Chapter Nine

Gabe stared out the passenger side of the patrol car, a plain white SUV with the Windy Gap wolf’s head logo on the side. They were approaching the outskirts of Wolf’s Peak, but the familiar landscape of the steep, rocky slopes on either side of the road with the drop off to the creek on one side rushed by without registering. He should cancel his dinner date with Serena. It was the right thing to do.

“Gabe!” Rico, Gabe’s partner for the day, gave his shoulder a push then put his hand back on the steering wheel. “What the hell is wrong with you, Wulfric? You’ve been somewhere else all morning.”

“Sorry.” Gabe rubbed his face with his hands. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“Big Friday night out with the ladies?” Rico gave him a huge grin and winked. “Gotta watch it. The chief will have your ass if she thinks you’re not duty-ready.”

“You’d think they’d be nicer to us volunteers.”

“You’d think.”

Rico could talk. He was a career enforcer and actually got paid for his hours on the job, unlike Gabe and Sam who both volunteered their time to fill their pack tithe. Rico lived on-site at the Windy Gap compound, sharing a bunk with a bunch of other lone wolves not really looking to settle down. It was where Gabe and Sam had lived before their dad died. Afterwards, Sam had moved in with their mom and Gabe had moved into the apartment over the deli—a move that had become suddenly extremely complex.

“Yeah, I’ll be careful of the chief.” He’d tossed and turned with guilt—the look on Sam’s face still etched in his mind—until the small hours of the morning. When the pale light of dawn had lit up the blinds in his bedroom, he’d given up and made coffee. This was his full day of volunteer enforcer duty he did each week, and it was getting longer and longer by the minute.

“Look, there are no calls right now. Let’s go get some grub. We’re close to your place. Saturday is potato soup day, right?”

The idea of possibly facing Sam made Gabe’s stomach lurch. “What about somewhere else? I eat at the deli all the time. I could use a change.”

The dark line of Rico’s black eyebrows shot up, but he nodded. “Okay. The Chubby Burrito instead?” At Gabe’s nod, he got on the radio and told dispatch they were taking lunch.

Gabe stared off into space as they pulled up at the bright-green food truck—a mural painted on the side featured a fat, mustached burrito dancing with a pair of sexy, long-eyelashed maracas. “Hey, Rico, give me a minute, will you?”

“No problem. The usual?”

“Yeah.” He watched Rico get in line. He’d screwed up, big time. If he’d had any clue Serena and Sam were this far into a relationship, he never would have pressed her for dinner.

Hell, that was a lie.

The moment he’d seen her, he’d known she was the one, and his life had changed forever.

What he hadn’t known, and never could have guessed, was that it would threaten his relationship with his brother. Or that he’d ever choose a woman over his twin.

He should let her go, let Sam have her. If you’d asked him a few days ago, that’s what he would have said. But now? Now he had the smell and taste of Serena in his system, and he wasn’t sure he could give her up so easily. No, he definitely couldn’t give her up without making sure if she was really Sam’s. Or really his. His wolf hummed.

He was taking her to dinner, and he was going to go all out to seduce her. Sam wanted her, but the odds of either of them having started deep into the mating fever were slim. The lycanthro virus was tricky, and it took exactly the right circumstances to bring it back to life after years of lying dormant in the bloodstream. He was just feeling the results of being a highly charged alpha in the presence of a very sexy potential mate. And so was Sam.

Right now, it was every man out for himself. Just like he and his twin had competed against each other in football, baseball, and track, they were going to compete for Serena.

And he intended to be the winner.

Feeling lighter than he had all day, he saw Rico waving to him from the front of the line. Gabe reached for the door and the radio crackled. “Woman down at 10 Gibson Street, Edge Canyon. Looks like she’s been mauled by dogs. All units, be aware and on the lookout for aggressive canines.”

The Windy Gap enforcers were not local law. As far as anyone knew, they were a security company based out of the ranch and used by many individuals in the area. They had no official standing as far as the county was concerned so they kept their radio chatter mundane and friendly. Aggressive canines might be aggressive wolves. But Edge Canyon was out of his and Rico’s patrol area. For something like this, one of the enforcers who was undercover in the actual police department would keep an eye on the investigation and make certain it wasn’t pack related.

Gabe headed for a free table in the shade, taking his cell phone with him. Out in public they used phones—much more private than the radio if anyone non-pack overheard anything.

“Hey, Rico, aggressive dog warning in Edge Canyon.”

Rico nodded and set their order on the table. “Not our jurisdiction.”

“Nope, just interesting.” He reached for the first of his tacos and took a bite. “We’ve got some big dogs in the area.”

Rico’s grin showed off sharp canines. “You can say that again.”

Gabe grinned back and stuffed the last half of his of taco into his mouth. The woman’s situation could be serious, but suddenly he felt better. The sun was shining, Chubby’s tacos were the best in fifty miles, and he had a date with the sexiest woman in the county.

 

Serena opened the back door to her bedroom and went outside. “Lacey? Are you still there?”

“I’m here.” The familiar tones of her sister’s voice washed over her.

“Good. I had to get outside and into the sunlight for a little while.”

“Is the cabin that bad?”

“Worse. It’s dark and small and everything is super old. The windows are tiny and don’t let in much light.” She walked down the short path to a patch of sunlight that fell in a gap between some towering pines. “But it’s nice out here.” She took as deep a breath as she could. “If I could only breathe.”

“Still getting adjusted to the altitude?”

“Yep.” She found a nice rock in the puddle of sunlight and sat down on its heated surface. “Now you have to help me out. I have a dinner date with Gabe tonight and I have no idea what to wear. Do I go sexy or not? I’m thinking buttoned up to the neck. What do you think?”

Lacey laughed. “I guess that depends on how breakfast with Sam went.”

“It was a disaster.” Serena shuddered. “Thank God I drove myself.”

“Talk to me. I thought you liked him? You spent enough time on the phone with him the last month you were here.”

“That was texting. It’s different.” She sighed. “I had no idea how different. Maybe, if the thing with Gabe hadn’t happened we’d have been okay, but as it was he spent the entire time staring at me with that whipped puppy face, trying to figure out how to make me happy. And then one of us would say something and it would hit too close to home and he’d flip and get really angry. I know it’s because he’s not over the thing with Gabe.”

“Well, what did you expect? ‘Thanks for blowing my brother yesterday, here are some flowers?’”

“No.” Serena smiled, despite the seriousness of her situation. “Of course not. But I don’t think there’s any chance for us if he can’t get over it. Remember, he’s an alpha. They’re a little possessive.”

“A little? Don’t forget, you left me here with a whole pack of them.”

“Well, maybe the ones at home are easier.”

“I doubt it.” Lacey laughed, then got serious. “Okay, let’s say you didn’t meet Sam a month ago and built up an imaginary romance with him. Forget about Gabe and pretend you’ve just met Sam. Would you go out with him?”

Forget about Gabe? The memory of the heat of the sun and the smell of the grass rising up around them as she took him in her mouth suddenly washed over her. Her entire body flushed.

“Serena? Are you still there?”

“I’m here.”

“So, answer the question.”

Go out with Sam? The Sam she thought she knew, absolutely yes. But this new one who was needy and aggressive and someone she had to walk on eggshells with? “No, not as he’s acting now.”

“And what about your wolf? They have good instincts. She liked him before, what about now?”

“She’s a bitch on a biological time clock. She wants every alpha male she thinks might make babies with her. I can’t trust her.”

Lacey’s laugh rang out over the cell phone. “I’m with you there. My wolf thinks I should hook up with Owen, can you believe it?”

Serena could. “He’s grown up pretty hot.” She’d had her own secret crush on their older brother’s best friend when she’d been a teen, but she’d outgrown it. Maybe it would have been better for her had she fallen in love with Owen. Then she wouldn’t be in this fix now.

“He’s too much like a brother. That’s what happens when you’ve known someone since you were five.” Lacey snorted. “I’m telling my wolf to find someone else. But back to you. What about Gabe? If you’d met him before Sam, would you still be going out to dinner?”

Gabe. Heat washed over her again. “I don’t know,” she lied.

“So, what are you going to do?”

Serena got up off her rock and stretched. “I said I’d go out with him and I will, but I have to cut things off with both of them. This is just too complicated.”

“Are you sure?”

No, she wasn’t sure. When she thought about cutting things off with Gabe her wolf snarled in protest. But this was ridiculous. There were other men out there she could find to be her mate. She didn’t need a man whose twin would always resent them, regardless of whether she chose Sam or Gabe.

“I’ve gotta go, Lacey. Thanks for listening.”

“Always, sis. I’m here for you. We all are.”

After Serena hung up the phone, everything seemed brighter. It had helped talking to her sister. She liked Sam, but in retrospect she suspected that what they’d had was merely a few kisses after too much wine and a texting relationship from too far away. Despite her wolf’s pushing her at every available alpha in sight, Sam wasn’t the one. Sure, they might have been able to develop something, but now?

She doubted it.

The question now was, how soon could she dump Gabe at dinner and get back to making a life out here in Colorado without all the mess these alphas and her wolf had brought to her door?

She went back into the house just in time to hear a knock at the front door. “I’m coming.” Tossing her phone on the bed she ran through the short hallway and into the main room and opened the front door.

It was the weekend and this part of the compound was deserted. She’d driven up past the ranch and the big council house after breakfast. It had been full of kids and wolves and sheep and horses. But up here, tucked away from the action, things were eerily quiet.

“Hello?” Serena heard the dwindling sound of a car engine. She craned her neck to scan the yard, but there was no vehicle in sight. She looked down. On the stoop at her feet rested a bouquet of bloodred roses in a clear glass vase. She bent down and picked them up. The soft, silky petals were perfect, just slightly open and ready to bloom. She leaned in to smell them, but was hit by the strong scent of fertilizer. She wrinkled her nose at their fertilizer scent and wished they had the full perfume of the old-fashioned roses in her mother’s garden instead.

She carried them in, searching for the card buried in among the dark-green leaves. Gabe or Sam? Despite how lovely the flowers were, she was irritated. The card read: For Serena, with love.

Now she was in a pickle. Did she ask Gabe? Or did she just assume they were an apology from Sam for his behavior at breakfast? All her good feelings from her conversation with her sister fled.