Chapter One
Piper Diamond tried to ignore her mate, Baxter, as he sighed, rubbing his thumbs in small circles at the base of her neck. He always knew just the right way to touch her to ease the tension in her spine. His musky Wolf scent so close to her stirred desire like it always did, but right at this moment, he wasn't after sex.
Instead, his eyes were sad and droopy, his mouth downturned, trying to convince her to do something far different. And far less exciting.
"Please come to the game with me."
"Baxter, I can't."
"Why not?"
"Because I have all this work to do," she gestured to the receipts and invoices strewn over her desk. "And because I don't want to. You'll have more fun without me, anyway."
It was the Wolf League playoffs in Uphoria, Alberta. Winter howled outside and the windows rattled as sand-like grains of snow beat against them. And it always led people to bundle up in woolen hats and parkas to brave the frigid temperatures, so that they could sit in a freezing cold hockey arena and watch a bunch of Werewolves skate around on the ice, slapping around a puck with their little sticks.
Hockey season was the worst season in Piper's opinion. Though she could easily summon up a small dragon to keep her hands toasty in the arena, she just didn't see the appeal of the sport. Not a very Canadian attitude, as Baxter repeatedly told her.
When it came to hockey, the only delightful parts of watching a sports game–the rippling muscles of the athletes–were hidden beneath layers of padding and fur. Boring.
What made it even more unbearable was that while the playoffs happened, they were all anybody in Uphoria, especially Baxter, would talk about. Piper couldn't even walk down the street without hearing fights over the finer points of what happened in the last game.
Baxter leaned over her, nibbling at her neck. She tried to ignore the tingle that it created, focusing on her bookkeeping papers.
"You have been pouring over these books for hours," Baxter nipped at her earlobe, his steamy breath in her ear. "If you come with me, I can make it really worth your time…"
Piper swept her blue-and-purple hair out of her eyes and turned to her mate. As a Werewolf, he was able to shift forms at will and either be a man with firm muscles, dark hair, dark eyes, and a Latino complexion, or a humanoid wolf with hairy, clawed feet, hands the size of dinner plates and boundless muscles that rippled under gleaming fur the color of midnight.
"You'll be able to enjoy the game better without me," Piper repeated. "The gallery is in the red again, I'm not sure how I'll make rent. It seems every time I break even, something happens and I'm in debt again."
Baxter caught the arms of her swivel chair, trapping her. "Piper Diamond, you get your delicious ass out of this chair this instant. You need something to distract you, and you know how… desirous I get after we win a game."
"You're insisting, aren't you?"
Baxter nodded, and Piper wrapped her arms around his neck. He rarely insisted on anything, and so she knew that this was very important to him. "Okay. I'll go. On one condition. If we lose, you don't start pouting."
Baxter flicked his tongue across her lips and she opened them readily and moaned.
"I'll get your coat," he whispered, slipping away from her grasp.
Piper smiled at him. She really did not want to go watch hockey, even though she had to admit the sex after Uphoria won a game and Baxter was all hopped up on adrenaline and excitement, was always mind-blowing. But Baxter was right, as he usually was. She needed a distraction and hockey was better than sitting around stressing.
They had been mates since senior prom night. Neither of them had really understood just how permanent Werewolf mating actually was. They had been hormone-fueled teenagers with their heads in the clouds, lost in a night of music and dance.
They hadn't even known each other prior to that night.
Nobody had asked Piper to prom. She was the high school's fat-girl that nobody noticed, except for when she snuck candy into Mr. Breton's oh-so-boring History of Magic in the Americas class. She wasn't the only one eating chocolate while Breton droned on and on, but she was the only one the other students seemed to notice. Back then, Piper hated her body, bouncing from diet to diet, her weight yo-yoed like crazy, making her constantly sick.
She hadn't even wanted to go to prom, but her mother wanted her to go. Her mother had just stopped chemotherapy and so Piper had agreed. During a slow song, Piper was making up an exciting story to tell her mother about how much fun she had when Baxter approached. He complimented one of her art pieces that was displayed in the school hall. Talking lead to kissing, intense and fiery.
Piper was still not entirely certain how or why it happened, but before the end of the night, they were in the backseat of his car, clumsy, awkward, but with no second thoughts.
It had been a mistake.
But it was the best mistake Piper had ever made. Baxter was the sweetest, most attentive mate she could ever hope to find. Even though knowing that she was his mate for life scared the shit out of her at first, it didn't take long for her to truly fall in love with him.
"I love you," she said, leaning against him for warmth as they scampered out to the car.
Baxter kissed the top of her head. "I love you, too."
***
The game, as Piper had predicted, had Baxter jumping from his seat, swearing like a sailor at the referee every few minutes, cheering and stomping his feet every other time. He wasn’t the only one, either.
Piper watched him with a smile, only half paying attention to the game. On the rink, two teams of Werewolves, both in their beast's forms, faced off, snarling and slamming into each other. The Wolf League games were notoriously more violent than the ones humans played and it was common for the ice to stain red.
"There he goes, there he goes!" Baxter screamed, pulling Piper to her feet.
The center forward for the Uphoria team had the puck. Skating so quickly that it was hard to keep her eyes on him, he zig-zagged through the opposing team players. Baxter screamed so loud his voice grew hoarse.
In that instant, as though she had called his name, the center forward looked up. His wolfish face was twisted into a snarl, white teeth flashing in the arena lights. Brown eyes burrowed into hers and he winked with a distinctive nod of his head.
There was a flash of movement and a roar of approval from the crowd. Piper strained to see what had happened. A buzzer went off, announcing the end of the game. Or at least, she hoped it was. Her cheeks were flushed all of a sudden, her pulse quickening.
"We won!" Baxter shouted, jumping up and down. "We won!"
Piper applauded half-heartedly. Her gaze continued to follow the center forward, but he didn't look back at her.
***
The next morning Piper yawned as she flipped the sign in the window of her art gallery from closed to open. After the game had finished, she and Baxter had celebrated with a few beers when they got back to the house her father had given to them as a gift after they graduated from college. The bottles were still sitting on the kitchen table, abandoned when Baxter had begun kissing her.
Winning the game had made Baxter more passionate than normal and he had given her a night that made her forget all about that odd wink at the game–unfortunately, it had also given her only a couple hours of sleep.
Piper walked around her little gallery, admiring the pieces of local art on display. As the host for the Wolf League playoffs, Uphoria always experienced an influx of tourists during the hockey season. This usually also brought in a couple extra thousand dollars and helped offset the unpleasantness of the season.
It had always been a dream to own a big grand gallery in the city, but Baxter was a hometown guy. Even though they tried out the city for a few years while they were in college, Piper could tell he was miserable and willingly came back to Uphoria.
Even with her father's gift of a house to help them get on their feet, Piper had rapidly gone through her savings to open up this small gallery. Though she always managed to break even every month, keeping her business afloat was no easy task.
Nobody appreciates the lovingly painted strokes of a real brush these days. They only want those cheap knockoffs Thor Wragge sells.
Speak of the devil. The tinkling of the bell announced a visitor and even before she saw him, she recognized the slimy, greedy aura of Thor Wragge.
Wragge owned a knockoff art souvenir shop directly across the street from her. He even dared to refer to as a gallery! The mindless could find any number of replicas of famous pieces of art over there, from The Mona Lisa to kits that would instantly paint any room like the Sistine Chapel.
Wragge had a setup in his basement that constantly put out his rip-offs via magic, but there technically wasn't anything illegal about it, as he never claimed to sell the originals. It was just bad taste and lack of originality.
"Can I do something for you, Wragge?"
Piper refused to call him by his first name. Whether it had been him or his parents to arrogantly give him his name, he was no God of Thunder. He was a powerful warlock, yes. He was attractive enough with neat, sandy-brown hair and brown eyes, but he wasn't even of Norse descent.
"I just thought I'd come over and take a look around. I've been getting so many customers lately that I need a nice, quiet place to think." Wragge flashed a smile at her.
Piper bristled. She had seen the steady stream of customers in and out of Wragge's shop. In the last three days, she had had four. But that didn't matter. One of them had bought a thousand-dollar sculpture and that was worth the hours of sitting in the back, working on her own art while listening for the bells announcing a customer's arrival.
"If you're here to offer to buy me out again, forget it." Piper folded her arms across her chest, squashing her breasts down. They were large, like the rest of her and Wragge had a tendency to ogle them.
Piper was glad that Baxter wasn't here–the last time he had faced off with Wragge, he'd nearly attacked the man. Baxter already had a difficult enough time finding a job simply because he was a Werewolf. He didn't need jail time to make it even worse.
"You say that every time," Wragge smiled a toothy grin at her. "It's such a delightful little shop. I could do such wonders with all this. And you. It's a shame all that potential is wasted."
Heat rushed to Piper's face and she glowered. "Get out."
Wragge smirked and left.