“What happened to your father?” Lee asked. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me, but he was too old to enlist, surely. Did he get fake ID?”
“Logging accident,” I told Lee, trying to hide my bitter doubt at the words. “Dead tree came down on him.”
“You’re kidding me.” Lee set the barrow down to stare at me. “Alpha knew logging in and out, every inch of it, every kink of the chains, every creak of rotten heartwood, where to notch, where to place ropes. He was killed by a widowmaker?”
I shrugged. “So they said. Half of us were overseas fighting, including Jonathan.” I’d have trusted Dad’s Second, but he’d been young and fit enough to join the bitter fight. “They were trying to get by with fewer men in the woods, trying to meet war demands on short deadlines. I don’t know. Mom seemed to believe it.” But Mom had been easygoing to a fault and, with Dad gone, she had no real status in the pack. “I wasn’t going to swear to Stanley, regardless.”
“No.” Lee and I exchanged a glance that shared our dislike of Dad’s Third. A powerful wolf, a strong fighter, but lazy and a man I hadn’t trusted.
“What about you?” I asked him. “I expected you to find a pack to belong to. Did you try?”
For a second, Lee’s eyes held a heat I didn’t understand, but then he said, “No. Never went looking. There were a couple of other wolves in my platoon from a Texas pack, and we ran together a time or two in Europe, but they weren’t the type I wanted at my back once the Jerries stopped shooting at us.”
“Didn’t you miss it, though?”
Lee stared at me, and I flushed. Of course he had. Just as I had. Wolves weren’t made to be alone.
Hell, I’d come within inches of accepting Stanley as my Alpha, just to fill that empty dark place in my head where my pack bonds were supposed to be. I should’ve been able to close my eyes and see the threads of glowing light leading to my Alpha, my packmates. I should’ve known when one of them was in danger, known when my alpha was angry with me, or pleased, by how it felt, without even looking. When Dad died, my bonds ripped loose and went dark. My head became such a lonely place, I’d almost let a bad man own me to fix that feeling.
And Lee had been a lone wolf a decade longer.
“Something led me here, to you,’ I said, starting to rake as he dumped fresh gravel out. “I wonder if it wasn’t that, somehow. My wolf, reaching out for a pack and finding you.” I glanced at Lee, figuring he might be pleased with that idea, but he scowled down at his work. My pleasure at the thought died. Perhaps he was that rare wolf who didn’t want a pack at all.
We ate a simple lunch of bread and cheese, sitting on a stone wall under a tree near the mayor’s driveway. My hands stung with popped blisters and Lee reached for my wrist. His touch on my skin resonated in an unfamiliar way, as if he’d run hot fingers over me from the inside. My whole body liked that sensation, yearned toward it. I guess I was starved for human contact. Embarrassingly, even my groin responded and I raised one knee to hide the effect, twisting free of his grip before he could notice.
Deep down inside me, I felt my wolf lift his head, excited in his own way, searching. I told him,Shh. Just Lee. We’ll run as a pack tonight.My wolf settled, feeling pleased.
“I should’ve given you gloves.” Lee brushed a fingertip around my biggest sore at the base of my thumb. “You should take the afternoon off.”
“They’ll heal when I shift.”
“Even so, they must hurt. Why make things worse?”
I shrugged, unable to say how I was finding myself more and more settled in my skin, the longer we worked side by side.
I’d always figured I was that rare wolf for whom going alone really was the best choice. Now I had to admit it’d been practical, not perfect. Very few Alphas were good with a pack member constantly travelling— especially far enough for their bonds to stretch thin— for anything less than a war. I hadn’t searched out a new pack because it would’ve meant giving up my profession, or at least curtailing the most interesting parts. But inside, I’d clearly yearned for wolf company more than I realized.
Every move Lee made sang of his wolf to me, in the smoothness of his steps and the shift of powerful muscles under his sweat-slicked skin. He’d hauled off his T-shirt and tucked it into the back of his Levis. The damp scent of sweat and wolf came to my nostrils and settled down in my core. Even the way we both alerted and turned in unison at the sound of a rabbit in the hedge made my wolf happy.
We finished the job halfway through the afternoon. Lee toweled off and put his shirt back on before bringing the mayor’s wife out to look things over. He introduced me as his hired help, but I stayed back, avoiding her sideways looks and attempts to pry out my origins. The faster we were done, the sooner we’d head back to privacy at his place. We could eat, and maybe we wouldn’t even have to wait for dark to shift and run. I was twitchy with need, despite all the time I’d spent in fur recently.
Alone in fur.That was the difference.
At Lee’s house, we wolfed down a meal of venison stew, thawed from his freezer. I helped wash the plates, then paced by the window, staring out at the forest dappled by late-afternoon sunshine.
“We could drive up into the mountains,” Lee said. “Somewhere private.”
“Yes!”
He laughed at my eagerness, but I caught the shine of gold in his eyes and the quickness of his movements. He wasn’t fooling me.
We both dressed in loose shorts and soft T-shirts— easy to remove, possible to shift in— and Lee stuffed his big feet into canvas gym shoes. I only had my boots, due to the limits of my pack, but I left the laces loose. Clothes felt confining. The chill of oncoming dusk meant nothing to us.
Side by side in his truck, we drove up the curving mountain road. A few miles past his place, a narrow logging road branched off and Lee took that route, climbing more steeply up a rutted single lane, overgrown branches brushing the roof of the pickup. When we reached a high clearing twenty minutes later, he turned off the truck.
Other than the tick of the cooling engine, the sounds of civilization had fallen away. The scent of crushed greenery and disturbed earth wafted on the breeze. Birds called in the trees. A squirrel chittered overhead, hurling rodent curses at us for frightening him. The sun had dropped below the treetops, and the forest around us lay in shadow, deep and inviting.
“Oh, yes.” I swung out of the truck and turned to Lee. “Are we safe to shift here?”
