Chapter Two
“I smelled it, too,” Mitch said, standing at Fletcher’s right shoulder, as he had been doing all their lives.
Fletcher glanced at his best friend. He couldn’t even begin to hide his frustration. Not from Mitch. “You feel it, too, right?” he finally asked, running his hands through his hair impatiently. He’d let it grow lately, and it fell just below his shoulders. Sometimes he felt as if he should cut it all off and be done with the annoyance of it, but something always stopped him. His wolf snarled in the back of his skull, and he grimaced. Arousal hummed in his body, as it so often did these days, but there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. Nothing made him feel any better anymore.
“I feel it,” Mitch said, voice low and mild.
Fletcher glanced at his soon-to-be official Beta. Mitch wore his hair short, but it was his blue eyes that most people noticed first. “How are you so calm?” he asked, irritated.
“You think I’m calm?” Mitch laughed, and the sound raised the hair on the back of Fletcher’s neck.
“Oh.” Fletcher shifted his weight uncomfortably.
“Yeah. Oh.” Mitch walked forward, standing nude on the jumble of rocks that topped the mountain’s ridge. It was full dark now, and no one was allowed to hike the sanctuary’s property once the sun set except pack members. Fletcher wanted to join him, maybe run his hands over Mitch’s perfect skin, but they’d been down that road too many times and he knew it would only lead to more frustration.
“We should go,” Fletcher said instead, knowing that his parents were waiting for them back at the big house. He and Mitch hadn’t been home in five years, and he was anxious to end their exile. It was time to stay home. His wolf agreed. Fletcher took a deep breath, and moved closer to Mitch, shivering slightly as the cool air slid across his bare skin. His cock was half hard, and he almost took himself in hand, but then he remembered what had happened the last time he’d tried to masturbate and sighed. He couldn’t even get off on his own anymore, and he knew that Mitch had been having the same problem. He forced himself to refocus his thoughts. “Our stuff probably arrived today. Mom and Dad are probably wondering what the hell we’re doing, sending all of it ahead via post.”
Mitch shrugged. “Your parents won’t wonder. They know what it means.” He gave Fletcher a sympathetic glance. “Even my grandmother won’t argue over it, and you know she rarely lets anything go, not if she can chew over it.”
Fletcher grimaced again. “Shit.” His wolf had matured in the years he and Mitch had spent on walkabout, learning from all the packs they’d visited across the world. They’d served as ambassadors for Boulder Pack in wars and isolated villages, in peace and during delicate treaty negotiations. Now, though, his instincts were telling him it was time to come home. Time to take over as Alpha. “I don’t want to hurt him,” he whispered.
That got Mitch’s attention. “Your father won’t let you do that.”
Fletcher rubbed his eyes. “My father isn’t as young as he used to be.” He remembered the last time he’d been home. His wolf had nearly taken over, and the only thing keeping him from challenging his own father as Alpha of the pack had been his iron self-control.
“Your father knows what’s coming,” Mitch said, putting a hand on Fletcher’s arm.
Fletcher froze as static sparked over his skin, and then he jerked away. “Fuck.”
Mitch swallowed, then took a careful step back. “It’s definitely time to go home.” He shook out his hand as if it hurt.
Fletcher knew it wasn’t pain that Mitch was trying to shake off, but arousal. He stared at his friend. Mitch stared back.
“Jesus Christ, I feel like I’m being split apart,” Fletcher finally groaned, clenching all of his muscles. His cock had hardened fully the moment Mitch had touched him, and it was all he could do to keep his hands off his friend. A quick glance down told him that Mitch was in a similar predicament. This shit had been happening more and more often the past year. At first, they thought it was just that they weren’t getting laid enough, so they’d hooked up and tried to work out the arousal with random women, but the moment the night ended, the cursed cycle would start all over again. Then they figured they’d try and jerk each other off, and that had been even worse. It was as if their bodies and souls were intimately threaded together, but something wasn’t quite right with the connection. Neither man had been able to bring the other to climax, and their experiments had left them frustrated and desperate.
“The answer is out there,” Mitch said, pointing north, towards home. “I can smell it, and so can you.”
“Fuck. I can’t go home yet, Mitch. I’m not ready.” Fletcher let his wolf take over. It was too fucking difficult to think as a human. Skin and bones blurred into something entirely different, and then he was his beast, with fur and teeth and claws. He lifted his head and howled, not surprised when Mitch echoed him, standing in his wolf form just back from Fletcher’s right flank. He turned to his friend, and Mitch flicked an ear at him, loyal as always. Mitch had already followed him to the ends of the Earth. He’d follow him around this mountain for one more day.
He knew it was time to go home, but he couldn’t. Not yet.
****
“Hurry up, or we’re going to be late,” Paige said, throwing a pair of jeans at Avery.
Avery stood at the window and stared at the sunrise just now painting the sky behind the trees yellow. Her skin prickled. Her wolf paced inside her head. She looked at the jeans on the floor, and everything inside her wanted to kick them away. She tried again to let her wolf out, but nothing happened, no matter how hard she concentrated. Her skin prickled as if she’d jammed a finger in a light socket, and then the crawling sensation moved into her bones. She moaned and gave up, crouching on her heels. She dropped her head into her hands.
“Avery,” Paige said, kneeling beside her.
Avery shied away when Paige reached out. “No, don’t.” She took a deep breath and held it for eight counts, then exhaled. “Sorry,” she said, dropping her hands from her face.
Paige put a careful hand on Avery’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”
The touch made her skin crawl, and her wolf howl inside her head, but she nodded anyway, gritting her teeth. “Just unsettled.” She stood up, then grabbed her jeans and shoved her legs inside. “I’m fine.” She forced a smile.
Paige frowned, looking at the window. “You’re not fine, but we are out of time.” She pivoted and headed out of the bedroom. “I’ll wait in the car. Maybe grab an energy bar or something. You know you’ll feel worse if you don’t eat.”
Avery made a face, but she pulled on her t-shirt, and then went into the kitchen. After rummaging around the cupboard, she found the last stick of beef jerky, and tore it open. She grabbed her cell phone and keys, and shoved them in her pockets. She skipped wearing a bra and panties, because she couldn’t bear to have elastic next to her skin these days. Good thing the t-shirt is thick cotton, she thought, not for the first time. Or everyone and their mother will see my nipples. She glanced down, annoyed at how they poked at the fabric. She put her hands on her breasts, ignoring the ache in her pelvis, and then she sighed and went out, locking the door behind her.
“You ready?” Paige called out the window of the driver’s side of her car.
Avery nodded, ripping at the jerky with her teeth and chewing so she wouldn’t have to answer with words. Her wolf whimpered, and she tried to soothe her beast mentally. She vowed to go for a good, hard run after work, even if she had to do it with a human body. She needed it desperately, regardless of the weirdness afflicting her.
Paige started the car. “Okay, then. We’re off.”
****
Six hours later, Avery ducked into the private bathroom in the office set behind the gift shop’s checkout counter and locked the door. She shuddered as she leaned against it, breathing too quickly.
Stop it. You’re going to hyperventilate, she told herself, counting to eight and then holding her breath. She’d led two groups of children on a guided hike through the Sanctuary’s nature trail, and then she’d helped an older woman who’d twisted her ankle back up the rough hiking trail cut into the side of the east ridge. And now, she had had enough of humans for the day. She breathed out, then breathed in and counted again. What the hell is wrong with me?
Pounding on the door had her growling before she could control herself. Her wolf scratched at her from the inside, and she ground her teeth together until her jaw ached.
“Avery? You in there?” Marcus Lyall, Beta of the Pack, and Sanctuary coordinator called through the door to her.
“Shit,” she muttered, then reached for the door and swung it open. “Uncle Marcus.” She stared up into his blue eyes, fighting the aggression rising through her. This is Marcus. He’s pack, she told her wolf. He wasn’t really her uncle, but she’d grown up with Paige and had been calling him that since she’d been a little girl. He told her he liked it. She appreciated that, especially now. Her father had flaked out on her when her mother had died, and Marcus and his brother, Boris, Pack Alpha and Paige’s father, had stepped in to help her with her grief. “I need a minute,” she told him, voice cracking. Her wolf whined, scratching at her mental walls, and Avery barely restrained a wince. Her head hurt like crazy.
Marcus stepped back, looking startled. “Oh.” He reached out a hand and touched her cheek. “Oh, sweetheart.”
Strangely, his touch didn’t make her want to scream. She swallowed hard as cool, soothing power calmed her wolf a little bit. “I’m sorry. I don’t know if I can do the group hike this afternoon.” She hated to let him down, but the truth was, she was a mess. She could barely control her emotions, and the mood swings were really messing with her.
He smiled and stepped back, gesturing her out of the bathroom. “Here. Eat this,” he said, extracting a pack of cookies from his pocket. “I know you didn’t have time for lunch today.”
Avery smiled thanks and ripped open the plastic. The sugar rushed her system like a hit of adrenaline, and she inhaled sharply as she scented something strange on the breeze. She looked out of the small office behind the register and past the line of people waiting to pay for their passes to hike on the mountain. She couldn’t see a damned thing except for humans, and her Aunt Lillian, Boris’s wife, working the register.
“Better?” Marcus asked her.
She nodded. “Thanks.”
He smiled. “I came to tell you that you need to—”
Avery’s cell phone pinged, interrupting her uncle. She grimaced and dug out her phone. “Hang on, let me silence this or it’ll keep going,” she said, looking at the screen.
Paige: Where r u I need you right now!!!
“That would be Paige, right?” Marcus asked, hazel eyes twinkling.
Avery looked up. “Yeah. How did you know?”
He grinned. “I came in here to tell you to take the rest of the afternoon off, so you can go help Paige up in the big house.”
Avery stared at him suspiciously. “What’s going on?”
Instead of answering her, Marcus glanced over his shoulder as the noise in the gift shop suddenly increased. “The next group is here. I’ll take over guiding them so you can get going, before Paige has a coronary,” he said, already walking out of the office.
Avery frowned at him, and then scowled at her phone. What the hell was going on these days? No one was making any sense anymore. I’ll be there in ten, she texted to Paige, and then she shoved the phone back into her pocket.
****
A half hour later, she stood in the disaster that was the Alpha suite of the big house. The house was actually a huge log cabin set on top of the mountain on the private side of the Sanctuary. She didn’t know how long ago it had been built, but it had been updated over the years, and now it resembled a swanky log cabin resort, complete with huge windows and a giant meeting room that doubled as an entryway. A terrace ringed the second story, with double doors lining the length of the building. She was upstairs on the north side, standing in front of the open double doors that had housed Paige’s parents for as long as she could remember. Had, being the operative word, she thought, stunned as she took in the mostly empty room.
“Avery! Thank God you’re here,” Paige said, attacking her and dragging her inside. “My parents have lost their minds.” She gestured to the dismantled queen-sized bed in the corner and the boxes stacked against the wall near the en suite bathroom.
“What in the heck?” she asked, staring at the carnage. The windows were bare, too, and she could see the entire valley from this vantage. She’d had no idea this suite had such a spectacular view.
“My parents are moving,” Paige said, sinking her hands into her hair and pulling, hard. “And they only just told me!”
“Wait, what? Moving? Moving where? I thought they were just moving do a different set of rooms,” Avery said as an unexpected pang of terror hit her right in the heart. How could the Alpha move? He couldn’t just pick up and leave the pack. Her wolf started pacing again, in the confines of her body. She rubbed her hands down her arms, trying to soothe her beast. It didn’t work.
“They’re moving to a cabin I didn’t even know they’d built!” Paige kicked a box. “And they bought an RV.”
“A cabin?” Avery forced her mind to work. “Where is this cabin? Wait, is it the one that was just built down the road?”
“Yeah. I know it’s only, like, five minutes away, but still! What are they doing?” Paige started pacing. “They can’t just take off, willy-nilly.” She stopped and gave Avery a look. “I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Maybe it has something to do with your brother coming home.” Avery walked further into the room. It didn’t look anything like she remembered, not that she’d been inside that many times. She and Paige mostly hung out in Paige’s room downstairs. The last time she’d been in here, it had been when Paige’s mother had asked her to help hang up a new painting. Ann Lyall was a brilliant artist, and Avery had loved the watercolor of the forest she’d done, but now it was nowhere to be seen. “I don’t understand,” she said, pursing her lips.
“Avery! You’re here!” Ann Lyall unconsciously echoed her daughter’s initial exclamation as she walked into the suite.
Avery turned, and Ann’s smiling face was in stark contrast to Paige’s distraught expression. “Aunt Ann, what’s happening?” she asked, hoping the older woman would be able to calm her daughter down because she hadn’t had much luck. Probably because I’m just as confused as Paige.
“Oh, honey, no worries. We’re just moving down the mountain a bit.” Ann smiled impishly, an impressive feat for a woman in her late fifties. “We’re going to be doing some traveling, soon, too.” She put her hands on her hips. “Almost done in here.”
“Traveling?” Avery asked, nodding slowly. “Paige said something about you wanting to travel.”
“Traveling, Mom?” Paige repeated, standing with her hands on her hips. “I thought you meant you’d go on a vacation or two, not that you were going to buy a freaking RV and take off for months and months.” She glared at her mother. “The Alpha can’t travel. You know that.”
“I’m not moving out of the country, Paige. Don’t worry so much about it. Everything is going to be fine.” Ann smiled at her daughter. “We need to move this stuff downstairs so the men can get it set up in our new cabin.” She looked around, then nodded. “It’ll be good to have our own place. I’m looking forward to it.” She glanced at Avery. “Will you help us get the last of it downstairs?”
Avery frowned, still confused. “Okay. But what about the Pack?”
“What about them?” Ann asked.
“The Pack needs an Alpha,” Avery said. Everyone knew this, and most especially the Alpha’s wife. Packs that had no Alpha tended to dissolve into chaos. Wars had been fought over the Alpha’s position. All she had to do was think about Gorge Rock Pack, their closest neighbors, to know that packs without Alphas always suffered. That pack had been without a leader for a quarter of a century, and last she’d heard, .
“No worries, my dear. Boulder Pack will always have an Alpha,” Ann said, cryptically. She grabbed a box and headed for the door. “Grab a box or two, will you?”
Avery watched her walk out of the suite, bemused. But she’s never lied to me, and she’s always been there for me, especially after my mom died, she reminded herself.
“See? See?” Paige grabbed Avery’s arm and dragged her to the railing outside the suite. She pointed to the foyer downstairs. “Look! They’ve packed up everything.”
Avery yanked her arm away, growling under her breath. Her skin buzzed unpleasantly from the contact. “Paige, calm down. It sounds like they just want more privacy, now that they’re getting older. They’re not moving far.” She’d seen the cabin being built over the last few months, but had just assumed it was for someone else, or possibly even a rental property for visiting wolves. She went back into the suite and grabbed a box. It wasn’t heavy, and she sniffed, then nodded. It held some of Ann’s clothing.
“What are you doing?” Paige asked.
“Helping your mother,” Avery said. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“You can’t. This makes no sense,” Paige said, blocking the doorway.
Avery frowned. “Paige. You’re overreacting.” She tried to move past her best friend, but Paige wasn’t moving. She stared her friend down. “Move aside.” She put a little bit of a bite into her voice this time.
Paige moved immediately, and then sucked in a breath. “You just did it again.”
Avery glanced at her. “What?”
“You did that thing.” Paige jabbed a finger at her. “That thing with your voice.”
I don’t know what she’s talking about, Avery thought, heading for the stairs. Before she could walk down, though, her wolf abruptly stood up and started howling inside her head. She stumbled, knocking the box into the railing. It tumbled out of her grip, and sailed over and down, like a rock falling off of a cliff, and landed with a thud. Avery barely noticed. Two men stood just inside the entryway, looking up at her. They were in shadow, and no one else had noticed them yet. Avery couldn’t tear her gaze away.
The taller of the two had longish brown hair, and light brown eyes, and something told her he was the strongest wolf she’d ever met. He was built. The only thing more impressive than his physique was the startling intelligence shining from his gaze. The other man, only slightly smaller, had blue eyes so clear she felt like she could dive inside. He radiated a vast, cool calm, like a rock that no amount of wind or snow would ever budge. She stared at them, frozen, as arousal rocketed through her body. Her wolf howled and howled so loud she couldn’t think.
“Who?” she tried to ask, but her voice didn’t work. Her skin prickled. She felt like she’d swallowed lightning.
“Avery. Avery!” Paige shook her.
Avery turned to her best friend and bared her teeth angrily. Her wolf was just beneath her skin, and it was all she could do not to scream out loud. She just could not deal with hysterics right now.
Paige stepped back, shock coloring her expression. “Okay, whoa. Down, girl.”
Avery swallowed and counted to ten, and then pointed. “Who are they?” She wanted to run downstairs, strip naked, and rub her skin all over the two men. She wanted to fuck them. She wanted them to tie her up and never let her go. She’d never felt anything like this, not ever. She gritted her teeth again, and reminded herself that she was an independent woman. Wolf. Whatever. “Paige? Who are those wolves down there?”
“What wolves?” Paige glanced over the railing, then gasped. “Fletcher! Mitch!” She bolted down the stairs, taking them two at a time, and launched herself at the larger of the two men.
The man with the golden eyes caught Paige and hugged her tightly, and it was only then that Avery realized that the man she wanted to fuck into oblivion was her best friend’s older brother. The Alpha heir. When Paige grabbed the other guy, and planted a huge kiss on his cheek, Avery growled, long and low. She could tell that Paige loved him like a brother, but it didn’t seem to matter.
“Oh, fuck,” she whispered, gripping the railing until her hands ached. “Fuck.” She wanted the man with the blue eyes, too. She wanted them both. She closed her eyes, and just breathed, willing her insane arousal to go the fuck away. Besides, there was no guarantee that the two men downstairs would desire her back. They definitely won’t want a chubby, non-wolf like me, she thought.
“It won’t help, you know,” Ann said, startling her out of her daze.
“What?” Avery couldn’t even look at her. Her gaze was trapped on the two men downstairs.
“You shouldn’t fight it. The Pack needs you.” Ann moved past her and headed downstairs.
The Pack needs a defective female wolf? Avery thought bitterly. Not likely.
The man with the light eyes grinned and held out his hands. “Mom!”
Ann moved closer and gripped her son’s wrists. “You look good, Fletcher,” she said, and then she pulled him in for a hug. Mitch stood by, smiling, until Ann dragged him into the hug, too. “Mitch. I’m so glad you’re both home.”
Avery stepped away until her back hit the log wall. Her wolf snarled at her, and she scratched at her arms, using the pain to help her focus. “This isn’t good,” she whispered. She glanced to her right. The open suite beckoned to her. She could go in there and get a grip before she went downstairs. Why hadn’t she recognized them? She’d grown up with Paige. She’d seen Fletcher and Mitch many times over the years.
But not recently, she realized, frowning. She slipped into the room and headed directly for the windows. I haven’t seen them in at least five years. No, longer, actually. She remembered seeing them briefly during the holidays when she’d turned sixteen, but that had been the last time. She’d been away at college the other times they’d come home, and then they’d just … stopped visiting. She undid the latch on the casement window, and it swung open. The cool breeze slid over her hot face.
“It’s been nine years,” she murmured, doing the math in her head.
“Nine years is a hell of a long time,” a man said behind her.
Avery spun around, heart leaping into her throat. Fletcher stood in the center of the suite, light brown eyes bleeding to gold. Mitch stood just behind his right shoulder, blue eyes shading to black.
Avery put a hand on the sill to hold herself up and wondered what her eyes looked like right now.