Timber Wolf (Virtue Shifters Book 1)

by Zoe Chant

"I didn't see a puppy," Brent snarled. A couple of the others edged forward and Jake tensed, ready to cross the distance to Mabs's side and protect her. She was far enough away that a human wouldn't be able to hear their conversations so clearly, but he could, and would know if she really needed him.

  "I know you've got a big truck, Tonya, you can probably see right over the fence. Gosh, can you tell me where the wolf was? If it was recently maybe I can check for tracks." Mabs was practically sparkling with innocent energy. Jake had to bite his lip to stop himself from grinning.

  "No," Tonya said in a low voice. "It was back in the summer and I guess it was probably a big dog anyway, and probably up on Jen's property, now that I think about it."

  "Oh, yeah, she's got the Rotties," Mabs said brightly. "I can see how you might think they were cows."

  Jake choked on a laugh as Brent snapped, "Who said anything about cows?"

  "I know, right? It was crazy!" Mabs spread her hands. "I was driving by Jen's ranch in July, I guess, and I looked out across the field and honestly for a second I thought they were cows too! Four of them, bouncing along like big sweet idiots, but they were so big and chonky I really did think they were cows!"

  It was, Jake thought, like listening to Noah pick up pieces of what other people had said and put them together into an entirely new story that had nothing to do with anything at all. It was amazing, and the little group that Brent had dragged out were starting to look at each other like they not only doubted their own minds, but possibly Mabs's. And more importantly, Brent's, too.

  "I figured it out after a second, of course," Mabs went on cheerfully, "but honestly, who would even think you could mistake dogs for cows?"

  "What about wolves?!"

  Mabs actually walked close enough to Brent to put a hand on his shoulder. Jake's whole body tensed, but she softened her voice and said, "Well, sure, Brent, people could mistake dogs for wolves, that would be easy. Look, I know you've had a rough time lately, so I think you should probably go tell Preston Cole that it didn't wo—"

  "How did you know I was talking to Preston?!"

  A huge amount of tension drained from Mabs's shoulders, visible even from the distance Jake was forcing himself to stay at. Her voice changed to sharp anger. "I didn't, Brent, but I sure as hell do now. Bill, Tonya, my ex doesn't give a damn about the safety of my son. I'm betting Preston Cole promised him a cut of the proceeds if he could get me off the Old Brannigan Place, and he's talked himself into believing there are wild animals around here that nobody's seen in fifty years.

  "You all know me. Maybe not super well," she said with a nod to the people she hadn't named, "but we've seen each other around town. I want to be here, to be part of Virtue. I want my son to grow up here. All Brent and Preston want is for me to sell up so they can develop this whole stretch of land into a resort for rich people. Let's imagine for a minute there were wolves coming back to this area. That would be a conservation miracle. I'd hate to let somebody like this," and her tone conveyed the look of distaste she shot at Brent, "ruin what Virtue's spent such a long time building. I guess wolves must need some peace and tranquility, too, just like people."

  "C'mon," said one of the strangers. "I don't know why I let this guy get me all worked up. Let's get out of here. I'll buy you a beer, Tonya, if you wanna meet at Hogan's. I'll buy everybody one, and we can have a little talk about Preston's development ideas."

  "Yeah," Tonya said. "Sounds like a good idea to me." She broke from the group, and the others followed, leaving Brent standing on his own.

  "It doesn't matter what they think, or how I found you," Brent growled. "I know what I saw and nobody's gonna convince me otherwise." Whatever else he had to say was drowned out by the sound of vehicles driving away.

  In the silence afterward, with everyone else gone, Jake's wolf whispered, Now?? and Jake, grinning, said, Yeah. Now.

  He shifted, and with snarls and snapping teeth, chased Brent off the land for good.

  TWENTY-SIX

  "You should not have done that!" Mabs, laughing, threw herself into Jake's arms after he returned to his human form. "Oh my God, you shouldn't have done that! It was amazing, I've never heard anybody shriek like that, but what if he comes back? What if he—I don't know, what if he had a dashboard camera? What if he—"

  Jake silenced her protestations with a kiss, and she didn't mind at all. "I had to," he informed her. "It was killing me, letting you be the fierce she-wolf and all, without me even getting a growl in. You were amazing." He spun her around and kissed her again. "You were amazing. You even got him to tell you Preston had looked him up!"

  Joy bubbled through Mabs like golden sparkles, making her smile so widely it almost hurt. "I was amazing, wasn't I? I did get him to confess! But you! I thought you were gonna bite him!"

  "I was not going to bite him," Jake assured her loftily. "For one thing, what if I'm wrong and it did turn him into a werewolf? That'd be the worst. But more importantly, biting him would leave evidence that there was a wolf around here."

  "Oh, right. Good thinking. I still thought you were gonna bite him."

  "He did too," Jake said smugly.

  Mabs threw her arms around him again, hugging hard. "I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad you're wonderful. I'm so glad you scared the pants off Brent. I hope we never see him again."

  "I don't think we will. You were amazing," Jake said again, more softly. "A real she-wolf. I don't know how I could have ever doubted you were the woman for me." His gaze went distant a moment and he laughed. "My wolf wants you to know he never doubted it."

  "Tell him he's very wise and handsome," Mabs said in the same placating tone she'd used on Brent's posse.

  To her relief, Jake laughed. "He says you're right."

  "Of course I am. Mommies are always right." Mabs gulped a breath and checked the time. "We only left Noah like ten minutes ago, right? That was relative time of being hours, not actual time? I was so freaked out."

  "You came across as the least freaked-out person in history," Jake said. "And yeah, it was only a few minutes. Look, Mabs, I don't want to tell you what to do, but next time you need to face somebody down, can I do it? You're really good at it," he hastened to add, "but you've gotten to do it twice now and I want a chance." His gaze went distant again before he smiled crookedly. "My wolf says it's much more of an honor to protect the cubs and that humans don't understand what's important."

  "Once more I agree with your wise and handsome wolf." Mabs stood on her toes to steal a kiss. "But yes, if there's a next time, I guess I can let you be the in-your-face hero. I don't really like it, but—"

  "You're incredibly good at it."

  She smiled. "Thanks. That wasn't what I was going to say, though. I was going to say, 'but Brent was my past coming back to haunt me, and I guess I felt like I had to face him.' Also, not to gang up on you by siding with your wolf, but..." She hesitated. "I can imagine somebody getting past me, Jake. I can't imagine someone getting past you, and that's what I want to have protecting my son."

  "Yes," Jake almost howled, "but if you can't imagine somebody getting past me, and I'm protecting you and Noah, then you're both safe and nobody's gotten through you!"

  Mabs pursed her lips, thinking her way through that, then had to shrug an agreement. "Okay, yeah, somehow I hadn't looked at it from that perspective. I'll let you be the big strong handsome front line from now on. Not that I plan to have any more showdowns."

  "Maaaaammmmaaaa!" Noah's small voice, muffled by the barn, sounded distinctly guilty.

  "Oh dear." Mabs pulled a face at Jake, muttered, "I wonder what happened," and hurried back toward the barn, tugging Jake along behind her.

  Noah appeared in the barn door before she got there, his little face concerned and his hands twisted behind his back. "I didn't mean to, Mama. It just broke."

  "What broke, honey? Are you okay? Are you holding something?" Mabs let go of Jake's hand and crouched in front of her son, concern driving all other worries f
rom her mind.

  "I'm okay." Noah unfolded his hands from behind his back, displaying two fists full of cash. "But it broke."

  Mabs actually heard herself wheeze like a cartoon character. Noah had fifties crushed in his hands, a lot of them, and, as she looked over his shoulder into the barn, she could see a trail of them behind him, scattered across the barn floor. "Noah, where, uh, where did you get these..."

  "The mattress broke," he said miserably. "The dollars fell out."

  Jake, standing behind Mabs, said, "Oh my God," in a fascinated tone, and pushed the doors open so they could follow the bills back to the mattress.

  A velcroed seam had split open from Noah's bouncing, and more fifties, as well as tens and twenties, were smooshed through it. Mabs dropped to her knees, echoing Jake's, "Oh my God," in a squeak.

  Noah, miserable with worry, wailed, "I didn't mean to!" and Mabs fumbled him into a hug.

  "It's okay, baby. You're fine. It was an accident, and besides, this mattress is made to break like that. Maybe not from being bounced on, but..." Her ability to talk, or even think, simply faded, and she just stared at the split in the mattress seam.

  Jake knelt beside her and pulled the seam open farther. More bills spilled out, like they'd been dying to escape. Mabs and Jake both croaked a laugh, and Jake picked up a few of the bills before letting his hand fall. "No wonder the mattress weighed so much. Oh my God. We nearly threw it away."

  "Who keeps money in a mattress ?" Mabs's voice shot high, then disappeared again into a nervous laugh.

  "Sarah did," Jake said in a voice an awful lot like the one she'd just used. "I mean, Sarah said all the rich Virtue-ese kept their wealth in their mattresses, but I didn't think she meant it!"

  "I'm sure she didn't, but...!" Mabs gestured helplessly at the mattress. She was afraid to even open it any more, like the cash would disappear like leprechaun gold.

  Noah, who had stuffed a hand in his mouth, extracted it to say, "Are we rich now, Mommy?"

  Mabs laughed again, still high and nervous-sounding. "Not after we're done paying off the house repairs, no, honey, but we're not in the hole, either."

  Noah looked around with interest. "What hole?"

  "No, not like an actual hole, honey, it just means, uh, owing people money. Oh my God. Am I really seeing this?"

  Jake had pulled the seam open even farther as she spoke, and money really did just slide out onto the barn floor. "She must have been avoiding banks for decades. My God, look at all this. This is..."

  "This isn't a money." Noah shoved his hand into the growing pile of cash and extracted a piece of brightly colored cloth.

  "How did you even see that," Mabs breathed, taking it from him. It was square, neatly hemmed, and crumpled from having been compressed in wads of cash for heaven knew how long. It also looked vaguely familiar, and Mabs stared at it a few seconds before shrieking and dropping it as she jerked backward. "Oh my God. Oh my God. That's one of Preston's handkerchiefs!"

  "What the hell is it doing in—" Jake's breath caught sharply and he cut himself off as Noah blinked between the adults with wide-eyed interest. He cleared his throat and rose. "I'll, um. I'll go call..."

  Mabs nodded and carefully put the handkerchief back down in the money. "Yeah. You, uh. You go do that." Jake left the barn while Noah tried to grab the hankie again, and instead Mabs caught his hands and then picked him up, upside-down. "We have to leave this stuff here for a while, baby. We'll get to figure out what to do with it later. In the meantime, would you like some lun...dinner?"

  "Lundinner!" Noah howled at her hip, gleefully. "What's lundinner?"

  "It's leftover peanut butter and jelly sandwiches fried like fish sticks."

  "YUMMY! I want that!"

  "Well, I walked into that," Mabs muttered, then brightened her voice as she carried Noah out of the barn, Wolf bouncing around her feet. "Did you leave any PBJ sandwiches left over?"

  "Nooooooooo..."

  "I guess we'll just have to have fish sticks, then."

  "Can we have..." Noah, dangling, fell silent as he tried to think of something spectacular enough to justify the ask. Jake, up ahead of them, nearly at the house, turned back to lift his chin in a kind of reverse nod that suggested he'd called the police, and that they were on the way. "Pizza?" Noah finally asked, with the kind of desperate enthusiasm that suggested he simply hadn't been able to come up with a better proposal.

  "How about spaghetti and meatballs?"

  "Yessssssssss!" Noah squirmed until Mabs had to put him down for fear of dropping him. Then, Wolf at his heels, he ran off to play while Mabs went to sag against the side of the house with Jake.

  "I have to heat up dinner," she said quietly, "but...um. Wow."

  "The sheriff is on his way," Jake said with a nod. "He'll probably want to talk to you more than me. I'll wrangle Noah, if necessary."

  Joy and relief flooded her and she stepped into his arms, hugging him. "Thank you."

  "What are partners for?"

  A spasm of nervous delight shot through her. "Is that what we are now? Partners?"

  Jake wrinkled his face. "I know it's diving right in, but I thought we could just skip the girlfriend/boyfriend thing, maybe?"

  "Yeah." Mabs kissed him, then hugged him hard again, glad to be with him. "Yeah, that sounds great to me. Okay. I'm going to throw dinner together before the sheriff gets here, and...wow. This is going to be a lot."

  "We'll get through it," Jake promised. "Together."

  * * *

  The sheriff came and went in far less time than Mabs expected, but four hours later her phone rang with Sarah's picture coming up. Noah was in bed already, so Mabs put it on speaker and lay the phone down on the coffee table between herself and Jake so they could both hear Sarah say, "What the hell happened, Mabs, the city council chat group is buzzing about Preston Cole's arrest!"

  Mabs said, "Oh my God," softly, and moved closer to Jake, but Sarah went on as if she hadn't spoken.

  "Everybody's saying he just up and confessed to murdering Doris Brannigan, but that can't be right. He'd never just say it. What happened? Did you find some dirt on him? Tell me everything!"

  "We found one of his handkerchiefs in—" Mabs broke off, glanced at Jake, and, evasively, said, "In her bedroom. And her diary talked about him harassing her. I don't know what happened, exactly, but the sheriff must have gotten him to confess. Holy crap," she added for good measure, and Sarah's laugh burst over the line.

  "Holy crap indeed! Preston! Who would have thought he had it in h—actually I guess I kinda did," she said with less humor. "I mean, he really was always a jerk."

  "He's the one who told my ex where to find me, too," Mabs said with a sigh. "But that's over, too, Judge Owens ruled in my favor and Jake, uh, scared him off this afternoon."

  "By being a wolf," Sarah said solemnly as Mabs and Jake both choked and stared at each other. "I heard," Sarah went on. "Excellent party trick. Look, I really just wanted to call to see if you two were okay. Are you okay?"

  "Yeah," Mabs said softly. "I didn't know about the arrest, but...yeah. We're okay. Thanks for checking on us."

  She hung up and turned to Jake, who said, "Holy crap."

  Mabs really thought that summed it up. "Jake, what do we do with a mattress full of money?"

  "Honestly, I'd probably put it in a different mattress and start paying off bills," Jake admitted. "Of course, the sheriff knows about it and might have a different opinion on more formal things to do with it, but I don't think there's any doubt it's your money, Mabs. And I don't think it's enough money to fall under the estate taxes stuff, although I guess we could count it to find out."

  "We should probably count it, at least, just so we know how much is there."

  "I want to get some rubber gloves first," he said, making a face. "It's called 'filthy lucre' for a reason, and somebody's been sleeping on that for decades. I hate to think how many skin cells are in there."

  "Well, that's about the most disgust
ing thing I've ever heard."

  "You," Jake said, "are the mother of a small child. I absolutely do not believe that's the grossest thing you've ever heard, or done, or touched."

  Mabs made a face, then made another one. "Touché. I won't regale you with the details. Okay. Rubber gloves and cash-counting tomorrow, I guess, and...and then, I don't know, do you think we could just take things nice and quiet and easy until, like, Christmas?"

  "Oh, I don't know," Jake murmured. "Christmas is what, three weeks away? I can think of a lot of things to do that are nice, but not quiet, and might be easy, for three weeks..." He leaned in to kiss her, and then again, until they really weren't on the couch anymore, and both of them were in danger of getting rug burns from too much vigorous activity on the floor.

  * * *

  Aside from nocturnal activities with Jake, paying off bills over the next few weeks was honestly one of the best feelings Mabs had ever experienced. All sorts of rumors flew around Virtue about where the money had come from, with Mabs's favorite being "Old Ms. Brannigan left a mattress full of money for them to find," because nobody actually believed it. She just said, "My ship finally came in," when people asked, and they went on imagining mattresses and buried treasures and attic antiques sold for a small fortune.

  Christmas rolled around with less stress than Mabs had ever experienced, in part because she had no outstanding bills, but mostly because Jake was happy to stay up late wrapping gifts with her, and because Noah was overwhelmed with excitement at the upcoming holiday. To her confusion, Jake kept her out of the kitchen all day, but she couldn't exactly complain about the promise of a Christmas feast she didn't have to cook herself.

  Finally, after much thumping and crashing and a lot of astonishingly good smells, around four p.m. she was invited into the kitchen for the first time all day. The table was set, but a space had been left for an enormous gift box that had Noah's name on an equally enormous tag. He yelled with delight and pulled it apart, then gave a gasp that even Mabs found gratifying, despite being not at all responsible for the gift within.