When Annie had seen Graham’s name pop up on her cell phone screen, she’d nearly driven her car into a tree. Only the blast of another driver’s horn and the amped-up reflexes of a wolf shifter had allowed her to avoid plowing off the road and into an immovable object. As it was, she hadn’t needed the double shot of adrenaline to make her voice squeak when she clicked on her hands-free headset to answer the call.

“H-hello?”

“Annie. It’s Graham.”

She hadn’t needed the introduction. Even if she hadn’t seen his name on the caller ID, she’d have recognized his voice in the first syllable. After all, this was a man she’d known for her entire life, her cousin (of one remove or another), her packmate. Her alpha.

“Y-yes, sir.”

“I need to talk to you.”

How long had she been waiting to hear those words? Annie wondered.

Two years, ten months, fifteen days, twelve hours, and forty-two minutes, the voice inside her promptly replied.

Wow. She hadn’t even realized she’d been keeping count. But it shouldn’t surprise her, since the moment had seared itself into her brain like a lesion. It had altered the course of her life, after all. She could be forgiven for remembering it vividly.

“All right.” The calm, even tone of her voice sounded like it came from outside of her, as if someone on the car radio was having the conversation for her. “Would you like to schedule a time, or did you want to speak now?”

Always the alpha, Graham had chosen the now. Annie had found herself driving through the Michigan countryside while the leader of the Silverback Clan made her an offer the Godfather could have taken a lesson from. Not only could Annie not refuse, she had to exert every ounce of her self-control not to leap on it like a starving wolf on a fresh kill.

“Go see John Jaeger in Alphaville,” he had told her. “Do this favor for him, and I’ll consider it an act of contrition. Your banishment will be lifted, and you’ll be free to come back to New York. If you want.”

If she wanted.

If she had any interest in fulfilling the dream she’d held tight to her heart since the moment she’d been cast out of the pack of her birth.

Gee, she’d have to give it some thought.

The irony of the situation didn’t escape her. For almost three years, she’d been wandering aimlessly around the country moving from state to state, region to region, usually stopping for only a few months at a time. She bounced between research facilities that caught her interest and colleagues whose work intrigued her, but she hadn’t even tried to make herself a place anywhere. Because she’d known no place but New York was home.

In all that time, she’d never considered making her way to Alpha. Stubborn pride, she figured. Every shifter in America knew about the town. It was where they sent their problems, like an open-air asylum for damaged Others. Shifters who couldn’t shift, or who couldn’t control the process. Ones with anger issues, or who had survived trauma. Even ones who needed to recover from grave physical injuries.

And, of course, the outcasts. The ones who had been shunned by their packs, prides, clans, or family groups.

Paging Dr. Freud. She didn’t need a degree in psychology to diagnose her own neuroses in this case. She supposed that if she had gone to Alpha—known to shifters one and all as Alphaville—she would have had to admit to her own status as outcast. Going to the place where outcasts went meant she believed she belonged there, that she deserved the punishment Graham had meted out.

But, after all her resistance, all her mental kicking and screaming, in the end, she delivered herself to the place. And into the office of the mayor, no less. Her former alpha certainly knew which carrot to dangle to get her to move fast.

She followed the receptionist’s directions to the door with the brass plaque engraved, simply, MAYOR. Lifting a hand, she rapped three times before she could talk herself out of it.

“Come in.”

The voice, masculine but muffled, had no special qualities other than the distinct subliminal buzz of alpha power. Her innate gamma nature (a middle-of-the-pack wolf) made it impossible to refuse the order. Even if she had wanted to.

Still, she took a deep breath before she turned the knob and opened the dark panel. In her head, the “Imperial March” from Star Wars played, all minor chords and tonal dissonance. It could have been her theme song.

She stepped forward and scanned the space, gaze automatically fixing on the man behind the desk. “Mayor Jaeger?”

“Dr. Cryer.”

The man stood, all lean, feline grace and masculine power. He smiled, wide and charming, and circled the end of his desk to greet her.

She took his hand automatically and shook it, instinct making her size him up in an instant. He stood an inch or two over six feet and carried it with the lazy, precise balance that marked him unmistakably as a cat shifter. Years of practice let her inhale discreetly, just enough to identify the stone-and-pine forest scent of mountain lion. Or cougar, she thought they called them out here.

It explained the light tan to his skin and the black-streaked sandy color of his hair. Add in the dark, mossy green of his eyes, the chiseled features, and that big, broad grin, and the man was enough to catch any female shifter’s eye.

So why did Annie’s keep straying to the huge, burly shape silhouetted against the bright light streaming through the windows?

“Welcome to Alpha.” The mayor had a politician’s handshake—firm, brisk, and dry—and the manners to keep it brief and friendly. “We’re excited you were able to make it all the way out here to see us.”

Annie yanked her attention where it belonged. She even had to angle her body away from the window to bolster her self-control. What in the name of Crick and Watson was the matter with her?

“Thank you, Mayor Jaeger.” She forced a polite smile and ignored the way the hair on the back of her neck stood on end. “I enjoyed the drive. I haven’t gotten much chance to see this part of the country.”

“Well, we like it, rain and all. Hopefully, you’ll have some time to tour around a little bit. See some sights.”

“That would be great.”

Inside, Annie’s wolf snarled and raised its hackles. It had no use for small talk and an intense desire to face the man by the window and sniff him from head to toe.

Down, girl.

Force of will might be keeping her gaze on Jaeger, but every other one of her senses was focused on the stranger. So much so, that she noticed the instant he gathered himself to step forward. She was already turning before her host lifted a hand to motion to the other man. So much for self-control. She’d just have to hope no one had noticed.

“Dr. Cryer, I’d like you to meet a good friend of mine. This is Jonas Browning. Jonas, Dr. Annie Cryer.”

Bear.

Her wolf growled it. Not in the menacing way of a predator detecting a potential threat, but with a sense of surprised satisfaction that made Annie think if her inner beast had been a cat, it would be purring.

Jonas Browning, of the huge frame and mayoral friendship, was definitely a bear; her wolf was right about that. He bore the earthy, woodsy, pleasantly musty scent of that species, but there was something different about it. Annie couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but he smelled just a little different from the bears she had met in the past. A wilder, rockier scent that struck her as pleasant as it was unexpected.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Cryer.”

“Annie,” she corrected him before she could stop herself.

He smiled, a slow curve of his lips that made the face she could now see clearly shift from handsome to sexy and on into the realm of panty dropping. It was a damn good thing she wore jeans over hers. They would keep everything in place.

For the moment.

“Then you should call me Jonas.”

She would call him anything he wanted, as long as he stood where she could look at him. Okay, stare at him. And if he wanted to keep talking to her in that deep, rumbly baritone that sent shivers all up in her belly, that would be great, too.

Yespleasethankyou.

She shook her head, trying to clear the fog, and the motion must have clicked something into place.

“Browning?” She remembered the receptionist’s earlier mention of lumber and replanting trees. “As in Browning Industries?”

“Guilty.” He grinned. “Family business.”

That was one word for it. Browning Industries had made a name for itself as one of the biggest lumber concerns in North America. And that was before it expanded to become the best-known and most respected name in conservation and reforestry. It also still produced huge quantities of lumber and paper products, all from rigorously managed model forests.

Jonas Browning managed the company now that his father had retired. He was a multimillionaire and known as a playboy in shifter circles. You know, in addition to being so sexy he made her drool.

Annie was so focused on the breathtaking bear that she’d almost forgotten anyone else was in the room. When the mayor’s voice cut in and reminded her, her wolf snarled in her head. It did not appreciate the interruption.

“Hey, why don’t we all sit down and make ourselves comfortable,” Jaeger said. “Then we can get down to business.”

Ignoring the impulse—fueled entirely by her wolf—to take her seat right in Jonas Browning’s lap, Annie forced herself to perch in one of the antique armchairs positioned in front of Jaeger’s desk. Jonas took the other, and the mayor reclaimed his own on the other side of the cluttered surface.

“Now, Dr. Cryer,” the cougar began. “As it turns out, Jonas is the reason I contacted Graham Winters about getting in touch with you. That’s why I asked him to be here for our meeting. It’s really a meeting for the two of you. You could say I’m just the broker here.”

The wolf could care less about the cat’s words. It just wanted to draw in the bear’s scent like some kind of high-test liquor. In fact, it acted as if it were intoxicated by something. Annie had never experienced anything like this, but when she tried to sort out the strange sensations, her wolf only got more agitated.

What is wrong with you?

She got another low, purring growl in response. Great. Maybe the mayor had given her some kind of kitty cooties. How was that for using the science?

“I have to say, you haven’t been the easiest woman in the world to find.” Jaeger leaned back in his chair. “First time I talked to Winters was nearly six weeks ago. Took him this long to track you down. Apparently, you’ve been a bit of a wanderer since you left New York.”

Okay. Like a bucket of cold water, that reminder of her past cooled Annie down enough that she was able to look away from Jonas Browning’s sexy, smiling face and at the patently amused one of John Jaeger.

“That’s true,” she admitted. “I have moved around a bit.”

She didn’t mention why, or where, or how often. If they wanted to know, Graham would have told them. In fact, he’d probably considered himself duty bound as one alpha to another to tell the mayor everything. She imagined the mayor knew all about her previous work and the danger in which she had placed her pack with her carelessness.

The thought had her stomach clenching. She preferred not to dwell on the story. Not anymore. For the first six months, she’d practically set up residence in her own shameful actions. Since then she had discovered that things like eating, sleeping, and basic hygiene were a lot easier to manage when she didn’t waste all her energy on self-loathing.

With that in mind, she told herself to concentrate on the here and now. As in, why was she here now?

She cleared her throat. “Ah, I only spoke with Graham quite briefly. He told me that you had called in a favor he owed you, and that you were looking for a scientist with expertise in shifter genetics and gene expression, as well as a solid background in biochemistry and shifter biology. But, um, he didn’t tell me why.”

Not that Annie had asked. She’d all but gone deaf to everything after she’d heard those magic words: You’ll be free to come back to New York.

“Yeah, I guess he figured we’d better explain that ourselves.”

Jaeger stuck out his chin and scratched at the underside. His gaze slid toward his friend. “You care to do the honors, buddy?”

Jonas Browning seemed to twitch, as if the other man had caught him by surprise. He spared Jaeger a quick glance, then shifted in his chair to face Annie. Wow. The force of that direct attention almost made her dizzy. It definitely made her wolf squirm and whimper like a puppy looking to be stroked.

“So, here’s the thing, Annie.”

She stared into his dark eyes, and her wolf squirmed harder. It wanted to rub up against him like a cat to mark its territory.

Territory? Annie demanded.

Mine, the wolf replied.

While Annie reeled at that declaration, Jonas Browning continued to talk. Even through the haze of shock and the madly possessive mate claim of her inner wolf, his words managed to get through. Maybe because they came within an inch of causing a cardiac event in the chest of a perfectly healthy thirty-year-old Lupine female.

“The truth is, I need you to save my clan.”