by Holley Trent
SUMMARY
Grant Banks’ last one-night-stand ended in conception, and now he’s an alpha werewolf with a pack to lead, a ranch to run, and a son to raise on his own. He’s got his hands full, for sure, but he’d rather stick it out alone than to take a mate who’s only interested in him for his status. However, when a holiday visitor from the Norseton pack takes a shine to his son, Pete, Grant decides there might be a woman who’s just right for him after all.
Angel’s got the right stuff to be an alpha’s mate. She’s patient and kind, and knows how to take initiative. Unfortunately, she’s an omega wolf—the weakest in her pack. She could be a doting mother to Pete and a natural companion for Grant, but she could also be a serious liability.
While Grant may not care about the challengers who want his job, Angel does. As badly as she wants to be on his arm, she won’t be his if it means he must risk his role. The Wolverton pack needs a progressive alpha like him if it’s ever going to leave its old ways behind.
CHAPTER ONE
Grant Banks ground his teeth, pinched the bridge of his nose, and waited.
Three.
Two.
One.
Right on cue, there went the cry that was loud enough to rattle the single-paned windows in the back the house. That kid of his had a serious set of pipes.
“His mother shoulda named him Piper instead of Pete,” he muttered and snatched his bleating cell phone off the kitchen counter. He barked into it, “I hope you have a damn good reason for calling me at this hour.”
“Um, it’s like seven, Chunk.”
“Leo?” Even if he hadn’t known the voice, the nickname’s usage would have given her away. No one else called him “Chunk” anymore.
“Yeah, it’s me. I thought you had my new number saved.”
“Well, I do.”
As he made his way down the hall of his tiny-ass house to his kid’s tiny-ass bedroom, he squinted at the dim phone display. He’d dropped his cell one too many times, and even had a cow stomp on the screen once. The glass was cracked. Further, the display was no longer backlit, but he could still sorta, kinda make out what was what if he crossed his eyes just so.
All that eye-crossing made him bump right into the damn doorjamb.
“Shit,” he muttered, rubbing what would probably turn into a knot on his forehead. He sighed. “I’ve got the number, Leo. I just didn’t look.”
He needed to replace his damn phone the moment he had time to drive somewhere that wasn’t Middle-of-Nowhere, Wyoming. That was hard to do. The ranch was a one-cowboy show on most days, and he couldn’t leave town without worrying about some dillweed stirring up trouble in the wolfpack he’d been unceremoniously made alpha of earlier in the year.
He set his phone on the rickety second-hand changing table, scooped Pete up from his crib, and regretted the deep inhalation he’d taken, like the noob he was.
“Shoulda known,” he muttered.
“Known what?” Leo asked.
Choosing not to respond, Grant muted the mic. The phone hadn’t woken Pete up; nature had.
Ma had gotten the six-month-old into a routine, and once Pete went down at six-thirty, he didn’t get up again until dawn, unless he filled his pants—which always seemed to happen right at seven. Grant was still trying to learn the routine and figure out when to just keep Pete awake for the extra half hour. There was a learning curve to parenting, and Pete had been given to Grant just as unceremoniously as the alpha job had been.
“The phone only wakes you up during naptime when I’m trying to shower, right?” Grant asked.
Pete’s only response to that was the pressing of one fat foot to his father’s face.
It was a good thing Pete looked more like his daddy than he did the wretch who’d left him bundled with everything he owned and a note on Grant’s porch three months prior. She’d rung his doorbell and hopped in her old jalopy before he could push open the storm door.
The note had read, Here’s your kid, werewolf freak. Howl about it.
He’d howled, all right.
“Petty bitch,” he muttered.
Maybe Grant had gotten what he’d deserved for screwing a flaky friend of a friend, but who else was there beyond the Wolverton locals?
“No damn one, that’s who.”
He unmuted the phone, still muttering.
“Did you mute me?” Leo snapped.
“Naw.”
“Liar. Who are you muttering at?”
“No one.”
“Sure thing, Chunk. Are you busy?”
Grant grunted.
He set Pete on the changing pad, patted around for all the stuff he needed for a diaper change, and got to work.
“I was calling because Arnold and I are on the way up.”
Grant dropped the wipes. “Say fuckin’ what?”
“We’re comin’ up. Sorry for the short notice, but we realized too late that we both had Christmas Eve off and we wanted to bring some gifts.”
“No, what you mean is you wanted to make sure that I haven’t gotten my ass handed to me in an alpha challenge yet, and don’t trust Ma’s say-so.”
Leo was too quiet and, like all the rest of the Banks women, Leo was never short on words.
Her silence gave him all the information he needed.
“Uh-huh.” He swiped the wipes container off the floor and took a deep breath before unfastening the site of natural disaster.
“We’ll be there in ten minutes,” Leo said.
“Seriously?” No way he could hide a kid in ten minutes, and he hated that he even felt like he had to.
Grant was supposed to have been the brother who could keep his dick in his pants. He was the respectable, responsible cowboy folks in Wolverton were hard-pressed to find an ill word to speak about. Leo had always looked up to him, and expected more from him than she did the rest of the Banks kids, but Grant wasn’t perfect. He’d just been better at hiding his dirt.
While he would never call his kid a mistake, if Grant had to do things over again, he probably would have chosen a different incubator for Pete—one who liked all of the parts of male werewolves, and not just their cocks.
“Thanks for the notice,” he said on a sigh.
“Sorry. We’ve had intermittent cellular coverage between New Mexico and here. Towers aren’t playing nice, I guess.”
“Naaaa!” Pete shouted.
“What was that?” Leo asked.
Grant cringed and tried to feed Pete his pacifier.
Pete threw it.
Damn it.
“What was what?” Grant asked, and immediately put the pad of his thumb over the phone mic.
“Did I hear a baby?”
Granted lifted his thumb tentatively. Pete was chewing on his fist. He probably wasn’t going to babble again. All the same, Grant wagged a finger at him in warning.
Pete pushed it away with his foot and grinned widely.
Gods.
“Listen,” Grant said. “You know I can’t put you up, right? I’m living in the little-ass house on my ranch. It’s even smaller than the trailer I used to have.”
“What happened to the trailer?”
“Too much to itemize.” Though he did in his head every night as he fell asleep, rather than counting sheep. He’d sunk way too many dollars into that mobile tin can. The trailer had been his first place after moving out of his parents’ house—his bachelor cave. He’d hated to let it go, but at least the guy who’d towed it away gave him a few bucks for consolation.
“We’ll find someplace to stay in Wolverton. There are probably rooms at the inn, in spite of the time of year. Not like anyone visits Wolverton.”
“Shouldn’t have a probl
em getting one room, no.”
“Need two.”
“Why two?” He pinched the bridge of his nose again, remembering too late where that hand had just been.
Ugh. Noob.
“Don’t tell me you brought reinforcements with you. I promise, Leo, I’m fine. There haven’t been any alpha challenges, not even from that dipshit baby-daddy of yours. Pretty sure Arnold put the fear of the goddess into him the first time he came up here.”
Arnold had done the pack the favor of making the last Wolverton alpha crap his pants. He hadn’t driven up expressly to depose Mitch, but Mitch had annoyed him. Arnold was a generally patient sort—Grant figured he’d have to be to marry a woman with a mouth as tart as Leo’s—but Mitch had gotten into his face at the exact wrong time.
“You haven’t heard from Samuel at all?” Leo asked.
“Nope. Nothing from your ex, and nothing from any of his brothers. Last I heard, they were thinking of clearing out of town and setting up a new home base in Montana. Hopefully, they’ll go. I need fewer problems in the pack.”
“I doubt anyone would miss him. Anyway, we didn’t bring along any reinforcements. Just a Norseton Pack newbie. She likes road trips and she likes Kinzy, and I’d never say no to an extra pair of hands.”
Grant was constantly saying no to the same. Plenty of mothers of wolf ladies in the Wolverton area had propositioned to him or his mother. He needed a mate to mind his kid, they all said. He needed a mate like he needed a new hole in his head.
“Turn on your porch light so we can spot the house from the road,” Leo said. “That ranch turnoff is always so hard to see. We’ll stop by there before checking in at the inn.”
He sighed. No use trying to explain Pete in advance. Leo would see for herself soon enough. “Yep. See ya.”
He disconnected the call and opened the nearby, tiny-ass dresser’s middle drawer. Pete needed clothes that weren’t pajamas if he was going to meet his youngest aunt.
“Do me a solid and make a good impression, will ya? Be cute or whatever. Be good. Don’t shame me in front of Uncle Arnold. I owe that guy too many favors already.”
Pete closed his eyes and scrunched his face. Purple pooled in his cheeks, chin, and forehead. He grunted, and then writhed.
“Seriously?” Pete’s introduction to solid foods could very well incapacitate his father.
Pete opened his eyes, and made a big, silly grin like his middle uncle, Chet, did. Pete smelled like Chet under the same circumstances, too, and Grant would know. They’d shared a room for sixteen long years.
Grant hung his head. “Who needs a DNA test with proof like that?”
___
Somehow, before Leo arrived, Grant managed to get Pete cleaned up, the toxic waste that had come out of him contained in not one, but two heavy-duty garbage bags, the outside light turned on, and he’d even washed his face and hands.
Grant waited behind the storm door with Pete perched on the crook of his arm. He peered at the headlights coming up the path and wished he’d put on underwear. The Wyoming wind was blowing through his sweatpants like water through a sieve.
He grunted appreciatively. “Looks like Uncle Arnold got a new truck.”
If Pete gave a damn, Grant couldn’t tell. He was too busy fiddling with the zipper of his hand-me-down onesie to do much looking outside.
Arnold parked right beside Grant’s rusted old Chevy, and Leo hopped out, waving manically in that way she always did.
He couldn’t help but to smile. His little sister had always had boundless energy and a smile on her face, at least for him. She could take or leave most folks, especially around Wolverton. She hadn’t been cut out for the place, or its ways. They were shifting with Grant at the helm, but that was only because she’d left and brought in the change-makers.
Two more doors of the truck opened while Leo picked her way up the icy driveway, holding her daughter Kinzy.
He couldn’t concern himself with who else was getting out of the vehicle, because Leo was reaching for Pete with her free arm and hollering at him.
“That sound on the phone was a baby! Whose is he?”
Grant handed him over—not like he really had a choice. Pete practically vaulted off of him. Grant couldn’t blame the kid for being a traitor. He probably saw Kinzy looking mighty comfortable in her mother’s arm and figured the accommodations were better with her.
“Grant,” Leo warned, squinting at him.
He rocked back on his heels and sighed. “Yep?”
“Who is he? He’s wearing Harley’s old onesie. I should know, ’cause I bought the thing for Reese’s last baby shower.”
Busted by their sister’s hand-me-downs.
“He’s mine,” he said through his teeth.
Arnold stopped beside Leo, holding an overstuffed shopping bag. His brow was furrowed, and he looked from one sibling to the other, likely already putting two and two together.
“Say again?” Leo said.
Grant shrugged. “I guess Arnold didn’t get one of his precognitive psychic pings about that one.”
“Grant? What. Did. You. Do?” She hitched Pete up a little higher and stared into his eyes. “Is that orangutan your daddy? Because you look just like the picture of him that’s on top of Mama’s curio case.”
“Orangutan. That’s a good one, but I imagine it’s better than the stuff his mother called me.”
“You have a son?”
“Ma told me not to tell you yet ’cause you’d be upset with me, and she wanted to wait until she figured out some way to tell you. Say hi to Pete, Leo.”
She growled, but she sounded way more valley girl than wolf. She stamped her foot, which made Kinzy babble a complaint. “How long have you had him?”
He shrugged. “Three months, maybe? Yeah. That’s about right. Since right after the county fair, so…”
She blinked her big, green eyes at him several times, hitched both kids up a little bit higher, growled at him once more, then shoved past him into the house.
He scratched his chin and rocked back on his heels again. “Yep.”
Arnold tossed the bag up onto the porch and laughed, loud and long. “Oh, shit. I don’t like seeing Leo upset, but you gotta admit, you Banks kids do drama better than any wolf family I’ve ever met. You know, I—wait. Shit.” He slid two fingers into his mouth, blew a shrill whistle through them, and waved at whoever was waiting in the backseat of the truck. “Might as well come in,” he shouted. “We’re gonna be here a little while.”
Whoever was inside shut the door, and the light in the truck went off before Grant could think to take a look.
Grant dragged a hand through his hair and cringed. “We’ve been trying to keep it kinda quiet, you know? Until things settle down a little.”
“Worried about folks wanting to fight you for the alpha gig? You should have called us. Me and Jim would have come and played sentry for a while.”
“Not so much about that, but about folks pushing their daughters to me. I didn’t want them before, and I guess they think I’m desperate to find a mate now.”
Arnold notched up an eyebrow. “You’re not?”
“No. Ma’s been helping. She comes over and watches Pete during the day when I’m working with the cattle.”
Snow-topped gravel crunched beneath feet on the driveway, but the expression of curiosity on Arnold’s guileless face was far more interesting at the moment.
“Where’s his mother?” Arnold asked in an undertone.
“Hell if I know. She’s probably two sheets to the wind and humping a mechanical bull in Cheyenne. I hadn’t seen her in almost a year before she dropped Pete off. I didn’t even know he existed.”
“She a wolf? That doesn’t sound like something a wolf mama would do. They don’t give up their kids so easy.”
“No. Pete’s only half-wolf.”
“Like me and my sis.”
“Yep. I don’t know what that’ll mean for him. Maybe you can give him some pointers
one day.”
The lady from the truck stopped behind Arnold.
Grant quirked up a brow as he assessed the newcomer’s high, poofy ponytail and was moving his gaze down toward the rich brown skin of her forehead right as his porch light blew out.
“God damn it.” He pinched the bridge of his nose and climbed up the stairs. “Always something.”
Arnold didn’t even bother suppressing his laughter. “You sure you don’t need a little help, man? Can’t run this ranch on your own, a wolfpack on top of that, and then come home and do daddy duty.”
“Maybe you’re right.” Grant opened the storm door, ignored Leo’s glowers from the couch, and entered the closet. As he freed an outdoor light bulb from its package, he called out to the porch, “I do need some help. In spite of what folks keep suggesting, though, I don’t need a mate.”
He heard the door open, heavy and then lighter footsteps cross the threshold, and then the slam.
Grant turned with the bulb, and, finally looking at She-with-the-Puffy-Hair, immediately dropped it.
Fortunately, it hit the rug and didn’t break.
The lady bent, picked the bulb up by the threads, and held it out to him. Her timid smile broke his heart into about a million little pieces, but it was her pretty, dark eyes that made him go dumb. Those long eyelashes made her look sweet as a baby doe.
She’s a wolf?
She hit his radar as a wolf, but there didn’t seem to be much of a threat to her.
“Hi,” she said, giving a little wave.
“Who’re you?” he asked in a croaky voice, a sound unlike anything that had come out of his mouth since he’d been thirteen and waiting on puberty with bated breath. Apparently, being thirty-five didn’t make him immune to insta-crushes.
“Angel.”
“Are you sure your name’s not Vixen?” he muttered. Reflexively, his gaze swept down her body. The silver ski jacket she wore didn’t do a whole lot to disguise her curves. He wanted to peel it open like a tin can lid and look at the rest of her.
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.”
