Instead, a woman who seemed far too young to be my mother held court in front of a huge statue of an angel—an angel for crying out loud—that rose out of a ring of daylilies surrounded by perfectly manicured grass. Even from a distance, Celia was so absurdly human that I couldn’t quite imagine having spent nine months growing from egg to fetus within her womb. High heels, a black suit with tight mid-length skirt, red lipstick. She looked the part of a bereaved human wife mourning her lost husband.
But no one would have mistaken her for the mate of a shifter.
We should talk to her, my wolf murmured. Get to know her.
Unconsciously, I rubbed at the mostly healed bullet wound midway up my left arm. But the real pain came from within my chest.
Even though I knew I was lying, I told myself the ache was just heartburn. No way would I acknowledge the truncated memories of Celia that flickered through my mind.
But the recollections of my father were harder to push aside.
Harbor, the werewolf half of my parental unit, had done his level best to turn us into a real family. Even twelve years later, I still vividly recalled my father kissing away my boo-boos and trying to do the same for the pinched expression that came onto his wife’s face every time she glanced in my direction.
It hadn’t worked, though. It had never worked.
Instead, Celia exploded into regular bouts of tears and rage. A one-night stand turned into a surprise pregnancy turned into a marriage—that Celia could accept. She could also overlook her husband’s tendency to don fur as long as he did so far out of sight and never mentioned the bestial half of his personality in her presence.
But when her young daughter’s eyes turned feral every time a sparrow alighted on the family’s bird feeder.... That was too much to handle.
I wasn’t even old enough to shift for the first time when the tears and sighs gave way to screaming matches and finally to an ultimatum. Celia was leaving our clan, leaving me, leaving her mate.
For a werewolf, though, being separated from his mate was akin to driving hot spikes under his fingernails. So Harbor packed up alongside her and left me behind in his quest to make their relationship work.
Not fair, my wolf whispered. Daddy wanted to take us with him.
My inner beast had matured considerably during the last month, but she still possessed the naivety of a child. So, for her sake, I allowed one Celia-related memory to rise up and fill our joint mind. For the wolf’s sake, I replayed the final conversation I’d shared with the shifter who even now rotted in the ground forty yards away from the spot where my feet remained rooted to the earth.
“You know I love you, right?” Harbor asked as we sat together one summer evening on the stoop of our ramshackle single-wide. The landscaping was a bit shabby, dirt trails worn between residences and everything in need of a fresh coat of paint. But the pack’s territory felt warm and welcoming in a way this human cemetery never could. That night, nine-year-old me had been completely content.
“I know,” I answered cockily. I hadn’t known yet that Harbor planned to rip out my heart that very evening. So I parroted back his words easily. “I love you too, Daddy.”
My father smiled and pulled me onto his lap. But his voice was grim as he broke the bad news. “But your mother needs to be around people like her,” he started, and abruptly I wanted to be anywhere but there. My throat tightened with tears as I realized what was coming.
Still, my father wouldn’t continue until I spoke. So I forced out a single word. “Yeah,” I answered, itching to run away under the moon with a mason jar, to capture fireflies for bedroom illumination and pretend the current conversation wasn’t happening.
But I could hear my mother’s gut-wrenching sobs wending through the open window behind me. The sound alone was proof that something drastic needed to be done if we ever hoped to unify our own small corner of the pack.
Replaying the memory a dozen years in the future, I realized that my father had been painfully young then. Celia had gotten pregnant at fifteen and a half, and Harbor hadn’t possessed many additional years. Which meant the pair of them were only a little older than my current age when they’d broken all ties with their daughter.
Trying to imagine raising a kid of my own when I barely felt old enough to make my own way in the world, I felt a little more sympathy for the duo...even if the gut-wrenching pang of parting hadn’t faded one bit in the last dozen years.
Back in the past, Harbor’s lupine eyes bored into mine as he begged me to understand. “You can come with us if you want. Or you can stay here with a pack that loves you.”
See! my lupine half barked in my ear now. I shrugged off her jubilation because I’d been the one responding to Harbor then just as I was the one trying to decide whether or not to face Celia now.
My wolf still didn’t get it, but my human half had been savvy enough even at nine to understand what my father was saying between the lines. Harbor couldn’t bear to relinquish either of his responsibilities. He wasn’t an alpha werewolf, but he still possessed a deep-seated urge to protect his wife and daughter, the instinct like a heavy yoke dragging down his broad shoulders. Harbor would never leave me against my will.
But he and I both knew that I was the rotten apple tearing his marriage apart.
So nine-year-old me had puffed out her little chest and told Harbor what he needed to hear. “I’m old enough to take care of myself,” I said, simulating tween arrogance that I didn’t really feel. “Who wants to go live with humans when I have a whole pack to hang with?”
Behind us, the screen door creaked open then slapped shut with a bang. “Are you ready yet?” Celia asked her husband, averting her gaze from a daughter who she neither wanted nor loved.
The one-body clutched a cardboard box full of the few possessions she planned to take with her. Possessions that didn’t include the carton of baby photos and mementos I later found when I tore our little home apart in search of something to remember my parents by.
In contrast to my desperate clutching for the past, there was very little of our shared life that my mother hoped to remember.
“I’ll be right there,” Harbor soothed her, his voice calm and deep like the rumble of lullabies that lulled me to sleep every night.
For a moment, Celia hesitated, tapping one hard-soled sandal against the rough planks of the porch step. But then she turned toward our family’s car to stow her luggage in the trunk before sliding into the passenger-side seat. Keeping her eyes safely averted, she waited for the arrival of her mate.
My father sighed, but didn’t jump immediately to do her bidding. Instead, he rumpled up my short hair with one huge paw. “Never forget that I love you, Fen,” he murmured so quietly that Celia wouldn’t have been able to hear even if she possessed superior shifter ears. I could barely hear him, my half-blood nature meaning that my inner wolf slept most of the time. “If you ever need me, call and I’ll come.”
Then he’d turned away and walked toward my mother, leaving me shivering and abandoned in front of our little home. In the distance, I could hear the howls of our pack mates reminding me that I could turn up on their doorsteps for food or hugs at any hour of the day or night, no questions asked. It wasn’t as if I was alone in the world.
But it sure felt that way.
Years later, when I’d needed a father, Harbor hadn’t been present. I’d ached to turn to him when I grew into my own skin and ran away from the pack to spend eight months wandering alone through outpack territory. I’d needed him again when I returned to my clan and slid into a new role, slowly learning to guide teenage shifters not much younger than myself. And I could sure have used his advice at the present moment as I strove to figure out a mate bond that left me alternately giddy with joy...and on the verge of fleeing in terror.
Still, I’d never picked up a phone to call Harbor because I’d known he wouldn’t come. When I was nine years old, my father had chosen Celia over me. And now he’d fled beyond my ability to
follow.
We still have a mother, my optimistic wolf whispered.
I only shook my head by way of reply. Because no matter what my inner animal thought, the one-body whose high heels were currently sinking into the sod before me was mother by blood alone. There was no point in poking my nose where it didn’t belong.
So I turned away from my father’s funeral even as I felt the electricity of transformation fill the air and heard my relatives howl out their eulogies to the clear blue sky. My wolf wordlessly yearned toward the possible companionship. But instead of pacing forward to join these family members who I barely recognized, I just retraced my steps back toward a shifter whose affections weren’t fickle and flighty, who cared for me with no strings attached.
I was plenty old enough not to need a parent. And I was better off without Celia in my life.
Chapter 3
HUNTER’S ANGER HOVERED over our hotel room like a lead weight. The puppies had been fed and washed and were now nestled down amid half a dozen pillows in the bathtub. We hadn’t heard a peep out of them for ten minutes, a sure sign that even Star was fast asleep at last.
Which meant my mate was finally free to release the pent-up frustration that had been building inside him during the entire drive home. “You were right there and you didn’t even bother talking to your mother?” he demanded. The uber-alpha’s amber eyes cut through my skin and made a beeline for my already aching heart.
Within my human body, my lupine half whimpered as the overwhelming aroma of frigid root beer splashed over us like an ocean wave tumbling a failed surfer toward shore. The effect was pure alpha compulsion, but my mate hadn’t put any intention behind it—only anger. Even so, I felt my shoulders bowing, my knees trembling, and the ground beckoning me to come closer.
The sensation pissed me off.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” I rebutted, opening my mouth with an effort. “But, no, I didn’t.”
I’d taken to letting my inner wolf hang out behind my eyes lately, but now I shushed her the same way I’d calmed the puppies moments earlier. And as my animal half disappeared from view, so did Hunter’s alpha compulsion. Abruptly, I was able to stand tall once more.
To stand tall and to march over to my companion, shoving both hands against his broad chest in a schoolyard show of aggression. “Playing top dog with your mate isn’t cool,” I ground out, expecting Hunter to apologize as he always had in the past when his wolf got the better of him and he slapped my weaker animal down.
Instead, the uber-alpha’s usually amber eyes glinted gold as he wrapped two huge hands under my armpits and lifted me up so we saw eye to eye. My feet kicked against nothing and I gulped. I liked to treat Hunter like my own personal lap dog, but the truth was that his overwhelming alpha dominance combined with his massive strength meant he could snap me like a twig if he felt like it. Maybe sass and backtalk wasn’t always such a smart move.
“Playing like you’re not my mate isn’t cool either,” Hunter rebutted after a long moment of tense silence.
Then his mouth smashed into mine and his hands slipped down to cradle my butt as I wrapped my legs around his waist. My mate’s proximity had flicked an internal switch from anger to arousal in an instant and I growled with pleasure as his tongue invaded my mouth, plundering and pillaging rather than easing into his usual gentle pleasuring.
Yep, my evasions of the L word earlier that day hadn’t been overlooked. Hunter was just as pissed as he was turned on.
Well, so was I. Time to see if angry sex is as delicious as happy sex.
My back slammed up against a wall as we twirled through the air. I should have felt dizzy from the abrupt motion. But my eyes were still wide open and latched onto Hunter’s, a lifeline in the turbulent sea of our churning emotions.
The funeral, the puppy mill, my misspent childhood all fled from my mind as I grabbed Hunter’s hair in one fist, pulling him closer even as I fumbled at the clothes that lay between us. For all that was holy, what had he been thinking this morning when he donned a belt?
Luckily, my mate only needed one hand to hold me up now that my spine was sandwiched between his broad chest and the room’s cheerfully painted drywall. So his other five fingers were free to flick and twist and yank.
In seconds, both of our flies were open, my panties pushed to one side and Hunter’s engorged cock throbbing at my entrance. I was sopping wet with anticipation, shaking with desire, barely able to gasp around the passion that consumed us both.
But then Hunter paused and drew back, breaking the liplocked battle that I hesitated to call a kiss. Touching his forehead to mine, he closed his eyes and whispered, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to...”
Great. Of all the moments to squash his wolf....
So I took matters into my own hands, both literally and figuratively. “I’m not sorry and I did mean to,” I countered, wrenching myself down onto my mate’s member before he could stop me.
As always, Hunter filled me to bursting. But his sheer size wasn’t enough to still the aching neediness within. “Take me,” I growled to a bloodling who had regained his humanity at just the wrong moment.
For the first time since our first time, I thought Hunter might refuse my advances. My companion was in complete control as he held me aloft three feet above the ground, his broad hands and strong arms in charge of determining whether we ground together fast or slow or not at all.
As Hunter’s lips thinned into a hard line, I had a feeling he might be leaning toward not at all.
Confirming my hypothesis, my mate yanked me up off his cock and I gasped at the sudden emptiness within. Uh uh, big guy, I thought. Putting every ounce of strength I had into the gesture, I writhed within his grip, wet folds skimming over iron hardness.
Now it was Hunter’s turn to growl. “We’re not done talking about this,” he muttered.
But I didn’t care. Because my mate had already surrendered to my need, ramming me back down around his hard length. The exquisite agony forced my eyes to squeeze shut as his manhood penetrated to the very core of my being.
Hunter was raw and rough and ruthless with desire. I was more animal than human as I responded in kind. We possessed each other in a frenzy, pounding, devouring, arching, erupting.
At last, sated, I sagged against his clad chest. Slipping fingers between the buttons of my mate’s shirt, I sought the bare skin above his galloping heart. Because despite the contentment of my body, a hard, melancholy knot remained in my throat that only skin-on-skin contact would ease.
Hunter was as present as ever by my side. But the tides were shifting, and I wasn’t sure even our mate bond would be sufficient to allow us to ride out the next wave together. Instead, I had a sinking suspicion that forces beyond our control would tear us asunder and shove us apart, leaving nothing to do but struggle to keep our heads above water as we stumbled toward opposite shores.
Sensing my changing mood, Hunter clenched me tighter in his arms. But despite the uber-alpha’s comforting proximity, I’d never felt quite so much alone.
I WOKE TO COMPLETE darkness, the room chilled by an overactive air conditioner and my mate absent from our shared bed. “Hunter?” I whispered.
My inner wolf should have been able to hear his footsteps padding across the carpet toward us, but she was sound asleep. So I only noticed Hunter’s presence when the covers lifted and his long, lean body slid underneath to lie beside mine.
“Just checking on the munchkins,” he murmured, kissing my forehead as he encircled me in his arms once more.
“Were they alright?” I asked drowsily, nuzzling closer and feeling like a wolf pup in my own right. For all of Hunter’s passion and skill in the lovemaking department, this was my favorite part of shacking up—just lying by my mate’s side as his hands skimmed idly over my recumbent body.
I knew it was just my imagination, but Hunter seemed to run five degrees warmer than an average mortal. His fingers felt like flaming brands as they stroked my a
rms, my neck, my back, my hip. Tantalizing trails of sensation roused me and eased me in equal measure, and I forgot I was even waiting on an answer by the time Hunter spoke again.
“Star had climbed out of the tub and onto the toilet seat. Remind me to keep the lid down,” Hunter murmured.
It was too dark to make out the expression on his face, but it didn’t matter. In my mind’s eye, I could see the smile my mate was trying to hide behind feigned sternness, and my lips curled upward in reply. “Mmm,” I responded eloquently.
“I thought I might take them to Haven tomorrow,” he continued, referring to the current home of the pack I’d lived with for most of my life. Hunter didn’t have to elaborate on his thought processes because the solution was obvious. Haven’s leader was a bloodling himself and his pack consisted of a mismatched—but happy—band of oddballs. The orphaned pups would have a better chance of growing into fully functioning shifters there than anywhere else.
Still, the thought of being parted from the youngsters—and especially from Star—gave me a sharp pang of loss. I must have twitched beneath my companion’s gentle massage because his fingers paused as he asked, “Unless you want to keep them with us?”
Raise three traumatized bloodling puppies on our own when Hunter and I were still having trouble defining our own relationship? Rationally, I knew we weren’t up to the task, so I shook my head in negation. “No, we’ll take them to Haven.”
Now it was Hunter’s turn to hum noncommittally, and I regretfully raised myself up on one elbow so I could attempt to peer into his face. Unfortunately, my human eyes couldn’t make out so much as the outline of his body since my mate preferred pitch darkness for sleeping—another aspect of his bloodling nature that I simply accepted since it did no one any harm.
With no visual clues to go on, though, I was forced to ask my question out loud. “What’s wrong?”
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