“Mona Mitchell?” Angel said incredulously.
It seemed impossible. The Mitchells were touring Asia with their big blockbuster movie press junket. Why the hell would Mona Mitchell show up here at their mountain home, interrupting a fight with a dire wolf—and brandishing a gun?
For a moment, Angel worried that somehow, they’d walked straight onto the set of the next Millennium Woman movie.
No. I saw the dire wolves shift. This isn’t a movie. And that gun she’s holding is real...
“Thanks,” Mona said, giving her a relieved smile as she lowered her gun. “I couldn’t let you hurt Clara.”
“Clara?” Angel repeated slowly.
She squinted, trying to see if someone had been hiding behind Mona. But Clara Mitchell, the other half of the famous Hollywood couple, was nowhere to be seen.
Mona smiled and nodded towards the snowy plain behind Angel, where moments ago, the dire wolves had fought.
Frowning, Angel turned around.
Dire wolf number one was still out of it, bleeding into the snow. As Angel watched, Reed shifted back into his human form, groaning weakly as he clutched his bleeding thigh.
Then her gaze went to dire wolf number two.
The shifter was still in wolf form, standing above the iron crown. The wolf looked oddly pleased with herself.
Then, golden eyes gleaming at Angel, the wolf began to shift.
And a second later, Angel found herself face to face with Clara Mitchell.
Clara looked just the way she did in the interviews on TV: short black hair slicked back, wearing a smartly tailored suit combined with comfortable boots and a pair of sunglasses.
“Sorry you got caught up in this,” Clara said as she pushed her sunglasses up into her hair. Then she reached down for the iron crown, idly spinning it in her hand for a moment before she laughed and placed it on her head. “I guess I owe you two the full story now.”
“You’re the people Angel was dog-sitting for?” Jonathan asked.
Through the fragile bond between them, Angel could feel his puzzlement, although he had relaxed against her side.
Whatever was going on here, the Mitchells weren’t a threat.
Even though apparently, they were dire wolf shifters.
Or at least Clara is...
“Let’s get this situation cleaned up first,” Mona said. “I’m gonna call some friends I have to deal with these two. And then we can sit down and I’ll give you the full story. I promise.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to borrow your phone and call Henrik,” Jonathan said, sounding reassuringly calm. “This is too close to his territory. He’ll want to know what the hell is going on here.”
Clara and Mona looked at each other for a moment, then Clara nodded.
“Sure. I guess it’s time to come clean. I knew there was a dragon nearby, but I figured that as long as we stuck to our home here on the mountain, Henrik would never even know I was here. Which was exactly what we wanted.”
***
In the end, they locked the wounded dire wolf shifter down in the empty concrete room below while they waited.
Poodle shifter Sean was still unconscious, but fortunately his wound had stopped bleeding.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Mona said when she checked up on him. “I think he’ll be fine. He’ll recover just in time to go to jail.”
“Did you know he was a shifter?” Angel demanded. “Did you set me up to take care of a criminal dog shifter, all alone out here in the mountains?”
“No,” Clara said immediately and sighed. “Believe me, if we’d known we’d have never left. Or hired an undercover detective, maybe. We’re really sorry you got dragged into this. That’s why we flew back as soon as we heard from you.”
The two women looked sincerely sorry.
After a moment, Angel nodded reluctantly. “All right. So you didn’t know about Diego—well, Sean. But you do know why he was here. And I want to know everything now.”
“I think I know at least part of it,” Jonathan said.
He’d wrapped his arm around Angel again, quietly offering his support as they huddled in one of the rooms that hadn’t been devastated too badly by the blizzard and the fire.
“You’re a dire wolf shifter. And shortly before I retreated into the ice, I heard a rumor. I heard that the king of dire wolves had died. That he didn’t have a son, only a daughter. A daughter who refused to mate any of the alphas her father had chosen.”
“It’s a good story, isn’t it?” Mona’s lips quirked, and she leaned against Clara. “Instead, the daughter and heir of the king of dire wolves grabbed his crown after his death and ran. And whoever wears the crown rules the dire wolves—who are for the most part not very nice people. So she thought that this way, she’d kill two birds with one stone. Keep the dire wolf shifters from getting up to terrible things without a king to lead them, and go to live her own life.”
“And marry the one she loved. The one who was her real mate.” Clara smiled and slid her own arm around Mona’s waist. “We always feared they’d eventually find us. We kept the crown hidden for ten years. That’s not so bad, is it?”
Jonathan nodded with a faint smile. “It’s quite impressive, really. Especially given the career you’ve had in the meantime.”
Looking obviously pleased, Mona gave him a grin. “What can I say, it worked out pretty well for us. And it’s not like you see us two on the big screen. Just our movies and our actors.”
“And you’d be surprised by just how little your average dire wolf crime lord is interested in Hollywood gossip,” Clara said dryly. “We’ve been hiding in plain sight all these years.”
“Until someone found you,” Angel pointed out. “And then they hired Diego, because you two are famous for how much you love your dogs.”
Mona sighed. “They’ve found our weak spot. I’m not going to deny that. We wanted a new companion for Lola after we lost our old poodle, and then fate brought us a stray whining and pawing at our door...”
“I can’t believe I didn’t realize he was a shifter,” Clara said ruefully. “I thought he was traumatized from months on the streets... He didn’t smell like shifter at all, and my wolf has a pretty good nose.”
“That’s his one special power.” Angel still didn’t like the thought of having lived with a criminal dog shifter all this time. She grimaced at the memory of letting him lick her hands. “The only thing that’s special about him. And why he decided to use this power to make money as a career criminal, as soon as he realized that’s what he could do.”
Clara made a thoughtful sound. “I wonder how many other unsolved crimes he committed...”
“Let the authorities deal with that,” Jonathan said. “I bet they’ll be glad to get a lead on whatever shifter-assisted crimes might be out there.”
“And the dire wolves?” Angel really didn’t like the idea of an entire kingdom of dire wolves out there.
It had been bad enough to face one of them out in the storm. But an army of dire wolves? She shook herself.
I’ve really had enough of wolves for the rest of my life.
Clara held up the crown again, sighing as she inspected it. “It was probably not a bright idea to hold onto this. But it belonged to my father, and my granddad before him. It’s a very powerful item. It wasn’t just nostalgia either—I guess I always thought that if something happened, I’d be able to put it back on. I could return and keep the dire wolves from starting a war with the lion shifters, or whatever mess they’d get into.”
Angel nodded slowly. It was strange, but she trusted Clara.
Even though she was a dire wolf just as Reed was. Angel had seen her shift, after all. But still. Nothing about Clara gave off the vibe of an angry, homicidal criminal wolf out to conquer the world, or at least to rob a bank.
Clara looked pretty much exactly the way she’d looked in all of the red carpet interviews from her movie premieres. Elegant, laid-back, with an easy smile and a hint of something rougher hidden just beneath the Hollywood veneer.
Well, now Angel knew just what was hidden beneath the movie glamour. A past as the heir of the king of dire wolf shifters.
Angel’s smile widened. “Now I know how you came up with the idea for Millennium Woman’s nemesis.”
Mona and Clara looked at each other, then grinned. “We hoped it wouldn’t be too obvious—we figured that as long as we added a couple of evil aliens, no one would realize that the shifters in the movies were based on experience, and not fairy tales.”
“Well, you fooled me,” Angel admitted.
“And you’re making me curious,” Jonathan said with a laugh. “I feel like I’ve got a lot to catch up with. Like every movie you two have produced, for example.”
Clara turned to Mona. She gave her one of those looks Angel had begun to realize was hiding the quiet conversation between true mates that didn’t need any words.
A moment later, Mona smiled at Jonathan, clearly amused. “We agree. How would you two feel about an invitation to the premiere of Millennium Woman Four in New York next month?”