Chapter 1
Nearly Christmas, two years later
Owen Nottingham, Arctic wolf and private investigator, had made daily treks into the wilderness ever since he’d seen the white wolf across the river. He knew she had to be an Arctic lupus garou just like him. But the fact she was running with humans had to mean she had lots more control over her shifting or she couldn’t be with them on a long-term hiking and canoeing trip. Maybe she’d been born as a lupus garou. Maybe her wolf roots went so far back that she was a royal and completely in control of her shifting at all times.
One thing was for certain—she wasn’t one of the Arctic wolves who had changed him and his friends. He would never forget that day five years ago when he and his PI partner David Davis were hunting for bear in Maine, never having come close to finding one in the five years they’d been trying. They’d spotted a bear, and the hunt was on. Never in a million years would he or David have thought his good friend would end up having a heart attack.
Nor that the Arctic wolves the guide had on the hunt weren’t all wolf and that they were all from the same lupus garou pack. Neither the guide nor Owen could do anything to save David’s life way out in the woods. Owen had been willing to pay any price to save his friend. Whatever it cost. He’d envisioned the guide calling in a helicopter and air evacuating David to a hospital.
Owen had to admit that he’d agreed to it. Anything. Like making a pact with a devil wolf. The wolves wouldn’t have bitten them if he hadn’t asked for the guide’s help. Owen hadn’t known what was going on at the time. Only that the wolves had bitten both of them—David, to give him their enhanced healing abilities to repair his heart, and Owen, because he couldn’t witness what they were without paying the consequences. Which meant becoming one of them or dying.
After that, the pack took them in. They had to because David and Owen had no control over the shifting, but they were captives just the same, until one of the pack members had helped them to escape. So Owen knew all of the members of that pack. Those were the only Arctic wolves he’d ever met, beyond his own small pack.
More than anything in the world, he wanted to find her. Wanted to get to know her. Locating her could mean finding a mate for either him or one of his bachelor male partners in the PI agency. He still envisioned her standing near the river’s edge—half hidden in the brush, watching him, wide-eyed—and wondered where the hell she’d come from. He knew she’d been a she because she was smaller than the males. She had to be a shifter. Arctic wolves didn’t live in this part of the country.
Still, he’d tried to locate her after that, to no avail. She and her friends had taken a canoe trip after a few days, and he never knew what had become of her. He wasn’t even sure which of the women she’d been.
He was afraid he’d be looking for her until he was old and gray and might never see her again.
Owen opened up the new PI office that morning in White River Falls, Minnesota, the Christmas wreath jingling on the door. He was eager to make a go of a brick-and-mortar business again after seven years of working online, unable to set up a real office.
None of the other investigators believed they’d get a call first thing that morning, so they were coming in a little later. He finished hanging his sign on his door and stringing more Christmas lights on the miniature tree in his office. The whole pack—three bachelor males, and one couple and their two sons and a daughter—had decorated the seven-foot tree in the lobby so it looked cheery and welcoming sitting next to one of the front windows.
When Owen had settled down at his desk with a cup of coffee and a Christmas tree–decorated donut, he began checking his emails. He had only read one when he got the call that would be the first job they received at the office. He was enthusiastic about solving the missing person’s case promptly, hoping for their first good review.
* * *
Ever since that day in the woods, Clara Hart had been a very different person, her whole world turned inside out. Her friends were no longer her friends, and her adoptive parents had disowned her. She’d changed her name to her pseudonym, Candice Mayfair. She’d moved from the suburbs of Houston to the wilderness in South Dakota. It was beautiful, perfect for her to run free and be herself. Or rather—her other self. The wolf part of her that howled to be free, especially during the occurrence of the full moon. But at other times too, except during the new moon. She’d finally realized this by keeping a calendar of the moon phases at hand at all times to document the trouble she was having with fighting the urge to shift. She’d also purchased dozens of books about werewolves that definitely were not written by real werewolves.
She finished hanging her Christmas wreath on the door, placed a Christmas throw rug she had hooked on the kitchen floor, and added a few more nutcrackers on the mantel. She’d set up her Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving as she’d always done. At least that was something that hadn’t changed. Though last Thanksgiving, she’d had to wait until she turned back into her human form to finish decorating.
After two years, she had finally come to grips with what she was. That she wasn’t going to suddenly be her normal self again. She’d sometimes dreamed she was, but then she’d get the urge to shift and that shattered the illusion.
She suspected everyone she’d known thought she’d gotten into drugs or alcohol, because she’d disappeared from their lives. At first, she’d given excuses for why she couldn’t see them. But then she realized she had to isolate herself from anyone she’d known in the past. They didn’t understand what was wrong with her. And she couldn’t explain.
Drinking didn’t stop her from shifting either. She’d learned that the hard way. Being tipsy just made it harder to remove her clothes and shift, which meant she was caught in her clothes as a wolf for several hours one night, thankfully in her own home. So, no more drinking to try to control the shift. She’d also had the uncontrollable urge to howl sometimes when she ran as a wolf, and she was certain that would be a disaster. What if a wolf pack responded? She could be in real trouble.
She’d settled into her life, such as it was, and she’d found that writing about the subject she knew best—werewolves—was a good outlet for her. Using her former talent at writing romantic suspense, she’d started writing Arctic wolf romances. Unlike in other books where werewolves were hideous monsters out to eat people, her characters were misfits like her. She’d never encountered another like the male and the pup she’d seen that night she was camping. She knew they had to be out there somewhere in the Superior National Forest in Minnesota. She’d never been back there. Why would she be?
She had no idea if werewolves ran as a pack, a family unit, or whatever. What if the beautiful male was mated?
Candice had made a niche for herself on her fifteen acres where she still could get internet, with a small town nearby for groceries and anything else she needed. She could avoid people. Except online. Which worked great.
The worst part was her parents disowning her. When her father had a stroke, the full moon had been in full swing. Candice had been so angry, furious with her inability to control the shift. She’d even driven partway home when she’d had to pull over on a dirt road, park, strip, and shift. She knew then she just couldn’t manage the trip. When her mother had gone in for a pacemaker, the moon was nearly full. Her parents’ medical emergencies never came up when the new moon or waxing and waning crescents came around. And she couldn’t explain how she couldn’t travel anywhere as a wolf. That she was liable to turn into a wolf in the emergency room.
Her folks must have thought their adopted daughter didn’t care anything about them, so she was out of their lives. It didn’t matter that she’d come to see them straightaway when it was safer to do so. They believed she hadn’t wanted to help them when they needed her, and she’d felt horrible about it.
She’d learned they’d both died in a car accident, and it broke her heart. She had no one to blame for being unable to be with them when they really needed her but herself. She’d hand-fed a werewolf puppy on a camping trip and had paid the price.