Table of Contents

Part 3: Caught

Author's Note

Chapter 1 ~ Bettina

Chapter 2 ~ Mather

Chapter 3 ~ Bettina

Chapter 4 ~ Conlan

Chapter 5 ~ Bettina

Chapter 6 ~ Mather

About the Author

Sneak Peek at Part 4

~ I’m Bettina Tanzer, innocent baker and accidental werewolf...if I survive ~

The vicious rogue werewolf who wanted me bound and enslaved has taken Reeve, the sexy alpha prime who ushered me into this sensual, dangerous world. Now I am Reeve’s only chance. But first I must find his pack of solitary alpha males, hidden in the mountains. They are going to hate me for betraying their alpha prime and leaving him in a madman’s claws, but I’ll do anything—anything—to save him.

Even if it means embracing the wildness I never knew I wanted...

HEART OF THE PACK is a paranormal shapeshifter BBW romance serial in seven parts. The stories contain adult language and graphic sexual situations. Rated M for mature and W for wild readers only.

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Copyright © 2015 by Elsa Jade

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as factual. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be scanned, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

Author’s Note:

In the Author’s Note in Heart of the Pack ~ Part 2: Chased, I mentioned a new lone wolf spotted in the Rogue Pack territory in southwestern Oregon. Wolves were exterminated in Oregon in the late 1940s but the state now has 77 known wolves. One of those is a second wolf that apparently joined the new Rogue area wolf since I wrote that last note. They are called the Keno Pair since they can’t be called a pack until they produce pups. I don’t actually believe that these stories are manifesting as real wolves out there in the forests—I realize the return of wolves is due to the hard work of people who believe in a more natural stewardship of the land and of course the resilience of the wolves themselves—but it’s exciting to think someday I might see wild wolf in real life. Somewhere in the distance would be fine ;)

~ Elsa

Chapter 1 ~ Bettina

How could I have left Reeve behind, fallen beneath the jaws of Lysander’s vicious werewolf pack?

The question was stuck on repeat in my head, drilling deeper through my temples as the hours passed. Sour bile burned in the back of my throat, but I doggedly guided Reeve’s ruined Beemer through the thick pine forests of southwestern Oregon, following the magenta arrow of the GPS. At the end of the arrow was home.

Not my home, of course. His. His pack of alpha werewolves.

Werewolves who were going to be furiously pissed that I left their alpha prime to die. Intellectually, I knew there was nothing I could have done to rescue Reeve. I was just a chubby, lonely baker who up until last night had no idea werewolves actually existed. Well, now I was a baker bitten by a werewolf. But that hadn’t given me any superpowers yet, nothing that would’ve saved Reeve.

Maybe nothing that would save me.

Guilt and exhaustion welled up like a toxic fog of cut onions, blinding me so I had to stop the car. There was nowhere to pull off. The “road” I’d been following for the last half hour was just a dirt path, intermittently sprinkled with gravel. If the track hadn’t been preprogrammed in, I’d never have gotten this far. There wasn’t even a real road indicated on the GPS. Except for the magenta line, I was just floating through undistinguished green map. I had no idea what was out here except more confusion and heartache.

I lowered my forehead to my hands, clenched around the steering wheel, and swallowed back tears.

Cold winter air seeped in through the bent doorframe where Lysander had tried to drag Reeve out when he rescued me last night. Before I could stop it, a wrenching sob snagged in my chest. No, I couldn’t break down. I choked back the sound until it was just a chilled shiver that even the silvery wool suit jacket Reeve had laid around my shoulders this morning couldn’t protect against.

Bad enough to have abandoned Reeve. I at least had to find his pack and tell them what happened to him, to warn them that Lysander was coming for them. Reeve was their leader. I’d felt the depth of his sense of responsibility to them, and I had to honor that.

Since I’d left him to die.

The bent door at my elbow wrenched open with a shriek of ill-fitted metal.

My head snapped up. Not of my own volition. Someone’s hand was fisted in my hair—

I yelped and clawed behind me, trying to wrestle free. But all I managed to do was get my wrist caught in a steel grip.

My assailant dragged me from the bucket seat, my knees thumping painfully against the steering wheel.

I twisted on the fulcrum of my hair and wrist, to get my feet under me. When my sneakers were planted on the wet grass, I reared back with all my not-inconsiderable weight, totally willing to scalp myself to get away.

A grunt of surprise and a slackening on my hair gave me some much-needed hope. The grip shifted to a less punishing hold on the hood of my sweatshirt.

Idiot. Instead of continuing to pull back, I abruptly charged forward.

Blinded by the chestnut waves of my own hair, I couldn’t see who I hit. But I heard his masculine curse.

I swung into him the same way I manhandled two fifty-pound bags of bulk flour at once, throwing my hips into the arc.

Bastard never had a chance.

He went down hard, ripping the oversized suit jacket and the hoodie underneath right off my body as I slithered free. I shook my head to clear the hair out of my eyes and had a glimpse of the guy’s shocked pale green eyes as his gaze shifted from the empty clothes in his grasp to me. Then my knee connected with his jaw.

The blow snapped his head back, and he went over like a clear-cut fir tree.

I sprang to the side.

And stumbled.

There were three more waiting.

My breath clogged in my throat, I had a flashback of the three wolves poised at the end of the alley last night. Right before they rushed me and Lysander bit me. Starting this whole damn mess.

These three were men. No, not men. Man shaped, maybe. Virulently, blatantly male, each of them tall and honed to a hunting edge, although they were distinctly different, from the heavily muscled black dude in the middle with the dreads and leather vest to the boy with the platinum-blond faux-hawk laid out at my feet. But these were not men.

They were werewolves.

My skin tingled under the combined weight of their menacing stares as terror and relief spiraled together inside me.

Apparently I’d just found Reeve’s pack.

Chapter 2 ~ Mather

I knew what she was the second my gaze arrowed to her breast.

I wasn’t ogling—I should say, no more than necessary, and the magnificent heave of her bosom made it a pleasure as well as a necessity—but I recognized that tattoo on the upper swell of flesh bared by her tight tank top.

Or more importantly, I knew the scar hidden under that crescent-moon ink.

I took a step toward her, my nostrils flaring to take in her scent. She juked to the side, but Domingo and Lowe had left their positions on either side of me and were already flanking her. Conlan was rolling about in the muck, groaning, his hand cupped to his jaw.

I nudged him with my boot. “Son, is that how you were taught to treat a lady? No wonder you always come home alone. And if that’s how you’d chase prey, you’re lucky you don’t starve.”

He squinted up at me, his green eyes glittering. “I never go hungry. On either score.”

No, of course he didn’t, not with those sharp, pretty eyes. I held my hand down to him.

He swatted it away and leaped lightly to his feet, spinning to face our visitor. She flinched back, even though Domingo and Lowe each had a hold on her. Their big hands, wrapped loosely around her elbows, highlighted her femininity.

“Don’t scare her,” I murmured.

Conlan stalked around her on a spiraling course of intimidation, as if he didn’t hear me, although I knew he did. “That’s not your ride, lovey,” he said, leaning on his East End accent the way he did when he was hiding his vulnerabilities. “How’d you come by it?”

Her eyes—the color of sweetened coffee to go with her milky skin—narrowed at the “lovey” part. Young Conlan was lucky the phrase “staring daggers” was used only for effect. After a cold moment, she slid her gaze past him with deliberate dismissal and looked at me.

“You’re Reeve’s werewolves.” Her tone hovered between question and statement.

Conlan and Lowe both stiffened. Domingo’s hand tightened on her, and she winced, although she quickly tried to cover the instinctive response.

I just looked at her, silent.

She tried to hold my gaze, and the wolf in me whined in eagerness, wanting to be set free. But after another beat, her lashes fluttered down under the weight of my regard.

She bit her lip, bringing out a touch of color in her otherwise wan face. “If you’re not Reeve’s, if you’re more of Lysander’s pack, you can go ahead and kill me now. I’m done. I’m just…done.”

Unable to hold back, Conlan burst out, “Lysander?” at the same time Domingo muttered, “Mierda.” Lowe growled low in his throat.

She closed her eyes, sagging a little, as if she thought she really was done for.

And if she’d been anywhere near Lysander, no wonder she felt that way.

I closed the distance between us and put my hand under her jaw, the stubborn little point of her chin nestling in my palm. “What is your name, little one?”

That popped her eyes open again, and I caught a spark of gold in their depths. “I’m not lovey,” she said. “And I am definitely not little.” She propped a hand on her hip in emphasis, her fingers curling back toward that opulent ass.

I gave her half a smile. “You are to me.”

Since she had to stare upward at a sharp angle to meet my eyes, she couldn’t very well argue with that.

“Your name,” I pressed. I ran the pad of my thumb over her lower lip, as if I could gently pry the information from her tongue. I estimated a fifty-fifty chance that she’d bite.

She kept her gaze fixed on me, but I felt the shudder of her breath over my skin. “Bettina,” she said at last, a blush brightening her freckles. “Bettina Tanzer. I live in Rogue Pass and… oh hell, I don’t even know where I am now. I just followed the GPS.”

Bettina. An Old World name. Not as old as my world, of course, but it fit her well.

Conlan circled the BMW. “Somebody did a number on this thing. The door, obviously. Claw marks down the hood.”

I looked down at Bettina and released her chin. “Lysander?”

She nodded, the last of the flustered blush draining from her cheeks. “Him and his pack. He…he has Reeve.”

All hell broke loose.

Well, actually two distraught alpha werewolves broke loose, but they were plenty of hell when they wanted to be. Conlan demanded we jump in the car stat and backtrack. Domingo was at his side in an instant, checking the GPS to plot an attack.

Only Lowe stayed where he was, and I got the sense he wasn’t so much restraining Bettina as holding her upright.

I cocked an eye at the sun. It had already fallen behind the thicker, lower branches of the pines. We’d be losing it entirely in another hour or so.

Not that the wolf was afraid of the dark.

But that was precisely the problem.

“We’re not going anywhere,” I said.

That brought everyone to a standstill, even the wavering Bettina.

She stared at me. “But… You have to save him. I came all this way…”

“So you did.” I bent to retrieve the clothing that Conlan had so indelicately stripped from her. I held it out to her.

“That’s Reeve’s jacket,” Domingo snarled. “What else did you steal from him?”

I murmured, “If you’d stop talking and use your nose, I think you’ll discover that Reeve gave it all up. Quite happily.”

Bettina blushed again, all the way down her décolletage. She clutched the rumpled silver wool to her chest, hiding all that bountiful flesh and the delicate tattoo that crowned the luxe curve of white skin above her heart. “He sent me to find you,” she beseeched me. “You have to come back with me and find him.”

Ignoring the flick of my finger, Domingo loomed over her, his lip curling in fury. “Reeve would never betray us for panocha. What did you do to him?”

She jerked away from Lowe, widening her stance as she squared off against Domingo. “I am not,” she snarled back, “anyone’s lovey or little one or…brown sugar pussy!” Domingo’s dark eyes widened in surprise that she knew the slang, and I just shook my head, but she was only getting wound up. “I came here because I thought you would help me get him back. But if not, screw you! I don’t need you, not any of you.”

Conlan snorted. “As if you have a chance against Lysander.”

“She knocked you on your ass,” I pointed out.

He pursed his lips, mutely acknowledging the point.

But Bettina was still railing, “He’s a good man—werewolf, whatever—and you’re just going to let him die—”

She gasped and took a staggering step back. The jacket sagged in her arms, and she stared down at herself.

The tattoo on her breast was glowing. To be precise, not the tattoo, but the scar underneath. The fragile crescent arc under the black ink gleamed like pearly snow, like teeth and bone, like moonlight.

Her fingers hovered above the scar, not touching.

I felt a thrill go through my own chest, as if the scar had been carved into me too, and I tightened my fist against the urge to flatten my hand over the mark. Soon to be followed by my mouth.

It demanded all the righteous might in my body to stop myself from taking her this very moment. The wolf raged against my restraint, but I didn’t know what Reeve had been intending when he staked a claim on her. The wolf only cared that she was here, now, with us.

“The moon just came up,” I said. My voice sounded hoarse to my own ears, and the others swiveled their heads to look at me, sensing the strangeness. “We can’t see it yet through the trees, but it’s there. And it’s here too. In you.”

Bettina was too shocked by the oddity in her own skin. “The moon is… What?”

I frowned. “Reeve didn’t tell you?”

“He told me lots, but we were…busy.”

Conlan coughed out a laugh. “Yeah. We all got a whiff of your ‘busy’.”

She whirled on him. “Busy running for our lives. Because he sent you boys out on the easy hunt for Lysander while he took the most dangerous track!”

Lowe tilted his head back and howled. It was a sorrowing sound that sent a chill down my spine.

Bettina started at him, her pupils blown wide and black. She swayed toward him, toward that call of the wild.

“He’s always the first to feel the moon,” I told her. “But you’re even more sensitive. Because you are wolf-born.”

The other males gaped at me.

“Impossible,” Domingo muttered. “Wolf-born females are too rare, like, once in a…”

“A blue moon?” I smiled at him. “She’s marked by the lunar body. Lysander was either stupid and lucky, or he knew exactly what he was doing and decided a bite could push her over the edge. Reeve was even more lucky to intervene. And save her.” For us.

The unspoken words hung in the fading light.

Bettina clasped the jacket tighter to her breast. “Reeve told me a little about the wolf-born. Like his mother.” I restrained my surprise that he’d said anything about his painful memories as Bettina continued, “I am… I’m not like that at all.”

“Your wolf hasn’t risen yet,” I said. “You can’t know what you’ll be.”

She glowered at me. “And I suppose you’re just the man to tell me what that is.”

“I am.” I echoed her stance with my hand over my heart and sketched her a small bow. “I’m Mather Johnson. That one you steamrolled is Conlan. Over there is Domingo, and the quiet one—when he’s not howling at the moon—is Lowe. We all came to Reeve’s territory over the years, and he is our alpha prime.”

“Not if he’s dead,” Conlan muttered.

“Don’t you dare!” Bettina took a threatening step toward him, and this time Lowe was definitely holding her. Holding her back.

My estimation of her rose another notch. With the moon’s tidal pull influencing her, she was fearless. What a prize Reeve had won for us.

Perhaps at the cost of his life.

“We aren’t abandoning him,” I assured her, “but we four can’t chase after Lysander’s pack without a strategy.”

“Five,” she said. “I’m going with you.”

“Bold,” I murmured. “And stupid.”

She bristled. “You don’t understand. He said if…if the bite doesn’t change me, he’d take me home.”

Home? If she survived, that would be with us now. Reeve knew that.

“He lied,” I said. Steeling myself against the way she recoiled against Lowe, I continued relentlessly. “The only way you were leaving was if death took you before the wolf did.”

“But he said…” She touched her temple, as if summoning up memories. “No, you’re right. He only implied I had a choice between Lysander’s slavery and his own.”

In one step, I was in her face. “Do you really want to talk to me about slavery? Lysander would put you in a cage, nothing more than a bottomless source of power for him. Reeve would value your contribution, honor your place as the balance for our pack. That is the difference.”

To my surprise, she only raised her chin to better aim her glare at me. But she did not back down. “Do you really want to talk to me about whether the inability to say no constitutes a yes?”

Ouch. I almost recoiled. No wonder Reeve had danced around the questions she must have posed to him.

She would be a queen among wolves.

I reached out to smooth the brambled locks of her hair beside her anger-flushed cheek. “You didn’t say no to Reeve.”

Her pulse quickened—I heard it—swirling more blood through her face and brightening her brown eyes. She leaned back, tightening the lock of hair between us, but the motion put her spine up against Lowe’s chest. “You aren’t Reeve,” she said, her voice stuttering almost imperceptibly.

But I was too focused on her to miss a single breath. “A little bit of me is,” I told her. “As a little bit of Reeve is me. We are pack.”

Behind her, Lowe whined low in his throat.

I felt it too now, the sweet song of the still-out-of-sight moon, coursing through my veins.

Bettina tilted her head back to look up at Lowe. He stared down, his amber-gold iris a thin, inhuman ring. Meanwhile, I stared at her exposed throat. My gaze dropped lower, to the white swell of her breast and the ink-blackened scar.

I couldn’t stop myself, couldn’t stop the wolf.

I lowered my head. The musky hint of sex clung to Reeve’s coat in her arms, and all my muscles tightened with want. Fingers brushed against the ends of my dreads, skimmed over my shoulder, left naked by the vest. But it wasn’t Bettina’s hand—it was Lowe’s.

My heart ached that she had such power, even unawakened, to bring even our wildest brother to her side, to gentle the beast with a glance.

Tenderly, I kissed the moon in her skin.

There was a sweetness to her skin, as if she’d been dusted in powdered sugar, but underneath I sensed the frantic shush of blood racing through her veins and the gathering tension in her muscles—a raw earthiness swirled with innocence.

Her breath hitched, lifting her luscious breast against my mouth. The roughness of the crescent points teased my lips, and I was suddenly, fiercely exultant she had only the one mark, that she’d avoided the ruination of scarred skin like mine.

Because we would mark her.

From my beast’s triumph, my unease was confirmed: the link was incomplete. The wolf hadn’t risen in her yet. Reeve hadn’t locked down the bond. It was only the three of us, touching but uncertain.

And yet the power was rising like wildfire crowning in the pines, poised to leap across the darkness between.

Lowe howled again, the sound not at all mournful, but ringing with triumph.

A heartbeat behind, I almost joined him.

Until Bettina sagged between us, her lashes fluttering down, her eyeballs rolling back in a dead faint.

Damn. I grabbed for her. Fortunately, Lowe already had his arm under her shoulders. Without even a huff of effort, he swung her up into his embrace, his other arm under her knees. He cradled her against his chest and stared at me. The amber-gold had expanded to fill his eyes as his pupils narrowed to expressive pinpricks: mine.

“I thought we weren’t scaring her,” Conlan said from behind us.

Despite his cheeky words, his voice was rough. He’d felt it too. And even secondhand, through his link to me and Lowe, it had shaken him.

I glanced over my shoulder. Domingo stood with his arms crossed, his face averted. But his jaw was set in lines of granite.

I realized my own jaw was hanging slightly askew, still amazed at the hidden power coursing through her, and I closed my mouth with a silent, vicious snap.

Lysander was not going to willingly leave this treasure behind.

Chapter 3 ~ Bettina

Sounds, blurred and inhuman, came at me as if I were underwater, low and sort of hypnotic, almost calming.

Like distant howling.

That jolted me out of my daze.

It wasn’t inhuman after all. Although it wasn’t entirely human either. It was the four males talking softly somewhere beyond my immediate vicinity. Or three of them talking plus the quiet fourth one—Lowe.

I vaguely remembered the taut power of his arms wrapped around me. But more tentative than Reeve’s touch, as if he’d never had to control his strength before. He’d carried me to a vehicle. Not Reeve’s BMW, I knew, because there’d been no constant cold breeze from the crumpled door. The truck cab had heated, though not so warm as Lowe’s muscled thigh under my cheek.

That masculine pillow must have lulled me into an exhausted sleep.

But I was up now. And so was my blood pressure.

Reeve’s pack intended to keep me prisoner. Reeve must have known that. He’d lied to me! But he saved me from Lysander… No, not saved. Stole.

With that understanding, what did I owe him? And did I think I could sneak away from these four?

I cracked my eyelids, peering suspiciously around. I was lying on a huge, L-shaped leather couch. Without lifting my head, all I could see across from me was a river-rock fireplace. Flames danced behind an iron grill. Though I had the sense of much more space behind me, it reminded me of the little cabin, all hard, masculine edges with the exception of the soft wool blanket wrapped around me.

Maybe there were fireplace tools tucked into the shadows. If I could just slip over there unnoticed…

I edged one toe out from under the blanket.

A soft chuffing noise made me freeze.

I angled my head and found Lowe sitting on the floor just beyond my feet. His watchful expression didn’t change, but his eyes glinted more yellow than the flames.

“You’re awake. Good. We have questions.”

I scrambled upright at the rich, melodious voice behind me.

Yeah. There was no way I was escaping, even if he’d been the only one here, even if I had all the fireplace irons and probably the entire Rogue Pass fire department too.

What was his name? Mather. He circled the end of the long couch, his gaze never leaving me. He was taller than Reeve, and even more muscular, testosterone blatantly displayed by the leather vest. His dreads brushed below the massive bulk of his shoulders. In the flicker of the firelight, his skin was deepest umber. Except for the silvery scars that traced in thick lines over his shoulders and around his biceps. I had no idea what—or who—would leave such terrible markings, but my stomach churned to think how I had thrown the slavery jab at him. All in all, he was intimidating as hell. And I suspected he cultivated that Idris Elba baritone for contrast just to amuse himself.

Thinking of his voice, I refused to look at his mouth.

Which had been on my breast not so long ago.

My skin tingled at the memory of the strange sensations that had coursed through me right before I keeled over. Had that been…the wolf?

I startled when a quicksilver shape vaulted over the couch beside me. The younger platinum-blond punk rock male. Conlan with the touch of cockney in his accent. Definitely a bit of a cock.

He gave me a twisted smile as he settled into the cushions. “So, sleeping lovey. You need to tell us more about how you lost the boss if you want us to get him back.”

At my feet, Lowe made a grumbling noise.

“Oh, sod off, mate,” Conlan said. “She’s not going to swoon again. Are ya?”

I looked around for the fourth male. Domingo, with the slicked club of dark hair and the tight goatee that gave him a sinister air. I didn’t see him. Not that I thought his absence improved my odds of escape any.

Finally I returned my attention to Conlan. “I didn’t faint.”

He slanted a sly glance at Mather who was standing halfway between us and the fireplace. “So much for impressing the ladies with your gentlemanly kisses.”

Mather crossed his arms over his wide chest and grunted. It hadn’t been gentlemanly at all. It had been pagan and wicked and… And very, very sexy.

Yikes. I was looking at his mouth—his wide, full lips, the inner seam touched with an almost delicate pink—when I’d said I wouldn’t. Before Reeve, I’d all but convinced myself I could live the rest of my life on coffee and baked goods. These lusty, hungry werewolves were a terrible influence.

And now their virus was in me.

I jerked my eyes back to Conlan. “What do you need to know?”

“Everything.”

I told them everything, from the attack behind the bakery, to meeting Reeve—well, I left out banging him in the alley and punching him in the nose—then fleeing in his Beemer to the hunting cabin.

“So Reeve shagged you there?” Conlan snorted. “I’ll never be able to sleep in that bed again without dreaming.”

I lifted my chin and stared at him down the length of my nose. “You’ll have to eat on the floor too.”

He jerked back. “You did it on the—”

Mather interrupted. “Reeve was hoping to stimulate the virus, making sure it would be strong enough to take you through the change.” He paced in front of the fire.

“Stimulating?” Conlan snorted. “Is that what the kids call it these days?”

I couldn’t help but echo his dismissive noise with a huff of my own.

Mather turned to face us. “Lupoviridae is passed through saliva—like a bite—but also through semen.” His jaw tightened. “You’re fortunate you weren’t raped. Lysander has been that vicious before with females he believed could be force shifted.”

I opened my mouth, but Conlan beat me to it again. “Force shifted?”

It surprised me that Conlan didn’t know everything there was to know about being a werewolf. Or at least pretend to. Maybe Mather was right when he said they weren’t all alike. I mean, besides the color of their skin.

He angled toward the fire, and I tried not to stare at the scars. The thin crescent on my tit had tormented me all through my childhood, only getting worse—much worse—when puberty hit, but it was nothing compared to his array.

“The change should be as smooth and natural as the phases of the moon. But it can be forced.” Mather glanced at me. “Those who are wolf-born—infected from birth with lupoviridae—are only slightly less vulnerable during the change than those infected later. It’s never a sure thing.” His shoulders hunched almost imperceptibly. “Gravid females stay in wolf form until they bear their young since the wolf is stronger. In centuries past, pups didn’t change until well into childhood. By then, they knew their wolf well and had no fear of it. They’d spend their later childhood learning the ways of the human world, and at puberty, they’d embrace all the changes that entailed. Plus welcoming the return of the wolf. But now, staying wolf is too dangerous. Some are born not even knowing their true selves.”

In the firelight, his gray eyes were as silver as his scars, sharp as knives as he stared at me.

I pressed back into the couch. “You think my mother…”

That unrelenting stare dropped to my breast. “She left the mark on you. So that someone might find you and tell you what you are.”

“She scarred me?”

At my stricken whisper, Lowe made a sound of distress. But I didn’t care about his empathy. Not when I was imagining a razor blade in my mother’s hand.

“She cut her baby, but she didn’t stand up to the man who hit her?” My whisper was long gone, rising with shrill edge. “She could have turned into a wolf and ripped his throat out, and instead she let him beat her to death?”

“She might not have found her inner wolf,” Mather said softly. “Not everyone—even among wolf-born—does. And even for a wolf, ripping out throats isn’t as easy as you might think.”

I bit my lip hard. He had found his wolf, obviously, but he still had so many scars.

I pressed my hand over the tattoo. At least it wasn’t glowing anymore. That had been pretty unnerving. “My grandmother said it was a birthmark.”

“She wasn’t wrong. It is a mark of your birthright.”

Had Oma been a werewolf too? Wouldn’t I have known…somehow? Certainly she’d been a wild thing with the schnapps. But if she wasn’t, had she known that my mother was? Had Mom run into some sexy, dangerous beast and been bitten? My mind was spinning almost as bad as it had been when I faced the four of them in the forest. But those were old questions—dead and buried—and I had other concerns. Despite my heart aching anew behind the scar and its tattoo disguise, I narrowed my focus to the here and now.

“Where is this place?” I asked. “And how are we getting Reeve back?”

“Don’t tell her anything.” Domingo stood at the far end of the couch, his arms crossed over his chest. In the light of the flames, his dark eyes glittered, and with his goatee and slicked hair, he looked even more devilish. “She already knows more than anyone who isn’t pack.”

Mather studied the other male. “Reeve initiated the bond.”

I stiffened. Bond? That sounded almost as ominous as force shifted. I might’ve complained about being lonely, but I didn’t want to be bound. Mom had made that mistake, trapped in a relationship that destroyed her. I’d been halfway down that path myself. Okay, three-quarters with Tommy. Reeve was no Tommy, but in some ways—not even just werewolf ways—I knew he and his pack were even more of a threat to me.

But the angry curl on Domingo’s lips said I was the fly in his royal icing. “Reeve didn’t trigger the start of the bonding ritual. Lysander did. Reeve tried to hijack it, but we don’t know that he finished the job.”

A metallic tang in the back of my throat, like blood, made me grit my teeth. I didn’t like the sound of any of this. “What bond at you talking about? Lysander didn’t do anything except bite me.”

Domingo never even looked at me when he answered, “Exactly. You could be his creature, here to learn our secrets and give him everything.”

The clench in my jaw traveled down to my fists in outrage. “You think I wanted to be bitten? The only thing I willingly gave that psychopath was a bellyful of mace.”

Conlan chortled, but I noticed he didn’t defend me against the accusation.

“You might not want it,” Mather said in a placating tone, “but lupoviridae wants you. All of you. It’s highly mutable, not surprising in a virus that causes shapeshifting, and it changes in response to the other strains it encounters. Being wolf-born, you had your own strain of the virus, even though it was dormant. But when Lysander bit you, the virus would’ve started mutating to blend with his. That commonality is what makes a pack strong. Sharing the same strain makes a powerful link that…” He shook his head slowly, the dreads shifting over his scars. “There are no words. You have to feel it for yourself.”

I didn’t want to feel it. I didn’t want to be bound.

The blanket, which had seemed so soft and comforting, now felt like a noose around my whole body. I shoved free of the folds and pushed to my feet.

Only to discover someone had stolen my jeans.

Chapter 4 ~ Conlan

“Where”—her voice was very, very soft—“are my pants?”

A perverse thrill went down my spine, something I hadn’t felt since the old days back home when me and my mates would kill a school night playing tag with the coal trains that went through town.

I gave her the same cheeky grin I’d given the conductors as they zoomed past, horn blaring. “Tonight’s laundry night, and you had mud on your ass. Thought you’d be thankful.” I knew I was appreciating the view of her full white legs rounding up to her broad hips.

“I want my pants.” She enunciated each word clearly, as if she thought I might not understand. She didn’t think too much of me, I knew. But I was used to that.

“Aye, well, we don’t always get what we want, do we, lovey?”

I put everything I had into my flip tone.

But I knew exactly what I wanted.

Mather had stripped her down to her stretchy tank top and undies, worried that an injury might have caused her to faint. He’d found nothing worse than the bite on her arm and declared her “merely” exhausted and shocked.

As if the big fella had any idea what that sort of vulnerability felt like. I had hung Reeve’s wrinkled coat carefully beside the back door—he’d be back for it, I had no doubt—and loaded Bettina’s clothes into the wash. Her things smelled of forest earth and our alpha prime. And of her, a swirling headiness of sweet and wild that made me want to run around the woods like a crazy man and curl up at the hearth at the same time.

It was going to be a real shame to kill her if she was a spy.

But she made a good show of wounded innocence standing equidistant between the four of us, her fists clenched against her bare thighs. I don’t know what the other lads were staring at, but from where I sat, I thought I had the best view. She stood almost in silhouette with the fire behind her, the flames brightening her soft, pale skin in a whole-body blush. Her curves went on for days, a wonderland to discover.

Under her angry glare, I leaned back in the cushions, widening my legs to give more room for my hardening woody.

Just the quickest flicker of her gaze down to my crotch and I swear I almost shot off right there.

But she spun on Mather instead, the lucky fuck. “Are you holding me here against my will?”

He raised his big black hands, fingers spread, as if to show her he wasn’t holding anything. “Your night with Reeve helped counteract Lysander’s bite. His pack probably can’t track you through that link anymore.”

She stiffened. “He could have done that?”

“If your viral load had mutated to match his. But Reeve…diluted the effect.” He took a step toward her, his hands still raised. “We need to make sure any link with Lysander is absolutely severed.”

Bettina took a half step in retreat then stopped herself. Firelight gleamed on the slate tile under her heels as she rolled up onto the balls of her bare feet. Ooh, fighting stance. “You are not going to bite me.”

And fighting words too. Nice.

“No.” Mather’s voice deepened into his X-rated octave, and his hands came down to skim lightly over her shoulders. “I’m not going to bite you.”

I leaned even further back in the cushions and popped the buttons on my fly to watch the show.

Mather ran his hands up her arms, and even from here I caught the tremor that passed through her. His big hands framed her face, and he leaned down, but slow, so slow, and he was so tall, his descent seemed to take forever.

She had all the time in the world to run, to slam her knee into his groin—which I happened to know she was entirely capable of doing—or at least to turn away or speak a protest.

For half a second I thought she would, but then I saw her waver, saw the longing in her eyes right before her short, thick lashes fluttered down. She lifted her chin and tilted her head just the slightest degree. A welcome.

His wide mouth settled on hers as delicately as the first snowflake settled on a pine needle, trembling on the edge before melting slowly.

On the floor at the other end of the couch, Lowe whined under his breath, and I turned to grin at him as I released my cock from my jeans. His yellow gaze was fixed on the couple. Beyond him, at the far edge of the room, Dom stared too, his lip curled. He saw me watching him and glanced down at my state of arousal.

His groan was almost inaudible. Almost, but not quite.

But he turned toward the shadows and slipped out of the room.

Poor sod. Well, that left more of her for the rest of us.

Mather was working his black magic—ha, he’d kick my ass if he heard me say that aloud—and Bettina’s hands, which had been clenched at her sides, were tangled in his dreads.

That escalated quickly.

It was just the virus, I knew, and the moon and the shock. And the black magic, of course. We were werewolves, in a world that didn’t believe and wouldn’t understand. Some of us fled from the face of such rejection. Others, like Lysander, turned to violence. The other choice was to take such pleasure as we could find, to catch it, to hold it fast, and to devour it whole.

I knew which choice I would make and, in doing so, stave off those other terrible options for some other night. Maybe given her druthers, Bettina would have chosen flight or fight, but in Mather’s hypnotic hands, instead she’d be fucked.

She let out a breathy moan as Mather freed her lips and traced his mouth down the arched column of her throat. He bent her back, easily holding her weight in the crook of one elbow as he worked up the edge of her tank with his free hand.

I stiffened—all of me—and leaned forward. My cock swelled into my palm, my calluses abrading the sensitive underside, and I echoed her restless sigh.

Her head lolled, and she opened her eyes.

To see me watching her.

Her pupils dilated, a bottomless pool of desire. In the depths, I saw that she too had faced darkness, perhaps more terrible than any werewolf, and she had been afraid to ask for the pleasure.

Well, we might be werewolves, creatures of earth and night, but we could show her how to fly into the moonlight.

With the impetus of her glazed eyes on me, I rose. I was already barefoot—Lowe hated boots in the house—and I reached over my head to strip off my T-shirt, tossing it aside.

Her lashes fluttered down—Mather had his long fingers cupped under the swell of her breast, distracting her, the greedy bastard—but when I took a step forward, her eyes sprang open again. Hunger snapped in her gaze, and my cock jutted toward her.

I flayed open my jeans, exposing myself. I waited.

Her hand drifted down along Mather’s shoulder, as if she were reading his scars like Braille. Her fingers left his skin and stretched across the shadows and flicker of firelight.

Toward me.

Elation swept through me, but I didn’t take her hand. That was…too much. I skimmed the roughened pads of my fingertips up the inner skin of her forearm, where the pulse leapt, feeling her shudder. I eased behind her and brushed the tumble of curls over her shoulder, exposing the back of her neck.

Hey, it was Mather who said he wouldn’t bite her.

I set my teeth in the muscle at her nape and closed my jaws gently. She let out a faint whine and tilted her head forward in submission.

Mather snorted as he got a face full of auburn locks. His elbow, still supporting her at the small of her back, nudged me in the gut. Not kindly. But he finally moved his arm and leaned her back into my naked chest.

Ah, gods and monsters, she was glorious. Soft and curved and womanly. And underneath that, muscle and bone and—hidden deep—wolf.

We are all more than one thing, and I wanted all of her.

With both his hands free now that I was doing the heavy lifting, Mather pushed up her tank top. I was there for the assist, skimming it up over her raised arms. I tossed it on my shirt, knowing our scents would mingle. From my position behind and above her, I looked down at the double swell of her breasts. The sprinkling of inked stars trembled with her frantic breaths. I remembered the way the moon scar had glowed, a beacon summoning us to the hunt.

And we’d come.

Or we would come…

Mather dropped to his knees in front of Bettina, his tongue tracing an arc over her belly as he eased her panties down. I wasn’t even sure she noticed because I took the opportunity to reach around and cup the lush globes of her breasts in both hands. As big as my hands were, she overflowed me, her body a bold match to her spirit.

She squirmed against me, her bare ass grinding on my exposed cock. I gritted my teeth, striving for control. Even for the Wild Hunt of legend, there were rules. Rules of engagement, rules of war.

I adjusted my hands on her breasts to gentle her, but she only bucked more insistently. Ah, she was sensitive. Teasing, I reached higher to circle her areola. The flesh crinkled under my not-quite touch, and her nipples jutted long and needy. She mewled and wriggled.

Right, then. Fuck the rules.

I molded her nipples into aching hard nubs, and her hips jolted.

Still on his knees, Mather growled and latched his hands on her thighs, steadying her. He looked up at me, his gray eyes buffed to raw silver by his lust. Our strong and studious Mather had his limits.

I smirked down at him and tweaked her nipples again. She shuddered and gasped. The scent of her arousal was intoxicating, a sweet and wild musk that went right to my head. Both of them.

My cock prodded at her backside, and she parted her thighs, letting me slip between. Her cream slicked over the tip of my dick. I stroked once in the luxe heat of her outer folds, my eyes half closing.

Mather cupped her mound, his meaty palm hiding the cinnamon curls between her legs. His thick fingertips caressed the head of my shaft, and my knees almost buckled.

He smirked up at me. Fucker.

Fingering the two of us, he leaned forward to kiss her navel. Then he went lower.

Any bastard who says black men aren’t cunning linguists has never seen Mather Johnson whip out that Harvard-educated tongue.

Since I was behind, I lost sight of him as he ducked below her belly, but I felt him. I closed my eyes all the way this time, leaning Bettina back into my arms. His breath huffed across her pussy and my penis, and both of us groaned. The flick of his tongue was agony; the long, slow laving was ecstasy. When he worked his fingers up inside her, seeking that inner mystery—no, not her wolf, her G-spot—his knuckles bumped my heaving cock. I ground my jaws tight, but I wasn’t going to make it. She was too much for me, the perfume of her flooding my nose, the taste of her in my throat, thanks to the pack link with Mather.

Reaching for strength and control, I dragged my eyelids open to see Lowe lounging against the couch, stark naked, his yellow eyes rolled back in his head. His cock was in his fist, gleaming with spit and gushing like a geyser. No fucking help there.

I reached further, felt Dom’s agonized awareness though he’d shifted and run for the hills. Ruthlessly, I seized his coldness and his pain, the very distance, for myself, and shunted the pleasure his way, all the heat and sweat and exhilarating fragrance of Bettina coming apart in my arms. My cock was rock hard and I could run forever…

She spasmed against me, her back arching off my chest, letting in a rush of air and firelight. She screamed, and somewhere far away a howl echoed in the darkness.

I shot up into her pussy, out toward Mather’s wicked tongue. I locked my knees to keep from toppling over right there, like when she’d smashed me off my feet when we first met.

Damn, she was everything a boy or a wolf was waiting for.

Now if only we could keep her.

Chapter 5 ~ Bettina

This was madness! I wanted to die of mortification. I had never, ever done anything like this before.

Except I had actually, not so long ago even, with Reeve. But this was worse than letting one sexy guy jump me in the alley—three times worse!

And yet if I happened to die right this second, I would die happy. My body still pulsed with the aftershocks of the orgasm that had burst through me.

Mather and Conlan—black and platinum—hazed together through my half-closed lashes. I couldn’t bear to open my eyes all the way to find Lowe, who I sensed watching. And somehow I knew it was Domingo we’d heard howl.

Oh. My. God.

Cool fingers wrapped around my wrist, and I almost flinched, my nerves overwhelmed by sensation. But then the other touches fell away, leaving only that grasp.

I finally focused on Lowe, who was leading me away from the others. I couldn’t look back. I just couldn’t.

Lowe was completely naked—as was I. He wasn’t as massively built as Reeve and Mather, nor as sleekly menacing as Conlan and Domingo. But there was something about him even more wild. And he had watched while I… If I wasn’t going to expire of shame right there, then I had to come—har har—to terms with what I done: let the other two males have their way with me. No, that wasn’t entirely true. While I’d had my way with the two other males.

I was so grateful he didn’t say anything. But really, what could someone say to that?

Besides “wow”, of course.

He padded in front of me, silent on the hardwoods that led down a long hallway. The firelight didn’t reach this far, but I just followed him in unresisting bewilderment.

The chalet—no cabin, this—continued in its unrelentingly masculine vibe, which made my still quivering and pulsing female flesh seem sacrilegious. But when Lowe stopped in a smaller room and flicked on a bank of small frosted globes to reveal a bathroom, with indoor plumbing and everything, I almost wept girlie tears of relief.

“Tell me there’s hot water,” I said, “and I will…” I started to say something gratuitously naughty, but considering what I’d done mere minutes ago, that seemed been-there-done-that. “…I won’t cry,” I said instead.

He grinned, his amber eyes crinkling. From the narrow linen closet, he withdrew a stack of fuzzy towels and laid all of them in my arms.

Then he leaned forward and rubbed his nose lightly over mine.

I blinked as he drew back, and he gave me another grin and a little sneeze.

“Thanks,” I said.

But when he vanished out the door, pulling it silently closed behind him, I wished he’d stayed. Because worse than talking was thinking.

I turned the water as hot as it would go—this was getting to be a problem with me—and tried to wash away my sins.

All of them.

Despite my roiling emotions, I didn’t linger. Because even worse than thinking was the urge to hide. I didn’t want to do that. Not anymore.

When I got out, my clothes were folded neatly on the bench under the towel rack. Conlan had said he did the laundry, but I suspected Lowe had surreptitiously deposited them here since I never heard anyone enter or leave. Except it wasn’t just my jeans and hoodie; there was a black tank top instead of my flowered one and a pair of boxer shorts. That appeared to be unused. Which didn’t surprise me after all the commando cock I’d seen in the last two days.

I giggled to myself—definitely a sign of the impending apocalypse—while I pulled on their hand-me-downs. Look how I fit so nicely into these oversized werewolf warrior castoffs. It’s like I was meant to be here.

That thought banished the snickering.

See, it was better not to think.

I got dressed, found toothpaste in the drawer and brushed my teeth with my finger, and gave myself one last look in the mirror. The glass was still a little foggy from my hot shower, and I looked…like me but not like me.

Fair enough. I wasn’t acting like me either. What had happened to Bettina Tanzer, bakery owner, fat girl, and lonely stray-cat feeder? I didn’t know who I was anymore.

And I had a sneaking suspicion there was only one way to find out.

Straightening my spine, I marched out into the dark hallway and followed the flicker of flames back to the great room, peering around me as I went. I’d been unconscious when they brought me here and sex-dazed when Lowe led me out, but I was in full snoop mode now.

Reeve had said his mother’s influence had helped his pack integrate with the real world, but he hadn’t mentioned that they must all be doctors and lawyers and investment bankers. Every line of the chalet had that effortless elegance that only came from big money. The bathroom had been marble and chrome; the floors were perfectly smooth mahogany; the arched ceiling of the hall soared up into the two-story vault of the great room where that lovely river-rock fireplace dominated the wall flanked by floor-to-ceiling windows framing the blackness outside.

The only thing missing was…heart. Despite its elemental beauty, the house felt empty. No pictures on the walls, no throw rugs, no curtains. Eesh, hopefully no one else had been looking through those windows.

I stopped at the end of the big leather couch and took in a steadying breath.

Mather was sitting in the crook of the L, half facing the fire, half facing me. His arm was slung along the back of the couch, and the firelight glimmered on the black leather of his vest and the silver of his scars. Despite the king-at-his-ease pose, his jaw was tight.

“You didn’t even get off,” I said. A crude challenge, but I was curious too.

“That wasn’t why I did it.”

Did me. I wandered idly nearer the fire. Hard to see past the flames, but… Ah, the fire poker was right there. I turned to face him, feeling better now that I knew a half pace backward and that fire poker would slap right into my palm.

I eyed him with a touch of resentment. “I can’t seem to resist you werewolves.”

He inclined his head, the dreads sliding over the leather like the lazy swish of a predator’s tail. “Of course you can’t.” When I made a scoffing noise, he added, “It’s the wolf in you.”

Was that true? Was I as instinctively drawn to dangerous, violent men as Mom had been?

Would I end up like her?

Knee-jerk rejection locked my knees as I stood straighter. I made my own choices, damn it. “I haven’t felt what you’re talking about.”

“You will. When she rises.”

“And if…if it doesn’t? Reeve said I could leave.”

“He said that.” Mather’s tone was neutral, neither a question nor a confirmation.

I narrowed my eyes. “And he’s your alpha prime.”

“He’s not here. And might be dead.”

On stiffened legs, I jolted a step toward him in anger. “He is not dead.”

“From your account, it wasn’t looking good for him when you drove away.”

Shame and regret slammed through me, a thousand times more incriminating than anything I’d felt while these strangers’ cocks were sliding on my flesh. But that had just been sex—insane and mind-blowing sex, but just sex. Leaving Reeve behind was…wrong. Getting it on with his pack while he was gone was wrong too, even if Mather thought Lysander could track me through the link. Maybe they should abandon me to the crazy gold wolf. I was screwing up everything. And everyone.

“Reeve is alive,” I repeated, though the words seethed with rough emotion. “He’s waiting for us.” I clenched my fist over the crescent moon scar, and this time, my voice vibrated with certainty. I knew I was right. I had to be right.

Mather studied me. “You feel him through the bond?”

That bond thing again. I didn’t like the sound of that any more than thinking of myself as a coward. “It doesn’t have anything to do with my feelings,” I objected. Girls like me weren’t allowed to have feelings. We existed to comfort others. To be confidants and sidekicks. Comic relief and occasionally objects of kinky desire, if we had the right lingerie. I was like one of my cupcakes: pretty and well frosted, a guilty pleasure to be walked off the next day.

That was the part of me I wanted to change, never mind shapeshifting.

Even Lysander, who’d started this whole damn mess, hadn’t stuck around. But Reeve… He had stayed the night, he had fought for me. Maybe his motives hadn’t been pure, but I wasn’t going to leave him out there to die alone. I wanted to look into the icy-clear reflection of his eyes again and see what he’d seen in me.

See if I believed him.

Mather dragged one hand over his dreads and let out a soundless sigh, his broad chest heaving. “There’s someone I want you to talk to.”

I stiffened. I’d been glad to not see the other males in the room, giving me more time to figure things out. But Mather held out a rather bulky cordless handset.

“There’s no connection out here, so you need the sat phone. The number is dialed in. Just click talk. She knows you’ll be calling, but don’t tell her Reeve is missing or that Lysander is loose in our territory. She’s…a friend, of sorts. But the wolf in her will want to press any advantage.” He tossed the phone.

I caught it reflexively and stared down as if it were a grenade. “Who is ‘she’?”

“Another wolf-born female. The closest one. She centers the pack outside Seattle. Her name is Lucy.”

I glanced at him bemusedly. “What am I supposed to talk to her about?”

He shrugged. “Girl things.” He pushed to his feet and sauntered out, leaving me alone.

Well, if that wasn’t the most exasperating thing ever.

I pressed the talk button.

But before I could say anything, I heard, “Whatever he’s trying to get you to do, the correct response is ‘Only if I wanna.’”

I blinked. “Uh. Hello.”

“Hey there, hon. But you don’t live in the hello world anymore. You run with wolves now. Alpha male werewolves. And they will run amok all over you if you let them. They’ll do it sexy like, so it’s tempting, but don’t let them get away with that shit.”

Lucy’s voice was softened with a touch of Southern charm, but the mettle was right there. Not so much steel magnolia as rebar kudzu.

“I’m calling you because…” I rolled my eyes even though she couldn’t see it. “Well, mostly because Mather made me.”

“Mm-hmm, that’s exactly what I was saying. Did he twirl those dreads of his?”

I considered. “Sort of. And he was flexing at the time.”

“Oh, I can totally picture that.” She paused as if savoring the image in her mind. “If you get tired of his smart-ass self, send him north.”

I wanted to laugh at the idea of telling Mather to do anything. But my throat closed, half with a thrill of pleasure at the thought of commanding him, half with a threatening growl that anyone else would think of taking him from me.

What the hell. I cleared the chokepoint from my voice to ask, “Any other advice?”

“I already said it.” A tinny crackle hitched down the line as our signal bounced to the satellite and back. Despite the interference, her word cracked with vehemence: “Run.”

The flush of annoyed—and annoying—lustful heat evaporated from my body in a cold snap, as if the chill of space had leached the life from me. “Excuse me?”

All hint of charm left her voice, exposing the bare metal. “Run. If you can. Mather said your wolf hasn’t risen yet, that you have doubts. You still have a say in this. No one can force the bond. If you don’t want this, then run.”

For all his warnings about Lucy, I was pretty sure Mather had no idea she was going to say that to me. Though her suggestion felt wrong, traitorous, I couldn’t keep the plaintive note out of my voice. “I don’t even know what this really is.”

“It’s power like you’ve never felt,” she said. “And it’s utterly terrifying. You hold the life of the pack in your hand. But these are alpha males. They are big and bad and dangerous, so your embrace has to be even bigger, even badder. Think you can handle that?”

“No,” I said. “I’m a baker. I handle caffeine addicts and chocoholics.”

She laughed. “Werewolves like sweets.” Her voice gentled. I felt her softening across the line. “Most of them have never known softness or sweetness. Reeve is special. At least he grew up with a woman’s touch. I imagine it almost broke him to lose that, to see what happens to a pack without its center, but for the chance to have it again…” She let out a low whistle. “Hon, run if you can. Because if you can’t, you’re gonna need to be a rock to hold against the onslaught.”

My heart was pounding so hard—like fleeing footsteps—I was afraid she’d hear it over the phone. “I can’t run,” I whispered. I couldn’t tell her why, though I wished I could. Wouldn’t she want to help end Lysander’s deadly raids? To stop him from biting other women like us?

But if I hadn’t been bitten…

“I wish you luck then,” she said. “If you live, let’s go power-walk Mount Hood. You bring the chocolate, and I’ll bring the wine.”

“Sounds…great.” At least the chocolate and wine part. My stomach growled in agreement.

“Are you alone?” she asked, her tone changing.

“Yeah.” I sank to the edge of the couch, wondering if she kept up her aerobics just in case she needed to use her own advice.

“Because there’s one other thing…”

Chapter 6 ~ Mather

Gathered with the others in the kitchen, I rubbed my clenched jaw. Bad move. I still smelled her on my fingers, and my cock hardened all over again.

I went to the sink to wash my hands and face, and when I turned back, Conlan smirked at me. The smug little prick. Like he’d gotten any more out of it than I had. Of course, he’d had his dick between her legs, which was more than I’d gotten. Domingo lurked on the far side of the eating bar, as if that length of granite was enough to separate him. Only Lowe, lounging stark naked on the near counter with his back against the wall, looked truly happy.

“She’s dangerous,” Domingo said. “I felt it. While you all were distracted. She could end us. The power in her is…” His long fingers, so expressive on a guitar—or with a knife—flicked open helplessly as words failed him.

I stood dripping, meeting his turbulent dark eyes. “I know. Or she could save us.”

I didn’t let him look away. He knew better than most how close death walked with us. It was our shadow, and no one escaped his shadow, ever. But sometimes the darkness crept inside.

And to be sure, both of us were right. Even if Bettina saved us, we would no longer be what we’d been. Our lone-wolf years would end.

No wonder Domingo was fighting us.

“You’re with us, Dom,” Conlan said softly. “Always.”

Sometimes I was amazed such a smug prick could be so sensitive.

Domingo was having none of it. He shook his head, the black club of his hair lashing. “We already lost Reeve because of her.”

I opened my mouth to calm him down—although once again, he wasn’t wrong.

“We’re getting him back.”

That was what I was going to say, but she said it first. I turned to see Bettina putting the sat phone beside Lowe.

“Get your bare butt off the counter,” she said as she stalked past without looking at him. “Playtime is over.”

Conlan lifted his eyebrows and side-eyed me uncertainly.

From the other end of the room, Domingo growled, “Nobody cooks here.”

“It’s such a nice setup, I’d be inclined to say that’s a pity. But in this case, maybe it’s for the best. Either way, it’s about to change.”

I folded my arms over my chest. “What did Lucy tell you?”

“That I’m insane.” She jerked open the refrigerator door and peered inside. “This is worse than the cabin.” She yanked out several containers and turned to the counter. Where Lowe was watching her. “Down.”

He slid off and padded toward me.

She deposited her finds on the counter and turned to the sink. She rummaged underneath and found the spray bleach and paper towels. She bustled through the kitchen, squirting as she went. Lowe sidled behind me and sneezed.

She handed him a clean paper towel. “Bless you. Don’t use his dreads.”

I snapped my head around to glare at Lowe. He tilted his head in confusion.

Bettina quirked her lips at me. Damn, but she might as well be one of us already.

She whirled back to the cabinets and started going through them methodically, shoving aside what she didn’t want and claiming the rest. “I’m not going to tell you what else Lucy said, because it doesn’t matter.”

I’d known it was a risk, putting the two in touch. But werewolf females faced challenges even I didn’t understand.

I rather suspected the challenges included male werewolves.

Bettina cranked up the stove, murmuring contentedly to herself as the blue jets heated the griddle. The domestic scene made my innards clench that Reeve wasn’t here to see it, see the home his mother had made coming to life again.

She looked up at me. “If you could get everyone something to drink, please.” She angled her stare to Conlan. “You set the table. Plates and forks are fine, and I suppose paper towels for napkins.”

She had us whisking around the kitchen, and in another few minutes she was serving up pancakes dusted with powdered sugar and topped with slices of soft, warm pears. I hadn’t even known we had fruit.

Lowe was already at the table with fork in hand as the rest of us gathered.

Bettina glanced across the kitchen to where Domingo stood stiffly in the corner. “We are getting him back,” she insisted. “This is basically what I made for him at the cabin. If you are linked, as you say, maybe he’ll taste it, wherever he is, and know we are coming for him.”

Domingo shuddered, his face averted, but the movement jolted him out of his frozen stance. He edged across the room and took the seat farthest from Bettina.

She ignored the slight, although I was sure she must have noticed it. Instead, she glanced around the table. “Eat. And I don’t want to hear a word until the plates are clean.”

As if we needed the encouragement. We all went for the stack of hot cakes steaming in the center of the table. Damn, if only we had whipped cream.

But then my mind went to other uses…

“Lysander wants me,” Bettina said. “So I’ll be the bait.”

My fork skidded across the plate with a little shriek. “You can’t—”

“Ah-ah.” She pointed at my plate. “Eat first.”

Lowe growled in his throat. She turned her finger on him. “No. Not a word.”

But we all stared at her.

“They outnumber us,” she said. “You have two things going for you: home court advantage and me. You’re going to have to work those hard to win.”

I glared at her. “You are not a ball we pass around and fight over.”

“No talking, remember?” She glared back. “I’ve thought about it, and this is our best option. We can lure Lysander to a place that’s good for us, where he can’t bring all his resources to bear at once. You tell him you want to trade: me for Reeve.”

“He’ll never believe we’d give you up willingly—” Conlan started, and I grunted in agreement.

Bettina shook her head. “He’ll believe it because he’s proved himself the kind of male who bites and runs. Reeve said he keeps his women as slaves. He thinks he’s much more important than me, and he’ll think you believe the same.” She glanced at Domingo. “What do you think?”

He had not even picked up his fork yet, but he did now and took a bite of his hot cake before answering. “I thought we weren’t talking.”

She gave him a magnanimous hand wave that almost made me grin. “Speak, chess master.”

He studied her. “What makes you think I play chess?”

“I saw the pieces on the shelves by the fireplace when I was thinking about taking the fire iron and bashing you all over the head.”

He tilted his head. “That…is not an opening gambit I’m familiar with.”

“Yeah, well. I figured you must be the one who played because process of elimination.”

“Hey,” I protested.

But Domingo only smiled thinly. “You’d give yourself back to Lysander?”

“You already accused me of being a spy.”

“Maybe I changed my mind.”

“Maybe I think you’ll rescue me in the nick of time.”

His smile faded—and I could sense the anguished memories roiling behind his dark stare—but I felt something between them ease.

Domingo cut another giant wedge of pancake topped with pear. He wolfed down the rest in a few bites before he said, “I went through the Z4. You had Reeve’s jacket, and the GPS was in the cradle. But his cell phone wasn’t there.”

“He had it with him,” Bettina said. “He must have left it in his jeans when he shifted before Lysander’s wolves found us.”

“They’ll have found it by now. If they get in range of a cell tower, we can call them and set up the exchange.”

Forget her no-speaking rules. “He might believe females are chattel,” I interrupted, “but he’ll also believe this is a trick.”

“And he’ll be right. But it won’t stop him from biting.” She tucked her arm against her belly. “Again.”

I hated this. Hated it more than…anything in a long time. “We can’t risk you,” I said softly. “Not when we’ve just found you.”

The glint of gold in her brown eyes was bright when she met my gaze. “You’d sacrifice Reeve instead?”

“Yes,” I said.

“No.” She looked at Domingo. “So, I’ll ask again: what do you think? Is there a place around here that’d be good for wolf hunting?”

He took another pancake. “Give me two hours. I’ll give you a plan.”

She nodded once and pushed away from the table, her plate untouched. She vanished into the great room, leaving the four of us to our treat.

Lowe looked around at us, shrugged, and snagged her plate.

I sat back in my seat. “So.”

“I’ll figure out a way,” Domingo said.

Conlan muttered under his breath, “I hope so. This time.”

Domingo froze, every muscle and his black stare locking tight. His fury and disgrace stung through our pack link, but Conlan didn’t relent.

Without another word, Domingo rose and stalked out.

“You really think that helps him?” I asked wryly.

“He’s not the one in danger,” Conlan argued.

But he was, in his own way. Same as the rest of us, although probably Domingo was closest to the edge. Even I didn’t know his whole story, and secrets were hard to keep from pack, but I knew he—like the rest of us—had been drawn to Rogue Mountain, to the ghosts of love that still flickered here like embers burned low.

And now, with Bettina, the potent bonds of a female-centered pack might blaze up again. She was more than powdered sugar, she was gunpowder. I crossed my arms over my chest, and under my fingertips, the scars were a blatant reminder that the fire of love could warm and light the darkness…

Or it could burn everything to ash. I didn’t blame Domingo for his doubts.

“He’ll pull out all the stops,” I said at last. “But he doesn’t need the reminder.” He lived with it every day on this mountain.

Conlan rose, taking empty dishes with him. “We all need the reminder of what we become if we stray, even for a second.” He glanced at Lowe. “Sorry, boyo.”

Lowe grumbled softly as Conlan cleared his plate and loaded the dishwasher.

“If we’re going to get Reeve back, we’re all going to have to pull together,” I said.

“You think I don’t know that? But you’re no fool, even if you did go to that fancy school. Reeve’s been holding us, but he’s on the verge too. Even before this, even before the rumors of Lysander coming. We could get him back…and we still might not get him all.” For once, all the cockiness was gone from him. He braced his arms wide on the once-again empty counter, his green eyes downcast. “This could force us to the breaking point.”

His hopelessness triggered a seething rage in me, the kind I thought I’d beaten a long time ago. I gritted my teeth. “The only thing gonna get broken is your whiny mouth if you keep yammering.”

“Just because you don’t want to hear it—”

I slammed my fists down on the table, driving myself upward to my full height. “I don’t.”

“I can’t feel him.” Conlan raised his gaze finally. “There’s just…silence.”

Lowe whined and looked at me, his amber eyes wide with shock.

“I…” I groped with numb mental fingers. How had I not noticed? But Lowe hadn’t either, and he was the one most instinctively aware of all of us. “When?”

“I don’t know. I guess we were all distracted, like Dom said.”

Reeve couldn’t be dead. There’d be worse than silence in the bond. There would be an endless void, threatening to suck us all down.

“We’ll find him,” I said. We had to. “Go make nice with Domingo and get us a defensible position, and then make that call to Lysander. Lowe, you and I will go through the armory, see what we need.”

And when that was done, I needed to see to the one weapon that might be the only way to win the night: a wolf-born female to become the force that bound us all.

Keep reading for a sneak peek at Part 4

Wolf Born: Heart of the Pack Part 4: Bound

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About the Author

Elsa Jade, author of sexy shapeshifting romances, also writes paranormal romance, urban fantasy romance, and science fiction romance as Jessa Slade and sexy contemporary romance as Jenna Dales. In all her incarnations, she believes in the transformational power of love and is thrilled to share her stories with like-minded readers.

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Part 4: Bound

Chapter 1 ~ Bettina

For I didn’t know how long, I sat on the couch with my head in my hands. From the kitchen, I could hear the murmur of masculine voices, punctuated by the occasional thump.

I wanted to thump myself. If I was going to sacrifice myself for no reason, why hadn’t I just stayed with Reeve? Maybe he could’ve gotten away, if not with me than at least with his life.

Of course, if I’d stayed, I would never had met Mather and Conlan and let them…

While Lowe and Domingo had apparently enjoyed it all through their psychic link or whatever…

The backs of my knuckles, facing the fireplace, were warm, but nothing like the blazing heat of my hidden face.

“Bettina?”

I scraped my palms down my cheeks, trying to squish the embarrassment out of me as I looked up at Mather.

He stood between me and the fire, eclipsing the light, and I hoped I managed a bland expression when I asked, “Are you going to try to talk me out of it?”

He crossed hs arms over his chest, the leather vest creaking a protest, even as he said, “No. It’s your choice, and a brave one.”

Great. Now I had a choice. Not with the bite, not with becoming a werewolf, but with possibly risking my life, sure.

I really was throwing myself to the wolves.

I wondered which ones would catch me.

“But we have a problem,” he said.

I twisted up one corner of my lips in an attempt at levity. “Just one?”

He didn’t even try to return the smile. “Conlan is afraid that Reeve might be… that Lysander may have done something already.”

A force much darker and colder than Mather’s shadow loomed over me. I clamped my hands together to stop them from shaking. “You think Reeve is dead?”

“No.” He took a long stride toward me and dropped to one knee in front of me. He enclosed both my hands in one of his. “No, I don’t think that. Conlan was the first to come here after the collapse of Reeve’s natal pack, so the two of them have a particularly close connection. But I think we would know if the link had been permanently shattered.”

I looked down at our threaded fingers, his long and black, mine rough and stubby. “The pack bond,” I murmured. I still didn’t understand how it worked. Sort of mental but sort of physical. “Can you… can you figure out what’s wrong with him? If he’s hurt or maybe where he is?”

“It’s not quite that simple,” Mather said. “The spirit of the wolf is very intuitive and sensitized, so the bond can seem almost psychic.” I jolted a little at his use of the word I’d thought earlier, even as he continued, “But it’s not exact or accurate every time, even when the bond is strong and centered. And now that even Conlan has lost touch with him…”

His grip on my hand tightened almost painfully, but I could tell he wasn’t aware of his telltale loss of control in that moment. “What can we do?”

“Us, nothing. But I’m hoping you might be the key.”

My stomach churned with a dull panic. “But I’m not… I don’t feel it. The bond, I mean.”

“Not yet, I know. Until your wolf rises, you won’t. But Reeve’s wolf would’ve been reaching out to yours, and the link on his side was wide open, waiting. If you’d been able to shift, Lysander’s pack wouldn’t’ve had a chance against you. But it was too soon. Now the link is exposed, vulnerable, and we need your wolf to answer.”

“You want to force shift me.”

His expression twisted, and his grip abruptly loosened, so I knew he knew what he was doing now: what Lysander had wanted to do.

Only Mather was using human guilt and words instead of wolf violence.

I wasn’t sure which was worse.

“So once again, not really a choice.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice.

“You could leave Reeve to die.” Mather’s deep baritone gave the pronouncement a horrible resonance.

I yanked my hands loose from his. “You know I won’t do that. Why would I have come here at all if that’s what I wanted?”

“Then let the wolf out,” he snapped. “I feel you holding back. When my mouth was on your breast, I felt your heart pounding and your soul yearning to soar, and yet you did not let her out.”

Despite him blocking the fire and the fear of Reeve’s imprisonment, my cheeks burned.

Almost as hot as other parts of me.

Want to read more?

The trouble continues in Wolf Born: Heart of the Pack Part 4: Bound

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