Watching Isabelle had become something of an obsession for Luke. Most of the pack was here at his mother’s, yet he only had eyes for his mate. She was about thirty feet away—too far for his liking—lounging on one of the sturdy rocking chairs that lined the pack house’s wraparound porch. Every time she sipped from the huge mug in her hands, she stopped and sniffed the contents, letting out a little sigh of satisfaction. Hot chocolate, probably. His mate definitely liked her chocolate.
Everything she did fascinated him. From the way she tucked the flyaway strands of dark hair behind her ears, to how she ducked her head when someone said something nice to her. Hell, he even enjoyed the way she narrowed her eyes at him when she was about to tell him off.
He had it bad.
Given everything that had happened, Isabelle’s ability to captivate him was an excellent thing. Because when he thought about Jenny Erlington’s little girl wandering around in the freezing dark in nothing but her pajamas until neighbors found her, blinding fury whited out his vision and his wolf shook with the need to destroy.
“When did Vaughn call to tell you not to go to Missoula?” Luke refocused on Tanya and Daphne. If they’d been there to guard Jenny Erlington...hell. Maybe they’d be dead, too.
In the shadow of a huge spruce, the two females cowered, their eyes downcast. Damn it. This was on Luke, not them. He never should have trusted Vaughn.
“Come here,” he said, hugging them to his sides. Fear and anger overrode their natural scents. “It’s not your fault. Vaughn’s the sheriff. Of course you listened to him.”
“He called right before we were supposed to leave,” Daphne said in a nervous voice, while Tanya nodded. “He said the security detail wasn’t necessary anymore.”
That sonofabitch. “Did he give a reason?”
“No. He’s not the most talkative guy,” Tanya grumbled.
Daphne’s big brown eyes were filled with tears when she chanced a peek at him. “I’m so sorry. We would’ve gone if—”
“Stop,” he said, his voice still too harsh. Gentling his tone, he said again, “It’s not your fault.” It’s mine.
As the females walked off—probably to find company that wasn’t a growling asshole—Luke poked at the fire burning in the small chiminea. Still, he kept his eyes on Isabelle. Every time he looked away, his wolf started to rage. Between the danger and the mating dance, they were a mess. Possessive, dominant, and—
“You’re eyeballing my girl, son.”
Luke tore his gaze away from the porch. Hank Dodd ambled closer, scowling at him as if he’d just peed on the landscaping.
“Yes, sir.”
“Hmmph. Well, you’re honest. I’ll give you that much.”
“Try to be.” At least about the stuff he could be.
Like a bee to honeysuckle, Luke’s gaze flew back to Isabelle. She laughed at something Freddie said, and a feeling of complete devotion rose in Luke, washing away everything else. “Yes, sir.”
Hank nodded. “Can’t say I blame you. She’s pretty special.”
“You’re taking all of this suspiciously well. Is this the part where you warn me off? Because, no disrespect, but that’s not going to happen.”
Hank rolled his eyes. “I fell in love with her mother the moment I laid eyes on her. It was like falling out the side door of a helo, a hundred feet up, without a safety harness. Just as sudden, stomach-lurching, and irrevocable.”
“Sounds violent.”
“Coulda been, but then Abby caught me.”
“Isabelle decked me the first day we met. An uppercut, right to the jaw.”
Hank’s bark of laughter turned heads all across the yard. “That’s my girl. Think she’s gonna catch you?”
“God, I hope so.”
* * *
“Are you happy?”
Freddie blinked at Izzy’s sudden question and pulled his attention from the rapidly multiplying herd of children they’d been watching race around Lena Wyland’s torch-lit yard. The kids argued, threw snowballs, wrestled, and generally tried to maim one another. Izzy recognized some of them from the day she arrived in Montana. How was that only a few days ago?
She scrutinized her brother’s face. “I mean, like really happy?”
As if on autopilot, he homed in on Rissa, who was sitting on the edge of a picnic table in the yard below them. Of course, he’d been doing that for the last twenty minutes, since his fiancée had left him on the wraparound porch. Once again, Rissa looked up like she could feel his attention. Damn, the heat of their shared look could’ve melted the snow.
Freddie leaned back in his rocking chair, his broken leg propped up on a low stool. A goofy smile lit his face. “Oh yeah.”
Izzy wanted to fake a gag, or mock their sappiness, but that’d make her a hypocrite. Because Luke was sitting on that table now, too, and they couldn’t keep their eyes off each other either.
“This is nuts,” Izzy whispered.
“Little bit.” Freddie reached out, and without touching her, traced an invisible line between her brows. “What specifically put that look of consternation on your face? Has Luke been pressuring you? Because if he has, I’m gonna—”
“For what?”
As Freddie shifted guiltily, a giant, arrow-shaped sign flashed in her head. It was pointed right at her and marked with one word: Idiot. Flash. Idiot. Flash.
“Oh. My. God,” she said in a hiss. “You know. Don’t you? That’s why you’ve been so pissy with Luke. You know we’re mates.”
That whole cockamamie idea was insane. Bonkers. Bats in the belfry, Looney Tunes, cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs crazy.
The flashing idiot sign grew red-and-white chase lights.
“It wasn’t really a secret, Iz. Not with the way the big ass got all growly any time someone came near you. Hell, Luke practically whizzed a circle around you to mark his territory.”
An ah-ooh-ga! sound joined the light party.
“Well, it was a secret to me, dumbass. And the only reason you’re not a smear in the snow for talking about me like I’m a fire hydrant is because Abby’ll get mad if I mess up your ugly face any more than it already is. You know how she likes pictures for the mantel.”
Across the yard, Luke stood and stared at her, frowning. Instinctively, she knew if she gave him the slightest indication she was in trouble, he’d tear through the deck railings to get to her. Woe to anyone who got in his way. It made her feel...strange. Sort of like her rocking chair had grown roots and could withstand an earthquake without getting knocked over.
Izzy shook her head at Luke and he slowly sat back down.
Freddie watched the whole show and huffed. “I really want to hate that guy, but he’s so freaking concerned about you all the time, I just can’t. And that’s so annoying, ’cause he’s an arrogant dipshit. But you deserve someone who’ll do anything for you. Even if it’s him.”
Hiding her face in her cocoa mug, because she had no idea what to do with all that, she said, “Doesn’t it bother you that you had no choice in this whole mate thing?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s like some biological imperative. Hormones or something. Like going into heat. I didn’t even know his name before I—” She broke off, blushing.
“Before you wanted to do the nasty?”
Eyes bugging out of her head, she backhanded his arm. “Fred!”
“Ow! Damn it. Christ, you’re such a prude. To answer your question, you violent cur, no, it doesn’t bother me. How could it, when meeting Rissa meant finding everything I didn’t know I was looking for?”
“Jeez, Fred, you’re downright poetic.”
“Oh, shut up. Seriously. Finding Rissa was like the universe handed me the one person on the whole planet that was perfect for me. Just me. What could be wrong with that? It’s not like I got brainwashed. I’m still me, except now, I’m complete.”
Another snarky comment leapt to mind, and he knew it, because his eyes narrowed. But Izzy didn’t say it. She saw how much her brother and his fiancée loved one another.
“So, it’s all just a foregone conclusion then?” she asked. “Luke’s stuck with me?”
“Hey, knock that shit off. That bossy bastard is lucky to have found you and he knows it. But you still have a choice, Iz. You haven’t mated yet. You can walk away.” At her expression of disbelief, he added, “He promised.”
“Promised?” Freddie and Luke’s terse conversation outside of the sheriff’s station yesterday suddenly had some context. “You made him promise what, exactly?”
Freddie turned to look at Luke. They silently scowled at one another for several seconds. “That he wouldn’t try to seduce you into the mating bond. That he’d let you decide for yourself whether or not you want to stay.”
“I didn’t think that was possible,” she said, her voice a whisper. Her grandmother’s warped tales whipped around her head and she distinctly heard a growl. Her wolf throwing a flag on those memories?
“Well, it won’t be easy.” Freddie stared at his own mate as she walked toward them. “I don’t even wanna imagine having to leave Rissa.”
A few of the boys playing below them in the yard broke away and pelted Freddie with snowballs. He scraped off the saucer-shaped sled he’d wielded like a shield since they got here, and shook a fist at the hooligans. “I have a broken leg, you little demons!”
Boom, boom, poof! Three more frosty bombs nailed his barrier.
Izzy wiped some splattered snowball off her cheek. “I don’t think they like you, Fred.”
“Oh, no,” Rissa said, coming up the porch steps with her sister. She gazed at the writhing swarm of mittened evil with undaunted affection. “They love him.”
Freddie gaped at his fiancée as if she’d sprouted wings from her forehead.
On the steps, wisely out of collateral-damage range, Daphne said, “All together like this, they are a little much to take.” When Freddie pulled a clump of snow from his collar, she laughed. “I think Dean and Sarah’s boys might be the worst of the lot.”
“Which ones are they?” Izzy asked, as Abby came out the back door of the enormous stone-and-wood house carrying a thermos.
Pointing at several kids hiding behind an overturned picnic table, Daphne said, “The one piling snowballs in a pyramid is Nate. He’s six. And Justin is almost five. He’s the one in blue, directing everyone like a little Napoleon.”
Definitely the ringleaders. Bossy little Alpha and Beta in the making. Izzy wondered if this was how Luke and Dean had been as kids: terrorizing the county with mischievous green eyes and wicked aim.
Abby poured steaming hot chocolate into Izzy’s mug. “They’re adorable,” she said, earning a disgruntled look from Freddie.
“Come on, Fred,” Izzy said. She pointed to a toddler who couldn’t be more than two years old. “That little glittery pink one is pretty cute. Look at her do the Frankenbaby walk.” As soon as she said that, the girl fell face-first into a snowdrift.
Every adult pack member in the vicinity stopped what they were doing and started to move, but Luke was at the baby’s side in an instant. Scooping her up in his arms, he brushed off the crying child and kissed her red cheeks. One of the men Izzy met at Freddie’s her first day here and the helicopter pilot she’d met yesterday materialized next to them. They both fussed over the little girl and stroked her face.
A boy, about twelve years old, jogged past, with Sarah and Dean’s younger son riding his back. Another piggybacked pair were hot on their heels as Luke’s mother and another woman cheered the racers on.
Weres. Every last one of them.
Laughing, happy voices echoed around the yard, including her family’s. Izzy couldn’t lie to herself. She was happy, too.
How the hell had that happened?
A warm sensation like sinking down into a hot bath enveloped her. She didn’t have to look to know that even while snuggling the little girl, Luke had focused his attention on her again.
“Children are such a blessing,” Abby said, cocking an eyebrow at Izzy and Freddie. “You know...grandchildren would be wonderful, too.”
Freddie choked on his coffee. “Jeez, woman. Can I get out of the cast first?”
Abby sniffed. “I don’t see why a cast should present a problem.”
Rissa waggled her brows at Freddie.
“I’m outta here,” Izzy said, dropping her feet off the railing to stand. Maybe if she ran for it—
Abby pointed a finger at her. “Sit down, young lady, and finish your cocoa.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The werewolves’ laughter drowned out Freddie’s sputtering.
Wrapped in a woolen blanket, Izzy hunkered down in her chair, keeping a wary eye on her foster mother.
Babies? Jesus.