Wedding the Wolf: A wolf shifter paranormal romance

by Steffanie Holmes

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I thought it was obvious. I mean that I love you, Willow Summers—”

  “Don’t say that name!”

  “—I ken we have nae known each other long, and that we have secrets between us. But I donnae want it to be like this anymore. I want us to make a new arrangement. I want more of you, and to give you all of myself in return.”

  “You want more of me?” I picked up my prosthesis from the floor beside the bed and hurled it at him. “You’re already taking everything from me! Willow Summers won’t exist any more. She’ll be gone, because of you!”

  Irvine flung his hands up as the prosthesis hurtled toward him. It clipped the side of his face, and he winced. “Willow, please. I want to make this right—”

  “If you want to make it right, then you’ll call off this stupid plan!” I screamed.

  “Please, Willow. if you only ken why—” Irvine’s face crumpled with pain. He held out a hand to me, but I slapped it away.

  “Don’t use that name—”

  “Irvine, are you here?” Caleb’s voice rang up the stairs. “We need to talk.”

  My whole body turned to ice. Caleb. The wolf behind this whole terrifying plan was inside the house right now.

  31

  Irvine

  Willow froze. The anger on her face crumpled into terror. “Caleb,” she whispered.

  “Yeah.” He must want to discuss what we’d decided in the forest. Shit, he couldn’t have chosen a worse time. Willow’s face was turning white. She was scared out of her mind.

  “Dinnae worry.” I stood and took a step toward her. “I’m here. You’re safe.”

  “He can’t see me here.” She scrambled off the bed and sunk onto the floor, grabbing her clothes from the pile beside the bed.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed as she got on her hands and knees. ”Are you going to pretend to be the maid, because if Caleb sees you scrubbing the floor without your clothes on, he’s going to want to hire you.”

  “What do you think I’m doing? I’m hiding under the bed.” Willow rolled her tiny body into the gap under the bed, dragging her clothes in after her. “Pull that corner down for me, and try and stop him from coming in here.”

  I did as she asked, not bothering to tell her that Caleb would probably be able to smell her if he entered the room, then went out into the upstairs landing and leaned over the balustrade. Caleb stood in the entrance hall, his face stony. “What’s taking you so long?” Caleb growled as he started up the stairs toward me.

  “Sorry, I’ve been running errands. There’s a lot to prepare.”

  “Where’s Willow?”

  “She’s running some wedding errands for Alex.”

  “You have a train to catch in …” Caleb glanced at his watch. “An hour and forty-five minutes. You’ve got the first meeting with the Lowell pack this afternoon, so you can’t miss it.” He jogged up the stairs and frowned as he noticed I was shirtless. “Look at you. You aren’t even dressed yet. Have you even packed?”

  I grabbed my crumpled shirt off the floor outside Willow’s room and pulled it over my head. “I was just saying goodbye to Willow. It’ll only take me a couple of minutes to grab my stuff. Relax, I’m nae going to let you down.”

  “You’d better not, not again. We’ve got a lot riding on this alliance.” Caleb’s eyes burned into mine. “You could be a little more grateful, man. It wasn’t easy organising this at the last minute, and after the way you’ve been acting and all the trouble you’ve brought down on my pack, I could have just as easily left you to fend for yourself.”

  “I ken that. I’m just a bit distracted at the moment.”

  “Don’t be distracted, Irvine. Just get this done. And I think it’s best if you avoid Willow from now on.”

  “Aye?” I took a step to the right, placing my body between Caleb and the bed, hoping he wouldn’t see Willow under the bed.

  “I’ve found out something about Willow that you need to know. While I was away, I asked Rosa to have a look into Willow’s background, see if she could find something that might explain this stalker. She was thinking it was connected to Willow’s career, so she plugged Willow’s name into a search engine, just to see some of the other weddings she’d done in London. And do you know what she found?”

  I shook my head, my stomach tightening.

  “Nothing. Because Willow Summers is not her real name. There’s no record of her business in London, or any online presence at all before she set up a new website a month ago.”

  “That cannae be true.” How would Willow run her company without a website?

  Caleb shook his head. “And that’s not all. Rosa found an article about another London wedding planner, Carol Winters. Apparently, this wedding planner is blonde, but she has an uncanny resemblance to Willow and a prosthetic leg – one that she’s used along with an interesting story to get PR for her business. She was attacked by a werewolf when she was a girl, you see. She’s in the tabloids and on YouTube videos all over the internet talking about how evil werewolves are and how much she wanted them all killed.” Caleb frowned. “Irvine, Willow is the daughter of Helen Winters.”

  What?

  That was insane. That didn’t make sense. Helen Winters was the publisher behind the Werewolf Watch website, which attempted to reveal the crimes of shifters and other supernatural coverups. There wasn’t a shifter alive who hadn’t seen Helen Winters’ ridiculous so-called news stories. Sometimes, her guesses about national news stories were spot on. Just last year, she correctly guessed that a scuffle with a wolf at a Ryan Raynard exhibition opening was actually a shifter attack and not the performance art the media claimed. Luckily, the site also included articles about other conspiracy theories, like the fake moon landing and the earth being hollow and filled with Nazis, so a lot of the truth got lost in the noise.

  Helen Winters was a nutcase, and she hated shifters. Willow couldn’t possibly be her daughter, could she?

  From beneath the bed, Willow gasped. Caleb didn’t seem to notice.

  “That dinnae make sense,” I said, even as the pieces of Willow’s story started to fall into place. She’d spoken about her overbearing mother, and I ken she was hiding her past from me, but I thought it was an abusive stepfather or just extreme loneliness. Never could I have imagined this.

  “I’ve seen the footage, Irvine. She’s a blonde in the pictures, but there’s no mistaking Willow’s face. Her story is all over her mother’s site. Don’t you see what this means? It can’t be a coincidence that she’s here, trying to get everyone in our pack to hire her for their weddings right when we’re planning the big reveal.”

  I reeled at his words. “Say what you mean, Caleb.”

  “Willow Summers, or Carol Winters, is here to expose our secrets. She’s feeding information back to her mother. There are articles on Helen Winters’ site that contain bits of information about us, about a plan that’s afoot, about Robbie’s appearance at the party. Where do you think she’s getting this information?”

  “It cannae be from Willow. I havenae told her anything.”

  “Don’t be so sure. You might’ve said things in the heat of the moment that you don’t even remember—” Caleb’s eyes fell on the prosthetic limb at the end of the bed. Fuck. I couldn’t believe Willow had forgotten it. He looked up at me and raised an eyebrow. I averted my eyes.

  When Caleb spoke again, his voice was hard. “Tell Willow when you see her next, that the Lowe clan doesn’t take kindly to infiltrators, and that no one else will be hiring her for their weddings.” Before I could reply, he pushed passed me and thundered down the stairs.

  Caleb slammed the front door behind him, leaving me alone with the woman who’d done nothing but lie to me.

  32

  Willow

  The front door slammed. Caleb had gone, but not before he’d shattered my entire life. My heart hammered in my chest. I crawled out from under the bed as quickly as I could, grabbin
g my prosthesis and attaching the vacuum. I need to get out of here before Irvine—

  Too late. Irvine stood in the door, blocking my escape. His eyes blazed.

  “Do you want to explain?” he growled, his arms folded across his chest.

  “I could ask you the same question,” I threw back. “We’re talking about the secret project you’ve been working on, revealing the existence of shifters to the world?”

  “Don’t act like you didn’t know, Carol,” he retorted. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You’re trying to expose everything we’re doing so that we’re hunted down and killed.“

  “I’m not working for my mother. I left my mother. She doesn’t even know where I am or that I changed my name. She’s the reason I can’t stay here if shifters are exposed. If Helen Winters becomes an authority on shifters, then I’ll never be able to be free again. I swear, I didn’t lie to you, Irvine.”

  He snorted. “This whole relationship has been nothing but lies.”

  His words cut me, so I shot back. “What relationship? We don’t have a relationship. This was about sex, nothing more.”

  Irvine sneered. “Lying to me is one thing, but how long will ye keep deluding yourself that this didnae mean anything to you?”

  The side of my neck throbbed from where he’d bitten me. Even in the heat of our fight, the air around us sizzled. Seeing the pain and rage on his face now, my whole body ached to collapse against him and kiss that pain away.

  But now I saw what I’d been trying so hard to ignore, that I’d hoped in my heart wasn’t true because Irvine was the only man who’d ever cared who I was inside. We could never be together. We’d never be equal, because we were fighting for different sides.

  A human and a werewolf – what had I been thinking?

  “I don’t owe you anything, Irvine Baird.” I hated the way my voice wavered, the way the tears streaking my face showed just how false my words were. “Move out of the way. I’m leaving.”

  “No.” He picked up the leather jacket he’d dropped on the floor. “I’m leaving. Goodbye, Willow Summers, or Carol Winters, whatever your name is. I hope you have a nice life. I hope all the shifters you’ve doomed to die make up for all the pain you’ve survived.”

  With a last, lingering look filled with pain and hatred, Irvine slammed the door behind him and stormed out of my life.

  33

  Irvine

  I was packed and ready to leave Crookshollow forever. I’d lost everything that was dear to me, and I was now a liability to the pack. What was the point in staying? Caleb was right. I’d be more useful in London, if I could pull my head out of my arse and start working on the reveal, like I was supposed to.

  No more distraction. Willow is gone. She never even existed in the first place.

  I had one final chore to do before I left for the train station. The whole pack were gathered at Clara’s shop to witness the activation of the Benedict Ring’s power. Caleb had ordered me to be there, and I was already late.

  I pulled my car to a stop on the high street, jumped out, and rushed Astarte. Clara had the CLOSED sign up on the door, but it was unlocked, so I barged through. She was standing behind the counter, shuffling tarot cards, and tsked as I entered.

  “The rest of them are in the back,” she said, as she shut and bolted the door behind me.

  I entered the tiny storeroom. All the male members of the pack glared back at me. My stomach churned, but I stood tall, not wanting to show them how much pain I was in. So Caleb had told them everything.

  “Hurry this up,” I growled. “I have a train to catch.”

  “Now that we’re all finally here. Come on, Caleb.” Luke jabbed his cousin in the ribs. “Let’s see it, then.”

  Caleb stood at the rear of the storage room, holding out a parcel of black velvet in his hand. He lifted up the edges of the cloth, revealing the ring. “It’s beautiful,” he breathed, holding out his hand so we could all see.

  It wasn’t. It was tarnished from age, and was impossibly large and gaudy. A large stone that Caleb had called a bloodstone was surrounded by coiled snakes. It looked like the kind of ring you could pick up in Camden. It didn’t even glow with power or give off a strange vibe.

  Because of that ring, I lost Willow. I’m not even sure if it was worth it.

  “What do we do now?” Ryan asked.

  “I guess I just put it on.” Caleb reached for the ring.

  “Hold on, Caleb.” Clara pushed her way through our circle. She picked up the ring and held it close to her eye. “Hmmm.”

  “What?” Caleb grabbed for the ring, but Clara held the ring out of reach.

  “Let me just check …” Clara rifled around in her pockets, and pulled out a small stone on a leather cord. She held the stone over the ring, dragging it back and forth multiple times. Finally, she sighed, and tipped the ring back into Caleb’s hand.

  “This ring won’t help you,” she told him.

  “Huh?”

  “That ring contains no power. It’s as useless as one of the cheap pewter ones I sell out front.”

  “But …” Caleb spluttered. “But this is the Benedict Ring!”

  “That may well be true, my dear. I do detect a small trace of residual power. At one time, this ring did house a great and powerful force. But not any longer. What power it contained has long since dissipated.”

  “But how?”

  Clara shrugged. “Some mysteries of the universe are simply outside my scope to uncover.”

  Caleb turned to Robbie, his eyes flashing. “How did you not foresee this? It must’ve been in your research?”

  Robbie paled.

  “Hey now,” Luke said, placing his hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “We shouldn’t start yelling at each other. It’s not Robbie’s fault a centuries’ old ring isn’t what we expected.”

  Caleb dropped the ring on the ground, where it bounced two times and rolled against the side of my boot. He slumped down against the wall. “What are we going to do? We’ve got packs all over the world waiting on us to make the first move, but without the ring, how am I going to get Parliament on our side?”

  “Do we need the ring?” I asked.

  “Huh?” Caleb’s voice was sharp as his gaze swung to me.

  “Do we need it? Our cause is good and right and just, and other shifters see that. We pollute it by using magical persuasion to get our point across. I’ve nae felt good about using that ring – it’s nae something we can easily control or understand. Maybe we dinnae need to bring ancient rings into our fight at all. If you want Parliament on your side, maybe you just need to go down there with as many shifters as you can and demand they grant us our rights.”

  “Irvine, don’t be stupid. Without the ring, why would they listen to me?”

  “Shifters and humans are already listening to you. Rolf kens the current ring is fake. He told me so.” Caleb’s face paled, but I continued. “All the Wulfrics ken, but they still allied with us. Why? Because this matters. It’s about the future of every shifter, and all the shifters of the future. And that’s important enough.”

  Caleb’s face remained stony. All the shifters started between us, waiting to see what would happen next. It was Robbie who broke the silence. “I think Irvine’s right,” he said, his voice shaking. “We dinnae need the ring. Everything we’ve achieved up until this point proves it.”

  Luke rubbed his head. “We’re going to have to completely rethink the plan, but I think we can do it, too.”

  Caleb glared around the rest of the room. “Do you all agree, then? Do you all think we can still do this without the ring?”

  Every shifter nodded their assent.

  “Fine.” Caleb rose to his feet. He picked up the ring and handed it to Clara. “Then we’ll do it. Now get out of here, all of you – you’ve got work to do. And Irvine, you have a train to catch.”

  34

  Willow

  “If you hang on a second, I’ll get those samples for you.”
The salesgirl took my order sheet and flashed me a smile.

  I grunted in reply. Usually I had nothing but patience for anyone in the wedding business. Dealing with bridezillas every day was bad enough without adding anal retentive wedding planners into the mix. But today I just couldn’t plaster a smile on my face.

  While I waited, I dragged my mobile out of my pocket and stared at the screen. Nothing. No missed calls, no texts. Nothing.

  He stormed out and told you to have a nice life. What did you expect him to do?

  After Irvine left me at Elinor’s that day, Caleb and Elinor came back and told me that Irvine had left for London, and the stalker wouldn’t bother me again, but that I wasn’t to have any contact with him or the rest of the pack, apart from finishing Alex’s wedding. Elinor looked shaken and upset, but Caleb’s stony face told me there was no sense arguing. I hurried out of there, so they couldn’t see my cry.

  That was two weeks ago, and I hadn’t heard from anyone in the pack apart from Alex since, and even she was standoffish and businesslike. So much for friends.

  Even though I hated Irvine, his words never left me. They burrowed into my every waking moment. I thought a lot about that fight, and then I thought about why I thought about it so much. I thought so much that my head ached, although that might’ve been from the copious amounts of wine I was consuming on my own every night.