by Celia Kyle
“Ta da!” her father cried, grinning from ear to ear and waving his arms around like a magician who’d just pulled a bunny out of hat.
Her mother clapped and cheered over his minor accomplishment and then turned back to the fire she was trying to start. “Failing” would have been a better word, but Lucy kept her snarky lips clamped shut. She loved her parents—really!—they were just so freaking clueless! They had absolutely no concept of how hard it was to be a teenager, what kind of pressures were heaped on Lucy’s shoulders. Maybe one day they’d grow up and realize that the world wasn’t all butterflies and unicorns, although she had a sneaking suspicion that their annoying optimism would never fade.
“Congratulations,” Lucy muttered, rolling her eyes again as she threw her pack over her shoulder and crawled into the blood red tent.
With one deft movement, she zipped it shut behind her. Yanking her book from her pack, she lay back on a thin foam pad, using her pack as a pillow, and escaped from her boring, bourgeois life. Before the story had fully captured her attention, she heard her parents murmuring quietly, and she knew they were talking about her “bad attitude” again, but she didn’t care.
Really!
The next thing Lucy knew, she woke up to the sound of twigs cracking nearby. She could barely see her hand in front of her face it was so dark. She must have fallen asleep reading, and since the sun didn’t set till almost nine in her part of the world, she guessed it had to be closer to ten.
Righteous indignation flared inside her. Her parents hadn’t even bothered to wake her for dinner! And they knew how much she enjoyed her mother’s camp stew. Jerks! She ignored the twinge of guilt over acting like such a brat earlier. They should have at least asked if she was hungry. The fire still crackled quietly, but she’d been camping enough times to know it had burned down very low, probably almost to embers.
Maybe her mother had saved some food for her anyway. Lucy reached for the zipper, when she heard twigs cracking again and paused. If her dad was taking a leak, she certainly didn’t want to accidentally see that, so she waited until he went back into their tent. But he didn’t.
Or it didn’t.
Whatever was prowling through their campsite didn’t sound human. First of all, she could have sworn she heard four feet shuffling along instead of two. Plus, her father didn’t huff and snuffle like a dog sniffing someone’s crotch. Or growl.
Goosebumps spread across Lucy’s arms and she froze in place, terrified to even blink. She had no idea what was out there, but the dim glow from the dying fire showed a silhouette of something big. Very big. A wolf, maybe? Suddenly she was very happy her mother had insisted they buy Lucy her own tent.
Scratch that.
Suddenly she wished her mother had insisted they all sleep in the same old tent they’d always used. What she wouldn’t give to be quivering in her parents’ arms, rather than holding her breath all alone. In the dark. With a monster on the other side of a very thin piece of blood red nylon.
“Get out of here! Go on!”
Her father’s voice came loud and strong just a few feet away. Pots clanged together, and the monster outside scurried off. She heard it breaking through the underbrush surrounding their campsite, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
“Lucy, are you—” Her mother broke off. “Go on! Go away! Shoo!”
The underbrush thrashed louder and louder until her mother screamed in fear. No, terror. The animal snarled and snapped its teeth. Her father shouted in alarm and then pain. Lucy sat frozen at the entrance of her tent, listening helplessly as the beast attacked her parents. Screams, growls, fabric shredding, dirt flying, bones crunching, and then silence.
Not silence. Only her parents were silent. The animal continued snarling and grunting and snuffling wetly as it did unspeakable things to the only people in the world she truly loved. A screech bubbled up her throat and it was all Lucy could do to keep her mouth clamped shut. But a tiny squeak managed to leak out.
And the animal went quiet.
Giant paws padded toward her tent.
Lucy remained still.
Then her tent exploded inward, razor sharp claws tearing through the fabric and slicing through her shoulder. Her screech finally flew free and she scrambled backward, away from all the sharp pointy things shredding the thin blood red nylon.
She screamed and screamed and screamed, and still the giant wolf tore apart her tent in a frenzy. Its claws raked down her leg and its fangs gnashed within an inch of her arm, but its body became entangled in the fabric. This only enraged it more. A bloodshot eye locked onto Lucy and she could have sworn the wolf smiled. But not a nice smile. A smile that said, “I can’t wait to gobble you up, little girl!”
The cacophony was too much to hear anything beyond her own screams and those of the wolf, but the wolf heard something. It stopped moving. It turned its head, bloody drool dripping from its snout.
A howl. Close by. Then another.
The wolf growled, but not at Lucy. At least, not at first. It gave her a furious glare and then wriggled itself free from the remains of her tent and loped off into the forest.
“Jesus,” Mason whispered when she finally stopped speaking. “What happened?”
Lucy shuddered, not wanting to remember all of what happened next. Mason wrapped his arm around her shoulders and held her trembling body close. She immediately felt calmer and leaned into him, taking comfort where she could find it.
“A hiker found us the next morning. I was in the hospital for two weeks. A bunch of people questioned me, told me everything would be okay. I guess they were right, in a way. By the time I went to recuperate at my grandmother’s in Pepper, about an hour away from here, my college had been paid for, my parents’ mortgage was paid off, and I had a healthy settlement from the Forest Service over the ‘incident.’ I still would have rather had my parents back.”
They sat in silence for a moment, their ice creams forgotten and melting down their hands. She didn’t care. Mason’s closeness was all that mattered. He gave her strength she didn’t know she possessed.
“I’ve spent the last ten years trying to build a life away from Ashtown, one that wasn’t clogged with… memories. I went to school, I built a career as an accountant, I went to more therapists than Woody Allen. I put my past behind me.”
“So, what brought you back to town? Selling the house?”
Heat bloomed in her cheeks. She’d already shared her deepest darkest secret with him. The latest bit of drama in her life barely compared.
“Long story short, I was framed for embezzling. Turns out that blood really is thicker than water. Especially, when the president of a family-owned company discovers his uncle has been feeding a bad gambling habit by stealing from the corporate bank account. After I tried reporting it to the authorities, the family covered the uncle’s activities and pinned it on me. They couldn’t press charges, of course, but they hid their tracks enough to satisfy the investigators. Then they took their revenge by spreading the word I was a thief. Good luck finding an accounting job with that kind of rumor going around.”
“Assholes,” Mason growled and then gripped his cone so tightly it crumbled in his hand.
Lucy smiled at his protectiveness. “Yeah, well, whaddya gonna do? My grandmother is great, but I needed to get away, go somewhere to regroup.”
He threw his ice cream in the trash can next to the bench and shook off the droplets of creamy goodness before giving her a curious look. “You mean you needed someplace to hide.”
A denial sprang to Lucy’s lips, but before she could speak the words, she realized he was right. The truth hurt. She shrugged and tossed her own sloppy cone into the trash. For some strange reason, she’d lost her appetite.
Mason turned to her, took her sticky hand in his and gazed deeply into her eyes. “There’s no reason to hide anymore, Lucy. I won’t let you. You’re too spectacular to hide away.”
Tears burned at the backs of her eyes, but she couldn’t
look away from his hypnotizing green eyes. Not that she really wanted to.
“And you need to know,” he continued, wiping a fleck of ice cream from her chin, “you’ll never be alone again. You will always have me. Me, my brothers, my entire pack. Your pack. You are the alpha mate, and every member of the pack will support you, no matter what.”
Wouldn’t that be nice? she thought. She wanted to believe him, more than anything. But life had a nasty way of reminding her that whatever progress she made, it would be there to take it all away.
“I don’t know, Mason,” she whispered, leaning her head on his shoulder.
He kissed her temple. “What don’t you know, my love?”
“I’m not strong enough to take on that kind of responsibility. An alpha mate should be strong, a formidable force. That’s just not me.”
She felt his lips smile against her skin, and then he said, “You’re wrong, but that’s okay. I can be strong for the both of us until you realize it.”
Chapter Sixteen
Mason and Lucy spent the rest of the afternoon window shopping along the main drag. He’d expended a lot of effort building up Ashtown’s reputation as the hottest spot for hipsters to hang, and it had worked. After they invariably moved on to fresher roadkill, the middle class would catch wind of the town’s charms and it would be come all the rage with suburbanites. Then they would follow the hipsters’ breadcrumbs, leaving Ashtown to the snowbirds. Then he’d just figure out how to repeat the cycle.
In the meantime, Lucy seemed to be having a great time pawing through all the junk that reminded her of her childhood. It warmed his heart to see his mate’s spirits lift. She’d suffered enough in her life. It was time she enjoyed herself a little.
“I had this exact toy when I was nine,” Mason said as he handed her a ninja action figure dressed in a red Hawaiian shirt. “It was my most prized birthday present that year. Then Kade stepped on it with his baseball cleats. Smashed it into a million pieces.”
“I hope he replaced it for you with his allowance.” She had a glint in her eye that suggested she already knew the Blackwood brothers weren’t sitcom perfect. He laughed.
“Not a chance in hell. I was so mad I shifted and tackled him. Dad caught us before Kade got to shift, and I was grounded for a week. On my birthday!”
“Poor baby,” Lucy mocked, stroking his arm like he was a whining puppy. “Stories like that make me grateful I was an only child.”
“You never wanted someone to fight with? To share your clothes with? To tell your darkest secrets to?”
“Not really. Besides, I had my mom for fighting. At least during my teenage years.” Mothers and daughters, an eternal struggle.
“So, you were a daddy’s girl?”
Lucy snorted softly and played with the arm of an old Fisher Price record player. “No doubt about it. We loved to listen to his old Sinatra albums. I didn’t really care so much about Ol’ Blue Eyes, but I loved how much he loved him.”
“We should go listen to some of them,” Mason suggested, hoping she’d take the hint and invite him over to her house. Not that mates required invitations, but he was still trying to be a gentleman—at least until she finally accepted him as her mate.
Lucy sighed sadly. “Can’t. I have his old record player somewhere, but the albums were stored in the basement and it flooded a few years back. The caretaker threw them all out. All I have left are the memories.”
Mason grabbed her hand and dragged her from the little curio shop. “We can fix that.”
As the Record Turns was one of the first “cool” shops to open on Main Street in recent years. He had no reason to visit the store often, but if someone was in the market for vintage vinyl, there was no better place in all of Georgia.
“Any one in particular?” he asked as he headed straight for a section at the back devoted to the Rat Pack.
“No idea. He had a bunch.”
Mason felt the heat from Lucy’s body as she peered over his shoulder while he flicked through the albums. His wolf urged him to pick her up, set her on the racks of records, and take her right there in the middle of As the Record Turns. The cashier, a mangy-looking dude with tiny braids in his beard and an unlit clove cigarette dangling from his tobacco-stained lips, probably would have enjoyed the show, but Mason definitely wasn’t into other people watching. Especially Lucy. Even a brief glance from another man sent his wolf into a fit of jealousy. So, he kept his cool and continued digging.
“Will this do?” He showed her one titled Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits. The man himself graced the cover with a cocky little smile Mason admired.
“Does it have Fly Me to the Moon?”
“Huh, I would have pegged you as a My Way kinda gal.”
She nudged him with her hip, sending spirals of desire straight to his cock. “Ha-ha. I’m actually partial to Moon River.”
“How apropos.” When she looked at him blankly, he sighed. “Moon River? Werewolf? Get it?”
“Oh God,” she groaned.
What he wouldn’t give to hear her moaning those words in his ear as he brought her to the edge of oblivion, over and over and over again. He pushed the image from his mind, but it was too late. His cock pressed hard and hot against the fly of his jeans.
“So what’s yours?” she asked.
Mason was so distracted by her soft curves grazing his side as she read the list of songs including on the album that he had no clue what she was talking about. “Huh?”
“Your favorite Sinatra song.”
“Oh. Sorry, I’m more of a Dean Martin guy.”
Lucy gasped and slapped a hand to her chest. If she’d been wearing pearls, he had no doubt she would have clutched them for dramatic effect. “Say it isn’t so!”
“Hey, your dad loved Sinatra. My mom was in love with Dino.”
“Mama’s boy,” she teased.
He grinned as he pulled a Dean Martin LP from the rack. “Guilty as charged. I guess we’ll just have to go back to your place and compare. My treat.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you were a glutton for punishment.”
He waggled an eyebrow at her. “You have no idea.”
Lucy blushed furiously and hurried out the door while he paid for the albums. He threw money at the kid behind the register and jogged after her, not wanting to let her out of his sight for a minute. He caught up with her as she entered the curio store again.
“What’s up?” He fell in step next to her.
“Since you bought that for me, it only seems fair that I buy your little ninja dude.”
“His name was Master Fu, and I don’t need a toy.”
“I don’t need a record,” she shot back.
“So that’s how it’s going to be, huh? Arguing over every little thing for the rest of our lives?” He chuckled, but Lucy didn’t.
She paled and turned away to the pay for Master Fu. Mason tried not to feel disappointed over her reticence to admit they were mates. His brain knew she’d come to eventually, and probably very soon. But in that moment, it still felt like a kick in the nuts.
The tension between them on the drive to her place drove Mason mad. He’d never felt so unsure in his life—an uncommon and extremely unwelcome feeling for an alpha. He vowed to let her take the lead, so when he pulled up in front of her place and she jumped out, he hesitated. Only when she glanced over her shoulder and said, “Coming?” did he follow.
By the time he closed her door—he’d had one of his men fix her broken doorknob—she was on the phone with the local pizza place. She gave him a quizzical look.
“Preferences?”
He shrugged.
“Okay,” she said into the phone, “make it a large Hawaiian. Thanks. It’ll be here in twenty minutes.”
“You could have warned me you were planning to ruin a perfectly good pizza with pineapple.”
“Hey, I asked,” she said, leaning against the kitchen entryway, the picture of health and sass. “If you don’t like the best
pizza man ever invented, the door’s right there.”
“I’m not leaving until you admit I’m right.”
Mason looked around the living room until he spotted the record player. It was old, but of high quality. Real audiophile equipment that must have set Lucy’s father back quite a bit when he bought it. Lucy winced at the static crackling through the speakers as the needle skimmed over the old vinyl.
“I think I already won.”
Then the music started, and Mason turned to her with his hand held out. “Care to dance?”
“No way, I’m a terrible dancer.”
“I don’t believe it.”
She stepped away from the wall. Just a step, but it was a start. “I swear. One guy at a school dance asked if I had a bug crawling around under my shirt.”
Mason laughed. “Now I need to see you dance!”
He breached the distance between them and clasped one of her hands. It was soft and warm and full of life. “Don’t worry, I’m an excellent dancer.”
“Cocky as ever,” Lucy groaned, but she allowed him to pull her into his arms.
Her lush curves pressed into his chest, his stomach, his pelvis, his legs, driving his wolf wild. Driving him wild. His hands itched to skim those tempting peaks and valleys. Instead, he ground his teeth tight and simply swayed with her in his arms. She kept her hands on his shoulders, as if they were at a chaperoned middle school dance.
“It would be easier if you wrapped your arms around my neck,” he suggested coyly. The look in her eye told him he wasn’t fooling anyone, which he really hadn’t intended to.
“It would be easier if we were listening to Sinatra,” she countered, but she wound her arms around his neck anyway.
They swayed together in the middle of the room until the first side of the record ended. The player had a special feature that allowed it to automatically flip over the album and start the next side without human intervention. They continued swaying through the process, heedless of the fact the player made a hell of a racket doing its job. They were too engrossed in their own closeness to care about anything else.