When I dropped Olivia off at her place, I felt the dull ache of missing her, even though we’d only met this afternoon.

I led her down the slippery path to her apartment, careful to make sure the landing was cleared of ice so she wouldn’t fall. I smelled her sweet and alluring natural fragrance. She didn’t need to say a word; I knew she wanted me to come inside. That was one thing about humans. They said one thing, when their body language said something entirely different. And their bodies always told the truth, if you really knew how to listen.

I didn’t want to leave her, not with the danger I knew she’d placed herself in by venturing to the Lodge tonight and meeting with the council. Not all the shifters in the pack were happy about humans being involved in our ways. And especially not a female human, a woman…that would be too much for some of the men of our pack.

I’d assumed my role as alpha only recently, and it had been hard-fought and controversial. For starters, I didn’t have a female mate, which was usually one of the requirements. But with so many men and so few women up here in Alaska, none of the eligible candidates had mates.

Some of the pack members wanted my twin brother, Jameson, to lead us. As much as I loved my brother, there could be only one alpha. Going out on a limb to help Olivia wouldn’t make the rest of the pack happy with me, but I didn’t care.

I wanted to kiss Olivia goodnight, but it seemed over the line. I had to take things slowly; I didn’t want to scare her. I was a foot taller than her, and probably weighed twice as much as she did. Not to mention, I was damn sure she was still getting used to shifters. For all her bravery, I could tell that she wasn’t prepared for the harsh realities of life in Alaska.

When we got to her front door, I raised her hand to my lips and kissed it slowly, the way I’d seen in an old romantic movie. I didn’t want to leave her, but Jameson had texted me a few moments ago, and told me he had something urgent he had to tell me in person. I never doubted my twin brother. When he said he needed me, I believed him.

Thankfully, it was a clear night so I made it back to my restaurant, The Silver Eclipse Café, in record time. Jameson was already inside, along with Sawyer, one of the young cubs from the village. I hadn’t seen that kid in ages. I’d sworn that Sawyer was just a geeky teenager with glasses and braces. But time had moved swiftly, and he’d shot up a foot and gained forty pounds of muscle in the last few years. Braces and glasses flew to the wayside when he learned to shift. And suddenly, the guy was a fierce bad-ass who spent his free time chopping lumber around Bond. The dead-giveaway that he’d changed was his hulking biceps, which were almost as muscular as mine.

I settled into a stool behind the bar after I grabbed a cold beer from the fridge. It’d already been a long day, and now I had to deal with whatever situation Jameson had brought me. Being alpha was a thankless job. Everybody wanted your help, and then behind your back they said the could’ve done it better. That’s why I never half-assed anything, if I could help it. My integrity was on the line, and I didn’t take it lightly.

“So, Jameson. What situation is so important that you couldn’t tell me over the phone?”

Jameson crossed his arms in front of his muscular chest, and let out a deep sigh. “We’ve got a rogue shifter on the loose. He’s hunting humans, and word has it that any shifter who gets in his way is dead meat.”

“You heard this from where?” In these parts, we let shifters keep to themselves. I wasn’t about to track down a brother shifter based on rumor alone.

“I heard him talking over at the lumber yard last week,” Jameson said. “The guy was bragging about his big plans to attack the humans in Bond. Said he’d pick them off one by one. He seemed pretty serious about it. Said he’d make it look like an accident.”

“Just what we need. A vigilante to start a war between shifters and humans. You know they’ll say we’re all alike.” I gritted my teeth.

“I didn’t think to bring it up with you at the time because I thought it was just him blowing smoke,” Jameson said. “But then after you left the Lodge with that lawyer, it hit me. This guy could be the one who killed that woman. What was her name?”

“Charlotte Smith.”

“Yeah. He seems like the type. Really unhinged, even by shifter standards.”

“Do you know where he lives?” I asked.

“He lives in an old trailer pretty close to here. I delivered firewood for him once when I was working for Boss Sullivan. Of course, I didn’t know he was rogue then.”

“You think he still lives there?”

“I’d bet my life on it,” Jameson said as he cleaned his teeth with a toothpick.

I leaned back and sighed.

“Well, what does Sawyer have to do with this?” I motioned towards Sawyer, who was busy gnawing on a stick of beef jerky and picking out songs on the retro jukebox in the corner.

Sawyer’s ears perked up at the sound of his name.

“I’m just here to help out.” Sawyer looked every bit the overeager wolf cub with his peppy, eager to please eyes and his overzealous attitude. It wouldn’t be long before he’d be challenging me, trying to assert his dominance, and become pack leader. I wasn’t having it.

“We’ll do just fine on our own,” I said evenly. I wasn’t in the mood to train a newbie who had zero combat experience. Those pumped-up muscles were useless as far as fighting was concerned. He needed to be battle tested, but I wasn’t going to be a father figure to him. Not when his father had been the one to kill mine.

“What’s the deal with you and the human chick Jameson told me about? I hear she’s ten kinds of crazy hot, bro,” Sawyer said as he tipped back his ice-cold bottle of beer.

“Are you speaking English to me right now?” I grimaced. “First of all, she has a name. It’s Olivia. She’s helping one of our pack mates who’s in some deep excrement over in Bond.”

“Wow, sounds so romantic. Especially when you use big words like that,” Sawyer said with wide eyes.

Jameson piped up. “I did some thinking about that. I don’t know why you’re helping her. She’s putting herself in danger. Putting us all in danger. You know Dominic won’t like it.”

“I don’t care if Dominic likes it or not,” I growled.

“You say that now, but…”

“As Sawyer would say: Come at me bro. Isn’t that what you’d say, Sawyer?” I laughed.

“I get the sense you’re making fun of me now.” Sawyer looked confused.

I patted Sawyer on the back and smiled. “It’s fine. I’m just fucking with you. We should eat and then we’ll hunt down this bastard.”

I sank back into a high-backed leather booth near the counter, and my mind wandered to Olivia. I could still smell her on my body, the fresh aroma of her shampoo, and the clean smell of her soap. She was breathtaking, especially for a human. Usually I wouldn’t give one of their kind a second glance. But Olivia was different.

I wanted to run my hands down her body and feel for myself what her silky-smooth skin felt like, and how her breasts plumped under my hands when I squeezed them. I wanted to drag my teeth across her stomach and nip at her in playful bites as she writhed underneath me. She’d smile and laugh as I delicately licked her between her thighs. How good she’d taste on the tip of my tongue. Her body would rock under me as I slipped in my…

“Aidan, what the hell’s the matter with you?” Jameson slapped me on the head. “We’re making Moose steaks and we want to know if want it cooked.”

“I’ll have mine raw and juicy, the way I like it,” I smiled.

* * *

After we ate, we loaded into my truck and turned on the GPS. Jameson punched in the coordinates to the rogue shifter’s trailer in the woods. It was the last known address for him, and Jameson said the shifter bragged he’d been stockpiling an arsenal of guns and explosives in the woodshed out behind his dilapidated home.

The last thing I wanted to do was go out into the harsh, cold night and track down a rogue shifter. I knew guys like this – unhinged. They were what gave shifters a bad name.

Keeping guys like that in line was part of the deal when I became alpha. Our pack had thinned in recent years – some families couldn’t deal with the extreme Alaskan winters. Not to mention, the many “accidental” shifter shootings by humans scared away the pack members with young ones.

Being human was so much easier. Humans spent their Sunday mornings in bed, and the most important thing on their day’s chore list was deciding what to eat for breakfast. I’d like to wake up in bed next to Olivia Ryan. But that was never going to happen. Good girls like Olivia didn’t go for shifters like me, at least not long-term.

The snow fell lightly now, and melted when it hit the heated windshield. I flipped off the headlights before we turned down a small service road, and I drove slowly into the darkness. The moon was full and the skies were clear tonight. We’d be at this dude’s trailer in no time to set him straight. I didn’t want to resort to violence, but if it came to that, I was ready.

We traveled cautiously down the ice-packed dirt road; I could see a dimly lit 1960s-era Airstream trailer off in the distance. It was a stainless-steel hunk of junk in need of a good servicing. The awning was broken and dangling by the front door. Some of the windows were roughly boarded up with plywood. I didn’t know how anybody could survive in something like that during the harsh Alaskan winter. We cut the engine once we got to the end of the long driveway and walked the rest of the way, making sure our footsteps were light enough not to crack the ice underfoot. I saw fresh bear tracks in the snow around the trailer, leading up the walkway to the front door.

Damn. This had to be a bear shifter, not a wolf shifter. Jameson had failed to mention that. Bear shifters were known for being powerful, mean, and angry when they weren’t fed. Seeing as how it was winter, and food was scarce, he was probably starving.

Before we were at the trailer’s door, I saw the outline of the shifter through the window. He was standing in the light of one of the broken, un-boarded windows, hunched over the unconscious body of a woman. The shifter was completely naked; his hard cock pulsed against the naked female in front of him. He looked like he hadn’t showered in weeks; his skin was caked in mud and filth.

The sight of him disgusted me. I kicked in the front door, sending my combat boot through the flimsy, rotten wood. The door fell with a thud and took the shifter by surprise.

“Who the hell are you?” he snarled.

“We’re here to take you into the council to explain your crimes,” Jameson announced.

“Not a snowball’s chance in hell I’m going anywhere with you.”

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way. My guess is you’re going to choose the hard way,” I said.

The shifter spat on the ground. “Why the hell should I listen to you? You’re just a dog. You don’t have the right to tell me what to do.”

I cleared my throat and waited for him to apologize before I kicked his ass. “You’d better stop while you’re ahead and come with us,” I explained through gritted teeth.

He snarled at me. “What do you care what I’m doing out here? You’re sexing a human female. Ain’t that breaking the rules?”

“How do you know about…” my voice trailed. I stopped myself before I said something I’d regret.

“You stink of a woman’s cheap perfume. I can smell her pheromones all over your body like she marked you. Rubbed herself up against you.”

I tensed. He could smell Olivia on me. Damn. Her scent was all over my clothes from earlier today. I knew bears had an excellent sense of smell, and were the most skilled in using their senses to track prey. But I hadn’t counted on putting Olivia in danger by coming here.

“Leave the woman out of this,” I said as my jaw tensed.

“We’ll see about that. After I finish you off, maybe I’ll track down your girlfriend and see how she likes a big bear dick inside of her.”

With that, the shifter reared up and transfigured into his animal form.

A grizzly bear. Fuck. The worst kind of bear next to a polar bear. He growled at me, snapping his powerful jaws in my direction. It was useless talking sense into him now. The nude woman he’d been laying over roused and awoke from her drug-induced stupor. She scooted into the corner of the trailer and threw her hands over her eyes.

The shifter’s paws lashed out at me, swiping powerfully and nearly missing my face. Jameson pulled a loaded rifle, laced with silver bullets, from his back holster. He aimed it directly at the shifter’s chest.

The shifter lunged at me, as Jameson fired the shotgun straight at the him. The bear swerved, and the bullet missed, grazing only his paw. Blood spurted over all of us as he reared up inside the tiny trailer. We ducked out of the way, just as the bear ran out the front door and into the dark cover of night.

The woman moaned in the corner.

“Are you okay?”

“I think so,” she whimpered.

I knelt before her and wrapped her in the thin, dirty towels laying in a heap in the corner of the trailer. It wasn’t enough. Her lips were turning blue; she was practically frozen. I took off my thick coat and wrapped it tightly around her body for modesty and warmth.

“I’m taking you to get help,” I whispered to her as I carried her in my arms to my still-warm truck.

“We need to go after him now,” Jameson snarled. “He’s going to get away.”

“Go after him,” I growled.

“Where do you think he’s headed?”

“Looks like he’s moving east towards Bond. We can track him and catch up with him there.” I turned my attention back to the woman, and checked her pulse to make sure her condition was stable.

“Damn it,” Jameson scowled. “I thought for sure we had him.”

“He won’t get very far wounded like that.” I glanced at the woman and lowered my voice. “We’ve got to get her to a hospital. A human hospital. The closest one is in Bond.”

“You think we should take her to the hospital?” Jameson asked. “What if the humans think we did this to her?”

“I know how it’s going to look, but we’ve got to do what’s right. And while we’re in Bond, I’m going to check on Olivia and warn her about that asshole. She deserves to know she could be his next target.”

Jameson rolled his eyes. “Of course, you’d say that. I knew you’d find an excuse to get close to your new girlfriend.”

“Stop it, Jameson,” I gritted my teeth.

“Okay, you two, break it up,” Sawyer joked.

A pit formed in my stomach, and I wasn’t in the mood for teasing. I had to get to Olivia before the bear did. It was the only thing that mattered to me.