“What's a werewolf to do when her boyfriend's mom is a werewolf hunter?”
A Werewolf Valentine's "Smashwords Edition" © C.M. Stunich 2017
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For information address Sarian Royal Indie Publishing, 89365 Old Mohawk Rd, Springfield, OR 97478.
www.sarianroyal.com
ISBN-10: 1938623363 (eBook)
ISBN-13: 978-1-938623-36-3 (eBook)
Cover art and design © Amanda Carroll and Sarian Royal
"Optimus Princeps" Font © Manfred Klein
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, businesses, or locales is coincidental and is not intended by the author.
to young love,
because there's nothing in the world quite like it.
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Dear Reader,
I'm so excited to welcome you back to book three in the Howling Holiday Series. When I originally started this series, with book one A Werewolf Christmas, I had no idea how much fun I'd have with it or how much I'd grow to love the characters and the blossoming relationship between Sylvia and Josiah. If you need a sweet, sappy, werewolf infused love story, then you're in the right place. Of course, poor Sylv still has to deal with her mate's crazy werewolf hunting mom, but love can conquer all, can't it?!
P.S. Want to be my Valentine? Then when you're done reading, if you have a spare moment, could you leave a review? And then come and visit me on my website at www.cmstunich.com. You can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat.
Happy Valentine's Day!
Kisses,
C.M. Stunich
Valentine's Day.
A holiday that strikes fear into the hearts of many—but only if you're single. For a mated werewolf such as myself, it was pretty much bliss. Or … it would be if my boyfriend's mother (who also happened to be a seasoned werewolf hunter) would relax a little on her son's epic grounding. I hadn't seen much of Josiah outside of school since the whole New Year's fiasco, but that was okay. School was enough; we had the rest of our lives to be together.
I felt a huge grin break over my face and tried to ignore the drawn together brows of my girlfriend, Deb. Her boyfriend, Lincoln, had just broken up with her, effectively ending the power couple known to the entire school as DebLin. Their lovey-dovey smugness had been like a pink cloud hovering over the school last year, tainting everyone else's holiday with their over the top perfection. Lincoln had ordered a red limo to pick Deb up from class and popped out of the top like a movie boyfriend cliché, a spray of white roses in his hand. And now, that cloud was gone.
“Please, spare us all the contented couple look,” Deb said with a roll of her eyes, pushing some frizzy dark curls over her shoulder. “Take it from me: even if it feels perfect, it probably won't last.”
I paused next to my locker and gave Deb a sympathetic look as I spun the combination on the lock and let the rusted green door swing wide.
“Did Lincoln tell you why he wanted to break up?” I asked for the millionth time. Deb had been strangely tight-lipped about the whole incident, and I wasn't trying to pry or anything, but it was hard to think up new ways to offer support when I didn't know all the circumstances.
“Not really, no,” Deb said with a sigh, leaning her back against the bank of lockers and gazing across the hall at the row of floor to ceiling windows that looked out onto the courtyard. “He just … texted me.” I bit my lip as I shoved my sweater into the locker and felt my hand brush against a small package that hadn't been there before.
Josiah.
I glanced over at Deb as she gazed into the sky through the window and started humming an old Bryan Adams song under her breath. Oh my God. I seriously needed to figure this Lincoln thing out—and fast. Unless I wanted to memorized the lyrics to “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”. Which I so didn't. I was, like, not even born when that song came out. Plus, my dad liked to sing it to my mom when they were flirting and giggling in the kitchen and didn't think my brothers or I was around. Gross, much?
I used my sweater as cover and slid the top off the little box. It was wrapped in a creamy brown satin paper with a matching lid. Inside, was a tiny stuffed werewolf with a heart around its neck.
Will You Be My Mate?
The words were etched into the back of the little red heart necklace, and I had to choke back a squeal. Three days until Valentine's Day—and the big V-Day school bash—and Josiah was already showering me with gifts. Speaking of … I shoved the stuffed wolf back into the box and stepped back before Deb could see. No need to grind salt into her emotional wounds.
“Can you believe he broke up with me over text?” she asked, but all I could do was stare back at her, the lenses on her glasses reflecting back my carefully neutral face. I'd tried the whole demonize the ex girlfriend gossip trick, but it hadn't worked. Deb was still so into Lincoln that she got her feelings hurt when I talked badly about him.
“Are you sure nothing happened between you two?” I asked back. I wasn't trying to beat a dead horse or anything, but this whole situation just seemed … off. At least Josiah was friends with Lincoln. Later, when we had our secret lunchtime rendezvous down by the football field, I'd ask him about it. That is, if my mouth wasn't busy kissing his face off.
I almost smiled, but then Deb sniffled and I frowned again.
“Guess I won't be going to the dance this year,” she said as I tucked some brunette strands behind an ear—a very human ear, thankfully. I could only count myself lucky that the full moon after my sixteenth birthday had been during a school break. Imagine if I'd grown ears and a tail in fifth period biology? I'm sure Ms. Mantley would've had a field day.
“You can't skip the dance just because you don't have a date,” I said and then held up a finger as an idea struck. “Or, we could, you know, get you another date.”
Deb glanced over at me suspiciously, pushing her glasses up her nose with a single finger and narrowing her eyes. Those pale brown depths stared back at me like I was the enemy.
“Another date? With three days to go until the dance? I don't think so, Sylvia.” But then … even though she was glaring at me like she kind of wished I'd drop dead, the corner of her lip was twitching in that way it does before she smiles. “With who?”
“With whom,” I corrected, trying to make a joke. Deb frowned some more and then her narrowed eyes flew wide as she spotted something over my shoulder. I followed her focus around and found … Josiah and Lincoln.
I couldn't help it; a grin split my face right in half.
“Sylvie!” Josiah said, feigning shock at seeing me. “You still go here?” he asked as the two of them came up to us and I noticed Lincoln's intentionally diverted gaze. Apparently there was something really cool happening up near the ceiling. Personally, all I could see were red and pink paper hearts and several banners advertising the dance.
I ignored Lincoln's weirdness and Debra's angry gaze for a minute, hopping into Josiah's arms as he dropped his backpack to the old terracotta tile floors beneath our feet. He lifted me up easy as pie since, you know, I passed on my lycanthropy STD to him. Josiah was now as strong as an ox—and it was totally hot.
Our mouths met in an explosion of color and warmth, stirring up these bouncy feelings in my belly that made me sigh all dramatically; I could hear Deb groaning behi
nd me. Thing was, DebLin had been soooo much worse. I mean, like, making out and rounding first base between each class. Yeah, that bad.
I pulled away and grinned at Josiah, loving the feel of his hands on my hips, his fingertips touching the bare skin on my lower back where my shirt had ridden up. When he set me back on my feet, I felt almost dizzy.
“Did you get it?” he asked, leaning forward to whisper in my ear, his lips brushing hot and silky against my neck. “The little present I left?”
“I got it,” I whispered back, standing up straight and looking my—yes, I'd finally accepted the word—mate over from head to toe. Josiah was tall, dark, and handsome in every sense of the meaning. His hair was dark brown, almost black, thick and shiny, falling across his forehead in a razored spray. It stuck out from under his white beanie and covered his ears, framing his face and drawing all of my attention to his eyes … and his lips. “And thank you.”
“You're very welcome,” he said as he grinned at me and then … let the expression falter with a small sigh. “It's the least I can do considering I'm still sans phone, computer, tablet … letters, telegrams, smoke signals … basically any form of communication.”
Josiah gave me a soft, sad sort of a smile.
“I feel like I barely see you anymore,” he said and we both paused as Deb cleared her throat and stepped up next to me, crossing her arms over her I Hate Valentine's Day t-shirt. It was new; I'd tried to talk her out of buying it yesterday when we went shopping. Guess I couldn't complain. Deb had tried to talk me out of spending the last of my Christmas money on a giant mega-pack of Valentine's Day themed panties. Yeah, I kind of had a holiday underwear addiction going on.
Not that Josiah's going to get to see them … I thought sourly. Since New Year's, we literally hadn't been able to get a single moment alone to … you know. So we'd had sex basically twice. Twice. Since Christmas. It was February. Totally lame.
“Sylvia and I were wondering if you had any single friends, ones who might not have a date for the dance yet?” Deb asked, lifting her chin and daring Lincoln to say something. Her blonde ex-beau flinched slightly, but decided to focus on the row of lockers to my right instead of on Deb's face. Is that … is that a blush coloring Lincoln's cheeks? Let's just put it this way: Lincoln was a running back for the school's JV football team, so blushing … jock. Didn't exactly go hand in hand.
I knew it, I thought with a small flash of triumph. Something happened with these two, and I'm going to figure out what.
“Single friends?” Josiah asked as he blinked back at Deb and lifted a finger to tap at the full curve of his lower lip. I am one lucky werewolf, I thought with a small smile, refocusing my attention back on Lincoln as he shuffled his feet in a decidedly un-jock like manner. “Yeah, sure. My buddy Simon—”
This time, Lincoln did snap his gaze up, turning a sharp blue glare in my boyfriend's direction before crossing his big beefy arms over his chest. And when I say big, I mean huge. See, Josiah is actually pretty, um, filled out compared to most of the other sixteen year old guys at my school. His arms are actually muscular, and he's not all stick skinny and awkward, but Lincoln … Lincoln is a beast.
Josiah paused and looked at his friend, silent dude signals passing between the two of them.
“Maybe Simon's … got a date already,” Josiah said slowly, looking back at Deb and then over at me as the bell for class rang above our heads. We all cringed. Damn. Break was over already. “I'll check with him and some of the other guys and get back to you?” Josiah phrased it as a question, but Deb just shrugged, and he turned his attention back to me. “Meet you at the field during lunch?” he asked with another grin.
I returned the smile.
“Meet you at the field.”
Josiah leaned forward, gave me a quick kiss on the lips and whispered in my ear again, sending tiny shivers down my spine.
“My little werewolf girl.”
And then Lincoln was grabbing him by the upper arm and dragging him down the hall towards the science building while Deb fumed and glared at his back from beside me.
Whatever their secret was: I was so totally going to figure it out.
Lunchtime.
My new favorite time of the day—and not because of the food. Admittedly, my high school had some pretty impressive cafeteria fare. One of the students had parents who owned a catering company, and they'd given the school a cheap contract so … professional, high quality food everyday. And it was cheap.
Buuuut … I didn't care about that. Nope.
Everyday at 12:30, I now booked my butt down the stairs from my English class and out the door, around the gym, and down another hundred cement steps towards the football field where Josiah was waiting. Seriously, if I hadn't been a werewolf I'd have never made it. My calves and lungs were already burning as it was. What is that, like a mile run? It was practically a triathlon.
“Hey,” I said, breathless and quivering, my skin lighting up as Josiah stood from the bleachers and turned to face me, running his fingertips down the bare skin of my upper arms.
“Well, hello there,” Josiah said as he looked down at me, his beanie tucked into the front of his black hoodie and his hair sticking up in an adorable mess. I reached up and ruffled it with my fingers. “I was starting to forget what your face looked like.”
“Oh, please,” I said as Josiah pulled me down onto the bleachers and tugged me into his lap. It was wet and cold out, but it was finally starting to look like winter was giving way to spring. The snow was gone; the rain had come. But all around us, the world was starting to come back to life.
I couldn't focus on any of it.
You know what whole absence makes the heart grow fonder thing? It's so true. I felt like I was ten times as in love with Josiah as I'd been on New Year's Eve when I'd finally confessed my feelings for him—and then almost died at the hands of his werewolf hunting mother.
“No chance your mom's going to lighten up anytime soon?” I asked with a slight cringe, enjoying the hard, steady warmth of Josiah's arm around my back, and the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath his hoodie. He smelled good, too, which would totally be a weird thing to notice if I hadn't been a werewolf. Pine, cloves, nutmeg. Josiah was both sweet and wild smelling, and I totally dug it.
“I don't think so,” he said with a sigh, putting his face against my neck and turning my entire body to Jell-O. “She can still barely look at Corine and me. I mean, it's been more than a month since …” Since both you and your sister shifted into werewolf form during what was supposed to be an attack on my pack. “But she doesn't speak directly to us, refuses to give back our phones or laptops, refuses to give me the keys to my truck. She's still making Dad drop us off and pick us up. She told him that she caught us doing drugs and now I get daily lectures about the dangers of methamphetamine.” Josiah wrinkled his nose up in a way that was so completely cute, I couldn't help but lean in and give him another peck on the lips.
It sucked not being able to talk to him or see him outside of school, but I mean, in a way I could totally understand why Josiah's mom was upset. In one night she'd learned that a) both of her teenagers were no longer virgins and b) that both of her teenagers had slept with werewolves.
Oh, and don't forget c) both of her teenagers now were werewolves. In a family of werewolf hunters … including Aunt Lizzie, the crazy Wakeham relative who'd tried to kill my boyfriend with a crossbow.
Had to be pretty upsetting. I felt lucky to have actually been born a werewolf. Plus, my mom was turning out to be surprisingly … cool. She championed for Josiah and Corine on a daily basis, calling Elsie regularly, and then waiting outside in her driveway until the woman came out to talk to her … with a silver plated sword clutched in one hand, but still.
Josiah was a werewolf; he needed to be able to act like a werewolf. But even the last full moon hadn't been enough to get Elsie to give in. According to Josiah, she'd taken her kids out to some empty field, made them shift in front of
her, and then forced them to shift right back. That was … it was practically torture.
“I skipped third period,” Josiah whispered guiltily against my skin, pulling back to look up at me with burnished brown eyes that made my heart jump and bounce inside my chest. “I couldn't help it. My skin got all itchy again and I just … I needed to get out.”
“You went running again?” I asked, because this was not the first time that this had happened. Josiah was so pent up from his mother and her rules that his wolf was starting to get antsy, rolling beneath his skin with an oiled gate, pacing like an animal in a cage. About a week ago, during gym, I'd glanced across the blacktop and seen him sprinting past the art building and into the forest with a tail sticking out the back of his jeans, furry and black and actually kind of adorable. Thankfully nobody else had noticed. Unfortunately, our school had an automated system in place—when a kid missed class, their parents got a robocall on their phones letting them know their student wasn't where he or she was supposed to be.
“It felt … I felt like I was flying,” Josiah breathed and then groaned and then sighed. He gave me a look that made my wolf growl happily in response. “But also like something was missing. When you're not there, Sylv—” he started and then paused abruptly, his gaze swinging over to the right with a look of stricken fear that could only mean one thing: Mrs. Wakeham had found us.
I scrambled off of Josiah's lap and nearly went tumbling down the rows of bleachers toward the field. Fortunately, my boyfriend's werewolf skills kicked in and he grabbed me at the last second, tugging me back and bumping our bodies together with an oomph.
For a split second there, I was content to cuddle up in his arms, let our wolf bodies brush up against our rib cages, struggling to get to one another. But then I heard the angry sound of throat clearing behind me, turning to look over my shoulder at the dark haired woman in the knitted sweater. Today's design featured a pair of bare butt cupids, complete with felted hearts on the tips of their arrows. Not as bad as some of the sweaters I'd seen in the past, but still ugly. Hideous, really, if I was being honest with myself. Or maybe I was just scared of the facial expression etched across the woman's features? If I hadn't known better, I might've thought that Mrs. Wakeham was a werewolf. Her curled and scowling lips looked like they were caught somewhere between a growl and a roar.
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