Shifters in the Snow: Bundle of Joy: Seventeen Paranormal Romances of Winter Wolves, Merry Bears, and Holiday Spirits

by J. K Harper

  A wadded-up baby sock hit the side of his head, and he glowered at Leo.

  She glowered back from the sofa. “Behave. I mistakenly told her you were decent.”

  “I was just asking a simple question.” He looked to Angel.

  She shrugged slightly and turned her full, pink lips up into a half-smile. “Angel’s on my birth certificate.”

  Holy hell, that voice. Warm and sultry, it gripped his nuts in a kiss that chased away the lingering chill from the wind.

  Sweet Cheezus.

  He shifted his weight uncomfortably, really wishing he’d put on some underwear.

  Fuck.

  “Uh…where’d you come from?”

  She furrowed her brow, squinted her dark eyes at him, and then laughed. “Norseton.”

  Duh.

  “Via New Jersey. I’m a refugee from Alpha’s old pack.”

  “She ran away from home like I did,” Leo said. “Set out under the cover of night with her mom and hauled ass to the southwest.”

  “Without a baby, though,” Angel said, pivoting toward Leo. “Far less dangerous than what you did.”

  “Well, shit,” Grant said. He walked to the sofa and shooed Leo off the center cushion. “Have a seat. You must be tired.”

  Angel laughed again and stuffed her hands into her coat pockets. “I think I’m pretty well-rested. I’ve been in Norseton for six weeks.”

  “Leo didn’t say anything about it.”

  “Why would I have?” Leo asked. “We’ve had lots of newcomers. I figured you wouldn’t want to hear about them all, and besides”—she fixed an eloquent glower on him—“you don’t tell me what you’re up to, either. You know. Stuff like Pete?”

  “That’s different.”

  “Bull crap, and you know it.”

  “You see how pissed you are right now? That’s why Ma didn’t want me to tell you.”

  “What did you think I was going to do? It’s not Pete’s fault that he’s here, and now that he is, I’m not going to get snarky about him being around. I’m madder that you didn’t tell me. I would have helped.”

  Grant raked a hand through his hair again and forced a sharp breath through his open mouth. “I guess Ma just thought that since you were doing so well, that—”

  “That what?” Leo interjected, one eyebrow raised high. “That I’d shame you for doing stuff out of order?”

  He chuckled nervously and peeked at Angel out of the corner of his eyes. She was busy looking at portraits on the wall with Arnold, but there was no way she couldn’t hear. It wasn’t a conversation Grant wanted to be having in front of a pretty stranger. For the most part, he tried to shield non-family members from the Banks’ brand of dysfunction, yet there he was, painting an explicit picture of it for all to see.

  He sighed. “Shit happens, I guess. I understand chaos. Can’t help but to when I live on a ranch like this that needs constant improvement. There’s no such thing as a predictable day around here. Of course, some of that chaos was bound to seep into the rest of my life eventually.”

  He was ashamed at how poor his judgment had been on that night with Sarah. He was supposed to have been the responsible Banks son. That was why his mother had volunteered him to be the pack’s alpha after Arnold had deposed the last one. He was supposed to have been the one who had his head screwed on straight and who knew how to keep his nose clean, but Sarah had known exactly what he was and said all the right words to appeal to his basest nature. She’d wanted to fuck a wolf, and he—and the four shots of Fireball he’d consumed—had eagerly complied.

  I don’t deserve to be Alpha.

  He scooped Pete up from Leo and started toward the back of the house without another word.

  He hoped they’d just go away—to town and the inn, and then back to Norseton in the morning.

  He had enough of his own shame. He didn’t need anyone else wallowing in it with him.

  And he didn’t want any damn witnesses, no mater how pretty they were.

  Chapter 2

  Before Leo could open her mouth, Angel put up her hands and shook her head.

  “Hey. You don’t have to apologize. I’ve never met a wolf who had a tame family life.”

  Truth be told, knowing that Leo’s family was a little messy made her like the woman a little more.

  Angel had arrived in Norseton with her mother, road-weary and with her nerves shot all to hell, and Leo had been one of the wolves in the welcoming committee. She’d been so bubbly and nice, and had that cute baby and the fine-as-hell husband, and Angel had instantly hated her.

  Back in Jersey, she’d gotten used to forming quick judgments about people in the pack. Trust was hard to come by. Backstabbing and tattling were common. Everyone formed their little cliques and watched the backs of the people in it, and the rest of the folks in the pack were S.O.L.—shit out of luck.

  She and her mother had always been on the fringes of the pack—excess cargo that the pack didn’t necessarily want to get rid of, but didn’t really want to take care of, either.

  They’d run to Norseton thinking they would make a pit stop in the oasis and figure out their options, and hadn’t found a good reason to move on yet. Life was almost…normal there. She’d grown up thinking normalcy was a fairytale concept.

  Leo sucked in some air. “I maybe didn’t tell you everything about Wolverton.”

  Arnold groaned. “You spill the tea. I’ll go get that other bag.”

  As soon as the outer door rattled in the frame, Leo held Kinzy out to Angel.

  Angel took the baby, watched Leo heave herself to her feet, and then waited in silence while the blonde paced.

  “That bad?” Angel asked.

  “Eh. Most packs are bad, but Wolverton has always been a special kind of cesspool.”

  “Oh?” Angel cut her gaze toward the back of the house where the cesspool’s alpha had hurried off to. He’d looked very nice on retreat, however. Low-slung sweatpants draped on a serviceable amount of ass, a sexy, broad back, and lots of muscles pulling his T-shirt tight. Not all wolves were built so nice, and the ones that were usually didn’t have faces to match.

  She’d looked, and felt no shame. Since she could never have whom she wanted, she figured looking couldn’t hurt.

  “Wolverton isn’t a single, unified pack so much as a bunch of large families that converge in one place and…” She grimaced. “Intermarry. A lot.” She’d said that last part in a mumble that took Angel a moment to mentally untangle.

  “That doesn’t sound so unusual.”

  Leo rolled her gaze to the ceiling and looked like she was saying a prayer to the goddess for strength. “Polygamist families, Angel.”

  Angel tugged on her right earlobe and tipped it toward Leo. “Say what?”

  “My family isn’t. I mean, at least not my parents, but their parents certainly did that whole plural wives thing. A lot of folks around here still do. For all I know, my parents are second cousins or something.”

  “Whoa.”

  Leo cringed. “Yeah. The guy I ran away from, Samuel, was one of the stauncher adherents of the practice. I was the last wife he collected.”

  “Kinzy’s daddy?” Angel peered down at the pink-cheeked kid. She’d known instinctively that Kinzy wasn’t Arnold’s. DNA inheritance wasn’t always a straightforward thing, but Angel had found the chances of him being the genetic father to be quite low, seeing as how he was a tan-skinned, dark-haired Osage tribe member, and Kinzy was fair-haired and white as the Wyoming snow.

  “Uh-huh. I was the wife at the bottom of the pile. Growing up around here, you feel like you can’t say no when your daddy tells you that’s who’s been asking about you. You just suck it up and when the day comes for the guy to collect you, you follow along.”

  “But you ran.”

  “After I had Kinzy. I stay up late some nights beating myself up over not having run sooner, but Arnold’s good at reminding me that if I hadn’t stayed, I wouldn’t have her, and I can’t imagine no
t having her. She means everything to me.”

  Angel gave the baby a squeeze, and laughed at her cute giggle. “Yeah, my mother always says, ‘the coal has to be squeezed before we can have the diamond.’ We have to have some trials in life. She thinks she has her diamond now, just being out of the Jersey pack.”

  “What about you?”

  Angel shrugged.

  She just didn’t know. Sure, she was glad to have gotten the hell out of Jersey, but she wasn’t forty-four like her mother and happy simply to be able to come and go as she pleased after twenty-six years of near-captivity. Angel may have been something of a captive to the pack, too, but she still had big dreams left—lots of things to do before she’d felt like she was really a member of the real world. She wanted to find a way to feel important.

  Arnold returned with another big sack filled with gifts the wolves in Norseton had sent up from New Mexico.

  “Nothing in there for your new nephew,” Angel said softly.

  “You don’t have to get Pete anything.”

  At the sound of the deep voice behind her, Angel turned and found herself eyes-to-chest with an alpha werewolf.

  She had to close her lids, not because he was so close and her eyes were crossing, but because her nose had suddenly become the acting captain of the U.S.S. Five Senses, and it wanted all resources devoted to its survey mission.

  Grant smelled like boot polish and musk and Christmas tree, though that last thing might have actually been from the little spruce tree in the living room’s corner.

  Either way, she liked the combination a hell of a lot.

  Kinzy patted the side of Angel’s face and launched the U.S.S. Common Sense in pursuit of Angel’s lost self-control.

  Angel took a step back, cleared her throat, and made sure her eyes were fixed anywhere but on the alpha.

  She blew little waves across Kinzy’s pale hair, and then squinted at the wolf wall calendar across the room—anything but to look at him again. She’d looked too much already. Normally, she was able to appreciate without yearning following soon after.

  Maybe it was his power, or his status, but something about him was affecting her differently. He wasn’t going to be easy to forget.

  “No, we’re gonna get him something,” Leo said. “What does he need?”

  “He doesn’t really need anything. I’ve got piles and piles of hand-me-downs, and Ma brings more that she’s collected over every day.”

  “But it’s Christmas. He should have at least one new thing.”

  “He’s not gonna remember. Why bother?”

  “Don’t be such a grinch.”

  “Maybe he’s just practical,” Angel said.

  Grant probably didn’t need her coming to his defense, but she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. Still, though, she didn’t look up. She wasn’t stupid.

  She didn’t know for sure if Grant was a born alpha in addition to being the one who’d inherited the role, but the energy pouring off of him was like nectar, and she was a lowly little bee trying not to gorge because she needed to make honey. Many of the wolves in Norseton had the right kind of magic to be alphas, so Angel had become quite familiar with how they could intoxicate lesser wolves. She was definitely lesser—an omega wolf, actually. Her old alpha had always spit the word at her like a curse. Her new alpha hadn’t commented one way or another about her probable lack of magic, though she had held her breath on the day she’d arrived in Norseton and he’d given her the same inspection he gave everyone. Adam had the goddess’s ear. He would have known if Angel was worth anything at all.

  Grant grunted. “Practical. Yeah.”

  In her periphery, she watched him move. Watched him rub his scruffy beard and shift his weight.

  “Just one little toy, Grant,” Leo said. “Or some books, or something.”

  “I guess that’d be all right. Space is at a bit of a premium here. Gonna have to start building out in the spring, as soon as the weather is stable enough.”

  “I know you wanted to build from scratch, but maybe expanding what you’ve got already is for the best,” Arnold said. “New construction is a lot to take on. There’s always some happening at Norseton. With all those wolves coming in, there’s a house going up every six weeks.”

  “They’re building them that fast?”

  “Yeah, but the crew there is damn good. Maybe Queen Tess’ll send them up.”

  Angel giggled, and not just because Kinzy was patting her face as if Angel were some sort of well-trained puppy. “Tess totally would.”

  “Nah,” Grant said, shaking his head. “I don’t want folks doing me that kind of favor. That’s too big, and folks always want to be paid back.”

  “Tess isn’t like that. Trust me. I work for her.”

  She looked after her daughter, in fact. Tess was the clan leader of a group of psychic witches called the Afótama. They were hosts to the wolves, providing them land and resources in exchange for the work the wolves did in the community. Many of the male wolves, Arnold included, were part of the executive mansion’s security detail.

  “People always want something, so what’s she gonna want way up here?”

  “Your friendship?” Leo said.

  “Is that such a valuable thing?”

  “You’re a pack alpha,” Angel said quietly. “I’d say so.”

  For a long while, he didn’t say anything. He rubbed his chin and then he said, just as quietly as Angel, “I just don’t see what I’d be able to do for someone like Queen Tess.”

  “Ask her.”

  “Just like that, huh? Call up the queen of the Afótama, ask her to send some muscle and supplies to build me a house, and pledge my fealty or whatever?”

  She shrugged and locked her gaze on a paint splotch on the wood floor. There were lots of them, in different colors. White and baby blue. The palest yellow. The colors all collided, as if the floorboards weren’t as important as whatever was painted.

  “You don’t have to be a butt,” Leo said.

  “I’m not. I’m just curious.”

  “Be curious without being a butt.”

  “Does that mean I don’t get an answer?”

  No one responded, which was Angel’s clue that perhaps the question had been directed to her. She could suddenly feel the gazes of the other adults in the room boring into her, so she did the crappy introvert thing—kept her own gaze averted, and blew another little wave across the top of Kinzy’s hair.

  Past experience said that if she didn’t respond, and if she made herself very uninteresting, then eventually an alpha would get bored and go away. She wasn’t worth intimidating.

  “I don’t even get a little answer?” He reached in and gave Kinzy’s chin a tweak.

  Oh God. Too close.

  The nearness of his hand made the skin on the side of her face prickle.

  She couldn’t back any farther away, though, not without putting herself on the porch. She didn’t like the porch. The porch meant winter, and, apparently, Wyoming winters punished in ways she’d never dreamed of back in Jersey.

  “Um. Fealty…” she stammered. “No. Not that kind of queen.”

  “I was jokin’.”

  “No, you weren’t,” Leo said. “You meant it. I’ve told you so much stuff about Norseton. You should know better.”

  “Maybe it’s just hard to believe, compared to what I’m used to.”

  “What we were used to. Remember, I’m from Wolverton, too. You don’t believe me when I tell you things?”

  “Put yourself in my shoes, Leo. Sounds like a load of bullshit, all your talk about…being treated well, and crap like that.”

  Beyond Kinzy’s babbling and the crackle of logs falling in the fireplace, the room had gone uncomfortably quiet.

  What Grant said should have been a joke—a ha-ha moment between people in the know, but wolves weren’t treated well in general. They didn’t treat each other well.

  No one said anything until Kinzy leaned backward in Angel’s arms and
tried to do some kind of reckless infant base jump off her hip.

  “Whoa.” Grant deftly took the wriggly baby.

  Angel stepped away. She put her back to the door, folded her arms over her chest, and fixed her gaze on the paint splotches again.

  “I guess we’ll head on down to the inn and get some sleep,” Leo said.

  “Goin’ already?”

  “Yeah. Kinzy hasn’t napped because she was so excited about getting to ride in the truck, and if we stand in here talking too long, Pete’s going to get up and then we’ll have two cranky babies.”

  “Here, let me get that light bulb.” Arnold grabbed the forgotten bulb, nudged Angel out of the way of the door, and stepped outside.

  Grant kissed the top of Kinzy’s head and handed her to Leo. “She’s getting big.”

  “Yeah. Wait three or four weeks. I bet Pete’ll outpace her in growth.”

  “Maybe so. He was a runt until Ma got her hands on him.”

  “That bi—” Leo cringed and took a deep breath. Leo didn’t curse, ever, so she had to be good and mad. “That woman was starving him?”

  The idea made Angel mad enough to curse, too, and unlike Leo, she didn’t have any hang-ups about foul language. After all, she was from Jersey. The Jersey pack’s official motto was, “Fuck you, bub.”

  “I don’t know if she was doing it on purpose,” he said. “I just know how he showed up. Doc said he was a little underweight.”

  “Which for a Banks boy means a lot underweight.” She gave Angel a conspiratorial look. “They all tend to be husky until twelve.”

  “We’re still husky, but muscles in the right places distract folks well enough. I’ve got plenty of fluff to spare.” Grant rolled his eyes. “Scrawny little Leo called me ‘Chunk’ until I was fourteen.”

  “But you had the puffy cheeks until sixteen. I was being generous.”

  “I grew up. When are you going to outgrow being such a brat?”

  Leo stuck out her tongue.

  Angel laughed quietly and stepped outside into the light of the porch and the snow.

  Ugh.