Knud: Her Big Bad Wolf

(The Brothers Nightwolf Trilogy, Book 2) 50 Loving States

Theodora Taylor

Contents

Prologue

Part I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Part II

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Part III

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

About the Author

Also by Theodora Taylor

Prologue

I hurtle through the woods unable to see or think or do anything but run. Dead leaves left over from winter crackle under my feet and branches scratch at my skin, snagging my oversized t-shirt. But I ignore the slices of pain and yank away from anything that tries to hold on to me. I can’t afford to pause even for a second.

There’s a wolf on my heels.

Literally, a wolf on my heels. Huge and fast, I can feel its hot breath on the backs of my legs. Then there’s a growl, and he nips hard at one ankle making me run that much faster. For my life.

I should have stuck with my original decision. I should never have gotten back together with him. Now I’m going to die because I made a decision with my heart instead of my brain—

I stop short when my feet slap dully against wood. Oh no…oh no!

There’s a river in front of me; loud and churning with rushing water.

I look down toward my feet and find weathered wooden planks. A dock. My gaze frantically travels the length of the structure right up to where the dock juts out into the dark water. Wood below me, water in front of me, and behind me…

I turn halfway around to find the wolf standing right where the dock meets the silty soil of the river bank. Its black fur glistens in the low light of the setting sun. And its glowing brown stare keeps me rooted to the spot as I try to decide what to do.

I glance over my shoulder at the rushing river behind me, then back to the wolf. It looks like a fierce predator and like the man I thought I loved. I won’t get past the beast. I can’t get past it. But I know how to swim and I’m strong, so maybe…

My thoughts cut off when the wolf starts toward me, its lope dangerous and slow.

Fear shrivels my stomach as I realize I have no choice. It’s either die or…

Before I can think any further about what the wolf will do to me if I let it get too close, I turn back toward the river and JUMP!

Part 1

I knew I had no business messing with her from the moment we met.

1

I awake in a softly lit room with a pair of familiar faces looking down at me. My parents, I realize as I push past the fog inside my head. On one side my father towers over me in a suit, overlarge and grim with generous sprinklings of salt throughout his dark, wavy hair. On the other stands my less intimidating mother. She holds my hand, a worried expression on her normally bright-eyed brown face.

She’s changed her hair. Her famous curls were only a little past her ears when I last saw her at Christmas. But now they’re nearly to her shoulders. Surprising, but not really. Her hair and make-up team have been after her to put in extensions for years.

“I like the hair,” I tell her, projecting on instinct, even though it feels like my throat is made of sandpaper.

“Oh, baby, you’re okay!” she says, her thick Texas accent nearly giving out with emotion as tears spring to her eyes. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“I’m fine,” I assure her. “Are you okay—?”

I break off, wincing when I try to reach over to pat her hand.

“She is in pain. You will give her something for this pain,” my father says to someone I can’t see over his shoulder. His voice, like him, is cold and commanding.

“Papa, I’m fine. But what is this?” I ask, squinting down at the small, white object taped to the back of my hand. There’s a long length of thin tube coming out of it, and my eyes follow the tubing only to squint even more when I see… “Is that an IV bag? Why am I on an IV?”

I look around and see Chang, one of my father’s longtime personal security guards, standing in front of a closed door. But it’s not my door. It’s made of pale wood—not dark maple like the one in my bedroom. And though the room is large and well-appointed with pretty vases and a variety of plants lining the shelves of its peaceful blue walls, it is definitely not mine.

“Is this a hospital?” I ask my parents. “Why am I in a hospital?”

Dad looks away from me like it’s all he can do not to flip out.

Mom keeps her eyes focused on mine, gripping my non-IV hand tightly as she says, “A group of hunters found you washed up by the side of a river in Kansas. Maybe you fell in or…” her voice catches and she doesn’t complete that thought, before finishing with, “Anyway you hit your head bad and you were very lucky those hunters found you…”

This time her voice doesn’t just catch, it gives out as tears fill her eyes.

“Oh, Mom, I’m okay,” I say, squeezing her hand right back. “Please don’t cry.”

“Look at you worried about me when you’re the one in the hospital! We could have lost you!” She shoots my dad a vicious look, her honeyed Texas accent throatier than usual as she repeats, “We could have lost her!”

Her glare surprises me even more than waking up in a hospital bed. I don’t understand. My parents normally operate at an unnatural setting of sickeningly sweet toward each other. But right now, it looks like my mother wants to kill her husband of thirty years.

“Oh no, Papa,” I say. “Did one of your enemies…?”

“Nyet!” my father answers viciously. “If this were the work of an enemy we would be discussing his death right now.”

Okaaaay…that response was a little over-the-top dramatic. But that’s my dad—especially when it comes to his family. “So then why is Mom so upset?” I ask him.

Instead of giving me an answer, my parents exchange a troubled look that I like even less than their angry ones from earlier.

“Mr. Rustanov, if you don’t mind…” a voice says from behind my father’s wide back, “Perhaps it’s best if I explain.”

A nebbish man with thinning hair appears after taking a few steps to move around my 6’5” father who’s been blocking him from my view.

“Hello, Layla, I’m Dr. Messnick,” he says squeezing into the small space remaining beside my father.

“Hello, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” I answer, my High Media training kicking right back in, despite the circumstances.

“I wish it could have been under better circumstances. You’re in Dallas Memorial Hospital, Layla. Two days ago, you were found unconscious by the side of a river in the Kukunniwi Woods of Kansas. Based on the amount of water pumped out of your lungs, we believe you might have fallen into the river and been knocked unconscious, eventually washing up on shore. In any case, we airlifted you here. When you first arrived, you were confused and disoriented, presenting with a severe traumatic brain injury. We immediately placed you in a medically induced coma to relieve the swelling on your brain. How do you feel?”

“Foggy?” I answer with a wry smile. “But no pain. You must have provided me with some exceptionally good drugs. Thank you.”

“Actually, we’re only giving you acetaminophen for the pain. Technically speaking, other than the hit to your head, there’s no evidence of any other excessive physical trauma. You did have quite a few skin contusions when you came in, but they’ve healed quite nicely while you were in your induced coma. For this reason, we believe they might have resulted from your time in the river as opposed to a human factor.”

I translate his words to mean that though I was found bruised and battered by the side of the river, it was the river they think must have done the battering, not another human being.

“Oh, well that’s a relief,” I answer, shining a grateful smile at the doctor. Then with a conscious thought toward keeping my voice pleasant and level, I ask my parents, “Are there any theories about how I ended up beside a river in Kansas?”

“We’re not sure,” Mom answers. “You were wearing hiking boots when they brought you in, plus a t-shirt and shorts, but—”

“Excuse me? Hiking boots?” I say as if the mere idea is a foreign concept—because it is. I don’t think I’ve ever owned a pair of boots that didn’t come with either cowboy or stiletto heels in my life. And though my younger sister, Alma, keeps trying to get me to go hiking with her, I’m not one for that or any other outdoor activity involving bugs or—I shudder—nature.

“Well, that explains it then. I was obviously kidnapped and dragged into those woods,” I only half-quip to my parents. “I must have somehow fallen into the river during my escape.”

“This is what I believe as well,” my father says with a nod as if that’s decided.

“Or,” my mother says, throwing us both exasperated looks, “you went camping.”

I come as close to snorting as I ever have since undergoing High Media training. “Oh, Mom, don’t you think it’s more likely I was kidnapped?” I ask with a teasing smile.

“Kidnapping isn’t anything to joke about,” my mom answers. “Especially with your mama.”

She’s most likely right about that. But I’m getting more and more alarmed by the second, and alarm isn’t on the list of my “brand qualities.” So, I keep my voice light as I add, “Also, if I was going to give camping a try, why would I do it in Kansas of all places? That’s a non-flyover state, so I would have known going in that if a huge bug tried to carry me off, I wouldn’t be able to call in an emergency drone.”

It’s just another joke. But for some reason, my words makes both my parents freeze.

Something’s wrong, a strange voice growls inside my head, and I sniff, because it smells like… yes, it actually smells like my parents’ scents have been altered by some quality I can’t quite pinpoint. For the worse.

“What is it?” I ask, my on brand smile wobbling.

But neither of them answers. Leaving Dr. Messnick to say, “Ah, could you perhaps tell us the year, your full name, and your age?”

I tell him the year and follow it up with “Layla Valeriya Rustanov. I’m 27 years old,” I answer.

Concerned looks are immediately exchanged all around. This can’t be good.

“Wrong answer?” I ask.

Mom squeezes my hand again, her eyes beyond sympathetic. “You’re right about the year. But…”

“You are 28 now,” Dad informs me, finishing my mother’s sentence as he so often does. “You moved to Wichita and took an internship with the Department of Children’s Services in January.”

“I moved to Kansas for a public sector internship?” I repeat.

“Da,” my father confirms, his expression careful, as if he’s dealing with dynamite. “You lived there with Gracie without your guards.”

My mom clears her throat, before adding, “It was only supposed to be for three months, but then you decided to take a full time job there.”

“I left Drummond without my guards,” I say, hardly able to comprehend the words as they come out of my mouth. Because why would I ever move from Drummond to take a public-sector job in Kansas? Also, I like my play cousin, Gracie Nakamura just fine, but didn’t she just drop out of business school? Why would I choose her, of all my contacts, as my first roomie?

“Da,” Dad answers again in his native Russian.

“I don’t… Why would I…?” My high media training fails me and I’m at a loss for words. “I don’t remember any of this,” I confess, my voice totally off brand and weak.

My parents both stare at me, their expressions different versions of stricken. My father’s face has statued over—a default mode he often uses when he’s upset but doesn’t want anyone to know. My mother’s face isn’t nearly so cloaked. Tears fall unchecked from her huge brown eyes. And their scents…. it’s as if I can smell their upset.

“Maybe we should start by asking what you do remember, Layla,” the doctor suggests. “What month do you think it is?”

“I believe it’s…,” I stretch my mind to recall the last date I can remember, “…sometime in January.”

Again, my parent’s exchange a look.

Then Mom says, “Honey, it’s June.”

“June?!” I repeat. Media training wars with emotion as I try to process the time loss. Six months. I’ve lost six months of my life.

“Okay, well…” The doctor’s eyes raise and go to the side, as he consults his bioware, then he says, “You’re scheduled for another medical scan in a few minutes, but I’d like to take a quick look at your eyes the old-fashioned way, if you don’t mind.”

“Yes, that’s fine,” I answer, my voice now much weaker than it was when I first woke up.

The doctor takes an old-fashioned pen light from his white coat pocket and shines it directly into both my eyes. “Your pupils are in good order, but I’m not sure where to go from here. I’ll have to consult with a few of my older colleagues. Usually, the bioware is a good indicator of what happened during an amnesic episode, but in this case…”

“I don’t have bioware installed,” I finish for him, my resting smile defaulting to wry.

But I must not be doing that great of a job of masking how I really feel, because the doctor’s voice becomes extra gentle as he says, “Tell me…what is the last thing you remember?”

I strain, thinking out loud… “I was…at my boyfriend’s apartment…” I cut my eyes to my father. “You haven’t met him yet, Papa, but I think you’ll like him. He’s a doctor, and he’s kind and smart. We were…we were talking about him coming home with me for my birthday in March to meet both of you.”

I look up at Mom. “Did that happen?” I ask, pitifully desperate for the answer to be yes. I need something—anything—to make sense right now. “Did you meet him?”

My parents exchange yet another cryptic look before my mother says, “Yes, we did meet him, baby. And he was very nice.”

“I thought he was a fine young man. A good match for you,” Dad adds, which for him is the highest praise when it comes to the guys I date.

But before I can ask another question the doctor says, “Ah…there are some other things we should discuss about your current condition, Layla. Perhaps we can talk alone?”

“You think you can kick me out of my daughter’s hospital room?” Dad asks, staring down the doctor with his infamous cold grey gaze.

“Papa, please stop!” I say, throwing a tight smile, at my huge Russian father. “He’s only trying to help.”

“Kicking parents out of a daughter’s room is not my definition of ‘help,’” my father informs me, crossing his arms over his large chest.

Instead of responding or getting in an off-brand argument with my father, I tell the doctor, “It’s alright. Whatever you have to say to me you can say in front of my parents. We’re very close.”

“Are you sure?” the doctor asks, eyeing my father warily.

Fear fizzes in my stomach as a new thought occurs to me. Maybe when the doctor said I didn’t have any other signs of physical assault he hadn’t accounted for sexual assault.

“Yes, I’m sure,” I answer. Because if I was kidnapped, and if they did somehow manage to do something bad to me, then even I might not be so judicious about holding my father back.

“You will tell us what you know. Now,” my father says to the doctor, his voice hard as nails.

Dr. Messnick gulps and seems to brace himself as he says, “Layla, you’re very lucky to be alive after your fall into the river. And…so is the baby you’re carrying. You’re pregnant.”

I stare at him. Wondering if I’ve heard wrong. Not comprehending…

“Wait…WHAT?” I hear my mother say beside me. It’s a fairly accurate verbal summary of everything I’m feeling. And then my father begins to curse in Russian.

2

Five months before Kukunniwi

“You’re late, Dr. Thug!” The little old nurse pursed her lips from her perch behind the nurse’s station and thrust a tablet at him as soon as Knight came through the Urgent Care’s revolving doors.

“AI got caught up on a valve replacement,” he responded to her sour look. “Had to go in for a manual assist.”

As he took the tablet from her he only just managed not to add, “and fuck you, too, Nurse Old Skool.” Most of the younger staff and his fellow doctors called him Dr. Knight or just Knight, when they were being casual. But a few of the older broads, insisted on calling him by a shortened form of the “Dr. Thuglicious” nickname that had somehow followed him here from med school.

“I see you had time to grab a coffee on the way over,” she answered with another pointed, sour look, this time aimed at the coffee cup in his left hand.

He didn’t bother to remind her he’d just come off a twelve-hour shift that included a lengthy surgery; one that had begun at 3:00 A.M. well before the butt crack of dawn. And now instead of going straight home as any sane human doctor might, he’d walked across the hospital plaza to consult on this case.

Instead, he kept his mouth shut. Two years into his residency he’d learned it was useless to fight back, especially against the older nurses. And this one looked like she was a few steps away from partial retirement. She probably still remembered the good old days when surgeons had to clock four years of med school on top of four years of college before they were allowed anywhere near a residency program. The glory days when paper was still part of paperwork, when doctors weren’t required to have robotic engineering skills, and when a surgeon would never dream of cornrowing his hair.

But Dr. Rasmussen Knight, as he’d decided to be called in the human world, had only needed to tack on a year of med school at KU to his robotics degree to get the M and D behind his name. Then the KU med program installed him here to replace a beloved Lister Award-winning pediatric surgeon twice his age who couldn’t keep up with the AI. And since cornrows were convenient as fuck for guys with long, curly hair, he’d decided to do that, too. So from the first moment she laid eyes on him, there was no chance in hell Nurse Old Skool would ever warm up to him.

“Maybe you should walk and read,” the nurse suggested as if just looking at him hurt her overly-nostalgic eyeballs. “The foster kid and social worker from Wichita Children’s Home have been waiting over an hour for you in exam room three.”

Knight took her up on her suggestion. Not because he cared about her opinion, but because the coffee was hardly doing shit for his current level of fatigue and he wanted to get this over with so he could go home.

But he stopped short in the doorway of room three. He’d been expecting to find a nine-year-old cub and Rita Olcan, the she-wolf who just happened to have a human job as a social worker at Wichita Children’s Home. She was another ancient, and she only tolerated him because he was the one wolf with pediatric skills within a 100-mile radius.

And yeah, as expected, there was a skinny nine-year-old wolf with dark floppy hair, seated on the exam table with both arms clenched around his stomach. But instead of Olcan, a tall hot drink of latte stood beside him rubbing his back.

Not a wolf. Definitely not an older she-wolf. But a much younger human woman with a huge head of dark brown curls that tumbled past her shoulders and down her back. She was dressed conservatively—if colorfully—in wide-legged red trousers and a pale-yellow bowtie blouse. The blouse looked like it was made out of satin—like real satin and not the shiny factory blends most women wore. And the color matched her ochre brown skin perfectly, making her look sun-kissed in the middle of winter, even beneath the exam room’s overly bright and unforgiving lights.

A groan from the boy tore Knight’s gaze away from Hot Social Worker, reminding him of why he was there in the first place.

With a slight frown, he made a preliminary scan of the patient. Dark circles under the eyes, profuse sweating. The kid was hurting. Bad.

Hot Social Worker made a sympathetic sound, squeezing the kid tight around the shoulder before looking up. “Will the doctor be here soon?” she asked with a polite smile.

He stared back at her confused until he remembered what he looked like to women who weren’t trying to coax him into bed. Dr. Thug—because of the cornrows and a particularly hard countenance that hadn’t fallen away after his time in the Marines. This woman wasn’t the first to mistake him for a nurse despite his white coat. A few of his patients’ mothers had even mistaken him for security.

“I am the doctor,” Knight answered, voice firm and brooking no argument. He’d learned since he’d started his surgical residency at the Children’s Hospital that this was the best way to deal with adults who were skeptical about his ability to dispense a diagnosis because of his brownish skin and brutish demeanor.

“Oh…” She visibly startled but unlike a lot patient parents, she didn’t argue with him or worse, demand to see his credentials. Instead, she reset with a bright smile and said, “Forgive me. I’m an intern with the Department of Children’s Services, here on behalf of the Wichita Children’s Home. Their usual social worker, Ms. Olcan, is out this week on vacation.”

Her hand returned to the kid’s back. “As you can see, Jandro is in terrible pain. But for some reason, Ms. Olcan has you down as the primary doctor in Jandro’s case file as opposed to Dr. Lillian who all the other children see. Perhaps because he only came to the home two weeks ago? I’m not sure. But we’re here now and I hope you can help him.”

Well, that explains it, Knight thought as he walked forward to get a closer look at the patient. The she-wolf social worker at WCH put a wolf doctor down as the kid’s primary… right before she went on vacation. Mystery solved.

Well, at least one mystery. The human social worker was still intriguing the hell out of him.

She smelled expensive. Like linen sheets and a perfume specially created to enhance her natural scent. Her skin was so porcelain smooth it appeared poreless. As if she’d been put on a beauty treatment regimen before a pimple could so much as think about appearing. Long arms and legs. The kind of fit-but-not-buff you could only achieve with a personal trainer and a body-specific, specially targeted nutrition plan. And unlike 99.9% of people her age, she spoke High Media, a super-succinct brand of hit-every-syllable, no-filler-words English you had to take years of special classes to learn.

This woman was well-designed. The kind of classic his brother, Rafes, would be happy to have on his arm for the human events he was expected to attend as President of the North American Lupines. But here she was in an Urgent Care exam room with a foster kid, because she was interning for a children’s service department in a non-drone state.

The kid groaned again, distracting him from his speculations about Hot Social Worker.

“So, what’s going on here?” he asked, not bothering to try and match her elevated language levels like a lot of people did with High Media folks.

She gave the boy’s shoulders another sympathetic squeeze. “Jandro told me he woke up this morning with intense stomach pain and started vomiting soon after that. He’s not keeping food down and as you can see, he’s not doing well.”

Knight nodded in agreement with her assessment about the state of his health, but not for the reasons she probably assumed.

“Alright, I’ll need to run a medical wand over him and I’m pretty sure he’s not going to be comfortable getting undressed in front of you, so why don’t you wait outside?”

“I’m sorry but that won’t be possible,” she answered with an apologetic dip of what seemed to be a permanent smile. “He’s deaf and you’ll need me here to translate since he can only sign.”

He raised an eyebrow, “You know ASL?”

Ever since the introduction of bioware into the general population, ASL had become all but obsolete. Didn’t need to sign if everyone could text and often speak directly into everyone else’s head. But this kid didn’t look like the kind whose parents shelled out for a complete bioware system in his birth package.

“Yes, I know ASL,” she assured him with another bright smile. Like bright smiles were her personal punctuation mark.

“You lucky boy!” he signed to Jandro. “You got sick the week a hot social worker was subbing in for O-L-C-A-N.”

Jandro answered with a weak chuff before unfolding his arms to feebly sign back. “Yes, she hot. But I vomit in front of her two times. Now I probably have no chance with her.”

“Inappropriate but funny,” Hot Social Worker signed back to both of them with a smiling shake of her head.

“Seriously,” he said and signed at the same time so Jandro could see, too. “I need you to wait outside. I can take it from here. Right, Jandro?” he asked, hoping the kid was smart enough to back him up on this one.

“Yes,” Jandro signed to her. “You can go. I okay with him.”

“Are you sure?” she signed back, also speaking out loud. “Because if you are uncomfortable, I can tell Doctor Cornrows where he can go.”

So she’s not all smoking hot sunshine and rainbows, he thought to himself as he watched Jandro sign back, “Don’t make me laugh. Hurts my stomach.”

“I’ll be right outside,” she spoke signed to both him and the kid before finally leaving out.

He watched her go, admiring the swing of her hips as she let the room. But as soon as the door closed behind her he spoke signed to the kid, “So you ran out of meth?”

“Yes. Police take when they find me with my dead mom. She O-D.” Jandro admitted immediately.

Sad story. But the kid’s face had lost all expression as he signed. Just stating the facts like he was used to his life taking turns for the even shittier. The deaf version of monotone.

“You addicted, too?” he asked matching the kid’s expressionless sign-tone.

“No,” the kid signed back. “But withdrawal pains get worse after every full moon.”

Yeah, this had become a common story within the wolf community over the past few decades ever since shifters discovered they could suppress the full moon shift with methamphetamine. And the story was especially ubiquitous in the poorer, or as they were more colloquially known, “mange” pack states like Kansas.

Basically, it went something like this: Wolf decides to live among humans in order to make more money than if they stayed with their rural pack. To make life easier, wolf uses meth to stave off the full moon shift. It works…for a few months or so, but the withdrawal pains start to get worse and worse over time. So instead of going to the woods on full moon nights, the wolf starts taking more meth to bypass the withdrawal pains. The rest of the story plays out pretty fast after that. Within a year of that first hit, wolf becomes a full-blown addict and loses the job wolf started taking meth for in the first place.

The best case scenario of that story ended with the wolf OD’ing in some alley. The worst case was sitting right here in front of him: a special needs city kid left behind by a single mom who’d probably been human before getting scratched by her fellow meth-head/shifter boyfriend.

Knight heaved a weary sigh before signing to the kid, “Antacids and drink A LOT of water. Understand?”

Jandro answered with a miserable nod. But at least he didn’t complain about getting the same advice he would’ve from a human doctor as a lot of wolves did. Meth users always come in hoping for miracles and it all boils down to a roll of Tums and lots of water. Anything else would be too risky to prescribe in a high risk for addiction case like this one.

“Sorry I can’t do more,” he signed, meaning it. “When the shifter social worker returns from her vacation, tell her to find you a foster family in the Kansas state pack FAST. Preferably BEFORE the next full moon.” He put an extra emphasis on the “fast” and “before” signs so the kid would understand how important it was.

“Okay,” the boy signed back, still looking morose.

Knight could have left it there but after a second he asked, “You know how to read?”

“A little,” the boy signed back.

So he pulled one of his Dr. Knight business cards out of his lab coat pocket and wrote his home address and private number on the back. “If this happens again, don’t let a human bring you in. Card has my number and home address.”

He held the card out to the kid who blinked with surprise before taking it.

“Never before meet nice male wolf,” he signed with the card in his hand, his expression somber.

“Not nice. Just decent,” he signed back. Leaving it there though he could have added he already had enough on his conscience and didn’t want to add finding this kid OD’d on the street to his current roster of recurring nightmares.

“What will you do about L-heart?” the boy suddenly asked, tapping the L-sign over his heart with more facial expression than he’d used when talking about his dead mother.

“Who’s L-heart?”

“My name sign for Hot Social Worker.”

Oh. He’d been so wrapped up in getting the kid help that he’d forgotten about the high-class hottie the boy had arrived with. “I’ll tell her you have the stomach flu and need lots of fluids and antacids to recover. This won’t go on your record.”

“No, I mean what will YOU do? Will you ask her for date?”

3

Four months before Kukunniwi…

The answer to Jandro’s question was no. Sure, Hot Social Worker was…well, hot. But she was also complicated. And he didn’t do complicated—or dates for that matter. So Knight sent the kid off with his hot social worker and didn’t think about her again.

Until a month later when he walked into RAWKUS, a new club located about a ten-minute walk from his building. RAWKUS was one of those venues where the latest dance hits played so loud, anyone who didn’t possess supernatural hearing had to practically hug to be heard over it. Technically, the place was new. But save for the décor and music, it could have been a clone of every other club he’d ever walked into looking for human pussy.

And when he propped himself up against the long chrome bar to make a preliminary scan of the club, he quickly found plenty of candidates to take his mind off the shitty day he’d had. His DTF-radar went off all over the place as hotties in high heels and tight dresses started filling up his visual inbox with come-hither glances. That was expected.

What he didn’t expect was to recognize one of the few women who weren’t looking at him. She was on the dancefloor in a long-sleeved, green-sequined minidress and yellow cowboy boots. And his wolf stood up inside him, remembering her in an instant even though her massive tumble of curls had been straightened into long, sophisticated waves. It was Hot Social Worker.

She danced in a circle with a much shorter, heavily tattooed woman who appeared to be mixed race—if her dark skin and almond-shaped eyes were anything to go on—and a slightly shorter black guy. A boyfriend? No, Knight decided after a few more minutes of watching them all dance together. They were all having too much fun, doing a bunch of old fashioned early century dances like the Soulja Boy, Stanky Leg and Single Ladies. Honestly, the guy seemed more interested in krumping that getting with either of the women he was dancing with. And, when a clean-cut guy tried to approach Hot Social Worker, it was the shorter woman, not the man, who dead-eyed him away…

She smelled good, remember? his wolf suddenly reminded Knight out of the blue.

Because she paid to have a scent specially designed to match her body chemistry, his human answered, resisting the sharp tug of attraction. Plus, she was here with friends. Going after a woman with a dancing cock-blocker by her side seemed like a stupid move, given how badly he needed a release for the red anger tonight. Much better, easier, and less complicated options were throwing him “what’s up” looks from all over the club.

As if to prove his point, a blond wearing a simple red bodycon dress and a matching pair of heels appeared in front of him, blocking his view of Hot Social Worker and her crew.

Knight scanned her up and down, liking what he saw. Short, sleek, and sexy with her tight curves on full display—not covered up in some weirdly cut minidress.

She scanned him right back; her eyes slathered with permanent eyeliner and sexual intent. Exactly his type. A bad girl with big girl panties. Not the kind who’d whine afterwards when it was time for her to bounce.

“Hi, I’m Riley. Can I buy you a drink?” she asked, leaning in close. She didn’t know he had wolf hearing and even if she did, she might have leaned in anyway just to have an excuse to push her rack into his lower chest

“Yeah, you can by me a drink,” he answered with a cocky smirk.

But as soon as she moved out of his line of sight and stepped up to the bar to order, his gaze wandered right back to the dance floor. And his wolf startled when he saw the social worker wasn’t dancing with her friends anymore.

His eyes darted around until he found her talking to some blond guy off to the side of the dance floor. Despite their stark color difference, the guy looked like her somehow, expensive and beautifully designed. He was dressed in a double-breasted leather suit jacket that would have passed muster at the hottest nightclubs from New York to Tokyo. Guy was some fancy shit.

Perfect match, he thought. But for some reason his normally quiet wolf had begun a low growl in his chest.

“Hey, hey! Did you hear me?”

With effort, he dragged his gaze back to the bad girl at the bar. “What are you drinking?” she asked, sounding more peeved than sultry now. He got the feeling this wasn’t the first time she’d put the question to him.

“Uh, get me a mineral water,” he answered, his eyes going back to Hot Social Worker. Fancy Shit was leaning in closer than he needed to. Trying to talk. But her face was tight like she didn’t want to hear whatever he was attempting to tell her.

“Seriously? Water?” Bad Girl asked. “Are you, like, a recovering alcoholic or something?”

“Yeah, something like that,” he answered since it was easier than explaining what all kinds of fucked up he really was.

“Oh, cool,” she said, like alcoholism was nothing more than the latest trend. “In that case, we don’t need to get a drink. We can just get out of here. I live in the building across the street if you want to come back to my place.”

Excellent. A quick fuck. No bullshit small talk required. This was exactly what he wanted.

But then Fancy Shit put his hand on Hot Social Worker’s shoulder and she immediately knocked it away, taking a step back from him.

Knight pushed off the bar, barely hearing the offended “Hey!” that followed him, as he stalked across the club.

“…let’s not cause a scene, love,” Fancy Shit was saying as Knight approached. The guy didn’t speak High Media like she did, but he had a classic English accent to make up for it.

However, Hot Social Worker didn’t seem all that impressed by his accent or his reasonable tone. “If you didn’t want a scene, you shouldn’t have—” she started to say before cutting off with an abrupt, “Oh, hello there!” when she saw Knight standing there.

She turned away from Fancy Shit to give him a winning smile. “How nice to see you again,” she said even though it was obvious to Knight that she didn’t remember his name.

Fancy Shit visibly startled but recovered enough to ask Hot Social Worker, “Is this a…friend of yours?”

No way to miss how he said friend—like he was attempting to inject humor into the awkward interruption because there was no way Hot Social Worker and the hard ass standing in front of them could be friends.

Well, okay then. Without a single fuck given, he stepped in front of the wealthy Brit and asked Hot Social Worker, “You sick of talking to this guy yet?”

Her eyes widened at his question but instead of giving her any time to come up with a gracious High Media answer, Knight pulled her onto the dance floor.

Like, a heat-seeking radar, the heavily tattooed woman she’d been dancing in a circle with earlier, started toward them. But Hot Social Worker raised her hand, as if to say, “It’s okay!” and the tattooed badass stood down.

Then as if pre-ordained, a Latin song with a sick club beat came on.

“I love this song!” Hot Social Worker cheered.

In response, Knight spun her under his arm before guiding her through a set of sexy Latin dance moves. Nice. Just the excuse he needed to touch her without having to discuss it first.

“Where did you learn to dance like that?” she asked breathlessly when the electronic DJ’s algorithm faded the club-thumper into a slow song.

Knight pulled her in close for an easy side-to-side sway. “My dad,” he answered. Not providing additional details because personal info wasn’t required for one-night stand negotiations.

“So…you’re Latino?”

“And some other stuff.” He didn’t bother to ask about her background. Thanks to advents in cellular-level dermatology, with the help of skin lighteners and darkeners, anyone could look like any combination of races these days if they had enough money. And again, he didn’t need any of her personal details to bang her.

“Well, I’m glad I ran into you…” she said smiling up at him. He had to admit that ever-present smile of hers was a fucking stun gun. Full of white teeth and soundless-laughter. Better than any of the other “come hither” looks he’d gotten tonight.

“…because I’m still wondering why someone working out of an Urgent Care would be listed as Jandro’s primary doctor. That doesn’t make much sense, considering the higher cost of being seen there as opposed to a pediatrician’s office.”

No, it didn’t make much sense. Which was why as soon as Jandro was placed in a foster home, the she-wolf social worker at WCH would make damn sure his record was expunged from the human data system. As if he’d never been there at all.

But obviously he couldn’t tell her that. So instead of answering her question, he asked, “You want to come back to my place and do this or what?”

“Do this…?” she repeated as if his relatively low form of speech was a foreign language. But then her eyes widened with sudden realization as she said, “Oh my gosh, are you…,” he could almost hear some teacher telling her to substitute a pause as opposed to using a filler word as she struggled to come up with the rest of her question, “…coming on to me?”

“Yeah,” he answered, his tone frank because he’d thought that much was obvious.

“You’re requesting a date with me?” she asked carefully, as if she were trying to process the completely foreign concept of dating someone who wasn’t a fancy shit while putting the question to him.

“No,” he answered just as carefully. “I don’t want to date you. I want to get with you.”

“Oh,” she looked from side to side. And she appeared to be speaking over a bunch of small explosions going off in her head when she said, “Am I to understand you are requesting a one-night stand with me?”

“Yeah, I want to have a one-night stand with you,” he answered about ten times faster because apparently, he wasn’t nearly as confused by this concept as she was. “I want to take you back to my place and bang. So are you down for that or what?”

“Oh, my….” she said. And swear to God, she actually placed a hand over her chest like she’d never been so shocked in all her life. Real talk, it felt like he’d just asked a Jane Austen novel to hit and quit it.

“Listen, if you don’t want to do this I can find somebody else—” he started to say, already scanning the bar for the Blonde DTF he let get away.

But then Hot Social Worker cut him off with an, “Oh, no, please don’t do that. My answer is a resounding yes! I would LOVE to go back to your place to participate in a one-night stand. Thank you so very much for the invitation!” That declared, she clapped her hands together like a seal. “Let’s go!”

And then—what the hell—she ended up pulling him out of the club.

4

“Home sweet fortress!” I declare as the heavily fortified manual car pulls up to the front gate of our heavily fortified Texas compound.

My mother, who’s sitting next to me in the backseat, laughs in that big way of hers. “I’m glad you’ve still got your sense of humor, baby.”

I’m only half joking. The place I’ve called home for all but eight years of my life consists of three huge brick villas on a giant property surrounded by a brick-and-wrought iron curtain wall. And though the ex-Mossad operative manning the security booth waves our driver through the front gate with a welcome back wave for me, any other visitor would be vetted and full-body scanned. Even with an invite.

To say my father is overprotective is an understatement. It’s more like security is his religion, and he’s raised all three of his children as acolytes. Which is why I never bothered to move out when I took over my mother’s old job as a one-stop social worker for all of Drummond, the small town where we live. It seemed easier to live at home as opposed to attempting to live like a normal girl who just happens to have two huge bodyguard following her around at all times.

Yet according to my parents, I’d decided to not only take an internship with the Department of Children Services in Wichita, of all places. But to also leave my bodyguards behind and move in with Gracie, the daughter of my father’s best friend and his Global Head of security, Suro Nakamura.

Why? Because I’d wanted to try something new, according to my mother. After 27 years of doing everything by the book.

I am confused…so, so confused. But according to my team of doctors, that’s to be expected.

“Yes, at least I still have my sense of humor,” I answer with a wry smile. “It seems like I’ve retained everything except for the last six months.”

Mom makes a sympathetic sound and rubs my shoulder. “I know this is a horrible way to come back home,” she says. “But I’m glad you’ve decided to stay here where we can take care of you instead of going back to Kansas. I missed you.”

I wished I could say the same, but the story about me deciding to move to Kansas on a whim still doesn’t feel real. None of it does.

And though the doctors keep assuring me my memory could come back any day now, I’m impatient with questions. Many of which my parents haven’t been able to answer clearly because, according to my mom, I got “caught up” in my new life and haven’t called her since I moved to Kansas. Which once more doesn’t sound at all like me.

But then again, I’ve never lived apart from my parents so what would I know about how I might react to living on my own? Sometimes it takes my little sister Alma weeks to return Mom’s calls.

Weeks not months, the new voice inside of me replies skeptically. And Alma doesn’t consider Mom to be her best friend.

The voice is new, too, and I’ll be honest—I’m a little afraid of it. It’s not quite how I’ve heard schizophrenia described, but it’s also not something I can easily ignore. It feels like the voice is separate from me, as if my gut instinct suddenly copped an attitude and started talking to me in a deep, throaty voice that brings to mind…

Nature…

No, that’s not it.

Spirit…

No, that’s not it either.

Animal, the voice says. I’m the animal inside you now.

My heart stutters, and I place my hand on my stomach. Still flat, but apparently there’s a baby inside. Which still feels so impossible. I was on the device. But, as it turns out, the device didn’t work. And though nothing abnormal came back on the initial diagnostic scans, I’m now one of 31 women worldwide who have somehow managed to get pregnant after its insertion.

I’m pretty sure the press will have a field day with this. But my mom assures me all my media protections were put back in place from the moment I was airlifted out of Kansas. Which means that even in this age of “Everyone Knows Everything About You,” no one will know anything about my mental or physical condition until my family’s PR team releases a statement.

I’m protected. The baby I’ve decided to keep will be, too. But the question remains… where is its father?

My own father is waiting for us when I walk into the bedroom with Mom holding onto my arm like I’m some feeble old lady, and two of her guards flanking my back.

“Good, Lasha. You are here,” he calls out, holding up a razor-thin tablet. “I have downloaded much good entertainment content from the past six months, and it is all here for you to watch while you recover.”

“Thank you, Papa. That was very thoughtful of you,” I say, even as the new internal voice says, This feels like walking back into a cage.

What? No! I silently answer the new voice. I’m as grateful to my parents as I’ve always been, but instead of taking the tablet, I ask, “Has Uncle Suro called?”

“Yes. I am afraid there are still no solid clues as to why you went camping,” Dad answers, tone gruff.

We’ve ruled out a botched kidnapping during my month long stay in the hospital. But my father’s head of security still hasn’t been able to find any details about why I’d seemingly gone to a remote area of the woods on my own.

“Why don’t you come get into bed,” Mom says, pulling back the covers and patting the mattress.

I take her up on the suggestion, feeling a little weary after the long drive from Dallas, combined with weeks in a hospital where I didn’t feel all that comfortable. But before I let myself settle in, I ask Dad if my boyfriend’s called him back yet.

“No, not yet,” Dad answers, setting the tablet on my dark oak nightstand. “Perhaps he is not as good a guy as we previously thought.”

I screw up my face because I know my boyfriend and he is that good of a guy. Not to mention the first boyfriend my dad’s ever said he liked.

“Are you sure you’re using the right contact number? He’d been talking about doing Doctors Without Borders this summer. Maybe he decided to leave early and turned off his bioware?”

My defense of him seems to annoy my father more than persuade. “Layla, I assure you we are doing everything in our power to reach him,” he answers, voice testy despite having received huge amounts of media training right along with his kids. Luckily our PR team gave him an Intelligent Russian Billionaire Redeemed by American Family brand, which allows for more wiggle room than mine: Ever Pleasant American Princess Living Next Door.

Dad suddenly grabs the tablet he set aside. “I did not put the last season of The Next American Viking Warrior on here. You love this show. How could I forget to load it for you?”

“Everything in your power?” I ask, doggedly sticking to the original subject. “Because when Uncle Suro called for his check-in yesterday he didn’t mention anything about paying him a visit at work.”

Dad looks away and says, “You are right, my smart and beautiful daughter. I do not know why I did not think to do this myself. I will have Suro try to visit him and report back.”

With that sorted out, he returns to fiddling with the tablet. But…

He’s lying. I know he is. First of all, I find it impossible to believe Dad needed me to suggest he send Suro to find my MIA boyfriend. But let’s say he did. My dad is a man with a huge bias toward action. He doesn’t agree to do things, he simply does them. Him avoiding a promise he’s made feels not only disingenuous, but also completely out of character. Right now, he honestly appears more intent on getting my old-fashioned tablet to work than he does on finding my boyfriend.

“Alexei, put that tablet down. We should let her get some sleep,” my mom says while throwing Dad an irritated look.

I startle a little because I’d honestly forgot Mom was still in the room with us, she’d been so quiet since we walked into my bedroom.

Not right… not right, the strange new voice insists.

But Dad does as she asks, leaving the room quickly as if he’s been relieved of duty, while Mom pulls the covers over me. “You’ve had a long day and you need to keep up your energy,” she says to me. “Growing babies ain’t easy.”

Mom’s allowed to occasionally say word’s like “ain’t,” because it fits in with her brand, Best Friend Just Like You and Me with a Texas Accent.

And though I agree with her, the voice growls, Trapped…trapped… trapped… as I roll onto my side.

But Mom’s right about me needing to rest. My eyes fall closed before the door clicks shut behind her. However, as I fall fast asleep, two important questions linger in my mind.

Why isn’t my boyfriend calling me back?

And why is my dad lying to me?

5

Four months before Kukunniwi…

By the time they got to his apartment building, Knight was kicking himself. No doubt Hot Social Worker was a quality piece of ass, but, as it turned out, she was also crazy as hell. Which was bad news all around because he didn’t like complicated. And he HATED crazy. Even worse, this girl was smart. And smart and crazy, as he’d discovered right before he decided to stop sleeping with the women who attended med school with him, was a recipe for disaster.

He’d always played it straight with both human and wolf girls. Let them know he wasn’t here for the long talks and kisses goodnight. Hot Social Worker seemed to understand that. She’d pulled him out of the club after agreeing to go to his place. But fuck did she talk a lot.

It seemed she had something to say about every aspect of their walk from “the delightfully cold” February weather to gushing over his “previously undiscovered part of town.”

“Oh my gosh, you live in a converted school building? How wonderful!” she exclaimed when they made it to the faded red brick former elementary school he called home (at least until he finished his residency in May). “Do you have roommates? Ooh, and is your place messy?”

“It’s a studio and no, I’m not messy,” he answered, feeling like he was giving the most disappointing replies ever.

As usual with humans, he didn’t expand beyond the basic details. Didn’t tell her he was a lone wolf to the extreme and couldn’t abide living with others, or about how he used to be a slob before joining the Marines. He just kept grimly walking, wishing like hell he’d gone with the Bad Girl option because this good girl talked way too much.

But it was too late to go back to the club, and girls who knew what they wanted and had the nipples to ask for it got snapped up quick. Most guys knew better than to shove a gift horse away in exchange for a talking stick in yellow cowboy boots. Fuck his life…

“I simply LOVE your apartment!” Hot Social Worker announced nearly as soon as he let her inside and the automatic track lights kicked on with a belligerent buzz. “Is this an old gym floor?” she asked, tapping her boot against the peeling black lacquer paint of an old half-court circle where a couch ought to be.

“Yeah,” he answered, dropping his keys on the faux granite counter top closest to the door.

“How truly delightful!” She looked around like she’d happened upon a palace even though the only other things to see in his spare apartment were a neatly made bed and an open galley kitchen pressed like a last thought into the shared wall.

“The bathroom’s over there if you need to take a leak before we do this.”

“Yes, I would like to make use of the facilities, thank you,” she answered before trotting off to the bathroom as if she’d won a prize.

“And you have an old-fashioned built-in bathtub—how lovely!” she called out when returned. “Your apartment is simply brilliant. It reminds me of those old 90s movies about directionless 20-year-olds!”

Actually, the building had been converted back in the 90s, but still he felt compelled to ask, “Exactly how much did you have to drink tonight?”

He half hoped her answer would be unacceptable so he’d have a good excuse to call a driverless car to take her away. Yeah, he still needed to get it on with somebody, but it didn’t necessarily have to be with her, and the club was only a ten-minute walk away.

She replied, “I’ve only had sparkling water. I’m just high on this experience. Would you like me to tone it down?”

“Can you tone it down?” he asked with a skeptical note in his voice.

“I cannot,” she confessed before letting out another squeal. “I simply can’t believe I’m here! No one has ever asked me to do this before and I’ve always wanted to have a one-night stand. Oh my gosh, this is SO exciting!”

Okay, he had to stop her there. “You expect me to believe nobody’s ever asked you to hook up before?”

“No, they have not,” she insisted. “Every man I’ve gone out with wants to date me with a timeline toward marriage. Trust me, it’s a very predictable cycle.”

She suddenly cut off, her lips tightening into something he could only describe as a squinty smile. “This isn’t a tactic on your part, is it? Can you assure me you’re not luring me in with sex in the hopes it will develop into a serious relationship?”

After several horrified beats, he somehow managed to answer, “No. This is definitely not a tactic to get you to date me. I don’t do relationships, and I really don’t date.”

She let out a huge whoosh of relief. “Thank you for that peace of mind! I’ve had a few guys try to use questionable tactics to finagle a date out of me in the past. But I’m getting a good vibe from you. You seem like the kind of man who truly only wants sex from women. Also, you talk like the walking embodiment of a muscle car, which is such a lovely and colorful personality detail. Again, thank you for inviting me into your home for this one-night stand.”

“Okay, stop thanking me,” he said, between clenched teeth.

Her perma smile went wincing and apologetic. “It kills the grown up one-night stand mood when I express my gratitude, doesn’t it? I’m so sorry about that. I hope I’m not messing this up.”

For the first time in his adult life, Knight found himself rubbing two fingers down his nose like his dad used to.

“Exactly how old are you?” he asked, suddenly recalling the detail about her interning but not working at DWCS. Maybe there was another explanation for how insanely weird this woman was.

“I’m 27,” she answered with a reassuring smile. “I’m not a minor. I just grew up rather cloistered. How old are you?”

“29,” he answered.

“Wonderful! And I assume you grew up somewhere rural under cult-like conditions, and coming here was your big rebellion against the life you used to know.”

“Something like that…” he admitted, thinking about the all-wolf Colorado kingdom town, where he’d attended school until he and his brothers joined Wolf Force, a special all-lupine recon squad in the Marines. Then came those few years spent running black-ops for his older triplet brother, before he’d dropped out of the admittedly cult-like shifter world to become a doctor amongst the humans.

Yet she reacted like his upbringing might be the best thing yet about him. “Great!” she exclaimed, beaming from ear to ear. “It is an honor to have sex with somebody like you. I really appreciate you inviting me here. I know you’d prefer not to receive any further thank yous, but I really must—”

“Hey, Hot Social Worker,” he said, cutting her off.

“Yes?”

He backed her into the nearest available wall, bringing his face in as close as he could get without actually kissing her. “Shut up.”

She was tall in a very sexy way. Only a few inches shorter than him in her yellow cowboy boots. He didn’t have to tilt his head down much to hover his lips right over hers. And he bet he could get inside of her with just a dip of his hips, no lifting requi—

“Oh, is this the part where we do this?” she asked, her voice dipping to a dramatic whisper on “do this.”

“Yeah, it is,” he answered, resisting the urge to roll his eyes and ask, what the fuck is up with you?

He continued, “Tell me how bad you want me.”

“Really bad, baby,” she answered, overstating the words like a terrible actress in a vintage porno.

“No,” he said, pressing his body into hers. “I mean how bad do you want me to be with you. There are levels to this.”

Her eyes went comically wide while her lips bowed into an ‘ooh’ shape. “What are the levels? Please tell me every single one, right now.”

“Well, there’s level one, missionary in a b—”

“That sounds incredibly boring. Besides, I’ve had that kind of sex before,” she interrupted. “Let’s skip straight to level five. What does that level entail?”

“Lots of oral. Few compliments. A couple different positions. I make you feel real good.”

She made a considering noise and looked to the side, before swinging her eyes back to say, “Thank you for the clarification. Let’s go with level ten.”

His eyebrows raised. “You want to go straight to level ten. The first time?”

“Yes, I do,” she answered with an emphatic nod. “After all, this may be the only time I ever get to experience level ten sex. Ooh, do I need a safe word? Please tell me I need a safe word. That would be incredible!”

“Okay, you need a safe—”

“Thunderpuffs! I loved that show when I was a girl. That’s my safe word.”

He stared at her.

And after a moment, she asked with what appeared to be utterly sincere concern in her eyes, “Were you not allowed to watch TV when you were a child?”

A hard beat. Then without any warning whatsoever, he turned her around and pushed her back into the wall, trapping her underneath his heavy body. Letting her feel his length, hard and thick against her back side.

“Oh my gosh!” she began to gasp.

“Shut up,” he warned her before she could form another full sentence. “If I ask you a question, you can answer it. If I tell you to say something, you can say it. But other than that, here are the words you’re allowed to say at level ten. ‘More. Yes. Please. Fuck me harder.’”

“Oh, I don’t curse, but the rest of those words are fine by—”

She cut off when his hand slipped inside her silk panties, cupping her pussy hard as he growled, “None of those words are on the list. Say sorry.”

There was a pause during which he sensed the future of this hook-up being decided.

Then her “sorry” hit the air like a breath expelled.

And a strange series of new sensations hit him…ones he had to pause for a few seconds to analyze. His mouth—it was dry. His heartbeat racing. And the adrenaline rush—well, it was the usual sexual rush but with something new mixed into it.

For him, sex had always gone hand-in-hand with quelling the red anger. Like the black-ops killing: it wasn’t so much a desire as it was a practical need. A way to channel the red anger so it didn’t destroy him. And for a while now, picking up women had felt like little more than picking out a pretty vessel for his cumload.

But as he kneaded her pussy, a curling ache began low in his stomach. Desire and curiosity intermingling with what he was beginning to recognize as anticipation.

His whole body pulsed—not just his dick—as his wolf, usually so dormant in the background of his human couplings, reared inside his chest. Wanting this. Wanting her.

“I had a bad day and I’m fucking pissed about it,” he whispered in her ear. “So you’re going to take this long dick. All of it.”

“Yes,” she said.

“You know what? I changed my mind. ‘Yes’ just came off the list. You answer me with ‘yeah.’”

Another pause, and he could just about see her High Media brain turning over the forbidden word before she gave in with a nod.

Not enough. He kneaded her harder, the ball of his palm applying pressure to her clit. “I want to hear you say it. Say yeah.”

“Yeah,” she said. The word shaky like she was having trouble breathing. “Yeah.”

His cock was pounding now, the urge to pull himself out and start rutting her almost overwhelming. But not yet, his cool human told his panting wolf. Not yet…

The dress was scratchy as hell and it had to go. Releasing her warm pussy from his hard grip, he unzipped the back and pulled it up over her head…revealing a slender back with creamy brown skin several shades darker than his own.

Beautiful and not chemically altered. She still had a faded summer bikini line and shade inconsistencies that skin coloring treatments usually took away. His eyes scanned down her body and found another surprise previously hidden by the loose hemline of her dress and the wide-leg trousers she’d been wearing when they first met.

Ass. 100% black girl ass. The kind even the best cosmetic surgery bots couldn’t replicate. He almost asked her why she’d been hiding her light, but then at the last minute didn’t for fear of the mood-killing answer she’d come back with.

Wanting to look at her some more, he swept all that straightened hair aside and kicked open her legs so she was standing before him, ass thrust out, in nothing but her panties.

And damn if that wasn’t a sight. Head bent, chin resting on her shoulder. Just the way he liked. Faceless. Anonymous.

“Stand there while I wrap up. Don’t speak. Don’t move.”

He watched her, his wolf crouched low in his stomach, almost wanting her to talk again so he could punish her and make her submit.

But her body tightened at his command, lips clamping over her words in a way that made him want to rut her right now, condom be damned.

But he didn’t. Instead, he stepped away, forcing his wolf to walk in another direction even though his cock had become a block of concrete inside his joggers.

The trip across the room to get to the bulk box of cling wrap condoms on his nightstand became more about him calming down than making her wait. He’d played out this same scenario with hundreds of girls all over the world. But damn if slipping the thin piece of latex infused polyethylene film over his dick didn’t feel like dealing with a bomb that might go off at any second. Somehow, he managed not to explode like a fucking grunt who’d never touched a woman before taking leave in a foreign country.

Down boy, he commanded his wolf as he came to stand behind her. He loomed over her for a few seconds, letting her feel his presence. Then he pressed his cock into her fucktastic ass and said, “At ease.”

She stiffened before relaxing her entire body with a shiver.

Hot Social Worker didn’t emit a fear scent, but he could still sense this was hard for her. To stand here and take orders that went against her base coding.

“You come off crazy but you’re real in control of yourself, aren’t you?” he murmured, his lips brushing the shell of her ear. “You watch yourself like you watch your language. You don’t know how to relax and just be. Tell me that’s right.”

“That’s right,” she answered, her voice a breathy confession.

“Don’t think about outside shit when you’re with me,” he instructed. “When I fuck you, all I want you thinking about is how good it feels and how hard you’re going to come on this dick. Got that?”

“Yes—yeah.”

He liked her self-correction but had trouble believing her. He reached around her chest and peeled the perfectly color-matched lifters from the underside of what turned out to be a heavy set of breasts. According to his nose, they were real and not silicone. Then a new smell hit him: the scent of keen arousal that made him swell even larger.

But not yet…he wanted to play with her some more.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked her.

“Nothing—”

She broke off with a gasp when he nipped her, sharp and fast, on the shoulder. “That’s what happens to liars. They get bit. What are you thinking about?”

“I’m thinking about what you’re going to do next,” she admitted.

“Good.” He lazily rubbed his thumb over her nipples. One, two strokes and they pebbled into hard nubs. “I’m going to tease you for a while, get you wet enough to take my dick. Then I’m going to fuck you rough. Is that what you want? This dick up inside of you? You want to feel what it’s like to have a guy who doesn’t give a shit about you taking you hard?”

She moaned.

And he reminded her, “One of your words is ‘Yeah.’”

“Yeah…that’s what I want.”

He took her by the pussy again, kneading, his breath harsh at her neck. “You going to ride this dick? Make me come inside you?”

“Yeah,” she gasped. He could feel her getting wetter by the second beneath his hand.

“You want this?”

“Yeah!”

“Then take it.” That was all the warning he gave before pushing inside her.

But the surprise was his because…fuck! She fit around his dick like a glove. So tight, he almost came upon entry. He slammed a hand into the wall beside her head, determined to keep a grip on himself.

He’d been planning to play with her. Edge her out. Make her cry. So many evil objectives had sprung to mind when she’d challenged him with that level ten.

But they all disappeared the moment he got inside her. “Ride it,” he bit out. “If you want this dick, fuck it.”

A reasonable command, but as soon as she started to heed it, his wolf lost its damn mind.

Unnatural. Unnatural to take a she-wolf against the wall. To make her mate you.

She was human not wolf. But his wolf…his wolf did not care.

The next thing Knight knew, he was pulling out. No more commands. He grabbed her by the back of the neck and forced her over to the bed.

It was an act of God she didn’t Thunderpuffs out, because his wolf was not gentle about getting her into position. He forced her forward until her knees hit the side of the bed and she tumbled down, only her hands saving her from face planting. But the position she fell into made his wolf rear even worse.

Hands and knees.

Claim! Claim! Claim! Consumed by his wolf, he fell on top of her back, caging her in with two arms so she couldn’t move when he…

His soul howled as he pushed deep inside her. So deep she let out an aching cry—one that completely unhinged him.

His wolf didn’t just push his cool-headed human aside. He shoved him to the back of his mind and threatened to shoot him point blank in the face if he didn’t stay there.

Not an itch. Not a vessel. HIS. He had to fuck this woman like he had to breathe. He relentlessly thrust into her. Wild, manic, so blinded by lust he bit her again.

This time not to discipline her, but to hold her down so she wouldn’t move when he knotted inside her—

Fuck, what are you thinking?!?! the human shoved to the back of his mind asked.

She’s not a she-wolf! You’re not mating her, he reminded his wolf. Again.

But his wolf didn’t give two fucks about any of the words coming out of his human’s mouth.

Claim! Claim! Claim! it chanted on a growl, relentlessly dominating the human beneath him with no remorse whatsoever. Her aching moans became the only thing he could hear, the scent of their wild fucking the only thing he could smell. And then, and then…

She started to scream, her core tightening around his dick so hard that his own release unexpectedly shot down his back. Forcing him to come right along with her. Together. Not like a one-night-stand. But like two people who’d been made to fuck each other.

Fated, his wolf mumbled as the orgasm rattled through every bone in his body, turning it to ash.

Sure, why not, his human answered. Fated to fuck. It felt like he’d been fated to fuck this human this once.

With that thought, he didn’t so much pull out as fall out of her. Completely spent as he collapsed onto his back.

The trashcan was right next to the bed. He ripped off the condom and tossed it on faith. Luckily, he heard a resonating metal “plink” as it hit the bottom of the basket. As neat as he remained after his years in the Marines, he doubted he’d have had the strength to do anything about a messy condom if he hadn’t made the shot.

But then she tried to stand, and, as it turned out, he did have some strength left.

“Where you going?” he asked, catching her arm as she moved to get out of bed.

“Home,” she answered. Her voice sounded as shaken as he felt. “I only live about a fifteen-minute walk from here.”

His faded wolf immediately pushed to the forefront again, insisting they couldn’t let her walk home alone even though Knight liked women to be on their way as soon as he was done with them.

“You can’t call a car?” he asked.

“No, I don’t have bioware and I actually feel safer walking. That’s why I decided to live so close to the DWCS office.”

“Alright, you can stay here and leave in the morning,” he decided, pulling her down beside him.

Not cuddling, but as close as he’d ever come with a hit it and quit it.

“Okay, I will stay until morning,” she decided aloud.

Sitting down carefully on the bed, she criss-crossed her legs and did a quick hand part of her straightened hair before braiding it into two plaits. A bedtime ritual he sensed. Designed to keep her hair, like herself. Totally in line, no matter what.

But then she let out a sad sigh when she was finished braiding.

“What?” he asked.

“I wish I’d thought to drink copious amounts of alcohol,” she answered. “How cool would it have been to wake up to the classic scenario of, ‘Oh my gosh, what did I do? How did I end up in some random guy’s bed?!?!’ Maybe I can still make it happen. Do you have any wine or beer?”

He never laughed. But for some reason he found himself fighting the impulse as he said, “Sorry, I don’t drink.”

“Is it because of PTSD, recovery, or you simply don’t like being out of control?” she asked.

He glanced sideways at her, surprised by the question. “Most people assume I’m a recovering alcoholic.”

“I’m not most people.” Though Knight wasn’t looking directly at her, he could feel her teasing smile as she said that.

No, she wasn’t most people, his wolf agreed. And for a weird, irrational moment he had the urge to tell her about his day. About the four-year-old girl he’d lost on the table because her heart had given out while the AI was trying to fix it. Two defibs. No chance. Dead in less time than it took for her to be born. The red anger creeping around the edges of his mind.

And the feeling that no matter how much he atoned, he couldn’t fix it. Never fully.

But that was too much to talk about with a woman who shouldn’t even still be here.

“Nightmares,” he said instead. “Drinking makes them worse.”

“Drinking makes them worse, but sex helps?” she asked.

“Yeah, sex helps. Tires me out, helps me sleep better so they don’t come.”

“That is a wonderful side benefit to your leveled intercourse then. Is it always this…intense? With others?”

No, his wolf answered with an adoring sigh, it’s never like this. But his guarded human was back in charge so he answered, “Like I said, there’s levels to it.”

Then before she could make the conversation any more intimate than it already was, he said, “Maybe we can fuck again when we wake up. One for the road.”

“One for the road,” she repeated, her accent back in full High Media-mode. “Yes, let’s do that.”

But when he awoke, she wasn’t there.

6

Knight sat up in bed, looking around. The black sheets were still crumpled where she’d lain the night before. But…he sniffed the air. Her scent had gone stale which meant she was no longer in his apartment.

She’s gone, his wolf whimpered inside his chest. Yeah, his human agreed, staying cool.

But his wolf continued to whine like they’d lost something precious as Knight went through the motions of making his bed and picking out his clothes for work. This was why he didn’t fuck girls in wolf position.

His human got it. How things needed to be to do his job, and live his life without letting the explosive anger that had nearly overshadowed his childhood take over. No attachments. No relationships. Just work, exercise, eat, fuck, repeat. Made total sense.

But his wolf could be…sappy AF. His wolf was the reason why he’d gone from running black ops to fixing kids. And his wolf was the one who’d refused to let the one-night stand with Hot-but-Crazy Social Worker go, even though it was a sure bet he’d never see her again—

There came the sound of a door opening and closing, and then the perfectly amalgamated scent of her expensive perfume drifted into his nose.

Both his human and his wolf watched as Hot Social Worker let herself in with a bag of groceries tucked under one arm. Standing at alert, but for different reasons.

“You took my keys,” Knight said as he saw her take them out of the pocket of her leather jacket and set them back on the kitchen counter where he’d left them.

“Yes, I borrowed your keys so I could let myself back into your apartment,” she answered as she placed the bag of groceries down next to his keys. She was back in last night’s green sequin dress. But she wore it like it was a choice with her two bedtime braids and leather jacket, rather than like the “walk of shame” attire it should have been on a Sunday morning. “I hope you don’t mind, but I wanted to make you breakfast as a thank you for hosting me last night.”

“I don’t have anything in my fridge.”

“I know. That refrigerator of yours is little more than a vintage stage prop. I wonder why you even have one?”

“To keep my takeout leftovers in,” he answered honestly. “But I haven’t eaten here in a while because I’ve got crazy hours at the hospital.”

“That sounds tough,” she said as she started opening and closing cabinets. “How unfortunate.”

“You speak kind of fancy for a hot social worker.”

“This is true but I’ll point out that your grammar isn’t all that great for a bad boy doctor.”

“Yeah, I know. My mom’s always on me about that.”

“Your mom who homeschooled you?” she guessed, obviously fishing.

He crooked his head at her. “We exchanging history now?”

She paused her search for a second and gave him a considering look before seeming to decide out loud, “You know what? Let’s not do that. You can be the bad boy doctor whose name I don’t remember, and I can be the Hot Social Worker whose name you never asked. That way we can remain the perfect example of a pornography scenario.”

“Except you talk too much to ever be cast in anybody’s porno,” he pointed out.

“Do I? Shoot, I’ll have to watch one and take notes.”

“You seriously haven’t ever seen a porno?” he asked her.

“You seriously don’t even have one pan for cooking?” she asked back.

“Look in the cabinet down there…right next to the prop fridge.”

She opened it and glanced in. Then let out a shout of triumph when she withdrew a large cast iron pan. But then her smile turned quizzical as she informed him, “This pan is covered in dust.”

“You’re lucky I’ve got a pan. Some nurse I banged gave it to me as a house warming gift—an excuse to come back here.”

“What a delightful bit of cunning,” she declared, going over to the sink to rinse the pan off. “Are bacon and eggs okay?” she asked.

He hadn’t had a home cooked meal in…wow, he cut off his original month estimate when it started racking up into years. A long, long time. But even as his wolf salivated, his human answered with a lazy, “Sure. I’m not picky.”

“I’m glad to hear that, because my cooking skills are very basic. My roommate is in culinary school so I survive on her leftovers—darn it, more personal details.”

“I’ll go grab a shower while you cook,” he told her. “Make it easier for you not to overshare.”

“Good idea,” she answered, pulling a six pack of eggs out of the grocery bag. “And while you’re in there, I’ll work on being sultrier and quietly mysterious just in case I ever have to play a Hot Social Worker with a secret in a pornography movie.”

And there it was again, the urge to laugh.

He took the quickest shower he could. Not because he was eager to get back to her, he told himself and his wolf. But because he didn’t like the thought of leaving some crazy woman unattended in his apartment. Not that he had much for her to snoop through. He made sure to never keep any personal artifacts out in plain sight. And he didn’t keep family pics because they made him feel guilty. But still…he didn’t like the thought of it.

“You’re right on time!” she said when he came out of the bathroom. Voice so bright, he had to wonder—like, really wonder, where the hell she came from.

He thought about the guy from the club. The one she’d been arguing with. Now they looked like they could have been a perfect match, yet she’d come home with him. Why? He had the feeling it wasn’t because he was a better dancer. Though the girl’s worldview seemed seriously skewed. For all he knew, that might have been the exact reason.

He didn’t have chairs or any kind of table so they ate breakfast standing up at the kitchen counter. And a cloud of uncomfortable silence soon rose up around them.

But in what he was beginning to suspect might be a bone-deep bias toward contradiction she said, “I simply love this awkward silence between us. What happens next? Are you trying to figure out how to tell me I’ve overstayed my welcome?”

She hit him with a look so eager he could practically hear her clapping like a happy toddler in anticipation of the treat of him kicking her out of his apartment.

“Alright…yeah.” He clumsily grabbed onto his usual script. This girl was…so freaking weird. He’d been the coolest kid in the room pretty much since his birth, but she was seriously knocking him off his game. And not for the first time since he met her, it felt like he was stumbling several steps behind as he said, “Okay, thanks for breakfast but I’ve got to get to work, so…you should bounce.”

“I will do that! I will bounce,” she agreed giving him two thumbs up. “Thank you again for the great sex. The experience was incredibly hot for me. I hope it was for you, as well.”

Yeah, the sex had been great. And hot. As he watched her deposit their dishes in the sink, his body heated with the memory of how she’d responded to him. How easy it’d been to slip into her from behind when they’d been at the wall. Like she was the perfect height to receive him.

“Hey, Hot Social Worker,” he said, suddenly fisting a hand around both her braids and pulling her back when she tried to move past him. “What level?”

Unlike him, she didn’t seem to have nearly as much trouble keeping up. “Ten—” she answered immediately, only to cut off when he yanked on her braids hard and took her mouth in an all-consuming kiss.

The kiss was a surprise, too. Something else he didn’t do unless woman specifically requested it. But there was no hesitation at all with this girl. His tongue pushed into the wet heat of her mouth so hungrily that it felt like he was fucking her above the way he wanted to fuck her below.

Sooner than he wanted, he was on the edge. Letting go of her braids, he kicked off the denim joggers he’d just put on for the trip into work and sheathed himself with the emergency wrapper in his wallet in record time. But to his wolf it still didn’t feel fast enough. He wanted inside her. To fuck her so hard.

“Ten,” he reminded her on a barely contained growl.

A warning of sorts, but that didn’t stop her gasp when he bent her over the counter and curved an arm around her neck, choking her as he pushed in from behind.

He’d gone in without any foreplay on faith, suspecting the dirty and unexpected nature of the sudden chokehold would flood her in a way that a simple finger bang would not. He’d been right.

He poured filthy words into her ears as he viciously took her. “You like that. You like getting choked as I fuck you from behind.” Facts. Not questions.

He’d had morning sex before, usually because it was too late to send a woman home. Most often it felt like something he could do with the rest of his sexual energy before he got on with his day and forgot her name—if he’d ever known it in the first place. One more pump of the nozzle, like when he topped off the gas he still had to put in his manual truck.

But this…this was different.

If anything, the sex was more intense in the light of day. Because while his human filth-bombed her ear, his wolf kept urging him to do things to this woman that he’d never done before. Outrageous things: Claim her. Make her yours. Possess her. Coarse, ragged suggestions to go with his coarse, ragged breaths.

But Knight kept going. Ignoring the wolf, losing himself in the woman. And then she came, her sex clenching around him tight as a fist, taking him right over the edge with the same weird synchronous feeling from last night.

With his wolf still shouting in his ear, his cum filled up the wrapper, emptying everything he had as electric bolts of pleasure kicked up his spine.

“By the Fenrir Wolf,” he muttered as his arm fell away, letting her out of the chokehold so he could use his hand to pull out.

“What?” she asked, throwing him another quizzical smile over her shoulder.

“Nothing,” he answered. It would be against the rules of the North American Lupine Council, and the rules of sanity, to try to explain to a one-night stand how he sometimes spewed ancient curses because he and his two brothers spent the first four years of their lives in Viking Age Norway.

Instead, he focused on removing the condom and cleaning himself up. Then he tugged his pants up while she tugged her dress down.

“That was truly wonderful,” she said on a sigh when they were both done making themselves look like they hadn’t just had a good morning fuck. “You are truly wonderful!”

And hell, the way she smiled up at him as she said that, dazzling and bright. It made him want her all over again.

Do it. Take her, said his wolf. Slowly this time. I want to taste her pussy. I want her to come from my mouth.

“I’ve only got ten minutes before I have to leave for work,” he said.

“I understand,” she answered, mistaking his reminder as a hint to get going.

But when she tried to move away he braced a hand on either side of her, keeping her there at the counter. “Hold on. Hold on, Hot Social Worker.”

She held on, her semi-permanent smile both curious and amused.

“I’ve got to head to work in ten minutes,” he repeated. “And I don’t want a relationship.”

“I don’t want a relationship either—” she started to say.

“Shut up and let me finish, please.”

She grinned and bit her lip, her eyes shining so bright he felt compelled to ask, “What?”

“Nobody’s ever told me to shut up before, and you’ve done so two or three times already. It’s pretty delightful!”

He crooked an eyebrow at her.

“You don’t believe me,” she guessed.

“Well, you do talk a lot.”

“Yes, I am aware of that. But no one ever calls me on it or tells me not to interrupt them.”

Another nudge of that strange curiosity he typically never felt with women. But instead of asking a follow up question he said, “Like I said, I don’t have a lot of time. And I don’t do relationships.”

This time he gave her a hard warning look before she could pipe up again.

And she made a zipping her mouth closed gesture which might have come off as more genuine if she wasn’t grinning so big. Seriously, his entire family probably didn’t smile as much in a year as she had in one fucking night.

But despite that he said, “So yeah, I don’t do relationships or any kind of long-term shit, but I’m thinking we could hook up again. Like, not a regular thing. Just whenever one of us gets the itch.”

Her eyes widened. “Are you proposing we become sex buddies?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

“If we’re keeping it real, I wouldn’t even call it ‘buddies.’ Because we don’t have to like each other to fuck. In fact, it’s better if we’re not friends. I’m talking about a no-strings-attached-ball-when-you-call kind of deal.”

“But I don’t have bioware. How can we, as you put it, ball when we call?”

“I don’t have bioware either,” he answered. Not an exact truth. But then his whole life in this human world down to the name on his business card wasn’t exactly true. He had bioware but turned it off when he left his black ops job behind. And now it had been dormant so long, he might as well not have it at all. Just like her.

“But I’ve got a couple of pay-as-you-go phones we could use.”

Her eyes narrowed over her ever-smiling lips. Probably because pay-as-you-go phones had been declared illegal a couple of years back, thanks to their near exclusive use by criminals. “Why do you…?” she started to ask.

“The point is we can make this happen without exchanging names or personal details. We can keep it as anonymous as we want. When you get the itch, you text me. When I get the urge, I text you. What do you think?”

“What do I think?” she repeated. “What do you think I think about having a no-strings-attached, sex-only relationship with a domineering guy whose name I can’t remember?”

If she’d been a normal woman he’d suppose that she thought he was crazy for even asking. But because this was her he guessed, “Hell yeah?”

“Heck yes!” she answered with another enthusiastic clap. “I can’t believe I’m going to be anonymous sex buddies with someone!”

“Not buddies,” he reminded her. “We’re not friends.”

“May I call you Buddy?”

“No.”

“It seems only fair since you’ve already given me a nickname, so I’ll take the liberty of calling you Buddy without your permission.”

“Hot Social Worker,” he said, his human already starting to regret this even as his wolf cheered.

“Yes, Buddy?”

“Shut-up.”

And before she could answer he sealed their new deal with a kiss.

7

Ever since I finally received a new phone a couple of weeks ago, both my parents have been insinuating the boyfriend who has yet to return even one of my calls is no good. But I don’t believe them.

Not until I see him walk out of the hospital doors at the end of his shift, laughing and talking with a cute nurse. With my guards flanking me, I watch as they come to a stop in the middle of the hospital’s plaza square. And even though I’m standing about a hundred feet away, the plans they’re making to meet at his bachelor pad apartment later tonight float back to my ears.

“Would you like us to go get him for you, Shimmer?” Jared, my longtime guard, asks me. He’s joined by Santiago, a much younger guard who has recently worked his way up through our Texas compound’s security food chain to become a member of my family’s private service.

“No,” I answer grimly, watching the way my boyfriend looks at the nurse with his head cocked to the side—just like he used to look at me. It truly feels like my brain is frying in a pan of indignant anger.

I mean, yes, I’m aware he was a ladies’ man before we met, but it never occurred to me that the man I’d fallen in love with after a whirlwind courtship would betray me like this.

And to think I honestly believed it was my father who’d been keeping us apart this whole time! Refusing to let him see me for reasons unknown.

I’ve made up my mind. After a deep breath, I step out of the shadows into the light of the setting sun and start walking toward them. Like a cowboy boot-wearing version of the Terminator.

The nurse visibly blanches. And as for my erstwhile boyfriend…

He does an about-face and starts walking in the opposite direction. Toward the D2 station where he usually catches the subway home, but at such a fast clip, he might as well be running away. From me.

I call his name. And to my disbelief, he actually breaks into a jog. I wouldn’t have guessed he had it in him given our many discussions about his hate/hate relationship with cardio.

I dash after him in the muggy Dallas heat, unable to believe I’m actually chasing this man down. I call his name again. But he keeps running until I yell, “Stop running away from me! I’m pregnant with your baby.”

That declaration stops him dead in his tracks.

And he looks around. Probably scared someone heard me. “What do you mean you’re pregnant? With my baby?”

Out of the corner of my eye I can see Jared extracting the nurse. No doubt he’ll take her back to the car we left idling at the edge of the hospital plaza, and she won’t be allowed to leave until she’s bio-signed a series of NDAs and received a hefty keep-your-mouth-closed payment along with some not-so-veiled threats on top of that.

The nurse will be taken care of but as for my boyfriend…it feels like I’m talking to a stranger as I say, “Yes, I’m a little over two months pregnant. I didn’t want to tell you in a voice message or even confront you like this, but I didn’t know what else to do. You didn’t return any of my calls. And when I showed up at the hospital’s front desk they said I was on the restricted visitor list. I thought surely there must be some kind of mistake…”

I trail off for two reasons: because I can all but hear the voices of my High Media teachers telling me it’s better to stop talking when my prose wanders into hysterical ramble territory. And because as obvious as that “it must be some kind of mistake” explanation seemed a few minutes ago, when I say it out loud while looking into his face, still red from his attempt to literally run away from me, I can see how badly I got it wrong.

You’re not on that restricted list because of some security mix up, the new growly voice informs me. He put you there. Your perfect boyfriend put you there.

“Yes, Layla, I put you on a restricted list because you wouldn’t stop calling,” he said as if to confirm what the voice was telling me. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

His sonorous English accent which I used to love so much now sounds snotty and disgruntled.

I don’t understand. Until suddenly…I do. “Oh dear…did we break up?”

He runs a hand through his wavy blond hair, confusion overtaking righteous indignation in his blue eyes. “Yes,” he answers nonetheless, “We broke up. Pretty spectacularly, in fact. How do you not remember that?”

I slice my eyes to the side. And for the first time (that I can remember), I’m embarrassed with the man whose made me feel so comfortable from the start of our relationship. Still, I force myself to explain. “We’re keeping it out of the media but my accident…it caused me to lose all memory of the last six months of my life before I was found by that river.”

He stares at me, obviously stunned. Then he says, “Oh…I get it now.”

“What? What do you get?” I ask because I’m still completely confused by all of this.

“Why your father sent that East Asian fellow to my office again. Even though you and I haven’t been in contact since I tried to reconcile with you in Kansas.”

Numerous questions pile up inside my head, so many that I hold my hands up and say, “Let’s start from the beginning. Why did we break up?” With narrowed eyes I think of the nurse. “Were you cheating on me?”

“No!” he answers as if I’ve deeply offended him. “Do you think I’d be that stupid? Especially considering who you are? Cheating on you would have ruined my career. Maybe my whole life if your father had anything to say about it—”

He cuts off with a frustrated shake of his head. “Really, I should end this conversation with you right now. The East Asian fellow said—”

“East Asian fellow?” I repeat. “Are you talking about Uncle Suro?”

Ethan gives me an exasperated look. “I don’t know his name. He never gave it to me during either of his particularly unpleasant visits. But if your Uncle Suro, as you call him, is a tall, older East Asian man who gets his jollies threatening the lives of innocent doctors, then yes, that’s who visited me.”

My hand flies to my chest, because yes…tall, older East Asian man, who is more than a little comfortable with threatening to do others bodily harm, is exactly how I might describe Uncle Suro. And as confused and upset as I am, I wouldn’t wish him on anyone. Much less the perfect boyfriend I’d been looking forward to introducing to my family a mere six months ago.

But it’s clear something happened that caused us to break up. And I need to find out what that was.

As if to demonstrate how few answers I’ll get from him, Ethan starts backing away from me like I’m radioactive, and not the woman he said he loved just this past Christmas.

I shake my head recalling the last big conversation I remember us having…

“If I ask you to marry me on your birthday do you think your father would be offended I didn’t request his permission first?”

“Of course not! He’s not that old school. And if we get married before I get pregnant without me keeping the baby secret from you for seven years, we’ll be doing better than he and Mom did.”

“Then I suppose my next question is if I ask you to marry me on your birthday, do you think you would say yes?”

I’d grinned and answered, “Of course! Who wouldn’t say yes to you?”

And then he smiled at me like he’d won the lottery.

But now…now all I see is fear in Ethan’s eyes. “Please don’t ever visit me like this again.” His voice is desperate, tone pleading. “I like my life as it is. And I never would have let your father interview me if I thought it would end up like this—”

He stops as if realizing he may have said too much.

“Wait, what do you mean ‘let my father interview you?’” I ask him, feeling way more confused now than I did mere seconds ago.

He shakes his head and says, “I’m terribly sorry we didn’t work out, Layla. Truly I am. I think we would have made a good couple if not for…circumstances. But I am most certainly not the father of the baby you’re carrying. So I beg of you, Layla…if you ever cared about me at all, do not contact me like this again. And please let your father and that East Asian fellow know I didn’t say anything to you.”

I stare at him mutely. I know it must be a trick of my imagination, but it truly feels like I can smell his abject fear. He’s a coward, the new voice says inside my head. How did you not see that before?

I’m unable to answer the voice. Or get Ethan to tell me what happened between us when he’s so obviously scared for his life—which frankly he should be if my father sent Uncle Suro to “talk” to him.

“Okay,” I say, finally letting him off the hook. “I’ll respect your wishes. I won’t bother you again.”

“Thank you,” he says. So polite. Then taking that as his cue, Ethan turns and this time he doesn’t just jog, he bursts into a flat-out run toward the D2 station.

I remember how we used to meet there and take the subway to attend a concert or grab drinks after work. I remember how he sent me flowers after the first time we had sex.

And strangely I want to call after him and tell him I’m also sorry we didn’t work out. Even though, even though…

I don’t know why, but he’s morphed into a terrified version of the perfect boyfriend he used to be.

Actually, I do know why…

My mind hardens at the thought. Dad.

8

Two months before Kukunniwi…

“Please don’t be angry with me but I have a huge favor to ask of you,” Hot Social Worker said when she showed up at his door three days after the full moon. She was covered in blood—not her own, as it turned out, but that of the bleeding wolf cub in her arms.

Their NSA relationship was about two months old at that point. Knight would like to say he held out until she called him for a hook up. But the truth was it had been the other way around.

For as long as he could remember, his wolf had been his most dependable ally. His human was dogged by a mood disorder that his childhood therapist described as “on the bipolar spectrum”—but not bipolar disorder. Translation: near uncontrollable anger over the smallest of triggers—but hey, at least you’re not manic.

The calm wolf who’d been tamed during his four-year stay in Viking Age Norway had been his one saving grace, and he’d turned to it often. How many times had he ended up in the woods surrounding his Colorado kingdom town after fights with his brother Rafes or his teachers or some random boy who just looked at him the wrong way? “Walking his wolf,” as his mother used to call it whenever he decided to stalk around in wolf form because his human couldn’t deal with any kind of conflict without bringing his fists into it.

With training from his Uncle Grady and his Wolf Force commander in the Marines, he’d learned to control his angry human without shifting. Instead, he focused all that anger into becoming a cold and efficient killing machine.

All that killing he’d done. First for the U.S. government, then for his brother who’d set his sights on becoming—and was eventually elected—President of the North American Lupine Council. Both jobs required everything that came with being a wolf, along with some rather dubiously acquired human skills. But it hadn’t been his wolf running black ops. His wolf hung around in the background, neither approving nor interfering. Like an old security blanket—there if you needed it, but you really shouldn’t need it past a certain age. And for a while it had been easy to forget he even had a wolf inside him when it wasn’t a full moon night.

With training and detachment his human learned to make all the sensible decisions. Like whether to risk smuggling a silencer across borders, or simply use an old-fashioned piano wire to carry out the job. Detached from his wolf, and human to his cold, cold core…it had been simple to remain remote and distant. Easy even. And he’d had no emotional problems whatsoever while carrying out those missions during his black ops days.

But then five years ago his serene wolf decided to go Jiminy Cricket on him.

That over-sensitive fuck ended his black ops career. Had actually steered him—him! —toward a medical vocation in pediatrics, of all things. Which had, in turn, forced him to transfer his weird skill set to a job that just about everyone except his wolf considered him pretty damn unsuited.

But he’d done it. Done it and excelled at it. And with a job well transferred into, his wolf faded into the background once more. Leaving his cold human to deal with things like shitty insurance companies and making sure his conquests didn’t get too attached.

But then Hot Social Worker happened.

Hot but cray-cray. Easy but complicated. His human wanted to be done with her. Was already done with her and decided about five minutes after her smell faded that even though he’d sent her away with a pay-as-you-go-phone, he’d probably never bother to use it.

But his wolf started badgering him to text her within an hour of her departure. His wolf wanted her as soon as he got off his shift. In his bed. Ass bared. For him and him alone.

Sixteen hours. He’d only held out a measly sixteen hours before texting the phone he’d given her and asking if she was DTF.

“I believe I might be DTF. What exactly is DTF?” she’d immediately texted back. Proving even though he hadn’t grown up in the human world, he seemed to know more about dating within it than she did.

“Down to fuck.”

“Oh, in that case, I definitely am DTF. I’ll see you in fifteen minutes.”

Thirteen minutes later (his wolf counted, not him) she showed up at the door with a big grin on her face.

“Hello, Buddy!” she chirped. “Level ten, please.”

She liked it rough. And he liked giving it to her that way.

They didn’t talk much—their relationship wasn’t based on talking. However, he sensed something in her past. A break-up maybe? Something that had made her diverge from her original path, the same way the wolf had made Knight diverge from his.

And now she was at his door with a bloody wolf cub in her arms. One his nose immediately recognized as Jandro, the kid she’d brought to see him when they first met.

He froze, not knowing how to handle this. She’d found out. But how? Had Jandro shifted in front of her?

But then she said, “I found him outside your building underneath the steps. He’s hurt and I brought him to you since you’re a doctor.”

“A doctor, not a vet,” he answered. But then he said, “Here, give him to me. Let me take him into the bathroom.”

“I think he might be a German Shephard-mix,” she said, kneeling down beside him after he’d deposited the cub into the bathtub. “Maybe with some Doberman in there? Look at those pointy ears and the strange black-and-tan coloring. He’s probably fully grown. And it sure looks like he was stabbed…maybe with a knife? Who would do something horrible like that to a defenseless animal? Poor guy.”

She was way off base about the cub being a German Shephard mix. And about him being fully grown. Jandro’s coloring was similar to that of his brothers’ Nago and Rafes. Maybe the kid had the same mix of Latin and African blood. He was also small for a wolf his age—not to mention, really thin. But she was right about the stab wounds. Jandro had a deep cut about three inches wide on his right side. And it was deep. Definitely looked like it had been done by a knife.

The Wichita Children’s home was about a mile or two west of his place. The boy must have stumbled all the way here, bleeding out—only to be confronted with a locked outer door. And of course, he couldn’t use the number on the card he’d been given. Without his own phone or the ability to hear, both were pretty much fucking useless to the kid.

Knight cursed himself. He’d bet two months’ salary if he went downstairs he’d find a pile of bloody clothes under the stoop where Jandro shifted.

Smart kid to come find him. Even smarter to shift since it was the quickest way to heal a wound. But from what he’d heard, shifting under the influence of meth hurt like hell. And it must have been a job and a half to pull that shit off with a knife wound that would have killed a human kid. As it was, Knight couldn’t help but be impressed with Jandro’s quick thinking, and appreciative of Hot Social Worker for bringing him up here.

But of course, his sappy wolf had to take it a bridge too far. Jandro could have bled out from this knife wound if she hadn’t found him, his wolf pointed out. She saved his life.

Whatever. Ignoring his wolf’s adoring words, Knight patched the cub up as best he could. Then he gave the kid a sedative to keep him in wolf form until he was done healing.

He’d wait to get the whole story from Jandro when he woke up, but he already had a feeling about what had happened. Meth plus kid with not enough money to pay for meth but desperate equaled Jandro being lucky he hadn’t gotten shot. Or worse.

Yeah, the boy was lucky. But as Knight cleaned himself up in the sink afterwards, he could feel the old red anger start to percolate in the back of his mind. Why the hell was Jandro still here in Wichita and not living with his state pack in the country anyway?

“Do you have a shirt I can borrow?” Hot Social Worker asked, drawing him away from his dark thoughts. She was still kneeling beside the tub, stroking Jandro’s fur though he’d already fallen asleep.

“Yeah,” Knight answered, focusing on that. Focusing on her.

He brought her a t-shirt then waited in his empty front room, listening to the sounds of her cleaning up as best she could in the sink. She hummed a tune he recognized: the last number of Chrysanthemum, that opera his mother liked to listen to while grading papers.

“Do you mind if I have one of the beers I left in your prop refrigerator?” she asked when she came out. The blood was gone, but she still smelled of the boy’s whose life she’d just saved.

“Let me get it for you,” he said, rushing over to the fridge before she could. He wanted to do something to thank her even though she had no idea how important her decision to bring Jandro up here had been.

He was off tomorrow so he got out two of the zero-calorie gluten-free pale ales she’d brought over a few hook-ups ago (but had yet to actually get drunk on), cracking the first one open with his bare hand before passing it to her.

“Thank you. By the way, you have amazing hand strength,” she observed, before taking it from him.

He didn’t answer, just cracked open another beer for himself.

“I thought you didn’t drink.”

“Special circumstances,” he answered, taking a swig.

The beer was cool and crisp against his throat. Exactly what he needed after sewing up a kid in his bathtub.

“Probably not how you imagined this night ending when you sent that DTF text,” she said with a wry smile when they were done drinking.

“Now I’m wondering if you remember what DTF means?”

She laughed. “Dog to fix?”

But he didn’t laugh with her. Calling a shifter a “dog” was akin to using the N-word in his culture. But she didn’t know that. She was only human. A fact his wolf needed to stop ignoring any day now.

She also doesn’t know what she did tonight, his wolf shot back at full defensive. That child might have died if she hadn’t brought him to the one person who could give him the help he needed.

Whatever, he answered his wolf. Then he set his empty beer bottle aside and took hers away, placing it on the counter. “Hey, Hot Social Worker?”

“Yes, Buddy?” she asked.

“You’re a good person. A real good person.”

She shook her head at him with a sexy smile. “Thank you. But why are you suddenly giving me compliments instead of telling me what to do?”

He sighed, sometimes hating how she often zeroed in on the real point even when he was intentionally beating around the bush.

Also because he did want to fuck her. To throw her down on the bed and tell her what to do. But…the kid was in the bathroom. And the meth in Jandro’s system would probably shift him back to human as soon as his wolf was done healing him. Knight couldn’t risk it.

“I appreciate you bringing him up here, but um…I’m not DTF anymore.”

An embarrassed beat of silence passed. Then she recovered with, “I completely understand.” As if eager to change the subject, she glanced over her shoulder. “How about the dog? He doesn’t have any tags, and if he survives, I’d like to make sure he ends up in a good home. I have a list of no-kill shelters…”

“Don’t worry about the…patient,” he answered. “I’ll take care of getting him to a good vet tomorrow. And I will make sure he ends up at a quality, no-kill shelter.”

“Oh, that’s kind of you. Thank you,” she murmured.

Then came another awkward beat before he said, “I can call you a ride if you need one but you should probably get going. I have to wake up early tomorrow.”

“I don’t need to…” She trailed off in that way of hers, like her mind was throwing up a wall to block what she was about to say, and forcing her to manufacture a new and improved sentence. “I’m truly fine with walking home. I prefer it. And trust me, I can take care of myself.”

His human did trust her to get home by herself, and moreover refused to entertain the notion of caring either way. But his wolf glared at him for letting her go anywhere alone this late at night.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to take the dog with me?” she asked.

He winced, hating the sound of that word on her lips. Even though she couldn’t possibly know what she was saying. “Nah, I got it.”

“Okay, I’ll take my leave then.”

Yeah, that’s what should happen. She needed to get out of here so she wouldn’t be anywhere in the vicinity when Jandro shifted back into his human form.

But instead of letting her go, he did the opposite. Caught her by the hand and said, “Hey, L-heart,” giving voice for the first time to the name Jandro had given her. “I’ll text you.”

“Yes, you may.” She smiled up at him. But it was all wrong. Bright and happy mouth on the bottom. Sad eyes on the top. “But it’s not necessary to make any promises. In fact, we should probably establish more boundaries so our arrangement doesn’t become inconvenient for either of us.”

She was right about that. Nonetheless, he repeated, “I’ll text you.”

And when another protest formed on her lips, he said it again, “I’ll text you.”

“Okay,” she answered, her voice whisper soft. “You’ll text me.”

“And when I do, you’ll text me back. I can’t host tonight, but I want you to text me back.”

This time when she smiled it actually reached her eyes. “I will text you back,” she finally agreed. “But for the record—”

Her “I will” was all he needed. He quickly kissed her before she could finish whatever she was about to say. Yeah, she still talked too much. But he was beginning to find he liked shutting her up so much that he really didn’t mind.

9

Early the next morning, Knight sat on the lid of his toilet waiting with a cup of morning coffee until…

The skinny black-and-tan wolf in his tub suddenly shifted into a skinny nine-year-old boy. Fuck…. Was it possible the kid had actually become even more malnourished than the last time Knight saw him? He was little more than skin on top of bones now.

“Bucket!” Knight called out, setting his cup of coffee aside so he could make the sign for “bucket” which required both hands. He then quickly pointed at the plastic mop bucket he’d set at the boy’s feet inside the tub.

A confused look crossed the kid’s face right before his unasked question was answered by a sudden heave of his chest. Sadly, meth withdrawal symptoms were one of the few things shifting into wolf form couldn’t fix.

The kid might be skinny but he was quick. He managed to grab the bucket and upchuck the pitiful contents of his stomach into the plastic container instead of all over himself.

“Good work,” Knight signed to him when the upchuck session finally died down to pitiful dry heaving.

Knight took the bucket to the kitchen and cleaned it out. “You’re lucky. This apartment is so old it still has a tub,” he said to the kid when he returned, and turned the knob on the wall to fill the bath up with warm water.

“Me not lucky,” the kid signed back morosely, his hands shaking with shivers despite the fact that wolf shifters ran at much higher temperatures than their human counterparts.

Poor kid wasn’t lying about that. Meth withdrawal was a bitch—which was why no shifter doctor ever advised it as a good way to keep your wolf under control. But since shifters weren’t supposed to exist, there wasn’t exactly a PSA going around about this. It was one of those things parents were supposed to know and pass down to their kids.

But obviously Jandro had drawn the shittiest hand when it came to the parent cards he’d been dealt.

“Hope you ain’t into bubbles because I don’t have any of that shit here,” he spoke signed to the kid.

The kid squinted at him. “You don’t talk like doctor.”

“Yeah, I know,” he answered. “Hot Social Worker brought that up, too.”

Knight got a towel out of the bathroom closet and set it on the toilet lid before speak-signing to the kid, “Good job crawling your ass over here, by the way.”

“Sorry, I didn’t know where else to go,” the kid signed apologetically. “You said I could—”

“DON’T apologize,” Knight cut him off, angry that the kid would even think for a second he’d done something wrong when all the wrong shit had been done to him. “I’m being serious. You did the right thing coming here. And I’m glad you made it. Now, can you tell me what happened?”

Jandro did, signing jerkily over the details. He’d scored some meth from one of the older kids at the home and that got him through the last full moon. But this time the withdrawal symptoms hit him way worse than before.

He couldn’t go to the WCH social worker because the home had a strict no drugs policy. If he started throwing up again they’d take him to the doctor. And even though Knight had helped him before, he had no way of knowing if he’d be able to cover for him a second time. So he’d stolen a bag from the drug dealer when he wasn’t looking. Just a fourth of an eight ball. But the dealer caught him in the basement trying to steal from him. He didn’t even give Jandro a chance to explain, just stabbed him in the gut and walked away, leaving him to die in the home’s basement.

Good thing Jandro had a way out…with his wolf, Knight thought to himself after the fucked-up story was done. But not really lucky because he shouldn’t have still been at the home in the first place. Damn system.

“Finish cleaning up,” he signed. “I’ll take you back to the home.”

“Okay,” Jandro agreed. “But my clothes downstairs. Can you get them for me?”

“No, I can’t get your bloodstained clothes for you because I threw them away,” he answered. Then he pointed to the work stool he’d placed next to the bathtub. “Wear those instead.”

Jandro’s eyes widened when he saw the pair of shorts and Deadpool tee on top of the stool. “You buy clothes?”

“Yeah,” Knight signed back.

“For me?” Jandro signed.

“No, for me because I like dressing up in kid clothes. That’s what I call fun,” he answered.

But Knight immediately stopped with the sarcasm when he saw real tears pooling in the kid’s eyes. Like kindness felt rough on his skin. Hurt him in ways that ODs and withdrawal symptoms couldn’t.

“Anyway,” Knight said aloud. Then he cleared his throat and raised his hands to speak sign, “I think they fit. Got a size nine. But I’m still not clear on this kid sizing stuff.”

Jandro didn’t answer. Just downshifted his eyes.

No words. However, Knight got the message. Thanks for the clothes, but could you get out of here so I can cry while naked in the bathtub without feeling like I’ve lost my pride, too? For real, man, it’s the only thing I have left.

As Knight stood up and headed for the door, he decided he wouldn’t just drop the kid off. He was going to talk to Olcan himself, make sure she prioritized getting this kid a fucking placement already.

But as it turned out, she had.

“I’m sorry,” she told the shifter who’d pushed his way into her closet of an office at the children’s home. “I contacted the Kansas pack and they said they’re already at full capacity as far as meth orphans go.”

What the hell? “Kingdom towns are required to foster all orphans in their state,” Knight answered.

“Well, that’s not actually an official law. It’s more like a code of conduct that’s not really enforceable,” Olcan answered tightly.

“Okay then, I guess I’ll just go pay the Kansas king a visit,” he said, shaking his head at her bureaucratic bullshit.

“You could do that, Dr. Knight,” she answered with an irritated look. “But from the sound of it, the kingdom is overwhelmed with this meth orphan epidemic. They also don’t have the resources for a boy in Alejandro’s…” she stopped, reminding him of Hot Social Worker but not in a good way, before she quickly finished her sentence with, “…situation.”

“His situation,” Knight repeated, feeling the old red anger rise up in him for the second time in as many days. “What does that mean?”

Olcan thinned her lips. “It means I have a roster full of human boys I can’t find foster homes for. This boy is deaf, can’t write, barely reads, and he doesn’t have bioware. So far, I can’t find a single deaf wolf in all of Kansas who knows ASL and is willing to foster him. ASL is the new Latin as far as humans and wolves are concerned. And from what I understand, there’s only one person in our entire department who speaks the language and she’s technically only interning with us because—”

“Yeah, I’ve met her,” he said, cutting Olcan off.

Knight hated this. Hated the way Olcan talked about the kid like he was nothing more than damaged goods. Jandro not only hadn’t made this lady’s job any harder by wolfing out during the last full moon, but he’d also managed to stay alive after being stabbed by one of her precious human boys.

But of course, Knight couldn’t tell her any of this since she was the person in charge of making sure the boys at the home remained drug free. So instead he said, “You talk about him like he’s a lost cause, but he’s worth something, dammit. He’s worth fighting for—”

“I’m doing the best I can, Dr. Knight,” she answered with an aggravated roll of her eyes.

At which point, he leaped out of his seat to roar, “Well, the best you can isn’t worth a damn if that kid has to spend another full moon in this mangy shithole!”

Silence descended, fraught with tension as she stared at him in wide-eyed fear.

And there it was. The red anger. This is how it worked. It hid out in the shadows. Pretending to play dead as Knight went about his carefully controlled life. But as soon as any kind of conflict arose, no matter how small, BAM! There it was. There it always fucking was.

He wanted to shift. His wolf called to him in those moments, offering him a reprieve from the red anger and the shame it always left in its aftermath. But the first rule of Wolf Force: don’t shift near civilians. For any reason.

He sat down with the voice of his childhood therapist ringing in his head, Apologizing after an episode is always better than just shifting out.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “What I’m trying to say is he’s worth something. Jandro’s worth something.”

Olcan regarded him with tight-lipped defensiveness. “I’m sorry if our little mange state doesn’t compare to whatever state pack you’re from…”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” he started, though he realized how she might interpret his words that way. Even more so if she knew his real family name and his background.

She kept on going. “But Oklahoma withstanding, there aren’t many resources for boys like Jandro. I’m sorry if that upsets you, but that’s the reality. And though I’ll try my best to find him a placement before the next full moon, I’m afraid…”

She went on like that for a little while longer, but Knight stopped listening soon after the two words he hadn’t expected to hear. Oklahoma withstanding…

Oklahoma withstanding…

Fuck, he thought to himself. He might have to do something to help this kid. Something he really, really didn’t want to do.

10

Knight spent the rest of his day putting a “just in case” plan together. Taking a pay-as-you-go phone out of his stash and placing it in a manila envelope, just in case. Covering the envelope with enough federal Forever stamps to get the thing to Timbuktu, just in case, before writing down an address deep in the panhandle of Oklahoma.

He almost wrote his fake name across the fake return address he’d put on the envelope, but no…he couldn’t risk them throwing the phone out, seeing as how there wasn’t any kind of note inside.

So just in case, he wrote his real name above the fake address.

Then he drove all the way down to Braman, Oklahoma. A little nothing town with a population of 300. But it did have a solitary USPS office going for it, and a gas station so that the very few people who still drove gas-powered manual cars could fill up on their way to places that actually mattered. Knight took advantage of both, filling up at the gas station before sliding the yellow-orange envelope across the blue laminate post office counter.

“Wolf Haven,” the old guy behind the counter read. “Never heard of it.”

Yeah, most humans hadn’t. And despite the fact that Oklahoma had risen quite a bit in status since it’s mange state days, it’s kingdom town still had a “no humans allowed” policy on the books.

“Where’s it at?” asked the old timer.

“Deep in the pan-handle,” Knight answered.

“No wonder I haven’t heard of it. They probably don’t have many more people than we do.”

Wolf Haven was up to 2,000 people these days, but Knight didn’t bother answering because the mail clerk would likely be surprised and ask questions. This was a just in case mission, which meant everything should be kept capital NTK.

But the old timer kept reading the envelope like it was the most interesting thing he’d come across in years.

“Knud…” the man said, pronouncing it all wrong, like nude. “Well, isn’t that an interesting name...”

Knight didn’t hear the rest of the comment because he was already pushing open the door without bothering to say good-bye.

He was surprised when his pay-as-you-go phone dinged just as he got back in his truck. And his wolf sat forward, wanting to know if the message was from the woman it desperately wanted to hear from.

It was—which made this the first time Hot Social Worker had ever initiated contact.

“Thank you for dealing with the poor furbaby last night. May I come over this evening around 9pm, so we might hit it and quit it?”

He didn’t laugh, but his mouth quirked up as he typed back. “Yeah. Come over if you wanna.” He kept his language casual, even though his wolf’s tail was at full wag.

She arrived at 20:58 with a sheet of old-fashioned paper in her hand.

“Hello, Buddy, thank you for having me over,” she said as she walked in. “You’ll be happy to know I followed up on our boundaries conversation from last night.”

“That wasn’t really a conversation…” He inhaled deeply. Her scent had a weird undertone tonight. He picked out the smells: heightened adrenalin and cortisol. Acrid and bitter. Upset. She was upset about something and it had happened recently. “What’s going on?” he asked carefully.

“Great question, Buddy. I’ve been doing some research on sex buddy boundaries, and as it turns out the internet has quite a lot to say on the subject. Taking that into account, I’ve made a list of governing rules for our arrangement—do you by chance have any tape?”

He startled, not understanding the question at first. “You mean like tape-tape?”

“Yes, scotch tape. We should post this on the wall,” she said, flapping the sheet of paper in her hand.

“I mean, maybe I’ve got some tape at the office.”

She frowned at the piece of paper, then at the wall she wanted to post it on. “I suppose we could use a tack or a hammer and nail. Do you have anything like that…?”

But then she trailed off, looking around the apartment. “I’ve just now realized you don’t have anything posted on your walls, not even a poster.”

“I’m only doing my residency here,” he pointed out, feeling a little defensive. “Who knows where I’ll end up next.”

She peeped up at him. “You’ll be leaving Kansas soon, then?”

“No, not that soon. But yeah, I’ll get my new placement around June or July. You too, right?”

“Yes…maybe. I don’t know. I’ve been offered a full-time position at DWCS. I might stay. I like it in Kansas. I feel free, and like I’m a true benefit to the community I serve here.”

Okay… so maybe they could keep this thing going for another few months. But before he could ask a follow up question, she rushed to ask, “Are you sure you don’t have anything we could use to hang this piece of paper? Perhaps one of those stickers you hand out to children?”

“I don’t hand out stickers.”

“Of course you don’t,” she answered with a teasing smile. “That would mean you have a bedside manner suited to working with children.”

He shrugged. “My job’s mostly running tech. Unless something goes wrong, usually it’s only the nurses who deal directly with the kids. It’s not like on those hospital shows. Plus, nobody cares about my bedside manner when I’m saving kids’ lives.”

“Yes, but you’re Jandro’s primary, so you do occasionally see patients face to face.”

Mine field. But he avoided it by pointing out, “I see you remember that kid’s name even though you don’t remember mine.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, I remembered his name, because he’s a deaf child with a tragic backstory. You’re a lothario doctor who doesn’t care about anyone but himself. Trust me, it was easy to forget your name as soon as I walked out of the building.”

She was still smiling. But wow…his second big silence of the day. And this time he got to be the one to stare at the other person in the argument like she’d lost her damn mind.

“Oh, my gosh,” she said, scrubbing a hand over her eyes. “I’m sorry....”

“So we’re fighting about stickers now?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“No, we’re not fighting about stickers. I shouldn’t have said that to you. I was trying to make a joke in the same vein as you often do, but it came off as incredibly mean and I’m terribly sorry. Please forgive my appalling lack of manners.”

She smiled at him and it seemed sincere, but he could still smell how upset she was about…something—not this conversation, but something else. And it made his wolf want to dig.

Instead, he said, “Why don’t you let me see these rules of yours?”

He took the piece of paper out of her hand and then whistled when he saw the ten rules listed in a clean serif font. “Damn, this is like a real list. Like, a typed-out list.” He glanced over at her. “You were one of those kids, weren’t you? The kind who didn’t just do your homework, but liked doing it and asked for extra credit homework on top.”

With a glaring smile, she answered, “If we were sharing personal info I’d tell you yes, I certainly was that type of kid because one - homework is an incredible tool for learning, and two - there aren’t a lot of stories going around about people who regret being too prepared for college.”

“Okay, tell yourself that instead of admitting you didn’t have a life in high school.”

Another glaring smile. “I suppose you were one of those quote-unquote bad boys who always farmed out your homework to your adoring fans.”

“No, not always,” he answered. “Had to stop doing it in med school because the restrictions on testing software got too tight.”

“Never more than 48-hour notice unless you’re drunk,” he read out loud before she could respond.

He looked over at her. “I don’t drink.”

“I know, but I added the drunk part for me,” she told him proudly. “Women often drunk dial my cousin Grace. It’s very cute.”

“Cute,” he grunted, because that was the opposite of how Knight felt about it, and precisely why he never gave out his number to human women—well, at least not until he met the one standing next to him now.

But he said, “Okay, I’ll sign off on that one. I’ve got this theory that people become who they really are deep down inside when they’re drunk, and I want to see if you shoot rainbows out your ass.”

“Ooh, I’ve never been truly drunk before but if I were, I bet I’d definitely do that,” she answered with a laughing smile.

Liking that she was slowly coming back to her usual wackjob base setting, he read the next rule out loud, “’No meeting each other’s family or friends.’ Copy that.”

Even if she wasn’t human, he’d never introduce her to anyone in his family. But his wolf stirred inside his chest with the notion that his mother would love this woman. She was strong and funny with a huge dose of silly that Alisha would appreciate.

“You like Michael Jackson music?” Knight asked her.

She gave him a quizzical look. “Yes, I am a human being living on planet Earth,” she answered. “Why do you ask?”

Yeah, Mom would definitely love her, his wolf practically sighed.

Ignoring it, Knight skimmed through the remainder of the list. No sharing of personal details. No cuddling. No taking vacations together. No meals other than a very occasional brunch. No sleeping over more than two nights in a row. Always use protection. No fighting. Ever. No falling in love. Ever.

He paused, tripping over those last words. An image of her carrying a cub she didn’t know was Jandro went off in his head for some reason.

And she asked, “What?”

“Protection…” he mumbled, grabbing onto the list item like a get out of jail card. “I’m not planning on seeing anybody else until we’re done with this arrangement. So maybe we could think about both getting tested and losing the wrappers?”

There was also the fact that wolves were incapable of catching or passing on STDs, or getting any woman pregnant outside of heat. In fact, the only reason he bothered with wrappers in the first place is because they added an extra layer of “we ain’t making love here” to one-night stands. But obviously he couldn’t throw that argument into the ring.

She tilted her head with a gentle smile of apology. “I’m sorry, but no. While it wasn’t specifically listed, I don’t think it’s wise for us to trust each other like that. Also, I do plan to eventually have children and I wouldn’t want to risk anything unfortunate that might interfere with my future fertility. Therefore, I think we should go on as we were before, safely, without risk of either of us getting hurt.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Boundaries. Probably for the best,” he agreed, even as his wolf did something weird inside his chest at the thought of her protecting her fertility for the future family, she’d be starting with someone else. “I’ll um…bring some tape home tomorrow and hang it on the wall.”

“Thank you very much,” she said, her tone as gracious as ever. “I appreciate it.”

“Hey, Hot Social Worker?”

“Yes, Buddy?”

He tilted his head and asked, “What’s wrong?”

She visibly swallowed. And for a moment he thought she just might tell him because her smile disappeared.

But then like a grey cloud rolling away, it came back and she answered, “Personal details.”

Yeah, he got it. Yeah…

But then he spoke-signed, “L-heart?”

“Yes?”

“I’m gonna kiss you.”

And she nodded, the smile she seemed to barely be holding onto turning grateful as she said, “That would be lovely. Thank you.”

So, he did, smoothing her perfect curls back with one hand so he wouldn’t get hair in his mouth as he captured her lips in a soft kiss. That was a lesson he’d learned the hard way the first time he tried to kiss her when she hadn’t straightened her hair.

Getting to know her. Even as they set firm boundaries, he was getting to know her.

He nipped at her sadness, sucking on her lips, drinking it down as if it could be extracted with a kiss.

“Take the dress off,” he murmured against her lips. “Panties, too.”

Her long-sleeved pink number disappeared a moment later, tossed to the floor like it didn’t cost more than the rent on his apartment. His mysterious rich girl was careless with her clothes. Another thing he’d discovered about her in their unprecedented two months of fucking.

But after her panties joined the dress, instead of tossing her onto the bed as he usually did, he laid her back and pulled her legs up one by one to take off those ridiculous cowboy boots.

“This doesn’t feel like level ten,” she said, her voice husky.

“That’s because it’s not. We’re on level five tonight.”

The leg he held stiffened. “I’d prefer level ten.”

And he got the feeling this was true. She wanted the mean, do what I say, punishing version of him tonight. Had come here for it as an antidote to whatever had upset her.

“Yeah, I get that.” Then he said, “And I don’t care what you want. Tonight it’s about what I want. And I want to make you feel good.”

“Why?” she asked.

Because he didn’t know how else to help her with whatever was upsetting her without talking about it. Because his wolf was too fucking sensitive when it came to her, and would never let his human take her at level ten in this state.

But aloud he merely said, “Because I can.”

Then he gently pushed her thighs open. And instead of diving right in like he usually did, he let himself openly admire what he saw. The flared hips, the soft pussy, the breasts he suddenly realized he’d never taken in his mouth.

That was a mistake that needed to be corrected right now, he decided. He leaned over her, snaking his tongue around one dark nipple before pulling it into his mouth.

No response at first. He could sense her resisting, wanting something else.

“Please don’t be nice to me,” she whimpered. “I can’t take it. Not tonight.”

He ignored her and trailed kisses over her tight belly, not stopping until he came to the place he was most familiar with on her body.

Contrary to his wolf’s wishes, he’d never let her come on his mouth. At level ten, oral sex was all about the edge. Eating her out until she almost came. Holding her down until she calmed. Then eating her out again.

But tonight he let his wolf have its way with her. Licking at her sweet slit, tongue delving in. Lapping at her for as long as it wanted. Until he became hypnotized by the nub at the top of her vagina, sucking on it a little too long. The wolf didn’t heed her cries of, “please don’t be nice to me,” didn’t feel the hands tearing at his shirt, begging him to stop because she was going to—

He didn’t hear anything but her long moan as her acrid scent shifted. Her emotional pain lifting like something exorcised.

Then, and only then, did the wolf give her back to his human who coolly grabbed a wrapper from the box on the nightstand before covering her with his body. But as much as he wanted inside her, his heartrate actually slowed as soon as he pushed in.

And instead of taking her brutally as he usually did, he took his time. Bracing himself on bent arms he enjoyed the feel of her clenching around his dick while he moved his hips in slow, lazy circles between her legs. Reveled in the feel of the warm gasps in his ear as he took her quietly. No words. No commands. Just him slow grinding inside her.

And instead of telling her to shut-up, he listened to her softly beg him not to be nice to her until her words eventually turned to babbling.

Hot Social Worker had come into this arrangement clear-eyed, but he could tell she was the opposite of him when it came to dating. One of those women who held on to guys for months, if not years. Addicted to the long-term just like his younger triplet brother, Nago.

Yet as she fell apart beneath him, he knew: no guy had done this for her. Slow burned her until all that High Media-gloss fell off and she completely unraveled.

This sex was different. For her, but also for him. What he was feeling now was the opposite of the wired weirdness that overtook him when he just needed to fuck somebody. The opposite of how he felt when he stalked the clubs, looking for the right vessel to dump all that angry adrenaline into.

Knight watched her, wanting her enjoyment more than his own. And he relished seeing her lose coherence. “What…you…doing. Oh…Oh! Good…good…feel…so good. Don’t…don’t.”

“Your favorite TV show growing up,” he said quietly, reminding her to fall back on the Thunderpuffs safe word if she was serious about her “don’t.”

But she didn’t say the safe word, didn’t make him stop.

Instead, she held on to him tightly as he slowly burned her up. Until her breath caught on a sharp intake and she turned her head to look up at him, her eyes softening with awe. As if she were seeing him, really seeing him, for the first time.

Right before she exploded around him, her sex squeezing so sudden and hard that it felt like she was yanking a simultaneous orgasm out of him. Whether he’d been ready to come or not.

Yeah, tonight was different in all ways. He’d never felt so calm, so centered as he did in the moments when they floated down together, her legs trembling around his waist, her breath panting in his ear, the smell of her sex-soaked sweat now free of anger and sadness.

His wolf lolled around his chest in a happy daze because he’d made this woman forget whatever had upset her. At least for a little while.

And his human found himself asking her, “You feel better?” Voice soft in the dark.

“Yes, I do feel better,” she whispered. She then carefully rolled out from underneath him.

He almost said “don’t go,” but stopped himself when she criss-crossed her legs and hand-parted her hair. Braids. A signal that she’d be spend the night.

“Thank you. I needed that,” she said, glancing at him a bit shyly, as she started plaiting her huge curls.

“Me too,” he agreed, not realizing how true that statement was until he said it out loud.

11

I push past Chang and storm into my father’s dark wood-paneled office without knocking. Forget my brand, I’m ready for a very unprincesslike fight after what happened with Ethan.

But then I stop dead at the sight in front of me.

My father is seated behind his desk, and my mother is in his guest chair. It should look like a completely innocuous scene, but something trips inside my brain.

This isn’t right…the strange growly voice tells me. Something isn’t right about this…

“Layla, we were just talking about you,” my mother says with her usual cheery Texas smile.

She looks genuinely happy in my father’s barrel-backed leather guest chair. A bright spot of color in her yellow tee and red jeans which I might have stolen if she weren’t so much shorter than me. But I don’t believe her. Why don’t I believe her?

The answer plunks down like another piece of the puzzle I’m trying to put together. It’s what I don’t see that’s not computing. What I haven’t seen since I woke up.

My parents are ridiculously mushy. The worst. Like the most affectionate people on the planet. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of my brother, sister, and I ewwing at all their kissing and canoodling. But they always laughed us off. And often my father would say something along the lines of, “You will have to forgive me, children, but I cannot keep my hands off your mother when she is in the room.”

However, they’ve been in the same room several times since I came to. At the hospital, and when they installed me back in my bedroom here at the house. But I haven’t seen them touch each other. Not even once, I realize as I review the scenes from the weeks since I woke up. In fact, they haven’t so much as looked at each other with anything but irritation as far as I can remember.

How many times had I knocked on this door to find Mom snuggled up in Dad’s lap like a teenager? Now that I think about it, I can’t ever recall coming in here and finding them on opposite sides of the desk.

Yet my mother is sitting in one of the guest chairs like she’s, well, a guest. And for some reason, I sniff the air because there’s a weird acrid scent coming off her.

She’s angry, the new internal voice tells me. She’s angry, just like you.

Which raises a much bigger question than what happened between Ethan and me as Mom asks, “How was your visit with Carine in Dallas? We want to hear all about it!”

I blink, suddenly remembering where I’d really been headed before I decided to hunt Ethan down on a whim. To see my personal trainer about slowly easing back into my gym routine, but this time with a mind toward my pregnancy.

“I didn’t go,” I answer. Then I demand to know, “What is going on between you two?”

“Nothing,” my father answers. “Why didn’t you go?”

“I changed my mind,” I reply between clenched teeth. “As I’m sure Jared will soon report to you, I decided to go to Dallas Memorial instead to find out why Ethan hasn’t been returning any of my calls.”

I watch my mom, not my dad, as I say this. Despite her chosen career path, she’s never been great at hiding her real feelings about a situation. Just like the internet memes of her eye rolls that started showing up after her detractors tried to come at her, horror is writ plain across her face. Even before she darts a glance over at Dad.

“No, don’t look at him, Mom, look at me!” I say. “What is going on with you two?”

“Nothing,” my father answers at the same time my mother says, “We didn’t want to tell you until you’d had a few more weeks to process what happened.”

“Eva…” Dad starts.

But Mom shakes her head and keeps confessing, “Also, I think we were both truly hoping your memory would come back, making another difficult conversation unnecessary. I mean, telling you once was hard enough…”

“Telling me what once?” I demand, feeling more than a little alarmed. “What is going on, Mom? Just tell me, please.”

“It is nothing,” my father insists. “Nothing to bother the children with—I told her that the first time.”

“I’m not a child, Dad, and I want to know what you’re keeping from me. What’s going on? Why did you send Suro to threaten Ethan? What is the real story here—?”

My mother’s face darkens and her head whips toward my father. “You threatened him?!?!” she asks. “After what happened in January, you actually went and threatened that boy?”

Dad grits his teeth. Not answering, just liked he used to not answer when Mom’s PR team asked him to do…pretty much anything. My dad might very well be the worst arm candy in the entire history of ever.

“I can’t believe you!” Mom whispers. “This is how we lost her the first time.”

“Lost me the first time?” I repeat. “Mom, just tell me please. I am so confused and it’s not fair. If you know something about why I broke up with Ethan, why I went to Kansas, you have to tell me.”

“Eva, do not…” my father intones, his voice on the very edge of a threat. “It will only make this situation worse.”

But my mother is one of the very few people in the world who can stand up to an Alexei Rustanov threat…and live to tell about it.

“You’re not talking to us,” she blurts. “You haven’t talked to us since early February when you moved to Kansas. And it’s not because you got too busy to call.”

I shake my head. That makes no sense. I love my parents. Why would I…?

But then the memory of a trembling Ethan comes back to me. I turn to my father and ask, “Are you the reason we broke up? Did you do something to make us split up?”

“Nyet, exactly the opposite,” my father answers, swiping his large hand in front of him, like a lion, swatting flies. “You chose to break up with him. You chose it, and you did not want to listen to anything he or I had to say about it. Just because—”

Dad breaks off, his face tightening. “You should not have broken up with him. He was a very good man who would not have left you pregnant next to a river.”

But I refuse to take the new bait he’s dangling to distract me from the huge clue he just dropped.

“Just because what?” I demand.

My father folds his arms across his massive chest, muttering in Russian.

“Mom?” I ask.

Mom clears her throat and ignoring her husband’s dirty look, answers, “You and Ethan broke up…right after you found out he was one of several candidates your father vetted for the position.”

“The position,” I repeat, and my heart drops. Because, no… “You wouldn’t,” I say to my father. “Tell me you didn’t actually interview men to date me without my knowledge.”

A beat. Then: “You are explaining it wrong to her!” Dad says to Mom between clenched teeth. “Just as you did in January, Eva. You are making me out to be the bad guy—”

“Because you are the bad guy, Alexei!” Mom yells at him, spreading her arms out wide. “How are you still not seeing that? Without consulting with me or, much more importantly, our daughter, you vetted guys to date and marry her and then cherry-picked the one you liked the most.”

“Dad!?” I say, my voice barely more than a choked gasp.

“And he was a very good pick. Hardworking with a bright future,” Dad points out. He seems to only be speaking to Mom as he says, “Layla liked him very much, just as I knew she would. And if he hadn’t been so stupid as to actually tell her the truth when he proposed without consulting with me first.”

“Do you actually hear yourself?” Mom asks, talking to Dad like he is a six-foot-five idiot. “Stop blaming other people for your mistakes, Alexei.”

“Then you must stop blaming me as well, Eva. You knew what I did and you did not tell her before the stupid boy did.”

I turn on Mom then. “You knew and you didn’t tell me?”

Mom grimaces. “I mean, your dad told me after you’d gone on a few dates with Ethan—he just had to gloat about it, didn’t he? And no, I didn’t tell you because I was sure the relationship would peter out on its own, and then I figured your father would see why he shouldn’t go messing around in our children’s lives—even if we are ready for grandchildren that live on this side of the Atlantic. But then it just kept going on and on, and the next thing I knew you were talking about possibly marrying this man. So I kept my mouth shut. I kept your father’s secret—which I shouldn’t have done. I’m sorry, Layla baby.”

“Oh, my gosh,” I say. No wonder I’d stop talking to not just one but both of them.

“Please do not act as if I am the only one who has kept secrets,” Dad says to Mom, tone scathing. “Our family was started with the secret you kept from me!”

“I know you are not bringing Aaron into this. I know you are not going to play that card!” Mom yells back. “I kept him secret to protect us from your Russian crime family. You did this to Layla because all you do is manipulate people, including your own kin!”

“And all you do is blame me for this. You have made me your scapegoat,” Dad answers, his face fully statueing over.

“Because everything was fine before you interfered,” Mom shouts, getting angrier as Dad grows colder. “You’re the reason she moved out and stopped talking to us, and you’re the reason we’re getting a divorce!”

I blink. Wait… “What?!...no, you are not getting a divorce over this. You can’t get a divorce over this.”

As furious as I am with my father, tears immediately spring to my eyes. My parents have gone through so much just to be together. There’s literally a miniseries based on their tumultuous courtship. But now they’re getting a divorce. Because of me…?

“You see, this is the look you had on your face when we called to tell you the first time in March,” Dad replies, his face still set to cold. “This is why your mother did not wish to tell you a second time. I had hoped there was perhaps a different reason for this wish of hers. But I can see now there was not. Da, I can see that now…”

And though my mom isn’t looking—perhaps because she isn’t looking—he throws her a look of such longing, my heart nearly breaks. Just like it did when I was watching the Years Apart episodes of their mini-series.

Mom stands then, raising her chin. “Alexei, I know you want to me to forgive you for what you did, but I can’t. I just can’t. So please stop asking.”

And just like that, Dad switches from yearning to a volcano of fury, jumping to his feet as he yells in a full Russian accent, “So you will blow up this marriage. You will rip apart our family! Because I did such little thing for our daughter’s own good!”

My mother, known worldwide for her eloquence, balls her hands into fists and answers, “No, I’m asking for a divorce because you don’t care how I feel…and I don’t want to be stuck in this marriage with you…because you're a stupid stupid stupid head…and I just hate your stupid, stupid face! UGHHHH! Idiot!”

As Mom heads for the office door, I can only stand there wide eyed, feeling as if I’ve just watched the Statue of Liberty blow up. I’ve never seen my parents fight like this—at least not in real life. The actors that portrayed them in the miniseries flipped tables, but I was assured by both my parents that they were taking dramatic license.

I believed them back then, but not so much now. Especially as I watch Mom storm out of the room with Dad yelling after her in Russian about how she’s the idiot for ending their marriage over such a little thing.

But as soon as she slams the door behind her, he stops yelling. And like a deflated balloon, he sinks back into his huge leather desk chair and steeples a hand over his eyes, panting with exertion. As if that fight took everything he had out of him.

“Papa?” I say into crackling aftermath of their argument.

“I am sorry you saw that, Lasha. Your mother…she will be embarrassed about how she ranted later, and blame me for this, too.”

“I—I…really don’t care what you did to me,” I tell him quietly, my former rage disappearing as quickly as it came on. “But you two can’t break up. You simply can’t. You are absolutely the best couple I’ve ever known.”

My father lowers his hand to look at me, his grey eyes infinitely miserable. “Da, you said this, too, when we called to give you the news after your birthday had passed. And you cried, just as you do now. But then…you did not come home to us. Instead you decided to stay in Kansas and take a full-time job in that backwater office.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t come home, but Dad…Papa…I don’t think it was down to me to fix your marriage. Only you and Mom can make this right,” I tell him.

“But she will not listen to me, Lasha,” he answers with a tired look. “She blames me for your departure.”

I considered his words with a nod. “Yes, I can see how my moving out would upset her. She’s never actually had an empty nest so she’s probably having all the feelings that were delayed when I decided to stay on at the compound and help her set up her non-profit foundation. On top of menopause.”

Dad regards me with a sad smile. “You explain this so well. You see, this is why when you were not here, everything fell apart. Perhaps you are wrong, and this divorce she is saying we must have is all your fault.”

“Wow, Dad…” I say.

But before I can launch into a response, he says, “I know…I know, Lasha. Not mentally healthy, blah, blah, blah. How unfair, blah, blah, blah. Do not guilt trip me, blah, blah, blah. Twenty-eight years with me and you still do not have a very good understanding of how Russian parenting works. I spoil you, and I guilt you, and I manipulate you—it is my way.”

“Dad…”

“Also, you have given me no credit for not bringing up the menopause to your mother no matter how badly we fight. I could have said this thing to her, but I have not.”

“I assume that’s because you don’t want Mom to spend the rest of her days in prison for killing you. But congratulations for showing some restraint on one topic,” I answer with a teasing smile, before sobering to softly say, “But Papa…no Papa, let me speak,” I say when he tries to interrupt. There’s no doubt about where I got my interrupting gene from.

He settles back into his seat and I level him with a stern smile. “You must fix this, Papa. Don’t use schemes or manipulate her to do it. Just fix it because you love her and I know she still loves you, no matter what she says, okay?”

Dad looks like he wants to argue with me, but in the end, he simply says, “Okay, I will do this. I will find a way to fix this.”

“And, Papa…” I dip my head with a sympathetic smile as I say, “You know what this means, right?”

He lets loose a heavy sigh. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

Ten minutes later I’m on my new phone calling a bioware number reluctantly given to me by my father. It’s a number I am certain must have stored in the phone I lost to the river.

“Hello?” a voice answers carefully. Perhaps because very few people have this number and the one I’m calling from is completely unmarked.

But my heart lights up as I say, “Gracie? Gracie, it’s me.”

“Layla!? Oh, my God, Layla! Dad told me you lost your memory. I’ve been so worried about you. But your father wasn’t letting me through to your phone or allowing me to come visit you. He said it might upset you!”

“I know what he said,” I grumble, feeling all sorts of conflicted feelings toward the man I love most in this world.

But apparently, I’ve already felt all these feelings before. Back in January. And then again in March when my parents announced they would be getting divorced.

“I’m so glad to hear from you!” Gracie tells me, bringing me back from those confusing thoughts. “Does this mean your memory has returned? Are you coming home?”

“No, my memory hasn’t returned,” I confess. “But yes…” I answer to the second question.

Covering my belly with one hand, I’m more determined than ever to find the father of this baby as I say, “Yes, I’m coming home.”

Part 2

Friends with benefits. That was all we were supposed to be. We even had a list of rules. This is the story of how we ended up breaking every single one.

12

One week before Kukunniwi…

They began breaking the rules almost immediately after they posted them on his kitchen wall.

Never more than 48-hour notice, unless you’re drunk…

L-heart took the full-time job at DWCS, which meant she was occasionally on call, too. Plus, his schedule got even more hectic with his residency wind-down and nationwide fellowship search. Their work demands increased so much that they didn’t see each other for an entire week in April because he was either on call, or she’d made plans during his days off. Six days apart was more than his wolf could take. And his human decided it was easier to let her know in advance which days he’d be off. Not because they were girlfriend and boyfriend, he told his wolf sternly—they could and would never be that—but simply so she could keep her calendar clear for possible hook up nights.

No meals other than the very occasional brunch…

That rule got broken in May when she showed up at his door late one Saturday afternoon.

Four days had passed since they’d seen each other last, and three days had passed since he’d texted her on a whim before his fellowship interview with St. Louis Children’s Hospital: “new rule: no masturbating while I’m away.”

As it turned out, she’d adhered to this latest rule because mere moments after he opened the door to let her in, she’d kissed him, filling his nose with the sweet and heavy scent of her arousal as she rubbed her long body into his, and murmured “Level ten, please” against his lips.

“Strip and wait for me on the bed,” he answered in a gruff voice.

She did as she was told with almost comical speed.

Only to have him crawl into bed beside her, still fully clothed and holding his work touchpad. A few minutes passed while she silently watched him sift through his never-ending mountain of paperwork. Until she finally asked, “When will we—?”

“Those words aren’t on your list,” he reminded her, without glancing up from the screen.

“Please?” she asked prettily.

Only to get ignored.

At first, her “pleases” were gracious and gentle. But then they became more and more insistent, delivered with kisses on his cheek and small licks and nips on his neck. He didn’t respond to anything she said or did—which was easy for his human who liked the cruel teasing, but torturous for his wolf who’d missed her.

But both his wolf and human bit out a sharp “don’t” when her hand wandered to close to her naked sex. “I’ll have to send you home if you can’t follow the rules,” he warned.

By the time he switched from work to some old entertainment content called Stargate Atlantis, she was full-on begging. Rubbing herself against the side of his body like a desperate she-wolf—

Fuck. Like a desperate feline. He’d meant to think feline. Because L-heart wasn’t a she-wolf. She was human. And he took a few seconds to firmly remind his wolf of that fact. For the gazillionth time.

Perhaps because of his “Freudian slip,” he didn’t punish her when, after snatching a foil package from his box of wrappers, she pulled the touchpad out of his hands and threw it across the bed.

“Please…please…please…” she chanted as she pulled his joggers down and off his legs.

Fighting to keep his face impassive, he watched her stretch the wrapper over his long cock. “I didn’t give you permission to do that,” he said when she climbed on top of him.

The look she gave him in response turned his dick to concrete in her hand. Desperate, apologetic, completely riddled with helpless lust as she lifted her hips and lined herself up over him.

“Please…” she whimpered. Then, before he could stop her, she slid down and sheathed his erection with her warm pussy. It was so wet he could feel hot liquid dripping from her onto his balls.

“Please,” she moaned again. He watched as she began to move up and down the length of his shaft, but she was too dazed with lust to find a rhythm.

Alright, no more games.

He flipped her over, somehow managing to keep them joined at the waist. Then he punished her hard for ending their game before he was ready. His hips pistoning between her legs, he fucked her without mercy, filthy words about what a nasty girl she was spilling unfiltered from his mouth until her body tightened beneath his and she came with a final, “Please!”

This time he didn’t fight it. He just let his body soar with her off the cliff until they both landed, panting hard, back in the bed. He should have rolled off her then, business done. But he didn’t. Instead, he stayed there, holding her tight until his dick softened inside her. Then, and only then, did he unknot, taking the wrapper with him as he did.

Pull out, said his wolf.

What?

You said “unknot.” You can’t knot inside a human, and she’s not a she-wolf in heat. You pulled out.

He cursed inwardly. Now his wolf was reminding him of all the places their relationship could never go.

You like her but don’t want to admit it, his wolf said, staring straight into his soul.

“Wanna order something to eat?” he asked out loud, trying to drown the wolf out. Trying to focus on something other than all the contradictory wants and needs messing with his mind.

“That sounds lovely,” she answered.

So that’s what they did, because he’d already kept her there for so long, and couldn’t fuck her a second time without at least feeding her. At least that’s what he told himself the first time it happened. The next few times he simply ignored his wary human and his smug wolf.

But rules were definitely being broken. And once they started eating dinners together whenever she stayed over, things began to change.

He began calling her L-heart on the regular, and her “Hey, Buddy!” greeting took on a whole different meaning. Mostly because it was often delivered with a sensual kiss the moment he walked in the door. (Yes, “he.” She now had a key to his place and was often waiting inside for him to return from another long work shift.)

This also had nothing to do with them being boyfriend and girlfriend, he reminded his wolf as he handed over a copy of the old-fashioned key. DWCS was about equidistance between both their places and she didn’t like driverless cars. It seemed stupid for her to walk all the way back to her place on agreed upon hook up nights and then come over later because he didn’t get off work until the evening.

No cuddling…

Around the time he gave her the key to his apartment, she began asking for level five sex about once or twice a week. Level five required him to be gentler. No dirty talk. Just quiet, but weirdly intense sex that was often accompanied by orgasms bigger than any he’d ever experienced. With her, with others, or with his hand. Afterwards, it felt impossible not to drag her into his arms, settling in for a good night’s sleep, free of nightmares.

Whatever. It worked for both of them. That was all that mattered.

At least that was what he told himself. Until the Friday night when she texted, “I know I slept over last night, but may I come over tonight, too? And if the answer is yes, I’d be very grateful if you could pick up ice cream.”

No sleeping over more than two nights in a row…

He was in the middle of dictating his post-op paperwork on the Riverez boy’s umbilical hernia repair, but he dropped everything to text back, “gotta work late had back-to-back surgeries today but come over and wait for me.” His thumb hovered over the send icon then at the last moment he added, “what’s wrong?”

Grey dots immediately appeared on the phone’s old-fashioned text messaging interface, but they lingered for a long time before a short message popped up on his screen: “I’ve had a long day.”

High Media-understatement bullshit, he sensed, before impatiently typing back, “why long day?”

“I accompanied the police to pull two children from a hot car. They were left inside by their mother while she went to score oxy. One child made it out alive, the other did not. He was a baby.”

Fuck. He didn’t like to think too much about her job requirements. He could barely look parents in the eyes when he lost a kid. But what she had to deal with; kids and parents at their worst…

“want me to get some beer too?” he texted back.

“Yes, please.” she answered.

“anything else?”

Grey dot…dot…dot…then, “Nothing else is required, just you.”

He smiled down at his phone. Smiling was another thing he didn’t do much of—at least not until she showed up. “k be there soon as I can.”

“Thank you.”

He finished his surgery play-by-play, then rushed through the rest of his paperwork, his fingers flying over the touchpad only to stop again when his phone sounded. It was an innocuous ripple, though, not the twinkle he’d assigned to L-heart’s contact number.

He didn’t recognize the number. At first, he thought it might be his younger triplet, Nago. He’d texted him a heads-up earlier that morning about an old girlfriend of Nago’s. And although he’d gone through a lot of trouble to mask his number. But if anyone could figure out how to find him, it was his brilliant brother.

But it wasn’t Nago. It was from the phone he’d sent to Oklahoma.

“Hello, Knud?”

Knud. Seeing his name in text unsettled him. He’d been Dr. Rasmussen “Dr. Thug” Knight for so long, he’d almost forgotten there were still those who knew him by another name.

“yeah uncle grady it’s me,” he typed back in the all-lowercase, no-punctuation style that never failed to send his mother on a rant about his “generation.”

“Sorry it took me so long to write back. Put the phone in my desk and only just checking it now. But it’s good to hear from you!”

So many emojis followed his uncle’s text that Knight was again struck by how different his huge deaf uncle appeared in writing versus in person. Grady’s wife, his Aunt Tu, frequently remarked that the person who spoke inside her head was much different from the quiet deaf-mute who could only communicate with his hands to all but his mate. Uncle Grady also spoke a rough, very informal version of ASL he’d taught himself. It was nothing like his son Qim’s sophisticated flow, or what they’d been taught when Aunt Tu insisted on making ASL a required class at summer camp.

Knight hesitated, his thumbs hovering over the phone’s touchscreen and his heart accelerating. He’d put a lot of work into escaping his past; into reinventing himself as someone other than the professional killer he’d been only a few years ago. He’d taken lives longer than he’d saved them. And it felt way too soon to return to even a fragment of the life he used to know.

But then the image of Jandro pushed into his head. Of the boy shaking in the bathtub as he came down from the withdrawal, then nearly losing it because a wolf had gifted him new clothes. And holy fuck, the kid was scrawny.

A full moon had already passed, and another was due next Friday. He couldn’t just sit and wait while Olcan continued to look for a placement. And besides, a placement was nothing more than a band-aid. A reluctant foster family who may or may not know ASL wasn’t what the kid needed to survive and thrive.

Knight took a deep breath and typed, “found deaf cub in kansas…9 years. parents dead. kansas pack can’t take him…social worker can’t find a family. need advice.”

To his surprise, his Uncle’s answer came back immediately in all caps: “SEND HIM TO US.”

He expelled a sigh of relief. “yeah that’s what I want to do...send him to the oklahoma pack…thanks.” Wolf Haven was not only one of the richest kingdom towns in the country, but it was also home to the sole boarding school for deaf wolves in North America. They’d be able to help Jandro there. And maybe Grady could help find Jandro a foster family who knew ASL for the summers—

But before Knight could type another message, his uncle texted back, “No, not to the Oklahoma pack. Send him to US.”

13

The conversation with Grady took a long time. Longer than Knight wanted considering who was waiting for him back at home. By the time he walked through the front door, he was exhausted for reasons that had nothing to do with the two surgeries and related paperwork he’d clocked before spending an hour texting back and forth with his uncle.

He no longer had the energy for level ten sex, or even level five. But he wasn’t going to send L-heart away. Not after the day she’d had….

He found two trays of what looked like freshly baked chocolate chip cookies cooling on the kitchen counter. Considering his complete lack of kitchen supplies, she must have brought them over—maybe as an experiment to see if his never-used oven really worked. It must have because the apartment smelled delicious, and the cookies looked almost as beautiful as she did.

As he set the ice cream down, he had a very unusual thought: tonight he just wanted to eat ice cream and freshly-baked cookies, drink a commiseration beer with her, and go to bed. That was all. No sex. Just a lot of sugar, carbs, and cuddling, which he knew violated at least two rules on their list.

“Hey, Hot Social Worker. Where you at?” he called out into the quiet space.

No answer.

Going completely still, his eyes scanned the empty room. He couldn’t smell much over the overpoweringly sweet scent of the cookies. But he could sense someone in the apartment.

“L-heart?” he tried again, his eyes going to the bathroom. But no, the door was wide open and he knew she’d never leave it open if she was inside.

He gave a quick thought to his gun, locked away in the same closet safe where he kept his pay-as-you-go-phones. The closet was on the opposite side of the room. Damnit….

His wolf senses prickled again. And suddenly several things he’d suspected about L-heart forced their way to the front of his mind.

That she was rich. That she was both overly trusting and overly confident. That though she worked a low paying job, she looked and talked like a High Media princess. Possibly because she was a Daddy’s Girl. The kind of rich that didn’t need to flaunt it because she’d been born with money to spare.

The kind of rich that kidnappers loved to target.

As he crossed what felt like a thousand football fields to get to the room where his gun was locked away, he cursed himself for not protecting her better. For being so cocky that he let her stay alone in a building that didn’t have so much as a doorman—

The closet door suddenly slammed open, and someone jumped out at him with a big “Boo!”

Knight’s instinct kicked in before his logic. He swung on the person without registering who it was…his training in full effect. Because in Wolf Force, if someone comes at you while you are casing an enemy position, you hit them hard and ask questions later.

But in this case, his instinctive punch was deftly dodged and swiftly returned. Straight to the forehead. Knud swayed. The strike hadn’t had much force, but it had been precise. Aimed right between the eyes, effectively blinding him. Literally. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear the blurry filter over his vision.

Fuck, don’t wolf out…first rule of Wolf Force, he mumbled to himself, right before the red rage made the point moot. It viciously took over his mind, cutting off access to all his wolf senses, as it blindly roundhoused on his attacker.

But the roundhouse was blocked, too. His attacker caught his leg and delivered a sharp elbow to the back of his knee. He yelled out, pain effectively clearing his vision as he fell to the floor. If not for his wolf resilience, his bone would likely have broken under the hit. Which stoked the angry fire hidden inside of him even more.

He could see again, but the anger...it painted his world deep red as he got to his feet. Whoever the fuck this fighter was, he’d destroy him!

“Buddy!” a familiar voice screamed in the distance. “Please don’t! Please! Thunderpuffs! Thunderpuffs! I don’t want hurt to you!”

The voice. It was L-heart…!

And just like that, the red anger receded. Let him breathe. Let him see…

The woman standing in front of him. Not some faceless attacker, but Hot Social Worker.

Her fists were raised in a martial stance, just like his. And she was panting hard, her eyes wide with horror.

14

My manual Tesla—which Jared drove the five hours it took to get here from Texas—pulls up to an imposing metal-and-glass building that looks like it’s dying for the chance to play a part in some film as a supervillain’s lair. This is apparently where I live now.

And as if to provide further proof I’m in the right place, Gracie is standing outside the building’s hexagon-shaped front doors. Waiting for me. If not for her unmistakable razor-sharp features, I might not have recognized her at all. The last time I recall seeing her was three years ago at my brother Aaron’s wedding in Italy. She’d been two years into an MBA program at Northwestern, and her wardrobe of choice had been a tight bun paired with a conservative suit dress.

But now she’s a dropout who has decided to attend culinary school in Kansas. And her looks have changed dramatically. She’s wearing a tank top and baggy joggers, both of which look like they were purchased from an online retailer. Her dark hair is cut short in a severe bob that’s nearly as sharp as her cheekbones. Most surprisingly are the dark tattoos adorning both her arms. They’re almost as menacing as this apartment building.

“Shimmer, please wait here while Santiago secures the inside and perim—” Jared starts to say.

“I’m terribly sorry, Jared, but I’m going to ignore you,” I answer before he can finish his instructions.

I jump out of the car and run to my same-aged “little cousin,” scooping her into a hug.

“Hey, cuz,” she says, hugging me back just as fiercely despite her new badass look. “It’s good to finally see you again!”

“Hello, Gracie,” I answer. Sad because she obviously remembers a recent version of me, but I don’t remember this version of her at all.

“I adore your tattoos,” I say to fill in the awkward moment.

“Thanks…you okay?” she asks. Most likely because I’m clinging to her rather desperately.

“No, I’m not,” I admit.

She pulls back from the hug to smile at me. Now this smile I remember. It’s quiet and composed like her. And it’s a twin to the smile of her introverted father, Uncle Suro.

“Let’s go home,” she says, taking me by the hand to lead me into the apartment filled fortress.

The interior of the apartment building, unlike Gracie, is exactly what I expect. Shiny biometric lock on the outside door and another inside the elevator we take to get to our penthouse. Security bots are stationed like titanium tiki statues on either side of our sliding hexagon-shaped doorway. I don’t bother to check their defense settings. Knowing my dad and Uncle Suro, they’re programmed to kill.

Our apartment looks more like a hotel room than a place where a social worker and college student live. The ceiling is made mostly of tinted glass, giving us a view of the colorful orange and rose-hued sunset happening above our heads. The living room sits like an island on a raised platform covered in plush maroon carpeting and creamy white couches. Just in case that isn’t decadent enough, there’s also an indoor swimming pool next to the island living room. It’s filled with rose-colored saltwater, the temperature of which I’m sure can be adjusted to whatever we deem most comfortable at any given moment. There are also four completely real palm trees hanging out in a green patch of transplanted moss and soil on the other side of the pool.

“Wow. I see we decided to really slum it when we moved here,” I say to Gracie.

She laughs and says, “Blame your dad, not mine. I think he was trying to make it up to you without actually saying ‘I’m sorry.’”

Of course, he was. And this place is a modern dream come true but…something doesn’t feel right. Or…doesn’t smell right. Just like the Texas compound didn’t feel or smell right to me.

While Jared and Santiago perform the usual perimeter check, I stand in front of one of the apartment’s hexagon-shaped interior walls. The wall is made of the same tinted glass as the ceiling and features a group photo of both our families glowing within its interior. It was originally taken at Aaron’s wedding. My parents stand on either side of my brother; Mom hugging her only son tight. I stand next to Mom, slaying in my bridesmaid dress and smile set to full paparazzi, while my younger sister, Alma, throws the camera a stone-cold look from beneath Dad’s arm. Alma’s No Nonsense All Business brand aside…we look like a happy family. We were a happy family.

Funny how much the picture hurts to look at now.

I shift my gaze to Gracie’s family on the other side of Alma. Her tall Asian father, her plump black mother. Her autistic older stepbrother and half-sister, Kenji and Sparkle—known as the Twins even though they’re technically stepsiblings. And as if Gracie’s family isn’t complicated enough, there’s her adopted brother, Spidey. He’s a budding hickhop rapper and wears his tufted afro in a super on-trend anime style. He somehow seems to be simultaneously grinning and rolling his eyes at the camera. I remember how Gracie chastised him for being “bitchy” because he insisted on referring to their still-single opera composer siblings as “Grey Gardens” behind their backs.

The memory is crystal clear…unlike the huge blank space from before the accident.

“Spidey sends his love,” Gracie says, coming to stand beside me. “I had to talk him out of driving down from Chicago when he heard you were coming back here. He can’t believe you lost your memory. Especially because you don’t remember that time when he visited us back in February. We had so much fun that weekend!”

I shake my head unable to believe it myself. That I quit my job and moved here to work.

My reasons for interning made sense, but I still can’t understand why I accepted a full-time job with some podunk children’s service office when I could have moved anywhere after the internship was done. Our Wichita apartment is…better than nice. But that still doesn’t explain why I decided to double down here after my parents announced their divorce.

Did it have something to do with the father of this baby? I wonder, rubbing a hand over my only slightly pooched out three-months pregnant belly.

Their initial safety check completed, Gracie shows Jared and Santiago to their rooms. The apartment has four guestrooms…which sounds outrageous until you realize the place takes up an entire floor of the building.

“No wonder you missed me so much,” I say when Jared and Santiago leave the sleek glass kitchen to unpack their things. “I can’t imagine staying in a place this big on my own.”

I’m seated at the glass island counter while Gracie throws together a big pot of gluten-free pasta for dinner.

“This over-the-top apartment wasn’t anywhere near the list of reasons I missed you,” Gracie answers, her voice taking on what my High Media coaches would call an “urban pitch.”

“Gracie…” I start.

“Grace.”

I look at her in surprise.

“I go by Grace now,” she explains, her voice gentle. “I almost said something earlier but I didn’t want to upset you.”

Oh…

“Grace…” I test out the name on my tongue and to my surprise, it’s a better fit than I expected.

“I like it! Almost as much as I like your tattoos,” I tell her.

“Thanks,” she answers with a quiet lift of her lips. “My father hates the tats. I guess we Nakamuras were supposed to stop getting them after my grandfather died.”

Which makes me wonder, “Did you have a falling out with your dad, too?”

Another smile whispers across Gracie’s—Grace’s—lips. “Not all of us need a reason to rebel. I just decided to drop out and do my own thing. But back when you asked to move in with me, I was the most rebellious person you knew.”

“Is that what I said when I called to tell you Dad curated my boyfriend and I wanted to move to Kansas?” I guessed, lips twisting into the wry version of my resting smile.

“Yup. But at least you were honest about why you picked me. And I can’t say I wasn’t happy to move in with you. Kansas isn’t exactly a hotspot, and it was good to have someone I knew here…”

“I’m happy I had someone to turn to even if I don’t remember it,” I reply with a truly grateful smile.

For a few moments we stare at each other over the island counter. Remembered and non-remembered fondness intermingling.

“Do you want to open a bottle of wine for dinner?” Grace asks, turning away from the pot of boiling pasta and walking to a hexagon-shaped wine rack embedded in the wall. “I should have aerated a bottle as soon as we came in, but maybe a Chianti will—”

“Grace…” I say, cutting her off. “I’m pregnant!”

She stops and gives me a stunned look. For nearly a full minute the only sound in the room is that of the percolating pasta.

“They didn’t tell you?” I deduce.

They being our fathers who I’m fairly sure tell each other everything.

She shakes her head mutely.

“Oh…” Then even though her lack of awareness about my pregnancy makes for a rather awkward transition, I have to ask, “I don’t suppose you have any idea who the father might be?”

15

One week before Kukunniwi…

The attacker was L-heart. Not some faceless enemy, but the woman he’d been rushing to get home to tonight.

He lowered his fists.

As did she…

“What the heck, Buddy?” she asked as if they’d just run into each other on the street. “Why did you attack me?”

He had the exact same question for her. “Why did you attack me?”

“I didn’t!” she shot back. “I jumped out and said, ‘boo!’”

“Why the hell would you do that?” he demanded. All the possibilities of what might have happened roared through his head. He could have hurt her, damaged her. If she hadn’t been so quick with her counter attack, if her voice hadn’t broken through his red rage, he could have killed her.

The possibilities iced over his heart as he asked her again, “Why the hell would you jump out at me like that?”

“Because I’m trying to be more spontaneous, and it seemed like the kind of thing a spontaneous person would do!” she answered, like it was her God-given inalienable right to scare the shit out of people in their own homes.

“I’m a former Marine!” he yelled at her. “You know this. You don’t sneak up on ex-soldiers!”

“When I was a child, I used to sneak up on my bodyguards, many of which were ex-armed forces, all the time,” she answered.

“What?!” he asked.

“And they never once tried to punch me, much less keep coming at me, when I fended off one of their surprise attacks.”

“Fended off?” he repeated. “Why would you need to fend off attacks from ex-military bodyguards?”

“Because that’s the only way one learns true self-defense,” she answered as if he should already know this.

More images flashed through his head, memories of the past colliding with the now. Him swinging on her…the kid walking into the garage to find his father dead…the little girl dead on the table… His wolf whimpered with guilt. And the red anger bubbled in the shadows, frustrated, wanting to come back for more.

“It looks as if we’ve both been unexpectedly hijacked by our pasts.” L-heart rubbed the back of her neck and peeked up at him with a chagrined smile. “I suppose we truly do need to talk about what just happened. I’ll get us some ice cream and a plate of cookies.”

Ice cream and cookies. She wanted to talk about this over ice cream and cookies when he could barely look at her after what he almost did.

“That’s not in the rules,” he said following her to the kitchen counter where she’d produced a spatula that definitely didn’t belong to him. Out of the goddamn blue.

“Yes, but—”

“There’s no BUT here.” He pointed to the rules hanging right in front of her on the kitchen wall. “Talking—especially about our pasts—is against the goddamn rules. No personal details. We both agreed to that!”

She set the spatula down, and though her gentle High Media-smile remained on her face, he could smell the emotions she was refusing to show, acrid and bitter. “Buddy, I’m aware of the rules, but in this case…”

“I. Am. Not. Your. Fucking. Friend,” he shouted, over-enunciating every word like she did but for a much different reason. “We’ve already broken half these goddamn rules and now you want to talk? We don’t talk. We fuck. That’s all we’re supposed to be doing. Not cuddling, or telling each other about our bad days, or eating cookies and ice cream together. We fuck and that’s all we do because you’re a complicated wackjob, and I don’t need you jumping out of closets at me! Who told you to come in here and bake cookies in my goddamn kitchen anyway?!”

He flipped the tray of cookies nearest him with an angry bear swipe of his hand. The metal tray flew off the counter and hit the floor with an echoing clang.

But that sound was nowhere near as loud as what filled up the room next. A silence so terrible he choked on it, suddenly incapable of saying anything else.

But as for L-heart…

She looked down at the tray and broken cookies on the floor. Then back up at him. Her smile unreadable, but her scent as clear as a scream.

“Yes, you’re right about my violations of our agreed upon rules. Thank you for both accommodating and indulging me for as long as you have. I’ll leave now.”

He realized the mistake he’d made before she even took the first step toward the door. Away from him.

“Wait a minute, L-heart,” he said, reaching out for her. “Wait a minute…”

He’d pushed and shoved so many people away. But for the first time he wanted to pull someone back toward him.

Yet before his hand could make contact with the body that had become so familiar over the past few weeks, she said, “Please, don’t touch me,” flashing a bright and brittle smile.

He let his hand drop to his side, not knowing what to say. Or how to explain the red anger, which he should have guessed would take her from him in the end. He couldn’t justify his actions, couldn’t talk about any of it. But even so, he didn’t want her to go.

That was when he wished they’d exchanged personal info. A name. He needed a name. Something to call her by. A way to beg her to come back to him. But he could only stand there helpless, not knowing what to do in the entirely new situation of wanting back something he’d broken in anger.

And then the time for calling after her was done. The door slammed behind her and she was gone.

16

My question about the father of my baby echoes in the air.

Grace opens her mouth…right before her face crumples into tears, like a mask that suddenly starts to melt.

“Grace!” I say, alarmed. I’ve never seen her cry before—not even when we were both toddlers. “What’s wrong?”

Grace shakes her head. “I told them I would take care of you!” she answers. “When my dad and your dad called me after you decided to move here, I told them to zen. I mean, Kansas is so boring and I honestly thought Uncle Lex had nothing to worry about. Between your martial arts skills and mine, I didn’t think there was anything that could hurt you here. But I was wrong and I failed you.”

“Are you kidding?” I ask, aghast. Not because she’d talked about me with my dad behind my back, but because: “It’s not your job to take care of me, and it wasn’t fair of our fathers to put you in that position to begin with!”

She sniffed. “Of course, you would say that. But I saw all the warning signs and kept ignoring them. First, I let you go off with that guy at the club.”

I blinked. “What guy? What club?”

“I don’t know who he was!” she all but wailed, her voice full of self-recrimination. “If it had been my father, he would have vetted him seven different ways before letting him talk to you. But you seemed to know him and you gave me a back off signal when I tried to approach. At first, I thought you were using him to get out of talking to Ethan, but then it looked like you were having a really good time. So when you decided to go home with him, I was like ‘why not? Let her blow off some steam for once.’”

I shake my head. “I don’t understand. You’re saying I met some random guy at a club and then went back to his place? Where does he live?”

Grace shakes her head. “I don’t know. Some place on the other side of the district. You came back the next morning and told Spidey and me over brunch that he lived in an itty-bitty studio but had a super long dick—no surgery. Then you said even though it was supposed to be a one night stand, you two decided to become sex buddies.”

I stop her right there with a raised hand, because that doesn’t sound like me. At all. “Are you trying to say I, Layla Rustanov, became sex buddies with a random guy I sort of knew from a club?”

Grace grimaces and reluctantly nods. “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. And here I thought my tattoos were bad ass. I guess when you decided to rebel, you wanted to go big.”

I shake my head again. Unable to believe a word she’s saying. “Was he handsome?”

“Yeah, I guess he was technically pretty,” Grace answers after a moment of consideration. “If you like pretty paired with a thuggish aesthetic, which I didn’t think you of all people would. But you stayed sex buddies for, like, months.”

More blinking from me because I really can’t see myself agreeing to a one-night stand, much less an ongoing sexual relationship, with a pretty-but-thuggish stranger.

“And I never told you his name?”

Now it’s her turn to shake her head. “No, you just called him Buddy…as in…”

“There’s no need to clarify, I get it,” I say, my brain working overtime to process everything she’s just told me.

“In all seriousness, the whole ‘relationship’ seemed kind of like a big joke to you. I mean you guys saw a lot of each other because you said he was really good in bed. But you never talked about him. This new guy…he seemed to be nothing more than a diversion. And you were on the device so I figured you were safe.”

But the device had failed. And apparently, it most likely had failed with some random guy I met in a club and decided to go totally off-brand with.

“Were we still…” I pause because ‘together’ seems like the wrong word to use for whatever it is I was doing with this man, “…seeing each other when I had my accident?”

With a kind of culinary sixth sense, Grace seems to know the exact moment to remove the pot of boiling pasta from the burner.

“Not that I could tell,” she answers as she drains the noodles. “I think you guys got into a fight about a week before your accident. A big one. You told me you’d be spending Friday night at Buddy’s. But then around eight or so, you came home. And you didn’t want to talk about why you hadn’t stayed over…just went straight to your room where you spent most of the weekend, crying. I was really worried. It got to where I was going to cancel my plans to visit my parents for summer break. But you told me not to. Said you had to go to work on Monday anyway.”

Grace returns to the counter and it looks like she’s about to cry again. “But I shouldn’t have listened to you. I should have followed my instincts and tracked down the guy who made you cry.”

“No, Grace,” I shake my head and take her hand. “Please…you have to stop blaming yourself. There’s nothing you could have done. And I can take care of myself. You know that.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.” She raises apologetic wet eyes to mine. “But less than a week later, a group of hunters found you washed up on the banks of that river.”

17

Five days before Kukunniwi…

She’d been crying. Knight could see that as soon as she walked into the small Department of Wichita Children Services reception area, just a few seconds after he came through the door.

She’d come out to meet him, making it unnecessary for him to find her in the back office’s cubicle maze. For some reason DWCS still hadn’t added her picture to their department website, even though she’d been working with them full time for over a month now.

But here she was, her beautiful brown eyes tinged with red, and her usual smile tight with misery. The opposite of her usual smile.

Of course, his sappy wolf immediately started in on him: Kiss her. Apologize! Make promises. Say you’ll stay in Kansas. Ask her to move in with you. Anything. Anything she wants. Just make her smile again for real. Please!

“Hi,” Knight said, ignoring all the crazy shit his wolf was talking.

Her eyes searched his face. Probably looking for some sign, any, that he was human. Or that he regretted what happened on Friday night.

He was human—at least partly. And he did regret what happened on Friday night. More than she could ever know.

But this was precisely why he didn’t do relationships. Because the red anger eventually destroyed everything he touched. She’d found that out the hard way.

Now she knew, and he couldn’t let her unknow for fear of what he might do. Or try to do. With a human who’d already told him she wanted kids.

He kept his face hard. Giving her nothing to work with. Nothing at all.

Finally, she gave up and pasted on a patently fake smile as she said, “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I know.”

“This is where I work and I…” she trailed off, her lips tightening as her eyes slowly drifted back to his, blazing with anger. “I refuse to engage in any drama here.”

“I’m not trying to bring any drama,” he promised.

“Then may I ask why you are here?” For all her High Media training, it was clear she had to work to keep her voice level.

“For the kid…Jandro.”

She blinked. Obviously, that hadn’t been the answer she’d been expecting.

But it was true. If it were up to him, she’d never have to see his stupid face again, and he’d never torture his wolf by forcing it to see hers. But there were things that were more important than his pride. Like the welfare of a deaf cub who’d be stuck taking meth for the rest of his brief life if somebody didn’t step up and do the right thing.

To that end, he held out an old-fashioned manila folder. “I’ve got somebody who wants to foster-to-adopt the kid, and I need to talk to a social worker who knows ASL. So if there’s someone else here besides you, send them my way. If not—”

She snatched the folder out of his hand before he could even finish the sentence. Opened it, flipped to the first page, then immediately looked back up at him. “Qim Wulfkonig? Qim Wulfkonig, the deaf billionaire?”

“Yeah,” he answered.

“Qim Wulfkonig, the deaf billionaire, wants to adopt Jandro, no questions asked?”

“Yeah, I told him and his dad about Jandro—”

“Wait,” she said holding up her hand. “You know Qim and Grady Wulfkonig???”

Incredulity riddled her tone. He guessed she’d figured thug doctors serving out their residency in Kansas, and deaf billionaire businessmen from Oklahoma didn’t usually hang out in the same circles.

“Yeah, I know him,” he answered. “Qim’s my cousin. And Grady’s my uncle by marriage. He married my Aunt Tu.”

“Tu? Wait. Your aunt is Tu Ataneq???”

“Can we just cut through all the disbelief bullshit and accept I know all these people or I wouldn’t be here discussing them with you?”

She searched his face again, this time seeming to rewrite everything she thought she knew about him. And Knud could just guess what she was considering…

An ex-Marine with anger issues living in a shitty apartment was one thing.

But the nephew of one of the richest families in the human and wolf worlds living like a PTSD case in a shitty apartment was another. He could practically hear her thinking, “and he called me a wackjob…!”

He tried not to care. What she thought of him didn’t matter. Only Jandro mattered.

She opened her mouth and he braced himself to tell her just that. Screw whatever assumptions she’d made about him anyway.

But instead of commenting on his background, she asked, “Why does Qim Wulfkonig want to adopt Jandro? He’s 25 and single. Is this some kind of Daddy Warbucks-scheme? Is he trying to use him for publicity? Because if that’s the case…”

Two things struck him right then. 1 – L-heart was clearly primed to find the Orphan Annie story 99.9% less charming than the rest of the universe; and 2 - She was fucking amazing. Most people would have jumped at the offer to rehome a difficult-to-place foster kid. In fact, he was almost positive just about every social worker in this building would have happily thrown Jandro at the world’s richest deaf man, no questions asked.

But L-heart’s first and only thought was about Jandro’s welfare.

Regret filled his heart for the future she’d almost certainly have with another man. A human man who’d be able to give her things he couldn’t…like emotional stability and kids.

“No, it’s nothing like that,” he replied, trying hard to ignore the wolf whimpering in his chest. “He is young, yes, but he’s a guy who knows what he wants. And that has always included a family. It’s true he doesn’t live in Kansas, but in spite of that, I think he’d be a really good match for Jandro.”

She continued to squint down suspiciously at the paperwork. “You talked to Jandro for all of ten minutes and now you think you’ve found the perfect parent for him?”

Shit. He’d forgotten she had no idea that the wolf cub she’d brought to his apartment all those weeks ago was actually a shifter. As far as she was concerned, she’d found an abused and injured dog, one he’d taken to a nearby no-kill shelter the next day. End of story.

“Ok, listen,” he said. “Qim will actually be in Kansas all this week. I was going to go with the WCH social worker to visit him on Friday. But she told me you had to agree to sign me off as the official interpreter for Jandro’s paperwork…or something like that. Real talk, I’m terrible with all this red tape shit. Bottom line, this form…?” He took the folder back from her and shuffled through the paperwork he’d printed out until he found the form he was looking for, then handed it back to her on top of the folder. “All you have to do is sign it and—”

“Why is an Oklahoma billionaire here in Kansas for the week?”

“Wow, I really did not miss your constant interruptions,” he said.

A wounded look flashed across her face.

And dammit, he had to resist the urge to apologize yet again. Because while he might not have missed all her interruptions, he definitely missed kissing her into silence.

They’d only spent a weekend apart. And he knew ending things before it got too serious was the best outcome for them both.

But tell his fucking wolf that. Or his dick.

His miserable wolf wouldn’t let him go to the club to hunt down another woman. Only her, only her, it said. But even though Friday had been proof of all the reasons he couldn’t have her, he hadn’t been able to fall asleep without jerking off to images of her beneath him, accepting his claim. And when he finally did fall asleep, it still hadn’t been enough.

The nightmares were back. The kid standing over his father’s body, looking at him in shock. Before crumpling to the ground in a small, untidy heap.

Fuck, fuck, fuck…

“Dr. Knight? Dr. Knight?” someone was saying in the distance.

He blinked. And there she was again. Cutting through the bad memories with a worried look hovering just above her fake smile.

“You know my name now?” His fake name, but still…

“Yes, it’s on this form you would like me to sign,” she answered. “Please enlighten me. Why is Qim Wulfkonig here this week and this week only?”

“His family runs a summer camp program in the Kukunniwi Woods. It goes mid-June through August. Qim and his Dad do this father-son trip every year to make repairs and prep the camp for the coming season. Look, can you just sign the paperwork…?”

She closed the folder. “Jandro’s a good kid who only recently lost his mother. He’s going to need a lot of guidance, therapy, and understanding. I want to make sure he gets all of that. The deaf are already underserved in this system, especially the ones without bioware. I fear Ms. Olcan may have a difficult time making a fair and balanced decision about this if she has to depend on you, Mr. Wulfkonig’s cousin, to translate. That’s why I won’t sign off on this paperwork.”

He snatched the folder back, unable to believe Jandro wouldn’t even have the chance to meet Qim because of this one bureaucratic obstacle.

“Are you doing this because of what happened Friday?”

She wheeled back as if he’d slapped her. “No! I am only looking out for Jandro’s welfare! If you truly knew me, you’d know I would never let my personal feelings get in the way of doing my job to the best of my ability.”

But he didn’t know her, did he? Not really.

“I get it. You’re just going to leave him in that home without even giving my cousin a chance.” He was furious and couldn’t believe she would pull this bullshit on him.

“No, Dr. Knight, of course I would not do that to Jandro,” she answered, rubbing one temple as if he was giving her headache. “I won’t sign off on you as the interpreter, but…” she took a deep breath, “I will agree to do the assessment myself if Ms. Olcan agrees to let me take her place.”

18

Kukunniwi Woods

No taking vacations together…

Another rule broken, he thought early Friday morning as they sped across the state to the camp where Qim would meet Jandro for the first time. Under L-heart’s supervision, of course.

He had no choice, Knight reminded himself. It wasn’t like he could send a human in alone to meet with two male wolves. Especially on a full moon night.

But it didn’t help that his wolf was singing, “The Way You Make Me Feel,” at full volume inside his chest as if they were back together again. Damn his mother for passing on her Michael Jackson addiction to the next generation.

And damn L-heart for smelling so good when she climbed into the front seat of his truck. For some reason she’d decided to forego the alchemized perfume she usually wore, and as it turned out, her natural scent was even better. Nothing short of intoxicating. And though she wore a totally respectable bright red vintage a-line dress under a short-sleeved blazer with her curls tied up in a tight bun, his wolf let loose a cartoonish howl every time he glanced over at her sitting beside him.

But apparently being near him wasn’t having the same effect on her. She smelled…cold. With no arousal scent coming off her whatsoever.

She’d smiled and given him a gracious hello when he pulled up to the children’s home that morning in his old gas-burning Ford F-150. She’d even agreed to sit next to him instead of in back with Jandro. But her scent of discomfort was so palpable as they made the drive west that Jandro confronted him right after she politely excused herself during a gas station pit stop.

“You make her angry and you break up?” Jandro signed as soon as she disappeared into the restroom.

Hell. For the first time since he bought it, Knud regretted driving an old-fashioned truck as opposed to one of the slick driverless cars that ruled the roads today. If he had a normal car he wouldn’t be having this conversation right now. But he’d always hated the thought of putting his destiny in the hands of someone else’s technology.

Plus, during his black ops days, he’d once hacked a car so it would drive his target to the grave he’d already dug for him. That had been one of the easiest kills of his career. So yeah, he had almost zero trust in technology after that.

Who are you kidding? his pissy wolf asked. Don’t blame the tech. You don’t trust at all, period. Nothing and no one. No matter how miserable and lonely it makes you.

“It’s a long story,” Knight signed to Jandro, hoping to hell that both him and his wolf would just drop it.

Jandro didn’t. “Not long story. What you do to her?”

“Something bad.” Something he didn’t deserve forgiveness for.

“Say sorry.”

“No.”

“Why not? You and L-heart smell good together.”

“I no like relationships.”

“Why not?”

Fucking kids and all their fucking questions.

“Because I DON’T LIKE them,” he answered, putting extra emphasis on DON’T and LIKE. “Plus she’s human.”

That should have ended the conversation right there but instead Jandro signed back, his own expression equally emphatic. “You and L-heart smell good together.”

Okay... “Must shut up now,” he signed. “She coming back.”

Knight was more than beginning to regret texting Grady and agreeing to escort Jandro to this meeting. But he’d made his uncle promise not to tell anyone in his family he was coming, so as not to compromise the solitary life he’d created for himself.

So at least there was that. Better than nothing, he thought to himself as he pulled the truck up next to the gravel driveway that led to the camp.

“We’ll have to get out here,” he spoke signed to L-heart and Jandro. “The road into the main part of camp isn’t wide enough for my truck.”

Another untruth. There was a back way in with a parking lot. But he’d opted to take them in via the “human entrance.” The one with the red-and-white NO TRESPASSING signs posted on every tree on either side of the lane, so stray campers would think twice before approaching the area.

“You all right in those shoes?” he asked L-heart as she delicately picked her way up the gravel path in yellow heels.

“I’m fine,” she answered over Jandro’s head, her voice falsely bright.

Then because she was obviously looking to change the subject, she pointed to the hand-painted wooden banner sign hanging above them: “Camp Nightwolf. That’s an interesting name. Have you been here before?” she spoke signed. For Jandro’s benefit, or maybe because she didn’t want Knight to mistake this for casual conversation. He didn’t know.

Nevertheless, he answered truthfully, “Yeah, I used to come here every summer for camp from the age of twelve until I left out for the Marines. I liked it.”

No personal details…

He could feel the broken rule lingering between them for a few beats before she raised her hands and spoke signed to Jandro, “He says he’s been here before, and he REALLY liked it.”

He hadn’t said REALLY. But L-heart seemed to like to add emphasis even when there wasn’t any.

God, this shit was awkward bordering on excruciating. But at least he wouldn’t have to stay too long. He’d purposefully arranged this meeting on a full moon night so he’d have a solid reason to get them the hell out of here as soon as possible.

“I not know how camp,” Jandro signed to both of them. “Think Q-wolf no like me?”

“I don’t know how to camp either and most people like me just fine,” L-heart spoke signed back.

“Yes, but you beautiful. I—”

“You are way more beautiful than I am,” L-heart assured him, signing even more emphatically than she spoke.

She’ll make such an excellent mother, his wolf all but whined in his chest.

Not gonna happen, dude, his human answered.

Now it was Knight’s turn to change the subject. “Here we are,” he spoke signed while coming to a stop. “Founder’s Cabin.”

L-heart stopped beside him, her eyes widening nearly as big as Jandro’s. “When you said it was a cabin, I wasn’t expecting…”

“An enormous log mansion? Yeah, my Uncle Grady loves to camp. But Aunt Tu doesn’t like to do without her amenities. I guess this was supposed to be a compromise.”

She nodded. “I understand. I’m not a fan of camping myself.”

She took a minute or so to look around her. The camp was arranged a bit like a traditional kingdom town with a huge kingdom house in the front, and rows of two-room cabins behind it. Traditionally, a kingdom house always served as the first line of defense against outsiders. And though the Kansas kingdom town was on the other side of the small mountain that housed this state’s time gate, this camp could have easily been mistaken for a much swankier version of it.

L-heart made a considering sound. “I’d assumed the Nightwolf on the camp sign meant this camp was underwritten by the Nightwolf Foundation. But I wasn’t aware they funded luxury camps along with educational grants and political lobbies.”

“You know a lot about charitable organizations,” he said, raising an eyebrow.

Her expression didn’t change, but his nose registered a small adrenaline spike. Which meant she felt nervous as she answered, “We occasionally have clients who apply for scholarships to supplement the grants we provide so they can attend colleges in other states. Any good social worker worth his or her salt knows about the Nightwolf Foundation.”

She suddenly glanced down at her retro analog watch, as if just now realizing the hour. “I believe it’s time for our appointment with Mr. Wulfkonig.” Like a person on trial given a sudden reprieve, she spoke signed to Jandro, “Let’s go meet him, shall we?”

However, as she rushed forward to escape any further questions from Knight, one of her ridiculous shoes gave way, and she started to fall.

She never really had a chance of hitting the ground. Because he was there to catch her with his supernatural speed, gathering her up in his arms before she could even register what had almost happened.

“Thank you…very much for catching me,” she said with her usual, but somewhat breathless, poise.

However, her thank you was followed almost immediately by the scent of her arousal.

And that was how he discovered that maybe she wasn’t nearly as unaffected by him as she’d appeared.

Her scent hit him hard, and his stupid, sentimental wolf nearly took over again like it had that first night. Kiss her! Claim her! Make her yours! it begged.

But his human knew better. And he forced himself to set her aside before lashing out with, “Do good social workers worth their salt always wear designer heels to meetings in the woods?”

“I honestly didn’t think it would be this rural,” she admitted in a somewhat sheepish voice.

“I specifically told you we’d meet Grady and Qim at their summer camp in the Kukunniwi Woods,” he shot back.

She stared at him, the scent of her emotions running amok before she seemed to make a decision. Folding her hands tightly in front of her she said, “This meeting is about Jandro. Let’s focus on that, shall we?”

Then she turned so Jandro could see her hands as she spoke signed with a freshly plastered on smile. “Dr. Knight, could you lead the way?”

Yes, he could…but he didn’t.

“Dr. Knight,” she repeated.

He didn’t answer. And he definitely didn’t lead them toward the Founder’s Cabin. Not only because the main door had already opened, but because of what he smelled when it did.

Not just Grady and Qim, but a few more familiar scents…ones he recognized all too well.

“Shit,” he said out loud.

Jandro couldn’t hear him, of course.

But L-heart asked him, “What’s wrong?”

19

This doesn’t make any sense.

I’m seated at a desk. In a cubicle that used to belong to me. It’s maybe an eighth of the size of the office I had when I was the primary social worker for Drummond—a job my mother and grandmother held before me.

But if the live-action picture frame perched next to what appears to be an honest-to-god landline is any indication, I work here. The image flashes a three-second photo of me wiping a tear from my cheek as I watch my big brother Aaron marry his best friend. Next comes a selfie of Grace, Spidey, and me. The sound is turned off, but we appear to be at some club, shouting “COUSINS’ WEEKEND!!!”—this might even be where I met my infamous one-night stand gone really, really wrong. Grace, I notice again, looks completely different from the super serious business student featured in the wedding photo on our apartment wall. She’s wearing a grin as big as Spidey’s and mine, and we both look so happy. Happy and…I search for the word…

Free.

I was free here in Kansas, at my tiny desk in this little office. Free to do what I wanted, when I wanted, with no bodyguards or overprotective parents watching my every move.

I peep over my shoulder at Jared and Santiago who’ve posted themselves at the front and back doors despite the fact that DWCS already has a security guard. I was free then, but not so much now…

Find him, the strange new voice inside me urges. You must find him. You can’t let them get in your way.

I know, I know, I silently answer it. But after a full cycle of the dozens of images in the frame, I don’t see anyone who I don’t already know.

With a somewhat aggrieved sigh, I finally turn to face the computer.

Yes, this place is still running on desktops instead of interconnected touch pads like we have in Drummond. It feels a lot like my first visit to the Smithsonian all over again when I reach out to clasp an object I only vaguely recognize as a mouse, and click it on the file folder icon marked “Layla St. James: Cases.”

Well, at least they used to be mine. All my cases were divvied up between other caseworkers after my accident. But based on the state of affairs since I walked in the door, this office was seriously inundated with service needs. Not only was this virtual folder waiting on my desktop when I arrived, but, forget my bad case of amnesia, more than one social worker has already offered to give me back all my cases as soon as I’m “ready to return to work.”

Catching up won’t be easy. I’ll have to cycle through a couple hundred pages of old PDF files to figure out where I left off. Not to mention I’ll need to figure out the whole cast of characters here at the office and in my case files.

First trimester tiredness is riding me hard, and part of me just wants to throw an upgrade grant at this place and not come back until they have up-to-date systems I’m familiar with. But I can’t do that. That would violate about eight different High Media-rules on how to avoid appearing entitled.

Also, these cases feel like my last option. I’ve already checked my bank and credit balances. Seems I picked up a lot of take-out on my way to Buddy’s, but never had anything delivered there. And though I put in a call to Spidey to confirm everything Grace told me, a tall pretty guy with light-brown skin and cornrows doesn’t mean much in the era of skin color treatments and ever-changing hairstyles.

It’s a long shot for sure. But with the strange voice still whispering inside me, I wake the computer and begin going through my old cases. Hoping I’ll find something, anything, that will provide me with a clue about the father of this baby and how I ended up unconscious on the other side of Kansas.

20

Kukunniwi Woods

Like a memory extracted and brought to life before Knight’s eyes, an older man—thin and refined with bronze skin—stepped across the threshold and out onto the large front porch of Founder’s Cabin. The protector—usually the male in a mated pair—is always the first to present himself. So, it came as no surprise when the dignified older man was followed by his mate, a curvy black woman, nearly as tall as him. She, in turn, was closely followed by a younger man in a suit.

Jandro tugged on his sleeve, pulling his attention away from the people coming out of the house to sign, “That guy look same you but in business suit. They Q-wolf and his parents?”

“No…” Knight signed back in a daze. “That’s my brother…and my parents.”

“Your family?” Jandro asked, his brows raising high with surprise.

“Yes,” he confirmed wearily knocking his hand with the sign.

From the corner of his eyes he could see L-heart watching their conversation carefully.

No meeting each other’s family or friends…

The rule hung in the air between them, even though they were no longer together.

And from the other corner of his eye, Knight could see the family who wasn’t supposed to be here. They’d stopped on the front porch, but they watched him hard. Like an incoming storm on pause.

“Why your family here?” Jandro asked. Because apparently there just wasn’t enough dramatic tension in the air for the kid.

Real answer? Because his Uncle Grady had apparently fucked him. He glanced at L-heart who was now looking from him to his parents with a curious squint. Yeah, the former king of Oklahoma had fucked him royally.

Knight struggled to come up with a fake answer for Jandro, and then decided to distract him instead by pointing out Qim and Grady who had also emerged from the cabin along with Aunt Tu.

But before he could do anything else, the storm unpaused and rushed down the steps toward him. In the form of his mother.

“Alisha, don’t…!” his father called out while his brother Rafes said, “Mom, wait…”

The tall black woman with almond shaped eyes ignored them both. And she kept coming forward like a runaway train until she stood toe-to-toe with her son.

She stared at him, her eyes bright and sharp as knives.

“Mom…” he began.

“Don’t you dare ‘Mom’ me, young man.” She took a step back and gave him the once over before finally saying, “My mother did this to me when I came back from the Viking Era.”

That was all the warning he got before she slapped him so hard, his face cracked to the side…and then she fell into his arms crying.

And just like that, he was Knud again. Not a doctor with a terrible past, but a son whose deliberate absence had broken his mother’s heart.

“Mom…” Knud murmured, holding her tight. “Mom, don’t cry…”

But his voice only seemed to make it worse. His mother wept even harder, her tears smearing all over the front of his shirt. Like she was the baby and he the parent. “Mom…” he tried again.

Knud could feel L-heart’s eyes on him, and it made his stomach curdle. Not that he’d ever bring a human home to meet his family, but if he had, this was definitely NOT how he’d want things to unfold. And though he didn’t want to care, he could imagine exactly what was going through her head considering how their own arrangement had imploded: he must be the kind of asshole who gets off on making women, including his own mother, cry.

But he wasn’t. At all. Fact: he hated seeing his mom cry, especially when he’d caused it. And that was precisely why he rarely made the mistake of letting people get too close anymore.

In the end, he didn’t have to find a way to stop his mom from crying over a son who wasn’t worth her tears. His older triplet, Rafes came over and firmly drew her away.

“Mom, we’re all very upset right now,” Rafes said, glaring at his slightly younger brother as if he hadn’t known exactly why he’d ghosted out. “But perhaps we should let Qim and the boy meet without embarrassing ourselves any further in front of…”

Rafes quirked his head, brows dipping low into a frown. He gave the air a quick sniff, then shot an indecipherable glance at his younger brother before squinting at L-heart. Hard.

He must have smelled his brother all over the human woman he’d brought along to facilitate Jandro’s first meeting with Qim. Yeah, he was definitely Knud again. The cocky bad boy wolf who didn’t look at a girl twice unless he was trying to get into her pants.

Knud waited for one of those judgy looks Rafes excelled at. But instead, their mother abruptly stopped crying, took a good, long look at L-heart, and gasped, “Oh my God! You’re…”

“Yes, I am,” L-heart answered quickly. “But more importantly, I’m Jandro’s social worker.”

Her eyes cut to both Jandro and Knud, her smile turning on like a bright, distracting light. “Who I am beyond that doesn’t matter. Do we understand one another?”

L-heart’s tone was firm, but his mother didn’t answer, just continued to stare open mouthed right along with Rafes. Which made Knud frown. One of the very few things his mother and older triplet had in common was that they were almost never at a loss for words. But right now, they both appeared to be speechless in L-heart’s presence.

“What happening?” Jandro signed over the scene. “Why your family stare at L-heart?”

“Jandro is right, we are being rather rude,” L-heart spoke signed. “I understand some of you are very surprised to see me here, but Jandro doesn’t read lips, so—”

“Tu! Tu! Get over here RIGHT NOW!” his mother suddenly yelled over her shoulder.

On cue, his compact aunt ran over in her pale pink tennis dress looking like an AARP ad for staying fit and fabulous in your fifties.

“What are you doing?” Tu asked her sister. “I thought the plan was for us to wait on the porch, so we don’t overwhelm him—”

She cut short when she saw L-heart, “Oh my God, you’re—”

“Yes, yes…I am,” L-heart said again, cutting her off just as she’d cut off his mother. “It is so lovely to meet you, Ms. Ataneq. As I was telling your sister, I’m here on Jandro’s behalf, so we shouldn’t—”

“But I love your mother!!!” Alisha blurted. “I mean love her. I’m Alisha Ataneq-Nightwolf by the way, Knud’s mother.”

“Nightwolf…” L-heart repeated, cutting her eyes toward the guy she’d known as Dr. Knight. “Your mother is a Nightwolf.”

“Yes, by marriage—did you know your mother is on my husband-approved list of people I’m allowed to hook up with?”

“Mine, too!!!” his aunt exclaimed beside her.

Ok, Knud thought to himself as his wolf cringed inside his chest, so this is what it feels like to be embarrassed as fuck by your family.

For her part, L-heart acted like finding out her mother is on the approved bang list of two middle-aged black women was no big deal. “Why thank you! That’s very kind of you to say,” she answered, gracious as a princess.

“Uh, is your mother Janet Jackson?” Knud finally asked her with a quizzical look.

“No, Ms. Jackson doesn’t have any daughters,” L-heart replied, her perma-smile firmly in place. “And it simply doesn’t matter who my parents are. All that matters is Jandro, right?” she turned and directed this at Tu and Alisha, like a teacher trying to get two unruly students in line.

“Of course,” Alisha agreed—right before asking, “But…do you think I could meet your mother? Because if I ever get the chance to use that free pass…”

“Mom!” both Rafes and Knud said at the same time, neither particularly interested in delving this deeply into their mother’s sexual psyche.

“…it would be ON like TRON!” Tu declared, finishing her older sister’s sentence with a twist of her lips and a frank tilt of her head. “Girl, your mama is FOINE as hell.”

“And really just one of my favorite people ever,” Alisha added, gushing.

“Mine, too!” Aunt Tu shouted. Then she held out an arm to her sister. “I’ve got goosebumps. Do you see these goosebumps?”

“Me too!” Alisha exclaimed, proving that the serious professor wasn’t too far removed from her infamously rowdy billionaire sister.

Tu turned a considering gaze to the ground below her. “Now feels like a good time to faint.”

Knud, being the only doctor present, felt compelled to say, “You can’t choose to faint, Aunt Tu—”

Only to be cut off when Tu dramatically dropped to the ground.

“And now it’s a circus,” Knud muttered, rolling his eyes and throwing up his hands.

“A circus you brought to our front door,” Rafes pointed out. And there it was, the familiar superiority Knud remembered so well.

“Is she okay?” Jandro asked looking down at the woman who might end up becoming his grandmother.

“She’s fine,” Knud assured the kid.

In the midst of the performance, Tu must have sent her husband a telepathic message over their mate bond because in the distance he could see Grady sign to Qim, “Everything okay. She only playing.”

Qim nodded as if that made total sense, but Rafes looked completely done with his family as he said, “Aunt Tu, please get off the ground. And Mother, please calm down. We are embarrassing ourselves.”

“So you’re dating my son,” Alisha said to L-heart as if Rafes hadn’t spoken at all.

Fuck! Just when he thought his mother couldn’t possibly make things worse. “Mom, no…”

“How long? You seem to know each other…” she gave the air a subtle sniff, “…very well.”

“Okay, can you stop talking, Mom?” Knud asked. “Like, right now?”

“Is this why you haven’t been in contact with us for so long?” Alisha asked, turning to regard him with sad eyes. “Because you’re dating her?”

Knud cut off his embarrassed protest, not quite knowing what to say to his mother’s sincere question. “Mom, I…”

But then L-heart came to stand beside him and stuck out her hand. “It is so lovely to finally meet you, Mrs. Nightwolf!”

A beat, then, “Ohmigod! Ohmigod! Ohmigod! I’m squeeing my pants right now!!!” Alisha cried out as she shook L-heart’s hand with both of hers. “I can’t believe you’re dating my son!!!”

“Wait…I thought she was dating some English heart surgeon—Ethan something or other...” Tu called out from the ground, her eyes still closed but her butting in skills on 100.

“Not anymore,” L-heart answered with a tight smile.

“But why Knud? I mean, he’s a very handsome young man and has always seemed to appeal to women who, between us, really should know better. But this truly comes as quite a surprise.”

“Huge surprise,” Tu agreed from her possum position. But then she completely ruined it by sitting up to ask, “Wait. Were you cheating on Ethan with Knud? Or…wait—” she brushed a few stray pine needles from her shoulders, “Was Ethan secretly gay and Knud was your sidepiece?”

Knud could only sent L-heart a look of gratitude, unable to believe she’d willingly stepped on this landmine for him after what happened Friday night.

But she seemed extra intent on avoiding his eyes as she said, “This seems like the perfect time to remind everyone that I’m the person who will be evaluating whether or not Mr. Wulfkonig will be a good fit as an adopted parent for Jandro.” Her gaze darted down to Aunt Tu. “I believe you’re one of the would-be grandparents, Ms. Ataneq. Is that correct?”

That finally killed Tu’s seemingly bottomless well of silliness. She stood, brushed off her skirt, and code-switched to dulcet tones as she spoke signed to Jandro, “Why yes, that is correct. Hello, Jandro! I’m Tu. It’s so nice to meet you.”

Jandro grinned up at the woman who’d just been prone on the ground only a few seconds earlier. “Tu…” He tapped two fingers over his heart, repeating her name sign. “That’s like L-heart. I gave her that name sign!” He proudly showed Tu the sign he’d created for the social worker who’d taken him to his first doctor’s appointment with Knud.

“Oh, isn’t that interesting,” Tu signed back, waggling her brows suggestively at Knud and L-heart. “You know my mate…er, husband,” Tu shot a quick glance at L-heart, “gave me my name sign. I think you two will have a lot in common. Come with me, I’ll introduce you to everyone. They’re really excited to meet you!”

As nervous as he’d been before, Jandro happily let her take him by the hand and guide him toward the house without any protest. He even grinned over his shoulder at Knud like he might have just won the grandma lottery.

Well, Knud thought to himself, Tu whipping out her crazy flag as soon as they met was one way to put the kid at ease.

Meanwhile Alisha continued to stare at L-heart like she was the second coming.

“If you’ll excuse me, I must accompany Jandro to meet his prospective foster father,” L-heart said edging past Knud’s awestruck mother.

Then with one last gracious nod, she followed in Tu and Jandro’s wake.

Which, Knud realized with an inward curse, left him alone with the family he hadn’t seen in five years.

21

I don’t remember any of the cases I oversaw while at DWCS but I feel strangely moved as I read through the notes I made on each file. In Drummond, most of my responsibilities involved filing adoption paperwork for citizens who ranged from rich to super-rich. But here at DWCS, I clearly have a wide variety of cases. A few with happy endings, but many are heartbreaking verging on devastating.

And though I have no memory of the last case file I started, tears well in my eyes as I read about the two children locked inside a hot car, one of whom was found dead when the fire department jimmied the door open.

After reading through that particular case, I have to wonder if Grace had misunderstood my reasons for coming home and crying all weekend. I truly can’t imagine witnessing such a horrific thing and wanting to hook up afterwards with my…ah…sex buddy.

But that’s where I told her I was headed. Which makes me wonder, despite what I’d told Grace, if maybe he was more than a sex outlet. Yet another puzzle piece that needs to be figured out…

I circle two fingers around my temple, frustrated to my very core. Why does it seem like the more I dig, the more complicated the mystery gets? I’ve found exactly zero answers in nearly eight hours of pouring over documents and files—in fact, I have more questions now than I did when I sat down at my desk.

Strangely, those depressing thoughts trigger a much-needed memory.

Reframe negative emotions, my High Media team once advised. Never let the media see you frustrated or down.

Okay, reframing, reframing….

I know I didn’t do anything that week except come to work and pick up takeout meals from the same place on the walk home. I have receipts and arrival logs from the bots outside my doors. That means whatever made me decide to go to Kansas must be in these files. I’m just not seeing it yet.

I stand up to address my cubicle neighbor over the partition that separates our work space. “Excuse me, Britney, may I have a moment of your time?”

“Of course!” Britney says, standing up so quickly from her chair, she almost knocks it over.

I’m used to this response. In fact, I can barely remember a time when people didn’t act like this around me. But still I lower my eyes and give her a humble, “Thank you,” before saying, “Was I working on another case before I went on medical leave? One that might not have been included in the zipperfile I was given.”

“They’re actually called zipfiles, Layla” she gently corrects me before giving a little gasp. “Oh no! You told me you preferred to be called by your first name but—is that still alright?”

“Of course it is,” I answer. “And may I still call you Britney?”

The other woman giggles like I’ve made the funniest joke in the world. “I love your humor! No wonder Qim Wulfkonig was so charmed by you.”

“Qim Wulfkonig…” I repeat, because of course I’ve heard of him. You don’t give as much money away as he does before the women in my social circle hear about him—usually with pictures attached. But though my PR team started pitching him as possible dating material pretty much from the moment he turned twenty-one, we’ve never met. The deaf billionaire tends to keep to himself, and I’ve never gone more than a month or two between long-term boyfriends. So the timing was always off for a potential first meet and greet.

But apparently, I’d met him during my lost months. Could he be the father of my baby? A do-gooder like him would have been totally on brand…

“You don’t remember him?” Britney says, her face falling.

“I’m afraid not.”

“Oh my God, that’s horrible! He’s so cute! And everybody was so impressed when you convinced him to adopt that deaf street kid…”

“Hold on. I did what?” I say, because of all the things that don’t sound like me—that really doesn’t sound like me.

At my old job in Drummond, I’d seen too many well-meaning but inexperienced people trying to adopt poor kids like purses. Daddy Warbucks who thought every orphan with a tragic backstory would be magically healed by the power of money and a fleet of nannies. I’d learn the hard way that sticking as close as possible to the same income bracket was always for the best when it came to foster-to-adopts. Even if this child was deaf, there’s no way I’d ever contact a billionaire out of the blue to foster him. Especially one that lives in another state where I couldn’t easily check on him.

“Well, yes… I mean maybe,” Britney answers carefully. “You did the original assessment, and I just assumed—”

“I did the assessment?” I ask, cutting her off. “If that’s the case, why isn’t it here with the rest of my files?”

Britney frowned. “I don’t know. I mean, it should be…”

But it wasn’t. We couldn’t find a case file for the boy I’d supposedly helped anywhere in the system. And though I left a voice and email message with a Ms. Olcan at the Wichita Children’s Home, she still hadn’t gotten back in touch with me by the end of the day.

I supposed I’d have to walk over and visit her in person tomorrow. Meanwhile, all I had to go on was what Britney and the other social workers cobbled together for me. The boy’s name was Alejandro “Jandro” Hernandez…mother dead from meth overdose. Deaf. Probably why I had been assigned the case—I spoke fluent ASL, along with Welsh, Gaelic, Cantonese, and Mongolian (our family PR team thought it would be cute for me to major in Endangered Languages).

And I knew Qim was aggressively pro-ASL, going so far as to donate millions toward keeping the language alive during an increasingly bioware age. But it’s not like young, deaf billionaires looking to adopt nine-year-old orphans were a dime a dozen.

Another mystery, but this time it feels like I’m getting closer. At the end of the work day, I lean back in my chair with all the puzzle pieces I’ve gathered swirling around my head. Then I pick up my new phone and dial Grace’s bioware.

“Hey cuz, you headed home?” she asks after accepting my call straight into her neural network.

“Yes,” I answer. “But before I leave, I want to ask a favor of you. I need you to look into someone for me without alerting your father…”

“Of course,” she answers. “Who?”

“Qim Wulfkonig.”

“The deaf billio—?”

“Yes, him,” I answer, cutting her off in my haste.

“Are you going to sue him because the Device crapped out on you?”

I let out a wry chuckle, seeing why she’d think that, since the Device is just one of several revolutionary medical patents owned by the Wulfkonigs. But…“No, actually, I’d like to find out if he has any properties or business holdings in Kansas.”

I receive a text from Grace just before Jared and Santiago pull into the underground garage beneath our apartment building. And triumphant fireworks go off in my head when I see the Kansas address on the screen with a note from Grace: “Address only a few miles from where you were found in the Kukunniwi Woods.”

22

Kukunniwi Woods

Proving he had a hell of a lot more reserve than his mate, Knud’s father, Rafe Sr waited until Jandro, Tu, Grady, Qim, and L-heart went into the Founder’s Cabin before joining the group.

“Hello, Knud,” Rafe Sr. said, studying him with a disappointed look Knud remembered well from his teenage years.

And hey, wouldn’t you know it, it still made him feel guilty as hell! Knud had to put effort into not shifting from foot to foot like a shame-faced teenager who’d just been brought home by the police after managing to get into yet another bar fight at his parents’ swanky ski resort.

“Hey, Dad,” Knud answered, reminding himself he’d done nothing wrong. Had, in fact, done what was best for all of them.

Another disappointed flicker, but eventually his father offered him a stiff hand. Knud took it, and they shook solemnly. The total opposite of how his mom had handled things.

But his older triplet, Rafes, wasn’t nearly as reserved. “Is that seriously all you’re going to say, Dad? ‘Hello?’ We haven’t heard from him in the last five years…and you act like it’s no big deal when we finally see him again?”

Before either of their parents could respond, Rafes rounded on Knud. “You have some nerve coming back here without telling your family—you know, the people who raised you and put up with your bullshit for years?—that you were meeting with Uncle Grady and Qim,” he said in the angry, judgmental tone Knud remembered better than well. “What the hell were you thinking swearing Uncle Grady and Qim to secrecy AND bringing a human here on a full moon nigh—!?”

“Are you going to marry her?” Alisha demanded, neatly cutting her indignant oldest son off just as he was getting started. “Because I really, really need you to marry her.”

“Mom, are you kidding me with this?!” Rafes asked, turning on her with an incredulous look. “You were just crying inconsolably a few minutes ago!”

“If you marry that woman I will forgive everything, no questions asked,” Alisha continued as if Rafes hadn’t said a word. “The last five years, all the fighting, the underage drinking, those girls you insisted on sneaking into our home…everything.”

“I’m pretty sure she means that,” Rafe Sr. said to Knud with a knowing half-grin. “Might be your only way back in, son.”

“I can’t believe this—” Rafes cut himself off with a curse. And Knud smirked because unlike their father, his brother Rafesson still hadn’t acclimated to the fact that the Ataneq sisters were, as Aunt Tu put it, “straight representing for Alaska cray.”

“He can’t marry her, Mom,” Rafes said, visibly forcing himself to keep his voice level. “She’s a human. A very famous human.”

“Okay, can someone please tell me why she’s so famous?” Knud asked, feeling pretty sure this was important information he needed to have for this conversation.

Alisha blinked at him, then shook her head. “He’s kidding,” she assured her husband and oldest son, both of whom were staring at Knud like he might be the stupidest man in the world. “He has to be kidding.”

“He’s not, Mom,” Rafes bit out. “Remember, we all saw his report card growing up.”

“Oh, not all intellect is accurately measured by grades and tests and report cards. Plus, who knows what he might have achieved if he’d bothered to put in some real effort,” Alisha insisted, defending Knud like she always did and always had to his older triplet.

“Come on, Mom. This is Knud we’re talking about here. He’s obviously only interested in what’s between that human’s legs.”

“Hey, man! Don’t try to act like you know me,” Knud countered. Yeah, Rafes might have had a valid point a few months earlier. But not now…and not when it came to L-heart. He really cared about this particular human. To the point that his wolf had been spinning since she walked out his door last Friday. “You don’t know me now.”

“You’re right, Knud. We don’t know what kind of changes you’ve undergone in the last five years,” Alisha agreed, before glaring at Rafes. “People change—as I discovered when my oldest son made it his life’s mission to block wolves from using the time gates. Never mind that he spent the first four years of his life—his formative years—in Viking Era Norway. And it’s because of his time with the Vikings that he began to develop resilience and the leadership skills necessary to become the President of the North American wolves. Imagine what he would have missed out on if I’d never had access to the time gates in the first place!”

“Not this again,” Rafes raised his eyes to the sky. “I’m using the black boxes to lock down the time gates for the good of our race! And you act as if our time with the Vikings was some sort of extended four-year vacation when what really happened is you abused the time gate system with devastating repercussions—”

Rafes suddenly stopped, probably because he knew from experience how conversations with academics rapidly wormholed into other topics if you didn’t stay vigilant. Knud himself could recall several times when what should have been a short conversation—like what to buy Dad for his birthday—turned into him listening to a long-winded diatribe about “the relatively new religion” of consumerism.

Rafes reset and said, “People don’t change that much, Mom.”

“Given your relatively young age, I respectfully disagree. And in any case, your brother and the human woman are most definitely dating! I can smell her scent all over him.”

Rafes sighed in obvious frustration. “Pardon my language—which by the way, I learned from you—but fucking a human and dating a human aren’t nearly the same thing.”

A beat of silence passed. Then Alisha turned pleading eyes to Knud and said, “Your brother is right. Look sweetie, I know you value your sexual freedom but you have got to marry this one. Please, do it for me! We’ll call it a ‘five-years worth of missed Mother’s Days’ make-up gift.”

“Mom! He doesn’t even know who she is,” Rafes pointed out, sounding more like the parent in this conversation than his mother. “And what part of ‘she’s human’ are you not understanding?”

“I don’t care about any of that,” Alisha said. “Nago has a child on the way with his Mississippi Queen, and now you’ve got Myrna.”

“Wait, wait…time out,” Knud glanced from Rafes to his mom with his own incredulous look. “Nago already sealed the deal with that Mississippi she-wolf? And Myrna, Hot Valkyrie Babysitter, is your fated mate? Like she came through a time gate, the very things you are trying to shut down, for you?”

“Don’t call her that,” Rafes bit out. As their mother eagerly jumped in with, “Knud! You should have been there. I was protesting the black box installation at the North Dakota gate when there was a flash and out popped Myrna! It was glorious! And it obviously means an end to Rafes’ black box project.”

Knud could tell his brother was on the verge of completely losing his shit, as Rafes answered, “It obviously means nothing of the sort, Mom. And Myrna is beside the point!”

“Is she?” Knud asked his older triplet . “Because unless I’m getting this wrong, you just got a hot Viking princess delivered to you through the very time gate system you’ve been trying to shut down for years, but here you are throwing shade on my relationship.”

“What relationship?!?!” Rafes yelled back. “You don’t even know her name!”

“Boys…!” their father said as if they were still teenagers as opposed to a pediatric surgeon and the President of the North American wolves.

“No, Dad. Mom’s trying to act like Knud’s changed…but look at him! He hasn’t learned anything. He’s still a total fuck-up. How can you not see that?”

“A total fuck-up,” Knud repeated, his voice low and dangerous. “You didn’t seem to think I was a fuck up when I was running the black ops that earned you your presidency.”

“You’re right,” Rafes spat back, his face little more than a snarl. “You were useful to me for about five whole seconds and then you went and fucked that up, too!”

Knud could have calmly explained that by leaving black ops he’d actually unfucked his life. Made something of himself. That despite the bad grades he’d earned in school, he’d managed to become a doctor. A surgeon, in fact. As opposed to his brother’s personal attack dog.

He could have said all of that.

But he didn’t.

Because the anger showed up, red, all-consuming, vicious and dumb. And before reason even had a chance to open its mouth, Knud shot out a hand and grabbed his brother by the throat.

23

“What are you doing? Shimmer? Shimmer! What are you doing?”

Jared sounds alarmed, even more so than when we walked down the rather ominous gravel path with NO TRESPASSING signs tacked to every other tree. If I were to warrant a guess, I’d say he’s less than comfortable with the fact that I’m currently picking the lock on the front door of Qim’s Wulfkonig’s home in the Kukunniwi Woods.

His home, as it turns out despite the plaque on the door declaring it the “Founder’s Cabin,” is more a ski chalet-level mansion with several summer camp-style cabins in back. Definitely not the little country cottage I’d been imagining when Grace found the address but no pictures or Google Earth-images of Wulfkonig’s Kansas property.

At least the lock on the door is decidedly old fashioned and therefore easy to pick. Which means one thing is going my way…

Five minutes after asking Santiago for one of the bobby pins from his samurai knot, I’m inside—with a silent thank you to my cousin Pavel for teaching me the art of lock picking at his place in Indiana that one summer.

I find exactly what I expect after breaking into a luxury cabin: a massive front room that extends all the way to the rear of the house, and large windows framing a stunning view of a small mountain beyond. There’s wood everywhere. The floors, the walls, the ceilings, and much of the furniture. But the wood is from a variety of trees—pine, oak, cherry, birch—and the different shades along with the bold leather furniture and a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace keep the place from feeling like the inside of a giant wooden box.

Santiago immediately fans out to search the rest of the house while Jared stands guard beside me in the middle of the room.

He gives the room a long look and whistles. “Nice place. Wonder what type of wood this is?”

“Mostly pine, and a few others,” I answer automatically.

“How can you tell?” he asks, throwing me a curious frown. No doubt I’m one of the last persons he’d expect to be able to identify wood on sight. And now that I think of it, he’s right. Nevertheless…

“You can’t smell it?”

He frowns, inhaling deeply through his nose. “Nope. Just smells like a closed-up cabin to me.”

My nose isn’t having nearly the same vague experience. I can smell everything. In fact, my nose easily picks out a huge number of scents as if they’ve been neatly arranged. Leather, pinewood, stone, dust, and something dog-like—but not quite. This scent is sharper—rich and woodsy—and not nearly as offensive as that of wet dog. In fact, it smells…

I inhale again. Right. It smells right.

Kindred, the strange new voice whispers inside of me.

The scent is also stale. Which means the cabin is empty. I know this even before Santiago returns to give the all-clear. And I get the sense I’ve arrived too late for…something. But I don’t know what that something is.

“This place kicking up your allergies, too?” Jared asks me with a sympathetic look.

That’s when I realize how all my sniffing must sound to the others. “Yes,” I answer even though I know that’s not the problem. “Forgive me for not simply making use of a tissue.” It’s easier to blame non-existent allergies than to admit I’m investigating the place with my nose. I can only imagine how fast the two men would bundle me into the car for a one-way trip straight back to Texas if I start telling them about my new and improved sense of smell.

“So…can I ask why we came here?” Jared asks with another curious frown. He’s obviously fishing for answers to the follow-up questions Dad will surely ask him when we get back.

And that reminds me of the constant supervision I’m under. Which makes me grind my teeth behind the gentle perma-smile I was trained to keep on my face at all times as the new voice whispers, Cage…cage…inside of me.

It’s not Jared’s fault he’s been hired to keep an eye on me like I’m a wayward child, I remind the voice. And instead of showing my annoyance I say, “We’re near the Oklahoma state border, right?”

Jared’s eyes go up in a way that lets me know he’s consulting his bioware. “Yes, that’s right. Just above the panhandle. Why?”

With one last glance around the empty room I say, “Let’s get some barbecue for lunch.”

24

Kukunniwi Woods

So this was how Cain must have felt.

Because inside the red haze, Knud wasn’t the prodigal son. Not the bad guy turned good that his mother wanted him to be. There would be no Saul-to-Paul happy ending conversion here.

Just the red anger. Just him crushing his brother’s windpipe until he finally stopped talking.

The wolf pawed at Knud. Trying to get him to shift, to come back to reason.

But civilian nearby. First rule of Wolf Force…don’t shift. Don’t shift.

Civilian nearby. Don’t shift. Civilian…civilian…L-heart….L-heart was nearby.

The red wavered.

And an image floated into his mind: L-heart with her fists raised, fully prepared to fight him to the bitter end, but still calling out to him, hoping to get through.

And suddenly the world was back.

His father held on to his arm, while his mom bent over to see to Rafes. Who was now in a besuited heap on the ground.

It didn’t take long for Knud to put two and two together. His father had both hands around his arm, because he’d been trying to pull him off the brother he’d had in a literal death grip. But then restraining Knud no longer became necessary because Knud abruptly dropped Rafes. As if he’d taught his brother a lesson and didn’t need to pursue things any further.

“Are you all right?” their mother asked Rafes who was still on the ground.

“I’m fine,” Rafes insisted, knocking away her hands and slowly pushing himself to a stand.

He rolled his neck, as if to expel the memory of Knud’s crushing hand around it. Then he said to Knud, “You. Need. To. Leave. Now.”

“Rafes…” Alisha started.

“Stop talking,” Rafes said to their mother. “Everyone stop talking.”

But Knud shook his head. “No, Mom, he’s right. I need to leave. This is why I stayed away. This is why I can’t…be with her like that. I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt her. But she’s fragile and I…I destroy everything I touch. And Rafes, man, I’m…”

He looked straight at Rafes, opening his mouth to apologize to his brother for the first time in quite possibly ever. But instead of letting him speak, Rafes shook his head and said, “No, don’t say another word. Just stop talking. Right now.”

And that’s when he smelled her.

“You think I’m fragile?”

Knud turned and found L-heart standing behind him, the smile she’d been wearing all morning for Jandro’s sake, completely gone. “You pushed me away because you think I’m fragile?”

“L-heart…” he started.

“Are you aware I came out here to pull you off your brother?” she asked. “I can think of at least five different ways to neutralize you, and that’s just off the top of my head without consulting my training tapes. You cannot physically hurt me.”

But she didn’t get it. “I can hurt you. What happened last Friday…”

“What happened last Friday hurt me because you pushed me away. Because you refused to talk with me, be honest with me, or treat me like I was more than some one-night-stand you let stick around too long…”

“You don’t understand. I’ve got a mood disorder. Not talking about it, not feeling too much or getting too close is the only way to manage it.”

L-heart just stared at him, shaking her head.

But his mom came over and place a hand on his arm. “Oh, Knud. Is that really what you think? That not allowing yourself to feel…closing yourself off from everyone is the only way to manage your disorder?”

“Mom, it’s not something I think—it’s something I know. You guys were the most loving parents I could ask for and I still turned out all fucked up.”

“No, no,” his mom insisted. “That’s not true.”

“It is true,” he insisted right back. Then he returned his gaze to L-heart. “And I’m sorry. I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted things to stop the way they did. But I didn’t know how else to end it.”

“Why did you have to end it at all?” she demanded as if he was the biggest idiot in the universe. “And just when things were getting really good?”

Had she not heard a word he’d said? “Why? Because I’ve got issues. Serious issues.”

She stared at him for a beat, then said, “I know you have issues, Knud. I’ve got them, too.”

He shook his head. “Mine are obviously a shit-ton bigger than yours.”

She laughed. Actually laughed like he, not she, was the naïve one in their duo. “Oh, no they’re not.”

“Try never being able to have a genuine response to anything or anyone because you’re afraid it will end up on social media and reflect badly on your family’s brand. Try having absolutely no private life or never being able to get a good sense of whether people like you for you, or just because of who your mom is.”

She made a dismissive sound. “You’re upset because your mom is trying to get you to propose to me. But try finding out the first boyfriend you thought you might be okay with marrying someday, was vetted and literally interviewed by your father.”

Knud glanced to the side before saying, “Actually that’s pretty common in our community…” But then a new question occurred to him. “Wait, how did you know my mom was trying to get me to marry you?”

“Because all black moms try to get their sons to marry me. That’s just what they do. Even though I talk too much and interrupt and am kind of a know-it-all and a tad eccentric.”

“A tad…” Knud repeated.

Suddenly her face fell, as if he’d hit her, and actually landed the punch. “See, that’s it…” she said with a sad laugh. “That right there is why I liked you. You kept it real with me from the start. You called me out. And looked at me like I was crazy.”

“No one’s ever looked at you like you were crazy?” he said, tone incredulous.

“No,” she answered with a totally straight expression. “At least not directly to my face.”

“Okay, who are you that—?” he began.

She huffed. “Knud, shut up. Just let me talk, okay?”

He did. The use of his real name and her unprecedented rudeness startling him into silence.

She sighed. “You were right about me, you know. I’m always thinking, always watching myself. I’ve spent so much of my life trying to figure out exactly how I should act and speak that I never learned how to just be myself. I don’t even have a concept of self. Only brand. It’s like before you, my whole life had been Photoshopped and I couldn’t even tell what was real.”

Clamping his lips, she looked up at him, all sort of emotions flickering across her face like animals finally off their leashes. “But with you…I could just be. I didn’t have to make a new decision every single second about my language and demeanor with you. The truth is…”

Again her face worked, as if her words had to climb over several obstacles to get past her High Media training. But in the end, they collapsed out of her mouth like a relieved confession. “The truth is, you’ve taught me more about myself in five months than I’d learned from my PR team in 18 years of living a brand. But I’m tired of playing games with you. I’m tired of trying to act as if I’m indifferent to you, or that my heart has gone completely unaffected by our time together. And I know, feelings make you uncomfortable, as do intimate relationships. I know that, and I’m sorry for putting you in this position, but I feel compelled to tell you… I’ve fallen in love with you.”

She nodded to herself, as if confirming the words in her heart, as she said it again, “Yes, I love you very much.”

It took him a moment before he was able to speak over the wolf howling inside his chest. “No…no, L-heart… you can’t love me,” he answered, voice guttural and quiet. “You just found out my real name…and I don’t even know yours!”

“It’s Layla,” she answered, refusing to drop her gaze from his. “My name is Layla, and you were wrong to say I’m fragile. Because I’m stronger than you. Strong enough to finally tell you how I really feel, and you know what…”

She nodded in Alisha’s direction, “if your black mom wants us to marry, then yes, I’ll marry you. Because I love you. Also, because my father’s lawyers excel at prenup agreements—honestly, I could marry a kangaroo and come out okay on the other side. But mostly because I love you. Truly love you. Which is why…”

A trio of gasps went up behind him when L-heart—Layla—carefully sank down to both knees.

No, no, was all Knud could think as his wolf howled like a crazed animal inside his chest. But his human didn’t… couldn’t comprehend what was happening as she said, “Knud Nightwolf, now that I know your name, I would like to ask for your hand in marriage. Not because of who you are or who I am, but because I love you. Like, big time love you—sorry, I’m very emotional right now and I’m finding it hard to construct a poetic enough sentence to express my deep affection for you.”

“This isn’t happening,” Rafes said behind Knud.

Knud was just as stunned. “You really want to marry me? Dr. Thug? The guy that loses his shit when you jump out of a closet?”

“Yes, I really do. So, what’s your answer?”

“Yes, his answer is YES!” a voice squealed in the distance. He looked up to see Tu on the porch of Founder’s Cabin along with Jandro, Grady, and Qim.

At the same time Rafes said, “No…no…you cannot marry her.”

But Knud’s eyes returned to the woman on her knees. “You should know,” he said carefully. “We wouldn’t be able to have kids. I’m…not up for that.”

“And you should know we can talk about that and figure it out. Either way, it will be all right.”

“You should also know that hu—usual medications don’t work on my mood disorder. So I can’t guarantee I won’t ever go crazy on you again.”

“And you should know my body is literally a lethal weapon. Temporarily blinding you is one of the nicer moves in my wheelhouse. If I wanted to, I could kill with one blow. So, there are some inherit dangers we’ll both have to deal with—also, you have my solemn guarantee that I will never jump out of a closet at you again.”

“I’ve also got to tell you—”

“Knud, shut up, please. My knees are starting to hurt, and I’m tired of running away from this. I’m tired of running from the things that scare me. And I hope I’m right about you. I hope you’re not a total coward. I hope you’re brave enough to be crazy about me, too. Either way, no more stalling. Just tell me: is your answer to my question yes or no?”

He shook his head at her, because seriously, how was this even happening? “My answer isn’t yes,” he said, his voice low and rough.

His mother gasped a sad, “Knud! Please…”

While he could hear Rafes say, “Thank you for finally seeing reason.”

No falling in love. Ever…

Knud shook his head, remembering the rule that had most tripped him up. Then he stepped forward, and pulled Layla to her feet. “My answer isn’t yes because it’s hell yeah. Hell yeah, I’ll marry you, Layla. And even though I seriously can’t figure out what I did to make somebody as fucking amazing as you love me and accept me as I am, I’m going to say hell yeah, because Hot Social Worker…”

She gazed up at him, her face all gooey and soft. “Yes, Buddy?”

He took her face in his hands. “I fucking love you, too.”

Just like that, her smile came back. And it was nothing less than the sun after a long, grey winter…coming through extra bright and blasting all the shadows away.

He’d think about that smile a lot in the weeks to come. Regretfully. Mournfully. He’d remember the way his wolf wagged inside his chest. So happy, so caught up in her optimism, so sure if she loved him and he loved her, everything would be okay.

Stupid wolf.

Stupid, stupid wolf.

25

“Please don’t be angry with me about this,” I say to Jared and Santiago as I drive my Tesla right past the barbecue place I claimed I wanted to go to for lunch. I promised them ribs but I’m only serving up intrigue as we speed toward my second non-vetted address of the day.

My request for leniency might have come too late, however. Though I can’t see the expressions behind their polarized sunglasses, the set of their jaws says it all: they aren’t happy with me. Again.

“I would have let you wait for me at the restaurant,” I point out, “But there’s no way you would have allowed me to come here alone.”

“Where is here, Shimmer?” Jared demands from the passenger seat. “We need an address.”

I make a considering sound. “Hmmm. See…I would love to grant that request, and I promise I will grant it…after I’ve paid my foster client a visit.”

“Why not now?” Jared asks, barely able to keep his tone calm and respectful.

“Unlike Kansas, Oklahoma is a drone state,” I answer, “and I would hate for my father to drop in on this particular foster family when all I’m doing is following a hunch.”

“A hunch about what?” Santiago pipes up from the back seat.

That’s a good question. But I can only imagine how quickly my father would drone over here if I provided any further details.

“I’ll tell you if it turns out to be more than a hunch,” I answer diplomatically. “How’s that for a compromise?”

Apparently, it’s not much. Neither guard answers as we drive past a standing wooden sign that has WELCOME TO WOLF HAVEN! etched in big gold letters across its front.

26

Kukunniwi Woods

“No, no, I won’t allow this! I absolutely will not allow you to marry that human!”

Rafes started in on me as soon as the others followed the rest of the family into the Founder’s Cabin, and we were alone. Layla had to finish up the assessment process with Qim. And their semi-retired parents had to pack, having already decided to visit Knud and Layla in Kansas when all was said and done.

Layla, my fiancée, Knud thought with a grin. And this time he couldn’t tell if it was his human or his wolf wagging its tail.

For the first time in his life, he’d been completely honest with a woman and she’d acted like it was nothing. Like whatever problems either of them brought to the relationship could and would be overcome with love and understanding. And the way the red anger had responded to her…. dissolving with just a thought toward her well-being. No, human drugs did not work on the red anger—but Layla? She did. The morning wasn’t nearly over yet, but it felt like a brand new day.

“Did you hear what I just said?” Rafes asked, barging in on Knud’s happy daze. “I won’t allow it.”

This again. “Listen, man, I don’t work for you anymore. You can’t tell me what to do.”

Rafes squinted and pointed a finger at him, “No, you listen to me, Knud. Whatever silly dreams Mom has for you and this woman, you can get them out of your head. Because it will not happen. It will never happen. And if you try to force it to happen, I will bring all my presidential powers to bear and make sure it doesn’t.”

Knud crooked his head at his brother, eyes flaring because, “Damn, Rafes. Black boxes and now this. Do you EVER use your presidential powers for anything besides fucking with people’s love lives?”

Rafes’ body went rigid. “That is an unfair accusation. I understand why Mom and the rest of the family think I’ve turned into the anti-Christ. But you know better, Knud. You know the enemy we’re up against.”

Yeah, he knew. And spent about a nanosecond feeling shitty about the blanket accusation. But only a nanosecond because, “This isn’t a mission you’re ordering me to scrap. And you’re not my president and commander. Not when it comes to this. Not when it comes to her. Because although I didn’t mean to have this happen…the truth is I’ve fallen in love with her.”

“Really. You’re in love with her?” Rafes repeated, his voice sugary sweet and mocking, before he yelled, “Get over it! She’s a human, and you’ve literally killed people to keep our secrets from humans. By the way, I notice you didn’t bring up your hitman past when you two were playing out that ridiculous marriage propo—”

He abruptly stopped talking mid-rant.

And Knud just as abruptly stopped listening.

Because a smell hit the air like an atomic bomb, a crude mix of sex pheromones, luteinizing hormone, and arousal blasting away their words. The scent was vulgar and nasty. Yet…very familiar.

Layla.

It was Layla.

A human…his human was in heat.

Knud’s first response was guilt, thinking it was somehow his fault. But no…it couldn’t be. He’d never shifted in the same vicinity.

But then what the hell? How was this even happening?

Spontaneous heat…

The words floated into his mind. A memory of his mother’s many fireside stories during their years in the Viking Age suddenly unlocked. And he remembered that according to the stories, not all human conversions into werewolves were due to a wolf scratching or biting a human on a full moon night. There had been a few—not many—but a few reported cases of spontaneous heat between humans and shifters.

And according to both his mother’s Inuit people and his father’s Native tribe, these human women who went into sudden heat were in fact fated mates who for whatever reason had been born without the ability to shift.

Love. Rafes had mocked him for loving her. Had told him to just get over her. But only now did Knud understand how far beyond love it went.

Layla was his fated mate. His fated mate! Which explained everything. His continued desire for her after a lifetime of losing interest as soon as the sex was cold. His wolf’s absolute conviction to be with her from day one.

And now she’d gone into spontaneous heat. Knud turned toward the cabin.

“No! Knud, No!” a voice said behind him, in the same tone Knud had heard humans use to say, “bad dog!”

His brother tackled him from behind, pinning him to the ground with his arm behind his back as they’d been trained to do with unarmed hostiles in Wolf Force.

Breathing heavily on top of him, Rafes said, “I can’t let you do this!”

“She’s my mate. And she’s in heat!” Knud yelled.

“She’s a human you’ve been fucking,” Rafes shot back. “And humans can be sedated out of heat. Grady and Tu are past heating age. They’ll handle getting her under control.”

But Knud’s brain landed on one name. Qim. Qim, the unmated billionaire, was in the same house, the same room as his mate. As HIS FATED MATE.

Argument over. Knud shifted to get out of his brother’s rear wrist lock, and then batted Rafes away with a large black paw like he was a pesky bug.

First rule of Wolf Force?

Fuck the first rule of Wolf Force. His fated mate was in heat.

His mate. His mate. His mate—not Qim’s.

Luckily, he was Viking trained. Unlike his mother and father, Knud’s human stayed in control when he shifted. So he easily shifted back to human with his loose joggers and t-shirt intact.

Back to human, but little more than an animal.

His wolf howled as he rushed toward the stairs to keep Qim from mating with Layla—

Knud stopped short when Qim, the same male he’d been so afraid of jumping his fated mate, walked out calmly guiding Jandro down the steps as if Layla’s heat smell wasn’t blaring like a tornado siren in the air. Both Qim’s parents and Knud’s followed close behind.

But how was that possible? Unlike Rafes, Qim didn’t already have a mate so Layla’s heat smell should have been driving his wolf crazy with lust.

That’s when a big “oooohhhh” hit Knud. And he suddenly understood why Grady had immediately volunteered his son to foster Jandro.

As if to confirm his suspicion, his mother sing-songed off his “what-the-what?” expression, “If you’d been in touch during the last five years, you’d have been there the Christmas Qim came out.”

But then the time for surprise reveals was over. Another wave of heat hit the air and Knud’s mind was once again consumed by savage thoughts.

His mate. In need. Right now. That was all that mattered. All he could focus on.

He found her behind the couch in the study, and his psyche nearly gave out when he saw the state of her. Naked and panting on her hands and knees. Four fingers shoved all the way in her own sex as she tried to get herself off with hot desperate tears in her eyes. Because she wasn’t a wolf and had no idea what was happening to her or how much worse trying to masturbate made the heat thrall.

“Baby,” he said when he saw her.

She looked up at him, her face streaming with tears. “Something’s wrong with me!” she gasped. “Something’s wrong. I feel like I’m dying. Like I’ll die if you don’t—”

She cut off when another heat wave racked her, seizing up her entire body with lust. “I know…I said I wasn’t…fragile,” she whimpered between clenched teeth, “But this hurts. It hurts so bad...”

That’s all it took for him to place himself behind her, plunge his pants and underwear down, and push into her unbelievably wet opening with a roughness that had nothing to do with level ten. Or level anything.

Always use protection…

The very last rule floated away like so much smoke as he caged his body over hers and began thrusting in and out. No wrapper. Just his bare cock making a declaration of the highest order. A claiming of not just body, but mind and soul. The opposite of no strings attached. She was his now.

“Oh fuck, Knud. Oh fuck!” she gasped out beneath him. All the pretty language she insisted on when he took her rough disappeared. And her tears turned to ones of relief as she begged, “Don’t stop! Don’t stop!” Her pussy clenching hard around his cock.

“I won’t,” he promised. “Not until I put a baby inside you. My baby inside you. Do you understand me? What’s happening here? This ain’t fun and games anymore because I’m fucking you until you’re pregnant. Until you’re mine in every way possible.”

“Yes, yes, please!” she agreed. So obviously out of her mind and beyond understanding what she was agreeing to.

But Knud couldn’t care that the woman beneath him didn’t understand that she’d agreed to become his mate, to let him seed her and turn her into what he was.

The wolf was in charge now. All he cared about was breeding her. All he wanted was to put his baby in her. All he ever wanted, he realized as he rocked his hips into her, was to make her his—

His thoughts cut off with a wounded yell when he released into her, his cock kicking as hot cum streamed out of him so hard it lit up his entire spine with pleasure.

This time it was Knud who took Layla over the edge with him. She cried out, her body convulsing as her pussy milked his dick for more. So perfect…so good. Knud understood in that moment why wolves mated for life. Why they never wanted anyone else after feeling this kind of pleasure inside a she-wolf meant to be theirs.

And then he knotted inside her.

He knew what was going on. He’d grown up a prince in Wolf Springs, the very well-off Colorado kingdom town. And unlike some states, his feminist mother had insisted on a complete A to Z sex ed for both girls and boys, starting at age twelve.

So Knud knew the situation when he suddenly swelled at the base of his cock while still inside her.

But Layla murmured, “What is that…what is…?” her voice frightened in a way he’d never heard.

“It’s alright, baby,” he assured her, “But it’s going to—”

Her scream interrupted him. Not one of pain, but of extreme pleasure. The stimulation caused by the knotting had a special place in both the official and whispered canons. Nature’s way of locking a male and female together so the male wolf wouldn’t pull out until his cock was well and truly emptied. The swelling reportedly lit up several erogenous zones within a she-wolf’s vagina causing her to have multiple orgasms in the aftermath of the first.

Which was all well and good for a she-wolf. But for a human who had no idea what was happening, it could very well be something else altogether. “Oh God…oh God…!” she screamed, her fingernails scraping the floor as she tried to both bear down on and get away from his knot.

She didn’t understand, he thought with no small amount of sympathy. She didn’t know she couldn’t escape what was happening. That what was causing the multiple orgasms had also physically connected him to her so it would be impossible for them to separate until he unknotted, a process that took anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour later.

“It’s okay, baby,” he said, reaching down to rub her back. And this must be love because at the moment, he was more concerned about her than he was focused on his second release which came streaming out of him with the unceasing tug of her pussy. “Just get through it. It will be over soon.”

But she couldn’t hear him over the overwhelming sensations she was experiencing. And she screamed again, this time bucking so hard, Knud had to lower his body over her and hold her down for fear she might hurt herself.

“It’s okay,” he soothed, wishing for her sake he would unknot sooner than later, and hating how confused she must be.

But then the point became moot because nature took over, protecting her mind and body before it was completely depleted by the back-to-back orgasms. And she passed out beneath him, collapsing over her knees.

Ironically, it didn’t take long for him to unknot and fall out of her after she passed out—only about fifteen minutes or so. And the male wolf’s basic instinct for aftercare soon kicked in as he climbed to his feet beside her still prone body.

She was his now, he thought as he grabbed a throw from the couch, and gently wrapped her up in it.

But then right as he was about to pick her up, he stopped. Sniffed. Then sniffed again, because he couldn’t believe what his nose was telling him.

The HCG hormone. The one he’d smelled only a rare once or twice on human women who were at the club, but had no idea they were in the earliest stages of a most likely unintended pregnancy. This far into the twenty-first century, very few humans still continued to get pregnant unexpectedly.

But his Layla was no longer fully human. Here was the proof strong and clear, because she had been bred by her wolf after just one session of unprotected heat sex. One and done, as his Uncle Mag had once crowed, when bragging about how he’d instantly put a baby in his mate, Knud’s Aunt Janelle.

Knud picked Layla up inside the throw with a tenderness he wouldn’t have suspected himself capable of even a few hours ago. And not bothering to cover his own nakedness, he walked out of the study with her. Only wanting to get the mother of his future pup into a warm bed. As he walked toward the stairs with her, he nuzzled her hair, marveling at the work her body was already doing to grow his son or daughter. Knud hoped for a daughter. A perfect replica of her with a personality to match.

He imagined them all in the house he would buy as soon as he got his residency placement. Maybe before. He knew Wichita Children’s Hospital was desperate for doctors who knew AI. Desperate enough to maybe let him set his own hours if he agreed to do his fellowship there. Then he could have breakfast with his family and make it home on time to have dinner with them, too.

Plans on top of plans unspooled as he ferried her up the cabin’s main set of stairs. He was ready. So ready to start this new life with her.

Stupid, stupid wolf…

27

I bring the car to a stop right outside a set of wrought iron gates. They look like the ones at our Texas compound with some significant differences. Instead of fleur-de-lis, each ornamental spike is topped rather surprisingly by wolf heads.

And while my family’s estate takes up a few acres, this one seems to take up a few thousand of them. Beyond the huge front lawn and circular driveway, stands a gigantic white stone house with a columned two-story Moorish entrance. That piece of real estate would be impressive on its own, but the paved black road I just drove down curves around it and continues on into a town dotted with charming stone and wood cottages.

As I take in the scene in front of me, I realize there’s another important difference. The gates to my house were built to block access to our three villas.

Whereas these gates…they stretch across the entire road, and then what looks like miles to both the left and the right to block access to an entire town: Wolf Haven.

I’d expected to have to talk my way through the gates, possibly even name drop to get to Qim Wulfkonig. But I had no idea I’d need to figure out how to get into the town itself.

Worse, there was no visible security box for me to use to call or get buzzed in. Just a good old biometric lock—one I suspected I wouldn’t have access to this time. Which meant if I wanted to walk into this town without getting in touch with Qim Wulfkonig’s people beforehand, I was salt out of luck (as my mother used to say after the PR team made her give up cursing).

Beside me, Jared lets out a weary sigh. He’s also staring at the gate’s lock, probably coming to the realization that after two decades of having the most biddable Rustanov in his charge, I’d suddenly become the client from hell. “I assume these people really have no idea you’re coming?”

“No, they don’t,” I answer, keeping my voice light though I’m feeling just as frustrated as he sounds. “I only meant to pop in.”

“Pop in,” Santiago, who stands on my other side, repeats. And though they’re both wearing polarized sunglasses, I can sense some serious eye rolling happening behind those mirrored lenses.

“I’m sure there’s some way to let them know I’m here. I’m just not seeing it.”

“Yeah, nothing’s coming up on my bioware when I try to pin down our position. Just ‘Location Unavailable.’” Santiago shook his head. “I don’t like this.”

“Maybe if you told us where we are, Shimmer,” Jared’s voice has taken on an unfamiliar pleading note. “Why we’re here…?”

“I hate to put you either of you in this position,” I say. And I do mean it. Making it onto the family’s private security team is a big deal, and I can’t imagine how much stress they’re under right now. “I promise I’ll run interference with my father before the daily call…”

I trail off when I see three people walking toward us from the other side of the gate. They’re all wearing warm weather track suits, and from a distance, they have the appearance of Olympic athletes. There’s an older black woman, compact and dark with the build of a former gymnast. There’s also an older white guy. Huge and grey, with so many muscles, he looks like he could be a former weightlifter. They flank a tall, lean light-skinned man who could certainly pose as an Olympic basketball player in any piece of entertainment content—but I immediately recognize him as Qim Wulfkonig. The pictures didn’t do him justice. Square-jawed with kind brown eyes, he walks with the confidence of a natural born leader.

I’d be completely charmed by their matchy-matchy “family of athletes” look…if they weren’t all carrying shotguns.

Jared and Santiago burst into action on either side of me, raising their own SIG Sauers as they yell, “Put the guns down! Put the guns down!!!”

28

Kukunniwi Woods

Knud watched his new mate wake with a start late that afternoon. She sat up in bed as if she’d just had a nightmare, then looked around until she found him in one of the guest bedroom’s dark leather barrel chairs.

“Hello,” she said carefully.

He wondered what she was thinking about, and that made him realize they might not share a telepathic bond, one of the many things that could go “wrong” when wolves mated with humans.

“How are you feeling?” He pushed the thought into her head, testing.

But she continued to stare at him expectantly, obviously waiting for him to answer her greeting.

No psychic bond then. To tell the truth, he wasn’t sure if that was necessarily a bad thing. He wouldn’t be able to get into her head, but that also meant she wouldn’t be able to get into his.

“Hey,” he answered out loud.

She smiled, raised her hands to push the curls off her face, then snatched her hand back when she found a nest of knotted hair. “I didn’t put my hair in braids before I fell asleep?” she asked, as if this was the most alarming thing that had happened to her in the past twelve hours.

“Nope,” he answered.

She shook her head as if trying to clear a fog, and rubbed her temple, “I just had the strangest dream…”

Knud made a considering noise and went over to the window, remembering from some textbook or other that she-wolves could be sensitive to light after going into heat. He closed the curtains on the aggressive summer sun and said, “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

“I asked you to marry me, and you said yes—crazy right? But things got even crazier afterwards. We decided to go back to Wichita with your parents after I was done supervising Jandro’s visit with Qim, but then I started feeling…truly abnormal. A fever came over me very suddenly, and a strange smell appeared in the air. For some reason, my clothes began to feel unbearable and I had to take them off, even though I was in the middle of an assessment! However, Qim seemed to understand. He quickly removed Jandro from the room and then…”

She blinked up at him as if trying to reconcile his presence in the dream and his presence in the room, as he came to stand beside the bed. “…then you came in and we had extremely intense sex, during which you kept talking about impregnating me—why are you looking at me like that?”

Knud stroked his knuckles over her cheek, before deciding it was best to just rip the band-aid off. “Because it wasn’t a dream.”

She laughed.

He didn’t.

Which made her quickly sober as she said, “It had to be a dream…”

He shook his head. “But it wasn’t.”

He suspected if not for the melanin, all the color would have drained out of her face right then. “No…. no… tell me I did not start tearing my clothes off during an assessment!!!”

Knud was torn because he wanted to alleviate her embarrassment, but didn’t know how to without violating quite a few long-held wolf laws. “Qim understood. Everyone did,” Knud assured her, hoping it would be enough.

Of course, it wasn’t.

“Exactly how did everyone come to understand that in the middle of an assessment, I stripped down in Qim Wulfkonig’s study, then had…oh my gosh…extremely loud sex with his cousin on the floor?” She stopped, her eyes widening with a new thought. “Did I… did I faint while you were still inside me.”

“I wouldn’t call it fainting. More like a passing out,” he answered.

“Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!” she said, scraping both hands through her unusually messy hair. “What am I going to do? How am I going to explain this to them? I’m no longer under my parent’s media protection. If this gets out, my father will…”

Knud had no idea who her father was, but if the look that crossed her face when she spoke of him was any indication, it wouldn’t be good.

“It won’t get out,” he told her, bringing her to her feet so he could look her in the eyes as he made his next promise: “You don’t have to explain anything to anyone. I promise you that, baby. You’re all good with everyone in my family.”

She looked at him like he’d just told her there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. “Are you seriously telling me no one in your family is judging me?”

“Yeah, I am.”

She didn’t believe him. He could see the disbelief in her expression, which in turn made Knud wish he could just tell her everything, straight up. But thanks to his old black ops job, he was more than familiar with all the rules that surrounded mating with humans. And he knew he could only spill all the details on the day of her first full month shift or three months into a viable heat pregnancy.

As it turned out, he’d have to wait the three months since neither a pregnant she-wolf nor her partner could shift for a year after a successful heat mating—nature’s way of ensuring the she-wolf didn’t accidentally terminate her pregnancy, and also had protection while she was at her most vulnerable.

Normally he’d risk it and just break the law. Like most people who’d spent a little too much time in the grey moral ground that was black-ops, he often considered himself above the law. And at this point his besotted wolf was willing to do almost anything to relieve the stark worry on Layla’s face. However, in this case, he couldn’t risk it. As pissed as Rafes was at him right now, he’d lock Knud up in one of their secret werewolf penitentiaries just to make an example of him to their people.

And Knud getting locked away from Layla would be a one-way ticket to Crazy Town. Lupine fathers-to-be were notoriously protective of their she-wolves. And he was not going to be the exception.

He’d only mated her a few hours ago, but he spent nearly the entire time she was asleep making arrangements that included taking next week off from work. He needed to go check out some gated properties. And that walking everywhere thing Layla liked to do was done, son. He’d be driving her to work from now on…

“Knud?” she said, interrupting his plan spiral with a soft look.

“Yeah?”

“Even if I end up in the news because of this, I’m glad it wasn’t a dream…and I finally told you how I feel.”

Another burst of sunshine lit up his tired, grey heart. Because if that wasn’t the main point, he didn’t know what was. “Me too.”

The moment would have been perfect if she hadn’t added, “Now I’m going to hop in the shower, and then go downstairs to make profuse apologies.”

Fuck! He had been so busy planning for the future that it hadn’t occurred to him he might need to come up with a plausible reason why they’d need to stay the night. Or why Jandro would be MIA until tomorrow morning.

“Any ideas about where my clothes might have gone?” she asked—only to groan with a sudden memory. “The part where I rip apart my vintage Mary Quant wasn’t a dream either, was it?”

No, it wasn’t. He walked over to the guestroom’s other chair where he’d placed the clothes he’d gathered for her. “I’ve already got some new clothes for you from the other rooms. Shorts and a t-shirt and some hiking boots—my mom’s about the same shoe size as you.”

He felt kind of bad handing over the ensemble he’d pulled together for her. It was so the opposite of anything she’d ever wear. But she thanked him as graciously as if he’d offered her the evening gown of her dreams, before disappearing into the room’s ensuite bathroom.

He was going to enjoy the hell out of spending the rest of his life with her, he thought as he watched her disappear through the door. But first he was going to have to lie to her. A lot. And that’s how he found out the hard way that he made a full transition from his former black ops life. Because though he came up with a story that would be pretty easy for her to believe after what happened downstairs, he hated that he’d have to play psychological games that she hadn’t agreed to or asked for.

Never again, he vowed when he heard the shower turn off a few minutes later. They just had to get through tonight and the next three months, and then he’d never lie to her again.

“Tina Turner!” he yelled out, taking another stab at figuring out who Layla really was. “My mom loves Tina Turner.”

“So do I. But I’m pretty sure she’s old enough to be my grandmother. Not to mention dead!” she called back.

The shower switched off a few minutes later. And then she emerged from the bathroom faster than he expected, dressed in the clothes he’d given her, face scrubbed of her usual sophisticated makeup, and hair pulled back with a curly ponytail. She looked like a teenager…and somehow more familiar to him because of it. Something tickled in the back of his mind. Where had he seen her before?

“You okay?” she asked, crooking her head at him.

No. No, he wasn’t. The feeling he knew her from somewhere scratched at his brain. Also, he could practically feel his wolf stalking back and forth inside his gut. Itchy at the closeness of the moon.

With everything going on with Jandro he hadn’t bothered to check the report. But summer moons were infamously tricky. Rising at the same time as its winter brethren, not caring whether or not it was dark out.

“You’re that kid Angelina Jolie adopted, aren’t you?” he asked, to cover up how off he was suddenly feeling.

She laughed, shaking her head at him. “No, I’m definitely not.”

Knud snapped his fingers. “Wait, what’s the name of that hot singer from back in the day? The one who turned out to have a secret twin sister? Rocky Road?”

Her head jerked back a little, startled by his guess. “Roxxy Roxx is actually a really good friend of my family. You’re definitely getting warmer because I am named after Roxxy’s secret twin sister. But she’s not my mother.”

That stopped Knud in his tracks because he suddenly realized, “I still don’t know your last name.”

She clamped her lips and seemed to make a decision. “I usually use my mother’s maiden name on official documents, so it’s Layla St. James. But technically, my full name is Layla Rus—”

She abruptly stopped speaking. And Knud wondered why….until he realized his perspective had changed. By a lot.

For some reason, Layla was taller than him. Much taller than him. And her expression had change from one of soft amusement to pure terror.

But why would she be scared of him?

And that’s when he realized. Or rather, that’s when he remembered why his mother had told the story of the Wolf Prince around the Viking fires, as opposed to coldly documenting it, like she had the many stories of wolves who’d turned humans by scratching or biting them.

The spontaneous heats were stories not History, because of the fantastical things that happened to the couples.

Like a nightmare unfolding, he remembered his mother holding him and all the other English-speaking wolves in their long house in thrall as she told the story of the Wolf Prince around the Viking fire. In what sounded like a classic fairytale, a wolf prince agreed to marry a human maiden after “filling her belly with pup,” with the caveat that she not look at him whenever there was a full moon. Why? Because as it turned out he was secretly a werewolf. But could not let his still-human wife know until she delivered their baby for fear of repercussions from his wolf tribe.

Knud had loved that story. Had asked for it often, even after they left the Viking Era. But it had turned out tragically, and there was one thing he’d failed to glean. As his mother preached, most stories were warnings, passed down through the generations to teach vital lessons.

Especially the ones told by wolves.

If this story was still being told to this day, there was a reason for it. Yes, spontaneous heats happened but they often came at an unusual price.

Even though his mate was pregnant, he would not remain human on full moon nights. Just as the wolf prince couldn’t stay human for his new bride.

“Fuck!” he cursed. But his curse came out as a low growl.

As did his, “No, Layla, don’t run! It’s not safe outside!” when she started backing away toward the door.

But his warning only made the inevitable happen faster. Before he could stop her, his mate was off. Running away. Running away just as she vowed not to do earlier. From the man who’d just turned into an overlarge wolf in front of her.

29

Kukunniwi Woods

She jumped.

The memory of his mate diving off the dock to escape after he’d failed to herd her back toward the cabin haunted Knud. As soon as he returned to his human form the next morning, he immediately made his way back to the spot where she’d fallen in.

And there he stood, groggy and dazed, at the edge of the dark, churning water…remembering how the river took L-heart in a flash. Carrying her away from him so fast, he could barely keep up with her even in wolf form. He’d watched her small, wet head bob beneath the surface as he ran along beside her on the bank. The current was strong and he worried even a girl as well trained in survival skills as she was would not have the strength to swim to safety.

Knud had jumped into the river after her, determined to help her or drown trying.

But then he’d realized she was moving with deliberate purpose, swimming parallel with the water using a combination of freestyle and breast strokes he’d instantly recognized as the combat sidestroke favored by Navy Seals.

Knud cheered realizing his mate more than had the skills to make it across the river. But then a boat engine appeared, bobbing along on the rapids, a physical reminder of a time when vehicles still ran on gas. The engine was ancient and very solid. Knud had been surprised an object that heavy could float at all…a testament to the strength of the current.

Unfortunately for L-heart, the bulky, rusted engine made a beeline straight for her. When she came up for her next breath, it slammed into her head and instantly knocked her out before Knud could get out so much as a yelp of warning.

The only bit of luck he had afterward was that Layla also wasn’t dense enough to sink into the river. Her unconscious body popped up a few seconds later. But then the real nightmare began.

Wolves can swim. But not very fast. And no matter how hard he tried, Knud couldn’t catch up.

After knocking her into a few rocks, the rapids finally deposited her on the other side of the river. Leaving him to follow her to the shore in what felt like hours later.

He’d grabbed the back of her t-shirt in his jaws and dragged her onto the river bank. Then he performed an initial scan even though he had no AI and was still in wolf form.

She was breathing, but her breaths were shallow. He sniffed her head and smelled the blood underneath. Brain bleed. Not good. His nose also picked up the scent of several broken capillaries all over her body.

But the head injury worried him most. She need a doctor. Now. Not in 12 to 14 hours when Knud finally turned back into a human. That’s when he caught scent of the men.

The small group of hunters thought they were chasing down a large wolf that had suddenly appeared in their camp as they wound down with a few pre-dinner beers. The damn thing’d had the temerity to run off with a stick holding three freshly skinned rabbits they’d been about to roast over a campfire.

The men finally located their rabbits less than a few meters away from their campsite. Next to the body of a young woman who appeared to have washed up on the river bank…

Knud watched from afar as the situation unfolded, including when the paramedics arrived in a drone to collect her.

And now here he was, back in his human form—the shreds of the tracksuit he’d borrowed from Qim’s room long gone thanks to his time in the river.

Was she dead?

No, he insisted to himself as he began the long walk back to the cabin.

She was strong. She could survive anything.

She couldn’t be dead.

He’d know if she were. Because she was his mate.

And Knud would find her. As soon as he figured out who the hell she was.

Thankfully, the mystery of her identity was solved much sooner than he expected.

Knud found the whole gang, minus Qim and Jandro, waiting for him at the end of the gravel path near Founder’s Cabin. His brother’s face was little more than a thundercloud.

“You fucking idiot! How could you let this happen!?” Rafes demanded, storming down the porch steps toward him. “How could you let her leave the house on a full moon night?”

“Son, calm down,” Rafe Sr. advised, gripping Rafes’ shoulder. He looked just as displeased about the situation as his eldest son. But he also had years of self-calming techniques under his belt.

“Yes, Dad, you’re right. I need to calm down,” Rafes shot back, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Because now I have to go back to my office and put in a call to the president of the United States. Why? So she can put in a call to Eva Rustanov and assist me with the damage control this situation will need to avoid the long-held truce between our human and werewolf governments being declared null and void. Because my fucking moron of a brother decided to play cute little sex games with and mate a human!”

Knud shook his head in confusion. He didn’t disagree with Rafes’ assessment of his character—he was often an idiot and a moron. But for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what former two-term U.S. President Eva Rustanov had to do with any of this.

Until the shoe dropped… And he suddenly realized why he’d vaguely recognized Layla that time when she appeared younger than her years. Like a teenager.

A childhood memory unfolded. Of his mother’s eyes shining bright with tears as their entire family watched Eva Rustanov, her hand on a Bible, be sworn in as the first black female president of the United States.

But just in case Knud had any doubts about this latest revelation, Rafes shot him a nasty glare and said, “Congratulations, dickwad. You just impregnated and possibly killed America’s Favorite First Daughter.”

Part 3

I don't do complicated and she's a walking, talking (way too much) Complication.

30

Wolf Haven, Oklahoma… Now

“Put the guns down! Put the guns down now!” Jared yells at one of the richest families in America. It’s been years since Jared transitioned from my Secret Service guard to a Rustanov employee, but his reflexes are still set to shield and defend. He moves in front of me, pushing me back as he aims his Sig Sauer between two bars in the gate.

The three people on the other side drop their shotguns, but no one raises their hands. And only one person speaks—the woman who I recognize as Tu Ataneq, the half-Inuit, half-black “Alaska oil princess” responsible for the Wulfkonig family’s current success.

However, instead of fawning over me and telling me how much she loves my mother like most black women her age do, she glares at me hard and silent.

She may no longer be holding a gun, but I feel like an intruder as she calls out, “This is a privileged land! Protected under the North American Lupus Pact. You are not allowed beyond these gates without an executive order from a sitting president.”

“Get in the car, Shimmer,” Jared says without taking his eyes off the three individuals.

Once again, I’m forced to be difficult. I can guess what my family’s PR team will have to say about this when they get Jared’s daily report.

I push past my guard to get as close as I can to the widest gap in the gate. I want the people on the other side to see my empty hands. Then hoping no one decides to pick up a gun and shoot, I speak sign, “Hello, my name is—”

“We know who you are. Why are you here?” Qim Wulfkonig signs, interrupting me. It’s clear from his greeting that he’s not the father of my baby, or even an admirer. Qim glares at me hard as if waiting for me to make the next move.

“Shimmer…” Jared intones behind me. My old White House codename sounds like a warning of bad things to come.

But I try again, this time signing, “I came to speak about J-A-N-D-R-O.” Just signing, no speaking. That way unless Jared records me on his bioware—which is strictly forbidden—he’ll have no way to report what I say back to my father.

“You cannot take him from us. He’s happy here. Thriving,” Qim signs.

“Growing stronger!” Grady adds like a proud grandfather.

“He likes living with us. Likes having a family he can trust,” Tu signs, her expression softening. “And we like—we LOVE having him with us. He makes our family complete.”

But Qim’s expression is more determined than soft as he finishes with, “You cannot take him away. We tell him he has a forever home with us. We make promise to him. Breaking promise would traumatize him. We will NOT break promise.”

I stare at them, and they stare right back at me, looking as if they’ll pick up the shotguns if that’s what it takes to convince me to back down.

“Lower your weapons,” I say out loud to Jared and Santiago.

No response, which is Bodyguard-speak for “request denied” when you don’t want to argue with a client in a tense situation like this.

But I insist. “Lower your weapons. That’s an order.”

There’s another long measure of hesitation, then the two guards lower their guns to their sides, technically following orders but staying at the ready.

I accept their half-concession, and the three people across from me take a few more steps forward. They’re close enough to scent, and I’m not as surprised as I should be to discover they smell a lot like the cabin minus all the wood…

Kindred. The word floats into my head again, making me wonder if I’m wrong about all this. If my brain injury didn’t just take away six months of my memory, but also my sanity.

But acting on faith, I sign, “You remember me, but I don’t remember you. I CANNOT remember you.”

I explain my situation, telling them how I woke up on a river bank about eight miles from their campground with no memory of my past. “Can you tell me what happened? Do you know how I ended up on the riverbank?”

The three family members look at each other, and I get the feeling they’re worried whatever they say could put Jandro’s adoption at risk.

“Have you found a therapist for Jandro with grief counseling experience?” I ask, switching to a topic that addresses what is probably most on their mind.

“YES,” Qim assures me, knocking his hand emphatically. “He meets her once a week. He also enrolled in our town school for the deaf. And we look now for a LSM tutor for whole family.”

I nod, though my response is an understatement for how impressed I am. They’ve gone above and beyond what I would have recommended as the bare minimum for a foster-to-adopt situation, and the Mexican Sign Language tutor is a great touch. They’re definitely not treating Jandro like a walking, signing purse. But the fact that my assessment is still incomplete remains an issue.

“Did something happen with Jandro? Has he been hurt or is there any other reason I maybe had to give you a bad assessment?” I ask.

Qim shakes his head emphatically. “Jandro’s adoption has nothing to do with what happened to you. I’m sorry it happened. But we’re not at fault.”

I trust my gut when it comes to people—at least I did before Ethan, apparently. But since I have no emotional memory of what went down between Ethan and I, I am still inclined to listen to my instincts. And that’s why even though I can see how defensive Qim is, I listen to my gut when it says to me he’s telling the truth.

“Then I don’t care what you tell me…no matter how bad it is. I promise I won’t give the information to the DWCS. Please tell me what happened that day. Please tell me the truth.”

More hesitation and exchanged glances greet my promise. I sign, “I’m pregnant,” in the hopes this might push them to spill the beans they seem so reluctant to let go of.

My guards don’t react. That’s not surprising. After all, they don’t know ASL.

But the Wulfkonigs' also don’t react to this news. And that takes me by surprise. Which can only mean…

“You already knew,” I say, my heart icing over. “How?”

31

Drummond, Texas… Now

“Knud Rasmussen Nightwolf… that’s an interesting name,” says the bulky guy in the tailored suit. He no doubt reviewed Knud’s credentials via his bioware before showing up at the compound’s front guard station to escort Knud onto the premises.

Knud has never been a fan of small talk—especially about his personal life. But he forces himself to say, “Famous 20th century anthropologist. My mom’s a…”

“History professor. Yeah, we know.”

Of course, they know. That and almost everything else about him, including the black ops background he’d purposefully hadn’t included in his application for med school.

Knud has literally been trying to get to Layla Rustanov, the mother of his child, for months. Only to be blocked at every turn. Had she been anyone else, he would have gotten to her in three days, three weeks tops. Seriously, it only took him three weeks to get to the president of Alarus after what happened with his brother, Nago. But Layla Rustanov is an operative’s worst nightmare.

Her mother is a former U.S. president, which means her Texas home is constantly under the highest official level of security. To top it off, her father is a goddamn Russian oligarch with enemies on top of enemies.

Alexei Rustanov taught his daughter to protect herself, and both she and her sister, Alma have undergone extensive martial, weapon, and combat training. But as soon as Layla had been found, he’d locked her up so tight in his Texas compound, she might as well have been in a tower with an actual dragon in front of it.

Actually, even that would have been better. Knud spent years as a soldier in the cold war between dragon and wolf shifters. So he knew how to slay dragons.

But Alexei Rustanov was a whole ‘nother story. And as a result, Knud had been forced to do a whole lot of shit he vowed he’d never do.

Like ask Rafes for help. When the reports about Layla Rustanov being successfully brought out of her medically induced coma started rolling in, Knud had gone to his brother on his proverbial knees. And then had to put up with about an hour’s worth of “I told you so’s” while chanting Layla’s name in his head to keep himself from wolfing out or launching himself at Rafes’ throat. Then, in order to get Rafes to put in a call to the sitting president, he had to promise to come running whenever his brother called for an entire year.

That should have been more than enough.

But even Rafes hadn’t been able to convince the current president of the United States to call Eva Rustanov on Knud’s behalf. It probably didn’t help that Knud hadn’t officially existed on record since…oh, the age of 19 when he was recruited into his first black ops gig by the U.S. Marines. And the bits and pieces of highly classified information about Knud that the president had access to did not paint a pretty picture. Because he’d done things that even his five years as a pediatric surgeon couldn’t undo. In short, he wasn’t the kind of guy you’d happily agree to introduce to the powerful parents of a woman who people, including Knud’s older brother, still referred to as America’s Favorite First Daughter.

So, Knud wasn’t surprised when Rafes received a polite but swift “hell no” from the Oval Office. Which meant, heavy sigh, asking his brother for even more help.

Finally, between Rafes and their other triplet, Nago, Knud managed to gain access to a floor plan for the compound. Then he resolutely pored over the details about the multiple renovations—not to mention a shitload of old internet articles—in order to figure out which room belonged to Layla.

After monitoring the Texas compound for days to identify all the guards, Knud compiled a dossier on each member of the security personnel to see if any were having, say, financial difficulties he could leverage to gain access to the house.

But it turned out Alexei Rustanov paid his guards well, and only a very few were allowed anywhere near his wife and children. Those individuals were extensively vetted and only permitted to join the family’s security rotation after at least a year of service. Then they were revetted every month and if they had so much as a missed credit card payment, they were pulled from the family’s team.

Layla’s father was thorough and smart, and he’d made it impossible for anyone he hadn’t thoroughly vetted to get anywhere near his daughter.

Knud imagined Rustanov was even more paranoid now than he had been before Layla’s accident. After all, for the first time ever her father had inexplicably relaxed his guard and let his daughter come to Kansas on her own last winter. And that small bit of freedom granted had ended with her being found half-drowned and unconscious on a Kansas river bank only a few months later.

No wonder Layla had been so oddly thrilled by the seemingly mundane experiences she had with him. It made perfect sense now: she’d been over-the-top protected her entire life, and had never been given the opportunity to take risks and live her own life.

Unfortunately, the fallout from her Kansas experiment was disastrous for Knud. In the end, he’d been forced to fall back on the one piece of his history he’d vowed never to revisit: his black ops past.

Having secured a very reluctant recommendation from Rafes, and an enthusiastic one from his former Wolf Force commander, Knud applied for a job at the Rustanov compound.

And wouldn’t you know—that got him in the proverbial door faster than anything else he’d tried thus far.

But it hasn’t been fast enough.

Knud’s wolf paces back and forth inside him as he goes through the usual first-day in a security job procedures: a second full-body scan; a credentials check for the bioware he’d only recently reconnected, which gave him access to two of the three main villas without needing to be accompanied by a senior guard; and a visit with the on-site tailor who outfitted him in one of the five suits that had been cut to his exact measurements.

“The fit is good,” the tailor remarks as he studies Knud in the three-way mirror. “Nice hair, too. Too bad you have to cut it.”

Another Rustanov security force rule: all male guards must wear their hair Marine short, or in a Samurai knot. Knud had more than done his time in the Marines, so he opts to get the Samurai knot. After being suited up, a stylist arrives and shaves both sides of his head before brushing his kinky curls into a low double knot at the back of his skull.

Almost there…almost there…he tells his wolf who can barely sit still.

After the hair, his escort is replaced by a guard who introduces himself as Brian, the day-shift security manager. Brian proceeds to give him an excruciatingly long tour of the compound, which includes two guest villas, staff living quarters, tennis courts, a gym, and just about every other amenity you’d expect to find at a five-star all-inclusive luxury resort. Alexei might have cloistered his oldest daughter after spending eight years in the White House, but Knud begins to understand why it took her so long to rebel. He might have thought twice about enlisting if he’d grown up like this.

The tour of the main villa comes dead last—probably because it’s the shortest.

“Here’s the foyer of the family residence,” Brian says, sweeping an arm around an entrance that could pretty much serve as an illustration for the term “opposite attracts.” An elegant double marble staircase with marble railings acts as a centerpiece along with the large crystal chandelier that hangs from the ceiling. But below on the main floor at the foot of the staircase sits two lipstick red couches which look not only visually inviting, but comfortable. Also, the ceiling is covered in a colorful spray paint mural that even Knud recognizes as the work of an iconic Brazilian street artist.

The two styles are completely at odds but somehow work together. But more important to him is that he is finally in the main family residence. Which means Layla’s room sits just three doors down on the second floor, to the left of the staircase…

As if to squelch Knud’s plans, Brian says, “This is where your security clearance ends. When you’re called to the main house, you are to wait here until a family guard meets you. You are never permitted to step foot on the stairs or anywhere outside this foyer unless you have been given explicit permission from a family guard. Is that clear?”

“Crystal,” Knud answers…

…right before whipping out his stun gun and plunging it into the side of Brian’s neck.

Not the nicest way to put someone down, Knud thinks as he watches the guard jerk and then slump to the ground in a heap. Knud can already see the mark his surprise taser attack will leave on the side of Brian’s neck. But he is also well aware of the Kevlar that lines the fabric of their flawlessly tailored suits—so he knows nothing less than direct contact would have put one of these guys down. Plus, with all the advances in scar removal, he feels confident the guard’s surface injury will only be temporary.

This is important because he knows Layla would never forgive him if he left anything remotely close to his usual body count in his wake. And he already has a lot to beg her forgiveness for. For the wolf. For Brian. And for the two hallway guards he takes out with supernatural speed before they can even draw their weapons.

Knud doesn’t have much time, or an escape plan. Layla, the woman who probably hates him, has become his only way out of the compound. But she’s worth the risk of getting gunned down by her father’s guards. After all: she’s his mate. And if the last few weeks of misery have taught him anything, it’s that his life isn’t worth jack shit without her.

He plans to tell her just that when he throws open her door and runs into her room, only to stop short. Because…

The room is empty.

Maybe he’s in the wrong room? There’s another Rustanov daughter, two years younger than Layla but living abroad. Could this be the room she uses when she’s visiting? But no…

He inhales deeply through his nose. This room smells like Layla. Linen sheets…natural fiber clothing…and her alchemized perfume. The scents mingle together, tantalizing him with a faded scent-picture of his mate. No, his wolf and nose tell him, this room can only belong to Layla. Which means…she was here, but not now.

His wolf howls in his chest, and his heart shrivels at the realization. Only months of methodical plotting kept his wolf from tearing him open and climbing out to find her himself. Of course, that wouldn’t be possible. But the longer Knud’s separated from his fated mate, the more it feels like it could happen. Which is why he has to—

The sudden scent of alchemized cologne, dark and rich, hits his nose followed by the unmistakable sound of a gun cocking. A cold metal barrel is pressed into the back of Knud’s newly shorn head, right beneath the samurai knot.

“I will ask you this only once. If you do not provide me with a satisfactory answer, I will pull the trigger.” Knud immediately recognizes the voice as that of Alexei Rustanov. “What are you doing in my daughter’s room?”

32

Wolf Haven, Oklahoma

“How did you know?” I sign after a few moments of shock. “How did you know I’m pregnant?

The three exchange yet another look between them.

“Do you know who the father is?” I sign, my heartbeat ratcheting up to desperate.

Again, no answer.

Though I’ve spent the majority of my life trying to be a shining example of comportment and endless patience, something in me snaps.

“If you don’t tell me what you know, I will return with my father’s entire security force. Trust me, they care zero about your land’s ‘privilege’ status. Tell me the name of my baby’s father! TELL ME RIGHT NOW!”

To my surprise, Qim, not his mother, is the first to break. He turns to his parents. “K-Thunder brought Jandro to us,” he signs. “And he’s going crazy trying to get to her. This frightens us, but we owe K-Thunder.”

Grady shakes his head. “Not our place tell her.”

“Then whose?” Qim signs back. “J-Blessing is now our family. So is K-Thunder. We must tell her.”

“But North American Compact—” his dad begins.

“This not about politics. This about family!” Qim insists.

Grady looks to Tu for back-up. But she suddenly moves as close to me as the closed gate will allow and shakes her head back at her mate, signing, “Qim is right...”

She looks at me to speak-sign, “Plus, I love your mother. She is on my free-pass list, you know.”

“MOM, WHY!?” Qim signs emphatically, looking more like an embarrassed kid than a world-renowned med-tech billionaire.

In spite of the intense moment, my anger vanishes and I barely smother a laugh. This definitely isn’t the first time a woman has told me this. But I don’t want to stray off topic. “Okay, then. So, if one of you can just give me the name of…”

My hands bounce as I attempt to come up with the proper term for the guy who got me pregnant.

“Yes, we can tell you who your MATE is,” Tu jumps in, rescuing me from myself. “You should know he’s been looking for you everywhere. He is not easy to reach, but if you give us a moment, we can make a few calls and he’ll be here within the hour.”

My heart explodes with excitement. Yes! I’m finally going to get some answers—

The first cramp takes me totally unawares. It’s more surprising than painful. But the second cramp isn’t nearly as courteous. It slices across my abdomen with all the subtlety of a blade.

“Oh…!” I cry out, dropping to my knees with my arms clutching my middle.

Voices call out. And hands catch me, before gently placing me flat on the ground.

“Shimmer? Shimmer?!” Jared shouts down to me as he hovers protectively over my prone body. “Can you speak?”

I try but the words won’t come out. The pain is blinding. Miscarriage, I think dimly, tears pooling in my eyes at the thought. “Baby,” I gasp to Jared, spilling the secret. “I’m pregnant. Must help baby!”

I just found out that the father of this unborn baby has been trying to reach me the whole time I’ve been searching for him. I can’t lose the baby before we reconnect. It feels like the strange new voice is wailing—no not wailing, but full on howling inside my chest.

“Get her to our clinic!” Tu yells somewhere in the distance.

Even in my pain-laden state, I know my guards will never agree to bring me to some small-town clinic in the middle of nowhere.

Santiago’s already speaking over her, and I can hear Jared yelling for an immediate transport to the nearest Tier 1 hospital along with a bunch of codes I assume must mean pregnant woman down.

In the middle of it all, Tu continues to insist, “No! We have to take her to our clinic. If you want to save this baby, she needs to come to our clinic!”

And as if to punctuate her point, I can hear what I assume to be the electronic creak of the front gates opening wide.

That’s the last thing I register before I pass out.

33

Drummond, Texas

What are you doing in my daughter’s room?

Knud raised his hands in an unprecedented gesture of surrender. “I’m looking for Layla. I thought I’d find her here. Not you.”

“You knocked out three of my guards, but didn’t expect you’d have to deal with me?” Alexei asked behind him.

His voice has only the barest trace of a Russian accent, but Knud can tell he’s truly pissed off his mate’s father based on how the accent is growing more pronounced.

“Honest to God, I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. I was only trying to find Layla. To talk to her.”

“Why?” The question comes from a different voice, warm with a distinct Texas drawl, and her alchemized scent reminds him of thick honey poured over cornbread.

“Eva, leave us,” Alexei warns.

“This young man went through a whole lot of trouble to get to our daughter. I’m not leaving this room until he tells me why,” she answers in a tone that’s both sweet and hard as steel.

“I’m her…” Knud searches for the correct word, one these humans will understand. “…fiancé. I’m Layla’s fiancé.”

“Fiancé,” Alexei repeats, all but sneering the word. “She never mentioned a fiancé to us.”

Knud feels oddly sad but relieved Layla hasn’t mentioned him to her father. Though she’s no longer completely besotted with him, the fact that she hadn’t said a word about him could mean she isn’t as upset with him as he’d guessed. Because it’s obvious—any guy who did Layla wrong would not survive to see another day once Alexei found out.

“Is she alright?” Knud asks her parents. “I just need to make sure she’s okay.”

Her mother cuts right to the chase. “Are you the reason she fell into that river?”

“Yeah. I’m also the reason she’s pregnant. Which is why I need to know if she and our baby are okay.”

Silence. Then, the Russian accent is fully back as Alexei says, “You are the only man who has ever come near my daughter without my approval. And because of this, she ends up pregnant, on river bank, with no ring on her finger. For this alone I could kill you. Tell me why I should spare your miserable life.”

“Alexei, what in the hell are you doing?” Eva says before Knud can respond. “Didn’t you hear him? He just said he’s the father of Layla’s baby…and her fiancé. Our daughter chose him. Put the gun down!”

Rustanov didn’t move. “Da, he says this yet he failed to protect her. He failed to keep our Lasha safe. There is no reason why my grandchild should grow up with such an unworthy specimen for a father because its mother made a mistake.”

“Alexei, please! For once in your life, put down the damn gun and listen to me.”

Knud suspects this is a familiar dynamic between the couple. But instead of letting the argument play out, he feels compelled to interrupt. Because he gets this guy. Gets him better than Eva Rustanov probably ever has.

And he also knows… “Sir, everything you have ever done for your daughter was to protect her. Everything you’re doing now is to keep her safe,” Knud says in as calm a voice as he can muster.

“Yes,” Alexei agrees. “I do what I do to keep her safe from fiancés like you.”

“I understand. I would have done the same if I was in your position.”

A beat passes. Then both Alexei and his wife say, “What?”

“If Layla were my daughter…I would do anything to keep her far from the likes of me. I don’t remotely deserve someone as bomb as her.”

“Da, so then why are you here? And why should I not kill you now?”

Without giving it a moment’s thought, Knud turns to face Alexei. But instead of using his superior strength and speed to disarm Layla’s father, he firmly presses his forehead into the barrel of the gun that used to be at the back of his head.

“You should not kill me now because I love your daughter. I love her enough to protect her with my life. I’ll take a sabbatical from my surgery schedule. I’ll do whatever you want me to do. But I promise I will never, ever let anyone hurt her again.”

“You’re a doctor?” Eva says, her face breaking into a surprised smile that almost perfectly matches that of her daughter.

“Yeah. When I’m not using my military past to apply for security jobs at your compound so I can see your daughter, I’m a pediatric surgeon. I realize that may be hard to believe…I know I don’t look like one.”

Eva nods in agreement. “You really don’t. Her last boyfriend was a doctor, too, but… to put it bluntly he looks like he could play one on TV. Whereas you look like you’d be better suited to…well, a job here. If you hadn’t just stun-gunned three of our best guards.

“Sorry about that,” he answers with an apologetic half smile before turning back to Alexei. “But the point is, sir, I love your daughter and I will protect her. From everything and everyone. Including me. Including you, sir. Because I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of dying. The one thing in this world I’m afraid of is living without Layla. And the only person who gets to tell me that I have to do that is her. So please either shoot me or tell me where she is. Because I’m not going to stop searching for her until I find her.

A long silence passes. One so thick, you could hear a pin drop. Then Alexei releases a deep, weary sigh…and places what appears to be an early century MP-433 Grach handgun back into safety mode.

“I do not like this boy for our daughter,” he grouses to his wife as he returns his gun to a shoulder holster tucked beneath his suit jacket. “He is too dramatic. Also, overpassionate to the point of being silly.”

“I hate to tell you this Lexie…but the only reason you don’t like him is because he reminds you too much of you. I like him just fine,” former President Rustanov says with a grin.

Layla’s father doesn’t return the smile. Instead, he gives her a stricken look like her words have stabbed him hard. “You like him for our Layla because he reminds you of me. But you no longer care for me as you did before.”

Eva stills, obviously caught off guard. “That’s because you went behind my back and picked a boyfriend for Layla without letting either of us know,” she reminded him with a lift of her chin.

“Yes, but eventually I told you what I did, as I tell you everything. You knew for months. Yet you did not ask me for this divorce until Layla left our house.”

“That’s correct,” she agreed, looking away. “Because what you did—what I let you do— was a stupid and controlling thing to pull on our daughter. I should have known how it would play out. But all I could think was if she married that fellow you chose for her, she’d stay here in Texas. Maybe even move into the house next door on the compound…”

“Ahhh. I see. You were afraid of the empty nest,” Alexei says, nodding his large head with understanding. “Lasha thought so.”

“See…she’s so good at getting me!” Eva says. “That’s why I was so angry when she left. It feels like Aaron and Alma are all yours, but Layla was supposed to be mine. I had the kind of relationship with her I always wanted with my mother, and I imagined Layla and I would have a whole life together. That she’d eventually follow me into politics, and I’d run her campaigns. That’s how I hoped to spend my retirement now that my foundation is pretty much running without me. But then she left. And when she left, it felt like you still had Alma and Aaron running Rustanov Enterprises, so your legacy was still intact. But I’d lost mine.”

Eva seems to finally be understanding something about herself as she looks up at Alexei with sad brown eyes. “I blamed you, Lexie. But then we got her back. And you were right. I could have told her what happened to make her move to Kansas from the start. But I didn’t. Because I wanted her back, and I was willing to get her back at any cost. I was trying to control her, just like you. Oh God. How could I have been so selfish?”

“You are not selfish,” Alexei says, his tone angrily offended as if by insulting herself, Eva has somehow insulted him. “You have given and done too much for others, for this country.”

He clasps a large hand around her shoulder. “Alma and Aaron both work and live abroad. Of course, you would want to keep our Lasha close. That is the natural feeling of a good mother.”

“Thank you but,” Eva shakes her head sadly, “we shouldn’t have held on to her so tightly. We should have encouraged her to go out into the world a long time ago. Let her make mistakes; have her heart broken.” She waved a hand toward Knud. “Even if it’s with a wildly inappropriate guy.”

Knud doesn’t bother taking offense because he agrees with President Rustanov. Layla does deserve better than him. But now their paths have become permanently intertwined. So all he can do is promise her parents: “I will do right by her. I’ll love her and protect her, even though she’s made it very clear she doesn’t think she needs anyone’s protection.”

Her parents chuckle.

“She has told me this, too,” Alexei says in a tone that is almost sympathetic.

“That’s the Alexei in her,” Eva says with an apologetic smile. “He doesn’t think he needs anyone else either.”

The amused look rapidly fades from Alexei’s face. “Kotenok, how can you say this? I need you! I need you like I need to breathe.” And then proving he really had no damn business calling anybody else “overpassionate,” he gathers her hands in both of his and declares, “This time apart has been hell for me. I feel dead without you. But I am stubborn and I did not know how to tell you this. How to beg for forgiveness. But if you want me to do this, if that is what it will take to for me to repair this damage, then I will—”

“Oh, stop it, Lexie!” Eva cries out, cutting him off. “You never left my heart. I love you! I love you so much!”

Wide eyed, Knud watches Layla’s 50-something parents fall into each other’s arms. And like a scene out of one of his twin sisters’ romance novels, they kiss with more passion than he ever would have attributed to a former American president.

“Uh…” Knud shifts from foot to foot, feeling like an awkward voyeur.

This is definitely not how he expected things to go when he found himself on the wrong end of Alexei’s gun. It feels like he’s interrupting a very private moment when he clears his throat and says, “Look, I’m really glad you both figured things out. But can someone please tell me where Layla is?”

Just like that, Alexie the romance novel hero disappears, and Layla’s serious father returns. Thankfully his gun hasn’t also returned, but his gaze is deadlier than any bullet as he says, “Da, I will call her and tell her the worthless scum who let her fall into the river while pregnant with his baby would like to see her. If she agrees, then maybe…maybe I will let you see her. But as for marriage—.”

Knud jumps in, “Uh, we’re already technically married.”

“What?!” Alexei roars. “No. There is no marriage contract on file.”

“Well, about that,” Knud says, “See…my laws don’t work like your laws.”

“What are you talking about? I know how the laws of this country works. And Layla is my daughter. While you are only the scum who made her pregnant and then lost her!”

“I didn’t lose her. I just had problems getting to her—the main obstacle being you, sir,” Knud clarifies. “There’s a big difference.”

“There is no difference as far as I’m concerned.”

“But that’s just it. You have no authority in this situation. I don’t need your permission to see my wife. Since she was found in Kansas, a common-law state. And according to common law, I’m her husband.”

“That’s not possible! You must be married for at least ten years for common law to take effect. What do you mean by this?”

“I apologize,” Knud says, raising his hands in a placating way. “Let me explain.” He darts a glance over to Layla’s mother, making a point of including her in this portion of the explanation. “According to the North American Lupus Pact, Layla and I are mates which makes me her husband according to both state and North American laws. The only exception to this being in states that still require an official certificate to make marriage binding.”

Alexei shakes his head in obvious confusion. But his wife, former President Rustanov, curses. “Damn. I wondered how you knew she was pregnant.”

Alexei’s brow wrinkles and he looks from Knud to his wife. “What are you talking about?”

Eva shakes her head, one hand pinching at the bridge of her nose. Then she suddenly shoots Knud a look of panic. “Oh no. Wait…does this mean…she’s like you now?”

Knud nods sympathetically, having a good idea how most humans would react upon hearing their child is now a werewolf.

“You turned her?”

“No, no…” Knud says, palms outstretched in a calming gesture. “I would never do that. If it had been up to me, we would have stayed together but figured out another way to have kids. But it wasn’t up to me so…”

Alexei inserts himself into the conversation, his face contorted in anger and growing alarm. “What are you both talking about? I do not understand!”

“Neither does your daughter, yet,” Knud answers. “And that’s why you have to tell me where I can find her. I’m a doctor, and there are a million things that can go wrong with a pregnancy between your kind and mine.”

Alexei now looks like he is about to explode. “I do not understand what you are talking about!” he roars, the veins visibly throbbing in his neck. “Someone will tell me. NOW!!”

Eva places a calming hand on one of her husband’s arms. “Lexie, it’s against the law for him to tell you anything,” she explains sympathetically. “And everything to do with the North American Lupus Pact is in the Blue Folder.”

Knud doesn’t know much about human politics—for obvious reasons. But he assumes the blue folder has something to do with the secret treaties and agreements that the United States government have made over the years with various supernatural creatures.

Knud feels bad for Layla’s father. But he doesn’t have time for another round of family therapy. “I’m sorry but one of you really needs to tell me where my mate is. Now.”

Eva blinks and clamps her lips in a way that reminds him of Layla. Then finally gives up and says, “Okay, then. I almost hate to tell you this after all the hard work you must have gone through to get in here.”

Alexei pipes up, “You will tell me how you managed this, by the way. So I know who to fire and what new security measures to put in place.”

Knud nods. “Of course. I’ll tell you whatever you want. Fill out a whole feedback form if you need me to. Just…where is Layla?”

“She’s not here,” Eva replies with an apologetic wince.

“Because she went back to Kansas to search for you,” Alexei finishes, his tone near to overflowing with irony.

“What?!” Knud’s brain feels like it’s about to implode.

“She went back to Kansas to find you,” Alexei repeats. “She is at her old apartment with Gracie. So if you would like to check there…maybe she will decide you are not a piece of shit for letting her fall in that river.”

“Lexie, stop harassing this boy,” Eva says. But the glare she throws him is more indulgent than admonishing.

“Thank you. I’m going to go find her,” Knud says, starting toward the bedroom door.

“But wait, you can’t just ambush her. There’s something you need to know first,” Eva said.

Knud turns back. Impatient. Because what else could possibly be important enough to hold him back from reuniting with his mate? But this is the former president of the United States. And Layla’s mom. So, he forces himself stay calm and listen, doing his level best to sound respectful as he answers, “Okay…what is it?”

Eva opens her mouth but before any words come out, the ringing of three different phones cuts her off. And his newly reinstated bioware explodes with messages.

34

Wolf Haven, Oklahoma

It’s like a recurring nightmare. Or that old movie, Groundhog Day. I wake up in a hospital bed with my parents looking over me.

Except this time my mother and father are on one side of my bed wearing twin expressions of worry, while one of my father’s guards is on the other. Like Santiago, he must be a new guy who’s made it into the family rotation since I left Drummond.

“She’s coming to!” the guard calls out.

A doctor, wearing a white coat with Wolf Haven Clinic stitched over the breast pocket, rushes into the room, her dark ponytail swinging behind her.

Another big difference between this hospital visit and the last one is that I can recall exactly what happened to land me here.

“The baby! Is my baby alright?” This time, these are the first words out of my mouth.

“Your baby is fine,” the doctor answers, snatching up a touchpad. She quickly reviews what I assume to be my charts. “You were experiencing some mild cramping, and brought into our clinic.”

I’m too confused and scared for manners. “Those cramps didn’t feel anywhere near mild,” I tell her. “It was like my first period after eating two cheese pizzas times 100.”

The doctor looks from side to side as if suddenly caught in a trap. “Oh, ah, I wouldn’t know about hu—I mean, your past cramping,” she answers carefully. “But some cramping is to be expected in the first few months of these kinds of pregnancies. Perhaps yours simply felt severe than normal. But I assure you, everything is going perfectly.”

“I passed out!”

“You did, and luckily our qu—uh, Ms. Ataneq was there to bring you to us. I’m sure we can find something to help manage the pain while you gestate.”

“Okay, thank you,” I say carefully. Though I really don’t understand.

As if sensing my confusion, my father’s guard takes my hand. “I know you’ve got to be confused by all of this but the main point is the baby is okay. And you’re okay. And I’m here for you now…that’s all that matters.”

I blink up at the young guard who must definitely be brand spanking new to our family’s rotation, because I know I would have remembered seeing him before. His skin is the color of warm sand, and he has deep set eyes that curve downwards at the edges. He’s pretty, so very pretty…but there’s a hard edge to his sharply planed face. Pretty, but dangerous, I think to myself right before his scent hits my nose. He smells…oh my gosh! He smells amazing. Like a fire burning in the deepest winter snow.

And the way he looks at me. It’s like he’s staring into my soul as the strange new voice inside me chants, Mine! Mine! Mine!.

With the explosion of emotions, smells, and internal chanting, it’s all I can do to keep my voice polite and level as I say, “Thank you for your kind and thoughtful words. I’m Layla Rustanov. May I ask your name?”

The whole room goes silent.

Uh-oh. “Have I made another faux pas?” I ask, feeling unsettled.

But then Mom says, “Ah, he’s not one of our guards, honey.”

“Then who is he?” I ask, shaking my head in alarmed confusion. I turn back to the strangely handsome man standing on my other side, still holding my hand. “Who are you?”

Another silent exchange passes between the three and Mom says, “I’m not sure who should tell her.”

“Tell me what? I’m right here,” I answer.

More hesitation, then my father blurts, “He’s the boy who made you pregnant and let you fall into the river,” at the same time the pretty-but-dangerous guard says, “I’m your mate.”

35

Wolf Haven, Oklahoma

“Well, ain’t this some anti-climactic bullshit.”

“Aunt Tu…” Knud speaks signs at the same time Qim signs, “Mom.” And Jandro signs, “Grandma…” Grady only shakes his head as if he’s given up on trying to reign in his wife.

“I’m just saying… We went through all this…let a bunch of humans into Wolf Haven…and she can’t even remember you!” Tu speak-signs back. Her eyes narrow in the direction of the closed clinic door where Knud left Layla and her parents after they requested to “talk privately.”

Layla only asked for the room, but Knud, knowing a few things about wolf hearing that she didn’t, decided to give her the whole building.

Which is where he found Tu, Grady, Qim, and Jandro…all waiting outside in matching track suits and matching expressions of worry.

“You guys have nothing to worry about,” he spoke signed to them. “Believe me, all the illegal stuff you did to get Jandro here is the last thing on her mind right now.”

Tu let out an audible sigh of relief…right before taking Knud’s reprieve as her cue to run commentary on the latest complication in what had started out as a simple NSA relationship.

“And that overstepping family of hers can just miss me,” she complains now, glaring at the human guard posted outside the clinic.

“You’re angry because they have more money than us and more power,” Qim signs, teasing his mom with laughing eyes.

“NO…” Grady signs in seeming defense of his wife. “She angry because she choke in front Eva Rustanov. I NEVER see her no able to TALK. I was afraid she might FAINT.”

“The only reason I’m not throwing cuss fingers at both you now is because of J-Blessing,” Tu signs back with a grouchy look on her face. But then her shoulders sag as she signs, “I can’t believe I choke. But she so beautiful. Like angel. I must try talk to her again.”

“Mom, this isn’t about you talking to L-heart’s mother,” Qim reminds her with gentle signs. “We’re here for K-Thunder.”

Then, proving why he was handed the keys to his kingdom earlier than most, Qim turns to Knud to ask, “What can we do? How can we help?”

“Yes, want help you like you help us,” Jandro agrees, proving why this street kid would probably end up with the keys to the kingdom, too. The boy already seemed like he was part of the family—and not just because of the track suit. He looked healthier. And though Knud doubted the shadows from his eyes would fully clear until he’d been seeing his therapist for a year or two, at least they no longer appeared sunken in and hopeless.

Happy. He’s happy here.

Even if Layla didn’t remember Jandro, he knows she’ll feel the same as him. That saving this kid was worth it. Worth everything they’ve been through.

Everything they’re still going through.

Which is maybe why it feels more true than sappy when Knud speak-signs back, “Trust me, J-Blessing, you did enough by agreeing to be part of our family. But thanks for the offer.”

“His word speak exact truth,” Qim signed to Jandro. Then he made a point of carefully signing “Gracias” in LSM.

Jandro beams, perhaps beginning to believe he deserves to be part of this family. He thumbs his chin in return, “De nada.”

A sudden commotion at the clinic’s front door interrupts the warm moment.

They turn as one to see the former First Family walking out together. Layla’s hand is wrapped inside Eva’s, like a child being guided by her mother, and they head toward the small drone now sitting in the field between the kingdom house and Wolf Haven.

Knud flew here with her parents in the drone, but he already has a feeling they won’t be leaving that way. And though Knud is happy to see the relationship with her mother is on the mend, his heart sinks knowing what’s coming next.

Beside him, Tu frantically speak signs, “No, no! They don’t just get to take her away. You’re her MATE. There are LAWS.”

“Yeah, laws we can’t truly enforce with their kind,” Knud reminds her.

“That’s bullshit,” Tu says. Then she speak signs, “This is our land! OUR kingdomland. We can forbid them from launching their drone.”

“Or arrest them for trespassing without an order from the sitting president,” Qim adds. “Whatever you need, we’ve got your back.”

Yes, they did. And not for the first time does Knud realizes just how stupid he’s been to keep his family at a distance for so long. But in this case…

“Thank you. But I’m not going to stop her from leaving. She doesn’t remember me, and she sent me away five minutes after meeting me.”

“Wait—” Tu starts, hands readying for a tsunami of signs.

“No, Aunt Tu. She’s had a lifetime of playing the part of perfect First Daughter.” With a shake of his head, he recalls all the research he did on Layla before going into the Texas compound. Because of her father’s place of birth and his complete lack of interest in running a political office, she’d had to step up at the age of 12 and do double duty. Not only had she undergone heavy media training, she’d campaigned tirelessly for her mother and even took over the office of First Spouse during her mother’s second term in office.

While Knud had been blindly following Rafes’ often fatal orders all over the world, Layla had given up everything, including her own sense of self, to be the person her mother needed to secure and successfully keep her presidency. No, Knud couldn’t ask her to do the same for an unworthy wolf she didn’t even remember.

“If she doesn’t want to play the part of my mate, I’m not going to make her. Our lawyers will figure out the custody arrangement, and she’ll be happy. That’s all that matters.”

Tu considers his words, then drops her hands with a sigh—only to stiffen again and squint into the distance.

Knud follows her gaze to see Alexei Rustanov headed their way.

“Stay calm,” he signs to both Qim, Grady, and Tu.

But his family makes no promises. Tu and Grady flank one side of him, while Qim and Jandro fall in on the other. They cross their arms over their chests...there if Knud needs them.

But he doesn’t have time to be grateful for their support because he’s too busy bracing himself for what Alexei Rustanov will say.

The larger man stops about a foot away from them, his cold grey gaze finding Knud with the precision of a laser. “You will listen carefully to my words. I do not care that you are a Nightwolf, or from some protected tribe my wife cannot tell me about. If anything else happens to my Layla, I will kill you. You understand this, da?”

“Yeah,” Knud answers. “I get it. You don’t have to worry about me harassing her. I wouldn’t do that, especially in her condition. If she doesn’t want to see me again, she doesn’t have to. But there are a few conditions that need to be met before I let her go…”

Trying to think like Rafes, Knud starts to compile a mental list of what Layla will need given her condition.

“What do you mean, ‘let her go?’” Alexei asks with a sneer. “I am not threatening you to stay away from her. I am threatening you because she has decided to return to Kansas with you.”

Knud’s heart stops at Alexei’s words. Beside him Tu says, “No way! Are you shitting us?”

“No, I am not ‘shitting’ you,” Alexei answers Tu with a scornful look. He then sneers at Knud. “She has chosen you. I suggest you do not, as my son Aaron says, fuck it up this time.”

36

Wichita, Kansas…again

I chose him.

I’m still not sure I made the right choice as I enter his strangely furniture-free apartment.

Well, not completely furniture free. He doesn’t have a couch or chairs or so much as a family photo on the blank walls. But he does have a bed. A huge bed.

This is what greets me after our epically awkward, near silent five-hour drive from Wolf Haven back to Wichita. During the drive, I took the time to read a long dossier on both Knud Nightwolf and Dr. Rasmussen Knight that my family’s PR team had sent to my tablet.

And wow… after reading over that eye-opening report, and seeing his apartment, I really have to wonder if maybe my time in Kansas hadn’t involved an undocumented nervous breakdown. Because I just don’t understand why I would have chosen someone who chooses to live like this.

But the apartment. I sniff, and it feels like something is finally settling inside my chest. This space smells right, feels right. Even if the bed is practically screaming at me from its corner.

A few minutes later I climb into the that bed fully clothed, then scoot myself over until I’m as close as I can get to the wall. He climbs in after me, wearing only a pair of boxers. But he doesn’t try or say anything. Instead, he lies quietly on his side of the bed and stares up at the ceiling.

Yet I could still feel a set of eyes on me. Like something inside him was staring at something inside me. And my something was staring right back, deeply entranced even as I turned over and glued my eyes to the wall before carefully closing them.

Knud… Dr. Knight…the father of my unborn child…is attractive on another level. The PR report mentioned that he’s one-quarter black, one-quarter Native American, one-quarter Inuit, and one-quarter Latino. In other words, he’s a walking ad for the benefits of diversity, and so very pretty. But he also has an underlying hardness I think might have something to do with his time in the military and…elsewhere. And it’s his hardness that removes him from pretty boy and places him firmly in smoking hot. Both literally and figuratively.

Despite him lying three feet away from me on the other side of the bed, heat radiates off him. And despite how freaked out I feel, I find myself imagining what it might feel like to have his hot body on top of mine during the winter months when we first met.

However, that image comes to an abrupt halt when a strange smell hits the air. It’s like…a room after sex but it’s coming from my body…which goes hot, then cold, with embarrassment when I realize it’s the scent of my arousal.

I’m being crazy. It has to be a side effect of the TBI. I can’t smell my own arousal. Can I? Can he...?

I can’t stop myself from looking over my shoulder to see if he can smell it, too.

I find him staring at me in the room’s dim light. “You okay?” he asks.

“Yes, thank you,” I answer as politely as possible, before quickly turning back over on the soft mattress.

Then I fall asleep, confused and frustrated for more reasons than one.

In the light of morning, it all feels like a crazy dream—and I’m still trying to figure out if it’s a good one or a nightmare.

I sniff the air and look for him. As if I will somehow locate him with my nose. And I do. He’s at the stove, making coffee. Still shirtless though he’s pulled on a pair of joggers over his underwear.

Since he doesn’t know I’m awake yet, I watch him for a little bit, appreciating the way the muscles move under his sand-colored skin as he busies himself in the kitchen.

I vaguely remember his brother, Rafesson Nightwolf, being pitched as a possible date for my scheduled appearance at the United States Marine Corps Ball. But then my team decided to go with a Marine who’d recently been fitted with two AI limbs. That was more in line with my brand of princess-next-door with a heart of gold.

The PR team had signed off on Rafesson Nightwolf, but they would never sign off on his brother. And I know exactly why as he shakes a bunch of beans into the top of his coffee maker, then jams his thumb into the machine’s button.

He’s too rough. Not just unpolished…but more like he took the polish, looked at it, then dropped it in the trash can and set it on fire while saying “I don’t give a fuck about your polish” to the person who tried to bestow it upon him.

“You’re staring, again,” he says. He doesn’t look up from the coffee machine, but he sounds amused.

“I apologize,” I say, scrambling out of bed so I can join him at the counter. “That was terribly rude. I hope you’ll forgive me.”

He turns and leans one hip against the counter before saying, “I don’t give a shit about your manners, L-heart,” with a lazy up and down look. “Never have. Never will.”

His comment makes me crook my head at him, wondering what he does give a shit about when it comes to me. Why we were together in the first place? Because even though he’s insanely hot, and that strange voice inside me continues to insist both he and his unusually spare apartment smell right, I cannot for the life of me figure out what in the world brought and kept the two of us together.

He’s so very obviously a bad boy. And I am the living archetype of a good girl.

Not with him, the strange voice inside of me suggests. Not with him.

“Thank you for inviting me here,” I say, resolutely ignoring the voice. “I know this must be difficult for you…”

“Not as difficult as it is for you,” he answers, handing me the first cup of coffee his machine spits out.

I accept it and take a careful sip—a little harsh but not undrinkable—before I bring up the subject I was afraid to mention during our awkward car ride from Oklahoma. “Do you mind telling me what happened during the months we were together? My cousin says we were…acquaintances. But I’ve met your family, and according to my mother, you went to extraordinary lengths to find me.”

“Yeah, that’s right. We started out as fuck buddies, but then we stopped being stupid about shit and got engaged.”

I startle, not just because of his language but also because I’m wondering, “Are you always this…blunt?”

“Yeah,” he answers with a half-shrug.

“And I liked that?” Back when the family’s PR team was still in charge of finding my dates, “Eloquence” had been at the top of my list of must-haves when it came to men I was willing to spend a few hours with during my scheduled appearances. I wasn’t sure this guy even knew how to spell that word.

Another half-shrug. “You’re not the type who’d let me know if you liked it or not, are you?”

No…I’m not. Before Ethan arrived on the scene, I put together plans for how to break up with guys without taking a hit to my reputation. Which meant I somehow managed to tell three long-term boyfriends it was over without ever letting them in on why it was over.

“I’m not like the other guys you’ve dated,” he guesses. “Not the sort you typically like, right?”

“Tell me what types of guys you think I like?” I ask, honestly curious about the answer. Because what I like and what’s best for my brand had become interchangeable as far as my PR team was concerned.

“Clean-cut, fancy as shit with a heart of gold…looking to put a ring on it,” he answers. “But that’s not me.”

I’m feeling somewhat aghast that he’s landed so close to the mark of the type of man my PR team decided would be the best fit for their “American Princess.”

“But you are a Nightwolf,” I point out. “And according to my team, you’re a pediatric surgeon. So somewhere in there you must have a heart of gold.”

He smirks. “More like a heart of corrugated metal.”

He gets quiet then. “Your PR Team tell you what I did before I became a doctor?”

“Well, no. Not exactly. They didn’t have all the details, even with the information given to them by my father’s security team. I know you were in the Marines, right, and spent a few years in black ops?”

He lifts his cup of coffee and takes a long sip. “Yeah, I was a Marine for about three years, but I was running black ops longer than that. For the U.S. Government and my tribe.”

“You were black ops before you became a doctor,” I repeat. Then ask, “Are you still running those kinds of missions?” Because I know having a seemingly normal job doesn’t necessarily mean someone has fully retired from black ops. Heck, a few guys who work at the compound still have to “disappear” once in a while when called upon by their former military bosses.

Knud shakes his head. “No, I don’t do that shit anymore.”

“What made you stop?” I ask, sensing a story.

He shakes his head with a wry grimace. “Had an operation go sideways. I was sent to kill a target but I was supposed to make it look like a suicide. The guy had a vintage car in his garage so I settled on carbon monoxide. It would have worked, too, because he’d just divorced, and among my tribe, that’s the number one reason for most male suicides. But his ex-wife got in a fight with their kid who she was supposed to have for the week. She dropped him off at the front door without warning.”

“He saw you kill his father?” I ask, my heart going out to the child, even as I easily processed the mission gone wrong aspect of the story after a lifetime of being kept company by security guards.

“Nah, the target was already dead by then. But turns out the kid was a fainter. Collapsed as soon as he walked into the garage. But I didn’t have eyes on the garage. I saw him get dropped off, but all I could do was stay in my stake out spot and wait to see if any of the lights came on in the house. They never did…”

He trails off.

And though my heart is pinched with fear I ask, “Did he die?”

“No. In the end, I compromised the mission and opened the garage. Got the boy out of there and took him to a hospital. My brother, who was the director of black ops for my tribe at the time, was pissed. But I guess the experience broke something in me. I was good at my job. But I almost killed a kid—and even though I saved him in the end, I knew he’d still be traumatized for life because of what he saw—what I took from him. Nah, my, um…soul wouldn’t let me do it anymore. Kept telling me I had to make a change. Start doing something to wipe the stain of what I’d done off—but some stains don’t wipe out so easy, I guess.”

“Your soul told you this?” I repeat, wondering if it’s similar to the new voice I have inside me. The one that refused to let me simply return to my easy life in Texas.

He shoots me a sharp look before answering, “Yeah, like I said, I’m not like your other boyfriends.”

He’s answered my questions but I feel like he’s still keeping something from me.

“Were you using your job to help manage your mood disorder?”

“Wow…so that was in the report, too?” he asks before taking another sip of coffee.

“My dad’s people are pretty thorough once they have a name—or in your case, names,” I answer, voice gentle. “I imagine some algorithm picked you out for black ops because people who’ve lived with a mood disorder often have far more self-management skills than those who don’t—especially in the case of young adults.”

He snorted. “I almost forgot that about you.”

“Forgot what?”

“How you drill down and understand the hell out of shit until it almost looks like a positive the way you tell it.”

“Is that why you fell in love with me? Because I turned everything into a positive?”

He stares at me. And an embarrassing thought occurs to me. “We were in love, right? I wasn’t… using you to get back at my parents.”

He stares at me for a long uncomfortable moment, before saying, “I’m not sure. Now that I know who you really are, and why you really moved to Kansas, I guess that’s a question I could ask myself. But on the other hand, it doesn’t matter, because I’m in love with you. So I don’t care if you chose me just because you’re trying to get back at your daddy, I’m just glad you did.”

His words stop my heart. And, I feel compelled to tell him, “I decided to come home with you because my father finally admitted he made a mistake with Ethan. He said…”

I shake my head in wonder, having never heard Dad outright approve of a man I was dating, much less encourage me to return to him. But my next words are completely true. “He said that the man I chose was a much better match for me, and that he trusts you, because you’re the first guy I’ve dated who cares more about me than himself. My mom also thought it was important for me to stay with you. She said you helped her see how much she still loved my father, and why I’d fallen for you in Kansas. I trust them, and there’s this voice inside of me. It’s new and possibly related to my brain injury—but nonetheless, I trust it, and it’s saying you, you and nothing but you…”

I trail off, expecting a worried look, like the one I got from my doctors when I told them about my suddenly hypersensitive nose.

But Knud goes very, very still, as if he’s trying to control something inside of himself, before he says with a tight voice. “I love you so damn much, Layla. And I wish to hell you remembered me. I wish you still loved me back.”

“I wish I remembered you, as well,” I say, my own voice growing tight despite all my media training.

But I don’t remember him. And for moments on end, we stare at each other. Cursing our star-crossed fate.

Then I say, “Grace told me we may have gotten into a fight—a bad one.”

He expels a long breath, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck like this is the last thing he wants to talk about. Nevertheless, he says, “Yeah, I got home, and you jumped out of a closet at me, and I swung on you.”

“Oh, no!” I say, covering my mouth with my hand. “Did I hurt you? I’m so sorry if I did!”

He shakes his head at me, expression hugely bemused. “No, I mean, yeah you blinded me a little, but that’s not why we got into the fight. You wanted to talk about my mood disorder, and that was against the rules—”

“To what rules are you referring?” I cut him off to ask.

He tells me about a list of rules, which both do and don’t sound like me. While I wouldn’t have thought myself capable of taking on a sex buddy just a few days ago, if I had, I would have definitely made a list of rules governing our relationship.

“I understand, you were upset because I broke the ‘no personal details’ rule,” I say when he finishes explaining.

He nods. “And you were pissed because you knew that was bullshit. We’d been breaking rules left and right, I just didn’t want you to get too close.”

“Why not?”

“Because I was afraid I’d hurt you.”

My smile turns quizzical. “You were afraid you’d hurt me, after I hurt you?”

“Believe me, my reasoning made sense…until it didn’t. Okay, you’re doing it again.”

“What am I doing?” I ask, a little startled by the accusation.

“Looking at me like you completely understand every word coming out of my mouth.”

“Have you not felt understood before?” I ask softly.

He looks at me for a long time, before shaking his head. “I’ve been a loner most of my life.”

“Because you were afraid of yourself. Afraid of your temper.”

He nodded.

And I have to ask, “Are we always this honest with each other?”

“No,” he answers, voice thoughtful. “But we were real. You once said I made you feel like a real person, because before me—”

“My whole life had been Photoshopped,” I finish.

He straightens. “You remember saying that?”

“No,” I answer with an apologetic smile. “It’s something I’ve thought, but have never said out loud…before you.”

He sets down his coffee cup. “Well, I guess that’s what you wanted the night of that fight. For us to start being honest with each other. But I was being stupid about it, so you threw up deuces. Real polite deuces, but you were out.”

“And what made you finally decide to stop ‘being stupid?’” I ask, completely enraptured by this story, which is apparently based on my life.

“You asked me to marry you, so I had to make a decision.”

I blink. And then blink some more. Because surely, I heard that wrong. “I asked you to marry me?”

“Yeah, you got down on both knees, right in front of Founder’s Cabin, which is—”

“I know where it is,” I say, cutting him off with an upheld hand.

Then I look at him in a new light and say, “I can only assume the sex was really good.”

To my surprise, the somber guy standing across from me bursts into laughter. “Yeah, it was.”

“Was it like what happens in the movies?” I ask setting my coffee cup down. “Did we rip each other’s clothes off and do it everywhere, including restaurant bathrooms and on top of conference tables?”

“No, it wasn’t like that,” he answers with a lifted brow. “But it was rough and…I don’t know. Dirty. Wrong. No-holds-barred sex.”

My eyes widen and my body swells with reawakened arousal as I say, “I, Layla Rustanov, the former first daughter of the United States, had dirty, wrong, no hold bars sex?!?”

He nods with a cocky smirk. “Yeah, you definitely did. Up against the wall. On this counter. Once in the bathtub. But mostly on that bed right there.”

He tilts his head and I follow his gaze over to his huge bed. Then, though I’ve spent the last eighteen years of my life thinking before I talk, the truth slips out in an angry blurt, “I am so pissed I don’t remember any of this!” I slam the side of my fist on the counter before asking, “Why are you smiling? This is terrible!”

“Because that reaction is totally you,” he answers. “This is the girl I fell in love with.”

Which is strange, because my reaction… I analyze it and find, yes, that was honestly how I felt. Which means the Layla this guy knew, the Layla he was most familiar with, was one that hadn’t hidden her feeling behind smiles and branding.

We look at each other again, this time in an old and new light.

It’s a truly touching moment, until I say, “Would you be opposed to having sex with me again?”

37

Would you be opposed to having sex with me again?

Knud stares at her for a few tense beats before finally managing to choke out, “You serious?”

He can smell her arousal. Had smelled it last night, and then once again as soon as she woke up that morning. But after their silent car ride yesterday and this morning’s bittersweet conversation, he hadn’t dared hope she was anywhere near ready to be with him like that again.

“Yes, I believe I am,” she answers in that overly enunciated way of hers before walking away from the counter…and crawling back into his bed on her hands and knees.

She doesn’t know any better. Can’t know any better. But…

In the next moment, he’s across the room covering her back and pushing down her pants at the same time. So fucking desperate to get inside her. Inside his mate. Where he belongs.

But something stays his wolf. He reminds himself this isn’t an anonymous score he brought home from the nightclub, or the human woman he tried to NSA. She’s the mother of his child. His mate. His entire reason for becoming Knud Nightwolf again.

Restraining his wolf, he drops his head to her shoulder and tells her, “There are levels to our sex. But I don’t want to hurt you.”

“How many levels?” she asks, voice panting in a way that makes his dick painfully hard.

“Ten. One is missionary, five is—”

“Level ten,” she calls out, cutting him off even faster than the first time they did this. “Level ten.”

He doesn’t pull her hair—still too much of a doctor to mess with a brain injury, even after a summer long hiatus.

But he does purposefully make his body heavier on top of hers, holding her down as he informs her, “We had rules for this, too. Only words you’re allowed to say at this level are ‘More. Yeah. Please. Fuck me harder.’”

“Oh my gosh, I agreed to that?” she asks, her voice full of wonder. “I let you do that?”

“You let me do nothing,” he growls back. “I took you. I claimed your pussy with my dick. And you loved every minute of it.”

A burst of arousal hits the air in response to his words, fragrant and heady.

But he doesn’t fall into the trap.

Instead, he reminds her how good it used to be by playing with her pussy and whispering filthy words in her ear until his fingers are sticky with her juices and she’s moaning, “Please, please, please!”

“There’s my nasty girl. Love it when you fucking beg,” he says, before rocking her back and impaling her on his cock. His eyes nearly cross at the feel of her after so long apart. And this time, there’s no wrapper between them, or heat scent making them crazy. He can feel the wet squeeze of her around his entire cock.

And he keeps her right there, one hand covering her breasts, the other working her pussy as he growls, “Take this dick, L-heart. Take it right now. It’s all for you, baby. It’s all for you.”

She circles her hips into his upward thrusts but the position soon becomes overwhelming. “Please! Please!” she mews, losing the rhythm.

“I’ve got you,” he answers and like a reward, he places her in the most intense version of the wolf cage position. His chest heavy on her back, his arms bent on either side of her face so she can’t move her body, not even a millimeter, as he thrusts into her hard from behind.

And he knows her wolf must be losing its mind because Layla goes straight from pretty pleases to a guttural chant of, “Fuck me! Fuck me! Oh God, fuck me!”

Hearing the dirty curses words fall from her American princess lips incenses him. Forget fragile. His hips go sloppy with the need to release in her. To claim her all over again. To make the mother of his child his once more.

“I’m going to fuck you until you come hard on my dick, baby. Then when you’re done making it all dirty, I’m going to keep you quiet by putting my dick in your mouth. Make you clean me up, before I put it in another hole. Because I’m claiming every inch of you tonight. Let me hear you say it: what’s going to happen?”

“I’m going to come!” she gasped. “I’m going to come all over your dick, make it dirty.”

“And then what’s going to happen?”

“No talking. I’m going to clean you up, and then you’re going to—”

The orgasm cuts her off, taking her voice along with her words.

As she comes hard around his cock, Knud releases with one final push. Just like old times, but somehow it still feels new. And as he streams into her, he has the thought that this is how they’ll do it. They’ll rebuild their relationship. Brick by brick, memory by memory. Level ten and level five sex. And this time, not only will he make her come, he’ll communicate like a motherfucker, and bake her cookies when she’s had a bad day.

On that thought they both collapse onto the mattress. Completely spent, even though they’d only woke up a little over an hour ago.

But then Layla sighs and says dreamily, “Oh, Buddy, that was even better than the first time. Give me a moment and I’ll let you shut me up…”

He freezes.

And so does she. Because… “Buddy! That’s what I used to call you. You hated it.”

“I did because…”

“…you didn’t want me to think we were friends or anything. Yes, you said that to me so many times!”

She sits up on one elbow, blinking as a trickle of previously hidden memories begin coming back to her. “The doctors said this might happen. They told me to do normal things, and my memories might return in a blink while I’m in the shower or sitting on the toilet—”

She stops, her eyes going soft. “You were my new normal. That’s what I remember most. How normal you made—make—me feel. I didn’t know you were a Nightwolf the first time around. I remember I found out who you really are at your uncle’s cabin. Oh! And your mom—she said my mom was on her ‘free pass list.’”

“Wow,” Knud said, “If there was one thing I was really hoping you’d permanently forget…”

“But I haven’t forgotten that,’’ she says with a teasing smile, “…or the feeling of finally understanding it wasn’t just me. You have a lovely family and you were pushing them away, too. You were pushing us all away because you were afraid you’d hurt us. But you wouldn’t ever do that, Knud. I was planning to spend the rest of my life proving to you what a good man you are but…”

Her eyes widen and then darken with horror. “I— I couldn’t do that because you turned into a wolf.” She stops for a moment to collect herself. Then shakes her head. “No, something’s wrong. This must have something to do with my injury…a hallucination or…something.”

Layla trails off, clearly waiting for him to jump in and reassure her that what she thinks she remembers couldn’t have happened. Didn’t happen.

But he can’t. And it’s been three months. “Layla, L-heart…for a number of reasons I wasn’t able to tell you everything before. But now that you’re carrying our child…things have changed and it’s time you knew. I’m…my people…we’re shifters, what humans refer to as werewolves.”

Layla blinks at him and pulls herself all the way up into a ramrod straight seated position in the bed. “You are not a werewolf,” she says, a dazed expression on her face.

“Yeah, actually I am,” he answers, wanting to follow Layla into a sitting up position. But he stays lying down, so as not to alarm her.

She stares down at him in his still prone position. Waiting for him to crack a smile and admit he’s playing a trick on her. But when he doesn’t she says, “So you’re a real werewolf. Like in the movies.”

Knud grimaces. “I mean, some movies get it right, but most don’t.”

“But you’re a werewolf,” she insists. “And I’m pregnant with your werewolf baby?”

Which brings them to yet another delicate topic. “About that… You’re not just pregnant with my baby. See, shifters can only impregnate other shifters. So the only way you can be carrying our baby is…”

Her eyes widen. “Are you kidding me? I’m a werewolf, too?”

“Yeah,” Knud confirms, waiting for her reaction.

38

As it turns out, Layla’s reaction involves a lot of talking. And shopping.

“If I’m a werewolf now, why didn’t I change with the full moon?” she asks, keeping her voice low as they test out a dark grey couch at IKEA.

“Because wolves can’t shift when they’re pregnant. In most cases, the male isn’t supposed to shift either. But matings between humans and shifters can be weird. They don’t always go according to plan. Which means I’m probably going to continue taking sick days once a month while you’re pregnant.”

She shakes her head. “And my mother really knows all about this?” she asks.

Knud begins to reply, only to be cut off by her next question: “And what about my father? Does he know?”

“Officially, no. Your mom does, but as a former president of the United States, she was sworn to secrecy—”

“Oh, okay. In that case, he knows. If those two had been able to keep a secret from each other, I never would have ended up in Kansas not talking to both of them.”

“Wow. We have a lot more in common than I originally thought,” she says later as they send their IKEA bags off in a driverless car that will drop the packages off in front of Knud’s building. “So you’re a prince of Colorado. Does that make me a princess?”

“No, it makes you the mate of a prince,” he answers. “Sorry. Our people only award titles if you’re married to a king, so you’ll just have to settle for being America’s princess,” he answers with a nod toward a bunch of people at the driverless stand, pointing at her and whispering behind their hands.

“How about that voice inside of me I referenced earlier?” she asks as they walk toward the small grocery store closest to his apartment.

“That’s what we call our ‘wolves,’” he answers. “It’s kind of like a sixth animal sense manifesting as a voice. Usually mine’s pretty Kumbaya . How about yours?”

She thinks about it. “It’s cynical and growly and extremely determined,” she answers. “I’m a little afraid of it.”

Knud laughs. “Sounds like a badass bitch, I can’t wait to meet her in 12 months.”

Layla must have come here a few times, because a few of the cashiers call out to her by name as they walk into the store, like an old famous friend. “How you doing there, Layla! Good to see you again! Glad to see you’re feeling better after your accident!”

“I’m great, Henry! It’s so lovely to see you again, too, Marta. I am feeling so much better, Jenny, thank you for your good wishes,” Layla answers, seeming to pull their names out of nowhere.

“Layla! Layla!” an older black woman, standing in front of an end-cap mustard display, calls out, waving her hands in the air. “I love your mama!”

“Thank you!” Layla calls back with a gracious wave.

Despite the federal ban on not recording people who don’t also have bioware installed, a camera immediately lights up the woman’s right eye.

“Hey…” Knud starts to say, moving to block Layla from her illegal image grab.

“It’s okay,” Layla tells him, and she waves, so that the woman can snap her picture. By the time she lowers her hand, there are several people looking straight at her with lit up camera eyes.

“That your man?!” the original picture taker asks, still recording.

“He is my man, yes, thank you for asking,” Layla answers. “In fact, we’re engaged.”

“What?” Marta, the cashier says from behind her register. “I was going to try to get your number for my youngest son. He’s an accountant.”

Layla shoots Knud an “I told you so!” look, before she answers, “Sorry, Martha, I’m off the market.”

“But hold on…I don’t see a ring on your finger!” Marta points out, a hopeful note creeping into her voice.

“That’s because she didn’t give me one when she asked me to marry her,” Knud calls back.

All the cashiers gape at them.

“Wow, you are really good at shutting people up,” Layla whispers behind her hand. “And by the way, thank you. No matter what happens now, thank you.”

He stares down at her, almost used to being confused by her now. “What do you think is going to happ—”

This time she’s the one to shut him up, pulling him to her for a heartfelt kiss.

By the time they return to his apartment, the story of their engagement is all over social media. And two brand new security bots have taken up residence on either side of his door.

“Guess you didn’t have to buy those biometric locks at the hardware store,” Layla says, before entering the apartment and calling out, “Hello, Papa! Hello, Mama!”

“I see you two have made it back from your errands without falling into any rivers,” her father says, standing up from a glass table to pull Layla into a hug, before nodding at Knud. “Adequate job, today, Nightwolf.”

Knud’s too busy double taking to answer, because as it turns out, he and Layla also didn’t need to buy furniture.

“Jesus!” Knud says as he looks around his place, which is now filled with colorful furniture, including a red couch, a huge geometric floor rug, and a four-person glass table currently occupied by her parents and one of their guards.

Her mom purses her lips together and shakes her head. “Did that young man seriously just take the Lord’s name in vain? Delia’s going to have to work with him on that.”

“Can we please not involve Delia and her team in this?” Layla asks. Then she starts calmly putting the groceries away, as if finding the apartment already completely kitted out and her parents sitting at the new glass four top was neither surprising nor unexpected.

“Is this a coffeemaker?” Knud asks, going over to a shiny red spout and circle drain embedded in the top of his counter where his sturdy coffeemaker used to sit. The old granite counter has been replaced with a gorilla glass surface, and touchpad buttons for everything from coffee to stove setting options glow underneath. The cabinets above and below have also been replaced by sliding gorilla glass, and Knud can only imagine what kind of AI he’ll find when he touches the open icons on all the dark doors.

“Yes, it is a coffeemaker, and if you’re making yourself a cup I’ll take a cappuccino, thanks,” Eva Rustanov answers Knud, before turn her warm gaze back to Layla. “And as for not bringing Delia into this, I’m sorry, but that boat sailed as soon as you kissed this little boy in public, darlin’.”

As if on cue, the door opens and a very dark-skinned woman with very blond hair enters followed by a three-person team of minions. All three have their eyes in semi-permanent bio-status. Off to the side and raised, as if they only barely exist in the real world.

Soon every new seat in his tiny apartment, which was has never hosted more than two people was filled. And like a gracious hostess, Layla starts taking drink orders while her parents and Delia discuss wedding details, as if the two people who plan to get married aren’t even in the room.

“Is it always like this?” Knud leans over and asks when Layla returns to the new embedded coffee machine with a phone screened filled with coffee orders.

“Yes, always,” she answers with an apologetic smile.

And that’s when he realizes…the kiss in the store. It hadn’t been an announcement, it had been a goodbye. To the secret love life they used to know before… all of this.

“Do you still want to go on with me?” she asks as if sensing his conclusion. “Because if not, we should let the PR team know while they here.”

She’s putting on a brave face but Knud can smell her fear. He looks around his apartment which is now filled with parents, PR, and protection.

“Do I want to be with someone who’s going to turn my loner life into a circus?” he asks.

That is when he finds out he can be a contrarian, too, because his answer to that question is, “Hell yeah.”

He smooths back her perfect curls and kisses her hello, saying “come right in” to the new, sure-to-be-crazy life they’ll be sharing together.

But a knock on the door cuts the tender moment short.

“Uncatalogued visitor!” one of the guards call out, obviously in sync with the security bots outside the door. “No weapons.”

No weapons means the unexpected visitor probably isn’t a threat, but uncatalogued means whoever it is, isn’t officially in the international database.

Another wolf, Knud senses.

And he’s right. But still his mouth drops open when he sees who the guards escort into the room.

“Myrna,” he says, blinking, because Hot Valkyrie Babysitter is no longer a teenager, but a grown woman… wearing leggings and a swing top. Still hot, with a underlying fierceness that crackled in her eyes, but a good ten to fifteen years older than the girl Knud had known in the Viking age.

“It is good to see you, Knud, second son of Rafe,” she says with a short head bow, her Viking era accent unchanged, even with the modern overlay.

“Uh, you, too, Myrna, daughter of the Fenrir,” he answers, before asking. “What are you doing here?”

“So you know this uncatalogued woman?” a guard asks, looking for a signal to stand down.

“Yes, she’s my brother’s…”

He’s not sure how to describe her with so many humans in the room.

“I am your brother’s nothing,” Myrna answers, her voice thickening with anger. “That is why I have come to you. I wish no longer to be his mate, and I need your help to get away from him.”

Whoa, Knud thinks. Right before his bioware explodes with a piercing emergency siren followed by, “Hail from President Nightwolf! Hail from President Nightwolf!”

“And to think,” a wide-eyed Layla says beside him. “I thought it would be my family bringing most of the drama to this relationship.”

Dearest You!

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this novel. Knud was one of my most difficult characters ever to write, because he hits a little close to home.

I really do believe if you’re from a large family as I am, you either have a Knud or you are the Knud—a prodigal, who goes away and shuts everyone out for reasons they deem perfectly valid until somehow they come to see that it’s just fear. If you have a Knud, I hope your prodigal returns to you one day. If you are a Knud, I hope you find your way back to your family.

I also hope you enjoyed this story. It’s always really fun to combine my contemporary and paranormal worlds, and I loved that these two total opposites, turned out to be not so opposite after all.

My next few releases will be modern day contemporaries, but I’m really looking forward to returning with Rafes’ and Ola’s stories later this fall. Until then…

So much love,

Theodora Taylor

About the Author

Theodora Taylor writes hot books with heart. When not reading, writing, or reviewing, she enjoys spending time with her amazing family, going on date nights with her wonderful husband, and attending parties thrown by others. She now lives in Los Angles, California, and she LOVES to hear from readers. So drop her a line or friend her on Facebook. And, if you love Interracial Romance as much as she does, sign up for her IR Weekly Bestsellers newsletter!

Also by Theodora Taylor

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