by Amy Green
“Jesus. He’s only on the force because he has a crush on you, Sheriff.”
Nadine’s jaw dropped open. “You can’t know that. Also, he does not. He’s a good kid. And I’m years older than him.”
“That makes no difference. He still has a crush. And the Silverman will eat him alive, right after he finishes you off.”
“That is not true! I—” She stopped when she saw him zip up the bag and stand again. “What are you doing?”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Devon said. “I decided to go into town after all. I’m going to wash my clothes and talk to my brothers. And I’m going to escort you on your way back.”
“Damn it, Devon!” She wished she could smack him. Or at least stomp her foot. She was used to being obeyed, having authority—but that was with humans. Shifters were so infuriating with their disregard of any law that wasn’t their own. “I know I’m not your favorite person. I’ve probably earned that. But there’s no reason for some old grudge to prevent me from taking in a murderer.”
He stepped close to her—too close—and looked down at her. “There’s no old grudge,” he said. “There never was. I could never have a grudge against you. But the Silverman will kill you, Sheriff. And if you bring your deputies, he’ll kill them too. So let’s get walking.”
He started to move, but she grabbed his wrist. It wasn’t something she thought about until she’d already done it. It went without saying that he could have brushed her off like a fly and kept walking, but he didn’t. He stopped cold and looked at her.
She blinked up at him, surprised—at herself, at him. Then she looked down and realized two things: first, she was holding the wrist with the flames tattooed onto it. And second, she’d never touched him before. Not even five years ago, when she’d had him arrested. A uniformed officer had done the handcuff honors that day. Which made this the first time she’d ever put a hand on Devon Donovan.
It was… strange. Electric. His wrist was big and strong and warm. His tattooed skin looked dark next to hers. His pulse beat beneath the pads of her fingers, steady and hot. She couldn’t tell if it had sped up or was beating normally, because her own had sped up so fast. Just like that.
He stood still, silent, his eyes on her. His expression, buried beneath his thick beard, was unreadable. He didn’t make even the slightest flinch of movement. For all that he was double her weight, half an animal, and impossible to control, with the touch of her hand on his wrist he’d gone as obedient as a poodle. Waiting. For as long as it took.
It took her a second to remember why she’d grabbed him in the first place. Keeping her hand on his wrist—she was, maybe, reluctant to let it go—she cleared her throat. “I need your help,” she managed. “Please.”
Still he didn’t move. “What does that mean?” he asked, his voice quiet.
“Things are… not so great with my job right now,” she admitted. “There are budget cuts, and some political bullshit is going on. The mayor doesn’t like me very much. The unrest in Shifter Falls hasn’t been good, either. People in Grange County are afraid, and some of the people who’d like to see me fired are stirring it up. People think shifters did those two killings, and that they’re not safe. Which is my fault.” She looked up at him. “You follow?”
His gaze had gone hard, but he nodded. “I follow.”
“I have to close these two murders,” Nadine said. She had no idea why she was confessing this to him, of all people—things she hadn’t admitted to another living soul, even her daddy. Things that kept her up at night. “These two dead bodies are a symbol of my failure right now, a sign that with werewolves next door, no one is safe. The county has never seen two murders like this, so violent and so close together. And both of them unsolved.” She swallowed. “In the end, all of that comes down to me. All of it.”
His big body was frozen so perfectly that he almost seemed to have stopped breathing. His focus on her was so intense it made her heart beat quicker and higher in her chest; he was listening to every word. “Who is trying to get you fired?” he asked.
Nadine shrugged. “Does it matter? The mayor, mostly, because he’d like a lapdog in my job instead. Human politics, Devon. None of your concern.”
He twitched at that, but then he was still again, as if he didn’t want her to release him. “You won’t get fired,” he vowed. “I swear it.”
She dropped her gaze to the ground, a lump in her throat.
“Let’s go back to town and make a plan,” Devon said. “You brought your car?”
She still couldn’t speak. She nodded.
“All right, then. Let’s go.”
5
People who want to get me fired.
It all comes down to me.
Human politics, Devon. None of your concern.
No. Oh, no. No fucking way.
It was his concern. She was his concern. She didn’t know it, and that was fine. That was better. But though he’d buried it, though he’d tamped it down and ignored it the best he could and pretended it didn’t exist, the fact was that for every day of the past five years, Nadine Walker had been his concern.
She thought he held a grudge over the day she’d had him arrested. She had no idea. That day had changed his life. Made it better, and yet made it worse in almost every way that mattered. She’d altered him and ruined his life at the same time.
But it was best not to think about it. Safer that way. Safer for both of them.
They found her SUV and he got into the passenger seat, feeling big and clumsy, his bag of belongings at his feet. They hadn’t been driving ten minutes—in silence—before he realized that in the enclosed space of the car, he smelled. That was fucking great. He rolled down his window halfway, hoping to air himself out.
If Nadine noticed, she didn’t comment. She was quiet all the way down the service roads out of the mountains, her eyes forward, her jaw set. They were on the edge of town when she finally spoke. “The stuff I said back there. It’s confidential, okay?”
Did she think he would gossip? He was the most hated werewolf in Shifter Falls. He’d spent most of his life making enemies, courtesy of his father. He had no one to gossip with, except maybe his brothers, and the idea of gossiping with Heath, Ian, or Brody was ludicrous. “It’s the mayor who is trying to get you fired?” he asked her.
She shook her head. “Why does it matter? What are you gonna do about it, Devon?”
“Crack his teeth in.”
That made her laugh. “Problems are so simple when werewolves tackle them.”
“They are,” he said. “It’s humans that make things complicated.”
She shrugged. “Well, I’m human, so that’s how it has to be. I’ll just have to deal with it. Where are we going, by the way?”
“My place.” They had work to do, but he couldn’t do it knowing that he smelled like he’d been in the mountains for two weeks. Which he had. “I have to clean up.”
She had gone a little stiff, but she nodded. “Where, um, where is your place?”
So he directed her. For years, Devon had lived in an apartment his father had assigned him, sometimes sharing it with other pack wolves as Charlie moved his wolves around. As Charlie’s son and one of his top henchmen, Devon had always been kept close, never sent on any of the assignments further afield. Only once had he been sent on a long-range assignment: the time Charlie had sent Devon to find and kill his brother Ian, who was living rough somewhere in the woods. Devon had found Ian, they’d fought, and Ian had won. Barely. It was a failure Devon had had to present to his alpha. One of too many to count.
Now, Charlie was dead and Devon and Ian were coexisting in something that was almost peace. They’d agreed to leave the past as past. Ian had even helped Devon with his recovery from the silver bullet wound, as had Ian’s mate Anna. They’d both been selfless in Devon’s worst moments. The world was a strange place sometimes.
Since Charlie’s death, Devon had left his assigned apartment and found his own place.
It was a small house in the downtown section of the Falls, built sometime in the sixties and left to run to ruin. It should probably have been condemned, but Devon had gotten it for next to nothing—no one dared try to overcharge a Donovan—and he had spent his spare time since quietly fixing it up. It still needed a lot of work, but the bedrooms and bathrooms were usable now, and the kitchen was half done. He’d started the project because he was restless and needed something to do since his father died, but in the past two weeks in the mountains, he realized he’d missed his house. It was starting to feel less like a temporary project and more like a place to stay.
Nadine pulled up in his driveway and Devon got out of the passenger seat. His leg seized up briefly after the long ride, but it limbered up as he turned to walk to the front door. “Come in and wait,” he told her. “I have to take a shower.”
She hesitated, but then she seemed to give in. She got out and followed him to the door.
It hit him when she walked in. The sight of her in his house, the smell of her there. He felt things inside of him shifting and moving, like tectonic plates. He shouldn’t have invited her in here, and yet bringing her here was as inevitable as an earthquake. Deep in his mind, his wolf howled, because his wolf wanted to keep her here. No, he reminded his wolf. That isn’t how it works. We can’t force her. She has to choose.
Nadine stepped into the main room, looking around, oblivious to the struggle going on inside the werewolf next to her. “You do all this work yourself?” she asked, her gaze traveling the drywall, the exposed brick, the drop cloths, the cans of paint, the leftover wood flooring stacked against the wall.
“I do,” he admitted, watching her look around, taking in her slim figure, the way the jeans molded perfectly to her hips, the line of her neck as she lifted her chin, the neat slope of her nose in profile. He’d never seen her wear makeup; he wondered if she ever did. If she even owned makeup, he’d find it somehow and throw it away. Makeup would only mar the perfect shape of her cheekbones, the arches of her brows, the natural darkness of her lashes, the soft line of her mouth. She had no idea, but she was without a doubt the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
“It’s nice,” she said about his house, once again oblivious, and ignoring the ugliness and discomfort of the unfinished part she was standing in. “I didn’t know you were so… handy.”
“I’m not, really.” With her, it never crossed his mind to lie. “I had to learn. I made plenty of mistakes that I had to tear out and do over again.” Mostly at night. Devon didn’t sleep much. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept the night through. There were too many memories, too many regrets, too many things he’d left undone.
She turned to him and lifted a brow. “Do your brothers know you do this?”
That made him laugh. “I’d be surprised if they even know where I live.”
Nadine shook her head. “You’re wrong. I bet they know.”
“Not a chance. We may not be at each other’s throats right now, but Brody has never trusted me, I tried to kill Ian, and I’ve been ragging on Heath for years about his overactive sex life.”
She blushed a little, which made him itch to touch her. Heath. Fucking Heath. No woman alive could resist his charming, womanizing brother. Nadine had never been one of Heath’s women—Devon would be able to smell it on her if she had—but the fact that even she wasn’t immune pissed his instincts right off. Mated or not, if Heath were here Devon would probably do his best to bruise that oh-so-handsome face. And to add to the insult, he wasn’t even sure he’d win.
But Nadine was persistent. “Your brothers pay more attention than you think they do. I’ve talked to them. It’s a feeling I get.” She motioned to the room around her. “I’ll bet they even know about this.”
“Bet?” he said on impulse. “You’re on.” He held out his hand. “Fifty bucks says you’re wrong.”
Her eyes lit up at the challenge, and she grinned. “I’ll take that bet, werewolf.” She took his hand and shook it.
That was a mistake—he knew it immediately. Touching her should be off the table. When she’d put her hand on his wrist in the woods, his wild wolf had calmed, so perfectly and so instantly that it had stunned him. It happened again, his wolf ceasing its usual growling and pacing and turning into a docile spaniel under her touch. If a docile spaniel was also capable of ripping out the throat of anyone who came near its mate.
Because that was the word, wasn’t it? The word he could barely speak in his own mind. Mate. She was his mate. When a shifter found his mate, the woman who was the only one who could complete him, his wolf was tamed and he never looked at another.
Devon Donovan had found his mate five years ago, when she’d arrested him for murder. He’d never looked at another since. He couldn’t.
And she had no idea.
That was how it had to be. Because as much as he may want to, a wolf couldn’t simply sweep in, grab his mate, and claim her. She had to be aware. She had to know what he wanted, what the consequences were. And she had to choose.
No choice, no mating bond. No mate.
He had no chance with Nadine. She couldn’t choose him, because she didn’t know there was a choice to be made. He couldn’t make it for her. And even if she knew, there was no chance she would want him. She was human, a cop. She saw him as an animal and a potential criminal. She would not ever, not ever, want to be mated to a wolf.
That was his fate. He’d known it for five years. To know his mate, and to have her not know him. Which left him alone.
That was why he had fire inked on his skin. Because Devon knew what it felt like to burn.
He dropped her hand and backed away. “I’ll go clean up,” he said, and left the room.
6
He took her to the Four Spot, the diner in downtown Shifter Falls that seemed to be the favorite hangout of the Donovans. Devon took barely twenty minutes to clean up, but when he came back downstairs, finished, he looked like a different man. He’d showered, changed in to jeans and a dark gray t-shirt that showed the tattoo on his arm. He’d brushed his clean hair back from his forehead and, most strikingly, he’d trimmed his beard. It was still thick, but less shaggy, and it clung sleekly to the lines of his cheekbones and jaw. Nadine found herself staring at it, when she wasn’t staring at the nearly miraculous muscles in his arms. Down, girl, she chided herself. He’s just helping you out. And he’s a werewolf. And he’s younger than you.
Still, she was a little disconcerted as she sat across from him in a booth at the diner, ordering coffee from the waitress. It was warm out, much warmer here than high in the mountains, and Devon dispensed with everything but his t-shirt. Nadine zipped her coat off, too, and left it in her SUV, so she was wearing her button-down uniform shirt. She briefly wished she was dressed more casually, but then she made herself remember that this was business.
“Okay,” she said after she had told the waitress to bring her a grilled cheese sandwich and a mountain of fries. She was ravenous. “You said something about making a plan.”
“Right.” He pulled a folded-up piece of paper from the back pocket of his jeans—Nadine tried not to think of how nice that back pocket had looked molded to his butt—and unfolded it on the table. It was a map of Shifter Falls, Grant County, and the surrounding countryside. “Let me show you where I’ve already scouted, and what I’ve found.”
Nadine leaned over the map, almost butting heads with him as he pointed. “I’ve been over this whole area here,” he said, tracing his finger over a swath of mountainous countryside. “I found a trace of his scent here, but it was old and faint. He walked from the top of this peak here down to the river, where the trail disappears.”
Nadine shook her head. “That’s a lot of territory. You’re sure he’s still in the area? He could be anywhere in the country.”
“He’s here,” Devon said, his voice dark and certain.
“How can you be sure?” she persisted. “Maybe the Martell pack is lying, and he we
nt home with them and rejoined them as the Martell alpha’s pet killer.”
“He’s done with the Martells.” Devon said this with as much conviction as if he’d just had coffee with the Silverman himself. “He spent twenty years under Martell’s thumb, but now he’s gone freelance with his killing, you might say. He’s had a taste of it when he nearly killed Heath and me. But he didn’t succeed, and it’s bothering him. He wants to finish what he’s started. He’s a hunter and he wants the satisfaction. We see this sometimes, if very rarely, in wolf shifters.”
“You mean a rogue wolf,” Nadine said, remembering. “Killing for sport until the pack takes care of him.” At Devon’s look of surprise, she said, “Heath mentioned it when I interviewed him. He said that one of the Donovan pack couldn’t have committed my murders, because the pack would have put a rogue wolf down.”
Devon scratched his beard. “That’s true. And it gives me an idea.” He looked down at the map again. “I’ve been thinking about the Silverman as a human, almost as prey. But he’s lived with wolves for decades. I need to start thinking of him as a wolf gone rogue. That’s how I need to start hunting him.”
Nadine’s phone pinged with a text, and she pulled it out and looked at it. It was Tate Henderson, her deputy. Where are you, boss? Mayor Archer is looking for an update.
Shit. Archer was the mayor of Pierce Point, the largest town in Grant County, and the one who wanted her ousted from her job. If he learned that she was sitting in a diner in Shifter Falls, getting intel from a werewolf, he’d take that to town, since everyone was nervous about supposed shifter murderers right now. Doing some info gathering, she answered Tate vaguely. Back in an hour.
Come back soon, he wrote back. I got the vanilla cookies you like.
Nadine stared down at the words, unable to believe what she was seeing. Vanilla cookies? Damn it. Was this a murder investigation or a damn PTA meeting? Devon had said that Tate was only a deputy because he had a crush on her. Was it possible he was right?