A trembling hand hid her mouth.
My eyes traveled back to the table top, then up to the ceiling. “Too much. It’s too much. I keep fucking this up.”
The words came from behind her hand. “Your wolf tells you all that?”
“We agree on it. Some of the more… gruff instincts are his. Marking would be him. But we agree on feeling all of it for you.”
“What does it feel like, having a… wolf inside you?”
“Kinda cool. We’re buddies. He… well, I call it talking to me, but it’s more like pictures and instincts that he sends to me. I talk back. He’s strong, but we came to an agreement years ago, I’m piloting this meat puppet, but he gets to play. Often. If I don’t shift about once a week I get uncomfortable and he gets pissed off.”
“Is that why you live here? In Alaska?”
“No. Well, yes, but there’s more to it than that. We’re native. We have a lot of native blood and ties to the land. Dad is full-blooded. Mom is half. Me, Patrick, Darius, and Tatiana are three quarters. We’re associated with the Tlingit.”
“Your tattoo. Those are the tribes of shifters with native blood.”
I nodded. “Yes. Wolf, bear, raven, elk, and eagle.”
“This is all still so…”
“Unreal?”
She shook her head. “I think that’s an understatement.”
“What are you thinking?”
“That I’m in real trouble here.”
I bristled. So did my wolf. “You don’t have to be scared of me, Jess. Ever. I will never ever do anything you don’t want me to.”
With her eyes cast down to the table, she gave the tiniest shake of her head. “You’re only supposed to be a summer fling.”
Those words, again. They speared my heart, and my wolf lay down to whine.
“I have so many questions.”
I grabbed her hand away from the coffee mug she’d been using as a lifeline. “Then ask them. I will always tell you the truth. Stay with me. Spend the summer with me. I’m not asking you to mate with me, I’m asking you to date me. Which is not how this usually goes.”
“Are you immortal?”
I snorted. “No, no. That’s fiction. We do live a hell of a lot longer than humans, though.”
Her warning bells went off. “Like, how long?”
“Five hundred years, at least if we don’t get killed. Seven hundred is usually as old as we get.”
“How the fuck is that even possible?”
“Accelerated healing affords us a long life.”
She turned those big, brown eyes on me, shocked and untrusting. Another punch to my gut.
“How old are you?”
I swallowed hard. “One hundred nineteen.”
* * *
My hand slid down my face.
One hundred nineteen years old.
Fuck a monkey.
Or a wolf, apparently.
My brain was just not meshing with what was going on. Magic. Shifting. Chiefs and alphas.
I had stepped into one of Brandy’s tawdry paranormal romances she loved to read.
“I’ve had a pretty shitty go of life, Garrett. It’s been one hit after another. My father and brother died in a house fire when I was twelve. My mother died from pancreatic cancer when I was nineteen. I had the fucknut who I call ex-fiancé cheat on me, knock me up, and then leave when I miscarried. Who, I might add, knocked up his side piece as I was pregnant with his child. These women I call friends are the most important thing to me, and I won’t give them up. I won’t give up the life I want.”
“There is nothing in the world that would convince me to ever stop you from being you. My wolf likes you. And that’s that. Whatever way you appeared in the cabin, that’s you. That’s what he wants. That’s what I want.”
I didn’t know what to think, where to go from there. I was completely overwhelmed, and my coffee sat in my stomach like a lead sinker.
“Jess. Can we just try this? I know you’re not really thinking straight. I’ve given you so much to think about. I don’t want you to feel trapped or obligated to this. If you find you can’t deal with all this, walk away and that will be the end. But give me a chance.”
He sounded… alone. Tired. Sad. It was not the same nonchalant, laughing air from just a few hours before. Serious and almost tragic.
I traced his features with my eyes and suddenly saw the one hundred eighteen years of his life there. He was young and handsome to the casual observer, but the depth of his eyes… Well, I’d been lost in those blue pools the first time we’d had sex in front of the fireplace.
Nothing but honesty radiated from him.
He was handsome, earnest, and while I had wanted a summer fling, maybe this could be something more. I also knew I didn’t have to decide that right now.
Now, I wanted to know more.
I hustled around to the other side of the table and sat down in the chair next to him and smiled.
“Okay, tell me more about this shifting stuff, who you are, what you do.”
“What?”
“Tell me more. You’re old, you heal fast…”
“I’m not old.”
“You’re a shitload older than me.”
He snorted. “What else is there to know?”
“I’m only twenty-two, but I’m obviously going to die before you. So how am I your mate?”
“Because when I mark you, you share my blood and my powers.”
“This does sound like a bad romance novel.”
“You know what else sounds like a bad romance novel? The fact I get an erection every time I smell you in a room.”
I laughed, then sobered. “Wait. Does that mean you were checking out the house with a hard-on the other day?”
“There should have been zipper marks on my dick.”
Trying not to laugh again, I snorted and the tension that was in the air was broken. We both collapsed in laughing fits.
He threaded his fingers through mine and gave me the biggest smile. My stupid heart melted a little. “Give me a chance?”
I pretended to think for a moment. “Ah, what the hell.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I still want to know more. Like how old is your brother? Brothers? And a sister?”
“Patrick is the baby of the family. He’s only thirty-nine. Darius is older than me, one hundred sixty-one. And Tati is seventy-three. I suspect Mom and Dad will have another soon. They like having kids, but really enjoy raising us one at a time.”
That blew my mind. “Wait. How old is your mother?”
“One hundred and ninty-one.”
“So, not only do you live longer, you can have children that whole time?”
“Women up to about four hundred, yes.”
“That’s amazing…”
“So Darius is the next Alpha?”
Garrett shook his head slowly. “He renounced it. He doesn’t want it. I was mad at first, but Dar isn’t assertive. He’s actually painfully shy—but about the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet. When I was born, Dar had a long conversation with Dad, and they worked it out. So, I’m the next Alpha as long as no one challenges, and I don’t lose any challenges.”
He slanted his head to look at me. “You know, I’ve been telling you everything and you haven’t told me a thing about your college degree.”
“Oh.” He was right. I was also thankful he didn’t ask me about anything else. I needed to stop talking about it until I was really over it. “I have a BS in Planetary Sciences. I like rocks and volcanoes.”
“We have a lot of those in Alaska.”
I collapsed in a fit of laughter.
Chapter Nine
“How’s the cabin coming?”
Garrett’s father scooped a large mountain out of the bowl of potatoes and plopped it on his plate. I was impressed. Garrett had warned me his family could eat, but I hadn’t expected two pounds of mashed potatoes per plate.
Including Olga and Tatiana.
“It’s actually coming along really well,” I answered. “Garrett said we’ll have the turbine up and spinning in a few weeks, and by then, everything should be put together. Brandy is insanely happy and has even talked about living here part-time.”
Garrett cleared his throat. “Can she do that?”
“She’s an asset manager. She can work anywhere she wants any time she wants.”
“That’s helpful,” Olga said.
Some other level of conversation was going on here. I wasn’t that trusted yet. Still, I was sitting here at dinner a week later with the Alpha of the St. Terese pack and his family.
Except Darius. He was off somewhere else.
Martin had been gracious and welcoming to me, which I wasn’t sure I had expected or not. They knew I had found out about the shifters, but I didn’t expect dinner and dessert on my first real visit to Martin and Olga’s house.
“And what’s your degree in, again?” Olga asked, heaping a pile of carrots on her plate.
Platter. They were eating off platters.
“Uh, planetary science. Geology, geomorphology, vulcanism, plate tectonics. I have to get my master’s soon.”
Tati tipped her head and looked at me. “What are you going to do with that?”
I halted. No one had ever asked me that. No one. Not even my best friends. “I… uh. Well. I’d like to develop a good early warning system for earthquakes, and I think the key to that lies in ancient geology and morphology. By developing that, we can have a better warning system for tsunamis. Since our planet is mostly water and most of the earthquake can cause massive tsunamis, it would be a huge step forward.”
“That’s ambitious.” Olga nodded her approval.
“I was always fascinated by the way the earth could shake when I was a kid. I lived in California until I was seven, and we moved to New Jersey.”
Patrick leaned forward and stared at me for a moment. “What do you plan to do with the knowledge you have of the shifters?”
“Patrick!” Martin slapped his hand on the table.
“It’s a legitimate question!”
“Your brother felt it was safe to tell her!”
“My brother is being led around by his—”
“Patrick!” This time, Olga slapped the table.
“Well, he is.”
“Not that it’s any of your business, brother, but Jess had done her utmost to stay away from me. There was a branch, a hot cup of coffee, angry fists…”
I bit my lip to keep from laughing. Or crying. “Don’t forget the sprint off the porch into the woods.”
If we were going there…
“You know we’ve always been told to keep this a secret.” Patrick folded his hands. “And he just—”
“I’m not going to do anything with it, Patrick. I understand secrets.”
Martin stared hard at his son. “And she’s my heir’s…choice.”
I caught the word switch. It was polite but necessary.
“You’re all ridiculous, mooning over a human.” He grabbed his platter of food and headed to the back door. “I’m eating outside. Don’t follow me.”
The back door slammed, and I wrinkled my brow. “Isn’t he like, thirty-seven years old? What’s with the petulant teenager crap?”
Olga shook her head and turned back to the table. “He’s got it bad for someone. You all suck at hiding that, you know?”
“Yeah, we do.” Tati laughed. “You’re a mother, anyway. You know this stuff.”
“Mother intuition.” Martin nodded.
“No, he’s just acting like a bag of dicks.”
I choked on the carrot I had started chewing and managed to laugh around it as politely as I could.
Garrett had put his chin on his fist and rolled his eyes. “Did I warn you about Mom? Mom has no filter. Mom likes to call it as she sees it.”
Olga pointed to Garrett but spoke to me, “Cute kid, but man, he was a beast as a teenager.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or be shocked, but Tati clued me in by choke-laughing on her food as well.
This family was downright fun.
“Well, this wasn’t exactly the tone I wanted to set for dinner,” Martin mumbled. “I was hoping for some decorum.”
“In this house?” Tati asked. “Really, Dad?”
“I guess I should be glad you all showed up dressed and we aren’t eating in the nude.”
“Nude is the second meal,” Garrett said, almost without thinking.
Everyone at the table burst out laughing, and I wasn’t in on this joke. Garrett waved it off and I could see he was going to explain it later.
The whole meal was wonderfully relaxed and full of good-natured humor and ribbing. I hadn’t really considered it, but when people lived as long as the shifters, family grudges were probably a total bitch.
Tati and Martin cleared the plates—platters—and Olga put the dessert on the table. It was an absolutely delicious looking cake and while I thought I was full, one look and I was ravenous again.
Just as she pushed the knife into the cake, there was a tremendous bang on the front door. It couldn’t be called a knock—it was far too angry.
“Goddamn it,” Olga mumbled.
Martin let out a deep breath as headed for the door. “I tell them to call every time, love, you know that. They just think we should all live in a pack house like they used to.”
“I like indoor plumbing and privacy when my husband takes me.” Olga’s voice was so full of growl, her words didn’t even begin to faze me.
Olga sat as Garrett stood and joined his father. She was utterly brimming with anger, and as the Alpha female of the pack, it was intimidating. Tati leaned into the table and caught my gaze.
“Whatever happens,” she whispered, “don’t run. Stay seated. We can all smell fear, but more if you are loyal through that fear, it earns you respect.”
What the hell was going on?
The door swung open and three men marched in without being invited. I saw Garrett and Martin prickle at that, but shut the door and turned to see these burly dudes who had strode in.
“Welcome to my home, Bart. Steve. Heath.” Martin was not happy.
“What gives you the right to burst into the house of the Alpha?” Garrett’s voice was angry but controlled.
Bart glanced at the other two men. “I question a decision.”
The air in the room was instantly thick and angry. I immediately understood what Tati meant by don’t run. Because I sure did want to at that moment.
Folding his arms over his massive chest, Martin stared at them. “What decision do you question, Bart? Is this a formal inquest and that’s why Steven and Heath are here?”
“It is as formal as it can get without calling the pack to a gathering,” Bart answered.
Martin sighed. “What is it, Bart? What is your problem this time?”
Bart stared at me at the table. He didn’t say anything, and no one else did either. After what seemed like an extremely long time he pointed at me.
“Non-pack.”
Olga slammed her hand on my leg to keep me from moving.
Garrett rotated his head to look at me and then back at Bart. “She’s a potential mate. She stays.”
“Only potential?”
Martin growled. Filled the air with an honest to God growl from deep inside his chest.
He was getting pissed.
“Bart, what the fuck do you want?”
“I want to change the hunting rule you laid down.”
“Which one? Jesus, Bart, there’s dozens of them.”
“The elk one.”
“Absolutely not!”
“We’ve always hunted elk—”
“And your brother was exiled last year for killing one of the tsisk! Do you think that I arbitrarily just make rules up? He killed a shifter. One of the Five Packs. Do you have any idea how long it took me to reach a compromise that didn’t involve the complete elimination of the St. Te
rese pack?”
Bart stuttered and glanced at Garrett for help. Garrett didn’t move, save one eyebrow that rose.
“Did you also know that it was their right to request the elimination of our pack? Because your idiot brother shot a tsisk and killed her. Her, Bartholomew. Your brother killed a female.”
“Well, it’s not fair. Where are we going to get our winter meat from?”
The room was suddenly slammed full of the power of the alphas standing in the living room. Olga held me in the chair. I wanted to run, because that power was stunning as it emanated from the two males there.
“You’re going to buy it from fucking Walmart like the rest of this pack, or you’re going to end up with your brother alone on a random Aleutian Island, forbidden to ever leave there.”
Bart swallowed. He wanted to cower or bow or anything to make Martin back down. He was trying not to fall to the ground and shake and shit himself.
Much like me at this point.
Finally, he relented and bowed his head. “As you command, Alpha.”
Garrett slid his glance at Heath. “You’ll call a meeting for tomorrow night and we’ll go over the rules again. Everyone will have a chance to request that we explain the reason behind them. Understood?”
“Yes, Beta.” He also inclined his head.
Olga stood from her seat. “Now get the hell out of my house and learn to call before you show up at someone’s house!”
“Yes, Alpha.”
All three backed out of the house, not daring to show their back to Martin and Garrett. As soon as Bart’s nose was clear of the door, Garrett slammed it.
Tati let out a breath slowly. “Damn. Idiots.”
I fanned myself. “Sweet baby Jesus.” The Alpha wasn’t really draining out of the air. I felt… drawn to it. Drawn to Garrett, who was still standing by the door.
“Son?” Martin asked quietly.
“Yeah… this is new.” His voice was gravelly and laced thoroughly with lust. His bright blue eyes were even brighter, almost glowing, and his gaze pinned me in the seat.
The feeling of Alpha went up.
What the hell…
“Oh, shit,” Tati mumbled. “I’m going outside with Patrick.” She snagged her cake and the fork and made a desperate beeline for the back door.
The door shut, and Olga leapt out of her chair, ran for the stairs while shedding her clothes, and disappeared up them. Martin stared after his wife, his eyes picking out each piece of clothing she’d dropped.
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