Finding Somewhere to Belong

by C. C. Masters

  I smiled. It looked like I might get a family Thanksgiving this year. “Do you guys celebrate Christmas, too?” I asked hopefully.

  “Oh, yeah,” Jason said enthusiastically.

  Mason nodded. “Austin let us have a tree last year!”

  “We tried to make eggnog...” Jason started.

  “Let’s not talk about that.” Mason interrupted, to the amusement of everyone else.

  I just giggled. “Can we have a tree this year?” I asked Austin hopefully.

  “Of course,” he told me with a smile.

  I settled back in my chair as the guys shared stories of past Christmases here with the pack. This was going to be so awesome.

  The food quickly disappeared. When I saw Davis sadly scraping the chili pot in an attempt to get anything left, I jumped up. “Who is ready for apple pie?”

  The twins also jumped up to clear everyone’s plates and put them in the sink to wash later. I reached to get some dessert plates out of the cupboard, where I had decided to store them yesterday. I handed the plates to Jason and asked Mason to get the silverware while I grabbed the pie. I asked Caleb to go back for the ice cream.

  The pie was still warm when I cut into it, but no one complained, as it was a perfect combination with the cold ice cream.

  Trevor leaned back in his chair. “Is it OK if I show up here every night for dinner from now on?” he asked Austin jokingly.

  “Yeah,” Davis added. “I’m fine with extra guard duty if I get dinner.”

  “I’ll remember that when I make the schedule,” Trevor teased him gruffly as everyone laughed.

  Everyone at the table was leaning back with full bellies when the apple pie was gone.

  “I need to see you three in my office before you go,” Austin told Trevor, Davis, and Rich. The three of them nodded and made a move to get up. Austin also stood. “Cody?”

  “Coming,” he groaned before heaving himself up to his feet. I couldn’t help but giggle.

  “It’s not my fault you make such delicious food, Anna,” he told me as he gave me a kiss on the forehead. I pressed my hand up to where he had given me a kiss with a dopey grin on my face.

  James looked at the twins sternly. “Anna cooked, so you two can clean up while she looks at your homework.”

  Neither of them groaned or complained; they just nodded. James stood and headed out of the room. Caleb looked at me. “What are you doing after that, Anna?”

  “We get Anna tonight!” Jason interrupted.

  Mason gave him an exasperated look but added, “Anna already agreed to movie night with us.”

  “Is movie night just for Anna?” Caleb asked.

  “Do you want to come, too?” Jason asked. “Tonight is Thor.”

  Caleb nodded. “I love that movie.”

  “Me, too!” I said enthusiastically. I stood up and headed to the twin’s laptops. “The sooner we get our work done, the sooner we can play,” I told them both with a cheeky grin.

  They both laughed at me but got up to clean up after dinner. Caleb helped them with the dishes while I helped each of the twins edit the final copy of their papers.

  “Do you guys need to email or print them?” I asked.

  Jason just shrugged, and we both looked at Mason. “Email is fine,” he told us. They emailed their papers in to the professor, and it was movie time!

  We all settled down to watch Thor, and despite my long-time crush on Chris Hemsworth, I did not even make it halfway through the movie before I was passed out. At the end of the movie, I woke up groggily in time for Mason to scoop me up with a murmured, “Come here, pretty girl.”

  He carried me upstairs and to my bed. I yawned and crawled under the covers. Jason got in the bed on my right, and Mason on my left.

  I should probably feel self conscious that I was in bed with two men right now, but honestly it just felt right. I nuzzled my pillow and Mason absentmindedly rubbed my back, as if to soothe me back to sleep.

  Not too long ago, I would have been a bundle of nerves and anxiety at the thought of being this close to two men. Having even one guy in my bed would have probably caused me to have a panic attack. Having the twins here with me just made me feel safe and protected.

  Being here with the pack gave me a sense of belonging that I had not realized I was missing in my life. I had thought that there was nothing more that I could want in life after achieving my goal of being a pharmacist and being able to provide for myself.

  I had always prided myself of being self-sufficient. I never wanted to put myself in the position of needing anyone. I wanted to be able to exist completely on my own. Now that I was here with the pack I realized that I may have been off-base in my goals. Yes, it was important to be able to take care of myself, but what about everything that I had been missing out on while I was alone?

  I had never really let go and had fun before. Being with the twins and joining in on their shenanigans made me realize that life was a lot more fun when you had people to share it with. Having people in my life could make it better, not everyone was out to take something from me.

  I drifted back off to sleep with the scents of the twins mingling with my own in my bed. My last thought for the day was how glad I was that I finally found somewhere to belong.

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  Sneak Peek

  Book 1.5

  Things weren’t as easy as they might have seemed for Anna (if you can call it that). The Seaside Wolf Pack finds that a mysterious female has been living in their territory, right under their noses, for years.

  Females wolves are rare in their world and it’s unheard of to find a female that has not already been claimed by a pack. White wolves are even more rare, and there are only a few places in the world where they can be found.

  James heads up to Canada (the stronghold of the arctic wolves) to investigate the truth of her past. Meanwhile enemies are circling the Seaside Wolf Pack, just waiting for their chance to attack.

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  James

  The buzzing of the phone broke into the quiet of the night, waking me from a deep sleep. I rolled over on my bed and groaned. That ring was assigned to my contacts in the local police department. This had better not be a phone call that one of our guys fucked up and was in a holding cell.

  I glanced at the time on my phone as I fumbled to grab it off the nightstand, where I had left it charging last night. It was 7:08 in the morning, which wouldn’t be too bad if I hadn’t just gone to bed 4 hours ago.

  The Caller ID read Det. Finn. He wouldn’t be calling for a drunk in public or a bar fight; this was something more serious. I sat up in the bed and took a breath before I answered the call.

  “This is James,” I said in a brusque greeting.

  “James, Detective Finn,” a gruff voice stated. “I have a case that has one of you written all over it.”

  I sighed. “What happened?”

  “I’ll text you the address. We are looking at one of yours as a perp, not a vic,” he told me curtly.

  I inhaled sharply. This was not good. I could hear a bit of anger in the detective’s voice. Before I could even reply, he had hung up the phone. Asshole, I thought to myself.

  Normally I would be pleased at finding someone else who was just as brief and to the point as I was, but in this case I wanted more details as to what had happened before I walked into a shitstorm.

  A moment later, a text came through with an address. At least it was here in Seaside, ma
ybe ten to fifteen minutes away. I hauled my ass out of bed and pulled some clothes on. I ran a hand over the stubble on my face uncertainly but decided that was a minor concern right now.

  I needed to get my ass to the scene of the crime pronto. I texted Austin and Cody as I headed down the stairs and to the garage.

  Got a call from PD, one of ours a suspect, details to follow.

  As an afterthought, I also forwarded the text from Finn with the address to both of them. If things went to shit, at least one of them could follow my trail.

  I grabbed my keys out of my hiding spot in the garage; the two little shitheads hadn’t found the new one yet. I ran a hand lovingly over the hood of my all black custom Range Rover as I went around to the driver’s side. I hit the button for the garage door to open and backed out of the garage and into the early morning light.

  Fuck, why did the sun have to be so fucking bright? I reached in the center console and grabbed my sunglasses. The whiskey from last night had burned out of my system already thanks to my fast metabolism, but my hangover was in full force. Another couple of hours, and it would be gone, but for now I had to suck it up and do my job.

  I pulled up to the address Finn sent. It was a small two story brick house a block from the beach in a peaceful little neighborhood. What would one of my guys be doing out here? I wondered to myself as I eyed the neighborhood. It looked like the type of place that usually had happy kids playing outside with their smiling parents looking on from the porch as they sipped lemonade and nibbled on fresh baked cookies.

  I parked on the street, opposite from the house. There was a marked police vehicle in the driveway with an unmarked sedan parked in front of the house. The neighborhood was quiet, everyone probably still in their beds on this early Sunday morning.

  “That’s where I should be,” I grumbled to myself, asleep in my fucking bed. Whoever was responsible for this early morning house call was in for a world of pain when I got ahold of them. I didn’t have a chance to knock on the door before Finn was opening it and gesturing for me to come in. He must have been watching me approach from the window.

  Finn had a scowl on his face as he thrust gloves and a pair of booties at me to put on. I raised an eyebrow in question but put them on. My anger was bleeding into concern; gloves and booties were used for messy crime scenes…

  Finn finally spoke as I was sliding the gloves on. “I have an officer stationed outside to watch the perimeter, and my partner is with the woman who found the body. We have ten minutes.”

  I just nodded and followed him further into the house and up the stairs. I used my extra sense of smell to pull in scents as we walked. I could tell the primary homeowner was an older woman, but I also caught the scents of wolves that had been here recently.

  Finn led me upstairs and pointed to the bedroom. He watched my face carefully as I took in the scene. I took in the scene stoically, doing my best not to let any of my thoughts show on my face.

  Blood had splattered and sprayed all over the room, the carpet and bed were soaked in it. There were very large, bloody paw prints that led into the bathroom. I could tell that what was left of the victim was in the bed.

  I turned to Finn. “How close can I get?”

  He pointed at the booties on my feet. “You can go up to the bed, but step delicately and don’t touch anything.”

  I nodded. I would step as ‘delicately’ as a 6’2” one hundred and eighty-pound man could. I stepped carefully towards the bed and tried to take in the scents. There were two wolves here recently, and I caught the scent of another woman.

  Could that be the woman who found her, or was there a female in the pack? I inhaled as deeply as I could and focused on the scent of the mystery woman. She was definitely human, not a wolf; my guess was that this scent was from the woman who found the body.

  “Has anyone else been here?” I asked Finn.

  He grunted. “In this room? Just myself and Mrs. Peterson. The officer who responded to the call couldn’t handle the blood, so he ran back downstairs after seeing the room from out in the hall.”

  I snorted. “I’m guessing he doesn’t have a future in homicide.”

  “Not likely,” Finn acknowledged with a snort of his own.

  I circled the room and walked over to the bathroom. I was picking up on the scents of the two wolves, but their human scents were stronger on this side of the room. They must have spent time in the room as both humans and wolves.

  “Well?” Finn barked impatiently.

  “There were definitely two wolves here last night, neither of them in my pack.”

  “Would you tell me if they were?” Finn said sarcastically, not really expecting an answer.

  I decided to give him one anyway. “If I knew who they were, I would tell you that I was going to take care of the problem immediately. We don’t tolerate this type of behavior,” I told him seriously.

  He looked me in the eyes and slowly nodded. “I do believe that,” he said softly and then cleared his throat.

  “The paw prints have to go,” I told him. “That’s non-negotiable.”

  “I figured as much,” he murmured.

  I quickly grabbed a towel off the rack, sprinkled some water down on the floor where the prints were, and smeared them. I looked at my work. It looked like the intruder had grabbed the towel to clean up and left it there; the paw prints were unrecognizable.

  “You have three minutes,” Finn told me in his gruff voice, glancing at his phone. “CSI is on their way and will shit bricks if they see a civilian.”

  I nodded. “I just need to walk through the house and get the rest of the scents.” I headed towards the door but glanced down at the booties. I would track blood all over the house if I didn’t take these off.

  Finn read my mind and pulled another pair out of his pocket. I quickly switched clean ones out for the dirty, careful not to get blood on the clean pair. I folded up the old pair inside out so no blood was going to get on anything and shoved them in my pocket. I didn’t want to leave any evidence of myself at the crime scene.

  I very quickly worked through the rest of the house. I found the scents of four wolves in total; two of them had stayed downstairs, while the other two were upstairs.

  The only other interesting scent I found was the very faint scent of a female. It seemed like she hadn’t been here for at least a week, but her scent was on some of the furniture, and also in one of the bedrooms upstairs.

  I got lucky when I opened the coat closet on my way out. Deep in the back of the closet was a hoodie with her scent on it. I inhaled deeply; it was definitely the scent of a young, female wolf.

  There was one long blonde hair trapped on the inside of the hoodie. I examined the root of the hair - that looked blonde as well. Naturally blonde wolves were rare, so that would help us track her down.

  This made the mystery even more intriguing.

  It was possible that the male wolves had tracked the female here. Did she try to run away from her pack? Was this her father or brothers that had come to drag her back home? What was the older woman’s role in this? She was human, but did she help the female to escape, or was she hiding the female from her family?

  The most likely scenario was that the human knew where the female wolf was hiding and refused to give up the info. Did the men manage to get the location out of her before she died? Where was the female wolf? She had not been in the house for around a week.

  As much as I hated to admit it, this wasn’t an unusual scenario. Females were becoming more and more rare with every generation. Packs kept their females close. Some packs treated them like queens, but others treated them like prisoners or brood mares.

  Females who were treated badly sometimes tried to run, but it never ended well for anyone involved. Sometimes the female would be snatched up by another pack and war would break out between the two packs. In those cases, the council had to step in and settle the dispute. Humans would sometimes get caught in the crossfire of a pack war, and
the council would have to be notified to send a cleanup crew for any human deaths.

  Finn practically shoved me out the back door when we heard a van pull up out front. I wanted to keep going through the house to see if I could find anything with the female’s prints on them, but that would have to wait until I could come back to the house later and did a more in-depth investigation.

  For now, I just texted Austin and Cody that we needed a meeting ASAP. I decided to stop to pick up coffee and breakfast for the three of us while I was out.

  I sighed and then decided to pick something up for all six of us. I’d even get the little shitheads some extra bacon. It was going to be a rough day.

  I needed to brief Cody and Austin on the situation, activate the clean-up protocol, get Caleb started on investigating these mystery wolves to see what pack we were dealing with, and follow up with my own investigation.

  I glanced again at the hoodie on my passenger seat and sighed. Having a female involved was going to make this more complicated.

  Austin was going to want to save her, Cody was going to want to sleep with her, the twins were going to want to torment her until she ran away screaming, and the rest of the pack was going to want to stay far away from her until the dust settled. And me? I fought the urge to grab the hoodie and take another deep breath of her scent. It was best if I stayed away from her altogether.

  Ready for Book 1.5: Finding Anna?

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  Books by C.C. Masters

  Seaside Wolf Pack Series

  Book 1: Finding Somewhere to Belong

  Book 1.5: Finding Anna

  Click here to find on Amazon

  Book 2: Finding the Fire Within (January 2018)

  Book 3: Finding the Power Within (May 2018)

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