by R. E. Butler
Adam hummed. “I’m not sure he would have let me do that. There aren’t a lot of omega males who can do the work that needs to be done, but with Dani, it just made sense for us to work together.”
“I love working with Honey. The retirees will love to have another couple to help out. Honey and I have started to get backlogged.” Jeremiah reached into his back pocket and pulled out a rectangular magnet. “We’ll make up new magnets with your cell phone number and Dani’s, so they can call you in the middle of the night when the heat goes out instead of just us.”
“Or when one of the old ladies hears something outside and wants someone to investigate,” Honey said with a chuckle.
Adam glanced over his shoulder at Dani, and she smiled, her blue eyes dancing. He knew then without a doubt that it was the right thing for them to do. Dani had wanted to find a place in the pack where she fit in, and not being able to take part in the pack hunts on the full moon wouldn’t help her feel connected to the group. But helping the retirees was a step in the right direction.
As they stepped onto the porch of the first home, Dani slid into his arms and kissed him. “This is awesome.”
“I think so too.”
Chapter 6
The next afternoon, Adam opened the door and Dani saw Brynn and two other women standing on the front porch. “Welcome wagon!” Brynn said.
“Wolfy welcome wagon,” one of the other women added.
Adam held open the door and said, “Sweetheart, this is Mia Slattery and her sister-in-law, Nila. Where’s Jack?”
“With Mal,” Nila said. To Dani she said, “Jack’s my son. He’s staying with my mate, Malachi.”
“Who likes to call him ‘carrot,’” Mia said as she stepped into the house and Adam shut the door.
“Who likes to call who carrot?” Dani asked as she accepted a hug from Brynn and shook hands with Mia and Nila.
Nila chuckled. “Jack’s favorite word is carrot. When he met Mal, he started to call him carrot, too. It’s a pack joke.”
“But you can only laugh about it behind Mal’s back,” Mia warned. “It’s funny as heck though.”
“We’re kicking you out, Adam. We need to welcome your mate to the pack properly,” Brynn said. She lifted a large wicker basket from where she’d placed it on the floor when she took off her coat.
“What’s the proper way?” Adam asked.
“With chocolate, of course,” Mia said.
Adam lifted his coat from the hook by the front door and slipped it on as he walked over to Dani. “I’m supposed to meet Jeremiah anyway so we can work setting up a better schedule for the retirees. I’ll be back in a few hours. You have my cell if you need me.” He kissed her and she smiled.
“I’m in good hands, I think.”
“Definitely,” Brynn said.
Adam grabbed his keys from the coffee table and waved at Dani before shutting the door behind him.
Brynn sat next to Dani on the couch, and Mia and Nila pulled chairs from the kitchen and settled across the coffee table from them. Brynn lifted a beige towel from over the contents of the basket and said, “Mia, Nila, and I want to welcome you officially to the pack, in a totally unofficial way.”
Mia rolled her eyes. “It’ll be officially-official on the full moon. But for today, we thought it would be cool if we hung out for a bit and maybe answered any questions you had. We’d like to get to know you.”
Dani made a clucking sound. “Aw, you guys are so sweet.”
“It’s our pleasure. Now, tell us about the night you met Adam,” Nila said as she opened a box of chocolates and handed it to Dani. “I think it’s so cool that you found each other in the woods!”
Dani told them about meeting Adam. “Everything changed for me in that moment when he came out of the shadows.”
“Were you afraid?” Mia asked.
She shook her head. “I knew he wouldn’t hurt me.”
Brynn fanned herself. “So freaking romantic. Acksel crawled into my bed in the middle of the night, drunk as a freaking skunk. Not romantic.”
“But he made it up to you later,” Mia reminded her.
“True. But I reserve the right to hold it over his head for all eternity.”
Nila laughed. “Mal had the nerve to buy me groceries and be amazing with Jack.”
“Such a brute,” Brynn teased.
Dani nibbled on a brownie studded with walnuts. “What about you, Mia?”
“I’m in romantic limbo,” she sighed.
“With who?” Dani asked.
“My brother’s best friend, Lucian. He’s human and in the military, so he travels all the time. I’ve been in love with him since I was a kid, but Malachi has always said that I was off-limits to him.”
“If you’re mates, why would your brother keep you two apart?” Dani asked.
“Because Mal thinks he knows best. He says Lucian’s life is dangerous. The heart wants what it wants, though, and so does my wolf,” Mia said. Brushing her hands clear of crumbs from a chocolate chip cookie, she said, “Let’s talk about the bears. What was it like growing up with them?”
Dani settled deeper into the couch and told her new friends about her old home. That fateful night when she’d been orphaned and her entire herd killed, she thought she would die in the woods all alone. “It was just luck, or maybe fate, that I wandered into Oakville and Row’s mom took me in.”
“What about other reindeer?” Nila asked. “Did the bears try to find people like you?”
“Reindeer, in addition to being nomadic, apparently like to stay off the radar. Mom looked for them for me. She even hired a private detective, but it was just recently that he actually found a herd. Of course, by now they could be someplace else, and we might not have found them. It doesn’t really matter, though. Adam’s my family now, and we get to start a new family together.”
“That’s so freaking romantic. I need a truemate,” Mia said, slumping in her chair.
“I think you have one already, you just need to knock him over the head to get him to realize it,” Brynn said.
“I know!” Nila said. “Next time Lucian is in town, I’ll make sure that he comes over for dinner instead of just stopping by their office. You can join us, and Mal will keep his opinions to himself, trust me.”
“That’s a great idea!” Brynn said.
Mia looked unsure. “What if he doesn’t want me? What if I’ve been longing for him all this time and it’s not meant to be?”
“It would be better to know now and able to move on, than spend another year wanting something you don’t have,” Nila pointed out.
“When you know, you know,” Dani said. “I knew the second I looked into Adam’s eyes that he was mine. Hell, I knew before that. I could feel him in the woods, and I couldn’t stop myself from finding him. If Lucian is yours, then your wolf will let you know. Take a chance. The worst thing that could happen is that you find out he’s not meant to be yours.”
Mia turned as white as a sheet.
Dani hurried on to say, “I mean, that at least if you know he’s not yours, then you can find the one who is.”
“That’s a good point,” Brynn said. She lifted her glass of iced tea and held it high. “Welcome to the pack, Dani.”
Dani clinked glasses with the girls and took a sip before turning her attention to the basket. Brynn continued to unload the chocolate goodies from its depths. “Wilde Creek’s my home now. Thanks for making me feel so welcome.”
“That’s what we do,” Brynn said, winking.
* * * * *
Dani called Adam when the girls left two hours later and discovered he was out chopping wood with Jeremiah.
“Do you need some help?” she asked.
“You’re sweet to offer, but no, Jer and I have it handled. You could text Honey. She’s checking in on the widowed females.”
“Cool. Be safe. Don’t chop off your leg or any other part of your body I’ve become attached to.”
He laughed.
“I’ll be careful. Have fun, sweetheart.”
She ended the call with Adam and dialed Honey. A few minutes later, Honey arrived in her car to pick her up.
“Jer said some of the females showed up to welcome you to the pack. Did you have fun?”
“Yeah, they’re sweet.”
“It’s definitely better than the pack I grew up in,” Honey said.
“What was your pack like?”
Honey grimaced and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Very strict. More so than even what we’d call an ‘old-school’ pack. My mom died when I was little and my paternal grandmother raised me in my father’s house. I knew something was going on with my father, and even my grandmother seemed cautious. Then she died in her sleep, and he started acting strangely. I overheard some odd conversations that made me suspicious, so I ran away. I thought I was pretty slick and that he wouldn’t know where I was, but it turned out that he’d put a tracker on my car. I stranded myself in Wilde Creek and followed Jer’s scent to his house. Acksel called my father on my behalf, and my father threatened the pack if I wasn’t returned.”
“Why did he want you back so badly?”
“I wasn’t really his daughter. My mother had an affair. I don’t even know who my real father is, but the man who raised me killed them both. He planned to trade me to another alpha for a new mate. When I didn’t go home, he kidnapped me and Jer. Jer saved us and the Wilde Creek pack came to help. Even though we’re both omegas, I’ve never felt anything but absolutely a part of the pack. They welcomed me and stood up for us when the man who raised me demanded I come home. I know the bears are different than the wolves, but this pack is a family and I’m proud to be part of them. You and Adam are mates, so that makes us sisters in the pack.”
Dani smiled. “That’s sweet. I always wanted a sister, and now I have Kammie and you.”
“The high-ranked males are used to things being a certain way – the omegas work for them, because they do important things like keeping the pack and town safe. Kammie got a raw deal because wolves tend to think of physical weakness as a sign of inner weakness.”
“Her scars don’t keep her from shifting, though. They don’t affect her like Adam’s do.”
Honey stopped the car in the driveway of her home. She unbuckled her seatbelt and turned to face Dani. “Sometimes being an omega is more about perceived flaws and weaknesses than actual ones.”
“You mean because my shift is a prey animal? I worry about what the pack will think about my shifted form.”
She scoffed. “I can’t imagine it being an issue. First of all, you’re a mate, and mates are precious to the males in the pack. Even as an honorary member, you would still be entitled to the same safeguards and protections as every other member. It won’t matter to the males what you shift into, and a lot of that is because you’re a female. Females are automatically omegas. Now, if you were a male and the wolf was a female? Then maybe some of the pack would give the female a hard time for having a mate who’s prey.”
“Because in wolf thinking, the male should be the strongest?”
She nodded. “Exactly. I’ve seen natural deer fight back with their hooves and horns, so I’m not sure I think that just because you’re a prey animal that you’re helpless. But wolf males tend to think in terms of black and white as far as what is acceptable and what isn’t. Adam’s scars actually do affect how he moves in his shifted form. That matters to the males, and to an extent the females too. Males want to know that the male at their back is as strong as them, and able to fight if necessary. Females want to be with the strongest male. Being a truemate trumps all that ancient bullshit in my mind, though.”
Dani hummed in her throat. “I’m glad Adam’s not embarrassed by me.”
“He’d be an idiot if he was, and an asshole to boot.” There was a brief pause and then Honey said, “Jer is a non. Or, he was.”
“What’s a ‘non’?”
“A full-blooded wolf who can’t shift. When he was very emotional, he could sprout fur, but that was about it. That made him bottom-tier of the wolf pack. Adam’s scars make him an omega because he can’t run as fast in his shift as others. But you know what I think?”
“What?”
“I see how he looks at you. If you were in trouble, nothing would slow him down. I think packs start to see the laws as the be-all and end-all of life. They forget that underneath the laws are the people who are affected by them. Is Kammie less of a wolf because she has scars from childhood abuse? Is Jer less of a wolf because he’s a strange hybrid scary-movie-monster wolf? Or Adam because he’s got scars from a fire? Hell no. This is what Jer and I like to call hierarchy bullshit.”
Dani chuckled. “The sleuth didn’t have a hierarchy like that. It was just the king. Everyone did what he said, and everyone pitched in.”
“It would be cool if the pack was like that, but I think that in spite of the archaic laws there is something good about it. I think the laws have a place.”
“They remind us that we’re not human,” Dani offered.
“Exactly. Now,” she said, clapping her hands together, “are you ready to clean a kitchen and bundle up some old newspapers?”
“You bet.”
The two left the warm car and walked down the street to the home of a widowed she-wolf named Esrami. Honey knocked loudly several times and then opened the door.
“Ez? Are you decent?” Honey called.
“I’m never decent,” a woman answered.
Dani chuckled. She and Honey draped their coats over the kitchen chairs as they walked through into the family room, where a fire blazed brightly in the fireplace and a woman, gray hair piled high on her head, sat with fabric in her lap.
Honey bent and hugged the woman. “Esrami, this is Dani. She’s Adam Cruz’s mate.”
Esrami pulled her reading glasses off and looked up at Dani. “Well, hello. You’re a reindeer?”
“Wow, you can tell that so quickly?” Dani asked.
Esrami touched her nose. “Eyesight goes, but the nose sticks around. It’s nice to meet you.”
Dani shook Esrami’s hand. Honey pulled a chair over and said, “I’m going to start working on the kitchen. You talk to Ez. She’s a hoot. I’ll make some hot chocolate.”
“A hot toddy would be better,” Esrami told her.
“It’s too early to drink,” Honey said.
The old woman harrumphed. “Fine, I’ll wait until you leave and have two.”
Dani laughed. “What are you working on?”
Esrami blinked jade-green eyes at Dani and smiled. “I’m making a quilt for Honey and Jeremiah, for their first pup.”
“I’m not pregnant!” Honey yelled from the kitchen.
“I didn’t say you were,” she hollered back. To Dani she said, “It takes me so long to quilt nowadays I have to start before someone is pregnant, or I can’t finish in time.” She gestured to the quilts hanging on the wall and over the couch, loveseat, and recliner. “I’ve been quilting since I was a young pup. My grandmother taught me. My Ralph and I never had any pups, but my sister had several and I was able to teach my niece how to quilt. She sent me that one for my last birthday,” she said, pointing to a pretty pink and mint quilt over the recliner.
“That’s so cool. I don’t know how to sew.”
“Your mom never taught you?”
“Well, my real mom was killed when I was little, and my adopted mom was a baker and not much for sewing.” She leaned forward and looked at the fabric in Esrami’s lap. The small squares were a mixture of pastel colors and patterns, ensuring it would be perfect for a boy or a girl.
“This is a patchwork quilt. It’s my favorite kind, because you can do anything you’d like with the pattern.”
“It’s beautiful,” Dani said.
“Would you like to learn?”
“I’d love to!”
The scent of pine cleaner drifted into the room and Dani chuckled as she stood to go help Honey in the kitchen. “
Maybe not today.”
“Anytime.”
Chapter 7
“I think we should pack Kammie up,” Dani said as she ended a call with her brother.
“Pack her up what?” Adam asked.
Dani smiled in that way she had that made everything inside him feel toasty warm. “Her apartment. She wants to stay in Oakville, and they’re heading back here with my mom to get her things. I think it would be nice if we packed for her so they don’t have to worry about it.”
He turned from where he’d been looking at the backyard and watching the workers from Ferrity Construction mark the boundaries for the privacy fence. Dani was wearing one of his t-shirts and a pair of lounge pants with pink hearts. He glanced at the coffee table, and the drawer where he’d stashed the engagement ring he’d bought for her a week earlier. He wanted to do something romantic when he asked Dani to marry him, but he hadn’t been able to think of anything.
She joined him at the window, wrapping her arms around his waist, and settling her ear over his heart. He cuddled her close and kissed the top of her head. “You’re very sweet.”
“Well, my mom’s already packed my stuff up to bring with them, so it’s the least I can do to make things a little easier on them here. Plus, I have a feeling that my brother is not going to be interested in staying in Wilde Creek very long.”
He inhaled Dani’s sweet scent, a mixture of sugar and peppermint, and rocked back and forth. “The full moon’s in two weeks.”
She tipped her face up and smiled. “You know the full moon doesn’t have any pull on reindeer, right? I can shift whenever I want to. Though I have a feeling that because of you, I’m going to enjoy the full moons very much.”
He grinned. “I’ll do my best to make sure you have a good time.”
She glanced toward the workers. “You know what I’d really love? A willow tree.”
“Why?”
“The leaves taste good.”
“You can have whatever you want, sweetheart.”
She tilted her head and gazed at him. “You’re all I need.” As he lowered his head to kiss her, she whispered, “And a willow tree.”