The mention of family had him sitting up in the grass, looking down over the prairie. It was cold and still dark, and Kate’s body was deliciously warm. But his family…

Some of them would shift back while they were asleep. Some would wake with the shift. Others would stay wolves for a little while after they awoke. Very few of them, if any, had stayed awake during the night, and they would all be rising to do the work that needed doing.

His mother would be awake, probably in the shower. It was early, but he’d bet the ranch she was already getting ready for the day. She liked to get an early start on the chores. Even on Saturday.

“What’s wrong?” Kate asked, sitting up behind him and kissing his shoulder. He could feel her touch from both sides of his skin, which would take some getting used to.

“I need to take you down to the ranch.” He nodded toward his home, clasping his hands around his knees and arching his back into Kate’s skin. He loved the way her nipples responded whenever he touched them, with any part of his body. It made desire zip through her, and he could feel her experience it. Heady.

“Is that it, down there?”

“Yeah. I love this hill. During the daytime, you can see our whole ranch.” He pulled her around his body and settled her between his bent legs so he could hunch around her. Kate’s skin was starting to pebble from the cool air, and he didn’t mind the chill as much.

“I’ve already met Beau and Jace and Bracken and Dee,” she said, and then listed off the rest of the Trewitts and Travises who had been in Somewhere.

“There are more.” His lips trailed down her neck and she shivered. He tried to curl around her more, but there was only so much he could do with naked skin everywhere. “Shift with me and I’ll take you down to my house.”

“Will anyone be awake?”

“My mom, probably. She’s usually up by now.”

“It’s got to be four in the morning.”

“Yeah, well. Psycho runs in the family, I guess.” He tried to smile his way through that comment, but there was an uncomfortable truth hidden within it. His father had been crazy enough to kill two of his own pack wolves. Psycho wasn’t far off.

Ryan shifted and waited for Kate’s wolf to come back. She sidled up to him and he allowed himself to draw strength from her for a long moment. Now that their bond was completed, he could still feel what she felt and what she touched in this form. As wolves. It also meant that he’d always be able to find her. He would always know where she was. How she was.

That would come in handy when he took her up to Kansas.

He ran down the hill with his mate, chasing her for the last time. He’d have to take her to Falcon, to make sure she was protected, before he had his confrontation with her grandfather. He couldn’t risk Kate’s safety around that man.

But then, she would be with him. Forever.

Manhattan, Kansas wasn’t too far from Durant. Not by Texas standards, anyway. It wasn’t as close as Somewhere, but Ryan knew Falcon Scott, the alpha of the Manhattan pack, so much better than he knew Aaron VonBrandt. He trusted Falcon. With Kate, specifically. Falcon was a good man, and the most protective alpha Ryan had ever met. Kate would be completely safe with him.

Plus, Falcon had a plane. If need be, he could get Kate somewhere safer than Manhattan. Far from El Paso.

If Ryan didn’t make it.

They ran between the corrals and Ryan took the lead, taking her around the barn, toward his big farmhouse. The light in the living room was still on, so he took Kate around back. On the off chance that his mother was still sleeping, he didn’t want to wake her. He shifted at the back door, before the steps, and Kate shifted back with him. He wrapped his arms around her and stood like that, their bodies pressed together, for just a moment before he took her into his world.

His mother would have to be the only one who knew about Kate for now. Until everything was settled. But he needed to introduce the two of them. The two most important women in his life needed to know each other.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, running her hands up and down his back. “Don’t you have a key?”

“It’s not locked.” Ryan kissed her neck, crushing her into his body again. “I just…I wanted one more moment where it was just the two of us.”

“We can go back up to the hill,” she said, giggling as he ran his lips up to her earlobe. “There’s no reason to rush anything.”

“No, I need to get you inside.” He nipped at her ear and one of her knees came around his thigh, like she was going to lift herself onto his cock at any moment. Gods, he would have been all for it, if he hadn’t been pretty certain his mother was watching them. He gave her a deep, hard kiss. “I want you to meet my mom.”

Ryan opened the door and pulled Kate inside. This house had played host to decades of memories. Before his parents had inherited it, it had been his grandparents’ house. And someday it would belong to Beau and his future wife, whoever she was.

It would never be Ryan’s.

He took the stairs near the back door and led the way to his room through the dark hallway. They’d almost made it there before Kate spoke.

“I can smell another wolf in here, Ryan.”

Freezing, he stopped to look around, honing his senses for the dark. They still hadn’t found Christian. For all they knew, he was still hunting them, but now that they were bonded, it wouldn’t matter anyway. There was no way for Christian to take Kate now. Ryan had claimed her.

But he didn’t catch any unfamiliar scents. “It’s my mother,” he finally said. “Her bedroom is down at the end of the hall.” He pointed to the door directly across from them. “This is mine.”

“But…” She looked from the end of the hall to his bedroom. “Your mother is a wolf?”

“Of course.”

“Why didn’t she come out running with you last night, then?”

“I know you’ll have a lot of questions, Kate, but there’s time.” Ryan laughed and pulled her into his bedroom. After all the work he’d done to find her the right dress the previous day, she was about to end up in his Sooner gear again.

“Your family doesn’t run together?” she asked, pulling on his hand. This was important to her.

“No. Not usually.”

She cocked her head to one side, fantastically naked and looking hot as a branding iron, and he was thinking about covering her up.

What kind of idiot…

“Does your family always run together?” he asked, digging through his shirts for one of his smaller, tighter muscle shirts. A workout shirt. Those would be more her size. And some shorts with a damn drawstring this time.

“Yeah. Every moon.”

His jaw clenched and he tried not to show his anger. “As much as you hate your grandfather, you still run with him?”

“He’s my family.” Her tone was so resigned, he turned so he could look into her eyes.

She was unhappy, and he couldn’t blame her. Her grandfather was a grade-A son of a bitch, and Ryan would always regret not hunting the asshole down the moment he started using his alpha power like fucking Darth Vader.

Ryan crossed to her and drew her into his arms. “You’ll never have to run with him again. Do you hear me?”

“I know.” She melted against him, and he knew he was never going to find clothes at this rate. But, hey. They were inside, out of the cold. The only thing they would need clothes for was to cover up around his mom. Otherwise, he preferred her naked.

“And I will take care of the Christian thing, too.” He spoke with such certainty, anyone would’ve thought he had a plan already. But he was still formulating one.

“Just don’t hurt him.”

“I made you a promise, Kate. I’m not going to hurt him.” He gritted his teeth, pulling her harder against his body. “Part of me would like to kill him for what he tried to do, whatever his reasons. But I won’t.”

“Are we going to go find him?”

“I’m not sure where to start.”

“We could go back to the truck and track him.”

“It might work if there’s enough of his scent still around.” He glanced back at the dresser, unwillingly. He didn’t want to put clothes on her. He wanted to go to bed. For about a day. And then he’d have to take her to Manhattan so he could be back in time to attend the pledging ceremony. And then, he had business to do.

Christian, he may have agreed not to harm. Phillip Quade was another story.

“Joseph Ryan Travis, the third.” His mother’s familiar voice echoed down the hall as she stomped up the front stairs that led down to the other side of the house. “Do you have a girl up there in that bedroom?”

Kate froze solid in Ryan’s arms. He smiled against her hair, and buried his face there for just another second. All he wanted was to be alone with Kate, for another breath. And then for another.

“I’m up here, Ma,” he called back. “I’ll be down in a second.”

“Bring your girl,” Rosalee Travis yelled, in her thick, mezzo voice. “And don’t forget to put clothes on, boy. I can smell the sex on you from a mile off.”

Kate burst into giggles as Ryan brushed his lips across her neck. His laugh chased hers, and Ryan pushed the door closed. Together they dropped onto the bed, unable to stop themselves. They rolled around until she was on top of him, her legs straddling his hips. His mostly hard cock strained under her slick folds, and he raised his eyebrows.

“I’ve never had sex in this bed before,” he whispered low enough so his mother wouldn’t hear. Kate groaned out another laugh and shook her head.

“Your mother is downstairs waiting for us,” she whispered back, insistently. “I can’t just…”

But he slipped his erection inside her and she moaned into her bitten lip. Her breath started to come a little faster. He pulled her down on top of him so that her breasts were pressed flush to his chest, and started to move his hips in a steady rhythm.

“You can just.” His voice was so low, he couldn’t even hear it himself.

“How quiet can we be?”

He pressed his lips to hers and rolled over, giving himself more leverage. His mouth stayed pressed to hers, taking in all of her sighs and moans. He found her clit and stroked her until she bit down on his lip. She practically drew blood when she came, and his hoarse, choked-out orgasm disappeared into her kiss.

Ryan’s heart slowed to a manageable pace once they were both cleaned and dressed, but he was going to be hard again before long. With Kate so close, and the magick so thick, he just couldn't stay away from her.

But he needed his mother to meet his woman.

The glow from his bathroom was the only light on upstairs, and when Kate stood in the door, leaning lazily against the frame, like she needed to go back to sleep, he almost scooped her up and carried her back to his room.

Instead, they took the stairs down into the main living room of the house, where Rosalee Travis was sitting in her favorite recliner, tapping her fingers on the leather and watching the weather channel. She was a solid, tall woman with gray-streaked dark hair and dark eyes. There were echoes of her brother Bracken in her face, and seeing them in the flickering light made it feel like his alpha’s ghost was with them in the room.

“Took you a while to get those clothes on,” Ma said, quirking an eyebrow, without looking directly at either of them. She sighed. “Looks like it’s going to rain again this morning. That’ll make it hard for me to get out and put down the last of those traps in the garden.”

Ryan nodded, like it was perfectly normal to have a conversation about voles right after they’d talked about his sex life for the first time. Not abnormal at all, Ma.

“When Beau gets back—” he began.

“Speaking of getting back,” she said, giving him a direct look at last. “When did you get back and who’s your friend?” Ma’s gaze dropped to his wrists, and her eyes went round, wide, and gold. “What in the hell is that on your wrist?”

“It’s a bond tattoo,” he said, slipping his hand around Kate’s waist and drawing her into him. “This is my mother, Rosalee Travis. Ma, this is Kate Quade. She’s my mate.”

Ryan almost held his breath, waiting for the tongue lashing he was about to get. Ma shook her head, looking from tattoo to tattoo.

“Well, son…it’s about damn time.”