Feral Wolf Next Door

Midlife Wolves in Crisis

J.L. Wilder
Copyright © 2022 by J.L. Wilder

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher
or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
 Contents

1. GINA
2. GINA
3. GINA: Two Months Later
4. DAN
5. GINA
6. DAN

7. DAN
8. GINA
9. DAN
10. GINA
11. DAN
12. GINA
13. GINA
14. DAN
15. DAN

16. GINA
17. GINA
18. DAN
19. GINA

20. DAN
21. DAN
22. GINA
23. GINA
24. GINA
25. DAN
26. GINA
27. DAN
28. GINA

29. DAN
30. GINA
31. GINA
32. GINA
33. GINA
34. DAN
35. GINA
36. GINA

37. DAN
38. DAN
39. GINA
40. DAN

41. GINA
42. DAN
43. GINA
44. DAN: Eight Months Later
45. GINA: Epilogue
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 1

GINA

E ver since Mom left Dad—and me, and the rest of our pack—to run
away with the alpha of the Slashers, I’ve been plagued by curiosity and
doubt. Ever since that day, I’ve wondered why she did it.
But at times like this—looking up at my father’s sinister face—I kind of
get it.
He’s not even looking at me. All his attention is reserved for Rodney,
who’s sitting at another table a few yards to my left and smirking. I’d love to
rip that smirk off his face, but fighting in front of the pack elders—and Dad,
our alpha—is only going to make things worse.
“Rodney,” Dad says, “what brings you before the council today?”
As if he doesn’t know. As if this hasn’t already been talked to death around
the pack. But Dad’s going to do whatever he can to make this as humiliating
for me as possible. It’s not enough for him that my marriage is ending. He
has to make sure I suffer emotionally.
He’s never going to get over the fact that this didn’t work—that Rod and I
were wrong for each other right from the very start. He’s never going to
admit that he was wrong to force us together. He’s just going to keep blaming
me for the fact that it never worked out for the rest of my life.
Rodney gets to his feet, as if he’s some kind of gentleman who respects
procedure. It actually turns my stomach to see him act like this. It’s so fake.
“I’m here to dissolve my marriage,” Rodney says.
“To Gina?”
He’s only got the one marriage, for fuck’s sake. Dad’s really milking this.
“Yes, sir.” Rodney has never called anyone sir in his life, as far as I’m
aware. It’s so performative.
“And why do you want to dissolve your marriage of twenty years?” Dad
asks.
Rodney glances at me, holding the look for several moments, and I
actually feel the impact of his words before he says them aloud.
“She can’t have children,” he says. “A mate who can’t give me children is
no good to me, especially as second-in-command of this pack. I need to be
able to produce an heir, and I’ve wasted twenty years of my life with a
woman who will never be able to give me that. She should be ashamed of the
way she’s wasted everybody’s time.”
“You act like any of this was my choice,” I snap, unable to stay quiet any
longer.
“You could have said something,” Rodney says. “You could have told me
you were infertile.”
“How the hell was I supposed to know that?” I’m not letting him shame
me about this. I’m really, really not.
“You must have known,” Rodney says. “The amount of fucking around
you did before we were married... I always just assumed you’d had a few
miscarriages, because how could you not have?”
 “You fucking—”
“Someone control her,” Dad calls, and I feel hands on my arms. I jerk
against them—this is so fucking humiliating, being held back like I’m some
kind of feral—but of course, humiliation is exactly what they want from me.
And I’m just fucking giving it to them.
I control myself, with effort, and relax in the grip of the men holding me.
“It’s possible that Gina had no idea about her infertility,” Dad says.
I’m surprised at the defense.
But I shouldn’t be. I should have known it wasn’t a real defense. “She’s
not very aware of herself in a lot of ways,” Dad says. “She doesn’t think
about the responsibilities the daughter of an alpha, and the mate of a rising
alpha, has. It hasn’t occurred to her in the past twenty years that she owes it
to all of us to provide an heir to this title, and that if she can’t do it, she needs
to step aside. There should be no need for these divorce proceedings.” He
looks at me. “You should have dealt with it on your own.”
“I should have dealt with it? How? I would have still needed to get a
divorce.”
“But you should have done that years ago, when you first realized you
couldn’t conceive, instead of making us all wait for you to figure it out.”
“Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t.”
“You didn’t, and now the whole pack has wasted years.” My father sighs.
“Of course, Rodney will still be the next alpha once these proceedings are
complete. That won’t change. Rodney, when you take a new mate, your child
with her will be next in line to be alpha after you.”
“You won’t have long to wait,” Rodney says. “I know how important it is
to keep the pack lineage going.”
Meaning he’s already got his eye on some hot young thing, probably. And
whoever she is, of course she’s going to want him too, because he’s in line to
be alpha. What girl wouldn’t want to be the alpha’s mate?
I mean, I don’t want to be his mate. But even knowing that, the idea of him
with someone else is…not upsetting, exactly, but disconcerting. Things aren’t
good between me and Rod, but it has been twenty years of marriage. I’m
used to him. Seeing him with someone else is going to be really weird.
And no one else is going to want me. Not now that I’m a famously infertile
reject.
Rejected by two men. I’m heading toward some kind of pack record at this
rate.
Whatever. I’m not going to let this get to me. At least, if nothing else, I
know I’m not going to be stuck with Rod for the rest of my life. And even
though that feels uncomfortable and embarrassing, in the end, it’s going to be
a good thing.
It’s just hard to see that right now.
“I pronounce this marriage dissolved,” my father says. “Your mate bond is
no more.”
“And remove Gina from the line of succession,” Rod prompts.
My father glares at him, and I get it. Rod’s going a little too far now, trying
to tell the alpha what to do. “She’ll be removed from the line of succession
when you have a child,” my father says.
“You’re saying she could still inherit?”
“She’s unmated,” Dad says. “She’s infertile. You’re not threatened, are
you?”
“Of course not.”
“I don’t close a door until I see an open window. You show me the heir to
the alpha position, and when you do, you’ll have the sole inheritance.”
 He’s only doing this to fuck with Rod. I get it. We all know there’s no
point leaving me in the line of succession. It’s just a way to light a fire under
Rod, to make him hurry into a new marriage and have a child quickly.
My father is using me as a tool to make my now-ex-husband sleep with
other women, in other words.
I haven’t been dismissed, but I can’t take this shit anymore. I get up from
my chair and walk out the door of the council building before anyone can
order me back.
 2

GINA

T he dream is always the same. I know it’s a dream from the moment it
begins, simply because of the fact that I’ve had it so many times. I
could probably recite it word for word.
Still, I give in to it. I don’t try to fight my way out, the way I do when I
have nightmares. Because I am never happier than I am in this dream, when
I’m with Dan.
And, fuck, I really, really shouldn’t be. I should be over him by now. I
should have moved on with my life. I have moved on with my life.
“You’ll never walk away from me,” he murmurs in my ear.
I groan with pleasure as his naked body covers mine. He’s teasing me, but
he’s absolutely right, too. I will never, ever walk away from Dan.
I knew it was true in the moment—when his touch was real, when his soft
words in my ear were actually happening. There was never so much as a
whisper of doubt in my mind. I never pondered leaving him. He was the love
of my life.
 And I know it now, from the vantage point of my dream. Because even as
I’m dreaming of this scene, I’m remembering it, too. I’m remembering what
happened between the two of us.
He’s right. I never did leave him.
The memory is painful. It ought to be too painful. It should push me right
out of enjoying this little fantasy. I should be clawing my way out of the
memories and trying to wake myself up.
As always, I don’t. I let myself linger. I let myself reach up and touch him
—the hard line of his jaw, his broad, firm shoulders, his narrow torso. As
always in the dream, we are young, the way we were when we were actually
together. I see our youth in the way his face is unlined, in the way my hand
against his cheek is smooth and soft. I feel it in the way my body moves so
easily, so effortlessly. I forget what it’s like to be young sometimes, and then
I have this dream, and it all comes rushing back to me.
He kisses me tenderly. It’s full of passion, as always—he clutches me to
him, his tongue exploring my mouth as if it’s uncharted terrain, and I feel like
he’s trying to pull me right into his skin.
No one makes me feel the way Dan does. No one has ever made me feel so
loved.
My body responds, as always, heating up to his touch. Everywhere his
fingers move across my skin, they leave behind trails of heat and electricity
that seem to shoot straight to my core. Already, I feel something powerful
building inside me, and we’ve barely begun.
I could do this all day—but we can’t do this all day, because Dan and I are
not supposed to be doing this at all. Because if anyone ever finds out about
our love, we’re going to have to stop.
It has to be secret. It has to be fast. Someday, we’ll really take our time
with each other, really luxuriate in each other’s bodies. But not yet.
So when he slides his thigh between my legs, pressing against me, I’m
ready to go almost immediately. Part of that is just another function of my
youth, of course. I’m pretty much ready to go all the time, and so is he. But
knowing we only have these stolen moments makes it both hotter and more
urgent. I wrap my legs around him and pull him against me. His cock is so
hard, and I can feel him throbbing. With every hitch of his hips, he threatens
to slip inside me.
He won’t tease me like this for long. We can’t get away with it for long.
We both know that. But these little moments—he’ll draw them out as much
as he can.
“Come on,” I urge him, because I always break before he does.
He grins down at me. “Are you in some kind of hurry?”
“Damn it, Dan.”
“If you have somewhere to be, we could put this on hold and finish up
later.”
He knows exactly what he’s doing. My wolf is as young and hot-headed as
I am, and he knows exactly how to provoke me. The threat—even a teasing
threat—of taking this pleasure away before I’ve had my fill is enough to
bring my wolf right to the surface, and suddenly I’m half-mad with animal
lust.
I shove him off of me and roll over so I’m on top. He lets me do it, of
course. This is what he wanted. He grins up at me. “Fuck, baby, I love it
when you go wild like this.”
That gives the wolf satisfaction, just like he knew it would. In both human
and animal form, I’m a sucker for a compliment.
But I need more.
 I position myself above him so he’s nudging at my entrance. Now I’m the
one with all the power. I’m the one doing the teasing.
But I’ve never had half his willpower. As much as I’d like to draw this out
a bit, to make him beg me, I don’t want to wait anymore. We never know
how long we’re going to have together, and we never know when our next
chance will be. We can’t afford to waste even a moment.
His hands come to rest on my hips, his palms brushing my thighs. “Fuck,”
he groans. “I love you so fucking much.”
It still thrills me when he tells me he loves me. I still can’t believe how
lucky I am. It heightens my arousal, and my body clenches around him,
which makes him groan. We’re so attuned to each other, so reactive to
everything the other one does. I fucking love him so much.
I start to move, rolling my hips slowly so I can feel him everywhere. He
runs his hands slowly up my torso and cups my breasts, stroking my nipples
gently. He knows how sensitive they are.
My head falls back and I let out a moan at his touch. I’m already close.
Without warning, he rolls us back over so he’s on top again. He grabs one
of my legs and pushes it up gently so my knee is pinned up by my ear, and he
rocks into me steadily.
“Fuck, baby,” he groans. “Someday, we’re going to do this all night long.
Hours and hours, just this. No one to stop us.”
“Might have to mix it up a little,” I pant. “I can think of plenty of things I’d
like to do with you that we never seem to find time for.”
“Oh yeah?” He’s grinning, and there’s something so alluring about the way
he smiles at me when we make love. He just looks so happy. Like being with
me makes him the happiest he’s ever been. “What do you have in mind?”
“I could make you come with just my mouth.”
 “You’ve done that plenty of times.”
“Just my mouth. With no hands. Without touching you at all.”
“Sounds like a fun challenge. But I like your hands.”
“You like my mouth, too.” I lick my lips, reminding him.
He groans. “Fuck, yeah, I do.”
“And when we’re mated, when we can be together like this every day,
we’ll have time for all kinds of things.” I wrap a leg around his waist. “We
can spend a whole night just seeing what I can do to you with my mouth, and
we won’t have to worry that we’re missing out on a chance to fuck, because
we can do that the next night.”
“Or later that same night.”
“Exactly.”
“How many times do you think we could make each other come in one
night?”
“We’re definitely going to find that out.”
“How many times do you think I can make you come today?” His fingers
move between our bodies and find my clit.
I gasp as he presses and starts stroking, still keeping up the rhythm of his
cock moving inside me. “We don’t have time…”
“I bet we do,” he says. “We’ll hear if the door opens, and I’ll have time to
jump out the window. I bet I can make you come at least three times before
that happens.”
My legs are shaking. He grins, his eyes bright and eager. “You’re close,
aren’t you?”
“So fucking close.”
“Come for me.”
“You—not yet—”
 “We’ll get to me,” he assures me. “We have a while. I want to feel you
come.” He fucks into me hard and stills for a moment so I can feel the full
depth of him opening me up.
I let out a little sob. “I love you so fucking much.”
He kisses around my nipple, his hand still rubbing at my clit. “Come for
me, Gina. Please.”
My body trembles and my orgasm crashes over me, and for a few
heartbeats I’m lost to pure bliss.
But it only lasts a few moments, and I’m dreading what comes next before
it even happens.
Because this is a dream. Because I already know.
In life, when we heard the sound of the front door scraping open, it came
as a shock to us both. When Dan released me and scrambled to his feet,
grabbing his clothes, I lay there in shock. Now, I lie there in resignation. I’ve
tried, in my past dreams, to change what comes next, and I know all too well
that there’s no chance of it. It can’t be changed. It’s set in stone.
He sees me lying there and runs back to me, grabbing a blanket to toss
over me.
It never occurred to me in the moment to scream at him to just go. That it
didn’t matter so much if I was caught naked in my own bedroom. I could
survive that.
But Dan always protected me. I should have known he’d never leave if he
thought I was even a little bit vulnerable.
My bedroom door is thrown open, and there he stands, so full of rage that
he looks like he might spit fire.
My father.
“I knew it,” he growls. “I knew something was wrong the moment I
stepped into the house. I could smell it. Did you think you could get away
with this right under my nose, Dan? With my daughter?”
I’ve fought my way into my shorts and tank top, and I insert myself
between the two of them. “Dad,” I protest, holding out a hand. “Stop it.”
We’ve been expecting that eventually something like this would happen for a
while. It’s shocking, yes, but it’s not as if we haven’t thought about what we
would say. It’s not as if we’re not prepared.
Dan steps forward. “Listen, Hank,” he says.
My father’s face darkens. “You don’t tell me to listen.”
Yeah, that was definitely a bad start.
Dan pauses and takes a beat to recover. “I love her,” he says. “I love Gina.
We’re in love, and we’re going to be mated, with your blessing.”
With or without Dad’s blessing, but never mind that.
Dad shakes his head. “You’ll never get near her again,” he swears.
“Dad!” I exclaim.
“Get out!”
The dream dissolves around me, and I wake up gasping.
Even though I know every moment of this dream, waking up from it still
leaves me a little shaken. That was such a horrible memory—especially
because it was the end of everything. My father ran Dan out of our house, and
just days later, he left the pack.
It was a devastating way to learn that I never meant as much to him as he
did to me. Because if the roles had been reversed, I would have fought
whoever I needed to fight for us to stay together. I guess Dan never felt that
way.
But at least I’m not with Rodney anymore.
I can feel some joy about that, if nothing else. No matter how bad things
ever felt when I was alone after Dan left, nothing is worse than life with
Rodney.
So maybe this dream did me a favor after all, because I’m feeling relieved
instead of ashamed or broken down. It doesn’t matter what my father said at
my divorce proceedings. It doesn’t matter what the pack thinks of me or my
failed marriage or my infertility.
For the first time in years, I’m free.
 3

GINA: Two Months Later

“P eter! Your order’s up!”

Peter grins as he steps up to the counter. “I’m addicted to your
scones,” he admits, picking up the brown paper bag.
“Well, it’s fresh out of the oven,” I say. “I can’t keep them in the display
case! Thanks for your patience.”
“Hey, I’d have waited a lot longer for one of these babies,” he assures me.
“No one makes baked goods like you do. Not even my mother.”
“I won’t tell her you said that when she comes in for her weekly cupcake,”
I tell him, grinning. “You have a good day, Peter.”
“You too,” he says with a smile.
He takes his scone out the door. I watch as he pauses in front of my bakery
window to pull it out of the bag. He’s taken two bites before he starts walking
again, and I know he’ll have devoured it by the time he gets home.
“I don’t get why you’re so friendly to them,” Olivia says.
I glance over at my best friend and assistant manager. She’s leaning
against the counter, and, as usual, flour is all over her hands, on her clothes,
and in her hair. I laugh. “Did you fall into the flour?”
She doesn’t laugh with me. “It’s not cute, Gina. They’re not going to stop
being dicks to you just because they like your baking. And they come in here
every day, and they’re nice to you—”
“Exactly,” I say. “They’re nice to me. Why would I start shit when they’re
being nice?”
“They still laugh at you behind your back,” Olivia says flatly. “Peter runs
around with Rodney, you know. I see the two of them laughing together all
the time.”
“We don’t know what it is they’re laughing about. We don’t know if it has
anything to do with me.”
“Does it even matter what they’re talking about?” Olivia asks. “The point
is that Peter hangs around with Rodney, Gina. The two of them are friends.
And you’re serving him scones. After what Rodney did to you.”
I sigh. Olivia has never understood this. I get it. She’s my best friend, so
she wants to defend me. She would go to war for me, and I love that about
her. I’d do the same, if a man ever treated her the way Rod treated me.
But that’s never happened, thankfully, and that means she can’t really
understand what it’s like to be me.
“I still have to live here, Olivia,” I tell her.
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I can’t afford to alienate everybody,” I say. “We just opened
this bakery. We want it to do well. That means I can’t refuse to serve people
who associate with Rodney. He’s going to be the alpha. Everyone associates
with him.”
“Not everyone,” she protests. “You know there are people who don’t like
him very much.”
 “Yeah, I know. Everyone knows. But the pack being divided the way it
is… that isn’t actually helping anyone. The contingent that opposes my father
never does anything.”
“They might someday.”
“You know they won’t. They gave it their best shot when we were
teenagers. Dad fought them off, and they’ve never tried again.”
“So, what? You’re giving up?”
“Of course I’m not giving up,” I say. “I started this bakery, didn’t I? I
started my life over after Rodney broke up our marriage. It’s not like I
crawled into a hole and died, for fuck’s sake. I’m just saying that I’m not
willing to walk around hating everybody all the time. I don’t care if they do
whisper about me behind my back. They still buy my baked goods and I still
get their money, and when I think about it that way, the joke is completely on
them.”
“Well, when you say it like that…” Olivia smirks. “I guess I do get it. His
money is just as good as anyone else’s.”
“Yeah, exactly. And the next time he thinks about talking shit, he’ll
remember that scone.”
“You think he’s going to stop saying shit because you fed him a scone he
likes?”
“I’m not that naive. I’m just saying, over time, people might lose their
appetite for trashing me and develop a taste for sweets instead.”
“Ah,” Olivia says. “The long game.”
“At the very least, I’ll make some money, and you and I get to have fun
baking. They’re going to shit-talk me anyway, so we might as well have fun
while they’re doing it, right?”
Olivia nods. “I get you.”
 “I’m glad.” Because I’m definitely not going to be turning away
customers, no matter who they’re friends with. I don’t like the reputation I
have around the pack these days—Rod’s infertile cast-off, a waste of a
woman—but I’m not so proud that I’ll cut off my own nose to spite my face.
It isn’t going to shut anyone up if my business fails on top of everything else.
And speaking of my newfound success... “Is the cake ready for the Millers’
anniversary party?”
“I think it needs more decorating,” Olivia said. “I was looking at it earlier,
and it looks a little…”
“Spare?”
“Empty. Edna Miller used the word elaborate when she placed her order,
and I don’t think it’s the right style. It’s not what she was going for yet.”
I nod. Edna and Charles Miller are members of my father’s generation, and
are celebrating their fiftieth wedding anniversary in a few days. They’re also
part of the half of the Timberland Pack that would love seeing my father out
of power—not that they’re going to do anything about that at their age, of
course—so the fact that they’re willing to buy a cake from his daughter is
definitely encouraging. I’m going to do my best not to let them down.
“I’ll add some more flowers,” I say, grabbing my icing tips. “Edna
gardens, right?”
“Yeah, Olivia says. “I’m pretty sure she does.”
“So she’ll like that. Where’s the cake?”
“In the kitchen. I left it in the middle of the counter. It’s actually in the box
already, but I left it open so you could get to it.”
I nod and go back to the kitchen. The Millers’ anniversary cake is in the
middle of the counter, just like Olivia said it would be. It’s resting in its box,
ready to be closed up and taken over there.
 But she’s right. It’s not ornate enough. It needs more decorating, especially
since it’s going to a woman in her seventies. This kind of modern aesthetic
isn’t what Edna is after.
I go at the cake for a bit with the icing piper, and when it’s finished there’s
not a square inch of plain white frosting visible. It looks as if someone
dropped their bouquet there. Not my personal style, but it’s exactly what
Edna Miller is going to like, and that’s what matters most.
I close the cake box. Olivia will take it over tonight and the Millers will
have it for their party. Another satisfied customer—and, hopefully, when the
party guests try this cake, it will lead to several more.
I turn out the kitchen lights, ready to head home after another successful
day.
 4

DAN

“T his gonna be it for today?” the convenience store clerk asks.

I grunt and nod.
He holds up the bag of potato chips I picked out. “These are good,” he
says. “Did you know the company had people vote on what new flavor they
should try making?” He shakes his head. “Humans.”
As if he’s not human himself. When I see shifters like this—employed,
wearing khaki pants and vests and standing behind a counter—it makes me
wonder when the last time they took wolf form was. I bet this guy would give
the answer in months instead of days. He’s probably very content to live a
boring human life, and to hold it over other humans’ heads. He’s the kind of
shifter who considers himself above regular humans because he has the
potential to shift, but never actually does it. I’m almost sure. I know this type.
I can’t stand this type.
He’s waiting for me to say something about the potato chips now. I’m not
going to. I don’t like it when store clerks try to engage me in conversation. I
don’t come back to town to chat with people. I come here to get the things I
need and leave again, and frankly, that should be beyond obvious. If I wanted
to socialize, I’d live human.
Not that I’m welcome to do that around here, anyway.
The clerk is staring at me, which isn’t that unusual. I get stares whenever I
come back to Timberland. I don’t know if it’s because of the way I look—I
haven’t cut my hair in weeks, when I did, it was with a switchblade, and soap
is out of the question when you’re living feral—or if it’s because of my
reputation.
I know what they think. Son of a rebel family who ran out on the pack and
went feral. Well, they’re not exactly wrong.
The clerk pushes my bag of supplies across the counter to me. “Have a
nice day,” he says.
I pick it up and walk out of the store without returning the sentiment.
It’s dead summer, and the air outside is still and hot. I linger in the parking
lot for a moment, trying to decide what I want to do. I definitely don’t plan
on staying human for long—I’m much happier on four legs—but if I run a
few more errands now, I can put off my next trip into town for that much
longer, and that definitely appeals to me.
Besides, I haven’t checked in with my family yet, and I want to. It’s so
infrequent that I’m in town, and I don’t like to go without seeing them while
I’m here. Even though I’m living a different life now, I do still care about
them.
What the hell. All I need is a new set of shock pads for my motorcycle. It’s
a quick errand. I’ll still be out of here within an hour. I head toward the auto
parts shop.
I’m about halfway there when I notice the storefront that was empty last
time I was here is now occupied. I see elaborate tiered cakes in the window,
and the sign over the door says Gina’s.
I shiver a little, but I can’t help looking in through the glass.
And sure enough, there she is.
She’s standing with her back to me, but I recognize her by her figure. Long
limbs, narrow waist, slightly thick hips and an ass you could just wrap your
hands around. I know, because I have. My fingers curl, remembering the way
she felt.
Immediately, the wolf starts to rise up. I feel the prickle over my skin that
means the animal is close to the surface, trying to break through. My eyes
lock onto Gina. Fuck, I could push through that door right now, I could go in
there and grab her—
And then I hear voices. “You want to go in?” A woman asks.
I turn. A man and woman about ten years younger than me are walking up
the street. I should know them, probably—I should know everyone in this
pack—but I don’t. I’ve been away too long, and these two would have been
children when I left.
The man glances up at Gina’s shop and snorts. “No way,” he says. “I’m
not eating anything she makes. And neither are you.”
“Don’t be stupid, Jack.”
“You know about her. She’s infertile.”
She is? First I’m hearing of it. My ears perk up. I want to know more.
“That’s the whole reason her husband left her,” Jack says. “She couldn’t
conceive, and he needed to have kids.”
Well, thank you, Jack. I had no idea Gina and Rodney had split up. I can’t
pretend I don’t feel the wolf inside me growling with pleasure from this
information.
“And unless you want our relationship to meet the same end, you’re not
going anywhere near her.”
“Fuck, you’re an idiot, Jack,” his girlfriend says. “What do you think is
going to happen? Do you think I’m going to become infertile by eating a pie
she makes? That’s literally the stupidest thing you’ve ever said, and the bar
for that is pretty high.”
“Don’t fucking talk to me like that.”
“Don’t you talk to me like that. I’m getting a muffin.”
Jack huffs, but he doesn’t stop her. The woman goes into the shop, but
Jack refuses. He waits outside instead.
I watch as the woman approaches the counter and surveys the baked goods
on offer.
“She is a good baker,” Jack mutters.
I look at him. “Are you talking to me?”
He shrugs. “You’re not from around here,” he says. “You’re that feral that
was run out of town twenty years ago, aren’t you?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, whatever else might be true about her—and I’m guessing most of it
is—she knows her way around an oven. I’ll give her that. What she needs is
to find some old geezer who’s already had his kids on someone else. Lock
him down and cook for him. Any guy would want that, right? She just needs
to figure out where her value lies.” He hesitates. “Of course, most of the guys
in this pack might not fuck with her anyway, disgraced the way she is. Hey,
didn’t you sleep with her once?”
“It’s Jack, right?” I ask, feeling my eyes illuminate with rage.
“That’s right.”
“Jack, let me ask you something. Do you like your jaw the shape it is?
Because if you do, I’d shut the fuck up and leave me alone.”
 He stares at me, then turns away, grumbling about feral wolves.
I look back through the window. Gina is walking over to greet her
customer now. She wipes her hands on her apron and smiles.
The wolf in me flexes every muscle.
I can’t trust myself to stay here. If I went into that building, there’s no
telling what I would do. I can’t let my wolf get anywhere near her.
I turn and set off at a jog down the street instead, back the way I came.
Fuck the shock absorbers. I’ll get them another time. I’ll go check in with
my family, and then I’m getting the hell out of Timberland.
 5

GINA

I see Dan leaving. It’s never easy to see him, and it’s even worse to see
him run away. Did he think I wouldn’t notice?
I don’t know what made him take off like a bat out of hell after staring
through my shop window for a solid five minutes. Either he thought I didn’t
notice him there, or else he just didn’t give a damn and was fucking with me.
I suppose it could be the latter. He is feral now.
It’s the same thought I have every time I see him, and it always stings a
little, because the Dan I used to know—the Dan I used to love—was so
civilized, so tender. Whenever I see this wild incarnation of that man, it
makes me feel like I never really knew him at all, and that freaks me out.
Aside from which, I’m still pissed off at him about everything. After he
went out my window the day Dad caught us together, I never saw him again
until he wandered back into town three years later, looking like he’d been
sleeping in a cave the whole time.
I’ve gotten used to these random appearances at this point. Kind of. But I
never stop hoping he’s going to say something to me. I guess I’ve never quite
lost the feeling of love I had for him when we were young, as much as I’d
like to, given the way he ran off on me as soon as the going got tough.
“What are you staring at?” Olivia asks me.
“Dan,” I admit. “He’s back in town.”
Olivia nods.
“Aren’t you going to tell me not to obsess over him?” It’s what she usually
says when I mention having seen him.
But today she shrugs. “I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe it’s healthier for
you to obsess over him than to be obsessing over Rodney.”
“I have not been obsessing over Rod,” I object. “That’s completely
untrue.” It’s not very fair of her, either. I’ve done my best to put my marriage
—my marriage of twenty years—behind me. I’m focusing on the present —
on the future, even—by opening up this bakery.
“I know you’re not,” Olivia says. “I just kept waiting for something to
snap. For you to realize you’re upset about all that after all.”
“I think you’re more upset about it than I am!”
“Oh, believe me, I am not sad to have that creep out of my best friend’s
life,” Olivia says. “I’m just concerned about you. That’s all. And I think
keeping your attention on your old flame might be a way to keep you from
brooding about Rodney.”
Even though I’m kind of offended that she thinks I’m in any danger of
brooding about Rodney, I have to admit that it’s a nice thought. But it’s
misguided, too, because thinking about Dan definitely doesn’t make me feel
any better.
“I always wonder why he abandoned me without a fight,” I say.
“I mean, he was young,” Olivia says. “You were both really young.”
“But we were serious about each other. At least, I thought we were. If
someone had tried to stop me from being with him, I would have fought
back. I would have tried. He didn’t even try. One altercation with my dad and
he just… left.”
“I know,” Olivia says. “It’s definitely not impressive. I thought he was
better than that too, when we were younger. Especially given the fact that he
stood up against your dad when his uncle made that bid for power.”
I nod, remembering. Dan’s uncle challenged my father for alpha when Dan
and I were in our late teens. He lost that challenge, but before he did, Dan and
his whole family were vocal, outspoken supporters of him. I remember being
jealous of Dan’s ability to stand up for what he thought was right. I thought
his uncle would have made a better alpha, too, but I never would have let my
father hear me say that.
Of course, being loud about his opinions didn’t do Dan or his family any
good in the end. Still, it was what made me notice him. It might have been
the reason I eventually fell in love with him.
“We really shouldn’t be obsessing over any men,” I say firmly. “One is no
better than another.”
“Come on. Dan’s definitely better than Rodney.”
“Is he? They both abandoned me.”
“Yeah, but—”
I hold up a hand. She’s right, of course. Dan may have abandoned me, but
he managed to do it without any public shaming. He just went his own way,
and I really can’t judge him too harshly for that, even though I don’t feel
good about it. He turned out to be a shitty boyfriend, which is still
disappointing to me, but if deep down he was always the feral guy he is now,
then it probably wouldn’t have worked out in the long run anyway.
But whether Olivia has a point or not, it’s nothing I want to talk about. I
want to forget the whole thing. I want to pretend Dan never came into town
today.
“Can we go out?” I ask. “Somewhere we aren’t going to run into Dan or
Rod?”
She looks at me dubiously. “Like where? Timberland is pretty small. Dan
probably won’t stick around, but Rodney could be anywhere.”
I groan. “I wish we could kick him out of the pack.”
Olivia laughs. “You and me both. Or better yet, I wish we could just take
this pack and split it in half, right? Take everyone who doesn’t agree with
current leadership and start a new pack.”
It’s not the craziest idea in the world—packs have certainly split like that
before. But it’ll never happen. “Who would get the land?”
“I know,” she sighs. “If it weren’t for that problem… but you’re right. No
one will ever leave this land. It’s too perfect.”
I nod. Harvesting the trees in the forests around here is the way the
Timberland Pack has made its money for generations. And the forests are
also full of small game—game that alphas of the past have established careful
rules about to make sure we don’t over-hunt. You wouldn’t find another
place as perfect as this one is for shifters if you looked for a hundred years.
I’m not willing to leave our little slice of paradise, even if I do hate the
leadership here.
“Let’s go to the bar,” I say.
“Okay, Rodney will definitely be at the bar.”
“Yeah, I know he will,” I agree. “That’s okay. I’m not going to hide out.”
“That’s the spirit!” Olivia says. “To the bar we go! We deserve to
celebrate. The shop’s really doing well, and tomorrow it’ll be the two month
anniversary of your divorce.”
 I laugh. “Is that what I celebrate now? My divorce anniversary?”
“Well, you can’t pretend it wasn’t a happy occasion for you!”
“That’s true. And I’ll show myself a better time than Rodney ever did on
our wedding anniversaries. All right, I’m in. Let’s go out for divorce drinks.”
“Fantastic,” Olivia says. “I’ll sweep up, and you close down the cash
register.” She hurries into the kitchen.
 6

DAN

“F irst things first,” my mother says firmly the moment I walk in the
door—before she hugs me, before she tells me she’s happy to see
me. Before any of that. “We need to do something about that hair.”
“Fuck’s sake, Mom,” I complain. “You do this every time I come home.”
“And if I didn’t do it, nobody would. Annabel, get the scissors.”
My little sister—ten years younger than me, my mother’s surprise baby-
turned-respectable mate and mother of four—gets up from the table, where
she’s feeling her youngest child pureed fruit of some kind. She grabs the
kitchen shears out of the drawer and hands them to Mom.
Mom grabs the back of a chair, spins it around, and points at it. “Sit.”
“I’m not doing this,” I say. “I’m only here to say hello to you guys, and
then I need to head back out.”
“Need to?” Mom scoffs. “You don’t need to head out. You don’t have
anywhere you have to be. Are you still living in a cave?”
“I fucking hate it when you say things like that.” It sounds half-disparaging
and half-heartbroken, so I never know whether to feel defensive or guilty.
 “Well, are you?”
“It’s a perfectly nice cave. And I’m living as a wolf. Wolves live in caves.”
Mom grabs my shoulder and forces me down into the chair. I could pull
away, of course, but I don’t. My mother is the only person in the world who
gets to push me around like this, whether I like it or not. It’s the least I can do
for her, given that I hardly ever see her anymore. She is starting to look older
now too, with her time dwindling I know these visits mean the world to her,
no matter how much it pains my wolf.
She starts attacking my hair with the scissors. “You should let me brush
this out for you, too. You’re all tangled.”
That’s a bridge too far. “No, Mom,” I say firmly. “I’m fine. What have you
got to eat around here?”
“Annabel?”
She shrugs. “Pureed pumpkin?”
“Honestly, I’d take that.” Every time I come home, Mom tries to feed me a
bunch of carbs, when I’m used to a diet consisting entirely of meat and
plants. It takes days before I start feeling normal again after she gorges me on
bread and pasta.
“Don’t be silly,” Mom says now. “I’ll fix you a sandwich.”
I’m not going to deprive her of the opportunity to feed her son. “Thanks,
Mom.”
The kitchen door bangs open. My older brother, Marcus, is standing in the
doorway, a massive grin on his face. “Dan! Heard you were home.”
“You’re letting flies in,” Mom tells him.
Marcus shuts the door and comes into the kitchen. “How long is my crazy
brother back for?” he asks with a smirk.
“Until Mom puts the damn scissors down,” I say. “Then I’m out of here.”
 “What, you’re not into your haircut?”
“I’m doing this under protest.”
“Let the kid up, Mom.” Marcus will never stop referring to me and
Annabel as kids, and it’s long since stopped annoying me. I find it endearing.
“If he’s only back for one night, I need to take him out for drinks.”
“I’m not back for a night,” I protest. “I’m just here for a quick visit, and
that’s it. I’m not even technically supposed to be in town.”
“You know you’re not going to get any grief from Hank for being here as
long as you don’t go near Gina,” Marcus says. “Which you obviously won’t.”
“Although, did you hear she’s divorced?” Annabel asked.
“I heard,” I say.
“What do you think?”
“What could I think? I don’t even know the situation.”
“You know enough,” Annabel says. “He dumped her after being married to
her for twenty years. What else is there to know?”
“Poor girl.” Mom tilts my head to one side. “I don’t think she was ever
very happy in that marriage, but even so… that’s not how anyone wants
things to end, is it?”
She’s right about that, of course. And I do feel bad for Gina. Kind of. On
the other hand, Rodney is an asshole, and I’m not sad to know that he’s out of
her life.
Plus, that means she’s single…
Which is absolutely not a thing I’m going to be thinking about. My wolf
growls with pleasure at the very thought, but I clamp down on it. We’re not
getting involved with Gina. We are not going back down to the bakery for
her. Absolutely not.
I never got over my attraction to that woman. I don’t know if I’m capable
of self-control when it comes to her. And I’ve been living wild for a long
time. Even here, in the kitchen with my family, I can feel the ways I’m less
human than they are. The way I want to run out the front door, because being
held within four walls feels unnatural and wrong. It’s taking a whole hell of a
lot of willpower to keep me in this chair right now.
And that’s without the temptation of an outrageously sexy woman who I
used to be in love with. My wolf wants her. Hell, so do I. For her sake, I have
to keep my distance, whether she’s divorced or not.
Marcus waves a hand. “All that aside,” he says, “you and I are absolutely
going to the bar tonight.”
“I’m leaving in like ten minutes, Marcus.”
“No, you aren’t,” Marcus says. He’s used to being obeyed. He’s always
been in charge of our family. “You’re coming out with me, and then you’re
staying the night. You can go back to your cave in the morning.”
“No way.”
“I haven’t seen you in months,” Marcus says. “And it breaks Mom’s heart
when you’re not around, you know.”
Low blow. It’s not like it’s my choice to not be around. “Fine,” I say. “One
night, and that’s it. I really am leaving in the morning.”
“Yup. You bet. You done with him, Mom?”
Mom blows hairs off the back of my neck. “All done,” she says. “You
boys go out and have a nice time.”
I look at Annabel. “You want to come?”
“I have four children,” she reminds me.
“Yeah, but Nate’s around, isn’t he?”
“He’s not, actually,” she says. “Tonight’s his hunting night with his
brothers.”
 “Well, just make sure he’s giving you nights off, too,” I say.
Marcus grabs me by the back of the neck. “That’s enough brotherly
wisdom from the prodigal son,” he says. “Bar. Now. Drinks. Let’s go.”
I let him propel me outside. “I’m just checking on her.”
“Well, she’s fine. She gets by without you, you know. We all do.”
I sigh. “Quit trying to make me feel like shit about the fact that I can’t be
here,” I say. “You know why I can’t, and you know it’s not because I don’t
want to.”
“I know,” Marcus says. “I just always wonder if there isn’t something you
could do about it. It was decades ago when Hank threw you out. If you
appealed to him now—”
“I’m not going to do that,” I say firmly. “I’m not having this conversation,
Marcus. You wanted to drink, so fine, let’s go drink.”
I stride off ahead of him toward the bar.
 7

DAN

“Y ou needed to stick around long enough to hear about what’s been

happening around here,” Marcus says, pushing a beer across the
table at me.
I pick it up and take a long drink. It’s honestly not that often I get beer, and
it’s a refreshing change. I know this is going to upset my system just as much
as all the pasta Mom would have given me if she’d gotten the chance—my
body doesn’t process anything as well as it did when I was 20—but whatever.
I’m getting drunk with my brother tonight.
“Hey,” Marcus says. “Put that shit down for a minute and listen to me.”
I curl my lip at him, but because he’s my older brother, I do what he says.
“It’s gotten bad,” Marcus says.
“What has?”
“Leadership around here.”
I shrug. “What else is new? It’s been in the toilet for decades.” There has
never been anything good about having Hank as an alpha, and anyone who
gladly follows him is a dangerous sycophant.
 “Yeah, well, it’s getting worse,” Marcus says.
“How could it get any worse?”
“Rodney.”
“Gina’s husband? I mean, her ex-husband?” I correct myself quickly.
That’s going to take some getting used to.
“He’s a hell of a lot more than that, you know,” Marcus says.
“What else?”
“He’s second in command,” Marcus says. “In line to take over for Hank
one day. You know this.”
“Yeah, I know that,” I say. “And he’s a little asshole. He’s just a younger
version of Hank. Of course Hank would choose him, and foist him off on his
daughter so that he’d be in the line of succession. I know all of this. I guess
I’m a little surprised he wasn’t disinherited after the divorce, but… actually,
no, when I think about it, I’m not surprised at all.”
Marcus nods. “Of course Hank prioritized Rodney over Gina. You know
he’s never thought highly of her, and he adores Rodney. It’s almost like you
can forget which one of them is his real kid.”
“So why are you telling me about Rodney?” I ask. “He’s a jerk, but I
always knew he was a jerk. It’s nothing new.”
“No, it’s getting worse,” Marcus corrects me. “He’s been starting fights.”
“He’s always been a shit-starter.”
“I’m not talking about bar fights. He’s been getting into brawls with the
Slashers.”
“The Slashers? Seriously?”
“I’m telling you, it’s a bad situation. The Slashers are getting angry, and
I’m pretty sure it’s only a matter of time before they start retaliating.”
“So they haven’t retaliated yet?” The enmity between the Timberland Pack
and the Slashers is old, and it’s pretty fraught. The Slashers have always
wanted our land, and of course we’ll fight to protect it. But for the
Timberlands to be the ones starting the fights—that’s rare, and it’s not good.
They don’t need any excuses to attack us. They’ll do it without provocation.
“They haven’t retaliated, but I’m sure they will if Rodney keeps working
them up,” Marcus says. “He’s putting us all in a dangerous position, and I
don’t think anyone is quite sure what to do about it.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“Because you’re a part of this pack.”
“No, I’m not. Marcus, come on. I haven’t been part of this pack in a long
time.”
“You’re with the Timberlands at heart,” Marcus tells me firmly. “You
might not admit it to yourself, and honestly, I don’t really blame you. What
Hank did to you fucked you up, kid. I get it.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. But it’s okay. You don’t have to be. You just need to
realize that this—this pack—is who you are, even though you’ve been kicked
off our land. You’re still one of us. You always will be.”
I drink my beer. I don’t like him saying things like that, because it isn’t
true. I’m not part of the Timberland Pack anymore. That died a long time
ago. Marcus acts like I just don’t want to see the fact that this is my true
home, but the truth is that he doesn’t want to accept that I’m never coming
back.
“Listen to me,” Marcus says firmly. “If you come back to the pack…”
“I’m not coming back to the pack.”
“You need to talk to Hank.”
“It’s not happening.”
 “I don’t understand. Are you really just going to spend the rest of your life
living in caves? Is that what life looks like for you now, Dan?”
“Why are we having this conversation? It’s been twenty years.”
He throws his hands up. “Because Gina is single now!”
“What? What does that have to do with anything?”
“You were exiled because Hank wanted to keep you away from her. He
wanted to make sure you wouldn’t get in the way of the marriage he wanted
for her.”
“And you think because that marriage has ended, Hank won’t mind having
me back?”
“It’s worth making the appeal, isn’t it?”
“No,” I say flatly. “It isn’t.”
“Why won’t you even consider this?”
I won’t consider it because it’s too dangerous for me to be around Gina.
My wolf can’t resist her. And after all this time, I feel sure she isn’t going to
welcome me back into her life.
And speaking of my wolf…
A scent fills the air. I feel every sense I possess perking up, and I have to
clutch my hands together to keep myself human. The wolf is suddenly fully
ready to prowl.
I turn slowly toward the door.
It’s her. Of course it’s fucking her. I knew immediately by the scent in the
air. I would recognize her anywhere. And so would my wolf—and my wolf
wants her badly.
“Hey.” Marcus has noticed her, too. “Here she is now. Maybe we should
talk to her about this.”
“If you call her over here, I am walking out.”
 Marcus rolls his eyes. “One day, you’re going to learn that you should
listen to me.”
“One day, you’re going to stop trying to push me around.”
“No, never.”
He stands up and goes over to Gina. I slam down the rest of my beer, get
up myself, and go to the bar to get another one. Marcus can do what he
wants, but I’m not going to be pushed into spending time with Gina when I
know that’s the worst possible thing for both of us. I won’t be able to control
my wolf around her, and even if I could…
The way things ended between us was just too painful. Nobody wants to
rehash that.
I’m not going to walk out on Marcus, the way I warned him I might,
because who the hell knows when the two of us will see each other again
after tonight? But if I lose control of the wolf, it’s a different story. If that
happens, I know I’m going to have to run.
Maybe I should have told Marcus how tenuous my control is whenever I
see Gina.
I glance over and see that he’s talking to her.
It’s too late now. I’m just going to have to do my best.
 8

GINA

“A w, hell,” I say. “Can we go?”

“What?” Olivia asks. “We just got here.”
“I know, but… Dan is here.”
She frowns. “You were fine with the idea of Rodney being here.”
“It’s different.”
“Why is it different?”
“I don’t know, it just is.” I don’t know how to explain it to her, exactly. I
don’t know how to tell her that the difference is that I see Rod all the time,
that I’m used to seeing him. When I run into him in places like this, it’s not
fun, but it isn’t shocking.
Being around Dan is different. It’s jarring. It throws me all the way back to
my youth, to a time when I thought I was going to have a kind of happiness
that I never got.
I don’t want to be here if Dan is going to be here. I’m not going to be able
to cut loose and celebrate if I know he’s watching me. I grab Olivia’s arm
and start to pull her toward the door.
 “Olivia! Hey, Gina!”
My heart sinks, because I know that voice.
Dan’s older brother Marcus looks just like him, and for the first few
months after Dan’s departure from the pack, I noticed Marcus all the time. It
felt like I was being haunted by the ghost of my ex-lover. I got over that a
long time ago, thankfully, but even now, it’s difficult to distract myself when
I see Marcus. It’s difficult to remember that I’m not looking at Dan. Having
Marcus around makes me jumpy, because I’ll feel like I’ve seen Dan, and
then Marcus will open his mouth and I’ll realize it’s not the same guy at all.
Their personalities are completely different, and their voices distinguish
them, too. Marcus’s voice is a bold tenor, and he’s always so clearly excited
by whatever’s going on. When he talks to you, he makes you want to care
about the things he cares about.
“Did you see Dan is here?” he asks me.
Of course, the thing he cares about today is the one thing I don’t want to
care about. I don’t want to talk about Dan.
“We saw,” Olivia said. “How long is he back for?”
“He says he’s leaving in the morning, but I might try to change his mind,”
Marcus says. “Gina, what do you think your father would say to letting him
move home?”
“He doesn’t want to move back to Timberland,” I say. He was happy to
leave, in fact. Marcus must know that.
“But maybe you and I could talk him into it.”
I want to laugh in his face. There’s no way I’m going to try to talk Dan
into moving back here—it’s the last thing I’d want. The idea of having to see
him every day is ridiculously stressful. I’m already looking forward to the
moment when he leaves again.
 For once, I’m glad Dan can be relied upon to be distant. “You can try it,” I
say. “But I don’t think my father would ever get on board with that idea.”
Marcus leans back for a moment. I don’t even see what he’s doing at first,
but when he stands upright again, he’s got his arm around Dan’s shoulders.
Dan looks like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world.
“Look who’s here,” Marcus says jovially. “Olivia and Gina.”
“Hey,” Dan says, not making eye contact. It is, actually, the first thing he’s
said to me since my father ran him out of town twenty years ago. It’s so
weird to be standing here talking to him—such as it is—when the last time
we spoke to each other, we were naked together.
“Hi.”
Olivia grabs Marcus’s hand. “Let’s go get drinks for everyone,” she says.
Before I can object—before I really even understand what’s happening—
the two of them are gone.
I’m expecting some comment from Dan about how fucking awkward this
is—I’d agree—but just then the music changes from the latest pop song to
something deep and rhythmic.
For the first time, Dan makes eye contact with me.
He’s so different—his face slightly weathered and aged, lines around his
eyes, flecks of gray in his hair and his beard. And yet, at the same time, he’s
exactly the same. Same broad, muscular shoulders. Same square jaw. Same
dark eyes that I could get lost in—that I have gotten lost in, countless times.
And suddenly I feel like I’m twenty years old again.
I’m speechless. Breathless. My whole body feels alive in ways it hasn’t in
years. I didn’t even know I could feel like this in my forties. But apparently I
can.
I don’t know which one of us starts moving first. I feel like the rhythm of
the music that’s playing is invading my bones, robbing me of my very will.
And Dan is moving right along with me, swaying to the beat, his hips flexing
toward mine—
He reaches out and grabs me by the waist, pulling me against him in a
swift, rough motion.
I gasp.
He’s hard. I can feel him against my torso. He’s hard, and he’s looking at
me hungrily with the yellow eyes of the wolf, and maybe the reason he isn’t
talking to me is that he can’t anymore.
I have to put a stop to this before it gets out of control. I can’t allow things
to go any further.
I put a hand on his chest and push him away.
He doesn’t release me right away. He growls a little and holds me more
tightly. Fuck. I’m really not dealing with his human side right now. This is
pure wolf. He’s never been like this with me before. But then, it’s been a very
long time since he and I were together.
He’s feral now, and I know that. He’s wild. Too wild for me. Too wild to
be here.
I push against him harder. “Dan, stop it.”
“Why?” He loosens his hold, but only a little.
And I’m pissed. “Really? You had your chance to be with me. You can’t
just come back after twenty years, walk into a bar, and grab me like I’m
fucking yours. I’m not yours.”
His lip peels back from his teeth in a snarl.
It’s so strange. I should be afraid of him, probably, but I’m not. There’s
nothing about this that scares me. Actually, it’s almost hot.
Yeah. Very weird.
 I’m just letting myself get carried away because it’s Dan. Because I’m
remembering how it felt to be in love with him. But I need to remember that
those days are long gone. Whatever this is, it’s a million miles from the Dan
who used to love me. This is a feral shifter, and that’s incredibly dangerous.
His wolf is clearly not under control.
I look around for Olivia and Marcus, but they’re nowhere to be seen.
Get out of here.
“I never had my chance,” he says.
What the fuck is that supposed to mean? He did have a chance to be with
me. He could have been with me years ago. He chose to run instead. Am I
supposed to act like he was the victim in all that? Because if that’s what he’s
expecting, he can damn well forget it. It’s not going to happen.
A bartender drops a glass. It shatters, and the noise startles Dan.
It’s the break I need. I pull away from him, turn, and run out the door into
the night.
 9

DAN

M ine.
She says she’s not mine, but she is mine. She’ll always be mine. A
part of us will always belong to each other. She doesn’t have to admit it right
now—my wolf knows. And my wolf wants to claim what’s his.
“Hey,” Marcus says. “Hey, Dan, what’s going on? Gina just took off like a
bat out of hell. Is she okay? Should we go after her?”
I can’t even look at him. I can’t spare him a glance. It’s taking every ounce
of my energy to keep from shifting and running after her and—oh, fuck it.
Marcus sees the change in my face. “Hey, no,” he says, grabbing my arm.
“Dan, get yourself under control. I fucking mean it.” It’s his older brother
voice, the one he used to tell me to stop tormenting Annabel when we were
kids.
I stopped listening to that voice a long time ago.
I shake him off me and cross to the door in three strides, and then I’m out
in the warm night air. Gina’s scent is still lingering there, even though she’s
nowhere in sight. She’s going to be just too easy to track down.
 I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t go after her. She doesn’t want me to. That’s why
she left, for fuck’s sake!
But those are the protestations of my human self, and the wolf is just so
much stronger. There’s no way I can resist. The most I can ask of myself is to
make it to a darkened alley before I shift, and I do. I’m able to strip down
there, and I leave my clothes. I’ll come back and try to find them later. Of
course, who knows whether or not they’ll be here—abandoning your clothes
in a pile in the woods is a lot different from doing it in an alley in the middle
of town. Even in a shifter town, where people will know what an abandoned
pile of clothes means… it’s possible I’m just giving this shirt and pants up,
and I don’t have that many.
But I feel like I have no choice. If I don’t let the wolf out, he’s going to rip
his way out, and the damage will be a hell of a lot worse then.
It feels like an exhale to let the wolf take over. It feels like relaxing a
muscle that has been clenched for far too long. I relax into the body that’s
most natural to me and I let myself start to run.
Immediately, my thoughts are clearer, my mind more at peace. I don’t need
to fight against myself. The wolf wants Gina, and the wolf gets what he
wants. It’s that simple. All that messy conflict I was feeling—that’s human,
and I leave that behind me. I run, sniffing my way along, following the scent.
It doesn’t take me long to find her.
She’s just walking home, fully human. She ran out of the bar, but she must
not have fully realized that I was going to give chase, because I know she can
outrun me if she really wants to. She’s the fastest shifter I’ve ever known.
Much faster than me, and I’m no slouch.
I come up beside her.
She knows I’m there before she sees me, of course. She might not have run
away, but she’s smart enough to recognize a scent on the wind. She looks
down at me.
“You followed me,” she says evenly.
I shove my shoulder against her, pushing her off the road and toward the
trees.
Even now, I expect her to shift and run.
She doesn’t, though. She looks at me for a minute, and then she allows
herself to be steered into the woods.
Is she stupid? I know she isn’t. But then why is she allowing this? Why is
she just letting my wolf have his way like this?
She can’t want it, can she?
The curiosity—well, that and the desire—in combination, they’re enough
to provoke my human side back to the surface. As soon as we’re out of sight
of any passersby, I shift and stand there looking at her.
“What?” she asks. “What is this?”
“You walked out on me at the bar.”
Her eyebrows shoot up. Honestly, I can’t blame her. I’m as surprised as
anyone that this is what I’m opening with.
“So?” she asks.
“You don’t walk away from me.”
“You’re going to say that to me? Seriously? You’re the one who walks
away, Dan. You don’t get to talk to me like that. Not now. Not after
everything.”
I growl. She has so little idea what she's talking about. And I shouldn’t
have to be the one who explains that to her.
She sighs. “Is this why you came after me? To give me a hard time about
walking out of the bar? Because I don’t need that from you, frankly. You
haven’t talked to me in years. You don’t get to critique my choices now.”
“You and I are bonded,” I tell her. “No matter what happened between us
—”
“No, fuck that. Absolutely not. You have no claim to me. You forfeited
any claim you might have had when you left me. We’re not bonded. We’re
not anything.”
I reach out and grab her wrist, fully expecting her to pull away from me.
I’m not going to let my wolf get the better of me. I’m not. I’m going to get
this under control.
But she doesn’t pull away.
She looks right at me, meeting my gaze.
“If you wanted anything to do with me,” she says softly, “you should have
fought for me twenty years ago. You didn’t. Now you’ve missed your
chance.”
“Have I?” I growl. Because the fact of the matter is that I can smell her
arousal. I’m not imagining things. She does want me, whether she wants to
pretend otherwise or not. She wants me, and I’m going to have her.
I push her back against the nearest tree, still waiting for any sort of
struggle. She doesn’t give me one. She gasps a little as the bark collides with
the skin of her back. Part of me wonders if that was too rough, if I hurt her.
A louder, more dominant part of me isn’t thinking about that at all.
Really, the only thing I want to think about is the fact that finally, after all
this time, I have this woman in my arms again, and I’m about to get
everything I’ve been fantasizing and dreaming about for the past twenty
years. My wolf is practically vibrating with the satisfaction of this moment. I
can’t remember the last time I felt this good.
I have just enough humanity left in me to give her an out.
 I loosen my hands on her, just a little. Just enough. “You’d better run the
fuck away from me right now,” I growl, hoping she’ll take me seriously.
Because I’ve never been more serious in my life. “This is the last chance
you’re going to get.”
I wait.
She doesn’t even try to run. She doesn’t try to escape me.
So I grab the fabric of her shirt in my fist and rip it off her body.
10
 GINA

I should be running from this man.

The state he’s in right now—he’s terrifying. He’s dangerous. I can tell
by the way his lips are peeled back, exposing his teeth. I can tell by the way
his dark pupils are shot through with yellow. He’s barely human. His wolf is
staggeringly close to the surface.
And I don’t know how I’m getting home, either, because he just tore my
shirt off me like it was made of tissue paper. Like it was nothing at all. The
only way to make it home without everyone in the pack seeing me and
knowing exactly what happened is going to be to shift and run home in my
own wolf form.
That’s if Dan doesn’t kill me first... which I don’t think is what he wants to
do. He’s not looking at me with rage. It’s a possessive sort of lust. He wants
me alive, not dead.
Either way, though, I should definitely be running.
And I’m not.
 I’m just standing here. Just waiting to see what he’s going to do next. My
heart is racing, and my breath is coming in unsteady gasps, but I don’t want
to get away from him.
What am I thinking?
That’s a question that doesn’t need to be pondered for long. I know exactly
what I’m thinking. For ages, the only sex I had was with Rodney, who
doesn’t give a damn about anyone besides himself. He didn’t care what I
needed. He never tried to satisfy me. My orgasms have become so rare
they’re almost mythical. If there’s a chance of sex with Dan here—Dan, who
was always so fucking good to me—well, I’m going to risk whatever I have
to to make that happen.
I don’t know if it’s even a choice anymore, to be honest. My body is
reacting to him in ways I’d all but forgotten about. If it wasn’t for the dreams
—the dreams where we’re together and I ache for him so badly—I wouldn’t
remember what it was like to have my nipples perk up just at the scent of a
lover. To have heat flood through me, making me so wet that I know he can
smell my arousal.
That’s probably only making things more dangerous, to be honest.
He grabs the waist of my pants, and I feel the aggression in the moment
before he tears them from my body.
I can’t believe how easily the denim gives way. I can’t believe the sheer
strength of him. Had I forgotten this? Was he always this way with me?
Or is it new?
I can’t let myself forget the fact that Dan has been living feral for a long
time. He’s not the man I loved when we were young, not really. He’s wild
and dangerous, and I can’t afford to move without caution.
And that’s exactly what I’m doing. I’m not being careful at all. He’s got
me out in the woods, alone, fully naked, and no one knows I’m here.
I should run.
“Dan,” I try.
A growl rips its way out from deep in his throat.
“Dan, we… can we talk?” Insane question. What conversation could I
possibly want to have while we’re standing here like this, him out of his mind
and me fully naked in the rising moonlight?
He responds by grabbing my wrist and whipping me around so that my
back is to him, and then he wraps his hand around the back of my neck and
shoves me down so that I bend at the waist.
I suddenly feel very, very exposed.
I feel his thigh between my legs, shoving them apart, spreading me. I could
pull away from this if I wanted to—he’s holding me, but it’s not a grip I
couldn’t break. If I shifted, I could run from him.
I’m not going to run from him.
He drops to his knees behind me. I can’t see him, but I feel his hot breath
against my pussy, and for a moment I’m sure he’s going to press his mouth
against me and pleasure me the way he did when we were younger. I want it.
I’m aching for it. It’s been so long since anyone took care of me like that.
He inhales deeply, like he’s smelling a bouquet.
Fuck, that makes me feel sexy.
He groans.
I look down and see his hand on his cock, stroking. I’ve got him so aroused
that he can’t resist, and I love that. I want him, too. I want the man behind me
to take me, to thrust into me and fuck me so hard I forget the years since the
last time we were together.
He’s going to do it. He gets back to his feet and lines himself up. I feel the
head of him pressing against me.
I groan and rock backward, letting his hard cock drag against me. I tilt my
hips so I can feel him against my clit, and the heat and friction of it is
glorious. I close my eyes for a moment, remembering what it was like to have
him inside me. To be one with him.
Dan shoves into me then, fast and hard.
My eyes fly open.
It’s nothing at all like what I remember. He used to enter me slowly and
pause to let me adjust. We’d breathe together, enjoying the wild pleasure of
being joined for just a few seconds, before he would start to move. It was a
part of our routine I never really stopped to think about, but I’m fucking
thinking about it now.
Because the way he’s fucking me now—it’s like he’s an animal. It’s like
Dan isn’t even here anymore.
There’s no pause to experience each other. Instead, he’s pounding into me
like a jackhammer, clearly chasing his own orgasm. And maybe that should
alarm me more than anything that’s happened so far, but no, it’s fucking
good, it’s still Dan’s magnificent cock inside me, Dan’s body draped over
mine, everything I’ve been missing all this time.
He fucks me hard, his hips slamming against me again and again, driving
into me so deeply that it’s hard to breathe. I’m gasping, shocked at how deep
he’s getting. My dreams didn’t do it justice. Was he always so big? He must
have been, and I’ve just forgotten over the years I’ve spent with no one but
Rodney. I’ve forgotten what good sex feels like.
And good sex is what this is. It’s so rough that it’s a little scary, but that
doesn’t matter—I like it. I love it. I’ll be sore afterward, but that’s a problem
for another time. He can fuck me like this all night. I hope he does.
 There was a time when I would have counted on his hand to find my clit,
but I know that’s not the version of Dan I’m dealing with today. I reach down
to touch myself as he fucks me. He growls pleasurably, grabs my hips, and
pulls me back to meet his thrusts.
I stroke myself harder. He’s fucking me so deep that it’s almost painful
now. I wonder how close the wolf is to the surface. If he shifts…
I can’t even think about it. I can’t even let myself think about the damage
he’d do to me if that happened. It’s too frightening.
“Dan,” I say, my voice coming out as a gasp.
I’m not sure what I’m trying to do. I’m not going to tell him to stop. The
way he’s making me feel right now—it’s too damn good. It’s more than I can
stand, and I can feel a reckless heat building inside me, starting in my core
and radiating slowly outward. It’s as if the tension has been slowly mounting
in my body for the past decade, and now it’s about to snap. I’m going to
come, and I know it.
I can’t let him stop. Even though I know I’m putting myself in danger here,
I can’t. I physically can’t walk away.
My breasts bounce as he fucks me, and I feel the slip and slide of his cock,
filling me up.
“Dan,” I groan again, maybe just to remind him that he’s human and so am
I, that he can’t let the wolf take over right now.
His hips stutter, and I know he’s close to his own orgasm.
I rub myself harder, wanting to come with him, knowing that there’s not
going to be any aftercare for me. There was a time he would have lain with
me after he’d finished for as long as it took if I hadn’t come yet, making sure
I got my turn. But this man, the man he is now—I don’t trust him to do that.
I don’t trust him at all.
 I have no trust in him, but I can’t deny my wanton desire.
And as he fucks me harder and more erratically, the band of tension inside
me finally snaps.
My orgasm is blinding. It shakes me to my very core, then rocks outward
to my limbs until I’m trembling so hard I’m at risk of falling over. Dan hasn’t
pushed me close to anything. I have nowhere to brace my hands, no way of
holding myself upright. There’s nothing I can do. I’m going to fall…
Dan pulls me back onto his cock, hard.
I whimper, my body going limp, and he pulls me upright so my back is
flush against his chest. His hands find my breasts and his fingers toy with my
nipples.
I gasp as my orgasm rolls into a second one.
He growls and fucks me hard. I feel him start to come, and that feeling
takes me even higher. I feel him throbbing inside me, I’m clenching around
him so hard it almost feels like my body is milking him, and fuck, this is it,
this is what I’ve been missing all this time, this is everything—
And then, without warning, without a word, he’s gone from me.
I turn around quickly, trying to piece together what happened.
He’s backed away and is standing several feet from me, looking deeply
wary. Concerned. Almost frightened.
I suddenly feel how naked I am. All the signs of the wolf that were so
alarming—and, let’s face it, so alluring—are gone now. He’s human again,
completely.
“Did I hurt you?” he asks me quietly.
“No,” I assure him.
The truth is, he did shock me with how rough he was. I’ve never known
Dan to be anything like that.
 Is this what years spent in the wild do to a man? Strip him of his
humanity?
“Are you sure you’re all right?” He reaches out to me gently, carefully, but
doesn’t touch me, and I can tell he’s letting me decide what happens next.
I reach back and take his hand, and he pulls me close.
Oh, hell.
I’m in his arms again, leaning against his chest, listening to the beat of his
heart, and it is so fucking familiar. Somehow, in spite of the fact that I know
he’s gone feral, in spite of the fact that this is dangerous, I can’t help feeling
safe in his arms.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I get carried away…the wolf…”
He runs his hand up and down my spine. I feel like I could stay here in his
arms forever now.
“I can’t control it sometimes,” he murmurs. “But I’m still me. I still care
about you, Gina. I’ve always cared about you.”
“I’m all right,” I tell him. “It was good, Dan. I liked it.”
And that’s completely true.
Yes, it was rough, and maybe a little painful, but it was also the best
fucking sex I’ve had in years, and I can’t regret that. I needed it.
I’m about to ask him if he wants to come to my place and talk—when I
feel him grow hard against me again. Dan stiffens, and he pulls away from
me. His eyes are wide, his lip peeled back from his teeth.
He looks as spooked as a prey animal, and in spite of everything, I find
myself wanting to comfort him. He shakes his head and backs away.
He turns on his heel and sprints off into the woods, so fast that he’s out of
sight before I can register what’s happening.
I stare after Dan, as startled by his sudden flight as I am by everything else.
 What the fuck?
None of this was anything I expected, that’s for sure. I thought Dan hated
me.
Then again, maybe he does. That wasn’t exactly the tender, respectful
lovemaking of my memories.
Maybe I should stay away from him.
But I don’t know if I’m going to have the strength.
11
 DAN

I do a wide loop around the perimeter of Timberland before I start working

my way back inward toward town. By then, my blood has cooled, and
even though I’m still in my wolf form, I know I’m ready to be human and not
go completely crazy.
I knew it wasn’t a good idea to allow myself to be around Gina. I knew my
wolf would take over, that I couldn’t be trusted. Honestly, it’s a miracle she
got out of that encounter unharmed. My wolf was so obsessed with her, he
was blind with need. I had never had such little control over him.
But she wasn’t trying to get away from me. She was pulling me closer. She
wanted it. After all these years could she really still have wanted me the way
I wanted her?
I can’t be around her like that again. I can’t let that happen again. I’m too
wild, and she breaks me open far too easily. I need to get the hell out of
Timberland before I make a mistake I can’t take back.
I jog back up to the bar. Gina won’t be there now, and with any luck, I can
find out what happened to Marcus, maybe even meet up with him again. I’m
sure he’s angry at me for tearing off like I did. I owe him a bundle of
explanations.
I push through the bar door and look around, but he’s nowhere to be seen.
In fact, the bar is mostly empty now—except for a huddle of men in the
corner. I recognize Gina’s ex-husband among them, and I have no interest in
socializing with him, so I’m about to leave—but then I hear her name.
I freeze, my ears pricking.
“Selfish bitch.” That’s Rodney talking. “She had a responsibility to me.
She should have been tracking her cycle, trying to monitor things. She should
have known years ago that something was wrong.”
“Had the two of you been trying to have children all that time?” someone
asks him—I don’t see who it is.
“Well, of course we had,” Rodney says. “Ever since we got married I’d
been having sex with the bitch. But it’s the woman’s job to keep track of
things like that. Biology things. My job was just to keep fucking her, and I
did my part. She’s the one who should have been keeping up her end of the
bargain.”
“Do you really think she’s infertile?”
“Well, look at the facts! We were together for a long damn time. If she
were going to get pregnant, shouldn’t it have happened?”
“But you didn’t want to have her tested?”
“I think the time we spent together was enough of a test. Besides, she’s not
worth it. She’s a lousy lay with a big mouth, and in my opinion, getting rid of
her was the best thing that could have happened to me. I’ll be glad not to
have to deal with her anymore. Dumb cunt.”
The wolf in me snarls his way to the surface, and I can’t help myself. I let
loose a growl of anger.
 I see the wave of tension that travels through Rodney’s group, and for a
moment, I feel some satisfaction. But only for a moment.
Then Rodney laughs.
“Dan, you want to come over for a drink?” he asks. “Or maybe you don’t
remember how to drink from a cup.”
The rest of the guys burst out laughing.
“I mean, if you’ve got something to say, you should say it,” Rodney says.
“Don’t just sit there growling and slavering. See, in the real world, when
we’re human, we talk to each other. We have conversations.”
I have less than zero interest in a conversation with this fuckface. I turn
away from him, toward the door. It’s clear that Marcus isn’t here, so I should
probably just leave.
“Maybe you’d rather handle things between us the wolf way?” Rodney
asks.
Yes! My wolf exults.
I would fucking love a fight. I would love to let Rodney know exactly what
I think of him, exactly what the price of shit-talking Gina is. I’d like to take it
out of him in blood.
If he were on his own, I’d be dragging him outside already.
But he’s surrounded by friends.
My wolf doesn’t care. My wolf wants the fight anyway, but I would lose,
and I know that. I can’t let myself do something stupid here.
I’ve already done enough stupid things for one night.
“Just watch your mouth,” I tell him. If he wants me to say something, I’ll
say something. “Don’t talk about Gina that way.”
Rodney snorts. “You still think you’ve got some kind of claim on her,
don’t you? It’s insane. You haven’t spoken to her in years. You fucked her a
few times when you were practically children. Meanwhile, I was married to
her for years.”
“You divorced her.”
“She’s still mine before she’s anyone else’s. Certainly before she’s yours.
And you don’t tell me how to talk about my ex-wife. You don’t tell me
anything. I’m going to be the alpha of the Timberland Pack, and you’re just
an exile who shouldn’t be hanging around here anyway. In fact, you’d better
get your ass out of town quickly before Hank finds out you’re here. You
know he doesn’t like you coming back.”
“I’m allowed to visit,” I say darkly. “My family still lives here.”
“Not for long, if you make trouble.”
The thing—the horrible but inescapable thing—is that he’s not wrong, and
I know it. If Hank doesn’t like something I’m doing, he will absolutely make
it my family’s problem. It’s the only thing that compels me, sometimes, to
obey the banishment order that was laid down so long ago. For the sake of
my family, I have to stay away from the pack.
That’s what Marcus doesn’t understand. What none of them have ever
understood.
I can’t go to Hank and ask him to let me come back now. Just asking might
have consequences for the people I love, and I won’t risk that. Not for my
brother. Not for anyone. Knowing I can’t come back has made me wild, but
it’s better to be wild than to be responsible for something terrible happening
to someone you care about.
I turn away from Rodney and his threats. I don’t want to have this
conversation with him. I can’t deal with any of this.
I set off at a roundabout run that will eventually lead me back home. I’m
sure I’ll find Marcus there. And when I do, I’m going to tell him that I’m
leaving Timberland again, and he won’t see me again for a good long time.
12
 GINA

R od’s mating ceremony comes disturbingly soon after our divorce.

Maybe it should shock me that he’s involved with someone else so
quickly, but it doesn’t. My father made it clear that I wouldn’t be removed
from the line of succession until Rod had produced an heir, and even though
it’s blatantly obvious that I have no chance at inheriting, and that Dad only
did that to light a fire under Rod, it’s still working. Rodney wants to
reproduce as quickly as possible, just to make sure he’s got the alpha spot
locked up.
I don’t care, I tell myself firmly, standing at the back of the crowd that’s
gathered for the ceremony. In fact, it’s good for me that he’s getting mated,
because it means I won’t have to sit and watch him fuck around with every
woman in the pack. At least he’ll be restrained to just one. That will be easier
to take.
Still, I can’t help wondering all kinds of things that are ultimately
unhelpful to me. Does he love her? How long have they been involved? Was
something going on between them before our divorce?
 I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.
“Linley looks beautiful, doesn’t she?”
I turn. It’s Rodney’s mother, Bess, leaning over to talk to me, and I kind of
can’t believe my bad luck. How could I possibly be forced to interact with
Bess? I knew she’d be here, of course, but she hasn’t shown any interest in
actually talking to me in years. It’s devastating that she only wants to talk
now.
She’s doing it to rub this in, I’m sure. She wants me to feel bad.
I won’t give her the satisfaction.
“She looks wonderful,” I say, forcing a smile onto my face. “What a
perfect choice for Rodney.”
Bess hesitates for a moment, frowning at me. I can tell she’s not sure
what’s happening. She doesn’t know if I’m being genuine, if I really meant
what I said.
The truth is, I did mean it. But I didn’t mean it kindly.
Linley’s a sweet kid. But she’s very much a kid. She’s half my age and,
more to the point, half Rodney’s age. I’m not at all surprised that he chose
someone so young—he’ll like being with a woman who’s naive and
worshipful of him, someone who’s not old enough or wise enough to refuse
to be pushed around. Also, I’m sure he’s into her body.
Bess recovers herself and smiles. “You know what’s great about Linley?”
“Tell me.” I know she’s trying to provoke a reaction from me, but she
won’t get it.
“She’s so young,” Bess says. “So fertile. I’m sure they’ll be able to have
dozens of babies.”
“Won’t that be nice,” I say evenly.
Bess frowns at me. “You like that you wasted half my son’s life, don’t
you? You’re proud of yourself.”
I snort out a laugh. She’s trying to force a response out of me, but she’s the
one reacting. It’s almost too funny. “I never wanted to marry Rodney, Bess. I
know you know that.”
“That’s right. You were taken with that wild boy.”
Of course, Dan wasn’t wild back then. He was perfectly civilized. But his
family never had any respect from my father or Rodney’s family. Not since
his uncle’s failed bid for the alpha position. They all talk about Dan, and
everyone related to him, as if they’re a dangerous element.
“I didn’t want you to marry Rodney either, of course,” Bess says.
“I’m aware.”
“But he was determined. Well, you know how he can be.” As if we’re
reminiscing fondly about someone we both love. Then again, she probably
does think I still give a damn about Rodney. It’s probably impossible for her
to imagine anyone falling out of love with her son, much less the idea that I
never really loved him in the first place. “He told me, ‘Mother, if I marry her,
I will become next in line to be alpha.’”
“He didn’t really need to marry me for that,” I say. “Father had him picked
for second in command anyway.” It’s the reason he got so upset when he
found me with Dan all those years ago. He knew the only threat to the
hierarchy he was trying to establish would come from me having a child with
someone else.
There’s a part of me, to this day, that wishes I’d been able to have a child
with Dan. I know it’s ridiculous, because he was always going to leave me.
He wasn’t as serious about me as I was about him. I knew that the moment he
decided not to fight for me. But even so…maybe things could have been
different, somehow. Better.
 Or maybe I’m just digging up the past because of that experience I had
with Dan in the woods. He was so unlike himself. So unlike the man I used to
know. He wasn’t the tender man from my youth. He was wild. Bestial. Scary.
But it was still the best sex I’ve had in years, and I can’t set that aside.
I watch as my father joins Rodney and Linley’s hands together. Rodney
beams with pride as he speaks the words claiming her as his mate, but he
doesn’t look like a man in love. He looks like a man who’s been given a
fancy toy and is ready to show it off to anyone who will give him the
slightest bit of attention. Having a young, hot thing like Linley on his arm is
making him feel virile and important.
I realize, suddenly, that he’s ashamed, too. He’s worried that our inability
to conceive reflects badly on him. He’s probably going to start trying to
knock Linley up the moment they get into their tent.
“She isn’t going to get a moment’s rest tonight,” I murmur, actually feeling
sorry for her.
Bess smirks at me. “I should say not.”
Gross. I turn away from her.
“At least Rodney will finally get what he deserves,” Bess murmurs. “A
woman who can give him children. That’s what he should have had from the
very start, and I’m glad it’s happening for him. I’m so glad the years he
wasted are over at last.”
I don’t want to let it bother me. I shouldn’t let it bother me, but, damn it
all, that finally gets to me.
Because Rodney isn’t the only person who wasted years of his life. Rodney
isn’t the only one who would have liked things to be different. I deserved
better. I deserved family, and someone who could really love me instead of
just using me to advance his position in the pack.
 The only man I ever loved rejected me and ran away, leaving me to be
mated to someone who didn’t give a damn about me.
I can’t help it. That hurts.
I turn and walk away, and as I’m leaving the crowd around Rodney and
Linley, I see the smug look of satisfaction on Bess’s face. She got what she
wanted out of this. She made me feel bad. That’s all she’s ever wanted from
me and, damn it all, I gave it to her.
13
 GINA

“Y ou’re not still upset about the mating ceremony, are you?” Olivia
asks me, concern etched on her face.
“Who says I was ever upset about that?” I ask her. “It’s been two weeks.”
“You left early,” Olivia says. “I did notice.”
“Okay, but that was because Bess was giving me a hard time. I told you
what happened there.”
“Yeah, you did,” Olivia says. “And I get it. Bess can be a real bitch
sometimes. Incidentally, did I tell you she came into the bakery the other
day?”
“No! Where was I?”
“Delivering that pie to Mrs. Lancaster.”
“Well, that’s convenient.”
“Not for Bess. It was really obvious she was looking for you. She came in
and looked around for a moment, and then I decided to call her out and ask
her if I could help her with anything.”
I have to laugh. “What did she say to that?”
 “She didn’t want to admit she’d come in to find you, so she pretended to
give a damn about the tartlets, and I kept her there for a good twenty minutes
listening to all the different ways we make them. She was fuming by the end
of it. She so clearly just wanted to get out of there.”
“She shouldn’t have come in, then.”
“I mean, I agree. I don’t know what she thought was going to happen if
you were there. You should definitely watch out for her, Gina.”
I snort. “She can’t do anything to me. We’ve been living in the same pack
all my life. She’s hated me ever since Rod and I got married, and she’s never
been able to do anything about it. I’m sure she just came in here to see if I
was upset about Rodney’s mating ceremony.”
“Right. Which you are.”
“Of course I’m not, Olivia. I don’t give a damn what Rod does—or who he
does.”
“Then why have you been so quiet lately?” she challenges me.
I sigh. I really don’t want to admit to this, but I don’t know what else to do.
Olivia always sees right through me, and if she keeps on thinking it’s Rod on
my mind, that’ll mean we have to keep talking about him. I can’t imagine
anything worse than that.
“It’s nothing to do with Rodney,” I say. “I’ve had Dan on my mind since
the last time he was in town.”
Olivia perks up at that. “Really? Dan?”
“Don’t look so happy,” I tell her severely. “And don’t think I didn’t see
what you were up to that day at the bar, pushing the two of us together.”
“Which didn’t work,” Olivia reminds me. “You ran off.”
“Oh, he caught up with me.” I shake my head.
Olivia stares for a moment. Then she sucks in a breath. “You mean…”
 “No, nothing bad,” I say quickly.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know if I can talk about it.”
“No, you have to tell me, Gina. If you don’t, I’ll imagine something awful.
I should never have let him get near you.”
I don’t want her to feel guilty. Not when nothing bad did happen. “It’s all
right,” I say. “We… well, we had sex.”
She gasps again. “You did?”
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I say quickly.
“But you’re single! And he was the love of your life!”
“He’s not like he was then,” I say. “He’s been feral too long. There was a
wildness in him when we were together this time. It scared me. It was like he
didn’t even really know who I was. It was like he was just looking for a
fuck.”
“Do you think he was? But Dan was always so…” Her voice trails off.
I don’t know what she was going to say. Maybe that Dan was kind. Maybe
that he was sweet and thoughtful and loving. And it’s true. He was all of
those things.
Once upon a time.
But he isn’t that way now.
“The sex was great,” I say. “The best I’ve had in ages. That’s why I can’t
stop thinking about him. I feel like I might do it again, if I had the chance.”
“Do you think you would?”
“Maybe. I don’t know if it would be wise or not,” I admit. “It’s hard,
having him back in my life, even temporarily. Even though he left
Timberland quickly and I haven’t seen him since. Just having to think about
him again makes things complicated.”
 “I’ll bet.”
“If it could just be, you know, sex, and nothing else, I think I’d do it again,
yeah. But I don’t see how it can be just that. I get too in my head when it
comes to him. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him. I don’t need
that.”
“That makes sense,” Olivia says. She bites her lip. “I shouldn’t have
thrown you two together.”
“It probably would have happened anyway,” I admit. “It’s getting too hard
to ignore the fact that… I feel things when I see him. I can’t ignore him.”
“Still, I shouldn’t have gotten involved.”
“All you did was encourage us to talk to each other,” I say. “That’s a good
thing.” I sigh and sprinkle some flour on the counter. Baking always relaxes
me, and even though there aren’t any more pies that need to be made tonight,
maybe working on something will calm me down. “It’s not your fault we
don’t seem to be capable of carrying on a conversation without losing our
minds.”
“So what happened?” she prompts. “I mean… You didn’t take him back to
your place, did you?”
I laugh at the very idea. “He’s way too feral for that. Honestly, I didn’t
have much control over the whole thing at all. He just… yanked my clothes
off and went to work.”
“But you were okay with it?”
“Oh, I was very into it,” I assure her. “I don’t know how I’m going to go
back to regular sex now that I’ve been reminded it can be that good.”
“You’ve only ever been with Dan and Rodney,” Olivia reminds me.
“And?”
“They’re not a massively representative sample of what’s out there,”
Olivia says. “What you need to do is find someone else to sleep with. I bet
you’ll be surprised. Not everyone is a selfish lover like Rodney was. You’ll
find men who are good, more like Dan, and who aren’t so feral.”
I nod slowly. “I just don’t know if anyone will ever live up to him.”
“Gina,” Olivia says seriously. “I didn’t realize how wild he really was. Not
until you told me. I’m glad you got laid, I am, but if he’s that out of control,
you have to keep away from him. The way you’re describing the whole thing
kind of freaks me out. You know dating ferals isn’t possible. They aren’t
capable of relationships.”
“I know,” I say. It’s hard to believe the man I once loved so much has gone
so wild, but she’s right. “I can’t have a relationship with him. I know that.
Whatever exists between the two of us, it isn’t that. I’ll keep away from him
from now on. Nothing to worry about.”
14
 DAN

“D an ?”
Annabel is staring at me as if she’s seen a ghost. I have to
laugh. “It’s me,” I confirm. “Were you expecting someone else?”
“Well, I wasn’t expecting you. You were just here!”
“That was a month ago.”
“Yeah, exactly. Usually it’s more like six months between your visits.
What brings you back so soon? Did you run out of supplies already?”
“Something like that.” I’m not going to tell her the real reason I’m
back:that I haven’t been able to get Gina off my mind. It’s like having a song
you can’t get out of your head. I don’t know exactly how to fix this, but I’m
hoping that the sight of her will make me feel better. Maybe just a look at her
will be enough to reset my brain, and I’ll be able to get back to my life.
I can’t keep lying awake every night remembering what it felt like to fuck
her. I can’t keep daydreaming about her body. For one thing, it’s making it
harder to live as a wolf. My body wants to be human these days, because I
can’t forget about how good it felt to be human with her.
 Even though I was barely human at the time.
That’s not good. I’m a feral wolf, for fuck’s sake. I don’t need to feel the
pull and the lure of my own humanity. I need to forget about that. It’s the
only way to stay sane when you’re not allowed to come back to your pack
and your family.
“Does Mom know you’re back?” Annabel asks me. “Does Marcus?”
“I haven’t seen them yet. I came straight here. Are they not here?”
“Mom’s out playing canasta. Marcus is in the back chopping firewood.”
I nod. “Your kids?”
“Napping. We were down at the river this morning for a swim.”
“Okay.”
“Dan, you’ll see them before you take off again, won’t you? They don’t
see nearly enough of their uncle.”
“I’ll see them,” I assure her. “I don’t have plans to leave anytime soon.”
She looks at me mistrustfully. “You never have plans,” she says, “but you
always leave.”
She’s not wrong. I can’t even be upset with her for calling it out. But the
thing is, she doesn’t understand why I always leave. She never will.
Just tell her.
I clamp down on the impulse. My family wants me back, and if they knew
why I don’t fight to return, they might fight for me. I don’t want them to. The
most important thing to me is that they stay safe.
“I’ll see them,” I tell her again, and then head out back to find Marcus.
He’s finished splitting logs, and now he’s sitting on the stump he uses for
that purpose and swinging his axe lightly from one hand to the other. He
looks up when he sees me. “Damn,” he says. “Back again so soon? You
forget something?”
 “Forgot to give you this.” I sock him on the shoulder, not too hard.
He laughs. “You want to do that when I’m holding an axe?”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He swings the axe into the stump and grabs me in a brief
hug. “You’re always away too long, you know that?”
So different from Annabel’s greeting, but it makes me feel just the same:
like I’m letting the family down. “You know I come back as much as I can.”
“I still say we ought to talk to Hank about ending your exile.”
“And I still say no, Marcus. This isn’t your fight. Don’t fucking get
involved, or I’ll stop coming around.”
He shakes his head. “You can’t keep threatening us with that,” he says.
“You’re not going to stop coming around. It’s obvious you can’t leave this
family behind. If you were going to do that, you would have done it a long
time ago.”
There’s nothing I can say to that. He’s right. I hate the way being around
my brother makes me feel like a kid again. I’m vulnerable to him in a way
I’m not vulnerable to anyone else, and no matter how much time goes by, it
never goes away. I’m never prepared for it, either.
He slings an arm around my shoulder. “Let’s go out,” he says. “Long as
you’re here, we should hit the bar.”
“That’s what you said last time. And then you tried to shove me together
with Gina, and she completely freaked out.”
“She wasn’t the only one. You looked like you’d seen a ghost. If you ask
me, the two of you need to rehash your past.”
“Not a good idea, Marcus.”
“Why the hell not? You’ll feel better if you put all that to bed.”
“Are you just hoping that if I move past what happened with her, maybe
I’ll be ready to talk to Hank about coming back? Because I won’t. That will
never happen.”
“Never say never.”
“I am saying never. You need to listen to me on this.”
“No, you need to listen to me.” He’s using his stern older brother voice
now. I can’t fucking stand when he does this. And at the same time, I know
I’d hate it if it ever went away. It’s like the part of me I’ve spent the last
twenty years building just falls apart when he talks to me like this.
“I mean it, Marcus,” I say. “Don’t try to put us together again. I’ll come to
the bar with you, but if she’s there, I’m going to leave. And if you see her and
call her over, I swear I’ll let a year go by before I come home again.”
“What’s happening?” Marcus asks. “Something’s weird between you and
Gina. You’re not still hung up on her, are you?”
“Is this a trick question?”
“No,” he says, “but it’s not really a question at all. You never got over her.
You’ll always be hung up on her. I know that. I’ve always known that.”
“Marcus.”
“You never got over her. Just admit it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him. “I don’t have anything I can do about it. I
can’t see her again.”
“Okay, so we’ll find you someone else. Someone to take your mind off
her.”
Easy for him to say. He didn’t experience that mind-blowing sex with her
the other night. He’s not as fundamentally altered as I am.
I wish I could tell him what happened, but he’d take it the wrong way.
He’s already pushing way too hard for me to come back home. If he thought
there was some chance that things could be rekindled between me and Gina,
he’d think he had a selling point, and he doesn’t.
I don’t want to be around her.
I want to put miles and miles between the two of us.
I’m only here to get a look at her, something to get her out of my system
and clear my head. And then I’ll feel normal again and go back to living my
life.
I have to believe that.
15
 DAN

“O kay!” Marcus says, clearly full of energy and excitement. “Who

looks good to you?”
I look around the bar, knowing full well that what he wants me to do is
pick a woman for myself for the night. If I tell him who I want, he’ll do what
he can to help me hook up with her.
I’m lucky to have a brother like him, and I know it.
But the only thing I notice, looking around the room, is that none of these
women are Gina. No one has her thick auburn curls. No one is the right
height. No one has the same bewitching smile. In every other woman I look
at, all I see are the many ways she’s not Gina.
Fucking hell.
It would be amazing to lose myself in another woman tonight. To just
enjoy a great fuck and not think about the love I lost all those years ago. I
think sleeping with Gina again has me in my head, has me thinking she’s the
only person I can have good sex with. I need to remind myself that that isn’t
true.
 It isn’t true.
I can have great sex with anyone.
I should let Marcus hook me up.
“You pick someone,” I say, because I can’t actually find it in me to care
who we decide on.
He frowns a little but nods slowly. “If that’s what you want.”
“It is, yeah.”
“Okay, well... How about her?” He’s pointing at a blonde woman over by
the door. She looks like she just came in, and she’s by herself—probably a
promising sign, but…
“She’s too young,” I say.
“Are you kidding?”
“She can’t be thirty years old, Marcus.”
“Well, how old do you need her to be? It’s not like you’re having a
relationship here. You’re looking for a one-night thing. Late twenties is the
perfect age for that.”
I shrug. It’s not. I don’t know why, exactly, but the idea of being with
someone that young seems exhausting somehow. “I won’t have the patience
for her. She’ll just want to yap at me all night.”
“You’re assuming a lot, you know,” Marcus says gently. “You’ve never so
much as spoken to the poor girl. You have no idea what her personality is
like.”
He’s right, of course. But even so… “I’d rather choose someone my own
age. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”
“I guess it’s not.” He glances around the bar. “What about her, at the end
of the bar?”
The woman sitting there looks to be the right age, but she’s wearing a dress
that barely covers her hips. “She looks a little… desperate.”
“She looks like she came here looking to get laid,” Marcus says. “That’s
what you want.”
“I mean, I can’t assume that just based on the dress.”
Marcus sighs. “You already are assuming it. But no, you should definitely
talk to her and make sure she’s in it for a fun night, I agree. Go and offer to
buy her a drink.”
I shake my head.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, Marcus. She’s not for me.”
“Okay, fine. What about at the table behind me?” He jerks his thumb over
his shoulder.
She’s almost directly behind him—I don’t know when he even saw her,
because I haven’t seen him turn around. “That’s Monica.”
“So what?”
“So I know her.”
“It has to be someone you don’t know? Why? Have you fucked Monica
before or something?”
“No, but…”
“But what?”
“I don’t know. She knew me when we were young. Before I was kicked
out of the pack. She knows a different version of me. She knows me as
someone I’m not anymore.” I sigh. “This wasn’t a good idea. I can’t see
myself with anyone here.”
“What’s going on with you?” Marcus asks. “You’ve hooked up with
members of the pack before.”
“I know. I just… I’m not feeling it tonight. I don’t want to. I can’t.” I stand
up.
“Aren’t we even going to drink?” Marcus demands. “Come on, Dan.”
“It’s for the best if I just go home.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “You lied.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You were hoping Gina would be here.”
That knocks me back for a moment. “Of course I wasn’t.”
“Yeah, I think you were. I think it’s the only reason you agreed to come.
And I think that’s why no one else is good enough for you tonight. You’ve
got her in your head again. You might as well just admit it.”
“Damn it,” I growl.
“Come on. You know nobody sees you as clearly as I do.”
“I fucking hate you.”
“No, you don’t. Tell me what’s going on.”
“I need to work it out in my mind first.”
“You slept with her.”
I stare at him. “How the fuck do you do that?”
“You’re my brother, Dan. I pay attention.”
“Well, it doesn’t mean anything,” I tell him firmly. “We’re not getting
back together. Don’t go getting ideas.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Right. Good.” I shove my hands in my pockets. “This was a mistake. I’m
going to get out of here.”
“No, stay for a drink,” he says. “We should at least talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Well, okay, if you’re not back together, then what does it mean? What
compelled you to sleep with her again after all these years?”
 You did. It’s his fault. He’s the one who pushed her into my orbit. He’s the
one who dangled the temptation before my wolf.
But I’m the one who can’t control myself. I know it’s wrong to blame my
brother. He shouldn’t have gotten involved, but I should be able to be around
Gina without completely giving in to my most animal instincts.
I’m the one who’s weak and pathetic here.
Coming back to Timberland at all was a mistake. I need to get her out of
my head before I try being around her again.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Marcus, and I mean it. I know he’s perplexed by my
unwillingness to do more to be around the family. I know he’s just trying to
help me. It’s not his fault he’s going about it all wrong.
“Don’t go,” he says, sort of helplessly. It fills me with guilt.
But I have to go.
I hurry toward the door of the bar. The farther I get from my family, from
this town, the easier it is to forget about them. I can live my life off in the
woods and not think about everyone here, everyone I’m letting down by not
being around.
Especially Gina. I know I’ve let her down more than anyone.
She’s still at the forefront of my mind when I step outside into the warm
night air. I inhale, as I always do, taking in the scent of everything around
me, letting my wolf get his bearings—
Gina.
I smell her.
Her scent is fresh.
And suddenly I’m near a frenzy.
I’ve been thinking about her for weeks—the way her body feels, the way
she moves with me—and now that smell is the most intoxicating thing I’ve
ever perceived.
I can’t help myself. My wolf is on the hunt.
16
 GINA

W alking home from the bakery that night, I can’t help feeling uneasy.
It’s as if there’s something stalking me in the shadows, but I know
there’s not. I’d have picked up on the scent if there was.
Wouldn’t I?
Maybe not. My hands and my clothes are still covered with vanilla from a
spill that happened right before I left work. So maybe that’s obscuring my
senses too much.
But... No, I’m probably just being paranoid. I’m all caught up in my head
because of my talk with Olivia about Dan, and about how feral wolves can’t
be trusted. How they don’t make good mates.
Of course, that was neither surprising nor relevant. The book closed on
Dan ever becoming my mate a very long time ago.
But maybe that’s why I’m feeling uneasy tonight. All that talk about how
he wasn’t to be trusted… of course it left me feeling a little strange, a little
off-balance.
A little… hunted.
 Something moves in the trees to my left, and I quicken my pace. My
impulse is to shift and run, but I don’t know what’s over there, and there are
things in these woods it’s not smart to run from. Mountain lions aren’t
unheard of, and they can outrun me.
If it is a mountain lion out there, my best bet is just to keep walking, keep
calm, and try to get somewhere safe.
Whatever it is moves again.
Fuck.
What if it’s not a lion?
What if it’s…Dan?
Something stirs deep inside me, something impossible to ignore. There’s a
part of me that wants it to be him, a part of me that can’t stop thinking about
how delicious it felt to be with him last time, and how wonderful it would be
to be with him again. I’m already feeling myself start to heat up at the
thought of it. What if he emerges from the trees and grabs me?
I'd willingly go with him. I know that.
I’ve imagined this scenario several times, but now that it’s happening, I
have no doubt in my mind that I’ll let him do whatever he wants. I’m already
wet at just the thought of it, and the danger of the fact that he’s almost
certainly in a feral state—well, that only makes it hotter.
Come and get me, Dan. I want you to. I very nearly say it out loud.
And something does emerge from the trees—but it isn’t Dan.
It’s Linley.
She stares at me for a moment.
Completely taken aback by her presence, I just stare right back.
“You’re out late,” she says.
“Could say the same.”
 “I was looking for Rodney.”
“Lost him already?” I shrug. “I don’t know where he is.”
“Like hell. Are you sneaking around with him?”
“What?” I stare at her. “He hates me. Why the hell would that be
happening?”
“He hates you. You don’t hate him. You’d do anything to get him back.”
“Don’t be so stupid. I don’t want that asshole back.”
She snorts. “Don’t make me laugh. You were in line to be the mate of the
alpha, and now you’re nothing. Of course you want him. Everyone knows
you do.”
Much to my consternation, it annoys me that she thinks this. I should be
able to walk away from her right now. I should just not care. “Fuck off,” I
say. “I’m just trying to get home.”
Maybe I’m just annoyed that she isn’t Dan. I did get my hopes up about
that.
She sinks into a crouch. “Tell me where Rodney is.”
“Are you seriously going to attack me?” I should be preparing to defend
myself, probably, but I’m honestly in disbelief over this. There’s no way this
is really happening. “Linley, I don’t know where your mate is. I’m not
running around with him.”
“Some of the guys have said he’s only with me to produce an heir, but that
he still has the hots for you.”
“I have no idea if he does, but I wouldn’t have him anyway.”
“Don’t lie. Anybody would want him.”
“Fuck, you really are delusional about the idiot, aren’t you?”
With a cry of rage, she springs at me.
I’m expecting it, of course, and I position myself to absorb the blow. I’m
braced for a wolf attack, light on my feet and ready to roll to one side with
the force of her body, but she doesn’t shift, and she’s still human when we
collide.
It should be a good thing, but I’m not ready for her to attack me like this.
I’m not ready for the rain of fists coming at my face. I try to push her off me,
but I was prepared to roll the body of a wolf, which would have been heavier
in the shoulders. I never thought she’d attack me human.
She’s got me pinned.
I try to catch her wrists, but the blows are coming too fast and hard. I try to
kick her off me, but her weight has settled. I’m starting to think there’s
nothing for it but to wait for her anger to break and then throw her into a tree
or something.
I could shift. But if I do…
She’s keeping this a human fight right now. If I shift, I’ll probably kill her.
And killing Rod’s new mate is a terrible idea for me, no matter how pissed
off I am about the whole thing. It would definitely get me banished from the
pack.
I can’t let that happen now. My life is finally starting to come together. My
bakery is taking off.
So I restrain myself. As much as my wolf wants to lash out at her, to use
force to make her stop what she’s doing, I keep myself under control.
And then—
The weight of her body leaves me, and it takes me a moment to understand
what’s happening. My ears are ringing from the hits. I’m dizzy and a little
nauseous.
It’s his voice that gives him away, makes me realize what’s going on. “Get
lost,” Dan growls. “Don’t let me catch you near her again.”
 “What the fuck?” Linley’s voice shakes. “You’re that feral. What are you
doing here?”
“Never you fucking mind. Go home to your mate. Stay away from Gina if
you like your limbs attached.”
There‘s the sound of footsteps retreating hastily into the night, then Dan’s
face swims into focus above me.
Fuck, the scent of him. Pure sex.
His eyes are shot through with yellow, his brows pulled together with rage.
There is no part of me that imagines he’s going to offer a hand to help me up
or ask me if I’m all right after that beating. He’s way too far gone for that.
I scoot away from him and clamber to my feet, not taking my eyes off him.
So wild. So fucking dangerous.
Run.
No. Stay. He’s exactly what you want.
I’m frozen with indecision, stuck where I’m standing, waiting for him to
make the next move.
He doesn’t, though. He just stands still and watches me, waiting to see
what I’ll do.
17
 GINA

I approach him slowly, exactly as if I’m moving closer to a cornered wolf.

“Dan?”
His eyes dart from my face to the trees behind me. It looks like he’s
deciding whether to attack or to run.
Fuck. What the hell am I doing, getting closer to him when he’s like this?
I’m the one who should be running. I should be getting the hell out of here
while I still can.
I really have to question my own sanity. Am I so mad for his body, for the
way it feels when he’s inside me, that I’m willing to put myself at risk?
Yet, there’s a part of me that really still trusts him. It’s Dan. He would
never hurt me, would he?
You know he would. Didn’t he hurt you when he ran off and left?
Dad made him leave. He didn’t have a choice.
He never even tried to fight Dad’s order. He never even tried to come
back. I would have fought for him, but he didn’t fight for me. Why?
 Maybe it’s just curiosity compelling me, but whatever the reason, I take a
step closer.
Dan shows his teeth in warning.
“Hey,” I say. “Don’t. Relax.”
I take a step closer—yeah, I’m definitely insane—and reach out my hand.
He hesitates.
I’m not sure if he’s going to let me touch him. I turn my palm up to make it
clear that I’m not threatening, that I’m just offering contact—
He reaches out.
It’s a human gesture. A wolf wouldn’t reach his hand out to me like that. A
wolf would lean into my touch, maybe, but this—
I look into his eyes. The yellow is still there, but it’s starting to fade. The
human is rising back to the surface.
“Dan?” I say.
He nods. “Gina.”
It’s not exactly an in-depth conversation—I don’t know if he’s even
capable of articulating anything much more complicated than that. But it is
something. It’s an acknowledgement that he understands what’s going on,
that he’s aware of my presence in a human way.
Suddenly, I feel a lot safer being here with him.
“Thank you,” I say. “For getting rid of Linley.”
He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and then exhales, shuddering. I
probably shouldn’t have said Linley’s name. He really seemed to hate her.
Was it just seeing her beating up on me that provoked the wolf? Or does he
have some other problem with Linley? Something I don’t know about?
Maybe it’s neither. Maybe his wolf is just always so close to the surface
that it was no effort at all for it to come out.
 “Are you all right?” I ask him. “Are you… under control?”
His eyes flash. “Don’t ask me that.”
“Why not?”
He shakes his head. “I should go.”
“Wait.” I’m not going to let him walk away from me this time. “What’s
going on here, Dan?”
“What do you mean?”
“Between us. The last time we saw each other…”
He shakes his head. “I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have let that
happen.”
“But it was good.”
“It was dangerous.”
“I liked it, Dan. Stop acting like it shouldn’t have happened.” I move closer
to him. “You could have me again, if you wanted me.”
“Damn it.” He closes his eyes and thrusts me away from him. “You make
this fucking impossible.”
The rejection jolts through me. “Fine,” I say. “Go, then. I should have
known you’d never change.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You left me years ago.”
“Your father banished me.”
“But you didn’t even try to fight him on that.” I’m shaking a little, and I’m
trying hard to convince myself it’s the cold getting to me, but I don’t think it
really is. I’m just devastated by this conversation. I hate every part of it. “You
didn’t try to stay. You didn’t ask me to come with you. You’ve never tried to
come back. You ran away from me the moment he told you to, Dan. We
always knew my father was going to get in our way, but I thought... I
assumed we were on the same page about what would have to happen when
he did. I thought we were going to stand together. I thought you wanted me.”
“Of course I wanted you. Of course I fucking did.”
Almost all the yellow is gone from his eyes now. He’s breathing hard, as if
he’s just run a marathon, and I recognize the signs of the wolf being fought
into submission. He’s struggling to be human with me. For me.
For the first time since he left me, I actually feel as if he cares about me.
It’s confusing.
“I couldn’t,” he says quietly. “I couldn’t fight your father.”
“But why?”
I hate opening up to him like this. I hate how vulnerable I’m being right
now. But I need these answers. I have to know. I’ve spent years wondering,
and the last few weeks have been particularly unbearable. If I’m ever going to
have a moment’s peace again in my life, I’m going to have to gain some kind
of understanding of what went wrong between us.
I don’t know what it is about my marriage ending that’s making me pick
apart the past again like this. I just know that it’s impossible to forget what
happened.
Dan sighs.
“You don’t really want to talk about this, do you?” he asks.
“I do,” I say. “I really, really do. I need to know, Dan.”
“Fine,” he says. “Your father threatened my family.”
“What?”
“He was going to kill them,” Dan says. “My parents… Marcus and
Annabel… If I wasn’t off pack land within the hour, he was going to have
them all killed.”
My head spins.
 Would my father really have done something like that?
It’s a question I don’t need answered, because I know he would. Of course
he would. Anything to control me, to control the future of the pack.
But I still can’t believe it. It’s so awful.
“I had to run,” Dan says. “He gave me an hour, Gina. There was no time to
try to think of another solution. No time to do anything. I had to get out of
there, or he would have come for my family. And then he told me... He said
not to come back for the next two years, and that if I did, he would still have
them killed. By the time I made it back to Timberland, you were mated and
married, and I had to move on.”
“If I’d known…”
“You would have waited for me.” He sighs heavily. “I know you would,
Gina. Your father knew, too. That’s why he worked so hard to make sure we
wouldn’t speak to each other. He wanted you to think I’d given up on us. He
wanted me to feel like I didn’t have a chance.”
And it worked. All my father’s plans to disrupt my life and steal away my
only chance at love… They all worked.
“I’m sorry,” Dan says.
“No. Your family… You had to.” I say this automatically. I’m numb with
shock.
But when he reaches out and pulls me into his arms, I go to him willingly.
18
 DAN

S he falls into my arms as if we were never apart and leans against my

body. Heat and arousal immediately begin singing through me.
A part of me hates how willing she always is. It would be so much easier
to stay away from her if she would do her part. If she would be sensible and
run away when I came too near. Doesn’t she understand how out of control I
am? How close my wolf comes to the surface? Even now, smelling her so
near to me, it makes me want to forget about conversation and start ripping
her clothes off.
I take a deep breath and compose myself. We’re finally talking, after all
this time. I don’t want that to end.
And fuck, it feels so good to finally tell someone the truth.
Gina looks up at me. “Who knows about this?”
“No one, as far as I know.”
“Your family doesn’t know?”
I shake my head. “They want me to come back home,” I say. “They want
me to ask your dad if I can. I keep trying to put them off about it, but they
won’t give up on the idea…”
“Why haven’t you told them?”
“Because they’d fight for me,” I tell her heavily. “If they knew what was
keeping me from coming back, there’s not a chance in hell they’d just
understand and let it go. It would come to a fight, and they could get hurt.
They could get killed.”
She leans into me.
“I wanted to fight for you.” I run my hands up and down her back. “I don’t
know if this is something you can understand.”
“You love your family,” she says. “I love your family too, Dan. I always
have. I wouldn’t want them to be at risk for my sake.”
“I’m so sorry it happened the way it did.”
“I understand now, though. So at least there’s that.”
I wonder how much that’s actually worth. Is it possible she could let go of
the past and trust me again?
Even if she could, she shouldn’t. She shouldn’t trust me. I’m not safe for
her. Even now, the wolf is far too close to the surface. Even now, she’s in
danger from me. I have to keep her safe. I have to keep away from her.
But I can’t let her go.
I bury my face in the side of her neck and inhale.
Immediately, I’m hard, and the wolf is rising to the surface again, eager
and hungry. I want her. I want to throw her to the ground and take her, force
myself inside her, fuck her until she screams my name—
No!
Stay human. Stay calm. Keep this slow, for fuck’s sake.
I can’t get carried away this time. I can’t just tear into her like a wild
animal. If I want there to be any kind of future for us at all, I have to learn
how to have sex like a human again, because that’s what Gina deserves.
Her hand comes up and cradles the side of my face. She looks into my
eyes.
“I know you’re still in there,” she murmurs.
I feel so seen in that moment. She’s looking right into the heart of my
struggles, and she’s going to help me through them. We’re going to make this
work. I’m suddenly sure of it.
“Stand still,” she says. “Very still, okay? Let me do everything.”
I lock my muscles in place.
My wolf growls in protest, but for the moment, I’m in control of him. I
watch as Gina runs her hands up under the hem of my shirt. Her hands are
soft and tentative against my skin.
This is what it used to feel like. This is how things were between us…
before. When we were young lovers. We were always so slow, so gentle. We
would explore each other as if we had all the time in the world, even though
we knew we didn’t. We were so human with each other.
I close my eyes and breathe slowly, staying as human as I possibly can in
this moment. Clinging to myself and my sanity.
“You can touch me,” she tells me. “Just go slow.”
Somehow, she seems to always know exactly what I need and exactly what
she should say. She knows how important it is for me to keep things slow
right now. How does she know? I haven’t explained it to her.
She’s as in tune with me as she ever was.
I run my hands up the sides of her body and find her breasts, full and heavy
and waiting for me. Last time we were together, I moved through this so
quickly, grabbing and squeezing and pumping into her. I didn’t take the time
to actually enjoy myself. To experience the feel of her.
 I caress her breasts, and she moans and arches into me, letting her arms fall
back so that I can access more of her skin.
It’s too much. I grab her shirt and wrench it over her head, just barely
managing to keep myself from tearing it—at least I’ll leave her with
something to wear home this time. I throw the shirt to one side and press my
lips to the hot skin between her breasts. She’s practically bent backward over
the arm I’m holding her up with, fully on display for me. I move my mouth to
her nipple and take it gently between my teeth.
The wolf growls in satisfaction, and this time I hear the growl actually
escape me. My human side is drifting further and further away from us.
“Dan,” Gina moans. “Fuck, I’ve missed you so much. You feel so good...
Please don’t stop.”
I palm my cock briefly, but there’s no chance of me losing my erection,
not with this woman in my arms. I snap open the button on her pants and
slide my hand inside.
Fuck, she’s wet. I can smell it, too, the spicy heat of her arousal, and
suddenly the wolf is borderline out of control again. He wants her badly, and
I want her too, so we’re in complete agreement.
That’s dangerous.
She looks up at me. “You’re panting.”
I shove two fingers into her in response.
She moans, and her head falls back. “Yes. Fuck me. Make me come.”
I’m not going to say no to that. I press the heel of my hand into her clit and
she rolls her hips, grinding on me. The scent of her arousal builds around me
until I’m almost crazy with it, my wolf in a frenzy for more, more, more. I’m
so hard I’m afraid my pants are going to explode right off my body. And I
don’t give a damn if they do. They’re in the way, a barrier standing between
me and my prize. She’s hot and wet and I’m so close to her. I just want to be
inside her. I want to feel her all around me. I want to watch the way her eyes
go wide when she feels me thrusting into her.
“I’m gonna fuck you,” I growl. It’s the closest I can bring myself to
making this a human moment.
She lets out a cry and hitches her hips, and suddenly I feel her convulsing
around my fingers, in the throes of her orgasm.
It’s so hot to watch her come. For a moment, it actually makes me feel
more human. For a moment, my wolf subsides, and I’m lost in the memories
of the way we were when we were young. How I always liked to make her
come at least once before we fucked, because she was so beautiful when she
lost control like this, and because she made me feel so powerful and alpha
and strong.
Fuck, I love her. I love her so fucking much, I’ve never stopped loving her
—
And then the scent of her orgasm hits me and washes over me, and I’m lost
again. I’m completely back to my wolf self. I curse myself briefly, but I don’t
have the presence of mind to even do that for very long, because suddenly the
temptation of her body is everything. I shove her pants down to her ankles
and she kicks them away.
I grab her and lift her into my arms. She wraps her legs around me, and my
cock settles wonderfully right at her center. It would take only the slightest
movement to push my way into her.
“Not like this,” she whispers. “You’ll have me, Dan, but lay me down.”
I growl.
“Do it,” she says. “Show me you’re still in there. Show me you’re listening
to what I say. Lay me on the ground. Then I’m yours, I promise.”
 It takes everything I have in me to forestall the moment of my pleasure…
but I do it. I lay her down on her back and hover over her, waiting for her to
say the words.
The wolf is lunging.
“Now,” she says, gazing up at me. “I feel how wild you are, but I see you
too, Dan. I want all of it. I want the wolf. I want the man. You fuck me now.
You give me everything you have.”
The noise I make is somewhere between animal and human, and I slide
into her.
Fuck.
So hot. So wet and tight. I don’t have a hope of making this last. I fuck her
hard and deep, wild with desire and desperation. I wrap my hands around her
thighs and pull her to me with every thrust, dragging her body across the dirt.
She lets out little cries as we fuck, obviously enjoying it as much as I am.
My orgasm is building now, and so is hers. She’s even wetter now than she
was before. Her fingers move to her clit...
I slap her hand away and replace it with my own. That’s my job. And I
might be lost to my wolf self, but I’m not too far gone to get my lover off.
She moans happily and lifts her hips to meet my touch, and then she’s
clenching around me. A moment later I’m gone too, spilling into her, panting
with the strength of my orgasm, clutching so hard at her hips that I’m sure
I’m going to leave bruises.
When it finally subsides, I look down at her. The wolf is receding now, and
I’m shocked at what’s happened… but I don’t regret it quite as much this
time as I did last time.
I stayed in the moment for a lot of that. I kept myself close to human.
She reaches up and runs her fingers along the side of my face. “Hey,” she
murmurs.
“Mmm. Hi.”
“What do we do now?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think anything changes,” I say. “How can it?”
“I think I still love you,” she says quietly.
And I think I’ve always loved her. But I can’t say that. If the words are out
there, it’ll be too hard to take them back.
She’s happy here. She’s got her bakery. Her life is here in the Timberland
Pack. I’m not going to ask her to run away and live the wild life—the life
that’s so fundamentally changed who I am. There was a time I would have
asked her to come with me, but I can’t do that now.
And she’s not offering.
“He’ll kill your family,” she says. “You can’t come back. I understand
that.”
I nod. “My little visits… Hank tolerates those. But if I ever tried to stay…”
“Or if he ever found out about you and me...” She sighs. “We can’t let this
turn into anything real.”
“We never could,” I agree.
“You’d better go.” She gets to her feet and starts to gather her clothes. “I
wish it weren’t like this, but… having you here isn’t safe. Not for any of us.”
19
 GINA

I ’m not expecting to see Dan again for a while. I thought we agreed we

were going to stay away from each other. So it startles me when the door
of the bakery opens and he walks in.
“What are you doing here?” I hiss. “I thought—”
“I can’t just stay away,” he says. “I can come to the shop, right? People
shop here.”
I’m not so sure it’s a good idea. We’re definitely running the risk that he’s
going to be more associated with me if anyone sees him in here, and that
would piss off my father and put his family in danger. I don’t want that.
But if he’s willing to take the chance…I mean, I do want to see him.
“You should buy something,” I tell him “If you’re going to be here. Make
it look more legit.”
“I don’t have any money.”
I reach into the display case and pull out an apple tart. “On the house
then.”
As I pass it to him, my fingers brush his. It’s electrifying.
 Fuck. I really do have feelings for him again.
Dan bites into the tartlet. “Oh, wow,” he says. “Gina. This is really good.
You should have opened a bakery years ago. Is all your stuff this good?”
“Well…yeah, I think so.” I’ve never been one for false modesty. I know
I’m a good baker. But seeing him enjoying my food is making me feel
especially good. “Thanks, Dan.”
“Maybe I can come in sometimes,” he suggests. “Maybe this is a way we
can see each other.”
“Do you think…” I don’t know how to articulate what I need to ask.
“I’ll keep myself under control,” he says.
But at the moment I’m more worried about me keeping myself under
control.
The shop is empty, though, so I come out from behind the counter. “Why
don’t we sit and talk for a moment?” I suggest.
“Yeah?”
“It’ll probably be okay, right? There’s no one here.”
I lead him over to a table in the corner. He sits down.
“I don’t think anyone could really object to two old friends who grew up
next door to each other catching up,” he says. “Even your father. Not in
public, in broad daylight like this. There’s nothing suspicious about it.”
I hope that’s true. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in years,” I say.
“Well, I’ve stayed away. You were married.”
“Not…happily married.”
“I know.” He scowls. “If I’d realized how unhappy you were…I don’t
know.”
“You couldn’t have done anything. Not with your family in danger if you
did.”
 “I know, I just hate thinking of you in that situation.”
“What have you been up to?” I ask. I don’t want to talk about Rodney.
He tells me about feral living. It’s something I’ve speculated about, of
course—I think every shifter has—but hearing about it is different. It’s hard
to imagine the man I once loved—the man I love now—living in such rough
conditions. A part of me longs to take him home and pamper him. He really
deserves it.
We’re interrupted when the door opens. My heart skips a beat, but it’s only
Olivia, arriving for her shift.
She eyes us suspiciously, but she doesn’t say anything. She heads into the
back to wash up.
I get to my feet. “I should go back to work,” I say. “It was…good catching
up, Dan.”
He nods and stand up. “Your baking is really something,” he tells me
sincerely. “You should be proud of this.”
We stand there for a minute looking at each other, knowing very well how
dangerous it would be if he reached out and embraced me. I can feel the
magnetic energy between us, and I know he wants me.
“I’ll see you soon,” he finally says with restraint.
I hurry into the back of the shop. Olivia is waiting for me.
I guess my expression gives me away—maybe I look guilty—because her
jaw drops “You slept with him again?” She gasps.
I close my eyes. “Can you take it down a notch? You’re really intense this
morning.”
“This is intense news! What’s going on with the two of you?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “Things between us were always so…”
“Intense?”
 “Well, yeah, kind of.” Intense is probably the best word for it. “I loved
him.”
“I mean, yeah, you did. But it didn’t exactly go well.”
“No,” I agree with a sigh. “It didn’t.” I close my eyes and take a drink of
water. I’m not sure I’m up for explaining the whole sordid story to Olivia. I
believe what Dan told me, about my father threatening to kill his family. But
if I tell her, she’s probably going to want to deconstruct it, to figure out
what’s true and what’s not, to figure out why he’s only just telling me now. I
want those answers too, of course, but maybe in a few days, when everything
isn’t so raw. For now, I just want to get rid of the nausea and disorientation
that’s been coming at me in waves since I hauled myself out of bed this
morning.
She looks at me hesitantly. “Are you okay?”
“Why?”
“You seem… I don’t know, hung over or something.”
“I’m definitely not.” Not from alcohol, at any rate. I haven’t had anything
to drink in days. Maybe I should—maybe it would help clear my head. On
the other hand, just the idea of drinking is making me feel sick to my
stomach.
Olivia eyes me for a moment. “We have an order for cupcakes,” she says,
handing me the order slip. “To be picked up late this afternoon.”
Meaning I’d better start work on them now if I want to have time to
decorate them well. “Can you manage the register while I work on this?” I
ask. Honestly, it’ll be a relief to go and work in the kitchen and not have to
deal with customers for the rest of the day.
“Sure,” Olivia says. “You sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine.”
 “We’re going to talk about this Dan thing,” she warns me. “Later. I’ll take
you out for shots after work and you’ll tell all.”
My stomach turns over, but I nod. I’ll figure out a way out of that one later.
Back in the kitchen, I lean against the counter and take deep breaths. I
should have realized that talking through everything with Dan was going to
mess me up. But I didn’t realize it was going to actually make me feel sick.
Unless I am actually sick?
If I am, it came on awfully quickly. I was fine yesterday. Completely fine.
And then, this morning, I woke up feeling like five miles of bad road.
I grab my bottle of water, take a quick drink, and then turn my attention to
the silver mixing bowl in front of me. I’ve got to get started on these
cupcakes if I’m going to have a hope of getting them done, cooled, and
decorated for an afternoon pickup.
But when I crack the first egg into the bowl, my stomach lurches again. I
lunge for the trash can and get there just in time.
“Damn.”
I look up, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand, feeling sweaty and
shaky but a lot better. Olivia is watching me from the doorway and shaking
her head. “You’re really not okay,” she says. “You should go home.”
“I’m fine.”
“You can’t cook if you’ve got the flu or something.”
“I don’t,” I tell her. “Seriously, Olivia, I’m fine. I think I must have just
eaten something that disagreed with me. I feel better already.”
She eyes me doubtfully. “Okay,” she says slowly. “But if you start feeling
sick again, you’ve got to go. Don’t make me be the bad guy and throw you
out.”
“I won’t make you do that.”
 “Because I will throw you out, if you make me,” she warns. “We can’t
afford to lose customers because they see you upchucking in the kitchen.”
I laugh. “Will you stop? I’m going to take this trash bag out to the
dumpster, and then I’m going to get going on these cupcakes. I promise you,
I’m fine.”
And I actually believe it.
As I walk the bag out to the dumpster, I think back over the past twenty-
four hours, trying to isolate what I might have eaten to cause that reaction.
But I can’t think of anything. Everything I’ve eaten lately has been pretty
standard—no unusual foods or portions, not even any meat that might have
been undercooked. As wolves, our bodies are pretty good at dealing with raw
meat anyway, but I haven’t eaten as a wolf lately. Just cooked stuff.
Weird.
Shrugging, I go back inside. There’s no accounting for bodies sometimes.
Sometimes we just get sick.
I start preparing the cupcakes, listening to the music of the store: the bell
over the door ringing as people go in and out, the cash register opening and
closing, Olivia greeting the customers and taking their orders, the crinkle of
paper bags as she packs them with scones and muffins.
“Just you today?” a man asks her in a jaunty voice. I don’t recognize who
it is by the sound of his voice alone.
She deflects the question. “What can I get you? The scones are raspberry
glazed.”
“One of them, then,” he says. A moment of silence—then the crinkle of
paper that lets me know she’s packing his bag—and he says, “Where’s the
old broad who owns this shop?”
A hard crunch of paper, as if her hand closed tightly around the top of the
bag. “Was there something you wanted, sir?”
“Aw, don’t be like that, sweetheart. Just wanted to know where she is,
that’s all. Not in today? Not surprised. Some of us have a bet.”
“A fucking bet?”
“Just a harmless little bit of side action. Dollars only. You didn’t want in,
did you?”
“You make me sick.” Another pause. “What’s this bet about?”
“How she’ll respond to Rodney’s mating,” the man says. “Some of them
are saying she’ll go into hiding. Is that what she’s done?”
“Fuck’s sake. She’s in the kitchen.”
“Yeah?” He sounds pleased. “Let me see her. If I could get a picture, prove
she was here, that would take out a bunch of guys in the betting pool.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“What about my scone?”
“You don’t get one. Go to hell.”
“Hey, don’t take it out on me,” he says. “Your friend couldn’t get
pregnant, and she lost her mate.”
“Just get out of here.”
I stand there and listen to the door open and close, trembling slightly.
Your friend couldn’t get pregnant, and she lost her mate.
I think I should be upset about all that—the accusations, the betting,
everything I just heard—but I’m not.
Because one thing that man said is ringing in my ears.
Your friend couldn’t get pregnant.
The sickness that appeared so suddenly and was gone just as quickly.
My hand moves to my stomach.
It can’t be. It’s impossible.
Isn’t it?
20
 DAN

I ’m at the Timberland general store picking up motorcycle oil—one of the

few things I literally have to come into town for, because there’s no
substitute for it to be found in the wild—when I hear Rodney’s voice.
Fuck. Is there nowhere that’s safe within pack territory? Either I’m coming
across Gina’s scent—and as much fun as that is for me, I can’t help feeling
like it’s a bad idea for us to keep crossing paths—or else I’m running into
these assholes.
I duck down behind one of the shelves. Maybe, if I’m lucky, they’ll be in
and out of here quickly, and they won’t even notice me. I definitely don’t
want a conversation, or a confrontation, or anything of the sort.
“When are we leaving, Rod?” someone asks.
“Day after tomorrow, if the bikes check out,” Rodney says. “Which
reminds me, Tom, is your fuel gauge still faulty?”
“Yeah, but at least I know it’s faulty, so it’s really not that big a deal.”
“Well, just fix it,” Rodney suggests. “You still have two days to take care
of it, so just do it.”
 Tom groans. “What’s the big deal?”
“You don’t know how, do you?”
“I know how!”
“If you did, you wouldn’t keep putting it off. Fix the damn thing. If we’re
going to be on Slasher land, I don’t want to run the risk of them seeing that
our bikes aren’t in pristine condition.”
Slasher land? I frown and inch a little closer. What the hell are they going
there for? The Slashers are our chief rivals, and they’ve been after our pack
territory for ages. Why would Rodney even bother risking an engagement
with them? There’s nothing to gain, because they don’t have anything we
want. None of us ever trouble ourselves with the Slashers—and it’s for that
very reason. They have nothing to offer us. Unless they come here, there’s no
reason to tangle with them.
So what is Rodney up to?
“We’ll be away for two weeks,” Tom says. “We won’t even see the
Slashers until the end of that time.”
Two weeks. Of course. It’s the yearly ride, the one all the men of the pack
between the ages of twenty-five and fifty take. I never went. I was too young
at the time of my exile to go along. I should be sad about that—sometimes I
am sad about it—but right now, I’m too preoccupied with the Slasher thing.
If only I could inject myself into the conversation and ask them a few
questions, find out what’s really going on. It feels like something I ought to
blow the whistle on.
Then again, who would I tell? It’s not like I’m going to go to Hank and tell
him his right hand man is up to something shady. He wouldn’t believe me,
and he’d just tell me to go to hell.
So then, what? What am I going to do with what I’m hearing here?
 There’s nothing I can do, but I still want to know. I inch closer.
They’re talking about bike stuff now, about the supplies they’re going to
need for their ride. I listen carefully for a hint that they’re coming into my
aisle, and I edge my way into the next one just in case. I can’t afford to be
caught eavesdropping. As usual, I’m outnumbered here.
“Once we’re done with the Slashers,” Rodney says, his voice full of
swagger and brash arrogance, “they won’t even think about fucking with any
of us.”
“Are they thinking about that now?” A third voice joins the conversation,
this one sounding a little younger than either Rodney or Tom.
“Can it, Karl,” Tom barks. “You know they’re our enemies. We have to
take them seriously, always.”
“I do take them seriously,” Karl protests. “I’m just saying, do we have
some reason to think that they’re going to start something against the
Timberlands?”
“You know why we’re thinking about that, Karl,” Rodney says. “They
want our land. Everyone wants our land. There’s no land as good as ours
west of the Mississippi.”
“East of it either, probably,” Tom agrees.
“Okay, but they know they can’t beat us in a fight, right?” Karl says. “So
they’ll leave us alone. They always have.”
“You’re naive if that’s what you think,” Rodney says. “We can’t count on
them to leave us in peace. We have to go to them. We have to make sure they
know which pack runs things around here.”
“I’m not arguing,” Karl says quickly.
“He’s just a kid,” Tom says dismissively. “You can’t expect him to
understand pack dynamics at that level.”
 “Nah, I guess not,” Rodney says.
“Hey,” Karl protests. “I can understand them.”
“You got the beer?” Rodney asks, ignoring Karl.
“Got it,” Tom says.
“Let’s get out of here, then.”
I wait until I’ve heard the door open and close a few more times, just to be
absolutely sure they’re gone. Once I’m feeling confident that the store is
mine, I head out into the aisle again, feeling stupid about the fact that I hid
from them. I know it’s what helped me hear what they were talking about,
and it was objectively smart of me to avoid confrontation with a group of
three of them. Still, it feels bad. It feels weak.
My wolf is snarling with dissatisfaction. That side of me would have loved
a fight with those fuckers, no matter how lopsided the odds.
Yeah, well, you’re not famous for making responsible choices, I tell the
wolf, as if he would even understand something like that.
I head up to the counter to pay for my oil.
And freeze in my tracks.
I’m not alone in the store after all. I miscounted the dings of the door
opening and closing, I guess, because someone else is checking out. And it’s
the only person I can think of who I want to see less than Rodney and his
gang.
Gina.
Of course. Of course we’re crossing paths again. It’s just going to keep
happening every time I try to do anything in town. And now that my feelings
for her are making themselves known again, I don’t know if there’s any good
way for me to handle a public encounter. I don’t want to treat her coldly, but
if word gets back to Hank that I was being familiar with his daughter… Even
if he can’t prove anything, that could have really dangerous repercussions for
my family.
I should just get the fuck out of here. I can buy oil some other time. I turn
toward the door.
But before I can make my exit, I see what’s on the counter.
A boxed pregnancy test.
The implications slam into me.
She’s infertile. At least, that’s what everyone is saying. But now she’s
buying a pregnancy test.
Her divorce was over a month ago.
Who has she been sleeping with since then?
I can only think of one definite answer to that question, and the realization
roots me to the spot.
21
 DAN

I t’s the wolf that gets me moving again. My human side is stuck, trying to
process everything that I’m just now realizing, but the wolf’s response to
danger is fight or flight. Pure and simple. And I’m not going to fucking fight
Gina in the middle of a convenience store.
I take off at a jog, although I know she definitely saw me.
Without meaning to, without even thinking about it, I’m heading in the
direction of her house. I need to talk to her. I park on her front porch and sit
there, waiting for her.
It doesn’t take long. She wasn’t far behind me. When she sees me sitting
there, she stops a few yards away and watches me hesitantly.
“You can’t come any closer,” she says. Her voice is firm. “Not this time,
Dan.”
“I’m not going to do anything.” It cuts deep, realizing that she’s afraid of
me. I guess I started to take for granted the idea that she wasn’t going to fear
me. But of course, things are different now. She’s thinking of more than just
her own safety.
 She hesitates. “You saw me,” she says. “At the store.”
“You were buying a pregnancy test.” Might as well cut to the chase here.
“I was,” she agrees.
“It’s… mine. Isn’t it?”
Even though I’m pretty sure, I’m still half expecting her to laugh at the
idea and to tell me that of course her baby isn’t mine. That I’m imagining
things. That this is some kind of mad fantasy on my part. Because that can’t
be my baby.
She closes her eyes and nods. “I haven’t taken the test yet, but if I am
pregnant…it is.”
“I thought you were infertile.”
“Yeah. I thought that too.”
“Well, what the fuck is going on?” I ask helplessly.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I wish I could answer that, Dan, but I have no
idea. I mean, I have to take this test, but I feel…” She spreads her hands
helplessly. “I feel pretty sure. I think I know what the test is going to say.
And if I am pregnant, it’s definitely your baby. There’s no question about
that.”
My head is spinning. I feel twenty years younger all of a sudden.
I always thought I would have a baby with Gina. It was our plan, back
then. But after I left the pack, of course, all that changed. Especially once I
realized she was with Rodney. Over the past few decades, what was once a
sure ambition has begun to feel as insubstantial as smoke. It was never real. It
was never going to be real.
Except now she’s standing here in front of me, telling me that maybe she’s
carrying my child, and it all feels inevitable somehow.
I stand up and move toward her. The idea of not taking her in my arms in
this moment is unthinkable. I’ve never been more in control of the wolf in all
my life. I’m no danger to her.
But she steps back, putting a wider space between us. “No,” she says. “No,
you can’t, Dan.”
“I’m all right,” I say. “Look at me. Look at my eyes. You can see it for
yourself. The wolf is under control.”
“I can’t take chances,” she said. “Not if there’s a chance I’m really
pregnant. You understand that. A feral wolf…”
“I’m fine,” I tell her again.
“But I can’t know that. You go from zero to sixty so fast these days, Dan.
When I think about the way you were the last time we had sex…”
“It was all right, you said. You liked it.”
“I did, but it was risky, too. And if I’m pregnant, I can’t risk the baby.”
She’s right, of course. If it was any other feral wolf, I would be saying the
same things. It’s only the fact that I can feel my wolf, calm and in control,
that lets me know this situation is safe.
But doesn’t she believe me? Doesn’t she trust me?
“Dan,” she says quietly. “I just need to figure this out. On my own.”
“I can control myself,” I tell her. “That’s my baby. I can be a good father.
Someone you can trust. I promise you that.”
“Even if you can, what about my father?” she asks. “Dan, if I really am
pregnant with your child, your family won’t be the only ones at risk. My
father would hate this. It would be a threat to everything he’s trying to
establish for this pack. And then there’s Rodney. How do you think he’s
going to react when he finds out I’m pregnant? It would prove to everyone
that I was never the problem, that he was the one who couldn’t have a child.
And no one would ever let an infertile man become alpha. He’d be out of
power.”
She’s right, of course. She’s completely right about all of it. I’m not the
only danger here. Even if we could be sure that my wolf was completely
under control, and would remain that way, this situation is full of risk.
Threats are pointing at us from all sides.
“You have to go,” she says.
Even knowing she’s right, that kills me. “I have to stay until you take the
test.”
“No, you really can’t,” she says.
“Gina—”
“There’s no reason for you to hang around. And if anyone ever found out
you were here while I was taking a pregnancy test… Dan, all it takes is one
person to talk to Rodney or my father. This is the situation they won’t let
themselves admit they’re dreading.”
“What do you think they’d do?”
“I don’t know,” she whispers. “I can’t believe they’d let this child be
born.”
A wave of horror washes over me.
“One way or another,” she says, “I think they’d take me, or the baby, out
of the picture.”
Would Hank really have Gina killed? His own daughter? It was bad
enough when he threatened to do it to my family, but this is on another level.
Then again, if there’s any man in the world I could believe it of, it would
be Hank.
And Gina is right. We can’t risk anyone learning the truth. That’s more
important than anything else.
 “I’ll get word to you,” she says. “Somehow. I’ll make sure you know for
sure, one way or the other.”
I feel myself nod, but I’m in shock. Is this really happening?
Are we really talking about the possibility of having a baby together?
And instead of the joyous event it should be, complete with a tearful
embrace, she’s actually asking me to walk away from her in this moment…
and I’m going to do it, because I know she’s right to ask.
It’s worse than the day I was run out of the pack. Worse than the moment I
realized that because of Hank’s threats, I was going to lose the love of my life
and the future of my dreams. I never thought I’d feel this kind of pain again
in my life… but now here it is, and I’m gutted by it.
“Go,” she breathes. “Before we’re seen.”
I turn and hurry away while I still have the strength to do it.
22
 GINA

W hen the little pink plus sign appears in the window, it feels
inevitable. I never doubted this outcome. I never questioned for a
moment that this was the answer I would get.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and call Olivia.
She answers on the first ring. “Did you take the test?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“It’s positive.”
“Oh my—”“Liv, I need you to promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“You can’t tell anyone about me being pregnant. And you definitely can’t
tell anyone what I told you about me and Dan.”
“Of course not,” she says. “I would never.”
“My father might… Well, I don’t know what he’d do. But he’d hate this. It
could end really badly, if he found out.”
 “But he’s going to find out,” she says reasonably. “If you are pregnant,
you’re not going to be able to keep it a secret for long.”
“I know that, but…”
“And when he finds out, he’s going to move heaven and Earth to find out
who the father is.”
“I know that, Olivia. But we’re not going to just tell him. We’re not going
to give up that information. You have to promise me you won’t do that.”
“Do you have a plan?” she asks me.
“This just happened.”
“I know that, but you’ve got to come up with something. Some way you’re
going to deal with it. With your father.”
“I know I am,” I say. “I just need to deal with myself first.”
“You must be… I don’t know. Freaking out? I would be freaking out.”
“I don’t know what I’m feeling. I never thought this was possible for me.”
“Hey, you know what this means?” She lets out a laugh. “It means that
Rodney is the infertile one.”
“Yeah. I’d realized that.”
“He’s going to feel like such a little shit. He deserves to. How come we
never even considered that it might be him?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “I guess, when he and Dad started talking about
what a disappointment I was… I didn’t question it. It made sense.”
“That’s because your father’s been running you down for forty years,”
Olivia says sternly. “You’ve been letting him make you believe all these
terrible things about yourself.”
“I haven’t been letting him.”
“No, okay, you’re right. I said that wrong. But has he ever paid you a
compliment?”
 I can’t think of one. I shake my head.
“Exactly. You’re so used to hearing about what a disappointment you are
that you didn’t think to question it. Even knowing that it takes two people to
cause a pregnancy, you assumed the problem must be with you. But it was
him all along! You’re pregnant weeks after the end of your marriage, and
meanwhile he’s out there riding away with his twenty-year-old mate, and
nothing is going to come of it. He’s going to be so fucking humiliated!”
“Olivia,” I say harshly. “That’s not a good thing. What do you think
Rodney’s going to do when he’s humiliated? He’s not going to tuck his tail
between his legs and hide out. He’s going to lash out at me. At my baby. And
if he ever learns who the father is…”
“Easy,” Olivia says quickly. “I’m not going to tell him, Gina. He won’t
hear it from me, okay? I promise you that.”
“I know. I know you wouldn’t. It’s just so hard not to worry about it. This
could go so badly.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Olivia says. “We’ll figure out something to say.
Maybe we can… I don’t know, say you slept with a drifter or something.”
“Why would that help?”
“It would give your father an easy way to remove you from the line of
succession.”
“Shit, I’ll just abdicate.” I don’t care about the line of succession. I would
have abdicated already, except I know my presence and positioning is an
annoyance to Rodney, and I can’t pretend it hasn’t been nice to know I’m a
thorn in his side, given the way he’s treated me.
But that’s the last thing I want now. I want nothing more than to be out of
his way and out of his thoughts. I don’t want him to even look at me.
“Are you going to leave the pack?” Olivia asks me.
 “Am I what?” I hadn’t even thought of that.
“Well, you’re right,” she says. “It’s not safe for you and the baby here. I
thought you might go into the wild. With…”
She doesn’t say his name, but I know immediately what she means. What
she’s suggesting.
That I go into the wild with Dan. Be feral with him.
“Do you think I should?” Is she really saying this is my best option?
“I don’t want you to,” she says quickly. “I’d miss you. And the bakery…
But you can’t stay because of the bakery.”
“Yes I can,” I object. “You know how much that bakery means to me. You
know I’d never leave it behind willingly.”
“I know,” she says.
“This doesn’t have to be decided now. I just found out. I have time to think
about it.”
“Yeah, you do.”
We’re both quiet for a moment.
We both know I might have time, but I don’t have that much time. I need
to make a decision pretty soon about what’s going to come next for me.
About how I’m going to handle this pregnancy.
“Listen,” I tell her. “I’m going out for a run. In case anyone is looking for
me.”
“When will you be back?”
“I don’t know. Maybe in a couple of days.”
“Stay safe,” she says. “I’ll be thinking of you, okay?”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I tell her. “Just keep the secret.”
“I will. I promise.”
We end the phone call.
 For a moment, I just stand there looking at the phone in my hand, unable to
make everything make sense.
I never expected this. Any of it. And now it’s all happening, and so
quickly.
I sigh and strip down for my run. It’s going to feel good to get out of here,
to be free and be my animal self, even if it’s only for a little while.
I let myself out the front door of my house and shift.
Immediately, I’m suffused with relief. It is so good to be the wolf. So pure.
The sounds and scents of the woods around me invade my senses, pulling me
away from the house.
I break into a run.
Before long, I’ve left my human life behind me. I’ve given in to the feeling
of pure animal instinct. And from here, my problems don’t seem quite so bad.
23
 GINA

F orty-eight hours of running wild have done their work. By the time my
house comes back into view, I’m feeling relaxed and happy. I shift
before I reach it and jog toward the door.
And then I come to a stop.
Dan is sitting on the porch, gazing at me, obviously waiting.
“How long have you been there?” I don’t get close. He doesn’t look
anything like the feral man I’ve gotten used to. He looks calm. But I’m not
going to take any chances.
“About eight hours,” he says.
“I took the test.”
“I know. I went by the bakery. Olivia told me.”
“She told you?” I can’t believe she would have broken the news.
“She didn’t tell me the result,” he said. “But I could see it in her
expression. It was positive, wasn’t it?”“It was.”
He gets to his feet and I take a step back.
“You can’t go to the bakery,” I tell him.
 “It’s a public bakery,” he protests. “Anyone can go.”
“No. You can’t. If you’re seen spending too much time around me, people
will guess.”
He approaches me slowly, hands held out in front of him. I really want to
back away. I don’t trust him not to get wild, and I have to protect my baby.
He’s too dangerous.
And yet…
There’s something about him. Something that makes me stop and stand
where I am, waiting to see what will happen next.
Dan closes the distance between us until he’s only about a foot away. He
could reach out and touch me now. He could grab me.
He doesn’t.
“You have to let me be a part of this,” he says quietly. “This is my baby
too, Gina.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“I know it is. But we have to figure out a way to make it work, and we
have to do that together. You can’t just keep me on the outside of things.”
“If anyone finds out you’re involved—”
“They’re going to suspect me anyway, Gina. I’m the first person anyone
will think of when they realize you’re pregnant, because of our history.”
He’s right, but that doesn’t mean I can just allow it to happen. “There has
to be some way we can make it safe. We have to protect you. We have to
protect your family.”
“You and that baby are my family. What kind of man would I be if I just
stood to the side and let your father do whatever he wanted? If I didn’t try to
involve myself?”
“No,” I say again, forcefully.
 Now he does reach out and grab me, his hands wrapping around my
biceps.
“Yes,” he says. It’s so forceful. So domineering. I search his gaze, sure I’m
going to see the wolf.
His eyes are still clear. His wolf is nowhere to be found. And for the first
time, I think, maybe this could work after all. I still have no idea how, of
course. It still doesn’t make any sense—the idea that, after everything, Dan
and I could start a family together. It’s too alluring to be possible. It isn’t
possible. Even if it weren’t for his feral side getting in our way, the risks
presented by my family and the rest of the pack are just too great.
But I can’t look away from him. I can’t unlock my gaze from his dark
eyes.
“I’m going to be that baby’s father,” he says quietly. “I’m going to be with
you through all of this, Gina. We’re in it together.”
I should tell him no. I have to tell him no.
I can’t do it. I nod helplessly.
He crushes his lips against mine, and I immediately feel the weight of my
problems fall away, just as it did when I was in my wolf form. This is just as
good a means of making me forget my worries as that was.
I wrap my arms around him and return the kiss eagerly. The scent of him,
the taste of him… It’s all overpowering. It’s enough to make me feel like he’s
the only thing in the world, the only thing that matters.
Dan pulls away. I let out a gasp, shocked and bereft at the sudden lack of
him, but he’s smiling.
“Inside,” he murmurs, stroking my cheek. “That’s all. We have to take it
inside.”
I nod helplessly. Even if we’re going to let this happen—especially if
we’re going to let this happen—it’s not a good idea to risk being seen
together. I’m confident that no one has seen us so far, but he’s right that it
makes sense for us to get indoors as quickly as we possibly can.
He takes my hand, and I let him pull me up onto the deck and through the
front door. Almost as soon as the door is closed behind us, his hands are on
me again, sliding my shirt over my head and unbuttoning my pants.
This time, I’m just as active in the process as he is. I unbutton his shirt and
push it off his shoulders. I loosen his belt and pull it from its loops. Quickly
enough, we’ve got each other fully undressed, and we just stand there for a
moment, naked and staring, enjoying each other.
Fuck. He’s so hot.
He’s not the lean, wiry youth I remember from my teens and twenties
anymore, though. That man was gone a long time ago. Age and the wild have
made him harder. His skin is darker than it was back then. His hair, which
used to be soft and short, is now long and unkempt. When he runs his hands
over my body, I feel the calluses on his fingertips. He has small scars on his
cheek, and a larger one on his shoulder, hinting at fights I wasn’t a part of,
damage I never knew about. I trace my fingers over the scar tissue that runs
from his right shoulder down across his chest.
Dan leans in and presses his forehead to mine. “Are you all right?”
“Are you?” I ask, eyeing the scar.
“That’s old.”
“It looks bad. This happened when you were alone in the wild?”
“Shh,” Dan murmurs. “I don’t want to talk about the time I spent in the
wild right now. I don’t want to think about that.” He kisses me again, and
once again my thoughts start to drift. It’s too easy, when his mouth is on mine
like this, to forget about all the things I should be thinking about. All the
things I should be worrying about. It’s too easy to just relax and let him kiss
me.
Dan’s fingers draw a delicate line up along my spine, making me shiver.
Heat floods through me. “I’ve missed you so much,” he murmurs. “I blocked
it out, how good it feels to be with you. I’ve forced myself not to think about
it all this time, because it would have devastated me to dwell on it. We lost so
much.”
I nod. I don’t have it in me to verbalize my agreement. I can only say that
he’s right—about everything. I’ve missed his body so much.
He slides his thigh between my legs, and I settle my weight on him,
grinding my hips to meet his. He chuckles, and his hands come to rest on my
sides. “I hear pregnancy makes shifter women go into a state of constant
arousal,” he says.
“I’m not that far along,” I protest, but my body is betraying me. I’m
rubbing myself so hard against his leg that the friction has me nearing orgasm
already.
He chuckles. “Maybe you were always like this,” he murmurs. “We always
had to keep our distance before. We still do, but… as long as we’re in your
house, we’re safe. I can do whatever I want to you, can’t I?”
No sense in pretending that isn’t true. I nod.
“You’d let me lie you down and lick you until you come on my tongue?”
“Oh, fuck, Dan…”
“You like that idea.”
He’s driving me insane. Do I like that idea? I feel like I could come at the
mere suggestion of it.
Dan laughs, picks me up, and falls slowly to his knees. I’m amazed at his
strength, at how easily he’s able to lower himself down while holding me up.
He lays me on my back and pushes my feet up, spreading my legs, giving
himself access. “You have no idea how good you smell,” he murmurs.
He looks up at me. There’s a little bit of yellow in his eyes.
I’m much too far gone to consider telling him to back off. I grab the back
of his head and pull him down to meet me, lifting my hips toward his face.
Oh, fuck.
The first hot swipe of his tongue across my clit has me panting. Then he
sucks me into his mouth and I’m gone completely, the heat radiating through
my body and pooling at my center. I keep thinking that this is it, that I’m
about to come, but it just keeps building.
Dan presses his tongue into me and licks along my walls.
I see stars. I wrap my leg around his head and pull him tight against me,
riding his face as hard as I can, and I start to come.
He groans against me, the vibrations increasing the intensity of what I’m
feeling, and for the first time in our lives together, I’m not worrying about
keeping quiet. This is my house. No one is going to walk in on us. We’re
completely safe here—completely free.
I breathe deeply as my body settles down, as my vision clears and my
limbs tremble with aftershocks.
Dan crawls up my body and looks into my eyes. His are clear. The wolf
isn’t anywhere to be seen.
Does this mean his feral side is tamed?
It can’t be, not completely. It can’t be that simple. I’m sure his wolf is still
in there, not too far below the surface. There’s no telling whether or not it’ll
come out the next time we’re together… but this is promising. This tells me,
at least, that there’s hope.
I feel full of that hope now. Maybe we can be together after all. Maybe
there’s a future for us. This doesn’t have to be a hopeless situation. We could
have a life together, raise our child together…
He looks down at me. “We’re having a baby.”
“We are.” I still can’t quite believe it. I had written off this future so many
times, in so many different ways. I had convinced myself there was nothing
to salvage between me and Dan. I had convinced myself I couldn’t ever have
a child.
Now all of it is happening all at once.
“Come here, you,” he says, reaching out for me. I don’t even check his
eyes for signs of the wolf this time. I feel confident about him. I feel sure. I
let him pull me into his arms. “You’re so damn beautiful,” he says quietly.
“You’re going to be the most amazing mother.”
Mother. A word I thought would never apply to me. I really can’t believe
that any of this is happening at all. It’s too good to be true.
But it is true, and in that moment, I’m so fucking grateful for the fact that
Rodney and I could never conceive. If we had, I would still be with him. I
would still be linked to him, unable to free myself. Because we never had a
child, I’m able to experience this moment with the man I would have chosen
for myself.
I don’t know what the future holds for us. I’m sure it’s not going to be
easy. It might not even be good. But this moment—lying in his arms, both of
us knowing that we’re about to have a child together, both of us wanting
that…
This is perfect.
24
 GINA

“Y ou are not being careful,” Olivia snaps at me.

“Yes, I am,” I protest.
“You were with him, though.”
“We were in my house. No one could have seen.”
She sprinkles flour on the counter and hands me the tin. It’s still a few
hours before the bakery opens, and the doors are locked. If that weren’t the
case, I wouldn’t feel comfortable having this conversation, but I know we’re
the only ones in the building. There’s not a chance of anyone overhearing.
I take the flour and spread it on my part of the counter, then start rolling
dough for the scones. Olivia should be doing the same thing, but she just
stands there for a moment, watching me.
“What?” I ask her at length.
“You’re going to get yourself into trouble,” she says.
“Look, why are you so worked up about it? I have the right to decide these
things for myself, don’t I?”
 She sighs. “You do, but… Gina, I saw what it did to you the last time he
left you. When your father ran him off the land. It really fucked you up. You
were never quite the same after that.”
“Of course I wasn’t. I was forced to marry Rodney.”
“It isn’t just that. You weren’t happy with Rodney, I know that, but there’s
more.”
“What more do you think there is?”
“You were happy when you and Dan were together,” she says. “I know
what he meant to you. You loved each other. You would have had a great life
together. And when he left, it was like a part of you died.”
“You’re being dramatic.”
“It was dramatic. You used to be hopeful. That went away when Dan left.”
“I’m hopeful again now,” I say. “The way this is all working out—I never
could have dreamed of it, Olivia, but it’s really happening. We’re going to be
together.”
She sighs. “I hope you’re right about that.”
“But you don’t think I am.”
“I just worry,” she says. “You can’t blame me for worrying, Gina. I saw
you get hurt so badly by him. You wondered for years why he didn’t fight for
you. You can’t tell me you don’t wonder about that anymore. That that’s all
gone away.
“I told you, he explained it to me. My father threatened his family. He had
to go, and he had to stay away.”
“And you’re fine with that?”
“Of course I am! What should I feel? Should I have expected him to put
his family at risk for me?”
“I’m saying… what makes you think he’ll do that now? When it matters?”
She shakes her head. “He chose his family over you once, and maybe you’re
fine with that, but now you’re going to have a child together.”
“You’re really against him, aren’t you?”
“No, I promise I’m not. I just want to make sure he’s on your side. That’s
all.
“I think he is. But I am being careful, Olivia. I promise. I’m not going to
let anything happen.”
She brushes her hands on her apron, wiping the flour off. “I know,” she
says. “I know you’re being careful.”
“What are you worried about?”
“I don’t want him to break your heart again,” she admits.
“Would you believe me if I told you that was the least of my worries?”
“I mean, I believe you, sure. I don’t know if I think that’s very wise of you,
though.”
“There are so many worse things that could happen,” I say.
“And you’ve got to worry about those things,” she agrees. “But someone
has to worry about you, too. That’s all. I’m worried about you. I want to
make sure you’re going to be all right this time.”
“I’m going to be fine.”
She nods slowly. “I hope so,” she says.
Her pessimism is more than I can take right now. I came in this morning so
happy, really believing that Dan and I were going to find a way to work
things out, but she’s got me questioning everything again. “I’m going to go
open up the front of the house,” I say. “Keep working on the scones, all
right?”
“I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You didn’t.” She did, but it wasn’t her fault. I understand what she was
trying to get across, even if I don’t like it.
I go out to the front, unlock the door, and open the register. Almost
immediately, a few people come inside, and for a moment I’m distracted by
the task of ringing them up.
“Is it true you’re pregnant?”
I feel shaken to the core. I look up into the eyes of a younger woman I
know from around town. I think Bethany is her name.
“She’s not pregnant,” her boyfriend scoffs. “She’s infertile.”
“Shut up, Bill, let her answer. I heard from the guy who runs the general
store that she bought a pregnancy test.”
Oh, fuck.
Olivia was right. I wasn’t careful. I didn’t even think about how the truth
could get out that way! How could I have been so irresponsible?
My wolf bristles near the surface, anxious to run away, sensing the danger
of the situation. I’m tempted to give in and just flee—but of course, that
would give them the answer they were looking for. That would let them
know they were right.
It was never going to stay a secret for long, anyway.
I draw a breath. “Yes,” I say. “That’s right. I’m pregnant.”
“You and Rodney were able to conceive after all?”
“Oh, don’t be stupid, Beth,” Bill says. “She’s infertile, remember? That’s
why Rodney divorced her. They were together for twenty years, and they
never had a child.”
“Maybe there was another reason for that. If she’s pregnant now…”
“She’s not. She’s lying. Trying to get her dignity back or something.” He
sneers at me. “It’s pathetic, is what it is. It’s going to be really obvious that
this was a lie.”
 I shrug. “Okay. If you say so.”
I see the hesitation in Beth’s eyes. Even though Bill is still full of mockery
and scorn, she isn’t sure what to think. She thinks I might be telling the truth.
And neither of them has asked me the real question. The dangerous
question.
Who is the father?
I’m glad they haven’t. I still don’t have an answer I’m ready to give to that
one. All I know is that I can’t let anybody find out it’s Dan.
I’m going to have to make something up. A drifter—that’s probably the
best choice. Someone nameless and non-present. Someone my father can’t
punish. Someone who couldn’t be harmed over this.
The story will get out now. I’ll have to decide what I’m going to tell
people, but I can still control this thing. I can still get in front of it.
I wait until Beth and Bill are out of the shop and then lean on the counter. I
should be afraid, probably, but actually I’m feeling satisfied.
People know now.
Soon, Rodney will know too.
Soon, he’s going to have to face the truth—that I was never infertile, and
that if anyone was, it was him.
25
 DAN

“S o you’re telling me you got the alpha’s daughter pregnant,” Marcus

says.
“You can’t tell anyone,” I tell him firmly. “If anyone finds out about this,
they’ll take it out on her. Especially Hank. I don’t know what he’d do.”
“If you really think he’d harm her, you need to get her out of town,”
Marcus says seriously.
I nod, relieved that he’s not trying to convince me there’s nothing to worry
about. “I’ve been considering it,” I say. “I don’t know if she’d be willing to
leave Timberland territory, though. This is her home.”
“Not even for the sake of her baby?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. “This is all so new. I can tell she wants to protect
the baby, of course. But asking her to take off into the wild…”
“Hold on.” Marcus holds up his hands. “That’s not what I was suggesting.”
“It’s not?”
“You can’t live wild with an infant, Dan. What are you thinking?”
“You just said get her out of town.”
 “Yeah. I was thinking of you two finding an apartment somewhere.”
“No way,” I tell him. “You mean in the human world?”
“Or something. Maybe you could find a cabin that’s not being used.
There’s a pretty wide gulf between civilization and the way you’ve been
living, you know.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the way I live.” I say it automatically.
“It’s not great,” he counters. “Not even for a man on his own. If you have a
woman and a newborn baby, it’s going to make the whole thing a lot more
complicated. You need to figure out some other kind of arrangement, Dan.”
“Well, what’s your idea?”
“You’re not going to like my idea.”
“Just tell me.”
He sighs. “You need to talk to Hank.”
Oh—he’s insane. “No way,” I say again. “Come on, Marcus.”
“You have to,” he insists. “You’ve avoided it for years, but now—”
“You fucking know I can’t do that.”
“You’re going to have a baby. This is bigger than you.”
“Damn it, it’s always been bigger than me!” I explode. “Do you think I’ve
avoided this conversation with Hank all these years because I’m too selfish to
bother with talking to him?”
“I don’t think you’re selfish. I think you’re afraid.”
“Well, you’re damn right I am!” I don’t know if it’s the fact that I just
opened up to Gina about this, but suddenly the idea of keeping the secret I’ve
kept for years feels impossible. “He’ll kill you, Marcus. You, Annabel, her
kids, Mom… He’ll come for all of us if he knows what I’ve done.”
Marcus stares at me. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s the reason I left,” I say with a sigh. “It’s the reason I didn’t come
back, even though you asked me so many times. He tolerates these short
visits from me, but he doesn’t want me anywhere near his daughter. If he
ever found out I was trying to get back into her life, he’d be furious, Marcus.
He’d make good on the threat he made all those years ago, and he’d come
after all of you.”
“Please. We could take him.”
“He wouldn’t come himself. You know that. He’d rally up all the young
bucks on his side. Every fighter he’s got. You wouldn’t have a chance. And
even if you did win, people would get hurt. It’s not worth that kind of risk.”
“Stop it,” Marcus says. His voice is severe.
I look up at him in confusion.
“You can’t keep doing this,” he says.
“What am I doing?”
“Acting as if you’re the only one who has the right to make these
decisions. You’re not.”
“This is my life.”
“No, Dan, that’s my point. It’s not just your life anymore. You’ve got a
woman to think about, and a child. You’ve got to consider what’s right for
them.”
“Fuck, Marcus, you don’t think I’m doing that? You don’t think I’ve done
that all my life?”
“You left her.”
“I had to. They would have killed you!”
“And I get that, Dan. I do. But you should have included us in that choice.
Don’t you know that? Don’t you think that we would have helped you?
Supported you? We didn’t want to see your life ripped away like that. We’re
your family. We’d have stood by you.”
 “That’s why I couldn’t tell you,” I tell him. “You would have gone to war
for me, Marcus. I know you would have. I wouldn’t have been able to stop
you. And I couldn’t let that happen.”
“It’s not your choice anymore,” he says. “I’m not going to let your life be
ruined, Dan. I care about you, all right?”
“What is it you think we can do about this?”
“You have to go and talk to Hank. Tell him about the baby.”
“He’ll fight us.”
“Then we’ll fight him,” Marcus says evenly. “I’ll fight for you, Dan. I’ll
fight for your future. I’ll fight for your child. That’s my family too, you
know.”
I don’t know what to say. “Marcus… I could never have asked you to do
this.”
“You should ask me,” he says. “Ask me next time, Dan. I’m your brother. I
would fight for you. I would kill for you. And I know you’d do the same for
me.”
He’s right. Unquestionably, I would. I let my whole life—my humanity—
slip away from me in the interest of protecting my family. When he puts it
that way, it’s not hard at all to believe that he would make a sacrifice like this
for me. Of course I would have done it for him. He’s my brother. I would do
anything for him.
And he would do anything for me. I see that now.
“Tell Hank,” Marcus says, as if he’s not suggesting something
fundamentally life altering. “Ask him for permission to rejoin the pack and
raise your child with Gina, and see what he says. You never know. He might
just say yes.”
“I’d be less shocked if he sprouted wings and flew.”
 “Yes, so would I,” Marcus agrees, “but we should try anyway. There’s
always the chance he’ll just agree, that he won’t want to put up a fight. He’s
not as young as he was, and it’s clear the Rodney thing isn’t really working
out.”
“He hates me.”
“He does. But maybe he hates the idea of dying without an heir even more
than he hates you. Maybe he’ll just be so glad that Gina’s expecting a child
that he won’t care who the father is.”
That’s optimistic to the point of being fantasy, in my opinion. But it is a
very appealing fantasy.
And I suppose it’s possible.
I nod. “I’ll talk to him,” I say. “And we’ll go from there. But I have to do
something else first.”
“What’s that?”
“I have to talk to Gina,” I say. “I can’t make any of these decisions without
her consent. If we’re talking about going to war against Hank, she has a right
to know. She has a right to decide whether that’s a course she wants to take.”
I stand up. I want to get to her as quickly as I possibly can.
26
 GINA

I ’m not expecting to see Dan tonight, so when I look out my kitchen

window and spot him running across the yard toward my front door, my
first thought is that something must be seriously wrong. A stab of alarm
shoots through me. What could this be about?
He mounts the porch steps. I’ve already got the door open, waiting to greet
him. “Dan?” I usher him inside. “I didn’t even know you were in town. You
said you were going back to the woods.”
“I was. But I needed to see you.” There’s urgency in his eyes, but no
wildness. The wolf is nowhere near today. I can’t believe it’s been banished
forever. He’s still spent twenty years living feral, and these last few times
I’ve seen him without that wildness about him have been exceptions, not the
rule.
But I will take these exceptions. I welcome them.
I pull him into my arms and lean against him. “People know,” I say
quietly. “About me.”
He holds me at arm’s length and searches my eyes. “You told them?”
 “No. I only told Olivia, and she’d never tell anyone, but the man who sold
me the pregnancy test...” I shake my head. “I wasn’t thinking. I was so caught
up, so shocked by the idea that I might be pregnant at all, I forgot to think
about the way everyone watches each other in this pack. The way everyone
gossips about everything.”
“What did you say? Did people confront you?”
“I admitted it,” I say. “I didn’t tell anyone you were involved, of course,
but I won’t be able to hide a pregnancy for long. It’s better to control the
narrative if we can, right?”
“I think we should tell your father.”
I stare at him. “What?”
“I’ve been talking to my brother about it,” he says. “Marcus thinks the best
thing we can do right now is to go directly to your father and let him know
what’s going on.”
“Dan, no. He won’t accept it.”
“He’s going to have to,” Dan says firmly. “This is our baby. Our family.
One way or another, I’m going to be around for this. I’m not going to run
away again. Not without you. Wherever we go now, we go together.”
I look up at him. He sounds like he means it, and fuck, I want it to be true.
But can I really trust him again? He left me once, and the stakes are so
much higher now.
“What if we go and talk to my father and he threatens your family again?”
I ask. What I mean is, what if you leave me again?
He hears my unspoken question. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “Not
this time.”
“But how can I…?”
“Gina?”
 I look at him.
“I want you to be my mate,” he says. “I want you to be my wife and my
mate, and I want us to be with each other forever.”
I feel the air whoosh out of my lungs.
“I shouldn’t have left you,” he says. “I should have fought for you, even
back then. I should have found a way. By some miracle, I have a second
chance now. I’m not going to let that slip through my fingers again.”
“Dan…”
“Shh.” He kisses me deeply, then looks me in the eyes. “The only thing I
want to know is this: do you want me, too? Do you want to be my mate?”
“Of course I do.” The words come effortlessly. This family is all I want.
There’s still the matter of him being feral to worry about, though. The
wildness I saw earlier—I don’t believe it’s really gone. And I’m acutely
aware of the fact that I’m pinning all my hopes for the future on him in spite
of that question mark.
Right now, it doesn’t seem to matter so much.
Dan picks me up in his arms and carries me in the direction of my
bedroom. It all feels so natural, and very, very human. And when he lays me
on my bed and crawls in beside me, I feel like I’m twenty years old again,
lying in the arms of the best lover I ever had.
“Gina,” he breathes. “You don’t know how much I’ve missed this. Missed
you.”
“I think I do.” After all, I’ve missed him just as much. Every single day of
the past twenty years, I’ve missed him. I’ve missed the way he makes me feel
beautiful when his dark eyes hold mine captive. With Rodney, I never really
felt like he was looking at me. But Dan makes me feel as if he can’t bear to
look away.
 His fingers trace over my bare skin—the curve of my breast, the swell of
my hip, around my thigh to the heat between my legs. He doesn’t touch me
yet, just rests a hand on my inner thigh. Rodney wouldn’t have paused to
appreciate a moment like this. Rodney would have already been inside me,
pumping away, not warming me up first at all. He never cared much for what
I needed.
And then Dan’s fingers are pressed against me, and I’m not thinking about
Rodney at all anymore.
Fuck, the way he touches me. Gentle at first, experimental, always, as if
it’s the first time we’ve been together. And yet he’s so expert at it. He knows
my body as well as I do, even after all this time. He knows all the most
sensitive places, knows when to apply pressure and when to pull back. As he
slides two fingers into me, he finds my clit with his thumb and begins to
stroke with featherlight touches.
I gasp, lifting my hips into his hand.
“Don’t worry,” he murmurs. “I’ll make you come.”
I know he will, I’m in no doubt of it, but... “You have to fuck me today.”
“I have to?” He sounds amused.
“I need it, Dan.” I think I’ll die if he doesn’t. “I need you inside me.”
He’s panting. “Yeah.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re getting it, baby. Don’t fucking worry about that.”
He crawls up my body. His cock is so hard against my leg already, and I
can’t resist wiggling against him a little, giving him friction and tempting him
closer. He groans with longing. “You know you’re killing me when you
fucking do that.”
“I’ve spent years without you, Dan. If you want to tease me, do it another
time.”
He nods, coming to rest between my legs, throbbing against me. His need
is just as urgent as mine. I wrap a leg around his back and pull him as close to
me as I can.
It happens effortlessly, as if our bodies are so desperate for each other that
they can’t be kept apart. There’s none of the usual pausing to line things up.
He just slides into me, and the feeling of rightness and relief is immediate.
Dan pauses and looks me in the eyes.
“Mark me,” I breathe.
“Yeah?”
“I’m yours,” I say. “Yours, always. Mark me, Dan.”
Even in my dreams, even in my wildest fantasies, we’ve never reached this
moment. But when his teeth sink into me as he starts to fuck me in earnest, I
throw my head back and let out a cry of pure ecstasy.
He gasps. “Fuck, I missed your body so much. I missed everything about
you so fucking much. I’m never leaving you again.”
And in that moment, I believe him. Whatever it takes to make this work, I
know I’ll do it. I’ll live feral if that’s what we have to do. Anything so I can
stay with him. Anything to keep my father from driving us apart again. That’s
the one thing I know I can’t stand.
Dan starts to move inside me, licking the few spots of blood left on the
side of my neck by his bite. I surrender myself to him, pulling him deeper
into me with the leg that’s wrapped around his waist. I hook my other leg
around his ankle to keep him from getting too far away. I can’t bear the
thought of him putting any significant distance between our bodies. He has to
stay close.
He fucks into me, and I cry out at the depth of him. It’s so easy to forget
how big he is, how capable of filling me up.
He pauses, fully sheathed in me, his body locked to mine, and stares into
my eyes. His are opal, pupils blown wide with lust and desire, and though the
face has aged, it’s like looking into the past. I’m with my Dan again. He’s
here, present and human and ready to be what I need.
“How are you doing this?” I breathe, feeling myself contract around him.
“What am I doing?”
“Taming the wolf. Even I feel wild when I’m with you like this.”
He chuckles. “You’ve got a bit of yellow to your eyes.”
“Do I?”
“Just a bit.”
“You haven’t got any…”
“I’m holding it back,” he says. He rolls his hips a little, and I groan at the
pleasurable friction. “If we’re going to stay together, I’m going to need to
keep the wolf under control, right?”
“I—yeah—” It’s hard to think critically with everything that’s going on.
“I can do it,” he says. “For you and for our baby, I can do it.”
I want so badly to believe that.
For now, I can. I can let go and allow myself to enjoy the moment.
I reach down, cup his ass, and pull him hard into me.
He groans. “You know I fucking love it when you take control like that.”
“Just fucking fuck me, Dan. I want to feel you.”
He gives in then, abandons any pretense at conversation and fucks me
hard, and in moments my orgasm crashes over me.
I claw at his back, crying out in ecstasy.
Dan lets out a growl that doesn’t even sound close to human.
I’m too far away, too lost in the throes of pleasure, to check his eyes. But I
have a feeling I know what I would see if I did.
It doesn’t matter. Just today, it doesn’t matter. We’ll keep working on it.
We have plenty of time until the baby arrives, plenty of time to get it right.
He thrusts into me hard, three times, and I feel the pulse of him as he
comes. Then he collapses on top of me, clearly exhausted. I don’t push him
off. I don’t want him to move. It feels too good to be covered by him after all
the time apart. It feels too good just knowing that he’s with me.
“Gina,” Dan murmurs, his breath hot against my ear.
“Love you,” I whisper, and I mean it.
“We’re mates now,” he says quietly. “You can’t get rid of me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I promise him. “I’m with you.”
He rolls off me then, but he keeps my hand. I’m glad. The idea of being
separated from him is too harsh to contemplate. “What do we do now?”
“It’s like you said, isn’t it? We’re going to have to talk to my father. We’ll
let him know about the baby.” The idea kills the delicious peace I felt in the
aftermath of my orgasm. “What do you think will happen when we do?”
“One of two things. It’s always possible that he’ll accept the inevitable,
and remove Rodney from the line of succession instead of you.”
“He loves Rodney.” That doesn’t seem likely, even though Rodney has no
biological claim to his place—he only got it by being the alpha’s favorite.
Dan nods. “Your father might also banish us.”
I swallow hard.
“If he does… I’ve been through it before,” Dan says. “We’ll figure it out
together. We’ll find somewhere to go where we can raise our baby, and the
three of us will be a family.”
27
 DAN

A part of me wants to go straight over and talk to Hank now, before my

resolve fades, before I have time to really think about what I’m doing.
But that’s in competition with the part of me that doesn’t want to climb out
of Gina’s bed, doesn’t want to unwrap my arms from around her. And I
convince myself that it’s all right. We can wait until morning. We don’t have
to go right now.
I pull her into my chest. She comes to me willingly, as if there were never
a barrier between us at all. As if the years that have fallen by the wayside are
nothing, and we were always together.
For a moment, it’s actually possible to believe that things are going to be
that easy for us.
Then she looks up at me. “Dan?”
“Hmm?”
“What does it feel like?”
“What does what feel like?”
“Being feral.”
 Fuck. I don’t want to talk about that now. But she does, and that’s fair. I’m
self-aware enough to know what a foolish proposition it is to let a feral into
your life, to lie in his arms. She must have voices in her head telling her she’s
being crazy right now.
I know I’m under control, but it’s reasonable that she would need as much
reassurance as I can give her. So I’ll talk about it. We’ll talk as much as she
wants, until she feels safe.
“I feel the wolf all the time,” I tell her. “You know the feeling when it’s so
close to the surface that you know you’re going to shift, and it’s just a matter
of trying to hold yourself together until you can get to a safe place?”
“Not really,” she admits.
“You’ve never felt like that?”
“When I was young, maybe. When my wolf first started coming in, and I
didn’t know how to control myself yet. Not since I was a teenager.”
“But you can remember the feeling,” I press her. “The feeling of being so
close to losing control of yourself that you didn’t know whether or not you’d
make it to safety.”
“I suppose,” she says begrudgingly.
“It feels like that,” I say. “All the time.”
“You mean… even right now?”
I don’t like admitting this, but she deserves the truth. “I feel the wolf now,”
I say. “You have to understand that, living in the wild, I’m wolf more often
than I’m human. It feels like my natural state. Being in this body feels almost
wrong. It’s like I’m denying what I should be. It’s like a betrayal of myself.
And my wolf—my true self—wants to fight his way back out.”
“But could that happen?” she asks, looking into my eyes. “Could your wolf
get out right now?”
 “I don’t think so.”
“You can’t say for sure.”
“Being with you, holding you like this… I’m more in control than I have
been in years.”
“But that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t happen.”
“No. It doesn’t. It could happen. But Gina, if I felt any danger, I’d put
distance between us. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about.”
“Or the baby,” I amend. It’s interesting. I think of them as one right now,
but she’s distinguishing between them, already putting the baby ahead of
herself. “I won’t let anything happen to our baby.”
I feel her nod. She’s choosing to trust me, and fuck, I know how fucking
difficult that must be, knowing everything she knows now. Knowing what I
am.
I feel awful about the past twenty years. I let my wolf have so much
control over me, and I never should have done that. Letting my human side
go was a way for me to escape the pain of everything I had lost. It was easier
to cope as an animal, to focus on the instincts of my body instead of the
thoughts that plagued me.
I let the wolf grow strong, and now human life is trying to claim me again,
and I’m just not sure whether I’m going to be able to find my way back.
Fuck, I hope I can. If the wolf gets too strong… I’m not lying to her. I’ll
run away. I’ll have to. I can’t risk going feral with her. We’ve had too many
close calls already. Too many times I might have hurt her.
I won’t risk it again.
She gazes into my eyes, and I feel as if she’s looking right into my soul. “I
trust you,” she breathes.
 “Do you really?”
“I really do.”
“You sound so sure.” I want her to be sure, but it sounds as if she trusts me
even more than I trust myself. “How can you be so confident?”
“I guess… I’m just choosing to be confident,” she says.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’ve decided to put my faith in you. And I’m trusting you,
because that’s the choice I made.”
“Is it really that easy for you?”
She laughs. “Of course not. It’s not easy at all.”
“Then how...?”
“It’s not easy for you to hold the wolf back,” she says.
“No, it’s not.”
“But you’re doing it. Right? Because you decided to. Because you want to
be a mate to me and a father to our child.”
I nod. “But you have to understand…” Fuck, I don’t want to say this. I
want to just let her go on trusting me, ,.but I can’t let myself mislead her.
“My control isn’t perfect, Gina. It never will be. I could slip.”
“You could,” she agrees, “and I could lose my trust in you. But for now,
we’ve each decided we’re going to make our best effort to make things
work.”
“Fuck. How have I lived without you all this time?”
She smiles. “Honestly, Dan, the world may never know.”
“Do you know how badly I’ve missed you?”
“I think I can imagine,” she says quietly. “I’ve missed you pretty badly
too, you know.”
“I should have come back for you.” I’ll never stop thinking about this.
 “No,” she says. “You would have been putting your family at risk by doing
that.”
“I put us at risk.”
“Practically as soon as you blinked, I was married off to Rodney,” she
says. “I can only imagine what that must have been like for you, coming back
after your two years away and seeing that.”
“It wasn’t easy.”
“I resented him so much then. I couldn’t help wondering if something
might have happened between you and me if he hadn’t been standing in our
way.”
“I might have asked you to come away with me,” I admit.
She looks me in the eyes. “I would have gone.”
“You would have left the pack for my sake?”
“I would do anything for you.”
“And I would do anything for you. Anything for our baby and our family.”
She nods. “I trust you.”
Out of all the things I lost when I gave up human life, having someone
look me in the eyes and tell me that they’re putting their trust in me feels like
one of the biggest. I wrap my arms around her and hold her tight.
28
 GINA

T he knock on the door jerks me out of the bliss of sleep.

Dan is already sitting up on the edge of my bed. “Do you want me to
get it?”
“No,” I say quickly. “People shouldn’t know you’re here.” That’s not how
I want news of our relationship to get out. It’s going to be a lot worse if we
have to go to my father and try to tell him something he already knows. I
think our best chance probably lies in catching him unprepared, so that he
doesn’t have a good response locked and loaded. Maybe if we get him off
guard, he’ll be so stunned that he’ll go along with whatever we suggest.
It’s a long shot, of course—and the moment I see who’s waiting for me on
the other side of the door, I know exactly how hopeless it is, and how foolish
I’ve been.
It’s Linley, and the smile on her face is a mile wide. “Hi,” she says.
I swallow hard. “Linley?”
“Your father’s got the council together. He’s demanding to see you.”
 I don’t really even need to ask what this is about. There’s only one thing it
could be. “Okay. I’ll come right there as soon as I get dressed.”
“I’m supposed to escort you.”
“Escort me? I know where the fucking council hall is. I don’t need you to
take me there.”
“It’s your father’s orders. I can’t just decide not to obey.” She’s smirking
at me, but she’s also right, and I know it. She doesn’t have any jurisdiction if
Dad gave her an order. We’re stuck with each other.
“Can I at least have a minute to dress?”
She waves a hand as if she’s granting me some kind of indulgence and
drops down on my sofa to wait. I want to tell her to get her ass off, but
arguing with Linley is a waste of my time. Instead, I go into the bedroom.
Dan is dressed—I’m sure he dressed when he heard her out there—and
he’s watching me, waiting for instructions.
“Out the window,” I breathe. “And straight for the woods.”
“We’re running away?”
“You are.”
“Are you kidding me? No, Gina, I’m sticking with you. We already
decided this.”
“My father knows. He’s ahead of us now. He’s going to have some plan to
deal with this.”
“And I’m going to be right there with you,” Dan says firmly. “Whatever
your father has to say, he’s going to have to say it to both of us—and you and
I will decide from there what we want to do next.”
I feel a warm rush of relief. “Are you sure, Dan? The risk—”
“My family is with me in this too,” Dan says. “They want to support me.
They want to support you. I know there’s danger, Gina. We all do. But we’ll
face it together.”
Fuck, I’m so lucky to have him by my side. I can’t believe I’ve actually got
him back with me, after all the years we spent apart.
Linley’s eyes widen when the two of us emerge from the bedroom, and I
have a moment of satisfaction. “What is he doing here?”
“That’s personal.” I might have to account for this to my father, but I
certainly don’t owe Linley any explanation. “Are we going? Or did you want
to hang around all day and talk?”
She eyes me sourly but leads the way to the council house. None of us
speak throughout the entire journey, but Dan’s hand finds its way into mine,
and our fingers lock together.
When we get there, I find my father sitting at the council table with
Rodney standing beside him, looking smug. I’m just as thrown for a loop by
that as I am by the fact that Linley was the one to come knocking at my door.
What on earth is there in all this for Rod to look smug about? I would have
expected anger or humiliation.
I hate that this isn’t playing out according to my expectations. It scares me.
“Gina,” my father says. “We hear you’re pregnant.”
I grab Dan’s hand. “That’s right,” I tell him firmly. “I am.”
My father looks at a couple of the men standing in the corner. “As we
discussed.”
I don’t anticipate what’s about to happen, and I’m sure Dan doesn’t either.
The next thing I know, they’re clapping handcuffs around his wrists and
dragging him out of the building. I see the wolf come blazing to the surface.
He’s more wild in that moment than I think I’ve ever seen him, kicking and
struggling, slavering and snapping. The handcuffs keep him from shifting,
though. Locked up like that, his shape isn’t as pliable.
 I run after him, thinking to fight the others off him, but Linley catches me
by the arm and holds me in place, and my father says commandingly,
“Freeze, Gina.”
I can’t help it. My legs lock.
My father is the alpha, for better or worse. And when he speaks to me in
that tone, when he puts that weight behind it, I don’t have a choice. My body
is compelled to obey.
“Did you think we hadn’t heard about you spending time with that dog?”
my father demands. “I have eyes everywhere. I see everything that happens
in this pack. There’s nothing that escapes my notice.”
Fuck. What does he know?
I was going to tell him everything today anyway. This doesn’t change that.
My father waits for the door to close behind Dan, who is positively
howling. I listen to the sound of his cries through the wooden door and feel
something close to despair.
“So,” my father says. “Pregnant after all.”
“I suppose I wasn’t infertile.” I try to keep my voice even. “Surprise.”
“It certainly is a surprise,” my father says. “Especially to your child’s
father. You really should have been honest with Rodney, at least.”
“Rodney?” I repeat blankly.
“Linley told me about how the two of you have been sleeping together
since their mating ritual.”
“Of course we haven’t!”
“Don’t bother denying it, babe,” Rodney speaks up. “I already came clean.
And no one blames you—well, not for that part, anyway. Of course you still
wanted me.”
The reason for his smug satisfaction is suddenly crystal clear—and
horrifying. I turn to my father. “You can’t actually believe this.”
He doesn’t answer me. “As the alpha of this pack,” he says, “my judgment
is that you’ll carry your baby to term—and then turn it over to its rightful
father.”
“No! Rodney isn’t the father! Dan—”
“Lock her up,” my father says.
Because of his freeze order, I can’t even move or try to escape. I can’t do a
damn thing except stand there helplessly as a few of his men come and chain
me up.
“Put her in a cell while Rodney and I figure this out,” my father says.
“He’s entitled to his child, of course, but he’s in another mate bond now.
We’ll need to sort out who he ought to be with.”
Linley looks at me as if she’s ready to rip my throat out. As if I wanted any
of this to happen. I’m horrified by the events that are unfolding right now.
But as strong hands drag me toward a set of stone stairs, I know there’s
nothing I can do about it.
29
 DAN

C law—kill—blood—!
My thoughts are coming in barely coherent flashes. It’s not enough
to form a plan. It’s not enough to decide what to do. I am in pieces right now,
and none of the pieces are human enough for that kind of thinking. If my
form could resolve into the shape of the wolf, I would be better. I would be
able to take some comfort from that. But the wolf eludes me, probably
because of the way my arms are locked behind my back. This is keeping me
human.
Barely human.
The hands holding me release me—no, throw me—and I fall to the ground.
As I scramble to my feet, I hear the sound of laughter.
I struggle to bring the world around me back into focus.
I’m standing at the edge of the forest. Mike and Jeremy, a couple of high-
ranking members of the pack, are watching me with tears of laughter
streaming down their faces.
“Did you ever see anything so fucking pathetic?” Mike asked.
 “Where the fuck is Gina?” It’s all I care about, and frankly, I’m impressed
with myself for having the ability to articulate the thought. I don’t think I’d
be able to put words to much else.
“Not your problem,” Jeremy says. “She was using you. You get that, right?
That baby isn’t yours. She was trying to cover up the fact that it’s really
Rodney’s. She was going to make you raise his child.”
“That’s not true.”
“You’re in denial, then.”
The thing is, I’m not. I absolutely trust Gina. As much as she trusts me not
to let my feral side harm her, I trust that she’s been telling me the truth about
everything.
Amazingly, this starts to have a calming effect on me. The wolf is no
longer clamoring at the surface. He’s still there, absolutely, panting and
lusting for these men’s blood, but my human side is dominant for the
moment.
Which is good, because what I need is answers, not death.
“Tell me what’s happening to her,” I say.
Mike laughs. “They’re locking her up, of course,” he says. “She really
thought she could keep Rodney’s baby away from him. She’s insane. She
spent twenty years withholding sex from him, and only when they’re
divorced did she start sleeping with him. It’s obvious that she wanted this to
happen exactly the way it did. It’s obvious that she never intended to let him
have anything to do with his child. She’s a monster and a blight on this
pack.”
“Now,” Jeremy says, “Hank is going to let him decide if he wants her
back.”
“But why would he ever choose that when he could have Linley instead of
that lying skank?”
My wolf reacts to that, more powerfully than I’m ready for. I let out a
howl. My need for my other body—my stronger body—asserts itself with
such dominance that I find myself fully out of control for the first time since
this started.
“Fuck!” I hear. “He’s shifting!”
“He can’t! We chained him!”
“Didn’t you lock the handcuffs?”
“I did, I swear! He must have—fuck, he broke them—”
It all seems to be coming from very far away. All I can feel is triumph and
satisfaction as my wolf asserts himself and the world seems to slide from
chaos into order. This is how I need to be and who I need to be. I lunge at one
of them, not paying any particular attention to which it is. A moment later, I
taste blood.
I’m just together enough to make sure my bite lands in his thigh instead of
his torso, that I’m only wounding him and not striking at any vital organs.
Still, the cry of pain I get to hear is enough to make me feel a little more
satisfaction, and that feeling is like a fucking drug. I want to stay here for
hours, hurting them, making them pay.
But I can’t. I need to control myself.
My human voice isn’t gone, the way it so often is when I let the wolf take
over. It’s still in there, loud and fighting, reminding me that we have things
we need to take care of. That this might feel like a relief right now, but it’s
doing nothing for Gina, who is suffering somewhere else, and it’s doing
nothing for our baby.
I force my wolf into submission and shift again.
I take stock of the situation around me. Mike is the one lying on the
ground, the wound in his leg bleeding freely. Jeremy is kneeling beside him,
trying to help him, and they’re both staring up at me in fear.
“What’s he doing to Gina?” I demand. My voice is still far more growl
than it is human speech. I’m barely a person right now.
“She’s locked up until Rodney decides what he wants to do,” Jeremy says.
“Dan, she’s playing you.”
But I’m not going to listen to the fuckers anymore. I’m running.
Back at the council building, almost everyone is gone, but I find Rodney
sitting on the front steps with Linley. He’s got his arm around her, but when
he sees me coming, he gives her a little push. “Babe, go on. Get out of here.”
Linley looks uncertain about whether or not to obey, but in the end, she
takes off running without a backward glance.
Rodney gets to his feet and faces me. “So you’re her stooge.”
“Fuck you.”
“I wondered who she’d gotten to believe that baby was his. Of course it
would be you. You always fucking wanted her.” He laughs. “You always
wanted her, but you could never have her. Hank was never going to let that
happen. You’re all wrong for her.”
“That baby is mine.”
“Bullshit. She and I have been fucking around daily since our marriage
ended.”
I don’t believe that. But even if it were true… “You couldn’t conceive
while you were together. Why would you be able to conceive now?”
“She wasn’t giving it up while we were together,” he says. “Manipulative
bitch.”
“What, not at all?”
“Not often enough. A few times each month, and I’m sure the little whore
was timing it out to make sure she wouldn’t get pregnant off me. It was only
once she lost me that she realized she actually had to try.”
I can’t help what happens next. The only real surprise is that, as I draw
back my fist and punch him in the face, I manage to keep myself human.
I’m not feeling human. I’m absolutely feeling the rage of the wolf right
now. But something in me manages to hold it together just enough to keep
that part of my nature from taking over. Maybe it’s just that I’m allowing my
human self to be as violent as he likes. Maybe that’s my saving grace here.
Whatever the reason, it feels good. I hit him harder and harder, again, and
again, until he’s a bloodied-up mess on the steps of the council building.
I stand over him and look down at my handiwork for a moment, and then I
go inside to find Gina.
30
 GINA

B e damned if I’m staying locked up in a damn cell while my life is being

decided for me!
They took the cuffs off my wrists when they locked me in here, and I’m
fucking thankful for that, because if they hadn’t, I would be well and truly
screwed. As it is, though, I think I might stand a chance at actually getting the
fuck out of here.
Maybe.
I’m eyeing the little window, the only source of light or ventilation into
this room. It’s tiny, and it’s high off the ground, and I don’t know if I’m
going to be able to wedge my body through it or even get to it.
But I do know that that window is my one chance at getting the fuck out of
here.
I listen for a few moments, trying to make sure there’s no one in the
hallway. If anyone comes by and sees me trying to escape, they’ll just chain
me up more tightly, and I’ll have blown my opportunity.
I don’t hear anything, so I position myself below the window and jump up.
 I miss the ledge the first time by about a foot. As I crash down to the
ground, my ankle twists slightly, and I bite back a cry of pain. I walk around
the cell a few times to make sure the injury isn’t serious.
Yeah. I’m okay.
I go back to the window and look up at it.
Jumping like that, straight up—that was a mistake I need to avoid making
again. I can’t afford to get myself hurt. So it’ll have to be a running start.
That makes me nervous, because it’s a good way to attract attention. Maybe I
only have one more shot at this.
I steel myself, run at the window, and launch myself into the air.
Yes! I snag the ledge, just barely. Before my grip can slip, I quickly adjust
one hand to a more secure position, and then the other. Carefully, pulling
with my arms as I go, I walk my feet up the wall until I’m able to secure an
elbow over the ledge.
I hang there for a moment, eyeing it, considering my next move. The ledge
is too narrow for me to rest there, so it’s going to have to be straight up and
out.
You can do this.
I push off with my feet and manage to get my head through the window
opening. My balance is precarious. I’m about to slip and fall back into the
room. I scramble with my feet. Asplit second later, one of them finds
purchase, and I spill myself through the window. It’s on the ground level,
thankfully, so at least there’s no drop. I roll away from the cell out into the
open air, gasping in relief.
But there’s no time to congratulate myself on my jailbreak. I need to get
out of here, and I need to do it now, before anyone figures out that I’ve
escaped.
 I get to my feet. Hugging the walls of the building, I make my way slowly
around to the front. With every beat of my heart, I’m sure I’m about to come
face-to-face with someone.
“Gina.”
I struggle for half a second against the hands that lock around my arms, in
the grip of pure panic. Then Dan’s voice breaks through, and I look up and
see his face.
I fall into his arms. “Dan. Fuck. You’re here. What happened? They were
dragging you away—I was so worried.”
“I’m all right.” He runs his hands up and down the sides of my arms. “I
was so worried about you. How did you get out?”
“I crawled out the window.”
“Fuck.”
“What about you? They had you in chains!”
“Yeah, I know. I broke the chains.”
“Oh, Dan...” I grab his wrists. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m all right. But we need to get out of here.”
I nod. “I think Rodney’s nearby. If he finds us…”
“I’m not that worried about him,” Dan says.
“You’re not? But…”
He grimaces. “I already met Rodney on the way here.”
“Oh no.”
“Don’t worry. I didn’t leave him in any condition to do anything about it.”
“What did you do?”
“Beat the crap out of him.” His face settles into an expression of
determination. “He fucking deserved it.”
“I know. I know he did.” But I hate to think of what might have happened
to Dan. What if Rod had gotten the upper hand at any point? Or what if
people who were loyal to him had come along during the fight? They would
have hurt Dan.
“I don’t think we can stay in Timberland,” Dan says. “I think we need to
get out of here.”
As much as I hate to admit it... “I think you’re right.”
I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave the only home I’ve ever known,
and I certainly don’t want to leave my bakery just as I’m finally starting to
know some success. But it’s much too dangerous here. Now that my father
and Rodney know I’m pregnant and are refusing to believe that Rodney isn’t
the father, I know I’ve lost control of things here, and I need to get away.
“Where will we go?” I ask Dan.
“For tonight, we just run,” he says. “We can worry about a destination
later.”
I wonder what that means. Are we going to be living wild? Are we going
to join the human world? Does he have a plan in mind for us, or does he
intend that we should discuss it later down the line? I want to know the
answers, but at the same time, I know there’s no time for questions. Dan is
right. Rodney might be beaten, but he’s still out there, probably twice as
angry. My father will go crazy if he knows I’ve escaped. And there are
dozens of people in town who will be more than willing to report to him if
they see me and Dan together.
Dan is right. We absolutely can’t stay.
He shifts, and I do the same, and we fall into a run together, keeping pace
with each other as we make for the tree line. I feel myself relax as the forest
closes around us, when I know that we’re out of sight of anyone who might
come walking by the council building. Until someone bothers to check the
cells, no one will know I’m missing.
How long it will take them to realize Dan is gone—that’s a different
question. I’m sure Rodney will be running to report on the beating Dan gave
him. And then there are the men who dragged him away in chains. Of course
they’ll know that Dan broke free. We can’t expect that to stay secret for long.
We need to put a lot of distance between ourselves and Timberland as
quickly as possible.
Dan must be thinking the same thing, because he pushes the pace, running
faster. Harder.
And then three wolves cut us off.
We skid to a halt, and Rodney—fully human—comes sauntering out of the
trees to join them.
31
 GINA

T his is going to turn into a fight. I know it. I can smell the aggression of
the wolves in front of me. Dan positions himself between them and me,
and I’m reluctant to let him do that, because I don’t like seeing him in danger.
But maybe I can keep this from coming to a fight at all. After all, it would be
four against two—it’s a fight I don’t think we can win.
I shift and face Rodney. “You’ve looked better,” I say.
“Your fuck there got the drop on me,” he says. I’m surprised he’s willing
to admit it. I imagined for a moment that he might claim to have been beaten
up by ten men in a bar fight or something like that.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“You’re not running off with my baby.”
“Rodney, lying to my father is one thing, but this is pathetic. You and I
both know it’s not your baby. You and I haven’t been together in months.”
“You might as well just admit it,” Rodney says. “There’s no point in lying
about it now. Everyone already knows.”
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
 “I don’t?” He snorts. “Are you going to tell me I’m making up the nights
we spent together?”
“You fucking know you are!”
A snarl crawls up from somewhere deep in Dan’s body. I’ve never heard
anyone sound so dangerous in all my life, and if he weren’t my mate, I would
be a little afraid of him right now.
Fuck, maybe I am a little afraid of him. He might be my mate, but he’s still
a feral. He’s still not fully in control of his more dangerous side. This could
easily go badly.
Rodney turns to the three wolves who are positioned in front of Dan. “Get
him.”
“No!” I try to jump in their way, but Rodney grabs me and restrains me.
“Easy,” he murmurs. There’s something vulgar, sickening, about the way
he’s trying to sound like he cares about me. “Wouldn’t want anything to
happen to our baby.”
“It’s not your baby!”
“That’s enough, now,” he says. “You know it is. You know you came to
my house every other night, begging me to take you back. You know what
you said: that I was the best lover you had ever had, and that you were going
crazy trying to live without me. You didn’t know if you’d ever be satisfied
again, you told me.”
“You fucking liar!” I struggle against him, kicking at his shins.
The three wolves encircle Dan, their teeth bared. He lowers himself
cautiously to the ground—not in a pose of submission, but as if he’s ready to
defend himself.
I have to get into this fight. I can’t let him be outnumbered like this. My
wolf is wild with fury at the sight of it. I wrench in Rodney’s arms again,
ready to let the wolf surface, and never mind what damage my claws might
do to him if he keeps holding on. I don’t fucking care.
“Stop struggling,” he says. “Hold very, very still. And don’t you dare shift,
Gina. If you do, I’ll have them kill Dan. And you know they could do it. The
numbers aren’t in his favor.” He’s so quiet, breathing the words into my ear,
but I can tell he means what he’s saying.
Fuck.
I force my wolf into submission. I remind myself that threatening to kill
Dan if I shift probably means he won’t kill him if I don’t. It means there
might be a way for everyone to get out of this alive.
Right now, that seems like enough.
“Tell him,” Rodney says. “Tell him the truth.”
He points me at Dan as if I’m a weapon.
“I am telling the truth,” I say. “Everything I’ve said has been true.”
“Tell him about the nights you came to me.”
“Fuck you!”
“He deserves to know, Gina.” Rodney gives me a shake that rattles my
teeth.
I tug against him again.
“Bill?” Rodney calls, calm as anything.
One of the wolves lunges at Dan, and the next thing I know, I smell blood
in the air. I let out a shriek of rage and pain at the sight of Dan wounded.
“Told you not to struggle,” Rodney says. “That’s the last warning you’re
going to get. If you move again, they’ll snap his neck.”
Dan’s eyes dart toward Rodney. I know what he’s thinking. If he can break
through the wolves around him and take out Rod, they’ll be without their
leader. Then, maybe… but he can’t do that. It’s too dangerous. Even if he did
manage to kill Rodney, we would still be outnumbered.
“Don’t, Dan,” I say.
“He won’t stop just because you tell him to,” Rodney says. “Beg him. Say
please.”
“Shut the fuck up, Rodney!”
“Or maybe you should just tell him why you don’t want me harmed.”
I feel like the breath has been punched from my lungs. I’ve never hated
anyone more viscerally in all my life. “I do want you harmed,” I manage at
length.
“You wouldn’t want anything to happen to the father of your child.”
“Rodney, I swear on my life, I am going to kill you. Let me go!”
He leans in close. His breath is hot against my cheek, and I can smell it.
It’s vile. “Tell him,” he murmurs. “Tell him I’m your baby’s father. Tell him
you lied to him, tell him you and I fucked dozens of times. Tell him, or I’ll
have him killed right before your eyes.”
All the blood rushes out of my face. I feel dizzy and sick.
So this was his plan all along. This is why he made up that awful lie about
the two of us continuing to see each other, even though he knew it wasn’t
true. He must have been telling Linley this the whole time, even though he
couldn’t have known I would get pregnant—just waiting to see how he could
use it against me.
It’s my word against his, and of course everyone is going to believe him.
Everyone but Dan.
Dan would always take my side.
But Rodney has me dead to rights here. Because if I don’t do what he
wants, he’s going to have Dan killed. And I can’t let that happen. I can’t,
even if it means losing the most important thing in the world to me.
At least he’ll be alive.
We found our way back to each other once. Maybe we can do it again.
I make eye contact with Dan. He’s huddled on the ground, his own blood
beginning to pool around him, and I notice that his foreleg isn’t supporting
his weight. That shoulder injury is bad.
I want to run to him. Instead, I make myself as cold as I possibly can. I let
out a sigh that I hope sounds like resignation.
“Fine,” I say. “You’re right. He’s telling the truth, Dan. The baby is his. It
was always Rodney.”
“Run him out of town,” Rodney says, wrapping a possessive arm around
me, and I force myself to lean into his embrace.
32
 GINA

A s soon as they’re out of sight, Rodney pushes me away from him.

“You can come out now,” he calls.
I’m at a loss. Who is he talking to? My curiosity roots me to the spot, even
though I would very much like to run away from him right now.
A moment later, Linley emerges from the woods, looking wild and angry.
“Talk to her now, if you want to,” Rodney offers. It’s clear that this offer is
being made to Linley, not to me. He doesn’t give a damn about what I might
want. “You said you wanted a conversation with her. Have it.”
“I don’t have anything to say to you,” I tell Linley.
“You’ve been sleeping with my mate,” she accuses.
“And you think that why? Because he told you so?” I roll my eyes. “I don’t
know why you listen to him, Linley. He’s a fucking liar.”
“I just heard you admit it,” Linley says. “Now you’re saying he’s a liar.”
“I admitted it because he forced me to. He would have killed Dan if I
didn’t agree with his stupid lie.”
 “If it weren’t true, you wouldn’t still be here,” Linley says. “You would
have gone after Dan.”
I have every intention of running after Dan. But if I go now, I won’t be
able to keep my wolf from lashing out. I’ll end up starting a fight. If Dan can
manage to keep from being aggressive, even if only for a little while, they’ll
just run him away and leave him there. Then I can go meet up with him.
That’s the safest way.
Right now, I am all about trying to minimize damage.
It’s impressive that I’m keeping my wolf under control. I just hope Dan is
able to do the same thing. I hope he has the sense not to turn this into a brawl.
I hope he knows that what Rodney made me say was a lie. Fuck, I really
fucking hope he knows that.
I’m itching to go after him, but I force myself to wait. Not until Rod’s
cronies are back. Then I’ll go, but I have to make sure it’s not going to turn
into a battle.
In the meantime, though, I certainly don’t owe Linley any explanations.
“You can believe whatever you want,” I tell her. “It really makes no
difference to me.”
“I know you’ve been seducing him.”
“Even if it were true, he’s the one who’s mated to you. If you think he’s
cheating on you, your problem is with him, not with me.”
She shakes her head. “Men can’t help themselves,” she says. “Everyone
knows that. They’re too out of control. Women are the ones who are
supposed to behave decently. You used your knowledge of him to seduce him
away from his rightful mate. You manipulated him. He’s a victim of your
machinations.”
“Holy shit, he’s really done a number on you,” I say. “I thought you were
being paranoid the other day when you accused me of sleeping with him
behind your back, but it goes deeper than paranoia, doesn’t it? You really
think everyone wants Rodney, and that you were the one who was lucky
enough to get him. You don’t see the situation for what it really is.”
“He’s going to be alpha, you arrogant bitch!”
“I don’t give a damn who’s going to be alpha,” I say. “All I ever wanted
was to be mated to the man I loved. I love Dan. I could never stand Rodney,
and he doesn’t like me, either. For your sake, Linley, I hope things are
different for the two of you. But considering he wanted to trick you into
believing he was cheating with me so he could force me to give up my baby
—which I assume he meant to have you raise—I’m guessing you’re dealing
with exactly the same man I always was. You’re a means to an end for him,
nothing more. He doesn’t care about you. He only cares about what he can
get from you.”
“You... You useless old bitch!” Linley shrieks. “Dried up whore!”
The insults don’t affect me. They might have once, but it’s obvious now
that she’s just grabbing for anything at all to say that might hurt me. And it
doesn’t hurt me, because I’m not what she’s saying. I haven’t been sleeping
with Rodney. I was never infertile. None of the things this pack wants to
accuse me of are true, and they never have been.
But Linley looks like she’s about to start trying to scratch my eyes out of
my face.
“Lin,” Rodney says, looking a little alarmed. “Keep it together.”
“Why? We should kill her here and now, Rodney.”
“Fuck’s sake. You know we can’t do that. She’s carrying my baby! Our
baby!”
Hearing Rodney refer to my child as being theirs, collectively, is somehow
a million times worse, and I can’t restrain myself any longer. I whirl around
and punch him in the face as hard as I can.
“Bitch!” Linley grabs my arm, hauls me away from Rodney, and flings me
hard in the direction of a tree. It’s too short a distance for me to halt my
momentum, so I crash into the bark hard, feeling it scrape up the side of my
cheek. I gasp at the pain, but I won’t give them any more than that.
“Fuck!” Rodney yells. “She knocked out my tooth!”
Linley draws back her fist, and I realize suddenly that she’s aiming for my
stomach. I duck just in time.
“Don’t fucking hit her in the stomach, Linley!” Rodney yells. “You’ll hurt
the baby!”
“Do you think I care about that damn baby? We were supposed to have
babies! I’ll give you all the fucking babies you could possibly want. You
don’t fucking need her!”
“Stop it!” Rodney yells again. But even though he might like to, it’s clear
he doesn’t have any real control over her. Linley grabs me by the throat and
shoves me back against the tree she threw me at a moment ago. I gag, trying
to pull her hand away from my neck. I try to call my wolf, but I can’t seem to
access that part of myself. I think it’s the fact that I can’t catch my breath. It’s
getting in my way somehow, preventing me from getting in touch with my
wilder side.
I’m seeing spots.
Linley got the upper hand on me, and I don’t know if Rodney is going to
stop her. Even for the sake of the baby, which he seems to care about on
some level. I know he wants my baby to live so he can take it away from me.
But maybe he doesn’t want that badly enough to prevent her from killing me
right here and now.
 “What the fuck is going on here?” a familiar voice demands.
It should be reassuring to hear my father.
It’s not.
“Drop her and step back, Linley,” my father commands, and of course
Linley has no choice but to obey.
I lie on the ground, gasping for air, looking up at him.
33
 GINA

“P ut some distance between yourselves,” my father orders. “No one

get too close to each other. I don’t want this turning into a brawl, do
you understand?”
It’s an order, so it happens almost automatically. Rodney, Linley and I drift
apart. Dad hasn’t specifically said anything that would prevent me from
making a run for it, and for a minute I think I’m going to be able to do just
that, but then he says, “All right. Nobody move from the spot where you’re
standing,” and I know I’ve missed the opportunity.
Fuck, why didn’t I go after Dan when I could? I was so convinced that
waiting for the right moment was the thing to do, since they weren’t going to
kill him. They were just running him off. All I would have to do would be to
track him down after the fact. It should have worked. I’m a very good tracker.
I could have done it. Introducing a new variable to the situation would have
made things too dangerous.
Except that now I can’t track him. My father is going to want to put me
back in that cell. And Dan’s out there on his own, injured and possibly
believing Rodney’s lies about me. He would never have believed them if left
to his own devices, but Rodney made me tell him it was true. And that
changes everything. What he would assume was a lie coming out of
Rodney’s mouth, he might well think is the truth coming out of mine.
I couldn’t even be angry with him if he believed it.
“Tell me what’s happening here,” Dad says. Linley opens her mouth, but
Dad holds up a hand. “Not you,” he says. “I want to hear from my daughter.”
Anyone might think that this was a sign of respect to me, but I know him
well enough to know that it isn’t. He doesn’t want to hear from me because
he gives a damn about me. It’s just that when something goes wrong around
here, he holds me more accountable than anybody else. It must be my fault. I
think he sees too much of my mother in me, even now. He’s not over the fact
that Mom cheated on him and left him for the Slashers, and he’s willing to
believe that I’m more or less the same person—just as untrustworthy, just as
unreliable. He’s primed to see me as a cheater and as someone he personally
shouldn’t trust.
I say, “Linley tried to kill me.”
“Start with why you’re not in your cell,” Dad says.
“I got out,” I tell him.
“Who helped you?”
“Nobody helped me.”
“How did you manage it?”
“I’m not going to tell you that.” If he locks me up again, I don’t want him
finding a cell without a window for me.
“I order you to tell me,” Dad says.
Fuck everything. “The window,” I say. “I crawled out the window.”
“That window is ten feet off the ground.”
 “Well, I jumped.”
“So, first you betrayed your pack,” Dad says, “and then you saw fit to
avoid punishment?”
“I never betrayed my pack.”
“Keeping Rodney’s child from him—”
“My baby is not Rodney’s!”
“Tell the truth,” Dad orders, the weight of the alpha command in his voice.
And I’ve never been more glad to hear it, because there’s nothing I want
more than to tell him the truth about everything. “Fine,” I say. “I’ll tell you
the truth, Dad. The truth is that I dutifully slept with Rodney at regular
intervals during our marriage, trying to have a child for him, because I knew
that was my responsibility to the pack. The truth is that I never got pregnant
with him. And when you all told me that that meant I was infertile, and a
failure, I allowed myself to believe you. I did everything right when I was
married, and I still didn’t get pregnant. So I must have been at fault.”
“That’s right,” Rodney agrees imperiously.
“But the moment I was on my own, and free to get involved with other
people,” I say, “I did get pregnant.”
“Please. Who else would have you?” Rodney sneers
“Dan. He always wanted me, and I always wanted him.” I face my father.
“And the two of us have been together for weeks now. The baby is his. I
haven’t let Rodney touch me since our divorce. And you know I’m telling the
truth, because you ordered me to.”
My father turns to Rodney. “Is she telling the truth? I want to hear from
you, and I want honesty this time. No lies.”
“Hank, I did what you would have wanted me to do,” Rodney says. “You
didn’t want her to have his baby. I know you didn’t. I controlled the narrative
so everyone would think the baby was mine. It was the most responsible
thing.”
“But the baby isn’t yours,” my father says. “Is that correct?”
Linley gapes at Rodney. “You lied? You mean you weren’t sleeping with
her?”
“I told you,” I tell Linley. “I told you he made it up. He didn’t care who he
hurt in the process of getting what he wanted. He didn’t care that it would
crush you to think he was cheating on you like that. He didn’t care that it
would make you do crazy things, like try to fight me. He just wanted my
baby.”
“I need an heir!” Rodney says.
“Then have your own baby,” I say. “But you can’t, can you? That’s what’s
really going on here. You’ve realized that you were the infertile one all along,
and you don’t want anyone else to know about it, so you’re claiming my baby
is yours.” I look at my father. “It’s not. Dan is the only man I’ve been with in
months. This baby is Dan’s., and I know you hate him, but there’s no getting
around that fact.”
“Hank, nobody ever needs to know about this,” Rodney says. “Who are
people going to believe? Me or her?”
“But she’s right about one thing,” my father says. “You don’t have an heir.
And claiming her baby as your own does not make that child your heir.”
“Her baby is the heir to the alpha line,” Rodney says, “and you want me to
take over as alpha when you abdicate. For that to happen, the baby has to be
considered to be mine. You have to get behind this idea, Hank. There’s no
other option.”
I can’t believe he’s willing to manipulate even my father like this.
My father shakes his head slowly. “No,” he says. “No, Rodney. The baby
isn’t yours. And you aren’t the alpha I thought you would be.” He turns to
me. “I’m going to give you a choice,” he says. “Your cell or the wild.”
I gasp. “What?”
“If you stay with the pack, I don’t trust you to raise that baby the way I’d
want you to do it,” he says. “So you can give it up to me to be raised as the
next alpha, or you can leave today, and remove both of yourselves from the
line of succession. Imprisonment or banishment. Take your pick.”
It’s no decision at all.
I turn before he can change his mind again and sprint for the woods.
34
 DAN

T here’s a deep chasm of pain inside me. I’m aware of my human side,
even though I’m in my wolf form, because the pain is so sharp and
acute, clamoring to make itself known. I focus instead on the pain in my
shoulder, which is at least something I know how to process. Rodney’s
lackeys ran me hard, for about ten miles, and right now I don’t feel like I
could even move. I lie slumped on my side, my bad shoulder up, panting and
doing my best to settle my body down. It doesn’t help to have my heart rate
up this high when I’m trying not to bleed out, and I know that.
Eventually, I do start to calm down. I roll to my feet and test my injured
leg to see whether or not I can walk on it. It hurts, but I can. The injury is
already starting to heal. Thank fuck for my accelerated shifter healing. I think
a pure wolf—or a human, for that matter—with an injury like this would
have been out of commission for weeks. But I’m going to be all right. I need
to be all right, because I’m in the forest and I need to look after myself.
I limp a little farther away from Timberland. Now that I’m not so worked
up about my injury, my thoughts are starting to return to what Gina said right
before I left.
It’s not my baby. It was always Rodney.
I don’t want to believe her. She said she was putting her full trust in me. I
should be able to put my full trust in her.
I did put my full trust in her. No matter how many times Rodney told me
that she’d cheated on me, and that she was using me because she didn’t want
to admit that the baby was his, I wasn’t going to believe it. I would never
have believed it from him.
Her saying it makes it different.
Why would she say it if it weren’t true?
She wouldn’t. There’s no reason.
She chose Rodney. And I don’t think she loves Rodney, so he must have
something to offer her that I don’t.
She knows the baby is his.
Did she ever love me? Did she ever give a damn? Or was she always
manipulating me?
I don’t know what to think. I feel like I’m lost in a cloud of horror.
I find a clear spot under a tree and lie down, hoping to get away from my
spiraling thoughts.
Just then, though, I hear the sound of something crashing through the trees.
Something is coming my way, fast, and it’s not troubling to be quiet.
Are the wolves coming back? Did they decide to finish me off after all? I
spring to my feet, ready to do battle, but the wolf that breaks through the trees
at last isn’t one of the ones that was chasing me.
I recognize her by scent—and by the way my body calls out for hers—
before I recognize her by sight. I want to run to her, but I know I can’t. It
would be crazy.
 I bristle. The fur on the back of my neck stands up.
She shifts, and then it’s the human woman I thought I loved standing
before me. “Dan,” Gina says. “Oh, fuck, Dan, you’re hurt. Let me...” She
extends a hand to me.
I snap at it. I don’t want her to touch me.
Her eyes fill with tears. “Dan,” she says softly. “I lied, Dan. You have to
know that. It was a lie. Rodney made me say it. I never wanted to say that to
you. You know I love you, don’t you? More than anything. And of course the
baby is yours. He would have killed you if I didn’t agree with him at that
moment. I couldn’t let it happen. It would have fucking destroyed me, Dan. I
need you alive. Anything else, we could fix. But I couldn’t let him kill you.”
My heart pounds. I want to believe this.
Gina steps closer. “I wouldn’t lie to you,” she says. “I promise. The baby is
yours. Rodney and I haven’t touched each other since our divorce. I would
never.”
I regard her quietly.
“You know,” she says. “You know I wouldn’t have let him touch me. You
know how I hate him. And you… I love you more than anything in this
world. I always have. My life was ruined the day my father made you leave.
And when you came back, it was like a miracle. I was getting a second
chance at something I really believed I had lost forever.”
She’s so close to me now. She falls to her knees beside me, and her hand is
on my shoulder, and I don’t move, because the emotions at war within me are
putting her at risk. I can’t afford to let myself go. Not even for a moment.
I’m angry.
I’m hurt.
I don’t know what to believe.
 She said she had slept with him. So many times. She said her baby was his.
She said she had lied to me about everything. She said she didn’t want me. If
any of that is true, then my wolf wants nothing to do with her.
But now she’s saying she lied to protect me. Could that be true? And if it
is…
I lean into her touch, accepting. Believing.
She’s taking such a risk, being here with a known feral wolf. There is no
reason for her to take this chance unless it’s true. Unless she fucking loves
me the way I love her. If Rodney were the one she wanted, she would be with
him right now. There would be no reason to go on pretending.
Gina examines my wounded shoulder and breathes a sigh of relief.
“You’re healing,” she murmurs. “You’re going to be all right.” The emotion
in her voice is so palpable that I really don’t know how I ever could have
doubted her. I move closer to her.
As I do, my human self clamors his way to the surface, overriding the
wolf. It has been a long time since my human self has been more powerful
than my wolf side, but suddenly I feel myself changing forms. I reach out and
take her in the circle of my arms, crushing her against me.
She bursts into tears. “You believe me,” she sobs. “I was so afraid you
wouldn’t.”
“Rodney lies,” I murmur. “I’ve always known that. That’s why he made
you say it. He knew I would doubt it if I heard it from your lips.”
“It killed me, saying those things. None of that was true.”
“I know. I know, baby. It’s all right.” I rub her back slowly until she calms,
and then I cup her cheek and look her in the eyes.
“I’m exiled,” she says.
“What?”
 “I told my father everything. The truth. He finally believes me. He knows
this baby is yours. He doesn’t want it born in Timberland territory.”
“That’s all right,” I tell her firmly. “You and I are together. That’s what
matters.”
35
 GINA

D an pulls me against him and kisses me deeply. It’s such a fucking

relief that I don’t resist or ask any questions. I’m just so glad that he
still loves me after what Rodney forced me to say. I’m so glad that he trusts
me enough to not take those words at face value. He believes me. That’s what
matters. He believes that our baby is really his. He believes that he’s the one I
love. He knows Rodney is nothing to me. I’m so fucking thankful.
I straddle him so that I’m sitting right on his cock, feeling it grow hard
beneath me. He smiles up at me, and the sight of his smile is enough to ease
the last of the tension from my body. It’s the most reassuring thing in the
world to me. I love him so fucking much.
“It’ll be a different kind of life,” he murmurs. “Not what you’re used to.”
“I’m not so attached to the life I had before.” The only thing I’m going to
miss is the bakery—well, that and Olivia, of course. But really, everything
else about living in Timberland I’m more than happy to let go of. I don’t need
it.
 Dan cups my breasts, squeezing gently. It feels like he’s trying to
memorize the shape of them. “You’re so fucking beautiful,” he tells me. “I
can’t believe I’ve lived without you all this time.”
I look down at his arm. The bleeding has stopped. It’s already beginning to
heal. I’m deeply thankful for that. If I thought he was hurt too badly, I
wouldn’t be able to devote my attention to this—what we’re doing now.
But he’s going to be all right.
Which means we can relax. We can enjoy each other.
“I guess it doesn’t matter how much noise we make now,” I say. “It
doesn’t matter if anyone catches us.”
“They won’t anyway. Not out in the woods.” He slaps my ass gently, and a
spark of desire shoots through me. “Turn around. I want to taste you. Sit on
my face.”
I groan, feeling myself grow wet at the idea. “I want you to fuck me,
though.”
“We’re not in any hurry today,” he assures me. “We can have as much of
each other as we want. Come on, Gina. Let me lick you.”
I can’t resist an offer like that. I rotate and position myself astride his face,
but I hesitate before lowering down. I’m throbbing with desire. I can already
feel myself clenching around nothing, aching to be fucked. But this—I
haven’t done this often. Rodney and I never did this. I’m not completely sure
of myself.
Dan senses my hesitation. He grabs my thighs and pulls me down hard, so
I can’t resist.
The moment his mouth is on me, I forget all my reservations. His tongue,
rough and wet, massages my clit, then presses into me, and finally I’ve got
something to actually contract around. He moans happily and digs his fingers
into my thighs, pushing and pulling me back and forth, guiding my body into
a rhythm until I’m fucking his face.
His tongue still working inside me, Dan reaches two fingers up and gently
pinches my clit. Electric shocks pass through me. I’m so fucking turned on
right now that I think I’m going to faint.
His cock stands erect before me, and just looking at it is sparking my
desire—he must feel that, because he rubs my clit again, and my legs start to
shake. I reach for his cock and wrap my hand around it. Even just feeling the
way he fills my hand, throbbing against my palm, is so intoxicating. I can’t
wait to feel this inside of me.
Dan presses his fingers against me hard. His tongue withdraws, licking
around the rim of my entrance, then thrusts back in. I feel him start to suckle
at me.
I’m going to fucking die.
I grind down on his face, rocking faster now, my body straining with need.
I grip his cock to keep me steady as I shove myself against his fingers, then
back onto his tongue, crying out with wild desire. I come hard and quickly,
seeing stars. Dan smacks his fingers against my clit as my orgasm peaks,
sending me higher, and I let out a wail of pleasure that shakes the trees.
I fall forward. As I come back to myself, I take in the smell of his cock
beside me, and without thinking about what I’m doing, I nuzzle against it. I
rub it against my cheek, then take the head in my mouth, close my eyes, and
start to suck. Dan groans happily. A moment later, I feel fingers pressing into
me, and his thumb gently grazes my over sensitized clit.
I think he won’t be able to make me come again—not this soon—but what
he’s doing feels good, and I don’t want him to stop. It’s not making me wild
with desire, but it’s comforting and deep and satisfying, like an itch I didn’t
know I’ve always had is suddenly being scratched.
For the moment, I focus on him. He’s deep in my mouth now, and it feels
good to have him there. I wrap my hand around the base of his cock to hold
him steady. I move my head back and forth slowly, taking him in and then
letting him go almost completely. When just the tip is in my mouth, I swirl
my tongue around him, stimulating the most sensitive area.
“That’s so fucking good,” he groans. “Fuck, you’re so good with your
mouth, Gina. I can’t believe we haven’t done this more often.”
Of course, I know why we haven’t. We always wanted to focus on fucking
each other. We’ve never been sure how much time we had together.
Now we have as much time as we want. We can do whatever we want to
do, for as long as we want to do it.
I press my tongue against the underside of his cock, then flick it. He fucks
his fingers into me, curling them at just the right time—
Oh.
I really didn’t think I was going to come again so soon.
But suddenly my body is building to another orgasm, and even though I
didn’t see it coming at all, it’s close now, and completely unavoidable,
coming down on me like a wave on the shore. I don’t even have time to get
Dan’s cock out of my mouth before I start screaming, gagging and choking
on him in a way that feels strange and makes the whole thing somehow even
more exciting. He’s throbbing hard now, gasping, and I can tell he’s close,
and I want to fucking taste him—
He lifts me off of him. I gasp in shock, suddenly left with nothing
stimulating my body, feeling betrayed—but then he lowers himself over me.
“You still want this?” he murmurs. “You still want me to fuck you?”
 “Yes, yes, yes, fuck, yes…” I babble. I feel empty and hungry and I need
to be filled. I grab at his hips, trying to pull him into me.
Dan resists, but he leans over and kisses my forehead gently. “You know
I’ll always take care of you, baby,” he murmurs. Then he slides into me, and
the feeling of completeness, of rightness, is more than I can handle.
I wrap my arms and legs around him and hold him inside me as tightly as I
can. My body is already responding, my orgasm already mounting, and as I
inhale the scent of him, I know I’m not going to be able to hold off.
I want us to come together, but I can’t resist what’s building inside me.
With a cry, I shiver and start to come for the third time.
He fucks me—not forcefully, not roughly, but with a depth and passion
that’s somewhere between the feral fucks he’s given me and the gentle
lovemaking I remember from our youth. The young man he was is lost, too
damaged and changed from his years in the wild, but I feel that there’s more
to him than just the wolf. I feel the human man, scarred and changed and still
very much my Dan, and I love him so fucking much that my body doesn’t
know what to do.
I feel the moment he comes inside me, filling me, his lips pressed against
the curve of my neck. When it’s over, he goes very still on top of me.
I run my fingers up and down his spine as our bodies cool, and he slides
free of me and turns slightly so that his head is pillowed on my shoulder.
After a moment, I find the strength to speak again. “Fuck, Dan.”
“Good?” There’s a smugness in his tone that makes me laugh.
“So fucking good,” I tell him. I think that was the best sex of my life,
actually.
“I’ve missed you,” he says.
“We’ve been back together for a while now,” I remind him.
 “I know. But I haven’t forgotten the time we were apart. I’m not over it.”
“Dan.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever be over it. We lost twenty years, Gina. Twenty years
we should have been together, doing this. Growing our family. Loving each
other.”
I nod. That’s why fucking him still feels so desperate. It feels like we have
to make up for everything we’ve lost. And I don’t know if we ever can. I’m
so glad to have him here in my arms, but I don’t think I’ll ever stop mourning
those lost years. I don’t think it will ever be okay that that happened. All that
time I spent with Rodney because my father ordered me to. All that time Dan
was alone in the woods, with no one, growing wilder. All that time, we could
have been together.
We have each other back, but we can never have those lost years back, and
that’s never not going to hurt.
He rolls off me, and we lie side by side, looking each other in the eyes.
“We just need to make the most of the time we have,” I tell him quietly.
“And there’s plenty of it, Dan. We’re older, yes, but we’re not old. We’re
having a baby. We haven’t lost these things. We’re going to be with each
other, and we’re going to have a family. We lost a lot of time, but we saved
the things that matter the most.”
Dan nods. “I know.” His fingers come to rest on my stomach, a bit
wonderingly. “We’re so lucky.”
“I’m glad you see it that way.”
“Do you?”
“I can’t believe I’m pregnant,” I say. “I was sure that was never going to
happen for me. I thought I was infertile. And even if I wasn’t, it’s miraculous
that we’re not too late. I’m not twenty anymore.”
 “It’s miraculous that it never happened with Rodney.”
“I’m so glad. I’m so glad he’s infertile. If I’d had his baby at any point in
time… I don’t think this could have happened.”
“I’d always have wanted you,” Dan says. “Even if you’d had ten of his
babies. I’d never have stopped wanting you.”
“But if I’d had his babies, I never would have been set free,” I say. “He
never would have ended the marriage, and I would have been stuck with him
forever.”
Dan doesn’t say anything. He just pulls me more tightly into his arms, and
I’m so glad. I’m so glad I got free of Rodney when I did. I’m so glad Dan
came back into my life. Lucky is exactly what we are.
It’s worth the Timberland pack thinking I’m trash. It’s worth my father
hating me. It’s worth being exiled. There’s no price in the world that would
be too high to pay for this moment, lying here in the arms of the man who
should always have been my mate, our unborn child cradled between us.
36
 GINA

T he next forty-eight hours are sort of a blur.

We hunt together. We make love. We sleep when we’re tired, no
longer beholden to the human patterns of night and day. We wake at
sundown and spend the night on the prowl for our next meal, and we eat in
our animal forms, enjoying the full, rich flavor of raw meat. We run until
we’re exhausted, and then we collapse where we stand. We wake up human
in each other’s arms, our bodies crying out for each other. He fucks me
through the drowsy midmorning, and then we do it all over again.
But, more quickly than I would like, common sense starts to reassert itself.
“We can’t keep doing this,” I tell him at dawn on the third day.
He’s quiet. Non-responsive. I don’t know if that means he disagrees, but I
plow on anyway.
“We can’t raise a baby in the wild,” I say. “It’s good enough for you and
me. I would stay here with you forever. You know I would. But our baby
can’t be born in the wild. It won’t be able to fight off predators. It’s not safe.”
 “Wild wolves do it,” he says, rather half-heartedly, in a way that lets me
know that he knows I’m right about this.
“But we’re not wild wolves,” I remind him. “We have our human qualities
to think of. Our human lives. And you know that human babies survive to
adulthood a lot more often than wolf cubs do. That’s because they’re raised
in civilization.”
He can’t argue with that, and he knows it.
“I just want to give our baby the best chance I possibly can,” I say. “If we
come back to the wild in a few years, when it’s a child instead of an infant…”
“No, you’re right,” he says. “The baby shouldn’t be born in the wild. Of
course you’re right about that.”
“I don’t know what I want to do,” I say. “We can’t go back. I don’t know
what the right answer is.”
“No,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about it, and… I think we have to go
back, Gina.”
“Back to Timberland?”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking.”
“You know my father will kill you if you step foot on that land again. He
would have done it before. And your family…”
“My family’s at risk now anyway. I haven’t wanted to admit it to myself,
but your father knows that you and I didn’t stay apart the way he wanted. My
intention was that we’d stay and fight after telling the truth. My family was
ready to fight with us. But everything went sideways so quickly, and we had
to get out of there. I just lost track of the importance of staying.”
“You think he’s hurting your family?”
“I think he will, yes. If we don’t get back.”
I feel something wrench deep in my gut. “I never meant for anything like
that to happen.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Dan says. “We both got caught up in everything
that was happening. It’s no one’s fault.”
“If it weren’t for me, your family wouldn’t be in danger.”
“If it weren’t for me, they wouldn’t be in danger,” Dan counters. “I wanted
this every bit as much as you did. And remember, they wanted it for me.” He
sighs. “I’ve been reconnecting with my older brother a lot recently.”
“Marcus?” I know Marcus, of course. I like him. He was like my older
brother when Dan and I were together as kids, and he’s always had kind
words for me as we’ve gotten older. In recent months, he’s been a regular
customer at the bakery, always eager to try something new. Aside from
Olivia, he’s probably the closest thing I have to a friend in Timberland.
“He likes you,” Dan says. “He likes the idea of us together. He thinks it
was a mistake, me letting you go.”
“But he knows why, doesn’t he?” I ask. “He knows you were only trying
to protect him and the rest of your family.”
“He knows. And the fact that he was ready to stand up to Hank for us was
what convinced me it was time to try to make things real between the two of
us, Gina. It’s dangerous, but we have to go back. My family was ready to
fight for us. I want to fight with them. I want to show your father and Rodney
that I’m willing to stand up for the life I deserve. We aren’t going to let them
push us around.”
“Then I’m going with you,” I say.
Dan shakes his head. “No. You’ve got to stay here, where it’s safe, until
the fight is over.”
“Are you joking? You need all the numbers you can get, Dan. Remember,
it’s not just my father and Rodney. They’ve got followers. Even with your
whole family standing with you, you’ll be outnumbered. You can’t do this
without me.”
His face is set. “Yes, I can. Think of the baby, Gina.”
“Damn it, I am thinking of the baby. Do you think I want this baby to be
born without a father? Do you think I want you to lose this fight? If they kill
you, I’m all on my own, with no safe place to go. You know I can’t let that
happen.”
“I’m not going to lose,” he says.
“You don’t know that. Why wouldn’t you want everyone fighting for you
that you could possibly have? Why would you take a chance and go in
without the best numbers possible?”
“I’m not going to take a chance with you,” he tells me firmly. “I won’t risk
you, Gina. Not for anything. You’re going to wait here in the woods and keep
our baby safe until the fighting is over.”
“No,” I say, just as firmly. “I won’t do that, and you can’t make me.
You’re not my alpha. You can’t order me to stay behind.”
“Damn it.” He looks furious. “I would if I could. You should listen to me.
You should respect what I’m asking you to do.”
“You should listen to me,” I counter. “You can’t do this without me.”
“I can.”
“Well, you’re not going to. This is the most important fight in both of our
lives, Dan. I’ll be damned if I’m going to stay out of it.”
We don’t speak any more for the rest of the day. We should talk about
when we’re going to go back. It feels like we’re in some strange limbo,
waiting for something to happen. I keep thinking he’s about to say
something, to tell me we should head back right away—what are we waiting
for?—but it doesn’t happen.
 He hunts and cooks a rabbit for our dinner, not taking me with him the way
he usually would. He hands me my half of the meat wordlessly. I don’t thank
him.
And that night, instead of making love, we leave a space between our
bodies when we lie down for sleep. The air feels cold and empty around me. I
roll away from him, try not to let the mounting anxiety get the best of me,
and allow myself to drift off to sleep.
37
 DAN

T reating her this way feels awful. I’m not angry with her, but I need to
create this distance between us right now, because it’s the only way I
can think to avoid the conversation I don’t want to have. I don’t want her to
ask me questions about when we’re going back or how we’ll prepare for the
coming fight.
We aren’t going anywhere.
Gina be furious if she knew what I was planning. She would hate me for
taking the choice out of her hands. But I have to do this. It’s the only way to
keep her safe.
I wait until her breathing becomes deep and even, and then I roll to my
feet. It hurts that I couldn’t even fall asleep with her in my arms tonight—if
things go badly, this might be our last night together. But she’s always been a
light sleeper, and if I were holding her, she would feel me move away. As it
is, it’ll be a miracle if I can get out of here without waking her up.
I hope she understands when she does wake up. When she sees that I’m
gone. I hope she knows that it’s not about her. I hope she realizes that I was
never upset with her, and that this was just what I had to do for all of us.
I’ll explain it to her later.
Because there is going to be a later for us. I’ll make sure of it.
Running back to Timberland takes my mind off things. I’m able to relax
into my wolf body and just give in to the urge to be physical. The
complexities of relationships are more than the wolf can deal with, and he
doesn’t bother to try.
When I get back to Timberland, I immediately get my first lucky break
when I catch a familiar scent. I follow it carefully, not knowing what I’ll find
or whether she’ll be alone.
But she is alone, walking the perimeter of the pack territory. Olivia. I shift
and go to meet her.
She jumps a foot when she sees me. “Dan!” she hisses. “You’re back?
Why are you back? Is Gina here?”
“It’s just me,” I murmur, taking my cue from her to keep my voice low.
“Can we talk?”
“Of course, but not here. It might not be safe.”
“In the woods, then?”
She nods and follows me into the trees, and we find a fallen log to sit on.
“I thought you’d be miles away by now,” she says. “You and Gina both.
Now that you’re both exiled, I thought you would run away and never come
back.”
“We thought about it,” I say. “But this pack is… well, it’s her home, even
if it hasn’t been mine in a long time. She wants to raise our baby here.”
Olivia sighs. “Things are really falling apart around here.”
“What do you mean?”
“After you left, there was a coup,” Olivia says. “Hank’s been removed
from power.”
My heart pounds. “Removed by who?”
“By Rodney. Of course.”
Damn it. For a moment, I actually hoped it might be a member of my
family. But of course that would be too much to hope for. “So Rodney is
alpha now?”
“Well, he’s claiming to be,” Olivia says. “He hasn’t actually tried to issue a
command yet, so it’s unclear whether the power transferred to him, and I
know that some of the things he’s saying aren’t true…”
“I guess he’s probably still telling people he’s the father of Gina’s baby.”
“Yes. He says she tricked him and ran off with his son.”
“Fucking ridiculous.” Never mind the fact that I believed it myself for a
short span of time. I was ridiculous to believe it. “Are people falling for
that?”
“The ones you’d expect are,” Olivia says. “I don’t believe it, of course. I
know the truth. I’ve spoken to your sister, Annabel, and she says your whole
family is on your side. But other than that, I’m not sure. Rodney has a lot of
allies.”
“Where is Hank now?”
“Locked up in a cell. Rodney says he’s spreading lies in order to try to
maintain his power.”
“What lies?”
“Hank called a pack meeting,” Olivia says. “He was explaining the series
of events that led to Gina being exiled—he said she’d conceived a child with
someone he didn’t approve of—and then Rodney stood up and called him a
liar, and told everyone the baby was his and that Hank was trying to discredit
him so that Rodney wouldn’t be able to rise to power.”
 I mull that over. “That might be a good thing,” I say. “If the two of them
aren’t getting along, I mean. That might be something we can use.”
“You think so?”
“I don’t know. But I know there’s going to be a war, Olivia. And if Hank is
fighting with Rodney, that can only be to our benefit. Where is Rodney
now?”
“He hasn’t left the council building,” Olivia says. “It’s like he thinks he
lives there now. He’s turned it into a sort of… party house.”
“I want to see.”
Olivia leads me into town. We keep to the shadows, knowing that we can’t
allow anyone to see me in particular. If anyone realizes I’m back, the war will
kick off early, before we have time to prepare. I need to see and not be seen.
That all goes out the window, though, as soon as I hear Rodney’s voice.
Because the things he’s saying are intolerable.
I should have known better. I should have known that coming to spy on
him would only result in me getting out of control angry, my feral side
leaping back to the surface. I should have known that I wouldn’t be able to
handle this.
Somehow, I am never prepared for it.
The first thing I hear is a burst of laughter, and someone says, “I know!”
I’m already enraged, because even though I haven’t heard any details of
what they’re talking about yet, I somehow know that it’s something I won’t
be able to stand.
“You know,” says a voice I recognize as belonging to Rodney, “I never
slept with her when we were married. She’ll say something different, I’m
sure. She’ll probably say she was giving it up all the time. Or maybe just
enough to try to get pregnant. I don’t know. I can’t predict her lies. But the
truth is that I figured out early on how bad in bed she was, and I was never
interested in her after that. I’ve been getting it from Linley for ages. Ever
since she was legal.”
“But didn’t you want a child?”
Rodney scoffs. “Not with Gina. Waiting all that time was the right move.
Then I could divorce her, and Hank wouldn’t put up a fuss.”
He’s changing his story now that it’s obvious Gina wasn’t infertile. Of
course he is.
“And then,” Rodney went on, “after we were divorced, I wondered
whether I would be able to get her to fuck me anyway. It was like a game—
and she was just so fucking desperate. The whore gave it up without a fight.”
They all laugh raucously.
I’m filled with a fury like nothing I’ve ever felt before. I feel Olivia’s hand
on my arm, trying to hold me back, but the desire to make them pay for that
talk is much too strong. I pull away from her and burst into the council
building.
38
 DAN

I ’m satisfied for just a moment when I come into the room, because they
all look shocked to see me. But before I can throw myself at Rodney, the
three men who are in there with him shift and position themselves between
the two of us. The room fills with the sounds of snarls and snaps.
My wolf comes lunging to the surface, and for once, I’m really glad to be
so in touch with my feral side. I don’t even have to think about shifting at this
moment. It happens as naturally as breathing.
I crouch low and face off against the three of them, assessing the various
threats, trying to decide who I should focus my attack on. The one on the left
looks to be the biggest and strongest, so maybe I’ll keep my attention on him
at first. The others will join the fight, but if I can take out the big one, I might
scare them off. At the very least, I think I’ll be able to keep myself alive long
enough to do that.
If they kill me after that… well, I’ll have given Marcus a chance to fight
for dominance. I’ll have given Gina a chance to get away and start a new life.
And if Marcus can win his fight, Gina can come home. I won’t be here, but at
least I can give her the life she and the baby deserve.
Rodney rises slowly to his feet. He’s still human, in the middle of all this,
and he’s smiling. “Stand down,” he says to his friends. They all take a step
backward and relax out of their aggressive postures.
Does that mean he’s the true alpha? Did I just see him give an order and be
obeyed? Or maybe it’s not that deep. Maybe they’re just obeying him
because they want to.
“So, you’re back,” Rodney says to me. “You can’t seem to stay away, can
you? I thought we’d be rid of you once Gina was banished, but maybe you’ve
left the bitch. Maybe you realized she was never loyal to you.”
I lunge at him, but two of the wolves get in my way and force me back.
“Break his leg if he tries that again,” Rodney says.
One of the wolves’ lips peel back from his teeth, like he’s excited by that
idea.
“If you want to talk to me,” Rodney says, “face me like a man. Actually
talk to me. But I’m not going to entertain this snarling match. If you can’t
control yourself, if you’re too feral to have a conversation, I’ll just have my
boys mess you up and run you off again.”
I’m not afraid of his boys, but I do want to talk to him. Actually, I want to
kill him. But the numbers aren’t right for that, so I force the wolf into
submission. A moment later, I’m human again and facing Rodney.
“So,” he says, “what brings you back here?”
“Tell your boys to shift,” I say. “I’m not going to have a conversation
while three wolves are snarling in my face. If I’m doing this human, so are
they.”
Rodney nods dismissively. “Fine,” he says. “Guys?”
 There’s a pause, and then they resume their human forms. They’re still
arrayed between me and Rodney, fists up, clearly ready to do battle, but I’m
not worried about them now. What are three human men going to do to me?
Nothing.
“So you grew a brain and left Gina,” Rodney says. “If you want a place in
the pack, I might be able to find something for you. You would have to swear
loyalty to me, of course.”
“You’re fucking dreaming,” I tell him. “There’s no way in hell.”
Rodney shrugs. “It’s up to you. I don’t need you to be a member of this
pack. If you’re happy living in the woods and having nothing to do with us,
that’s still an option for you.”
“I’m coming back,” I say. “And I’m bringing Gina, my mate, with me.
We’re going to have our child in Timberland.”
“You’re deluded. On so many fucking levels.”
“Tell me this, Rodney,” I say. “Are you still agitating the Slashers?”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know you and your friends went to Slasher territory to pick a fight.”
“The Slashers are our rivals, Dan. They want our land. If you’re going to
tell me you’re on their side, I’ll have you killed here and now.”
“You’re unfit to lead this pack,” I say. “You’re positioning yourself as the
leader, but you don’t know how to make the choices that will protect people.”
“Are you joking? I’m the one who’s kept the Slashers off our backs for the
past ten years!”
“By going to their land and raising hell? You really think that’s kept them
away?”
“They haven’t been here, have they? Anyway, what would you know about
it? You haven’t been here, either. If you think you’re the one to lead this pack
—”
“I’m not trying to lead this pack. I’ve never tried to take the alpha
position.”
“Oh, really? That’s not why you’re trying to pretend you’re the father of
the alpha’s grandchild?”
“I am the fucking father. You’re the one who’s lying about it. And that’s
obvious, because you’re the one who’s always aspired to power. You’re the
one who has never been willing to settle for what he has.”
“Shut the fuck up, Dan.”
“I’m not going to leave you in control of this pack, Rodney. They deserve
better than a fucker like you.”
“Big talk.”
“Are we done talking? Are you ready to actually fight?”
“If you want a fight, my guys will give you a fight.”
“My beef isn’t with them, Rodney. Face me yourself. Fight me yourself.”
“I’m not going to waste my time with you, Dan. I have no reason to fight
you.”
“I’m challenging you.”
He sneers. “Only a member of the pack can issue a direct challenge like
that. Any challenge from an outsider—like you—is free to be ignored. I don’t
have to pay attention to what you want. I can have you killed or dragged out
of town—whatever suits me.”
“But your men will know you were too much of a coward to face me,” I
say. I look at the men standing between me and Rodney. “Think about it.
He’s making you fight his battles for him. He needs three of you to stand
between the two of us. Why? Because he’s afraid of me. What kind of alpha
doesn’t handle his own business? What kind of alpha makes other people
fight for him like this?”
The men look at each other. I can’t tell if they’re taking me seriously or
not. I can’t tell if what I said is sinking in with them. I fucking hope so.
“That’s enough,” Rodney snaps. “Get him out of here.”
There’s a moment of hesitation, and in that moment I actually think maybe
they’re coming around to my side. But then they shift, and I’m face to face
with three wolves again.
I shift, too. I don’t think I can win this fight, but I’ll take out as many of
them as I can on the way down.
39
 GINA

I wake up shivering, and immediately I’m aware of the wrongness of

everything I’m feeling.
How long has it been since I’ve woken up without feeling Dan’s hands on
me? Certainly not since we left the pack. Now I feel nothing but the cold
morning air.
I keep my eyes closed. I take deep breaths and try to figure out what
happened. Slowly, the memories from last night come back to me, of Dan
acting distant and standoffish because he was angry with me for refusing to
stay behind.
But I stand by my choice. I can’t hang around here in the woods and let
him do all the fighting. For all I know, he could be killed. How could I live
with myself if that happened and I’d been sitting here doing nothing? It
would wreck me.
I’ll explain it to him. I’ll make him understand. If our roles were reversed,
I know for sure that he would never stay behind while I went to fight. He
would insist on being by my side.
 I open my eyes. The woods are quiet. When I roll over, he’s not beside me.
I reach out and rest my hand on the ground, on the place where he fell
asleep. It’s cold.
Right away, I understand what’s happened, and I don’t know how I could
have been so stupid.
He went back.
He waited for me to fall asleep, and he went back without me. Of fucking
course he did. I should have known he would. I’m on my feet a heartbeat
later, running without thinking about it. One moment, I’m human, and the
next moment, mid-stride, my wolf takes over and my speed doubles.
The fight will have started already. I have to get back, and I don’t know if I
can do that quickly enough. If anything happens to him, I will never forgive
myself for falling asleep. I will never forgive him for manipulating the
situation like that. How could he?
I feel like it’s going to take forever to get back to the pack land. In reality,
it’s probably only about fifteen minutes, but it feels like years by the time I
get there. I slow to a crawl. I want to charge in and start looking everywhere
for him, but I’m not supposed to be here. I can’t do that. I can’t risk getting
intercepted before I find him.
But a fight shouldn’t be that hard to track down.
I make my way through town slowly, pressing my body up against the
sides of buildings, not finding anything promising. I come to my house and
dart inside for a shift dress—it takes less than a minute, and I’d rather not be
naked when I confront Rodney again.
I draw a deep breath and keep moving.
I think I’m paying attention, that I’m alert to everything going on around
me, but I must not be, because it takes me completely by surprise when a
hand grabs my arm and pulls me up against the back wall of my house. A
moment later, I realize I’m looking at Olivia.
Her eyes are wide. She looks terrified. “You shouldn’t have come back,”
she breathes.
“What’s happening? Where’s Dan?” I don’t have time to talk about who
should have done what. I’m sure the fight is already happening.
“He’s confronting Rodney.”
I close my eyes. Of course he is.
“He went into the council building. He was half-crazed, Gina. Feral. I’ve
never seen someone go so completely wild like that.”
“What happened?” I ask. “What did Rodney do?”
“I didn’t see. I mean, they were saying things—they were talking about
you.”
That doesn’t surprise me.
“But I didn’t see what happened after Dan went inside.”
“Where are you going now?” I ask.
“To find his brother. If anyone can help…”
“Yes. Good. Go. Get Marcus. Get the whole family, if you can.”
“What about you? What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to the council building.”
Olivia sucks in a breath. “You can’t go alone, Gina.”
“I won’t be alone. Dan is there. And I can’t leave him on his own to deal
with Rodney. Go get Marcus.”
I pull free of her and run. I have to hope she’s doing what I asked her to
do. I don’t have time to look over my shoulder and make sure. I can only try
to get to the council building as quickly as possible and hope that Marcus and
the rest of Dan’s family will come and find us. That they’ll help us.
 I reach the council building quickly. All the doors are closed, but the lights
are on inside. I pause, listening, wondering if I’ll be able to hear the sounds
of a fight from within. I don’t hear anything, though.
I run to the door, wrench it open, and go inside.
Rodney is the only one in the room who’s human. I recognize Dan right
away, of course, facing off against three other wolves, one of whom is even
larger than he is.
“Gina!” Rodney says, for all the world as if the two of us are old friends.
“So you’ve decided to come home. I guess the call of the wild wasn’t for you
after all, is that it?
I don’t answer him. I don’t even look at him. All my attention is on Dan,
who’s staring at me with an expression that, even on his wolf face, I
recognize as horror. He shakes his massive head slowly, and I know what
he’s trying to say to me. Don’t get involved.
But it’s too late. I’m here. I’m a part of this now.
I’m ready for this fight.
I let my wolf rise to the surface. It’s easy when I think about all the times
Rodney has treated me badly. All the times he’s hurled insults at me, tried to
make me feel like I was nothing, told lies about me to the rest of the pack.
Not to mention the twenty years of my life he stole from me. The twenty
years of happiness I could have had with Dan, that I’ll never get back now.
Those years will always belong to Rodney.
And today I’m going to make him pay for them.
Once I’ve shifted, I fall into place beside Dan, ready to fight with him. He
growls a little at me, and I feel the message he’s trying to convey. He’s
telling me to back off. He wants me to stop, to let him handle this.
I’m not going to.
 I tried to tell him yesterday. I tried to explain that I wasn’t going to be left
out of this fight, and he should have listened to me. He shouldn’t have snuck
away and come back to Timberland alone.
He’s going to have to learn that I’m not so easily controlled.
Dan lets out a little sigh and mirrors my defensive stance, ready to meet
our attackers head-on.
We’re still outnumbered, though. Even if Rodney stays out of the fight—
and he’s such a coward that I feel sure he will—we’re outnumbered. Fuck, I
hope Olivia is running.
I hope Marcus is on his way.
If he’s not, we might be screwed.
40
 DAN

I would do anything to get Gina out of here, but it’s clear that she’s not
going to let me.
The best thing I can do might be to move the fight outside. Right now, the
three of them can encircle the two of us pretty easily, because we can’t really
spread out. If that happens, we’re fucked, but if we can get out of the council
building, we’ll have more space, and that will make it harder for them to pen
us in.
Also, we’re more likely to be seen by other members of the pack.
I don’t know if the rest of the pack would join this fight on our side or on
Rodney’s, but I’m hoping there are some people out there who supported
Hank and don’t like the way Rodney went about removing him from power.
Even if they’re not with me or Gina, maybe they’ll be against Rodney, and
that’s something we can use.
How do I get things moving outside, though?
I’m not sure. If it were still just me, I’d turn and run. I’d make them chase
me. But if I run away now, that’ll mean leaving Gina behind, and for all I
know, they’ll let me go and gang up on her. That’s a worst case scenario. No
matter how badly I want to split this thing up, I can’t let that happen.
I focus my attention on the big wolf. He’s the one I have to take out. Gina
can hold her own against either one of the others—though probably not both
—so if I can take this one out, we’ll have a fair fight on our hands.
I need to do it quickly.
I run forward and interpose myself between him and the one next to him,
cutting him off so he’s on his own. Behind me, I see a flurry of movement—
one of the others is attacking me—but the attack never comes. Instead, I hear
the snarls and snaps that let me know it’s come to a standoff between him and
Gina.
I block it out. I have to. I can’t let those noises reach me.
I prowl closer to the big one, and maybe he’s surprised by my aggression,
because he starts to back away. And suddenly I see my opportunity.
I start to drive him toward the door. As I do, I keep my eye on the others.
I’m hoping they’ll be distracted by what I’m doing, by seeing the one who
must be their leader being driven back, and… Yes. One of them peels away
from the fight with Gina and follows.
Perfect.
I still don’t like leaving her on her own, but those are the best odds I can
hope to create for her. Gina’s strong, and I think she can take him.
Rodney is on his feet, hurrying after us. “Damn it! Break his leg, I told
you! Take him out! Don’t let him get the upper hand!”
The big wolf’s eyes flick toward Rodney. I see my moment, lunge, and
bite down on the side of his neck. I shake my head hard. If he were small, it
would be enough to seriously injure him, but as it is, it only makes him mad.
He lets out a howl of pain and rage and throws me off. I let the momentum
carry me into the door—and through it.
For a moment, he doesn’t follow, and my heart stops. Did I guess wrong?
No. There he is, pushing through the doorway, trailing me into the yard in
front of the council building. His friend is still on his heels, and Rodney is
right behind them.
Gina’s on her own with the last one.
She might be able to win that fight.
Oh, fuck, I hope she wins that fight.
I want to go back to help her more than anything in the world, but if I take
these three back inside, her odds get worse. This is the best I can do.
“What are you doing?” Rodney yells. “You let him draw first blood?
You’re supposed to be taking him out, not the other way around! What the
fuck is this?”
And then—to my shock—the big wolf shifts and turns to face Rodney.
“You fight him,” he says. “If you don’t like the way I’m handling it, you do
it.”
“I order you to kill him!”
The man snorts. “You’re not the rightful alpha of this pack, Rodney. You
have no claim to power. I followed you because I hoped you’d assert
yourself, but you haven’t. You’re a mess. Fuck all of this.”
He presses a hand to the bite mark I left on his neck and looks at me. I
could attack him—I could probably kill him now, given that he’s in his
human form—but I don’t. My instincts tell me to let this play out.
“I never thought I’d take your side, Dan,” the man says. “You’ve been a
cautionary tale around Timberland since I was a kid. But maybe you’ll be a
better alpha than Rodney. You could hardly be worse.”
 I have no interest in being alpha at all, but I can’t say that now. Not
without shifting back to my human form—and of course, that’s far too
dangerous to even consider.
The man looks at the other wolf. “I guess you’re probably sticking with
Rodney,” he says, “but I hope you wise up soon. Just look at what he’s doing.
He’s going to let you fight and die, and he’s never going to join the fight
himself. He’s a fucking coward.”
“Damn it!” Rodney says. “Get back here and take care of this!”
But the large man is already striding off. I’m in disbelief. Was one bite
really enough to take him out of the fight? Rodney’s leadership must really
be shaky.
The other wolf doesn’t look as if he’s going to be so easily scared off.
After a moment’s hesitation, he turns toward me and starts to close the
distance between us. But now the odds are even—especially since I’m
confident Rodney isn’t going to join in the fight—and I don’t hesitate any
more. I throw myself into it with gusto. I bowl him over, giving into my
wildest instincts, and a moment later, his throat is in my jaws.
He goes limp beneath me in the universal sign of surrender.
Rodney howls in rage.
I back off my competitor and wait for him to get to his feet and continue
the fight—I wouldn’t put it past him to fight dirty—but he doesn’t.
I push past Rodney and run for the building. I have to get back to Gina.
Before I can get there, though, the door bursts open and she comes running
out.
She shifts as she reaches us, but she only gives me a glance. Her attention
is all on Rodney. “Are you going to fight us yourself?” she asks.
He just stares at her.
 She grabs him by the throat and shoves him hard up against the side of the
building. “Answer me, you fucking bastard,” she says. “You lied about me.
You tried to destroy my life. Do you have the guts to fight me yourself?”
41
 GINA

I know Rodney isn’t going to fight me. It couldn’t be more obvious that
he’s fucking terrified of me. But that feels so good that I just hold him
there for a moment.
Maybe I’ll get my licks in on him. Maybe I’ll beat him up, the way Dan
did. He definitely won’t be able to make any claims to the alpha position after
having the shit beat out of him by his ex-wife. He always was too much of a
coward to handle anything himself.
Behind me, I hear Dan’s voice. “Gina. Don’t. Walk away.”
But I don’t want to walk away. I feel more feral even than Dan right now.
Dan’s managed to get himself under control, to shift back, but my wolf is
raging beneath the surface. Rodney took so much away from me. I want to
take it all back from him.
Then several things happen all at once.
The sound of motorcycles splits the air. I hear someone shout: “The
Slashers! It’s the Slashers! Go get the alpha!”
I think, what fucking alpha?
 Marcus bursts onto the scene and takes in everything that’s happening.
Olivia is right behind him. “You’re all right?” he says.
“We’re fine,” Dan says. “What’s going on?”
“The Slashers are here. They’re already setting fire to the outbuildings. It’s
war.”
Rodney gapes. I fling myself away from him and hurry to Dan’s side.
“Marcus, what are we going to do? Who’s in charge? If my father was
deposed by Rodney, is anyone going to follow him now?”
“We’re going to fight,” Marcus says evenly. “We all know how to do this.
We don’t need an alpha to tell us how.”
“But—”
“Can you three cover the southern border?” he asks. “Annabel and my
parents are already there. I’m going to go round up some men.”
A sense of calm washes over me. Marcus is right. We can do this. We
know how to defend our home. He’s telling us what to do, where we need to
be, and there’s no question that that’s going to help us.
“What about him?” Dan asks, jerking his head toward Rodney.
“Leave him,” Marcus says. “The Slashers certainly aren’t going to give
him any quarter. If he makes it through this, we’ll deal with him later. Go.
Fight hard.”
Olivia recovers. “Let’s do this,” she says to us.
This time, when I shift, it’s not with a feeling of rage or panic. Instead, a
wash of calm certainty comes over me. I know that what we’re doing is the
right thing, and I know we’re capable of it.
And the thought occurs to me: this is what it must be like to be led by a
competent alpha. That’s something I’ve never experienced before. It’s a
feeling I’ve never felt. I’ve always been on my own, fending for myself. Ever
since Dan left.
This should be the most terrifying moment of my life—the Slashers are
invading our land—but instead of being terrified, I’m calm and steady.
Dan takes point, and Olivia and I run on either side of him as we make our
way to the southern border. It’s a quick trip, but even so, the action has
started without us.
A group of Slashers—I quickly count five, distinguishable by the brands
they all have on their right shoulders—has encircled two older wolves and
one young one. I know these must be Dan’s parents and his sister. With a roar
of fury, he immediately throws himself into the fray. Olivia and I join in. I
pick off one of the Slashers and engage him in a one-to-one duel. We
outnumber them now, and I think I can take this guy. He’s not that much
bigger than I am.
He snaps at me and snags my leg in his teeth for a moment. Panicked, I rip
away, which makes the wound worse, but I won’t give in to that. I have to
keep him occupied to give the others a fighting chance.
I snap right back at him. The injury I give him isn’t as severe, but I do get
my teeth into the meat of his shoulder for a moment. He shakes me off
quickly, and I go sprawling to the ground, but it’s enough—I know I can beat
him. And more importantly, so does he.
Still, he’s a lot tougher than the one I just fought off back at the council
building. That doesn’t surprise me. Rodney and his gang have gotten
complacent over the years, too used to just having everything handed to
them. The Slashers have been on the outside all this time, preparing for this
day. Ready to fight us.
I’m not giving up this land. Not now, after my life is finally starting to go
well again. Not now that I’ve gotten everything I’ve always wished I could
have. I will fight until my last breath to protect my home.
Filled with resolve, I charge the wolf in front of me again. My face must
have changed, grown fiercer or something, because he staggers backward a
little. I press my advantage, leaping on him and pinning him to the ground.
He thrashes, trying to throw me off, but I dig my claws in hard. I know I need
to keep him down.
He tries to roll over, and I sense that this is his last ditch effort. I lean in
and grip his throat in my jaws, biting down until I taste blood.
Not hard enough to kill. Just hard enough to claim the win.
If he doesn’t surrender, I’m prepared to kill him. I’m prepared to do
anything to protect my family and my home. But then I feel him go boneless
beneath me, conceding the victory.
I don’t move at first. It could be a trick.
Then a voice speaks. It’s a voice I've known since childhood. From young
adulthood. A voice that always meant comfort and safety.
“It’s all right,” she says. “It’s okay, Gina. It’s over now. You can stand
down.”
It’s Dan’s mother. She’s the closest thing I ever had to a mother, after my
own mother left us. But when Dan left too, she and I drifted apart.
I feel her hand on my shoulder now, and it pulls me back to my humanity.
I look around.
There were five rivals here, but now there are only two. The one I was
fighting hasn’t gotten up off the ground. Dan’s father is standing over him.
The other Slasher who remains is badly injured. Annabel is kneeling beside
him, and I know without having to ask that this was the one Dan fought.
“The others,” I say. “What happened to the other three?”
 “Ran off into the woods.” Olivia is beside me, her arm around my waist.
“Is anyone hurt? Any of us?”
“You got it the worst.” She touches my wounded arm gingerly. “You
shouldn’t have tried to take him on by yourself.”
“We might not have won if she hadn’t,” Annabel says.
Dan comes to me and pulls me to him. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I assure him. “It’s already starting to heal.” I show him my
arm. “But what’s happening in the rest of Timberland? We’ve got to make
sure everyone is all right.”
42
 DAN

I can’t take my hands off of Gina as we make our way back to the center of
the Timberland territory. I can’t stop touching her, reassuring myself that
she’s okay.
She leans into me. I get the feeling she needs that reassurance just as much
as I do. It feels like a small miracle that we’re both still standing, that we both
made it through this—not only the fight with Rodney, but a surprise attack at
the worst possible time by the Slashers. If I had known when I woke up this
morning what the day would bring, I don’t think I could have faced it. I
would have taken Gina and run far, far away from Timberland.
“What are you thinking?” she asks me, her voice low.
I settle for a shortened version of the truth. “I’m just so fucking glad you’re
all right,” I tell her.
She doesn’t answer, but her hand comes to rest on the small of my back,
and she rubs slow circles there.
When we come near the center of town, Olivia runs ahead. A moment
later, I see why: there’s a group of people and wolves gathered there.
 “Stay here,” I tell my family and Gina.
“Like hell,” she answers fiercely.
“Please. I’m not going to fight. Just let me find out what’s going on.”
Gina sighs and squeezes my hand, and then, mercifully, she lets me go.
I run ahead. I’ve only come a short distance when I spot my brother. He’s
standing over a man I don’t recognize, looking a bit threatening, which
makes me believe this is one of the Slashers. I check his shoulder, and sure
enough, there’s the brand.
I go to Marcus’s side. “What’s going on? I murmur.
“A lot of them ran off,” Marcus said. “Some of them are pretty badly
injured. Our women are patching them up right now.”
“That’s… generous.”
“Their alpha issued a full surrender. I’m in negotiations with him.”
“Negotiations?” I’m shocked. “You’re not going to give up the land, are
you?”
“Oh, fuck no. Of course not, Dan.”
“Then what are you negotiating?”
“Some of them have expressed an interest in joining our pack.”
“You’re going to let them?”
“Well, it’s not really up to me,” he says. “I’m not in charge around here.
But I’m letting them know they’ll have to pledge loyalty to whoever we
choose as alpha.” He smiles. “I think that’s part of why they want to stay,
actually—they can see we’re in the middle of a power shift. I think they see it
as an opportunity to be a part of the way things develop around here.”
“And we’re going to let them be a part of that?”
“Like I said, it’s not up to me,” Marcus said.
“Who is it up to?”
 “Whoever takes over as alpha.”
I look at him.
“What?” he asks.
“Marcus.”
“What?”
“Come on, man.”
He shakes his head. “I wasn’t…”
“You weren’t trying to. I know that. You weren’t trying to take over. But
this pack just faced a crisis, and you led us through it. You’re the one
everyone is ready to follow.”
“But your mate is the last alpha’s daughter,” he protests. “By rights, it
should be you.”
“It definitely shouldn’t,” I say. “I’ve been living feral for twenty years,
Marcus. I’m going to have a hard enough time just re-integrating myself into
pack life. There’s no way I’m ready to lead these people—and there’s no way
any of them are ready to follow me. That’s not going to happen.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive,” I say. “I’m no alpha. You’re what this pack needs.”
“I have no idea if I'm what this pack wants.”
“Are you kidding? After the way everyone followed you into battle? Ask
them for their loyalty, Marcus.”
He shakes his head. “It has to be voluntary,” he says. “After years of Hank,
after they believed Rodney was going to take over… I can’t push them into
following me. If they have someone else in mind, I need to give them the
opportunity to make a choice.”
I nod. “Fine.”
“Fine?”
 I drop to my knees in front of my brother.
“Dan, for fuck’s sake—get up,” Marcus says.
“No.” I raise my voice. “I pledge my loyalty to you, Marcus. I honor you
as the alpha of this pack.”
I know the others hear me; they’re turning to face me, watching what’s
going on. But no one says anything. For a moment, I feel a flicker of
uncertainty. Maybe I read this wrong. Maybe Marcus isn’t what they want.
Maybe they’re going to interpret what I’m doing now as trying to push a
leader on them that none of them wanted.
I hold my position, forcing myself to wait. Then, all around me, I see
people start to fall to their knees.
My spirits lift.
The rest of my family and Gina are approaching us now, obviously having
realized that nothing unsafe is happening here. Gina comes to my side and
kneels beside me.
My brother’s name is on the air, being murmured by everyone in the
crowd.
Marcus looks around at all of us. “This is what you want?” he asks. “It’s
time this pack had an alpha who has the full support of the people. I’m ready
to lead, if that’s what everyone thinks is right. But I won’t fight for the
position if any of you disagree.”
I wait, but nobody voices dissent.
Marcus nods. “Everybody stand,” he says—no, he commands. And I feel
the shift of power and authority. It’s his first command as alpha—part of the
ceremony of naming a new alpha—and I know at once that the choice has
been successful, because I feel a compulsion to obey. His words lift me onto
my feet, and I stand before him.
 Marcus points to a few people. “Make the rounds,” he says. “Make sure all
the fires are out. If you come across any more Slashers, bring them to me
here.”
The people he’s selected for that job nod and run off in various directions.
Marcus looks at Gina. “You’re hurt.”
“I’m all right. It’s already starting to heal.”
“Annabel?”
Annabel steps forward. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Good. Once you do, go help the others who are patching up the Slashers.”
Her face darkens. “I don’t want to help them.”
“I won’t order you to, but they’ve surrendered to us, Annabel. They want
to be a part of this pack moving forward.”
“They just want the land,” Annabel says. “They’re our enemies, Marcus.”
“But they don’t have to be,” Marcus says evenly. “This land has more than
enough room for all of us, and we can make our pack stronger by welcoming
new members.”
“We can’t trust them. They just tried to kill us.”
“It was Hank’s leadership that turned them into enemies,” Marcus says.
“With him out of power, we all have a chance to change the way we relate to
each other. We can build a stronger future, and we can do it together.”
I’m amazed. How can he be so trusting?
But that’s Marcus. He sees the good in people, and he brings it out in them.
If he can put his faith in the Slashers, and in his own ability to unite our
packs, I suppose I can trust him enough to follow.
43
 GINA

T he moment we get back to my house, Dan’s mouth is on mine.

I have all kinds of questions. What is the future going to look like? Is
he going to come live with me in this house, or will we find someplace else
and start over? What about the bakery? Will I be able to keep working now
that I’m going to be a mother, or will he want me to give it up? Is he going to
work? Is he really ready to abandon the wild and come back to pack life full
time?
I fully intend to ask him all of these things.
Later.
Right now, though, all that matters is the touch and taste of him, the
warmth of his body on mine, the way I can already feel him getting hard as I
lean into him. I let my hand drop down to cup him, and he throbs against my
palm and moans into my mouth.
Then he breaks the kiss. “Your arm,” he says. It comes out as little more
than a gasp.
 “No, I’m fine,” I say. I can’t really even feel the pain in my arm anymore,
to be completely honest. “It’s healing fine. I’m okay.”
“What did Annabel say when she looked at it?”
“That it’s not broken. Which I knew. She made sure the wound was clean
and sent me on my way.”
“You have to be honest with me,” Dan says.
“Honest about what?”
“If anything… If this is painful. If I’m hurting you, you have to tell me. I
don’t want it to be like that.”
“Oh, Dan…” I cradle his face in my hands and kiss him deeply. Then I
look him in the eyes. “You’ve never hurt me, okay? You have never hurt
me.”
“I’ve never done anything but hurt you.”
I sigh. “We’ve had a hard road.”
“I’ll say we have.”
“But nothing has ever been your fault, all right? It was never your fault. I
know what happened. My father made you leave. And then, when you came
back, you were so wild… Of course things were going to happen the way
they did. I don’t regret any of it.”
“I should have controlled myself with you, that first time in the woods. I
just let the wolf have what he wanted.”
“After all that time apart, don’t you think I wanted you just as desperately?
Don’t you think I was as hungry for you as you were for me?” I ask. “It
doesn’t matter how wild you were that day. There was nothing in the world
that could have scared me off, Dan. Just the thought of being with you again
after all those years was intoxicating.”
I stroke his cock slowly, and he leans into my touch. “Yeah?”
 “I used to dream about you,” I murmur, pressing my lips to his collarbone,
tasting the salt of sweat dried on his skin. “All the years we were apart, I
dreamt about you, and I used to wake up feeling awful because I thought I
would never have that again. It wrecked me when you were gone. And when
you came back… It was all I wanted. I would have taken whatever version of
you I could have.”
I kiss him again. He moans into my mouth, and his hand finds my breast.
He knows exactly what to do. I’ve spent twenty years dealing with having my
breasts mauled during sex, squeezed so hard it hurts. I’ve found bruises the
morning after. Dan’s grip is firm, but still tender. His thumb grazes the side
of my nipple, and it immediately hardens to his touch. I let out a little gasp.
He sighs contentedly. “We should never have been apart.”
“No,” I agree.
“I’ll never fucking leave you again. Never.”
He lifts me up, and I wrap my legs around him, feeling his cock pressing
up against me. I kiss him again, deeply and passionately, feeling as if I can’t
get close enough. I want to completely lose track of my body in his. I want to
forget where I end and he begins.
I don’t really register the fact that we’re moving until he drops me on the
bed, and then I realize he’s carried me into the bedroom. He crawls on top of
me and settles between my legs, and his cock throbs against my entrance. He
doesn’t take me, though. Not yet. He resumes kissing me.
I wrap my arms around his neck, holding him down, lifting myself up to
him. My hips hitch, my body craving friction.
Dan breaks the kiss, his forehead pressing against mine. “Tell me what you
want.”
“I just want to fuck you all night,” I breathe.
 “Tell me.”
“I want to feel you moving inside me,” I say. “I want you to make me
come so many times that I forget my name. I want to feel you come with me.
I want us to watch the sunrise together. I want us to still be fucking when
daylight hits. I want to keep going until we’re so exhausted that we literally
can’t anymore, and then I want to fall asleep in your arms. I want to wake up
to even more of you. I want to do nothing but this.”
He groans. “Damn. You sure paint a hell of a picture, Gina.”
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. Do you know how many times I’ve
fantasized about this? Having you in my bed, not needing to keep it a secret
or worry about what it meant? Feeling safe with you?”
“You are safe with me. You’re so safe.”
“That’s not what I mean,” I say. “I’ve never been afraid of you, but we’ve
always had to worry about what might happen if we tried to be together. Now
we don’t.”
“Now we don’t,” he agrees, his lips grazing my jawline. “We’re going to
do all of that. Everything you just said. And that’s just tonight.”
Heat floods through me at the thought, because I know he’s right. We have
so many nights together. From this moment on, I’m not going to think any
more about the things we’ve lost, the years we gave up. I’m only going to
focus on our future, and on our present. On this second chance we’ve been
given. We’re going to take full advantage of it.
And we do.
We make love for hours that night. At first it’s slow. Impossibly tender.
Even more than in the old days, when we were young, before he was ever
feral. The feeling of him inside me is glorious. His thrusts are steady but
measured, three full breaths between each one. He gives me time to relish in
the fullness of having him inside me, the exquisite intimacy of feeling him
throb against me, feeling myself contract around him.
“So good,” I breathe. “You’re so fucking good.”
“I can’t wait to feel you come,” he says into my ear, his cheek pressed to
mine.
I dig my heels into his ass and pull him hard against me. He groans.
“You’re going to make me come, doing that.”
“It’s okay if you do. I want it.”
“No,” he says. “Not yet. There is so much more I want to do tonight.”
He rolls us over, pulling me on top of him. His hands slide up and down
my sides, then grip my hips and guide me into a new rhythm. We’re moving
faster now, and he’s reaching new places inside me, stimulating me
differently. He cups my breasts for a moment and pinches my nipples gently,
then moves his thumb to my clit.
And I lose control of myself.
I’ve been trying to pace this, to make sure it isn’t over too fast, but
between the massive cock I’m riding and the way he’s touching me, I just
don’t have the power to resist. I rock hard against him, grinding down, rolling
my hips into his touch, the heat building and building until it’s almost
unbearable, and then his name bursts from my lips as I come.
He doesn’t give me a moment to recover. He lifts his hips off the bed and
turns me in his arms, and I’m not sure how he does it. I suddenly find myself
on my hands and knees, my face against the mattress, my ass high in the air.
Dan grabs me and hauls me back against him, and this time he sets a
punishing rhythm. He slaps into me hard with every thrust. I can feel him so
deep inside me that I almost can’t feel anything else. It’s like my body is
shutting down my other senses to cope with the intensity of this one powerful
thing: Dan’s cock, huge and throbbing and just totally claiming me.
“Gina,” he moans.
“Come for me.” My voice is hoarse and raspy and I don’t even sound like
myself, but it’s what I want. I want it so much. I want to hear him fall apart.
And a moment later, he does. His body goes limp on top of mine, and the
weight of him causes my legs to buckle so that I’m lying flat on the mattress.
Incredibly, though, he keeps going. He’s still inside me, still moving, his
cock still hard.
“Did you...?”
“Yeah. Fuck, you just fucking do this to me, babe.”
“Yeah?”
“I could fucking go all night, you’ve got me so hard.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have any fucking idea, Gina. It happens to me when
I think of you. Sometimes it happens when you’re not even around. I just get
so fucking hard. And now, being with you like this…” He sighs and fucks
into me slowly, resuming the calm, steady pace he set at the beginning of our
lovemaking session. “It’s just so good. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of it. I
don’t think I’ll ever get enough of you.”
“Good. I hope you fucking don’t. I want to do this all the time. For the rest
of our lives.”
He chuckles. “Eventually we’re going to have to stop. We’re going to need
to eat or something.”
“Let’s worry about that later.” I lift my hips slightly, changing the tempo
of our lovemaking just enough to distract him, and he groans and returns his
attention to where it ought to be.
 We go on like that for hours, until we’re both soaked in sweat, until the
bedsheets are rumpled around us and we’ve both lost track of time.
Eventually, lying in each other’s arms, still connected but not moving at all—
we’ve been still for a while now, just enjoying the feel of each other and
letting our bodies rest—I see the sun start to rise.
Dan’s fingers trail slowly up and down my spine. I feel the warmth of him
inside me, of his body and mine, locked together, refusing to be separated.
Refusing to let each other go.
For the first time in a very long time, I’m not worried about losing this. I’m
not worried about anything at all.
I let my eyes drift closed, relaxing in his arms.
“Going to sleep?” Dan murmurs.
“Maybe.” I press my lips to his chest. “Don’t go anywhere.” I wrap my leg
around his waist and pull him in tightly, lest he be left in any doubt about
what I mean.
“Not if you don’t want me to go.”
“I’ll never want you to go.” Of that I’m completely certain.
Dan moves against me a little, then wraps his arms around me and pulls me
close. I can feel him all around me and in me, and I feel comforted and
whole. I don’t know exactly what I’m going to wake up to, but I have
absolutely no doubt in my mind that it’s going to be something good.
44
 DAN: Eight Months Later

G ina rolls her head toward the knock on the door. “Who is that?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I tell her. “Annabel will get it. Or Mom and
Dad.” They’ve been here for the past five hours, since Gina’s labor began,
doing whatever they could to help—although it isn’t much. Olivia, who has
experience delivering babies and is taking care of our delivery, says that Gina
shouldn’t have anything much to eat. The most they’ve been able to do is
bring glasses of water and offer me food. Which I’ve refused every time, of
course. It would feel wrong to eat when Gina can’t.
“Everyone’s already here,” Gina murmurs. She lets her eyes slip closed.
Her face is shining with sweat, and she’s breathing hard with exertion. I grab
the hand towel I’ve been using and run it gently over her face again, wiping
away the moisture there.
“You don’t think it’s Hank, do you?” Olivia asks me anxiously.
I wish she hadn’t said that, I really do. I don’t think it’s Hank. He knows
better than to show up here—we haven’t seen much of him since his jail
sentence ended a month ago. He knows that if he comes around here, it’ll
lead to a fight, and he fucking knows who will win.
But now Gina is going to worry about whether her father is here. She’s
been a little anxious about that ever since he was released, even though she
did want him out of lockup. We all know how horrible it is for a wolf to be
locked up. The punishment was out of proportion to the crime—even
considering how terrible his crimes were.
“Of course it’s not Hank,” I say.
“Will you go see?” Gina asks me.
I look at Olivia, wondering if this is a good time for me to leave. She
shakes her head. “She’s pretty close now,” she says. “I’d hang around if I
were you.”
“But if my father is here…”
“It’s not your father,” I say. “There’s no way he would show up here.”
Gina bites her lip so hard that I’m worried she’s going to draw blood. I
work my thumb gently between her clenched teeth. “Don’t,” I say softly.
“We’re all right. Annabel will come in in a minute and tell us who’s out
there.”
And sure enough, there’s a knock on the bedroom door. “Who is it?” I call.
“Me,” a familiar voice says. “Can I come in?”
My heart fills with warmth.
“It’s Marcus,” I tell Gina. “Can he come in?”
“It’s still so weird to be asked.”
“He’d never come in if you didn’t want him here. He’ll be perfectly fine
waiting in the living room if that’s what you’d rather,” I say. “It’s completely
up to you.”
She nods slowly. “He can come in,” she says. “This is his niece or nephew.
He should be here. He’s family.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Olivia drapes a blanket over Gina’s hips for modesty. “Come on in,” I call.
The door opens. Marcus has to stoop to fit through the frame. He isn’t
much taller than me, but our height difference really stands out at the house
that I now share with Gina, because I fit through all the doors.
Marcus beams at us both. He’s holding a big basket, so large that he has to
cradle it between both arms. “Brought some baby gear,” he says proudly.
“Clothes and diapers and things. I’ve been shopping.”
I smile gratefully up at him. “Thank you,” I say. We can’t have enough of
that stuff.
“How are you doing, Gina?” Marcus asks.
She makes a face. “I’ve been better, Marcus.”
But actually, she does seem calmer since he came into the room. That’s the
effect Marcus has on everyone. He makes us all relax. Gina and I have
discussed it—how we never realized until Marcus took over that the
temperament of the alpha trickled down and affected the rest of the pack. We
were so tempestuous in the past because Hank was unreliable as a leader, and
because he didn’t have anyone’s best interests in mind. He was only after
what served him personally. Under Marcus, it’s completely different. We all
feel looked after.
Hell, even my feral side has begun to calm and fade away. Even though
what’s happening right now is extremely anxiety-inducing, I’m not feeling
the wolf at all.
“It’s time to start pushing,” Olivia announces. “Are you ready, Gina?”
“No.”
 “Yes, you are,” I tell her, taking her hands in mine. I kiss her forehead.
“You can do this. You’re ready.”
“What if I’m not?” she whispers. “I didn’t have good parents, Dan. What if
I’m not a good mother?”
“You’re going to be an amazing mother. There’s no one I would rather be
doing this with than you.”
“Okay, Gina,” Olivia says. “Push now.”
Gina grits her teeth, and her face reddens with effort. Her hand clenches
around mine.
“You’re doing so great,” I tell her breathlessly. “You’re amazing, Gina.
You can do this.”
She lets out a short sob of pain. “Dan—”
“I know,” I tell her. “I know. You’re almost there. It’s almost over. We’re
going to meet our baby so soon. Just a little bit more.”
“I can’t…”
“Yes, you can. You’ve already gotten through so much. You’re the
strongest person I know, Gina.” I mean it, too. I can’t think of anyone
stronger than her. “You can do this.”
“Almost here,” Olivia says. “One more big push. You can do it, Gina.”
She lets out a moan that turns into a sharp cry, and the sound mingles with
another, more high-pitched cry. It’s one that’s both completely unfamiliar to
me and yet, at the same time, it feels like I’ve heard it a million times before.
Olivia holds the baby up for us to see. “It’s a boy.”
A boy.
I have a son.
“Hell of a set of lungs on him,” Marcus says with a laugh, and I can’t help
but agree.
 Gina holds out her hands. “Let me—”
Olivia passes the baby to me, and I place him in his mother’s arms. She
looks down at him admiringly. “Dan, he’s perfect. Look at him. He’s
perfect.”
I agree with that, too. Even though he’s bright red and screaming, all I can
see is how hearty and healthy he looks. He’s going to be so strong when he
grows up.
“He’ll make a great alpha one day,” Marcus says quietly.
That’s a dizzying thought, but I can’t even focus on it right now. The idea
of a nebulous future where this little baby leads our pack is too much to
contemplate.
“Do you have a name?” Annabel asks from the corner where she’s
watching us.
We’ve been talking about names for the last few months, so I know what
Gina’s going to say, but I want to let her be the one to say it.
“William,” she says softly. “Will.”
“Will,” I say, because I wanted her to say it first, but I want the chance to
say my child’s name while looking at him.
He’s finally here.
We’re finally a family.
45
 GINA: Epilogue

“Y ou know you don’t have to do this,” Dan says.

“I know,” Marcus agrees, “but it’s the right choice. I’m not
going to have any children.”
“Hank’s probably furious that you’re in the alpha spot without a mate,”
Dan says.
“He is,” I verify. “I spoke to him last week.”
“You did?” Dan turns to me, agitation on his face. “I didn’t know that. You
should have told me.”
“You would have worried, and there wasn’t anything to worry about.”
“Why did you talk to him?”
“Because I don’t want to live in fear of him,” I say. “He’s a part of this
community, regardless of how we feel about it.”
“I told you I’ll banish him if it’ll make you more comfortable,” Marcus
says. “All you have to do is say the word. Let him get a taste of what it’s like
to live in the wild for once.”
 I shake my head. Marcus made that offer to me when he let my father out
of jail. I turned it down then, and I stand by my choice. At his age, living wild
would kill my father. He’s not capable of it. And even though I’ll always
resent him for the way he treated me and the things he stole from me over the
course of my life, I don’t want him dead.
“It was easy,” I tell Dan. “Easier than I thought it would be. I just told him
that I didn’t want him to come to the ceremony today.”
“I’ll bet he hated that.”
“Yeah, he did. He said it was a pack event and he had every right to be
here. Then he said some rude things about the ex-Slashers, and how if they
have the right to come to events like this, so does he.”
“What did you tell him?”
“To take it up with Marcus,” I say, shrugging.
Marcus laughs. “Good call,” he says. “Don’t worry. I’ve got your back.”
“I know you do.” I grin at him. He really is the big brother I never had.
“So, the ceremony,” Marcus says. “Is Will ready?”
“Yeah,” Dan says. “Not that he needs to do anything. He’s just going to be
presented to the pack.”
“I hope they accept him,” I say.
“Of course they will,” Marcus says easily.
“I don’t know.”
“He’s of alpha lineage on both sides.”
“Yeah, but people don’t like my father anymore,” I point out. “Being part
of his lineage isn’t really a selling point.”
“But being a part of yours is,” Marcus says. “Remember, you’re the one
who pulled back the curtain on Rodney and removed him from power.
You’re the reason we’re under new leadership now. People love you, Gina,
and they love Dan. Everyone is excited about this.”
I draw a breath and do my best to believe what he’s telling me. I want it to
be true. I think it is true, really. It’s just awfully hard sometimes to have faith
that everything is working out as well as it seems to be.
Dan’s hands come to rest on my shoulders. “Don’t worry,” he says.
“Everything’s going to be great, Gina.”
“Where is Will?” Marcus asks.
“Olivia has him,” I say. “She babysat for us this morning.” I scan the field.
“There.”
Olivia’s crossing toward us with Will in her arms. He’s only three months
old. I’d have liked to put this off longer, but the pack is clamoring for it,
according to Marcus.
I wouldn’t know. Dan and I have been holed up in our house, focusing on
being new parents. Today is actually the first time I’ve been away from Will
since he was born. We’ve been planning it for ages, which hasn’t made the
past few hours any easier. I hurry to meet Olivia and take him from her.
Immediately, having him back in my arms, I feel a little bit better.
“We had fun,” Olivia says, smiling. “He loves his auntie Olivia, don’t you,
Will?”
“What did you do?”
“Made cookies,” Olivia said. “Well, I did. He played with the dough.”
“Olivia, he didn’t eat it, did he?”
She laughs. “It was edible! No raw egg.”
“But he’s not on solid food yet!”
“He might have put a little bit in his mouth. Nothing to worry about.”
“It’s totally fine, Gina,” Dan says gently. “All of Annabel’s kids did that
when they were babies.”
“Right.” I know I shouldn’t worry. I should try not to be so overprotective.
I’m really determined to be a better parent than my parents were to me, and
sometimes I overdo it.
“Ready to do this?” Marcus asks.
I hesitate; it’s hard to give Will away, even though I know I’ll get him
back in a moment. But I trust my alpha. I hand my son over.
Marcus puts his hand on my shoulder. “Come on.”
“Me?”
“Yes, of course. You’re part of this. You too, Dan. I’m not just asking
them to accept Will as the next alpha. They’re going to be accepting you two
as the guardians of the next alpha. You’re being entrusted with the future of
the pack too, because you’ll be the ones raising him.”
That’s a little intimidating, but at the same time, he’s right—and I want to
be a part of this ceremony. This is one of the biggest moments of my son’s
life. I want to be involved in it.
So Dan and I stand in the center of the Timberland clearing beside Marcus,
our arms around each other, as he holds Will up and turns in a slow circle,
showing him off to the assembled crowd.
It’s a big deal, because most people haven’t seen Will yet. This is the first
time we’ve really brought him out of the house. The crowd goes silent
looking at him, and I don’t know what to make of the expressions on their
faces.
Are they disappointed?
Is he not what they hoped?
He’s only a baby. He can’t be that much of a disappointment to them yet,
but I can’t help feeling anxious anyway.
 And then, slowly, they start to drop to their knees.
“Will,” Marcus announces.
They murmur his name, just as they did when Marcus took over as alpha.
The sound rises around me. Will. Will. Will.
I see Rodney off to the side, alone, with only Bess for company. Linley left
him shortly after he was deposed, and he hasn’t been able to attract the
interest of another woman since. Everyone knows what he is now. Marcus
has offered to exile him, too, but honestly, I never even considered it. He can
leave if he wants, but I sort of like the idea of him hanging around and having
to watch me live the happy life he tried to take away from me.
He’s not honoring Will, and neither is Bess. But I never expected them to.
I turn my attention to Dan instead, who’s beaming so hard he looks like he
might cry. I feel the same way.
Marcus returns my son to my arms, and I huddle into my little family.

***

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Baby

E xcerpt from Chapter 2:

“So, any men in your life lately?” Kayla asks me later at the bar.
I laugh. She’s as predictable as the sunrise. Kay always wants to talk about
men. Who we’re dating, who we’re fucking, who we’re admiring from afar—
she’s been like this since we were teenagers.
“Human men aren’t much to write home about,” I tell her.
“So you’ve said,” she says. “What happened with that one you were
seeing? What was his name?”
“You mean Pete?”
“Sure. Probably.”
“I dumped him,” I say.
“Oh no.” She makes a sympathetic face. “What was wrong with him?”
“Oh, nothing. He was just boring. He was the sex-on-Saturday-night type.”
“What’s wrong with Saturday night?”
I realize the misunderstanding and laugh. Pack life really is different from
life in the human world. “I meant only Saturday night.”
 “What? That’s insane.”
“It’s not insane. It’s just human. They love routines and habits. They’re not
as capable of wildness. Especially as they get older.”
“I don’t know why you would choose that over a shifter mate,” she said.
“Excuse me, have you got a mate?”
“No, but I’m not dating human men either.” My sister is terminally single.
Sometimes I think she’d rather jump off a cliff than settle down with anyone.
“I’m not dating any human men at the moment either,” I point out.
“Yeah, but the next guy you date will be one.”
“True.”
“I don’t know why you didn’t just let Dad set you up with Brandon.”
I sigh. The one person I can usually count on to be on my side, and she’s
doing this. “Yes, you do.”
“No,” she says. “I know why you didn’t want to stay on pack lands and let
Deidre tell you you were rotten and spoiled and have Lonnie needling you all
the time. I know why you wanted to give the human world a try. But did you
even ask Brandon if he’d be willing to live away from the pack?”
“Are you kidding?” I ask. “Brandon loves the pack.”
I have trouble fitting in in the human world. It’s too tame for me. But for
someone like Brandon, it would have been downright impossible. He was
always running around the pack territory in his wolf form when we were
young, always causing mayhem. And when he wasn’t doing that, he was
spending his nights at this bar, shooting pool and drinking beer and laughing
boisterously at everyone’s jokes. He made money fast and lost it just as
quickly, betting on games or buying drinks for everyone around him, and in
all my life I never saw him back down from a fight.
The idea of Brandon taking a desk job somewhere— pushing papers nine
to five, coming home in a four-door sedan, and having a quiet dinner at my
dining room table—it’s insane. It’s like picturing a flying cow, or Lonnie
saying something nice to somebody. Impossible.
“He’s different from the guy you remember,” Kay says. “He’s relaxed a
lot.”
“I mean, he’s still Brandon, though, right?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, he still likes to have fun. He’s still not one to back
down from a challenge. But I’m telling you, he’s different. He’s grown up.”
“Not enough for the human world,” I say.
“And besides, he’s hot as hell.”
“Why don’t you go sleep with Brandon if you like him so much?”
She grins. “I’m spoken for at the moment.”
“Don’t tell me you’re in a relationship.”
“Oh, fuck, no, nothing like that.” She shudders comically. “No, it’s strictly
pleasure.”
“Who?”
“Do you remember Alistair?”
I think back. “Are you talking about that kid who was like five years
younger than me?”
“Well, first of all, he’s five years younger than me, not you. But yes, that’s
who I mean.”
“He’s a child!”
She laughs. “He’s thirty-nine! He’s middle-aged!”
“Well, the last time I saw him he was a teenager.”
“Trust me, he is all grown up now,” Kay says with a wide grin. “One
hundred percent man.”
“What is it with you and younger men?”
 “Hey, don’t come for my taste. I like what I like. You like human men.”
“Not really,” I say, laughing. “They’re just what’s available to me.”
“You could date a shifter.”
“Shifters are hard to come by when you’re living as a human,” I tell her
wryly. “I haven’t even met one since I left the pack.”
“That you know of.”
“You don’t think I would be able to tell? I can smell a shifter a mile off.”
“You did always have the best sense of smell in the family,” Kay said.
“And you’re good looking too. You probably could have been mated to
anyone you wanted, Alicia. You could have rejected Dad’s pick for you and
still found someone else. Someone who would have been willing to leave the
pack with you.”
“I don’t think anyone would have,” I say. “Has anyone left the pack since I
did?”
“Well, no,” she admits. “You know how rare it is. But you could have
motivated someone to leave. I could see a guy starting a new life in order to
be with you.”
“For a woman who doesn’t want a relationship, you’ve got a lot of
relationship advice,” I tell her.
“But you do want a relationship,” she says. “And you’re my little sister,
and you’re newly single. Of course I’m going to try to help you.”
She drains her beer and signals the bartender with two fingers.
“I’m not having another one after this,” I tell her. I’m on my third already.
“Who said one of them was for you?” She grins.
The door opens behind her and a man walks in.
He’s about my age, tall and burly, with thick, curly brown hair and a full
beard that he didn’t have the last time I saw him. But I recognize him right
away anyway. I’d recognize him anywhere.
And I feel as if I’ve missed a step going downward. Even though it’s been
ages, even though I’m committed to the idea that I’m over this guy and that
he means nothing to me anymore, being in his presence still has an affect on
me. I feel almost nauseous. How could I not, seeing him again?
Brandon.
“On second thought,” I say, “I think I’ll take that beer.”
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