Jane lowered her quickly expanding body to the first step of their little cabin in the woods. Soon she’d barely be able to sit on a sofa, and she couldn’t wait. A smile played on her lips and she absentmindedly rubbed her tummy as she watched the goings-on in the clearing. Or rather, the not-goings-on.

The Coleman pack had jammed themselves as close to the tree line as they could on one side, while the Warrens huddled and whispered amongst themselves on the other.

Seventh-graders at their first school dance couldn’t look more uncomfortable.

It was to be expected, of course, but she’d had some fantasy that her mating the Warren alpha would magically inspire her people to be happy about merging packs. Reese’s people had taken the news well, but the Coleman wolves still weren’t sure this entire situation wasn’t some kind of elaborate trap to kill them all.

Immediately following the fight between Reese and her father a few weeks earlier, Lance had ceded control of the Coleman pack and all its land to Reese. Then Ginger had spirited him away to the National Healing Center in Ft. Lauderdale. Only after Ian’s six enforcers confirmed the story did her old pack believe the events, but that didn’t make them happy about the transition. They were Colemans, through and through, and Warrens were their sworn enemies.

A full week after her parents had been at the Healing Center, Jane had finally received news on her father’s condition. Lance had been dosed with a slow-acting poison that drove him insane over the course of several months.

The healers had only seen the poison once before, about ten years earlier. The alpha of a pack somewhere in Georgia had created it for his mate to make her more docile and controllable, but his plan backfired when she went feral and killed a human couple. Thankfully, their teenage daughter had survived unscathed, but she’d been forced to watch the rabid wolf tear apart her parents. The National Circle had acted swiftly to put down the insane wolf, and to imprison her mate for not only causing the situation, but for allowing her to run rampant.

Once the healers had been able to identify the poison in Lance’s system, treatment was simple. It would take time, but eventually, Lance Coleman would be back to his gruff, demanding, loving ways.

The only question remaining was who’d poisoned him. It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to sniff out the culprit—Ian.

As they’d discovered, Ian had been dosing Lance long before Peter had been killed. In fact, they suspected Ian had been planning the murder of his father and Lance for a very long time. With both of them out of the way, he’d believed he would inherit the pack…and Jane.

A shudder raised the hairs on Jane’s arms at the thought. Then gratitude filled her heart and her eyes with love for her family—old, new, and the one soon to come. She couldn’t wait to introduce the little niblet to his or her grandparents, but that would have to wait until Lance was fully healed.

As her gaze swept over the gathering of wolves, Jane realized they were all healing. Ian’s treachery had nearly destroyed so many lives. The enforcers he’d recruited had been fed a bunch of lies about Lance going feral. They’d been told that Ian wanted to save their alpha from being put down. If his plan had succeeded, the entire Coleman pack might have been banished—not just Ian. She didn’t want to think about what would have happened to her and her baby if she hadn’t managed to escape. That was behind them now. Today would be the first step toward healing their packs.

The door creaked behind her, and every eye in the clearing turned their focus to the cabin. Her mate’s scent hit Jane before she felt his big hand on her back as he crouched beside her. The transition might be rough, but smiling up into Reese’s warm eyes, she knew it would all work out.

“Ready?” he whispered.

At her nod, he helped her up. But before addressing the gathered wolves, he leaned down so only she could hear. “Just got off the phone with your father.”

Her father had called Reese? Willingly? “Is he okay?”

Reese smiled at the implication her father would have to be insane to reach out to his new son-in-law.

“He’s fine. Well, better anyway. He wanted to tell me—” Reese paused to clear a frog that had suddenly lodged in his throat. “He wanted to tell me how sorry he was about my dad. He said long ago, farther back than he could remember, they’d been friends. Whatever had caused their falling out—his memory is still fuzzy from the poison—Lance says he regrets not mending fences when he could.”

Tears sprang into Jane’s eyes, which wasn’t completely unexpected. She cried a lot these days, mostly happy tears.

“That’s so good to hear,” she said, her voice squeaking with emotion.

“I just wanted you to know. Now let’s do this—”

Brody jogged up to them before Reese could finish. “Sorry to interrupt, but I thought you’d like to know the sentries have confirmed Ian is off our combined lands. He’s no longer a threat.”

Reese nodded curtly, his lips pressed together. Exile was no slap on the wrist for their kind. It was a fate worse than death, and the sentence was not handed down lightly. Ian was doomed to wander around alone, with no alpha to ground him and no pack to support him, until he lost his mind and went feral. He’d probably get shot by some human protecting his animals or family from a rabid wolf. It was no less than he deserved, but still difficult to think about.

Jane sent up a small prayer of gratitude that her idiotic plan to live in the human world hadn’t worked out. No doubt she would have become just another statistic. She never would have found the eternal bond of her true mate, the support of a pack twice the size of what it might have been, and a pup to raise without fear of being discovered.

Reese clapped his hands, snapping Jane out of her thoughts and drawing the attention of both packs. Blond and brunet heads swiveled toward them, staring at their powerful alpha.

“Today is an important day, maybe the most important in any of our lives,” he started, addressing both sides of the clearing. “Today we join together to create a single, unified, powerful pack.”

Light murmurs, mostly from the Colemans, drifted across the crowded space. Many still weren’t sure this was a good idea, and who could blame them. After all, their packs had been enemies for as long as Jane could remember. But if anyone could unite them, it was Reese.

“Both packs have endured heartache over the last year,” he continued. “We lost our alpha, but you Colemans have lost so much more. You probably feel as if you’ve lost everything—your alpha, your homelands, your very identity as a pack. Which is why I’ve decided that Colemans will not become Warrens.”

More murmurs as Colemans glanced at each other, worried about what this new enemy alpha had planned for them. One brave female stepped forward, her voice shaking as she spoke. “So, you’re going to exile us as well?”

Reese’s face softened, and he smiled at the woman. Jane leaned in and whispered, “That’s Claudia.”

“No, Claudia,” he said without missing a beat, “you’re a member of my pack now, and I will fight to protect you, even if that means my own death. But too much pain exists between the Colemans and the Warrens, so we will be known as neither. From this day forward, we are the Wilde Ridge pack!”

A brief moment of shocked silence fell over the crowd. Then the world exploded with whoops, hollers and cheers. Colemans and Warrens—no, ex-Colemans and ex-Warrens—crossed the space between them and started shaking hands, some even hugged, however briefly. Thankfully, no one was in their wolf form, or there most certainly would have been a fair amount of butt sniffing going on.

Once the commotion died down a little, Brody dropped to his knee before Reese and then whipped out a huge hunting knife and pressed the edge to the back of his forearm. “I would be honored to become the first to pledge my fealty to the Wilde Ridge pack. I freely offer my own blood as my sacred oath of allegiance to you, my alpha.”

Before Brody could cut himself, Reese stopped him. “I must do one thing first, before I receive anyone else.”

It was Reese’s turn to drop to his knees… right in front of Jane. She looked around her, thoroughly confused. Then he took her hands in his and placed them on her tummy.

“Jane, I vow to you all of my loyalty and love until the end of time. For you, I would move heaven and earth. Will you join me in leading our new pack to a happy and prosperous future?”

Once again, the tears flowed, but Jane knew her hormones had nothing to do with it this time. This time it was all about love. She gazed over the newly united pack and was met by smiles and even more tears. Until her dying day, she would never forget this moment.

Nodding, tears dripping all over Reese’s upturned face, she shouted her answer. “Yes!”

The pack broke out into more applause and cheers while Reese leaned into to drop a kiss on her stomach. Just then, the baby kicked, and kicked hard, right against Reese’s lips.

Jane sniffed back her tears and laughed. “I think the baby agrees too.”

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Interested in more Howls Romances from Celia Kyle & Marina Maddix?

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