by Terry Spear
Brooke wiped away tears and hastily pulled a tissue from the box of tissues on her desk. She sighed heavily. “She always set up a treasure hunt for me in the shop. Part of it was finding stuff she’d lost track off, which I loved doing for her too.”
Josh took Brooke into his arms and gave her a big hug.
“She and I butted heads. But I always loved the time I spent with her. Sometimes, she’d give me clues to find something I collected myself. Sometimes, it was to locate something valuable out of a box of items, just to see if I could. She always made it fun for me. At night after the store closed, we’d straighten up, put more merchandise out, and then head to the house for a meal we both planned.”
“So what did you collect?”
“Marbles, at the time. I had some vintage ones worth a lot of money. One opaque Lutz marble that had a lot of pink in it sold at auction for $25,000. I have one similar. I have some onionskin marbles, galaxy pattern marbles, painted sulfide marbles, pontil birdcage marbles, just a whole lot of different ones my great-aunt picked up eons ago and gave to me on my treasure hunts.” She couldn’t believe her great-aunt had left her a treasure list. “We should go to the house, have dinner, and talk to Lucas.”
Josh released her and looked over the list, smiling. “Man, as long as this list is, you may have hit pay dirt.”
“If we can find all this stuff, it’s in good condition, and I can sell it.”
“True. I suspect you can, and she knew you could.”
“But the real fun is in finding it.”
With the rest of the papers in hand, Brooke walked out with Josh to the house. He carried the sleigh bells and postcard, and Adam set the security alarm on the shop and locked the door. Lucas and Adam followed behind them as they walked through Brooke’s courtyard to her house.
“My parents don’t know I’ve come to see you,” Lucas warned.
Brooke and the others glanced at him, and she was sure they were all thinking the same thing. “Hopefully, that won’t get you into more hot water with them.” She unlocked the door to the house and turned off the security alarm. “Does spaghetti sound good to everyone?” She turned on her Christmas tree lights, and they sparkled, illuminating the predominantly blue and gold balls and the vintage-style ornaments she had collected over the years.
A resounding yes came from all the guys.
“Not surprising that you didn’t tell them about coming here. They’ve lawyered up,” Josh said. “They’re not going to want you to see us until this is over with.”
“Yeah, because my parents made me do it. You smelled me and you smelled the reindeer in the truck, didn’t you?” Lucas took a seat in the living room with Adam while Brooke went into the kitchen, pulled out hamburger from the fridge, and placed it in a frying pan.
Josh joined her to help out and filled a saucepan with water to boil the noodles. “Yes, Lucas. We bagged the reindeer hair for proof you stole the reindeer for the benefit of those who need something more substantial than just our ability to smell scents.”
“I only borrowed the reindeer.”
“‘Borrowed’ means you planned to return it. You didn’t. He could have been lost to us forever,” Josh said.
“We thought the police were following us. Sandy wanted us to drop the reindeer off in the shop’s courtyard and we’d come back for it. But my dad found out I was out driving around, and he wanted me to drop off my friends at their homes and then return home. We figured the reindeer was okay for the night. I was going to return to the shop and get it before anyone woke up that morning.”
“But you didn’t,” Josh said.
“My dad was angry with me because I was out so late and took the keys to the truck. He said I couldn’t use the truck the next day. Then I saw on the news that the woman who owned the shop was taking care of the reindeer and the owner had come to get him.”
“Why in the world did you steal the calf in the first place?” Josh asked. “That’s what I don’t get.”
“Ty’s uncle owns the company that rented your reindeer for their Christmas party. He’s a powerful man, and he didn’t like that he had to pay more for the rental because people took longer to take more pictures with the reindeer. Ty told us we’d borrow a reindeer to make up for the extra rental cost, not telling his uncle. But really, Ty just wanted to show him off to Sandy. He planned for us to take pictures with the reindeer.”
“I thought Sandy was your girlfriend,” Josh said.
“She was. But she and Ty have something going on.” Lucas shrugged. “She wasn’t really the right person for me. Not when I’m a wolf and she’s not.”
Everyone looked a little incredulous at him. Brooke couldn’t believe he wouldn’t be more upset about it than that. Not when Ty was his best friend.
“I know. I was mad when I first figured it out. Then I was like, why? She wouldn’t be the right one for me. She never would have been. Anyway, we didn’t get the pictures of us with the reindeer. We hadn’t thought anyone would see the photos if we took them, since we were going to share them privately with friends.”
“You know what happens when that’s done?” Josh asked.
“Uh, yeah, but we really hadn’t thought that much about it. As soon as Sandy saw we had the calf, she was angry with both of us and worried he could be hurt. She wasn’t involved in any of it. After we showed it to her, she went with us in the truck because she didn’t trust us to take the reindeer home.”
“She was right,” Josh said.
“She’s the one who got scared when we thought a police car was following us. She told us to stop and put him in the courtyard and we’d come back for him later.”
Josh shook his head. “What about the hacking of our security video?”
“It’s just something I learned how to do.”
“Adam already told you we can’t have our kind committing crimes.”
“Yeah.”
Josh smelled his scent. “You’re a gray wolf. A lupus garou.”
“A black wolf,” Lucas told him.
“That’s the color of your fur, but you’re a gray timber wolf,” Josh said. “All the rest of us are red wolves. Arctic wolves exist too.”
“Red is the color of your fur,” Lucas said.
“We’re red wolves, but the color of our fur has a lot of red. What do you know about your parents?” Josh asked.
“They died in a rockslide when I was seven. I didn’t have any other family to take me in. We didn’t belong to a wolf pack, and I didn’t think there was one here. I knew about our kind, but what could I do? I couldn’t tell anyone. I’ve had to run as a wolf in secret.”
“Not any longer.” Josh told him about the leaders of the red pack at the ranch south of there.
“Over thirty thousand acres?” The boy’s eyes brightened.
“Yep,” Adam said. “You can go there any time to run as a wolf.”
“Are there girls?”
Brooke smiled as she began to serve the spaghetti. Josh poured wine for the adults and then set the bowl of salad on the table. Adam served water for everyone and brought over the plate of garlic bread.
They all sat down at the dining table to eat.
“A few teen she-wolves. Males, too, that you can make friends with,” Adam said.
“See? I didn’t need Sandy after all. Can we go running?” Lucas asked. “I mean, close by. Forest Park? That’s where I sneaked off to when I could get away with it. I haven’t run with wolves since I did with my parents.”
Brooke felt bad for him. She would have really felt isolated if she hadn’t had a family to run with when she’d been younger.
“Can you control your shifting?” Josh asked.
Lucas nodded. “Yeah. I never have any trouble with it.”
“We can go running,” Adam said.
Lucas glanced at Brooke.
“Sure, I’ll go. I haven’t shifted since the day I was shot,” she said.
“Hell, I hadn’t thought of that. Will you be all right?” Josh sounded like he was afraid that if she turned wolf, she might feel the terror all over again. “I’ve been there. I had three escaped convicts corralled, except they were all armed with semiautomatics.”
“Oh wow, Josh, why didn’t you tell me about that?” Brooke asked, reaching over to hold his hand.
Josh squeezed her hand. “Rookie mistake. Anyway, I was shot twice, and I was lucky Adam was on the scene first. He took a hit, but he saved my ass.”
Brooke’s eyes widened. “Adam, you too?”
“We’re like wolf brothers. If one gets shot, the other has to take a hit so we can commiserate. Anyway, after we were both operated on, Leidolf managed to get us out of there before our injuries healed up too quickly. We stayed at Leidolf’s ranch until we could be cleared for duty. We both got a medal for it. We captured the murdering bastards and kept the city safe.”
“So you still have issues with being shot,” Brooke said.
“The last time happened six months ago, but it gets better with time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to hit the floor when I’ve heard the sound of gunfire,” Josh said.
“Even when those men were shooting at me?” she asked.
“No. When you were in trouble, that’s all I thought about.”
“What about you, Adam?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t matter how many times you get shot, that memory can be triggered by all kinds of sounds,” Adam said.
“There’s only one way to know how I’ll feel, and that’s by shifting and running,” she said.
Josh said, “Do you think the house and shop will be all right while we’re gone?”
Brooke scoffed. “We’ve got the security videos, and we won’t be gone that long.” At this point, she wanted to run as a wolf. She needed to run, to get rid of the pent-up sense of frustration she was feeling. To deal with the frightening prospect that these men were going to continue to come after whatever it was, armed to the teeth.
Josh reached over and took her hand and squeezed, his expression one of understanding. “We run. You’re right.”
Brooke smiled at him, glad he understood how she was feeling. “It was a good thing that we discovered who you were, Lucas,” she said, changing the subject. “If you don’t have any trouble shifting and can do it during the new moon, you have to be a royal. We still don’t want any of our kind going to prison, because you never know what could happen.”
“She doesn’t mean we’d protect you,” Adam warned. “We terminate rogue wolves. We can’t have any of our kind outing us.”
“And we don’t turn humans,” Josh said. “You need to find a girlfriend among our own kind.”
“That’s why I knew Sandy wasn’t right for me.”
“In rare cases, humans have been turned, but it’s not something you really want to do.” Brooke didn’t know how much he had learned before his parents died or even had remembered. “You have to think of the human’s family, how it would impact everyone, not just the girlfriend. And not everyone who is turned can deal with it. It changes their lives considerably. Some people can’t handle it. They wouldn’t be like you. Like us—royals, who can control when we shift at any time during the month.” Brooke sprinkled parmesan cheese on her spaghetti.
“You must have been adopted, or are you fostered?” Josh asked Lucas.
“Fostered. No one wanted a kid as old as me when we couldn’t find any other family I belonged to.”
“You need to live with your own kind and learn more about our ways. I’m sure your parents, your wolf parents, were able to talk to you about some things, but at your youthful age, maybe not everything,” Adam said. “You need to socialize with your own kind. Play-fight with juveniles, learn what it means to be a part-time wolf.”
“How do you feel about all this?” Brooke asked Lucas.
“Relieved. I knew there were others of our kind somewhere, but no one advertises what they are. Dad had a good-paying job where we were in Medford, Oregon, and he didn’t want to move from there to be around others of our kind. Mom kept saying I needed to meet others that were my age. They had disagreements about it a lot. They were going to see an opera and got a babysitter for me. Then the rockslide happened. A couple of other cars were caught beneath it too. No one survived. I thought because we healed more quickly than humans, my parents might make it, but they didn’t.”
“I’m so sorry,” Brooke said.
Everyone else agreed.
“How do you feel about a judge ‘finding’ some of your family?” Josh asked him.
Lucas’s eyes grew big.
“He’s a gray wolf. He’d make sure you could be adopted, not just fostered, by an honest-to-goodness wolf family. Maybe not grays like yourself, but you’ll be part of a real wolf family. They’ll probably be at the pack’s ranch, so you can be yourself and run as a wolf anytime you have free time,” Josh said. “We homeschool our wolves, so no more regular school for you.”
Lucas paused with a forkful of spaghetti raised to his mouth, evidently surprised at the news. “Cool.”
“What about the Thorntons, who have taken care of you all these years?” Brooke asked. It wasn’t as simple as just moving in with a wolf family who would adopt him. They could make it happen, but Lucas had to do what made him happy too.
“Uh, yeah,” Josh said, as if he’d made a mistake in not taking that into consideration. “How do you feel about it?”
“They’re wealthy and get foster-care money for me, but I pay for everything out of the inheritance I received from my parents. They didn’t want to adopt me in case it didn’t work out.” Lucas smiled at Brooke. “You could foster me, and you wouldn’t have to support me. I could work in your shop and help you with your website, promotions, whatever.”
“She’s not mated,” Josh said.
“I figured that. That’s even better,” Lucas said.
Brooke smiled. Adam chuckled.
“You need to be with a family. One that has some other teens,” Josh said with conviction.
“You’re just afraid I’ll get your girl.”
Brooke thought Lucas was cute. He fit right in with the rest of the wolves.
“Josh is right. I’ll take you up on hiring you to update my online store. I could really use some help with it.” Brooke figured he would be perfect for the job. “But you’d have to wait to start working until I don’t have any more trouble here.”
“Like getting shot? Why is that happening?” Lucas served up a third helping of spaghetti.
“Someone is trying to steal something from my shop. He’s sending armed thugs, so I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”
“I could work out of your house, if that would be all right with you. I could probably work out of the home I’m going to move to,” Lucas offered.
“You still need to do some community work for the reindeer ranch,” Josh said.
“You can’t prove I stole the reindeer. Not based on your sense of smell,” Lucas said, cocky. He sprinkled more parmesan cheese on his spaghetti.
“You don’t even want to go there.” Adam set his fork on his empty plate and folded his arms across his chest.
Lucas laughed. “You’re playing the bad cop, right?”
Adam only smiled.
Once they finished dinner, they cleaned the kitchen, and then they visited for a while longer. When it was time to go to the park, they took Adam’s Hummer.
“Are you sure your folks will be all right with you being gone this long?” Brooke asked, thinking she should have mentioned it earlier.
“They went to a Christmas party. They won’t be in until after midnight.”
Brooke looked forward to a run, though she couldn’t help but t
hink of what might happen while they were gone. Sure, she had security cameras up now, but her phone would be in the shed behind Carver’s house if she was alerted to a break-in.
Chapter 20
Josh was glad Lucas could run with them as a wolf, but he was concerned Brooke would be upset if either her house or her shop were broken into and she hadn’t been near the phone to call it in. He called to have a couple of patrolmen park in front of the house and shop for an hour, just in case. No sense in tempting fate.
He was glad she wanted to run with the boy. Josh should have been more sensitive to the way she must be feeling after all the trouble she’d been having. He was trained to deal with armed assailants. She was not. He got the distinct impression she really needed this run, and he was glad to do anything to make her feel better.
Adam and Lucas had waited for Josh and Brooke to undress and shift first in the shed at Carver’s house, while Lucas told Adam, “I’m not shy. I don’t mind if we all strip off our clothes at the same time.”
Josh smiled at Brooke, thinking if he’d been Lucas, he would have been saying the same thing.
“They’re courting. We need to give them their privacy,” Adam said.
They all had to remember that Lucas had lived for so long among humans that he probably had no idea what the protocols were for this sort of thing. It wasn’t that they couldn’t all strip and shift at the same time in front of each other. Often that was the easiest. That was something the wolves in the pack would need to talk to Lucas about, since he hadn’t learned all the nuances of being with other wolves all these years.
At first, they all stuck together, running through the woods. Then Lucas ran off like a racehorse, as if he needed to run as fast and as far as he could. Adam stuck with him, his companion on this new adventure and to keep him out of trouble, while Brooke played with Josh. He’d expected a quiet run with her, exploring the woods, enjoying the time together as courting wolves, though they hadn’t exactly said that was what they were. As far as he was concerned, they were.
