Page 47 of The Werewolf’s Study Date

“Yeah?”

“Define ‘just family.’”

"My parents," he says, throwing the truck into park and killing the engine. "Aunt Claire. Uncle Dennis. A couple cousins."

"There are ten cars in your driveway."

"People drop by," he says smoothly, unbuckling his seatbelt and leaning across the center console to cup the back of my neck. His thumb finds my mark instantly, grazing the edge of my collar, and a jolt of warm, electric comfort washes through the bond, knocking the edge off my panic. "Take a breath, baby. You're with me."

"If I get eaten, I'm haunting your apartment."

"Deal."

The second we step out into the November cold, the front door bangs open.

The smell hits me first—woodsmoke, roasting meat, pine needles, and the distinct, crisp musk of half a dozen shifted and unshifted werewolves. Before I can even reach the bottom porch step, a tall, broad-shouldered woman with dark hair streaked with silver and Boone's exact stubborn nose comes marching out onto the cedar planks, wiping her hands on a linen dish towel.

"Boone Thomas Kinkaid," she calls out, her voice carrying clear and sharp through the mountain quiet. "If you made that poor girl ride three hours in your truck without stopping for dinner, I'm taking your keys."

"We stopped for coffee in Canton, Ma," Boone calls back, grabbing our duffel bags from the bed of the truck with one hand and immediately locking his other around mine, his fingers tangling tight.

His mother doesn't wait for us to reach the porch. She comes down the steps in thick wool socks, stops directly in front of me, and takes my face between two warm, flour-dusted palms.

She doesn't sniff me like an animal. She doesn't circle me. She just looks at me with clear, intelligent hazel eyes that take in my messy bun, my oversized jacket, and the silver-edged scar peeking above my collar.

Her breath catches for half a second. Her thumbs brush softly over my cheekbones. Then she pulls me straight into a fierce, bone-crushing hug that smells like rosemary and vanilla.

"You're Maisie," she says against my hair, squeezing so hard I briefly wonder if my ribs are going to crack. "I'm Linda. Welcome home, sweetheart."

I stand there stunned, my hands coming up automatically to pat her back. "Thank you, Mrs. Kinkaid."

"Linda," she corrects, pulling back with a bright smile that lights up her whole face. She glances at Boone, who's standing beside us with his chest puffed out like a proud golden retriever, looking entirely relieved. Linda reaches out, smacks his arm with her dish towel, then turns back to me. "Ignore him if he hovered the whole drive. He gets it from his father. Come inside, you're freezing."

The inside of the Kinkaid house is pure sensory overload.

The front hall isn't a foyer—it's a mudroom the size of my entire freshman dorm, lined with three dozen pairs of work boots, running shoes, and hunting jackets hanging from wrought-iron hooks. Beyond that is a cavernous great room with vaulted timber ceilings, a double-sided stone fireplace roaring with split oak, and a dining table that looks like it was carved from a single redwood and easily seats twenty people.

And there are people everywhere.

In the living room, a man in flannel is dead asleep on the leather sectional with a baseball cap pulled over his eyes. Down the hall, somebody's shouting about football stats over the sound of a blender. On the massive wool rug in front of the fire, a charcoal-gray timber wolf is curled into a tight doughnut, sound asleep and snoring softly.

I stop dead in my tracks, my hand tightening on Boone's jacket. "Boone."

"Yeah?"

"Is that a wolf?"

"That's Caleb."

I wait. "Does Caleb live here?"

"No," Boone says, setting our bags down near the stairs. "He lives about two miles down the ridge. He does this sometimes when he's tired."

"He just walks into your house as a four-hundred-pound predator and naps on your rug?"

"He's about a hundred and eighty pounds," Boone corrects mildly. "And the rug's heated from underneath."

"Naturally."