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***
Chocolate is the last scent I expect as my paws skim across snow at the most remote corner of my territory. But the pack princess’s aroma is unmistakable, even when layered beneath the bitterness of fear.
Protect. The alpha urge thrums through me, heating muscles already warmed from running patrol. But I’m as human as I’m lupine. And the human part of me knows I can’t endanger the haven I’ve created for wolves not tolerated elsewhere, not when harboring a pack princess would draw an endless string of unsavory characters to my door.
Still, my canines press against the inside of my lip. I need to know more before I dismiss my knee-jerk reaction. So I circle wide, pretending to continue my sweep even as I close the distance between myself and the woman I smell.
I’ve been running these patrols for months now, ever since neutral outpack territories disintegrated and desperate lone wolves began testing my boundaries. Usually, snow and bitter cold do my work for me, forcing intruders out of my land. But the ravens have abandoned their usual perch on the rocky ledge ahead of me. Something bigger has claimed their space.
On the leeward side of the outcrop, the pack princess’s scent grows stronger and at the same time more muffled. She’s trying hard not to breathe, I’m guessing, like a child pulling covers over her head to hide from monsters. That reminds me of myself fifteen years ago—too wary to rest, too hungry to think straight. If the same weight is pressing this pack princess’s shoulders low, I can’t meet it with teeth alone.
I’ve worked past my initial alpha urge, though, and know what my strategy has to be. I’ll drive this intruder from my land the way I’ve driven out others, but I’ll do so carefully. I won’t eject her east or south, toward greedy alphas who’d treat her like property to be sold at a mate market. Instead, I’ll ensure she feels safe enough to accept supplies and directions to help her on her way.
First step: buy myself additional time to assess what I’m dealing with. Because her chocolate aroma is so strong I can’t tell whether she needs medical supplies as well as food. Deliberately, I clench my toes until my paw punches through the snow crust, then I grunt as I pretend to struggle, yanking uselessly at my not-really-trapped leg.
The noise should alert her to my presence, let her catch the remnants of alpha musk I left upwind. If she trusts easily, now is when she’ll come down from her perch and beg for sanctuary.
Sanctuary I can’t give her. But if she makes the first move, it will be easier to ensure she isn’t harmed once she steps beyond my territory’s edge.
There’s no movement from the rocks, though, as I take far longer than necessary drawing my paw back onto snow hard enough to run across. I can only imagine her there, huddled against the wind-scoured stone. Alone in a way no wolf should be.
If I had to guess, she’s keenly aware of what happens to unmated pack princesses with no clan to protect them. Before the outpack fell, she could have found an unclaimed corner and hid herself away from hungry males. Now her mere existence turns her into a mouse with no choice but to leap from one cat’s territory to another, knowing most like to play with their food.
My alpha instincts twist inside me a second time. Am I really going to drive a wolf who needs my protection out into the cold?
Can I really afford not to?
The answer to the second question is: no. Every single member of my pack was unanimously voted in after an extensive trial period, selected because they had their own reasons for eschewing society and were willing to embrace others’ differences. We’re all male also, the one experiment with inviting in a woman having failed so spectacularly we agreed to keep the pack single-gender other than entirely hypothetical mates.
Still, I linger as the wind picks up, howling through the rocks like a wolf calling to its pack mates. Surely the arctic blast will tempt her out of hiding.
No sound, no movement, nothing. She’s too wise to give in easily…or too scared.
I can’t give her what she truly needs, and she’s not picking her way down to accept what I do have to offer. Eventually, I turn away and lope alone into the night.
***
Werewolf law claims that the door I knock on next is within my territory, but human standards say this property isn’t mine. I’m a guest here rather than an alpha, a guest who can’t afford to reveal his ability to shift into a wolf.
Good thing I stuffed clothes into a backpack before going running in wolf form. By the time the door swings open, my toes are frozen within my boots from standing barefoot in the snow while dressing, but I look presentable by human standards. Still, I can’t quite prevent myself from sniffing at steamy air scented with moose stew as the woman who feels like an older sister greets me by name.
“Locke!” Dawn’s smile is as wide as the horizon. “Girls! Look who remembered we exist.”
I duck my head, a gesture more wolf than human. “I was in the area.”
“You’re always in the area,” Dawn says, mimicking my deep voice while tugging on one sleeve to draw me inside. She reaches up to rumple my hair the way she’s done ever since I was sixteen and she was a new mother at the far more advanced age of twenty-one, the gesture softening her complaint: “Yet somehow months pass between visits.”
The main room of the cabin is exactly as I remember it—warm in ways that don’t depend on the crackling woodstove at its center. That warmth comes from the family as a whole, but it’s Setsoo in her rocking chair that everything orbits around.
“The wanderer returns. Come, sit by me.”
There are no chairs in her vicinity, but I’m not the only one who rushes to accept the invitation. Dawn’s twins abandon their homework and sprawl on the floor beside me, boneless as wolf pups even though they’re fully human. Nita and Josie have grown since I saw them last—they’re sixteen now, their dark hair hanging in identical braids down the middle of their backs, their eyes bright with intelligence.
“Did you bring us anything?” That’s Nita.
“His bag’s empty.” Josie crosses her arms and tries to scowl. But the smile she inherited from her mother shines through even before Nita pokes her and she descends into giggles.
“I only brought my poor, useless self,” I say gravely, thanking Dawn with a smile for the ceramic bowl of stew she sets into my hands without asking if I want any. “Unless you count the rabbit I left by your smokehouse last week.”
“We found it,” Josie says. “Mom thought it was from one of her suitors.”
Dawn’s cheeks redden. “You sound like a gossiping old setsoo.”
“I resemble that remark.” Dawn’s mother pretends to scowl from her rocking chair while I cover up my smile with a spoonful of stew. The rich flavors of garlic and wild game flood my mouth, tempting me to drift back into my earliest memories of this place.
I was so scared, then, that coming in out of the cold had been physically painful. What had given me the courage to take that first step?
Setsoo’s weathered hand settles into my hair. “You have a question.”
While I consider Setsoo’s observation, the twins pull out a brush and butterfly clips, amusing themselves with my unruly curls the same way they have since they were old enough to stand on tiptoe and reach my head as I sat hunched over. When they were younger, the twins used to yank as they untangled. But now they’re gentle. And Josie’s hands have grown even more cautious than her sister’s, as if she’s starting to realize I’m a man.
If Josie is realizing that, she might be starting to notice other things about me also. Like the way my hair grows faster than an average human’s, each shift tempting hair follicles to work overtime. Or the way a wolf killed that rabbit by the smokehouse rather than a bullet or a snare.
If any of these humans find out I’m a shifter and the Council learns about their knowledge, they’ll be killed. But I’ve managed to work around Setsoo’s keen eyes for well over a decade, so I dismiss the surge of unease that rises in me at that possibility. Surely Josie won’t be more astute than her grandmother.
Time to focus on what I came here to ask.
“Remember when I arrived fifteen years ago?” I ask the older woman. “How I hovered at the edge of your yard for a week before I could bring myself to speak with you?”
“How could I forget a skinny white boy scaring away all the game?”
I don’t reply verbally to the dig because it’s true—I was a skinny white boy. Still, I flex my now-large biceps, making the twins giggle, before I continue. “How did you tame me enough to trust you?”
“Did I tame you enough to trust me?”
I must be imagining the knowledge in her dark eyes. I let myself believe that as Dawn interjects.
“If we’d tamed you, you’d show up on a regular basis rather than once in a blue moon like a hungry stray who only visits when he fails to hunt his own dinner.”
I belatedly remember manners Setsoo taught me. “Your stew is delicious. But you know I come for friendship, not food.”
“I wouldn’t feed you otherwise.”
Dawn and I share a grin, then I return to the question I want to ask her mother. “Was it food that finally brought me inside? Warmth?”
Setsoo rocks gently, but her eyes are sharp on my face as she answers. “I just kept the door open. A scared stray doesn’t come in for food, Locke. A scared stray craves safety. That’s all I offered you—a home with no strings attached.”
A home is the one thing I can’t give the scared pack princess hiding in my territory. “That’s it?”
Setsoo grabs a handful of my hair and tugs harder than is comfortable. “You think a home is simple?” she chides. “Then you’re not thinking hard enough.”