I’m excited to share the beginning of Wolf Weaver with you today! But even the first chapters include spoilers for book one. So if you haven’t already read Mate Market, here’s your warning — read that first then come back here!
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Chapter 1
Four weeks of pretending to be Locke’s mate should have taken enough sting out of our fake relationship so I could focus on his dead not-quite-father-in-law. But half of my attention remained riveted on Locke as he moved through the ice-cold vault like he owned it, checking for danger before retrieving the aforementioned corpse.
Which is when the dead man’s eyes snapped open. I jerked back, slamming shoulder-first into a frost-rimmed wall.
“Wren.” Locke’s low rumble broke the silence. “What’s wrong?”
I shook my head. Because the corpse’s eyelids were closed again. I must have imagined what I thought I’d seen.
“The wedding starts in fifteen minutes,” Locke reminded me, his voice steady despite the way his jaw tightened.
Right. Ylva’s wedding. The woman who’d borne Locke’s son, whose reluctant vows today would yank Knut into another alpha’s orbit. This corpse was her get-out-of-jail-free card and Knut’s also, for complicated European reasons Ylva hadn’t entirely explained.
I nodded. “Let’s go.”
Crouching, Locke heaved the body over one shoulder. The motion sent a waft of freezer burn toward my nostrils and was anything but sexy in context. Still, I couldn’t help staring at the way my mate’s tux stretched across his broad back, rope-like muscles flexing as he balanced the awkward load.
Turned out, my mating of convenience was far less convenient now that I’d developed a crush on my fake mate. As if responding to my thoughts, the corpse twitched…or I thought it did.
He’s dead, I reminded myself. Stabbed in the chest and frozen solid. Men don’t come back from that.
But my certainty felt like spring ice, cracking beneath my feet.
Still, nothing else happened as the door sealed behind us with a soft hiss. And now that we’d moved out of the stone-walled room into the ice-walled tunnel leading up to the chapel, a translucent ceiling meant wedding guests might possibly notice us. We needed to keep moving.
Which is when the body twitched again.
This time I was sure of what I’d seen. Tendons strained along the sides of a neck that should have been frozen solid. One of the dead man’s fingers lifted just a fraction.
Locke must have felt my distress via our mate bond even though that connection was wobbly and largely unusable. Because he paused. Turned to face me. “Problem?”
“Maybe? How certain are we that he’s dead?”
Rather than arguing, Locke lowered the corpse in a controlled slide until it rested with its back against the tunnel wall. Pressing his fingers against its neck, we stood in total silence as seconds ticked past. The only sound was the distant hum of refrigerant from the vault we’d left behind combined with my own shallow breathing.
“Dead,” Locke confirmed at last, his blue eyes focused entirely on me as if he was reading between the lines of my silence.
A silence I would have turned into distracting chatter a month ago. I was so used to covering up my ghost-related abilities with evasion. And let’s be honest—I still evaded in most situations. Even now, my phone was clogged with a dozen unanswered, apologetic texts from my ex-friend Morgan, the one I still wasn’t ready to forgive for trying to sell me at a mate market.
But my relationship with Locke was different. Over the course of four short weeks, our fake mating had turned into something that felt dangerously real, even if we’d never so much as kissed.
Physical connection aside, I trusted Locke. So I swallowed hard and told the truth.
“I think there’s a ghost about to crack free.”
Even as I spoke, ozone-scented mist began seeping out of the corpse’s shoulders. Normally I needed an item the dead person had loved, sweetened by my own bodily fluids, to coax a spirit into visibility. This one was elbowing its own way out.
“Can you stop it?” Locke rumbled.
I’d never tried to prevent a ghost from forming before, but the dead man between us was better gone and forgotten. Ylva’s father had battered scars into two teenagers’ faces—Locke’s first then Knut’s later. I didn’t know the entirety of either story, but I’d caught enough to make me want to punch Ylva’s father into his afterlife.
Unfortunately, I was self-taught when it came to the art of ghost wrangling. The closest I’d come to preventing spectral formation was when I’d released a beloved ghost who wanted to go by destroying her anchor. I had no idea how to send a wild spirit away.
“I don’t know how,” I admitted.
Locke’s hand brushed the thin fabric covering my shoulder, the unshakable intensity of his sky-blue eyes almost enough to make me forget we were only make-believe mates. “We’ll figure it out,” he murmured.
That’s all it took to remind me that, kiss or no kiss, Locke and I were a powerful team. And also to remind me that his touch was good for more than mere reassurance.
If my bare skin contacted his bare skin during a time when my pack bonds were wide open, any of my ghosts in his proximity would be dismissed. Since I’d left those I cared about on the other side of the Atlantic, there was a good chance…
Ignoring the ghost in front of me, I reached up and let my fingertips slide down the side of my mate’s jaw. Doing this—touching him—was so unfamiliar and also so heady. The rasp of day-old stubble combined with the warmth beneath set my heart racing.
Or maybe it was Locke’s scent I was reacting to. We’d come here straight from a red-eye, no time to do more than splash water on our faces. So it was no surprise I could smell astringent airport soap and recycled air on him. Still, even unwashed and tired, the something uniquely Locke underneath those environmental aromas made me want to gulp down each breath. It reminded me of waking up side by side in reclining airplane seats, my head on his shoulder while Locke remained alert beside me.
I’d felt safer then than ever before in my life.
Now, Locke’s eyes slid shut and he leaned into my touch ever so slightly. As if this contact mattered to him also. As if maybe he felt the same pull I did even though he’d made absolutely no move over the last month to offer more than platonic shoulder touches.
Unfortunately, Ylva’s father’s ghost wasn’t banished by our contact. Instead, the silvery mist continued pouring out of the corpse like spilled moonlight. It oozed across the icy floor then solidified in a way that reminded me of a shifter changing form.
Amorphous flesh knit into a sixty-something man standing erect before us. He was identical to the corpse except for one thing. His eyes—once lifeless—now gleamed with predatory intensity.
Every instinct screamed at me to take a step backward. Instead I planted my feet and tossed out a question I hoped he’d be befuddled enough to answer.
“Where’s your anchor?” Because if I could find what was holding him here, maybe I could get rid of him.
A whisper of amusement crossed the spectral face. And his answer didn’t feel like an answer.
“Hello, wolf weaver,” the dead man said.
Chapter 2
“Wolf weaver?” I repeated, my inner wolf sitting up and taking notice. There was a rightness about these words I’d never heard before, like a key turning in a lock I hadn’t known existed.
But the ghost didn’t answer. Just waved his arms at me, his mouth moving while no additional words came out. Meanwhile, his edges began fraying. Moment by moment, he was fading from true spirit into a wisp of memory.
“The ghost is a wolf weaver?” Locke rumbled as he hoisted the corpse back onto his shoulder. Unlike with members of my ghost pack, he apparently couldn’t hear Ylva’s father speaking.
I shook my head. “No, I think he was saying I’m one.”
There wasn’t time to dig into the issue, however, because the hum of chatter from the chapel above was growing louder, so much so that I could almost make out individual words. Soon, we’d reach the access door that would open into the behind-the-scenes area, which we could only hope would be just as abandoned as when we’d passed through it half an hour earlier.
We didn’t have time to tease apart the cryptic mutterings of ghosts.
So I sidestepped Ylva’s father’s spirit, his corpse, and the man who hauled him so I could lead the way up the tunnel. The passages twisted like a frozen labyrinth, and Ylva had warned us not to stray past the ice-walled corridors into the deeper stone passages. She called them maintenance tunnels, though the cold seeping upward from any down-turned openings made me wonder what could possibly need tending that far down.
Something about those depths called to me and repelled me in equal measure. But I stayed on track, retracing our steps as much by scent as by memory. As I turned into a narrow passageway, Locke’s breath was close enough to warm the back of my neck as he growled:
“I’d prefer it if you allowed me to go first.”
“Both of my hands are currently free,” I countered.
And now we’d reached the door Ylva should have been waiting on the other side of. The metal rectangle in front of me bore no windows, and the ice walls on either side were so thick I couldn’t see through them. That hadn’t felt quite so dicey when traveling in the opposite direction. Now, though, with the moment for the wedding close at hand, I disliked the idea of opening that door blind.
Which is when Locke insisted upon taking point. Not with words. He merely dropped the corpse, turning his body sideways so he could slide past me without touching. Then he thrust open the door…
…and slammed into Ylva, who was waiting on the other side.
Instinct made Locke grab hold of his ex to keep them both from falling. And it was like that, tangled together, his hands on her waist, her face tilted toward his, that they regained their stability.
I’d entirely lost mine. Because Ylva, despite being a decade my senior, was just like our surroundings—richer and sleeker than anything I’d run across in my daily life up until this point. She was resplendent in a confection of a wedding gown, her pale hair braided and knotted in an updo that appeared simultaneously constrained and wild. And while most werewolves avoided perfumes due to the risk of overwhelming sensitive noses, she managed to wear a scent that was both subtle and tasteful, evocative of winter roses without slapping floral intensity into your face.
Worst of all, she fit into Locke’s arms in a way I’d only dreamed about.
It wasn’t just externals that drew the eye either. Ylva bore a genuine warmth that she now turned on me rather than on Locke.
“You have impeccable timing,” she said as she took a step away from my mate, the intensity of her smile making me feel like she’d just handed me a gold star. Then her gaze slid past me to the slumped form of her dead father and her smile faded.
Locke took the cue, returning to the tunnel so he could heft the corpse up yet another time. His easy competence made it hard for me to remember the ghost dogging his footsteps and the jilted groom likely to soon be on our heels.
Locke hadn’t forgotten. “Exit strategy?” he rumbled.
“I’ve been stuck in the preparation room,” Ylva admitted. “So we’re going to have to wing it.” Her grin invited us to relish the idea just like she clearly did.
Which meant she wasn’t just warm and beautiful but also bold and capable. Of course she was. It was hard not to hate her guts.
Especially when she led the way down the corridor without hesitation, Locke falling in behind her without trying to take the lead the way he had with me. I brought up the rear, hyper-aware of how easily the two of them moved together. Even the ghost had stopped waving his arms and mouthing words at me, seeming willing to follow his daughter without complaint.
We were traveling away from the organ music, but I could still make out what they were playing. Up until this point, the tune had been a placeholder. Now, it segued into the iconic strains that ushered brides up the aisle.
“Chad is going to be pissed when I don’t show up,” Ylva observed, taking a quick left at the next intersection. “He was so certain he had me over a barrel keeping Pappa on ice.”
I wanted to ask why her father’s corpse was so important. But Locke had already taken up the conversational gambit. “You’ll need other allies after I leave. Are any local options palatable?”
Ylva shook her head. “Anyone with real influence doesn’t need an alliance with a nobody like me. They have their own resources. But I’ll be fine. I always am.”
Her voice carried an edge that hadn’t been there before, one that reminded me of the women Morgan and I used to save from mate markets. Perhaps that show of vulnerability was why the ghost drifted up in front of his daughter and tried to speak. His mouth twisted soundlessly as Ylva walked right through him.
And even though it felt petty, I was glad this was the one place where my abilities trumped Ylva’s. She couldn’t see ghosts, likely didn’t even know they existed.
Just like anyone else, though, she could feel them. “Cold in here,” she muttered, rubbing her bare arms.
“It is a bit absurd to build a chapel out of ice,” I agreed, hoping to maintain her current state of ignorance. Not just because of the one-sided competition I seemed to be building up in my head, but also because it was safer for everyone if ghosts stayed hidden.
Thankfully, Ylva was quite willing to be distracted. “You have to understand that we Swedes are proud of our winters. You know the saying: there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.”
The dress that wafted out around her was definitely bad clothing for early April in an ice chapel, and also for any altercations we might run into on our way out of it. The thin fabric did, however, show off her trim curves to perfection. I wondered where Locke’s gaze was falling and was glad of the distraction when the organ fell ominously silent.
It wouldn’t be long now before the groom realized his bride wasn’t coming. Before he sent someone into the preparation room to find out what might be causing the delay and discovered that his bride had fled.
Since we hadn’t made any attempt to cover up our scent trail, they’d smell the corpse just like I had. They’d know this forced coalition was no longer happening.
Then the kid gloves would come off.
Only, that wasn’t what went wrong. Instead, as Ylva opened one more door and let us out beneath clear blue sky the same color as Locke’s eyes, the ghost suddenly lurched toward me. In a last-ditch attempt at communication, he pressed his fading spectral form directly into my living body, cold meeting warmth in a way that sent visible mist swirling around both of us.
The effect was immediate and also unmistakable. Silver vapor rose from where our bodies overlapped. And while full sun might have hidden the ghostly fog, we were deep in a valley, the ice chapel and surrounding hillsides casting long shadows that turned afternoon into twilight at the bottom.
And Ylva was staring directly at me. No wonder her eyes widened.
There was no explaining away the oddity of what she’d just seen.
Chapter 3
Letting myself be revealed as someone who spoke to ghosts had resulted in the deaths of two of my closest friends. And, yes, Locke and his pack now knew about my abilities with no negative consequences. Still, I wasn’t ready to add Ylva to that select group.
The weight of my ghost-seeing secret pressed against my ribs like a held breath, so I was almost grateful when someone shouted. Ylva’s attention snapped away from me and her ghostly father, refocusing on the more immediate problem.
“Run,” she suggested.
We did. Our feet pounded across frozen ground, Ylva’s father outpacing us as we sped downhill from the chapel toward the valley floor where we’d left our getaway car.
Unfortunately, voices multiplied both behind and before us now. Figures emerged from the parking lot, blocking our escape.
“We can outpace them on the river,” Ylva called over her shoulder as she pivoted away from the cars, veering toward the waterfront. Her skirts bunched in her fists as she led us past storage buildings to the docks jutting into the ice-dotted harbor.
Her certainty carried us straight to a sleek motorboat tied up at the furthest pier. The boat barely swayed as we hopped aboard, but Ylva’s fumble for a key around the console came up empty.
“We’ll have to try another…” she started.
Locke shook his head, his gaze sliding to meet mine. He’d seen me reading Hotwire & Hustle: A Reformed Delinquent’s Guide last week. His faith that I could get the boat started gave me possibly unwarranted confidence. Nonetheless, I intended to try.
“Give me thirty seconds,” I said, dropping to my knees beside the steering console. It was hard to ignore the ghost poking his fingers into the engine, but I managed as I got to work.
My estimate turned out to be optimistic due to an unexpected anti-theft device. Then there were the wires, not quite what came standard on an American model, plus cold air that numbed my fingers fast.
Just as the first shifters spilled onto the dock, however, the engine roared to life.
“Lines!” Ylva snapped.
Locke was already there, untying us with graceful efficiency. The last rope passed through Ylva’s father’s ghost without slowing. Then the boat was lurching forward, spray slapping the hull and misting our faces with icy droplets.
For a heartbeat, exhilaration suffused me. We were free. Ice chunks bobbed in our wake like scattered jewels. The harbor was already fading into the distance.
Then Ylva pointed ahead. “Ice jam.”
What had looked like wide open water moments before now turned into a churning mass of broken ice sheets. I let up on the gas, had to if I didn’t want to ram into something that could break through the hull and sink us.
“My turn.” Ylva’s hand closed over mine on the wheel.
“I can handle it.”
“I’m sure you can. But I’ve been navigating these waters since I was twelve.” She didn’t push me aside, just waited until I stepped back before adding: “You already did your part.”
I got her point. After all, she’d proven this wasn’t a one-person job when she asked Locke to come here. Still, as she steered us into a narrow channel between jagged ice flows, my cheeks burned with the sting of both cold and embarrassment.
If I hadn’t made today into a contest, I wouldn’t have lost. But I had, and I did.
Then Locke was draping his tuxedo jacket around my shoulders, its intoxicating scent of frost and fire tinged with dog-eared paperbacks combining both of our signature aromas. I wanted to nestle into that reminder of our mate bond and forget about the wider world, but the rev of engines behind us sent me swiveling to peer backwards instead.
Three motorboats were already swinging into our channel…or trying to. One missed the turn and splintered against an ice floe. Another slowed to save those endangered by the crash.
But the third powered straight toward us. Its prow sliced through the water as it sped up.
“They’re gaining,” Locke rumbled.
This time, Ylva had no easy answer. Her knuckles whitened on the wheel as the channel narrowed.
Then our engine coughed. Once. Twice. Ylva pushed the throttle forward…but the boat continued to slow.
The gas gauge, I belatedly realized, was sitting at empty. My triumph over the successful hotwiring evaporated.
Make sure you have sufficient fuel had been rule number one in the text I pored over. I’d forgotten to check the basics.
“We’re out of gas,” I warned Ylva.
Behind us, the pursuing boat surged closer. Shouts carried across the water, triumphant and mocking.
Then Ylva’s father’s ghost did something I didn’t think spirits were capable of. He tapped his daughter on the shoulder in what looked like a farewell then squeezed himself down into a thread of light that invaded the engine. The gauge stayed on empty, but when Ylva pushed the throttle again, the engine roared back to full strength.
“Perhaps,” Ylva said, not looking away from the path ahead, “there was more in the tank than you thought.”
I stared at the engine housing, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Was Ylva’s father using himself as fuel to save us? Did that mean he was gone for good now?
There wasn’t time to dig into my guesses. Because the channel was narrowing, ice chunks smaller yet faster-moving as they sped toward us. One massive slab angled out from the right side like a broken tooth, nearly blocking our path.
There was no turning back. Not with our pursuers so close behind us.
“Hang on,” Ylva called.
Chapter 4
I eyed the gap between the ice shelf and the rocky bank, craving access to the wheel. Because Chad might force Ylva to marry him if we gave up now, but the thriller I’d read during the flight over had been full of the dangers of icy water. I could vividly imagine what would happen after our hull splintered against either the rock on our left side or the frozen shelf on our right side. If we ended up in the river, thermal shock would make it impossible to even try to swim to safety.
“If we crash,” I warned, “we freeze.”
Ylva glanced back at our pursuers then shrugged as she murmured, “Pappa always said the worst thing you can do in a tight spot is hesitate.”
She gunned the engine. I closed my eyes…
And rather than cold, I felt warmth as Locke’s arm settled around my shoulders. He pulled me close just as the boat’s starboard side kissed the ice with a grinding shriek of fiberglass.
Then we were through. Speed had saved us, the nose of the boat lifting and making our vessel just narrow enough to pass.
It wasn’t the danger behind us, though, that I focused on when I opened my eyes. Because Locke was so close that both his warmth and his scent enfolded me. The world narrowed until all that mattered was him and me, the darker flecks in his sky-blue eyes visible as he met my gaze with such fierce intensity that heat flooded my cheeks.
Then he turned away. Stared out at the water as if it was fascinating.
It was. The channel had opened up, the river broad before us. Ylva cut hard to the left, following a curve I hadn’t noticed.
Behind us, I heard shouting. Then a tremendous crash as the pursuing boat tried to follow our route and misjudged the angle. I could only hope the remaining vessel would fish them out before they froze just like they’d fished out those from the first collision.
“Idiots,” Ylva observed, her voice lacking the warmth that had seemed a core part of her character earlier. Instead, she was coldly triumphant as she guided us around another bend, sliding through a tiny opening so we could glide into a hidden cove.
There, she yanked apart the wires I’d connected, killing the engine. Luckily, wind would disperse our scent fast in such a wide-open expanse. But all three of us breathed as quietly as possible, knowing how easy it was to find prey with shifter hearing.
And the rescue boat was bound to take over the hunt for us. Sure enough, the thrum of an engine came up the river five minutes later. It passed our cove without hesitation. Kept going until the sound faded into silence.
No other pursuers followed.
“I have warm beds waiting for us,” Ylva said at last. She was shivering despite the blanket she’d found and wrapped around her shoulders. Perhaps that’s why she kept listing things that were warm. “Hot chocolate, or glögg if you’d rather. Sticky kladdkaka cake and cinnamon buns.”
My stomach growled, and Locke wordlessly pulled two small packets of airline crackers out of his tuxedo pocket. Handing one to each of us, he asked, “You have a route in mind that will keep us out of sight?”
“Of course.” Ylva touched the wires back together while ripping into the foil package with her teeth and tossing the contents directly into her mouth. She grinned as the engine caught. Frowned a little as it died once, twice…
After the third attempt, Ylva stopped chewing and peered down at the gas gauge. Her face twisted. “You were right. It is empty.”
And there appeared to be no ghost left to feed us bonus fuel.
***
Locke found a set of oars stowed beneath the seats, and he was the one with long enough arms to lean down over the side and reach the water. For my part, I was warmed by my mate’s thoughtfulness as he tucked Swedish krona beneath the seat to pay for damages after we reached the shore.
Ylva didn’t seem to be thinking along those lines. Instead, by the time Locke heaved the corpse to dry land, she’d already hopped out and gotten her bearings.
“My family has a cottage about three kilometers from here,” she promised, leading us without a backward glance into a landscape raw with early spring. If we ended up still out here after dark, we’d need to shift just to stay warm. But Ylva didn’t hesitate as she picked out a path barely visible beneath fallen branches and last year’s dead leaves.
“You told me about the cottage once,” Locke rumbled when the silence started feeling heavy.
“Probably,” Ylva agreed. “It’s a happy place.”
“Yellow shutters. Bright blue siding.”
The fact that my mate remembered a conversation from sixteen years ago sent a pang knifing through my chest. Meanwhile the warmth in Ylva’s voice grew even more pronounced as she murmured, “Blue like your eyes.”
The wolf inside me clawed at my skin, demanding out, and I barely managed to provide a muddled explanation as I shed first the borrowed coat then my dress. “These shoes pinch. I’ll be better lupine…”
Locke was picking up my clothes by the time my fur sprouted. And now the instincts that had been surging through me all day grew harder to ignore.
If my mate gave that tuxedo jacket to Ylva next… I bared my teeth at her even as the rational part of my brain tried to point out that it was Locke’s clothing to do with as he wished.
There was nothing rational about the idea of my mate’s scent touching Ylva though. And now she was purring about the past again, something warm and companionable made so much worse by how much more vividly I could feel the wobbliness of my mate bond when lupine. The connection between me and Locke felt like a rope snarling around trees and tripping me up even as we followed Ylva down the path.
At least lupine form allowed me to see that the way forward wasn’t actually as overgrown as I’d thought. I gathered my haunches under me and slipped past both of them, loping at high speed until I’d outpaced the intermingling of Locke’s and Ylva’s voices.
Alone at last, the pounding of my paws against half-frozen earth settled me enough that I was calm again by the time I reached the destination recognizable from my mate’s description. Shifting and shivering, I missed Locke’s tuxedo coat even more as I opened the door and entered a space far smaller than I’d expected based on Ylva’s obvious wealth.
The main room was a combo kitchen and sitting area with two dusty armchairs and a table of unfinished pine. The bathroom facilities were outside, which meant both interior doorways likely led to bedrooms.
Two bedrooms for three people. Mates would be expected to share…even if we’d never spent a night together before this. The residual wolfishness leftover from my recent shift made me relish the idea of lying beside Locke in the darkness. But my human side recoiled from any potential change in our relationship.
After all, I’d lost two best friends in two very different ways a month ago. I couldn’t afford to lose my mate as well, even if he was only a fake mate.
I was still frozen in the midst of that thought when Ylva and Locke entered in a gust of cold air and easy companionship. “Drop Pappa anywhere,” Ylva said. “He won’t notice.”
Ignoring the thud as Locke obeyed, I opened the first door while trying not to let my nakedness feel like vulnerability. Bedroom one was barely large enough for a single twin bed, no bunk stacked above it.
“That’s mine,” Ylva said, appearing at my shoulder and offering me the dress I’d shed in order to run lupine. It was a thoughtful gesture, but the scrap of fabric had picked up her perfume as she carried it. I had to force myself to slip into the haze of roses as she added: “I’ve slept there ever since I was a little girl. But if you want it…”
“Of course I’m not taking your room.” After all, it was far too small for me and Locke to even fit inside.
I was granted a short reprieve from bedroom-choosing when Ylva’s phone erupted into an extended bout of buzzing. “Yes, Chad, we all know what you want,” she muttered as she silenced notifications before stepping around me to open the second door. “You and Locke can have Pappa’s room,” she offered.
This space was big enough for a full bed at least. But there was only a narrow strip of floor, not wide enough for us to create even a nest of blankets there. Whoever chose this room would have to share the bed.
I must have stared a moment too long because Ylva dropped her voice to a soft whisper. “You and I could bunk in here if you’d prefer.”
Had she seen through my mating from the first moment she set eyes on us? Or had Locke told her something while I was running ahead in wolf form, trying not to hear anything that would lodge more ice into my chest?
Ylva was being kind, but my teeth still turned sharp as I graced her with a smile far less honest than the ones she’d offered me. “I’d prefer to spend the night with my mate.”
***