Chapter 1

Present Day

Omaha, Nebraska

Serena Wilder packed up her belongings at the library where she had worked for four years. This was her last day because she and two other women were no longer needed on staff. Between funding cuts and the newly-installed automations—automatic book check-ins and self-checkouts—she knew she had to find another job, but she hadn’t had any success. She packed away her remaining wolf postcards—not of any wolves she knew, but just the generic kind her friends had given her, because they knew how much she loved wolves, though not the reason why—that she had tacked to the board above her desk.

Her other two laid-off coworkers—strictly human—had already left. Serena had always worked around books, from being a teacher in the early days, to working in the first libraries. She loved books. But she’d had to move so many times over the years, and she was always starting over. How could she not? Once she hit her late teens, she had aged so slowly. People would wonder.

Now she’d applied for unemployment compensation, but she had a “waiting week” before she could be paid for subsequent weeks. After that, the amount of her highest quarterly earnings would be divided by thirteen and then again by two. So her compensation would be half of what she was already earning and wouldn’t be enough to support her.

Serena was worried about paying her share of the house she was renting with a male gray wolf, Harold Gaston, but he’d assured her she’d get back on her feet and could pay him later. As a telephone line repairman, he made more money than she did. They’d met at a local diner, the first shifter she’d met in all her years of moving about. They didn’t feel anything for each other in the way wolves who wanted to mate would. Her momma had often shared the story of how she had met Serena’s dad. How they’d fallen in love from the beginning. And how she and her sister would have the same wolfish interest in another wolf when they were older—just like that. When she met Harold, she didn’t feel any of the romantic feelings she thought she should have; nothing about him made her heartbeat quicken.

Serena was an avid romance reader, but she’d never been madly in love or even intrigued by a human, either, though her mother and father would have frowned at her even considering such a thing, if they’d still lived. Wolves mated with wolves for life. Not with humans, though she’d had a few human lovers over the years.

With their sensitive shifter hearing, she found sharing a house with another wolf sure beat living in a noisy apartment complex. And she liked being able to talk to Harold about wolf shifter things that she couldn’t with anyone else.

She had the rest of her day planned—go home, run, shower, and hit the road to apply for yet another round of jobs. Anything would do for now.

When she got home, she was surprised to find Harold standing inside, his sandy hair tousled, his small, black eyes studying her. She thought he’d had to work. He smiled at her, but he shoved his hands in his pockets. He seemed tense, troubled. “I had some business to attend to, so I took the day off. How are you doing?”

“I’ve left the library for good.” She set her bag of wolf cards on the dining room table. “I’m going for a run. Wanna go with me?” It would make her feel better to run off some of the frustration she was feeling.

“No, I’ve really got to take care of some business.”

He didn’t say what his business was, but then again, they were just roommates; he had a right to privacy.

Then she realized why she had been so surprised to see him home, besides the fact that he was supposed to be working. No brand-new red pickup truck was parked out front.

“Having trouble again with your truck?”

“Yeah, pain in the ass. Total lemon.”

“Is that the business you have to take care of?”

“It is.”

“Did you want me to drive you then? I need to apply for some more jobs, but I’d be happy to help you out.”

“No, I’ve got a friend coming by to take me to the dealership shortly.”

But it was all a lie. He was all a lie. Maybe not the truck being a lemon part, but everything else…

* * *

When Serena returned home from running, she saw her car was gone. She panicked. Had someone stolen it? She raced through the house, looking for Harold, calling out to him. He was gone. So was her wallet and her car keys from where she’d left them on the dresser.

It didn’t mean Harold had taken the car, but then she smelled the scent of a female gray wolf. He wasn’t supposed to know any other wolves. Warning bells began going off. She told herself that he could have just met her. But why had her wallet, keys and car vanished?

She hurried to his room—everything was gone. She tried calling him, the call going to voicemail.

She pulled out her laptop and logged into his email—thanking providence that he’d given her his password six months ago to look up something for him when his phone went out on him at work and he desperately had needed the information.

She barely breathed when she saw he had a plane trip scheduled for him and a woman named Velvet Jamison this afternoon for Grand Cayman Island. Then she received an email on her phone from her bank thanking her for having an account with them and hoping she would consider opening another with them in the future. What the hell?

She immediately called the bank and was told that her account was closed.

“Tell me again how Harold Gaston could have cleaned out my bank account without my authorization.”

“Whoever closed your account had two forms of valid ID. We’ll notify the proper authorities, Miss Wilder.”

A lot of good that would do Serena. The bastard would be on Grand Cayman Island with her money, sipping a fruity cocktail with one of those flipping colorful umbrellas and enjoying the sun, while she was stuck here on this cold spring day in Omaha, Nebraska. He’d be beyond anyone’s legal jurisdiction. And all her hard-earned money would be sitting safely in his Cayman account. Or he’d spend it all. At least she’d learned where he’d gone. She was glad he hadn’t thought to change his password.

“What do I do now? He took everything I own!” Serena said to the bank clerk. Well, not everything, but close to it. “I have $150 in cash and that’s it. He stole my car even!” Without enough money to pay $1,050 for this month’s rent, Serena would lose the rental home too. At least it had come furnished, so she didn’t have too much to leave behind when she packed up and vacated the place.

She again thought of home. She’d been thinking of returning to the old homestead, wondering if there were any shifter wolf packs out there. She kept feeling like there might be, like there had been in the past. There also might not be, but she hadn’t had any luck in finding wolves in the places she’d been living—Tennessee, Georgia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, here. She hadn’t returned to Colorado since the human family had taken her from there and raised her. She yearned to find a wolf to love, who would love her in return like her mother and father had loved each other. Like her aunt and uncle had loved one another too.

A distant memory stirred faintly. The walls of her family’s stone house had still been standing. What if her family’s home was still there? A dilapidated building, maybe? What if she could claim the land for her own? She remembered catching her father putting something beneath the basement’s stone floor one Christmas Eve. He’d explained to her the importance of the documents there—money for a rainy day, although for most things they bartered; a will; a deed to the house. Even if the house wasn’t salvageable, maybe the land was worth something.

She shuddered. She had never returned there. Not after the wildfire killed her family. All she remembered was the smell of smoke hanging thick in the air, gray ash covering everything. And she had never gotten the sight of her dead mother out of her mind, assuming, years later, that her mother had succumbed to smoke inhalation.

“Miss Wilder, we could give you a bank loan,” the clerk said.

“A bank loan.” Giving a bitter laugh, Serena wanted to kill Harold. “That would be the day.” She wouldn’t even be able to get that once they learned she’d lost her job. Thank God, she had a credit card phone case, and had her phone with her when she went running, but she didn’t want to get herself in debt in the event going after Harold and her money didn’t pan out.

She ended the call. Harold, the snake. She wanted every penny he’d stolen from her.

Except she needed money to get to him. And since they were both wolves, she really couldn’t go to the police. Though the bank was sure to call them.

The only money she figured she could get her hands on quickly was her family’s savings—if any of it was buried beneath the stone floor. It would be old money though; then again, may be worth a mint—if her home was still there and hadn’t been torn down. If it was, after all this time, surely someone else would have taken her property for their own. Not one of her red wolf kind. A human usurper.

She ground her teeth.

She didn’t want to see the woods where she had romped as a child. Or relive the horror she’d experienced when she had found shelter in the beavers’ lodgings. She didn’t want to set eyes on the home she had loved—not after her family had died so horribly there.

But she couldn’t think of any other option for now. She had to have money, and then she’d go after the bigger prize. Harold. Teach him to mess with one of her kind. He’d never do it again.

First, she had to find her car. Taking a taxi to the airport in hopes her car was there, she discovered his scent in the long-term parking area closest to the entrance he would have used to reach his gate and backtracked to where he must have parked her car. Between that and using her spare keys, she finally located it, her driver’s license and other set of keys sitting on the console.

Now, it was time to take the next step—return home after all these years.

* * *

Two days later in the Colorado Rockies, someone or something stalked Serena as she left her car behind on the gravel road. She headed in what she thought was the right direction of her family’s home, after going through the small town near where they’d lived, though it had grown some in size. The livery was now a museum; the old hotel, renovated; the feed store was still a feed store; the post office, a shop. And myriads of other buildings that were once homes along Main Street were now shops, bed and breakfasts, or art galleries. But the town was still quaint, no large department store chains. A couple of gas stations, a grocery store, a bank, and a few other shops had been added. A few more homes spread out from the town. But it was still a sleepy Colorado country town.

Beyond the town, she’d located the rock formations she and her sister used to climb that reminded her of giant stepping stones, a monument to an earlier time. In her day, the road that traveled past the stones had been dirt. Now it was gravel, not even paved yet.

Serena slipped between pine trees, barely making a sound as her hiking boots padded along the pine needle–covered floor. Whatever followed her proved clever, always keeping downwind of her, no matter how many times she circled, trying to locate it.

Keep cool, Serena. Don’t let it rattle you.

Yet, she couldn’t help the way her skin crawled. Every fine hair on her arms stood at attention. Her heart beat wildly and the sound of her blood pumping hammered in her ears.

She’d lived among humans way too long and had forgotten how to use her wolf instincts. Listen to the sounds of nature, she warned herself. What do you hear? Ignore your panic. Listen.

The rustle of the new green oak leaves shivered in the cool spring breeze. A distant creek gurgled over rounded stones as it had for thousands of years. A woodpecker pecked at rotting wood and a gray squirrel scampered up a nearby birch.

Something, whatever it was, watched and waited for her to make a move, as silent and cold as falling snow, as dangerously sneaky as a forest fire.

Damn it. Nothing would intimidate her in her woods. She hadn’t thought they would be so green, as if the forest fire had never happened. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that—as life went on without them.

She breathed in the wildness, enjoying the fragrance of spring. It stirred happy memories—sad ones, too. She’d only planned to find her home, the hidden money, a will, and the deed, but already she was feeling a pang of regret for not having returned sooner, for not taking back her family’s heritage, if she could. She shook her head at the sentimental human part of the equation. All she came for was her money, the will, and the deed, so she could put the property up for sale after she took care of Harold and got what was left of the money he’d stolen from her. Afterward, she could live here until she sold off the property. But she’d been so upset over him, she realized she wasn’t thinking clearly. How would she prove she was the descendent of the family who had owned the property in the first place?

A distant howl caught her attention. A wild gray wolf returned to the Rockies? She’d heard the Sinapu had reintroduced some into the area. Sinapu was the Ute word for wolves, and they were dedicated to the protection of the wild wolves and their habitat.

She stared in the direction, listening until she heard his mate call to him. Taking a deep breath, she wondered what it would be like to coexist with wild gray wolves in this day and age.

Would men ever be able to live with wolves in peace?

She hadn’t lived in the wild for so long, she couldn’t get the feel of it.

The fickle breeze switched directions. She turned her head to smell the scents. Nothing but the heavenly aroma of earth, pine needles, and oak leaves.

The sun withdrew from the tree-shaded sky, and her skin grew chilled. She rolled down the sleeves of her green sweater, annoyed she hadn’t made any headway in locating her family’s home.

The house had to be close by, she assumed.

She skipped over a fallen tree, then spied a clearing as the sky grew darker. Her heart sped up, and she dashed for the clearing.

A few more steps and she entered a landscaped yard. Not wild like it had been when her family had lived here. The natural earth-toned stone blocks still protected the home’s exterior, though she assumed someone had scrubbed away the black soot that had covered it after the fire. She stood in awe, overwhelmed for a moment, tears filling her eyes. Memories of playing in the woods, her mother calling to her sister and her to return home, the aroma of apple cobbler and fresh fish coming to her all at once.

The roof…

She stared at it. Green metal? She wrinkled her nose. And…and the place had been extended out the sides and back. She growled under her breath and moved in closer to get a peek inside the windows. Aluminum-framed windows replaced the wood ones and were now adorned with forest green shutters, which were pleasing to the eye. What was that on the roof? A skylight?

A light flickered on in the living room. She stopped dead in her tracks. The warm yellow glow filled the big picture window, but she couldn’t make out any sign of a person moving about inside.

Forever, it seemed she stood in the clearing, staring at her home, frozen with indecision. She wanted to check out the cellar. The moneybox, if still hidden, was down there, and the only way to get to it was by going inside the house.

On the other hand, the house belonged to her, and not just the hidden money, making her feel whoever lived here now had to go. They had no right to her home.

Mostly, she needed the deed and will to prove it was hers.

Her fists clenched and her jaw tightened. She wanted to scream, “Come out at once, or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll…”

The faint snap of a twig coming from the woods behind her garnered her full and immediate attention.

She whipped around. In the dark woods, the iridescent eyes of a wolf shown.

Nothing else…just the eyes. A gray? Had to be.

She glared at it, showing she wouldn’t be intimidated, or frightened or…

The front door of her house squeaked open, and she jerked her head around.

“Whoa,” a man said, stepping onto her front porch, his hand still on the doorknob. “What have we here?”

One very pissed-off homeowner whose home had been stolen by this person. Not to mention all the changes that had been made to the property when it didn’t belong to him.

A black SUV drove up on the gravel driveway and skidded to a stop. Two males got out, who looked eerily like the man on the front porch. If she had to fathom a guess, the three were more than just brothers—they were triplets. Both looked her over as if she was prime meat, taking in every inch of her, from her hiking boots to the top of her head with her red hair pulled on top in a chignon with copper clips.

“Jeez, Shawn, you didn’t tell us you’d invited Devlyn’s mate to the pizza party. What would he say?”

“Hey, Fisher, she was feeling well enough to go with Devlyn to attend that woman’s wedding in Portland, Oregon,” Shawn said, smiling broadly. “This little lady is someone else.”

The men all stared at her, then the other shook his head. “Hot damn, we got another one of them in our midst.”

“I’ll say, Heath,” Shawn said.

“Sure is going to cause some troubles,” Fisher said. “Got any more sisters?” He directed the question to Serena.

She took a step away from them and away from the wolf. Fisher turned his attention to the wolf, but no one said a word. She wasn’t afraid of the beast, but instead kept her focus on the men in front of her. They were her enemy.

“Are you lost?” Shawn asked, his voice deeply sensual, but a tad concerned. He tilted his head to the side slightly. “She sure looks like her, doesn’t she?”

Did he have a clue she’d come for her house? That he didn’t have long to live here? The crap about looking familiar was a guy line for sure.

She studied him back, trying to determine if she had met him somewhere before. Dark-brown hair curled behind his ears and hung just below the bottom edge of his denim shirt collar. Her eyes drifted to his jeans—well-worn, stonewashed, faded, soft and hugging his muscled thighs, and…

“Miss?” Shawn said. “Are you lost?”

“Hell, come on in, miss, and share a beer and pizza with us. We’ve got plenty for all of us. I’m Heath. If you couldn’t tell, we’re all brothers.” He lifted three pizza boxes, then motioned with his head to the other man. “That’s Fisher, our youngest brother by five minutes.” Heath was darker haired, amber eyed, and wore a plaid shirt, jeans, and hiking boots—the lumberjack look.

Blue-eyed Fisher grinned and raised three six packs of beer. He looked more like a cowboy, with a Stetson, well-worn cowboy boots, jeans, and chambray shirt with the western trimmings. His hair was a much lighter brown with golden highlights.

“And our oldest brother, Tanner, is…” Heath gave a small smile. “Well, he’s roaming the woods right now.”

Quadruplets? It took every ounce of effort for her to break free from her dilemma.

The hair at the nape of her neck stood on end. She knew the wolf was still behind her. Not close. Still hidden in the woods, still watching her.

The brothers’ half-wild, half-pet wolf maybe?

“Would you like to come inside and use a phone?” Shawn asked.

She swallowed hard, the tears stinging her eyes. For now, she’d leave her beloved home behind. For now.

She turned and glanced in the direction of the woods. Her vehicle was off the road two miles through the woods. She’d have to search her house when Shawn and his brothers weren’t around. She was certain they wouldn’t agree to her looking for the deed while they were in the house. Unless…unless she came back later when they were sleeping off the beer.

The wolf, gray and blond pelted, his eyes a beautiful dark amber, had drawn several yards closer, watching every move she made. He was a large gray. His ears perked up, twisted back and forth, listening to the sound of her breathing, judging how panicked she might be.

He sniffed the air, but she was downwind of him. Her lips lifted at the corners slightly. Then she bolted in the direction of the creek, hoping to return when they were asleep. She didn’t want them seeing her car and license plate, possibly learning who she was, yet.

“Miss!” Shawn yelled. “Miss! Shit!”

The men ran after her, but humans were so unattuned to the wild. She’d soon lose them in her territory. The wind kept shifting and she couldn’t detect their scents.

The land seemed so familiar, coming back to her as she made her way through it—the terrain, the trees, maybe taller than before, closer to the house than before.

For now, she dreaded meeting up with the wolf that bounded after her in hot pursuit. Not because she couldn’t hold her own against him, but because she feared being tracked. She’d do this her own way. She had no intention of being forced to tell them why she’d been studying the house…or who she was. If she could get her deed, a lawyer, and file her claim, she’d get rid of the squatters without much trouble. Except, she’d have to prove she was her family’s descendent too. She was afraid if she didn’t find the deed and will first, they could destroy them, and she wouldn’t have any recourse. Then she’d have to use her credit card and go after Harold.

“Damn it, where’d she go?” Shawn yelled.

“Hell, Shawn, we’ve got to let Devlyn know about her right away,” Heath said. “He’ll want a report at once.”

She scrambled into the creek, then made her way downstream several hundred yards. Around a bend in the river, she climbed into an oak tree, certain the wolf would lose her scent.

For some time, the men and the wolf searched for her, splashing through the creek. Their boots knocked rocks on the shoreline together occasionally, then their noisy search faded away. The wolf circled beneath her tree, then headed after the men.

She would have smiled when they passed right beneath her leafy perch twenty minutes later, unaware she sat right above them. She would have gloated at her cleverness. But tonight, Shawn and his brothers would return to her home, eat pizza, drink beer, and sleep in comfort in her home while she had no place to call her own.

“Come on. Let’s call it a night.” Shawn trudged back to the opposite side of the creek’s bank.

Fisher chuckled. “I know she’s somewhere close by. But Red’s not about to let us catch her tonight.”

Her blood warmed. They thought themselves hunters and she was their prey?

No. This was her land. Hers. And she’d have it back one way or…

“All right, stay out here,” Fisher said to the wolf. He shook his head. “You always did have a thing for a redheaded, long-legged beauty. See you in the morning.”

“Ah, hell,” Heath said. “We all do. And there’ll be trouble. You know it. Then Devlyn’s going to be pissed.”

“Wouldn’t you know she’d show up when our cousin’s gone,” Shawn said.

Shawn and his brothers tromped off. Serena fumed. If the wolf had gone into the house with its master, she would have waited until everyone went to sleep.

Now she was stuck in a tree like a raccoon cornered by a hound.

For a while, the wolf sat. When she didn’t move, he laid down, watching, listening, his ears twitching back and forth. She took in a deep breath and smelled the fishy stream, a hint of snow in the air, and realized how foolish she’d been to leave her jacket in the car. But if she left the tree, the wolf would hear her. Ah, hell. She rubbed her arms, her pants and boots wet from trudging through the creek. If she didn’t get out of the cold, she’d freeze to death.

She began the climb down, and the wolf sat up and watched her. She swore the dumb beast smiled at her.

Before she could race off for her car, he leapt at her, and her heart nearly died a frantic death. He knocked her down, his paws on her back, his heavy weight effectively pinning her to the pine needle–covered ground.

She growled. “Get off me.”

For several seconds, he held her there, not moving, though she tried to squirm out from underneath him. And then he leaned down, and she thought he was going to bite, but instead he licked her cheek.

“Get off me!” she screamed. She instinctively knew he hadn’t meant to hurt her, but was playing with her like a big, friendly dog. Only he was all wolf.

To her surprise, he moved off. For a second, she sat up and stared at him. Then she jumped to her feet and bolted. He ran after her, but didn’t tackle her again, though she expected it. When she reached her car, he paused.

“Afraid of cars and roads. Good. They can kill wolves.” She jammed her hand in her jeans pocket. Then in the other. Panic coursed through her icy veins. Ohmigod, what happened to the car keys? If she’d lost them when she was running, she’d never find them now. Not unless she shifted into her wolf and, with her nose to the ground, could find her scent on them.

The wolf watched her, his eyes fixed on her, waiting for her to do something. She snorted. Her only other option was walking twenty miles to town. Fat chance. Or joining Shawn and his brothers for pizza and beer. Great. Just great. She wanted to take her property back in an impersonal way. The less she associated with these men, the less she’d care about having them evicted.

The snow began to fall. She was out of options.

Cold, wet, and hungry, her hands jammed in her jeans pockets, she headed back toward the house, the wolf trailing her like a puppy would its mother. “You know, you’re supposed to go home with your master,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the beast.

He woofed at her. If she hadn’t avoided making trips to the wilderness with a wolf for so long, she would have recognized the warning in his bark. But it was too late.

The land gave way and she tumbled down a steep incline, branches slapping at her, tugging at her hair and shirt, her hands reaching out to grab something that would stop her fall down the rocky terrain. She swore she’d kill Harold for all the trouble he’d put her through. She felt the impact with the immovable tree before she saw it, felt the pain in her ribs. She smacked her head before the night turned into a hazy gray, then faded to black.