by Terry Spear
Nathan sighed. “You’re not going to tell me about the first time you had sex with a human?”
“You know how long we live, Nathan.” Bjornolf was sure Nathan’s father hadn’t talked to him about his own sex life before he mated Nathan’s mother. He wasn’t sure what the protocol was here. Bjornolf’s father certainly never talked to him about the birds and the bees.
“Yeah, I know once you reach puberty, you age only one in thirty years.”
“So it’s been a very long time.”
Nathan’s eyes widened. “You don’t remember?”
Bjornolf frowned at him. “Of course I remember.”
“Well?”
“She was sixteen.”
“Sixteen? That’s worse than me.”
“You’ve already done it with Jessica?” Bjornolf shouldn’t have sounded so astounded, but he had guessed the kid was trying to sound him out, to see if Bjornolf thought it was acceptable. Before he did it.
Nathan turned and hung another strand of the lights. “I shouldn’t have. I guess. Do you think Anna knows?”
Bjornolf was surprised Nathan would worry about what Anna thought. Then he recalled how she’d lectured him about not getting involved with a human girl. Which made him wonder when Anna had been involved with a human boy for the first time. That thought made his gut clench. It shouldn’t matter what she’d done so long ago, now that she was his.
Bjornolf shook his head. “I don’t know if Anna guessed or not.”
“She didn’t like it that I was seeing Jessica,” Nathan said morosely.
“If we have sex with a wolf-shifter, it’s for life,” Bjornolf warned, thinking that’s maybe why Nathan tore off to see Sarah. “So for years we seek… companionship with humans until we find a worthwhile mate. Don’t go having sex with Sarah unless she’s truly the one you want to be with forever, or you’ll both be stuck with each other for a very long time. No divorce for mated wolves.”
“Which means it’s okay to be with Jessica for now.”
“No,” Anna said, shoving the door open with her hip. She walked across the snow-covered grass, carrying a tray of hot, buttery crescent rolls and mugs of cocoa topped with mounds of whipped cream.
Nathan turned a little red as he eyed her.
“I brought you some breakfast. Not much, just something quick to snack on while you work.”
“You cook?” Nathan said, sounding surprised and at the same time glad as he climbed down the ladder to snatch a roll and a mug of cocoa.
“Don’t ever let Hunter and the SEAL team know. They think a woman should do all the cooking on missions. They tease me about it, but it’s not all bantering. I let them know otherwise.”
“Your secret’s safe with me.” Nathan scarfed down two more rolls.
“Thanks, Anna.” Bjornolf grabbed a couple before Nathan ate them all and helped himself to the other mug of cocoa. He’d fixed cocoa and rolls tons of times for himself before, but something about Anna preparing them made the food and drink taste even better.
“Yeah, thanks,” Nathan managed to say before he took another bite of his roll, concentrating on devouring them.
“Don’t worry,” she said to Nathan in a teasing tone. “I’ll feed you again.” She glanced up at the house, and her expression softened as she spied the lights hanging near the roof. “The lights are nearly done. They look great. I can’t wait to see them tonight when it’s dark.”
“Yeah, it’ll look great,” Nathan said. “We’ll be going inside to work on the tree next. Okay?”
“Sounds good.” Anna smiled at them warmly, then headed back inside. She shut the door.
Nathan stared at the door and calculated when she might be well out of earshot. “I think she heard us talking. I mean, about most of it. Don’t you?”
“Yeah, I think she did.” Bjornolf could just imagine her questioning him about his encounter with the sixteen-year-old human girl next time they were alone. Or maybe not. She might not want to touch the subject because he was liable to ask her about her past misadventures.
“Jessica’s adopted,” Nathan finally said.
“She’s still human.” Bjornolf was finally getting that Nathan was really hung up on the human girl.
“She…” Nathan paused. “She smells like a wolf.”
Bjornolf didn’t say anything for a moment, trying to process that bit of information, then asked, “What do you mean exactly?”
Nathan shrugged. “She smells like a wolf. Like all of us do—part wolf, part human. I asked if she owned a pet wolf. She laughed at me. Of course she smells more human because her parents hug on her all of the time. Probably because she’s adopted.”
Bjornolf stared hard at the boy, not believing this.
Nathan sighed. “Tessa was the granddaughter of a wolf. Maybe Jessica is also.”
“She can’t shift then. If this is true.”
“She told me she believes in the paranormal. I thought she was hinting that she was a lupus garou but that she was afraid to come out and say so.”
“You didn’t tell her about us, did you?” Bjornolf growled. Not that a human would believe Nathan, but still, they didn’t tell humans what they were. Period. Not unless they had to turn them.
“No. Of course not. Sure, I was hoping she was one of us. But why would humans have adopted and raised her? Why wouldn’t a wolf pack have taken her in?”
Maybe because her parents didn’t belong to a wolf pack. Bjornolf still couldn’t believe it. “Is she from here?”
Nathan shook his head. “She’s from Santa Fe, New Mexico, but she doesn’t know who her parents were. She’s searched, too.”
“So when she said she believed in the paranormal, what did she mean?”
Nathan sighed. “She meant ghosts. I wasn’t going to talk about lupus garous until she did first. When she spoke of ghosts, I couldn’t hide my disappointment. Of course she thought I believed she was crazy for thinking they were real.”
“What did you say?” Bjornolf asked carefully.
Nathan frowned at him. “I didn’t say, ‘Hey, I’m a werewolf. Imagine that.’ I just said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if other paranormal beings existed? Like werewolves.’”
“And?” Bjornolf prompted, not believing Nathan would risk saying anything.
“She told me that werewolves do exist. She said it so cheerily I thought she meant for real.” Nathan frowned. “‘In books,’ she said. Then I wondered if she was seeing some guy who was a wolf.” His hands tightened into fists. “Maybe he’d had his hands all over her. Maybe that’s why she smelled like a wolf.”
“You would have smelled the male wolf, Nathan,” Bjornolf said, seeing just how upset he was becoming. “You would have recognized his scent and known him. You didn’t, did you? Only smelled wolf on her? Like she was a wolf?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. When was she adopted? What age?” Bjornolf still couldn’t believe it without checking the situation out himself.
“When she was a baby, she said. Before she even knew her birth parents.”
“You don’t know her birth name?”
“No. She doesn’t know it. Her parents don’t know it, either, or are keeping what it was from her, afraid she might try to find her birth parents.”
Bjornolf let out his breath. “Anna and I are going to need to meet this friend of yours as soon as we can.”
Hell, if Nathan had sex with her and she turned out to be one of them, he was essentially mated to her for life.
***
Anna had been stunned to hear Nathan speaking to Bjornolf about sex and human girls. But Nathan obviously needed a parental sounding board, so she didn’t want to stifle him. She cleaned up the kitchen, unable to quit thinking about the trouble Nathan could be in.
She went out back and cut some lower branches off a few fir trees to use on the mantel, taking in great breaths of the chilly air, thinking about how Tessa and Hunter had met each other in these very same cabins.
Bjornolf was right about Tessa. It was really rare that a lupus garou could get a human pregnant, but all it took was one mistake like that. From what she’d seen of Nathan, he was responsible at working a job and had been great about decorating for Christmas, but raising multiple babies at once? She was sure he wasn’t ready for that.
Why hadn’t the boy’s father discussed the subject with him?
Not that her parents had ever done so with her. Which had gotten her into a lot of trouble.
After a short while, Nathan and Bjornolf came inside where the cabin was fragrant and warm. Anna loved the piney smell of the greenery she’d used to trim the mantel.
Nathan touched Anna’s arm, breaking into her thoughts as he delighted in showing her all the decorations he’d bought. He demonstrated how to put them on the tree to make sure that the silver, gold, blue, and purple balls were placed evenly around it. “You can get the branches lower on the tree while Bjornolf and I can get the ones higher.”
She shook her head. “I’m not that short. Besides, the bottom of the tree needs more ornaments than the top.”
Nathan took the hint. “Uh, yeah, right. I’ll help you with the lower branches.”
“I’m impressed with your selection of decorations,” she said, genuinely feeling so, though she was having a really difficult time not worrying about Jessica now that they suspected she might be a wolf. Jessica needed to be with their wolf kind, if she was one of them. She needed to learn how to live like they did. The problem was that they couldn’t just take her away from her adoptive parents.
Then a new worry plagued her. How long ago and how many times had Nathan had sex with Jessica? Was she pregnant? As a human, that was one thing. But as a werewolf?
What a nightmare.
“I’m impressed, too,” Bjornolf said, kissing Anna on the cheek, but being careful not to be overly affectionate with her in front of Nathan. Bjornolf hooked a silver ball near the top.
“Nathan said that the man who owns the tree farm, Everton, is a half brother of William Wentworth III.”
Her jaw dropping, Anna stared at Bjornolf. “That’s too much of a coincidence.”
“I agree. Hunter said the two murdered men were DEA.”
“DEA.” She thought about that for a moment, pausing to place a purple ball midway up the tree. “Remember, Wentworth has a big pharmaceutical company. Twenty-five percent of drugs come from tropical plants and trees in the Amazon. When we were given the assignment to extract him and his family, I wondered if there was a connection. I did a little research. His company discovered one of the anti-cancer drugs that was extracted from periwinkle and other rainforest plants. One of the drugs has greatly increased the survival rate for acute leukemia patients. So his company is doing a good job.
“But what if legal drugs are only part of his business?” she continued. “The legit side. What if he hooked up with one of the Colombian cartels to access the illegal kind, too? Or to distribute them here, using his cover of making legitimate drugs? Making lots more money at it. No expensive research. Just grow the stuff and distribute it and collect the dough, tax-free. Because of his other connection, no one would even suspect he’d have other kinds of dealings down there.”
Bjornolf nodded. “Very possible. No one would ever know, except for maybe two wolf agents with the DEA who suspected the truth.”
“Why would they have been at the Christmas tree farm, then?”
She knew Nathan was listening to them. Normally, she wouldn’t have talked shop in front of someone who wasn’t on the investigative team. In Nathan’s case, he seemed to have inside knowledge. The only drawback was if Everton was involved, Nathan might feel a need to warn Jessica.
He didn’t say anything about what was being said, but she was certain he was trying to think of anything that might help them with piecing the puzzle together.
“Wentworth might have tried to set Everton up if the two don’t care for each other,” Bjornolf said.
“What if Everton is in on this?”
Nathan was in the process of moving an ornament already on the tree to another spot when he paused to look at Anna, but he didn’t offer anything.
Anna sighed and folded her arms across her chest. “We have to look at every possible reason why Wentworth would tell his brother, Jeff, that we shouldn’t have killed their kidnappers in the Amazon, and why DEA agents were murdered at the Christmas tree farm. It’s possible that Everton is involved up to his eyeballs. He may know about his half brothers’ involvement and have blackmailed them even, wanting a share of the money. Maybe he got rid of the DEA agents for Wentworth.” She paused. “Remember when William and Jeff were talking, and the one said they had led trouble to someone’s doorstep, but they weren’t there to take care of the mess this time?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“I wonder if the agents disappeared around the same time.” Anna shook her head. “Without more to go on, it’s a guessing game.”
Nathan went to the sack to get one last ornament out. “Are you ready?” Nathan pulled out the angel. “See it’s gold, copper, and silver with a gray wolf standing beside her long skirt.”
Warmed to the marrow of her bones, Anna smiled. “It’s beautiful, Nathan. The prettiest angel I’ve ever seen.” It had been killing her not to take a peek before the guys came in from outside.
“I was afraid you might want something else. That you envisioned a different kind of angel. Something softer, maybe.”
“She’s perfect.” Anna went to hug him, and he quickly looked at Bjornolf, as if seeking his approval.
Bjornolf gave him a nod and a smile, but Anna had already moved to embrace Nathan. “You’re so sweet, Nathan. I’ve never celebrated the holiday. You’ve helped to make this one so special to me, and I’ll never forget it.”
He hugged her back, then he said to Bjornolf, “My dad always put the star on the tree. Did you want to do the honors?”
Nathan was fighting back tears, just like she was. Bjornolf gave her a small smile and squeezed her hand, and she noted his eyes were misty, too. “I’d love to.”
She realized then she’d never think of the holidays again as one of those hassles in life, involving crowded shopping centers and annoying Christmas jingles played over and over again. She put her arm around Nathan’s shoulders and watched as Bjornolf put the angel and wolf ornament on top of the Colorado blue spruce tree.
“We’ll have the most beautiful tree of any of the open houses, guaranteed,” she said proudly.
“Yeah, it’s pretty cool, isn’t it?”
Bjornolf cleared his throat. They both looked over at him. “Anna, you said you knew how to cook?”
In short order, they had baked chicken thighs, asparagus, and baked potatoes on a big serving dish sitting in the center of the cherrywood dining table.
Bjornolf and Nathan looked at the table, then at Anna. “We need holiday decorations for the table for the open house,” Bjornolf said.
“Yeah,” Nathan said.
They both studied Anna, waiting for her response. She wanted to say she didn’t “do” shopping. But after all that Nathan had done, she couldn’t say no. She sighed. “After lunch, all right?”
Nathan gave Bjornolf a high five.
She was doomed.
After lunch, Bjornolf and Nathan put away the dishes. She could really get used to this, but she figured when…
She paused as she wiped down the table. She hadn’t even considered what might happen beyond the mission—what would become of Nathan, or where she and Bjornolf would end up.
“I need to make a quick call
. Be right back.” She headed into the bedroom and shut the door, then fished out her phone and called Hunter. “I need you to look into something for me.”
“About the murders?” Hunter asked.
“No. About a Jessica Everton, adopted daughter of the owners of the Christmas tree farm. She was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico.”
“What are we looking for?” he asked.
“To learn if her real parents were wolves.”
Chapter 16
Shortly thereafter, Anna got a call from Hunter letting her know that Rourke, their investigative reporter, had just called to tell Hunter that once he’d interviewed Helen Wentworth and after investigating some leads, he suspected Jessica Everton might be a wolf. First, according to Mrs. Wentworth, there was the case of a mysterious adoption—no evidence of papers, the Evertons’ own loss of a baby daughter, Jessica’s behavioral problems, no birth record for her that he could locate—and the scent of wolf when he’d dropped by to see the girl at the tree farm.
Anna shared the news with Bjornolf and Nathan. “We’ll finish decorating for the open house after we go shopping. Then Nathan, you arrange for Jessica to come over for dinner tonight.”
They couldn’t put this off any longer than that.
He looked skeptical.
Anna sighed and took his hand. “Nathan, if she’s truly a wolf, and if you two had sex, then you’ve mated with her. If you’ve mated with her, you could very well have gotten her pregnant. We have to learn the truth and deal with it.”
He frowned. “You shouldn’t have to do anything. Hunter took care of his mistakes all on his own.”
Anna nodded. “True. But he’s the pack leader. He had to. You’re not even legally an adult yet. We’ll help you in any way we can. Okay? Hunter and the rest of the pack will, too. That’s what a wolf pack is all about, Nathan. We take care of each other through the good stuff and the bad. You don’t have to do this alone.”
He bit his lip, then said, “She thinks she’s pregnant.”
Anna quickly closed her mouth, not wanting to look so astonished.
