PROLOGUE
Margo Mahigan surveyed the campground in rural Pennsylvania with amusement Her Pack had moved in and taken it over completely for the past week. The kids were having a ball, trying to catch fish in the little stream that separated the campground—which had been closed for the season before her family descended—and the cow pasture on the other side. The adults had created conversation areas in various parts of the campground, and at night, if there were an abnormally large number of huge “dogs” on the loose, nobody said anything.
The owners of the property were being paid handsomely for the exclusive off-season rental. They weren’t on site at night, so the campers could do as they pleased. That nearly the entire Pack had chosen to travel to the United States from Canada at this time of year to welcome back two lost members said a lot about their desire for unity and reunion.
The Pack had nearly fallen apart completely twenty years ago when the leadership had come under the magical influence of a human named Mathias Bolivar. That Bolivar had since been discovered to have magical powers wasn’t entirely surprising to Margo. Only a mage could have influenced the Alpha pair so greatly that they lost complete contact with their only daughter.
Evie had run away, believing her family had disowned her for daring to mate with a fey warrior. In truth, they had begun looking for her the moment she left, but her trail had been magically fouled. Even the Alpha wolf could not pick up Evie’s scent.
For twenty years, Evie had been lost to her family and the wider Pack. Her disappearance had been a wound that had never healed. From time to time, various members of the Pack would try to pick up the trail, to no avail. Margo had first been drawn to detective work because she had participated in several of the efforts to try to find Evie in the human world.
Margo had turned her interest into a career. She hadn’t been the one to find Evie, much to her chagrin, but she had helped many other families in similar circumstances since becoming an agent of the foremost shifter detective agency in North America. In fact, she had just been promoted to head up the Canadian operations of Collin Hastings’ agency. It was a great honor, and a great responsibility.
She had taken a little time off, though, once word of Evie’s reappearance—with her grown son, Joshua—had spread. The fact that Josh had found his mate and was getting married in the human way, with a ceremony and a big party, was cause for celebration. The entire Pack had wanted to come, to show their support and re-forge ties that should never have been broken. Not everybody could take off at a moment’s notice, but those who could had packed up and driven close to a thousand miles from Canada to southeastern Pennsylvania, to be there for Josh’s big day.
The ceremony had taken place on the winter solstice. It had been a beautiful, romantic ritual, shared among family from both sides. The bride was a powerful priestess, from a long line of holy women with fey blood and magical men who had passed muster to join such a lineage. The ceremony itself had been presided over by the High Priestess, Bettina, who was called simply grandmother by everyone in the bride’s family.
Josh had been raised as a lone wolf by his mother, Evie. His father hadn’t been in the picture. In fact, his sire, Sir Rayburne, had only recently been reunited with his mate, Evie. He’d spent the last twenty years as a prisoner in the fey realm.
Margo still couldn’t really imagine going it alone for all those years. She had a lot of respect for Evie, and she was really beginning to like her cousin, Josh. He was a steadfast sort of guy, with a deep core of goodness about him. And his mate, Deena, was a little spooky, but also a lot of fun.
Her family, though… They were all very nice, but her younger brother was… Margo wasn’t sure how, exactly, to describe Gabriel Llewellyn. Infuriating? No. He wasn’t that bad. Intriguing? Definitely. Sexy as all get out? Hmm. Yeah. If she was being honest with herself, she was very attracted to the rogue.
But he was a mage. Born of a union between a priestess and a mage. That combination confused Margo’s inner wolf, who was a bit of a monster. Margo had been born with more than her fair share of Alpha tendencies, which made her a great detective who wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of finding what she was looking for or protecting those who needed her help, but it also made her wolf a little unmanageable at times. Like when it didn’t really understand where someone stood in the hierarchy of the Pack.
Gabe was not Pack. He might be related by marriage now, but he wasn’t a shifter. Her inner wolf didn’t know what to do with that. How strong was he considered among his fellow mages? Was he a power to be reckoned with? Was he the equivalent of an Alpha? Until her wolf could get a bead on exactly where he fit into the social structure, she would feel uncomfortable around him. As if someone was stroking her fur the wrong way. Not entirely unpleasant, but definitely a little off.
“Auntie Margo! Come look what we caught!” The plaintive little voice piped up from somewhere around Margo’s knee.
She looked down to find her brother’s youngest boy had snuck up on her again. Little Angus was going to be one hell of a tracker when his time came. Margo reached down to scoop the child up in her arms and walked him down to the bank of the creek where the rest of his siblings were playing with makeshift fishing poles, plastic buckets bought at the dollar store and making a huge, muddy mess. It sure looked like fun.
Gabe watched his woman from afar. He was visiting the campground in order to finalize plans for a big New Year’s Eve party he was helping coordinate. He was hoping to arrange some surprises for the newlyweds on the farm where the party was going to be held. In order to have any chance at maintaining secrecy until the big day, he’d been granted special permission to enter the Pack’s temporary territory at the campground.
What he saw made him smile as Margo—the delectable Margo—bent down to pick up a muddy child with a heartbreakingly tender expression on her beautiful face. She was going to be a great mother herself, someday, and Gabe had big plans to make sure that any children she had would be theirs—together.
He wanted Margo for his mate. It was just as simple as that. He’d taken one look at her and fallen hard. Something about her spoke to him on a basic level, and he knew she was the only one for him. Now all he had to do was get her to see it, too.