Chapter 2

Owen couldn’t believe his luck. Candice Mayfair was the beautiful white wolf he’d seen that day so long ago. Not that she looked like a wolf now. He only knew for sure she was the wolf because he recognized her scent. After the initial shock of seeing an unfamiliar and intriguing Arctic she-wolf, he’d gone after her that night.

The whole pack had been on a run, but they knew to stay far from any campsite. He and the other guys had swum across the river to explore a bit. Cameron and his mate had stayed on the other side with the kids. Owen had even swum back across the river to find the mysterious female and discovered that her scent led right to one of the tents. Since she had gone into the tent, he knew she had to be one of their shifter kind. He’d even hung around the next day, waiting to catch a glimpse of her, but there were three women, and he had no idea which was her. A blond, a brunette, and a red-haired woman—none of whom looked like the picture he had of Clara Hart.

Being a white wolf in summer had made it difficult to blend in, so he’d had to keep well out of sight.

Candice Mayfair was definitely the author of the books on the website, though she didn’t look like the photo her uncle had of her, if she was Clara Hart. She had the same compelling eyes, different color, but they got Owen’s attention, grabbed hold, and wouldn’t let go.

He carried her to her couch and set her down, staying close, his hand still on her arm until she seemed to regain her equilibrium.

“The wolf pup was yours,” she accused, jerking her arm away from him.

“Wolf pup?”

“Yeah, wolf pup. Don’t pretend you don’t know about your own wolf pup.”

Then all the pieces began to fall into place. Campers. Campfire. Food. Corey, the wolf pup she had to be referring to, hadn’t just found food like they’d thought. Candice must not have been a wolf until that night.

“You fed him? Corey? His mom wondered why he smelled of beef jerky that night. We thought he’d found some at the campsite. Don’t tell me… He bit you.” Which would be the only possible way to have turned her. Owen couldn’t believe it. Boy, would Corey be in trouble now. They were never to bite anyone unless they had no choice. “I’m so sorry, Candice. We’re all newly turned, really. Not as newly turned as you though. It’s been seven years for us.” He waited for that to sink in, for her to give him a chance to speak about the pack and how she needed to be one of them. She was one of them.

She must have had to live with this alone the last couple of years, which had to have been awful. Suddenly, the business of who she was—if she was Clara Hart or not—wasn’t half as important as righting a wrong with a fellow Arctic lupus garou.

She folded her arms. “You should have trained your son better than that.”

“Son? No, he’s Cameron and Faith MacPherson’s son. I don’t have a mate. No kids. I’m single.” Was he making it too obvious he was very available? That happened when you didn’t want to date anyone because your wolfish half might come to the forefront at a really bad time.

She lifted a red brow and gave him a hint of a smile. All he could think of was kissing her. A wolf, she-wolf, Arctic wolf.

Hell, he was rambling. Unless they turned someone, none of the guys who had been turned would ever have a wolf mate. Not a white wolf anyway, unless they were lucky enough to find others like them. He had to convince her to meet the pack. Not that she would want to be anyone’s mate, but she should be part of the pack. She had been turned by one of them. She needed to learn what they knew about all of this. He couldn’t imagine her being on her own and having to deal with it all alone.

Owen noticed the warm fire glowing in the fireplace and the cheery scent warmers wafting ginger-and-cinnamon Christmas fragrances into the air, making him think of home and hearth and spending Christmas with a she-wolf of his own. The place was nice and clean like his home, though he was certain Candice hadn’t expected visitors. Then the smell of burning gingerbread suddenly caught his attention and hers, and she rushed to the kitchen.

When he hurried in after her, he saw a tall Christmas tree sitting in one corner. The tree was covered in gold, red, and purple balls, just like his tie. Lights sparkled all over the tree, and Candice had a collection of reindeer in various sizes, along with nutcrackers, sitting on the fireplace mantel, under the tree, and on a curio cabinet. Really homey and holiday festive. Her decorated home was warm and cheery, not ostentatious like his. But what could he do? All the guys wanted to outdo each other with the decorations.

He wondered if Candice had friends over to enjoy the beautiful decorations. Or had she isolated herself because of the problem with her wolf half? Like they had done. At least he and his pack members had one another to share in the laughter and concerns—the shifts that had happened when they hadn’t had time to strip off their clothes, their near disasters when they were running as wolves and got caught on camera, and other catastrophes.

“I don’t normally feel faint over anything.” She yanked out the cookie sheet covered in gingerbread cookies. Shoving the sheet onto the stove top, she muttered about not taking her eyes off her cooking for anything next time.

“Believe me, I normally don’t either,” he told her. Smelling her beautiful scent had made him feel a little light-headed too.

Her chin tilted down, she gave him a look indicating that she didn’t believe him.

“Hell, if you hadn’t been holding on to the doorjamb and I hadn’t been holding on to you, we might have both ended up sitting on the floor.”

He swore she was fighting a smile as she grabbed a mixing bowl out of the fridge and set it on the counter, then pulled out another cookie sheet and a bag of flour and put them beside the bowl. Then to his surprise, she seized an apron and handed it to him. “Here. You made me burn my cookies, so you can help me make them again.”

He opened up the apron and read the message on it: Dear Santa, I’ve been very naughty… He laughed because that was in a Christmas wolf story she’d written, which he’d been listening to on audiobook on the drive here. Except in that story, the heroine was wearing lacy, red silk panties, a matching bra, and high-heeled shoes after going to a Christmas party. She’d slipped out of her classy gown to keep from making a mess of it. Owen couldn’t help but envision Candice wearing the red slips of silk and lace, the spiked heels, and this apron.

She glanced at the apron and yanked it out of his hands, her face turning as red as her hair. She shoved the apron in the drawer, then pulled out another. This one featured an image of Christmas balls. Safer. He smiled.

She frowned at him. “How did you find me?”

“It wasn’t easy. I first looked for you using your real name, not knowing you’re using your pen name for everything now. Once I knew your pen name, I found you on several social networking sites. No address on any of them. We use a top-notch professional investigative database available only to licensed PIs, and I found your current address in that.”

Owen looked down at the bowl of dough. Now he had to bake cookies, and he had no idea how to do it.

“Tell me what this is all about again. An inheritance? My parents wouldn’t have left me any money. They disowned me because of this little problem of mine.”

For an instant, Owen wondered if he really did have the right woman. “You’re Clara Hart, right?”

“In the past. Not today.”

He took a relieved breath. “Okay. Well, as long as Strom Hart recognizes you as his niece and you have proof of your former identity as Clara, we should be good.”

“We?” Candice sprinkled some of the flour on a cutting board and plopped a ball of dough on top of it. She started kneading.

He frowned at the speckled dots of flour that had somehow managed to end up on his black dress jacket. Here he was, trying to make an impression as a first-class private investigator, though he was usually more comfortable in jeans and a lumberjack shirt. He tried to brush away the flour spots and only managed to streak them all over the black fabric.

“Here, roll out the dough like this.” She took his hand and placed it on the rolling pin handle, and then she offered him the other handle. “Roll it out, and then cut out the cookies with the cutters.” She motioned to the tin cutters.

Owen looked down at the dough and glanced at the cutters.

“The Twelve Days of Christmas,” she said.

“Aren’t you supposed to drink Christmas drinks while you’re baking cookies?” He thought if he had a warm, fuzzy drink, he might even be half good at this. Using the rolling pin, he began trying to smoosh the dough onto the board to make it as thin as he thought it needed to be.

A piece of the buttery dough flipped off the rolling pin and onto his tie. He glanced down at it, not believing he was making such a mess of himself.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. That’s what the apron is for.” Candice frowned at his flour-speckled jacket, took hold of his arm, and moved him away from the counter so she could unbutton his jacket.

Never wearing an apron back home when he cooked, he hadn’t thought he’d make a mess of himself here. He’d been sure of it and had set the apron aside. He sure hadn’t expected her to unbutton his jacket.

Then she removed it and set it aside on a barstool. She began to work on unfastening his tie next, slipping it out of its knot and setting it on the counter next to the barstool.

Hell, all he could think about was her removing the rest of his clothes. His cock was already stirring to life. She smelled good: sweet and spicy, woodsy, and some kind of exotic floral mixture. She-wolf, of course, and gingerbread cookies.

He was waiting for her to remove his shirt when she looked up at him, her green eyes all-knowing. She grabbed the Christmas balls apron and slapped it against his chest. “Wear it so I don’t have to clean all your clothes.”

He wondered just how messy he could get while wearing the apron. His sleeves? Then she’d remove his shirt and…

She proceeded to clean his jacket and set it aside, and then she cleaned his tie while he went back to smooshing the ball of dough into something more manageable. No matter how much he tried, he couldn’t make it perfectly level. Some places were fat, some skinny. He took a moment to stare at the dough to figure out what to do with it. He could imagine some of the cookies baking too fast and being way too crisp, and some being thick and doughy and not cooked all the way through.

“Are we having trouble?”

Yeah, that was an understatement. Owen pointed with the rolling pin at the unevenly rolled-out dough. “Some are for those who want fewer calories, and some for those who want a fuller bite.”

Candice laughed, then took the rolling pin from him, saving him from any more humiliation—or maybe she just wanted to make sure the cookies turned out right and to finish this before the day turned into tomorrow.

She set the rolling pin aside, re-formed the dough into a ball, and rolled it out uniformly. She wasn’t even wearing an apron, but she didn’t have a drop of dough or flour on her.

“You’ve probably been doing this for a long time.” He imagined it would take him years to get it down pat.

“With my mom. We used to make them every Christmas. I always helped her. Until…” She shook her head.

“The camping trip and the unfortunate incident. You need to meet our pack. Talk to Corey about what he did. You’re part of it, you know. One of us.”

She snorted. “It’s hard enough keeping my ‘condition’ secret. How much harder would it be to keep the secret of a whole pack of Arctic wolves?”

“We manage it just fine. We have for seven years. In any event, you’re still one of us. We can help answer any questions you might have.” What he really wanted to do was prove being with another wolf was very different from being a lone wolf. “Would you like to run after this? As wolves?”

She handed him the partridge-in-a-pear-tree cookie cutter and placed her hand over his to show him how to apply pressure on top of the leveled-out dough, keeping it steady to make clean edges. He liked the way she touched him, thinking that if he wanted to learn how to bake cutout cookies right, he would be a really slow learner. She would have to repeat each move, her hand on his, leaning close, moving into his space, rubbing up against him. The oven was heating up, but so was he.

He helped her cut out the rest of the cookies and really was having fun. “So about running tonight?”

Candice turned to look at him, her lips parted in what appeared to be surprise. “How long do you intend to stay here? You know there’s a snowstorm on its way.”

“Which was why I felt compelled to come here to tell you about the inheritance, in case the electricity went out and you didn’t receive my contact email. And now I can try to convince you to come with me to see the pack. If nothing more than to let us know how you feel about being turned. Get it off your chest.” He glanced down at her breasts covered in a soft green sweater, the color matching her eyes. She had one hell of a nice chest.

“I don’t need to get anything off my chest. I dealt with it, like a big girl.” She slipped the baking sheet into the oven. Once she was done, she put the rest of the dough in the fridge and began to fill the sink full of sudsy water. She washed the utensils, the cutting board, and the rolling pin, then set them aside to dry.

Owen washed his hands. “Can you control your shifting?”

“Better. But not fully during the full moon or waning and waxing gibbous.”

“Yeah, we all have trouble with that.”

She frowned. “You’re kidding. Does it mean we’ll have no control over it forever?”

“For years, at least. From what we’ve learned. We can’t shift during the new moon. That’s when I’ll take you to see your uncle.”

“That won’t give us a lot of time, with the deadline to claim the inheritance so close.”

“I don’t know any other way of handling it. In the meantime, you could get to know us.”

She glanced at his dress shirt. “Do you always dress so formally on a PI job?”

“I was trying hard to make a good impression. It’s not every day a guy meets a famous author.”

Candice made a derisive sound.

“Well, it’s true. How do you ensure no one learns the truth about you?”

“You mean when I sell the manuscript?”

“Yeah. Book signings. The like.”

“All done online, as far as selling and publishing the manuscript. I do book signings during the new moon only.”

“Maybe we could help you with a signing.”

“How’s that?” She seemed interested, but also wary.

“None of us can shift during the new moon, but those who have werewolf lines going back a few generations can shift at will during the new moon and avoid shifting during the full moon. We could maybe solicit a couple wolf shifters to come to some of your signings as wolves during the new moon.”

“Some were born this way? You’re kidding.”

Owen felt bad for her, knowing she’d had no one to help her deal with this. “Yeah, see, there’s a lot you need to know. I looked at your books online and noticed that you only write about white wolves.”

“Right, because…” She leaned her back against the counter and folded her arms. “Don’t tell me there are other types.”

“Yeah. There are.”

The timer went off, and she whipped around to take the cookies out of the oven and set them on top of the stove. “Red wolves? Gray wolves? I know Arctic wolves are a subspecies of gray wolves, but some of the other kind are werewolves too?”

“Yeah, even something else that we’re just learning about.”

“Coyotes?”

“Yeah. And jaguars.”

She turned her head to the side, her chin down in a get-real look.

“Really. Who knows? There may be lions and tigers—”

“And bears, oh my.”

He laughed.

“It would be cool to have real wolves at the signing, but I’d be afraid they might scare off potential readers.”

“True. How long before the cookies cool?”

“Half an hour, all night, doesn’t matter. Then I put frosting on them. Okay, so you say you’ve been managing this shifter business for seven years. You and your partners? You couldn’t have fed a ravenous wolf cub, like I did, and have him bite every one of you.”

“Uh, no. My PI partner, David, and I were bear hunting—”

She tilted her chin down and gave him the look that meant she didn’t like hunters shooting wild animals.

“We never bagged one. In all the years we tried, we never came close. Until that day.” He explained about David’s heart attack and nearly losing him and the guide’s pet Arctic wolves that had accompanied them to track the bear, instead of the guide using dogs.

“Wow. So the wolves who turned you and David weren’t exactly bad guys. They saved David’s life in the only way they could, and they were trying to protect you and themselves from you giving them away.”

“Yeah, except we wanted to resume our old lives, and we needed to tell our PI partners, Cameron and Gavin, what had happened. They only knew we had vanished on the hunt, so they came to Maine looking for us. The alpha female of the pack bit Cameron, and he accidentally shared what he was with Faith, turning her. At that point, Gavin was the only one who hadn’t been turned. Later, I was sleeping so deeply as a wolf that Gavin got worried. He touched my chest to see if he could feel my heart beating. I felt something touching me, and half asleep, I whipped my head around and bit Gavin on the wrist. I felt terrible about it. We assumed he’d want to be just like us sooner or later, but if at least one of us could have driven us home without the trouble with shifting, it would have helped. What a nightmare it was for all of us to travel back to Seattle with so little control over our shifting!”

“Seattle?”

“Yeah. That’s where we were born and raised and had our office. Wolves are extremely territorial, and when we arrived home, it didn’t take long for a gray wolf shifter from a local pack to catch David and me ordering Starbucks drinks. We smelled him and were shocked that another wolf was there. He eyed us warily, didn’t bother to order anything, and slunk right out of there. We thought we’d scared him off. We had barely picked up our drinks when a car rolled up, and two men got out. One was the gray pack’s alpha male and the other his second-in-command. The alpha pack leader told us in a low, growly voice to get out of their territory—and pronto. We explained we were all from there and had a PI practice there, but he said to sell and move. No other pack was moving into their territory unless they wanted to die. Especially a newly turned Arctic wolf pack.

“Well, since we were newly turned, we weren’t as knowledgeable about fighting other wolves, and we didn’t know how big their pack was. So we made the decision to move. We kept running into other gray wolf packs as we made our way back east, and we finally ended up in northern Minnesota where there were no shifters and, in the winter, lots of snow.”

“Wow, I would never have thought wolf shifter packs would be territorial like that. I’m glad you were able to find a place to settle where everyone’s safe. I guess I got lucky too.”

And in meeting Clara here, Owen knew he’d gotten damn lucky.

Owen’s phone rang—a call from Cameron. He looked over at Candice and said, “Let me take this, and then we can go for a run.” Into the phone, he said to Cameron, “Hey, listen, I’m here. Candice is an Arctic wolf like us. I’ll explain later.”

“Uh, okay. Soon.”

“Yeah, we’re going for a run,” Owen told him, ending the call. He wasn’t taking no for an answer as far as running with Candice as a wolf. The chance of meeting another Arctic female wolf was so rare that he wasn’t going to let this opportunity to know her better pass. As a newly turned lone wolf, she would never have experienced running with another shifter wolf. Besides, Owen had every intention of convincing her to go with him to meet the pack. That meant meeting Cameron, Faith, and their kids, but also his footloose bachelor partners, and he wanted her to get to know him first. Maybe she’d be more interested in them. He could live with that, if she found happiness with their pack. In any event, she shouldn’t be on her own.

But Owen still wanted the chance to be with her a while before he took her to see them.

“All right. I want you to know I’m not a pushover or anything, but I planned to run tonight anyway. It will be…different, running with another wolf. We run, then after we return and ice the cookies, you can take some back to your friends. When the new moon is here, I’ll see my uncle and the lawyer and take care of that.”

That was a start, but Owen still felt he had to convince her to meet the others. She shouldn’t be running as a wolf alone. If she ever wanted a full-time guy in her life, settling down with a human wouldn’t work. Changing someone could present all kinds of problems, as she well knew.

“You won’t meet the others in the pack?”

“Maybe later.”

He thought that meant never. She seemed satisfied with being a lone wolf. Then again, before she met him, she’d had no other choice. If she was anything like him, she had to adjust to the notion of being a wolf with a pack, so he needed to take it easy.

He started to unbutton his shirt before she changed her mind.

“Whoa, Mr. Alpha Wolf. You can strip off your clothes in the guest bedroom down that hall. Oh, and I just vacuumed. Try not to shed too much fur in the house.” She hesitated, then retrieved her can of mace and raised her brows a little as if to say she was armed and dangerous, in case he had any notion of giving her grief.

Owen smiled back, loving her tenacity. She walked through the living room, disappeared into another room, then shut the door.

Feeling he’d won a small victory, which thrilled him, he headed for the guest bedroom decorated in forest greens and a moose motif. He quickly took off his clothes, shifted, and raced out of the bedroom and down the hall.

He met her coming out of the master bedroom as a wolf, and he recalled the day he’d first laid eyes on her standing across the river watching him. She was just as beautiful now, mostly white, but she had a soft tinge of gold on her lower body. She stood her ground, but she looked a little…startled. Maybe because he was a much bigger wolf. Even though she knew he was human too, he was certain she wasn’t used to encountering other wolves this close up. Which was another reason she needed to join the pack.

He thought she would love Faith and Cameron’s pups.

Owen moved toward her to greet her like wolves would do in friendship. She stepped back. He knew this was going to be a real learning experience for her, despite her having been a wolf for two years. She’d had no wolf socialization.

He took another step forward, and this time, she remained in place, ears perked, eyes on him, while he touched his nose to hers. Then she responded, and he took a relieved breath. He would have to take baby steps with her until she learned some of the wolf cues they all knew. Then he headed for the wolf door and she ran after him.

After that, they raced all over White Wolf Mountain in the snow, and Candice seemed to really enjoy her run in the wild. Owen ran alongside her for a while, wondering if she had ever howled. Maybe not. She might have been afraid to gather real wolves to her. And she would have no reason to howl. Yet it was part of who they were.

There was nothing out here but snow and more snow. He stopped, raised his chin, and howled. Then he looked at her to see if she’d give it a try. But she suddenly turned her attention to the west side of the mountain, ears perked, listening. He heard it too then, the low rumbling of snowmobiles in the distance—three of them.

Owen and Candice were on the back side of the mountain, and it would take them nearly an hour to make it through the thick snowdrifts to her home. Both of them headed that way, intent on avoiding the snowmobilers and the disaster their recklessness could create. The wolves couldn’t outrun the snowmobilers, should they catch up to them. Not unless Owen and Candice reached the trees and the snowmobilers couldn’t maneuver through them easily enough. He hoped that the humans wouldn’t follow them.

The heavy snowfall was too recent, and the wind had begun to pick up. The slope was steep enough to provide the momentum for an avalanche. Even a small slide could prove deadly. One that might carry a snowmobiler off a cliff or into a tree could be just as dangerous as a heavier slide burying the rider. If they were smart, only one of the riders would traverse the slope at a time.

Owen and Candice still couldn’t see the snowmobilers on the other side of the mountain, but they heard one of them suddenly turn toward the summit, most likely in a daredevil high-marking contest, accelerating and gaining momentum until he could no longer push his snowmobile upward due to the steepness of the grade and was forced to turn and ride back down.

He would have left his mark, and if they dared, the others would seek to make a higher mark than his. Owen hoped they were equipped with avalanche transceivers. They’d also need to know how to locate the distress signal to rescue someone who had triggered an avalanche and was buried. All Owen cared about was ensuring that Candice and he didn’t end up in a slide if the snowmobilers set one off.

The second snowmobiler rose to the top, and though Owen shouldn’t have cared about anything but their own safety, he was curious who would make the highest mark. Total guy competitiveness coming to the forefront, though Owen wouldn’t do anything so foolish and endanger his life and others’. If the other two were sitting there watching from close by, they could all be buried if the snow began to slide.

The second snowmobiler started to descend the mountain, and then all hell broke loose.

Owen heard the sound of the snow sliding downhill, the way it roared as it gathered speed, and the snowmobilers gunning their machines to move out of its devastating path. He thought he and Candice were far enough on the other side of the mountain to avoid the onslaught. They waited in case anyone needed their help. Even though they were wolves, they would have to act quickly. Chances of survival for a victim buried under the snow dropped drastically after fifteen minutes. They wouldn’t have time to return to the house and call for an emergency crew.

Then they heard one of the men shouting and no others responding.

Owen took off running, hoping the guy would accept the wolves’ help.