by Amy Green
“Excuse me,” Heath said pleasantly to Anna, letting her go. “I have to do my bit.”
By the time he walked to the front of the stage and stood next to Devon, the crowd had lost its surprise and was cheering. “I fight,” Heath shouted above the din, “in loyalty to my alpha, Brody Donovan.”
The cheering grew louder, and became a chant: “Donovan. Donovan. Donovan.” Brody climbed to the stage, stood in front of his brothers, and raised a hand, and the chant grew louder, echoing off the rafters.
Anna watched from her place at the edge of the darkness. It was a brutal message, perhaps, but at least it was clear: Shifter Falls had a new leader, and the Donovans were united.
The pack had a new alpha at last.
29
Two months later
“Thirty seconds,” Ian shouted. “Go.”
He stood on the mats in the old gym at the end of Howell Street, beneath the ropes hanging from the rafters, and watched them climb. Six teenage boys, all shifters, all in training. He clicked the stopwatch on and watched them as they scrambled upward, gripping the ropes with hands and feet, all the way to the top, where they slapped the ceiling rafter before descending again. When they all dropped to the floor, he clicked off the stopwatch and checked it.
“Thirty-two and a half seconds,” he shouted at them as the kids groaned. “Go again.”
“Jeez,” said a voice from behind his shoulder as the boys climbed the ropes again. “You really are a hardass.”
Ian turned to find Brody standing behind him, his mouth in a half-grin. He was wearing jeans, a zip-up shirt, and a baseball cap. He didn’t dress like an alpha—his half brothers razzed him endlessly about the whereabouts of his robe and crown—but he had the air of an alpha all the same. Brody didn’t say much, but Ian had noticed that when he spoke, even loud conversations went quiet.
“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it,” Ian said to him. “When was the last time you climbed a rope?”
Brody shrugged. The fact was that even at his adult weight, he’d be able to do it in twenty seconds or less, just like Ian could. “How is the training coming?”
“Slow,” Ian said. “No one has taught these kids a damn thing.”
“So?” Brody asked. “That’s what you’re for.”
Ian turned back to the ropes. Brody was right. Since the pack had its new leader, Ian had taken on a new role: trainer of the pack’s next generation. Shifter boys could be even wilder and less disciplined than human boys, and under Charlie’s leadership they had nowhere to channel their energy and strength. Most of them had ended up working for Charlie’s various criminal enterprises, all of which were now shut down. So Brody had declared an amnesty—everyone’s bad deeds were erased and everyone got to start clean—as long as the teenagers of Shifter Falls got both an education and a solid physical training. Shifters needed to know how to handle their bodies, their energies, their power, and most of all their wolves. Ian had stepped up to teach them.
It was good work. It kept him busy. It meant something. It contributed to the future of the pack.
Ian was fucking miserable.
Because the day they had chosen their new leader, Anna had gone back to Denver.
He’d known she would. She’d been kidnapped, assaulted. She’d been fucking terrified. She had a life in Denver, work to do. He’d let her go that fateful morning, knowing she might not be back for months or years, if ever. But after she’d been taken, after he’d watched her on stage with a knife to her neck—after he’d watched her free herself, then stand by so bravely—it had killed him when she’d left again. She hadn’t said a word of goodbye.
He didn’t blame her. Why the hell would she want to stay in a place like this?
“You want something?” he asked Brody as he dismissed the kids for a break.
“Yeah,” Brody said. “I want you to come have lunch with me at the Four Spot.”
Ian checked his watch. “Probably not a good idea.”
Brody sighed. “Your alpha is requesting your presence, dumbass.”
“You gonna pull that shit on me? Because you know it won’t work.” Ian would defend his pack, and his alpha, with his life, but that didn’t mean he wanted Brody telling him when and where to fucking eat. Old habits died hard.
Brody gritted his teeth. “You hear from Anna?”
Ian walked to the bench at the side of the room and grabbed a sweatshirt, shrugging it on. “What do you think?” he grumbled. “No, I haven’t heard from Anna.”
“You know,” his alpha offered, “you would have a better chance of hearing from her if you actually got a damned phone.”
“I really don’t think she’s going to call me,” Ian said. “Besides, Nolan has a phone.”
“You actually think you can bring your mate back by making her call your landlord?”
“I’m not supposed to bring her back,” Ian said. They’d been over this a thousand times. “If I was supposed to, I’d be in Denver right now, camped out on her doorstep until she said yes. But that’s not how it works. She has to come to me.”
“Well, maybe she’d come to you if she could call you. Or text. Or email.”
Ian stared at him. “Oh, Jesus. You’re not going to make us get text and email, are you?”
Brody threw up his hands. “For fuck’s sake, you too? It’s the twenty-first century. People have these things, you know. Maybe we should try living in the present.”
Ian shook his head. “Brody, I don’t want to talk to you on the best of days. I sure as hell don’t ever want to email you.”
“Once again, I’m not talking about me, dipshit. I’m talking about Anna.”
Ian dropped his gaze. He did want to talk to Anna. Every day. Every minute. He’d lost count of how many times he’d seen something in town, or heard something, and had turned, expecting to find her at his shoulder, asking a dozen questions that he never tired of answering. He’d lost count of how many times he’d thought of something that would interest her or excite her or make her laugh.
He’d lost count of how many lonely nights he’d lain in bed, staring at the ceiling.
He’d rather be doing something, and that was the hardest thing. All his life, he’d lived by action and reaction, fight or flight. A wolf kept moving, like a shark. Being patient was not any wolf’s strong suit. He was starting to see that this challenge was harder than any fight he’d ever been in. That seemed to be the purpose of it—to teach his wolf that patience was sometimes the only thing that was needed to win his mate.
Patience, and incredible sex. He’d already done the second one.
That made him think of the sex. Fuck, he missed her.
“I don’t want to talk about my pathetic mate situation anymore,” he said to Brody. “It’s bad enough that she’s been gone two months.” Damn it. Spring was here, cold and wet, the snow retreating, and he was living through it without her. Would it be like this in summer, too? How many springs, how many summers?
“Then come to lunch with me,” Brody said. “The others are coming.”
Ian sighed and gave in. If Brody had all of them coming, it was because there was pack business to discuss. Brody had occasional official pack meetings, but like the day he’d had Alison Masterson pick the new alpha, he preferred to make decisions with his brothers in a less formal way. Ian dismissed the boys for a lunch hour, then turned back to Brody. “Fine. What are we discussing?”
“We need a new chief of police,” Brody said, leading Ian to the door and pushing it open. “And whoever it is has to start soon.”
It was true. Chief Oliver had left town after Brody was chosen as alpha, and the post had been vacant for two months. Brody had made most of the decisions about the Shifter Falls police force, but he couldn’t do all of the jobs in town forever. He was a good alpha—maybe the best—but Ian had already noticed the strain on him. Brody worked seven days a week, and the pack loved him, but there was something else, an undercurrent of darkness and unce
rtainty, that haunted his brother. He wished he knew what it was.
“Get Devon to be chief of police,” Ian suggested as they walked down the sidewalk, which was wet with cold rain. “He needs a job anyway.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Brody said. “I’m making Devon head of pack security. That’s not the same thing, and he can’t do both.”
Ian shrugged. Heath was busy with his bar; he’d make an awful police chief anyway. And there was no way in hell that he himself was going to do the job.
They approached the Four Spot, and when Ian looked down the street toward Heath’s bar, he got an idea.
Heath and Devon were already in a booth, waiting. Heath was sprawled in the corner, wearing his usual brown leather jacket and white shirt, his dark blond hair long enough to brush his collar. Devon was across from him, hunched over a cup of coffee. He looked tired, as if he hadn’t been sleeping.
“Afternoon, Coach,” Heath said to Ian.
“Whatever,” Ian said, sliding into the seat next to him as Brody sat next to Devon.
“Yikes,” Heath said. “Single life does not suit you.”
Ian glared at him, though he already knew it would be ineffective. “And you like the single life?”
Heath held up his hands, palms up. “I, my brother, am mate free. All of the sex, none of the commitment.”
“That’s not what I heard,” Devon said. “I was in the Black Wolf last night, and I heard that you’ve been turning women down.”
When they all stared at Heath in surprise, Heath looked uncomfortable for a brief second, and then he shrugged. “Things have been strange around here,” he said. “I don’t want to piss off the wrong woman. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with being picky. Speaking of which,” he said, turning to Brody, “she’s not here.”
Brody was staring at the menu, his brow furrowed. It was like he’d never seen the thing before. It took him a second to look up. “What?”
“Alison,” Heath said. “It’s her day off.”
Brody looked so blank that Ian nearly grinned. Then he remembered that his mate was in Denver without him, and he dropped it.
“If you want mating advice, ask Devon,” Ian said to Heath. “For a guy women should be allergic to, he seems to know a lot about it. Or so he says.”
“Fuck off, Ian,” Devon said.
“Okay,” Brody said, putting down the menu and holding up his hand. “Enough Donovan brother crap. I called you all here for a reason. We need a new chief of police.”
They were interrupted by the waitress—not Alison, as Heath had observed—and after they gave their orders, Ian spoke up. “I had an idea about that. What about the Tucker brothers?”
Brody’s brow furrowed. “Edgerton and Quinn? The bear shifters?”
“Excuse me,” Heath said. “Aren’t they the two who tore up my bar in a fight one night? You’re suggesting one of those two for chief of police?”
“Well, yeah,” Ian said. “I was thinking of Quinn, specifically. I think it’s time we put a shifter in the job instead of a human, don’t you agree?”
“True,” Devon said. “Still, the Tucker brothers aren’t exactly police chief material.”
“Why not?” Ian asked. “They were sorry about that fight. It was about a woman, anyway, and she’s left town. I told them to come see me the next morning to make it up, and they both showed. They didn’t have to, but they came. And then they worked the whole day helping to clean up the damage.”
Brody looked at Heath for confirmation, and Heath shrugged. “Sure, they showed up,” he said. “I suppose that’s admirable of them. But that doesn’t make them police chief material.”
“The Tuckers have been in the Falls for generations,” Brody said, frowning. “Edgerton is the blood son of Caleb Tucker, and Quinn is adopted. I think he was found in the wilderness as a cub. Quinn has always struck me as the smarter of the two.”
“He is,” Ian said. “He was in the gym last week, and I talked to him. I’m telling you, that drunken episode was a one-time thing. Edgerton drinks more than Quinn does. Quinn lost control that night because of the woman, but also because he lost his job at the auto parts factory outside of town and doesn’t have enough to do. Edgerton is still working. Quinn is smart as hell, Brody. Give him something that motivates him, and he’ll be loyal to the death. His brother, too.”
Brody scratched his chin. “I’ll think about it.”
Ian went quiet again as their food arrived and his brothers kept talking. Damn, he thought, that was just like something Anna would suggest. Since when had he cared about motivating people and making them feel like they belonged to the pack? Since when had he cared about anything except his own day to day survival? Since she had come along, that was when.
He wondered if she’d approve of him now, if she’d be proud. He wondered if he’d ever know.
30
It had been so good to be back in the human world at first.
Anna had felt relieved, like the world was safe and normal again. She drove back to Denver and got a room with a friend of her old roommate’s, and then she’d called her mother and gone to the school to meet with Margaret. She’d seen a few friends and had coffee with them and gone shopping for new clothes. She’d even been asked out by a nice guy at school.
She didn’t ask herself too closely why she’d said no.
It was nice to be out of Shifter Falls, away from naked wolves and grizzly bear fights and barbaric alpha rituals. Away from the fighting Donovan brothers and their massive levels of testosterone. Away from a place that bred people like John Marcus and Crazy Ronnie. It was nice to be in a place where she didn’t have to carry a hunting knife all the time.
So what if she still had claw marks on the hood of her car? So what if she lay in bed at night, thinking about Ian Donovan’s hands on her, his mouth on her, his incredible body? So what if she looked at the nice guy who had asked her out, and thought of Ian saying Trust, relaxation, arousal, desire, satisfaction? She’d get all that with someone else, right?
So what if, for a few short days, she’d been completely, wildly free?
She picked a new thesis topic. She spent hours and hours in the school library, reading research books and making notes. Winter gave way to a cold, wet, snowy spring, and Anna caught herself staring out the library window when she was supposed to be researching, looking at the far-off mountains and wondering if Ian was running in them, if he was letting his wolf out. If he was getting along with his brothers. If things were changing in the Falls now that Brody was alpha. If he missed her. If he was lonely.
If he was as lonely as she was.
Stupid, stupid. She shouldn’t think about these things. She had work to do.
She’d thought about writing an article or a book about her experiences, and she’d even opened a page in her notebook so she could start jotting a few notes, or an outline. She had so much to say. But every time she picked up a pen and stared at the page, she froze.
It had seemed like such a good idea, but now it felt like a betrayal. It wasn’t just that the Donovans had let her into the secret workings of the shifter world and the pack. It was that Ian had trusted her. He had told her everything about his life—his mother, his feelings about his father and brothers. He had taught her how to kill a shifter and how to mate with one. He had saved her life and fought to the death for her. He had shown her the most private part of himself and let her all the way into his world, into his heart, as his mate.
She couldn’t write about that.
So she put the pen down.
But she stared at the research books on the library table in front of her, at the few scattered notes she’d made, and she didn’t want to write about that, either. She didn’t want to sit in a library and write about things. About anything. She wanted to go out and live her life, not write about it.
The price is too high, she told herself. I almost died. What did I think I was doing, anyway? I’m a student, an academic. Not a badass woman st
rong enough to be a werewolf’s mate.
Her mother had been nice about the fact that Anna had come home so early, but she hadn’t been able to keep the I told you so tone out of her voice. She also told Anna what she heard through the grapevine about her ex-boyfriend Daniel’s wedding—what venue it was going to be in, how many people were going. When Anna finally told her to stop it, she said, “I just wish it was your wedding, honey. That should be your wedding.”
Ian would never be able to give her a wedding, Anna remembered. Shifters didn’t marry, they mated.
“Let me ask you,” she said to her mother. “What’s more important: a wedding, or a man who will be faithful to you for the rest of his life?”
“Don’t be so dramatic, honey,” her mother said. But she didn’t answer the question.
Did she even want a wedding? Anna asked herself after that conversation. She’d been so busy with school, it hadn’t been a focus of hers before. She’d wanted a boyfriend, of course. Someone to love. She hadn’t had the chance to think too much about marriage or the future, because when Daniel had cheated on her, it had wrecked that train of thought. Weddings were things that happened to other people. Love was something that happened to other people.
There are no others, Anna, Ian had said, and he’d meant it. That night she’d spent in his bed, she’d never wanted to leave. Ever.
“Hey,” her roommate, Gina, said when she got home from the library in early April. “I have bad news. We have to give the apartment up by the end of the week.”
“What?” Anna dropped her book bag on the coffee table and put her hands on her hips. “Why?”
Gina shrugged. She was sitting on the sofa, painting her toenails. “The landlord is giving the place to his sister, I think. He says we have to move out.”
“I have nowhere to go,” Anna said. “Where are you going?”
“Sorry,” Gina said. “I wanted to move in with my boyfriend anyway, so I’m going to his place. It seemed like the perfect time, you know? I can ask around. I’m sure we can find something for you.”
