Chapter One

“Even big bad wolves can be good.”

-- Ronald Blackwell, Lil' Red Riding Hood lyrics

Levi

The trouble with pure-bred wolves and Alphas—and there was almost always trouble with them—was that they were so good looking, and so dominant and so persuasive that they intimidated the hell out of people.

Well…me—they intimidated me.

I fuckin’ knew better than to get mixed up with one of them in any kind of way, and yet here I was, drumming my fingernails impatiently on this bar as I waited for the Alpha wolf I had come here to meet.

Why had I even agreed to this? The word “No” had been trembling on my lips, and I was all ready to turn him down flat when he asked me to meet him somewhere after work. But then he favored me with a long look out of those gorgeous brown eyes with the sinfully thick eyelashes and leaned in close, his scent taking my breath away and scrambling my brain cells.

“Would you meet me somewhere after work tonight, sweetheart?” he asked. My good intentions to tell him there was no fucking way had folded up like a cheap card table and collapsed.

“If you want me to, I will, sir,” I replied, breathlessly.

I know. I know. It’s embarrassing.

Had he mesmerized me in some way? I thought so. That had to be it, as there was no other explanation. He had smiled his slow, seductive smile at me and several of my brain cells fainted dead away on the floor.

That morning, when he’d come into the café where I worked, the first thing I’d noticed about him was how hard it was to breathe when I saw him. It was hard not to notice that about him, considering he had taken up most of the oxygen in the room. He was big, even compared to other Alphas, and he had a face like a movie star, with high cheekbones and a stubborn mouth. His hair was like dark mahogany wood, and he had chocolate brown eyes, fringed with those thick, dark lashes. He was older than me, maybe in his late twenties or maybe as old as thirty, but gods, he was a gorgeous man. I lurked in a back corner of the dining room at first, pretending to be busy clearing a table while he talked to the manager. It was just so I could study him a bit, because it really was rare to see such a fine specimen.

I mean, the arrogance just shone right out of him. Gods help me, he was everything I’d ever fantasized about. And as a shifter, a pure-bred wolf, and an Alpha, he was a walking trifecta of trouble.

My mother used to tell me that status didn’t matter. Pure-breds and Alphas were no better than any of the rest of us, she said. But then, she was an omega, and she’d passed that on to me, which accounted for at least some of my intense reaction to him. My status was about the only thing my Mongrel wolf mother ever bequeathed to me. That and her remarkable good looks.

It wasn’t at all unusual for a Mongrel to be really good looking. Hybrids often were, though my mother was a stand-out among our kind. She was probably the best and most beautiful person I ever knew. She was good and sweet and kind and loving. She was a walking example of her favorite saying—a person didn’t need to be pure-bred to be pure at heart.

My thick, shiny hair, my golden skin and good bone structure had come directly from her, but my green eyes were courtesy of my human father, who was no slouch in the looks department either. Their good genes had only failed me in height—I topped out at five feet seven when I was fourteen and had never grown an inch since. I wasn’t complaining though. Not too much anyway.

It wasn’t bragging to say I looked good, because I was no different than most Mongrels, who were known to be hard to resist. That was why there were so many of us. Both humans and pure-bred wolves found us highly desirable and just couldn’t leave us alone. It seemed that human and wolf DNA mixed really well together and produced some remarkable offspring.

We weren’t good enough for the wolves to actually marry us, of course, though some couples defied tradition and stayed together. It was rare, though. Mostly it was a “love ‘em and leave ‘em” situation, which didn’t exactly inspire a great deal of love or trust in our hearts for the pure-breds.

There was another fly in the ointment, too, and maybe one of the reasons we were left so much. To be honest Mongrels simply didn’t have great personalities. They could be…unpredictable. Okay, I may as well set the record straight—they weren’t really unpredictable at all. They had predictably bad tempers, were mostly batshit crazy and were mean as hell. And I say this as a Mongrel myself.

Another thing about us was that most of us couldn’t shift successfully, like the pure-bloods could. If we tried, we might wind up with long floppy ears or maybe black noses. That was usually the extent of it. Sometimes canine teeth got longer, or a thick pelt of hair appeared all over our bodies. The most unfortunate thing that could happen was that a tail might develop at the base of our spines, or our faces might push out in a wolfhound-like snout.

I was spared that indignity, too, thank the gods, because I couldn’t shift at all—not even a little. Nor did I ever want to, as it looked to be painful. But I was definitely in the minority. Most every Mongrel I knew blamed their lack of success in life on their mixed blood and inability to fully shift. Disregarding their laziness and their lack of work ethics, (or any other kind of ethics for that matter) they instead whined around about how badly the gods had treated them by giving them good looks, but not much else to recommend them. To hear them tell it, their lives were as miserable as that of poor old Prometheus, chained to a rock by Zeus, having to endure his liver being eaten by eagles every night for all eternity. And that just had to suck.

Anyway, the Mongrels believed that if they’d only been born full blooded shifters, they could have all been Alphas with their own packs, finding great success in life with their beauty and charm—despite the fact that Alphas weren’t all that common. Most wolves were only betas and spent their lives taking orders.

Maybe it was because I was only a quarter wolf that I never felt disappointed in my lack of shifter status. My father had been fully human, while my mother was only half wolf. That made me a lowly, quarter-wolf omega, but I was okay with that for the most part. I had something that most Mongrels didn’t have. I had inherited some of my mother’s magic along with her beauty.

She never had the big, showy kind of magic that some in Valleywood had. People called her kind of magic “Conjure” or “Folk Magic.” A Conjure man or woman who could do Hoodoo was uncommon in Valleywood, whose supernatural residents mostly had higher magic.

Hoodoo was mostly reserved for those with African or Haitian heritage, and my mother had a lot of that, at least on one side of her family. The other side had been whiter skinned, so she was mixed race, as was I. She was beautiful, with her black, wavy hair hanging down almost to her waist, and her remarkable eyes and skin the color of dark honey.

Anyway, Valleywood and its vibe and atmosphere must have really enhanced her talent in magic, because she helped a lot of people in our neighborhood. She also claimed that race had little to do with it. It was her opinion that it was economic status or the lack thereof that really mattered. Even poor people needed healing, she said, and they didn’t always have money for a real doctor. So, they came to Conjures, like her, who had to work hard and hone their skills to help their friends and family.

My boss cleared his throat loudly and pointedly from across the room. He hated my daydreaming, as he called it. He made me jump and brought me right back to the current situation. The Alpha was on his way over to me, and I really didn’t have time to chat with him. But he came up to me anyway and told me he had questions he needed to ask me. He wanted to know what time I got off, and at the time I thought he might be flirting, so I immediately stopped what I was doing to talk to him.

Still, I hesitated a little, because I had an audition the next day that I was worried about and hadn’t really prepared for yet. I still had to learn my lines for it. I was only auditioning for a bit part in The Blazing Inferno, a soap opera that had been running for ages from XYZ Studios. It was always on everyone’s cancellation list, but its fans were loyal, so it never got cancelled. Beggars couldn’t be choosers, though, and I needed the work, or my agent was going to decide I was a total waste of his time and drop me.

I also had to finish clearing off all the tables after the breakfast rush and then sweep and mop the floors, and those activities, in addition to flirting with the handsome pure-blood had been mutually exclusive. But those eyes and that body called to me in a dark siren’s voice.

I was all in—right up until he told me what he wanted to talk to me about.

“Where do you want to meet me after you get off work, sweetheart?” the big Alpha had said, looking me up and down with an intense gaze, and my knees seriously went weak.

“Well, I don’t know. I’ve kind of got some things I need to do tonight,” I hedged, touching my hair and wondering if it looked okay.

“I promise I won’t take up much of your time,” he said in a low, sultry voice. He was standing much too close, and I could smell his luscious scent. He smelled like leather and lavender, with a hint of sage and cedarwood.It could have been his cologne, but I had a hunch that at least some of it was him.

“If you want me to meet you, sir, I can do that.”

“Thank you, honey,’” he breathed, his lips perilously close to my ear. That was the point at which my brain cells apparently fell out on the floor.

“By the way, why do you have that southern accent?”

“What? Oh, my mama was from the North Georgia mountains. I guess I picked it up from her. My grandma too. Why do you ask?”

“No reason. I think it’s cute.” He leaned in and whispered close to my ear. “Sexy.”

I was still feeling a little swoony when he said, “By the way, I need to ask you about a friend of yours by the name of Willie Watusi.”

My brain cells sat up in shock, stopped fanning themselves and said, “What? What did he just say?”

“I have a few questions, if you can spare me a little time. Maybe after your shift is over? What do you say?”

What did I say? I should be saying, “Hell no,” but agreement to whatever he said kept dripping out of me like a leaky faucet. No matter how much I disapproved of whatever Willie was doing with his time these days, I was no snitch. Besides, if Willie thought I had given out any information on him whatsoever, I’d be in some serious shit. He would fucking kill me.

“I-I… Well, I…don’t know. What makes you think I even know Willie? I mean, I might know him a little, but not all that well, really. Surely you can find somebody else to speak to.”

He gave me a skeptical look. “Really? That’s not the information I have. From what I understand, you and Mr. Watusi have a close, personal relationship.” He reached out to brush away a stray lock of my hair with his forefinger, and it felt like he was branding me.

“N-no. That-that’s not necessarily true. I barely know him,” I said, lying through my teeth. I’d known Willie since kindergarten. Willie’s grandma was from the south, just like my mother, and they’d passed on their southern accents to both of us. As the only kids in school that sounded like us, we hung out together sometimes at recess. But that had been a long time ago, and we didn’t run in the same circles anymore. Still, I’d practically grown up around him.

The Alpha gave me a look like he was disappointed in me for lying to him. Then he shook his head and smiled, glancing over at my boss who was hovering nearby. “I’d still like to speak to you, if you have a few moments. Do you want me to talk to your boss for you and smooth things over?”

“No, I don’t. Please. He won’t like that, and I’ll get in trouble.”

He gave me another slightly hurt look that made me feel like a bad-tempered punk with something to hide. Which I was, but he didn’t actually have any proof of that.

“How about later then, honey? After work? Isn’t there some other place you and I could talk? This is really important. You could be a big help, and I’d really appreciate it.”

A shiver went down my spine, but at the same time I couldn’t stop the slight eye roll. I hated it when Alphas or betas called me pet names like “honey,” in that sexist, condescending way that most of them used with omegas, trying to sweet-talk us. The fact that it totally worked with me just made it worse.

My heart was still trying to beat its way out of my chest because this Alpha was paying me so much attention, and I had that godawful butterflies-gone-wild feeling in my stomach. It was a part of my nature that I had little—okay, make that nonexistent—control when it came to gorgeous Alphas.

“It’s just that I don’t feel comfortable talking about Willie,” I said, chewing on my bottom lip a little and trying to take a step backward from him. He moved right along with me until I hit the wall behind me.

No way in hell was I going to say anything about Willie, because he was a vicious asshole with a memory like an elephant. He’d seriously kill me if he found out. This wolf needed to find somebody else to talk to and leave me alone, because I didn’t need any trouble. Willie had recently been hanging out with a group of Mongrels who had grown increasingly violent over the last few years, or so I’d heard. They were responsible for a lot of the crimes in the area that we locals simply called “the district,” though its actual name was Khepri City, or District 5. The streets we Mongrels had claimed as our own were in a bad area of the district. The Mongrels had claimed it as their “turf,” mostly because it was poor, and a lot of us lived there. Also, nobody else wanted anything to do with those squalid, narrow streets anyway.

It was where most of us lived, though. Our district was overseen by one of the gods, like all the districts in Valleywood were. His name was Apophis Khonus, and he pretty much left us alone. So again, I wanted nothing to do with anything that would draw attention to me. I wanted nothing to do with whatever this was. It would only cause me trouble.

“Here’s my card—write down your name and number on the back so I can call you later. Maybe you’ll decide you can spare me just a little bit of your time.”

Because I was intimidated, and because I couldn’t seem to say no to him, I took his card and scribbled my name and number on the back. I took a glance at it though as I handed it back and saw his name—Rolf Degan. That was such a wolfy name.

I happened to know that “Rolf” literally meant something like “glorious wolf” in German and “Degan” came from an Old German word, too, meaning “warrior,” so the name seemed highly appropriate for him, if a little pretentious. There were many other packs living in the area, other than German ones, of course, all of which had their own traditions and even their own slight differences in biology. They were mostly from other European countries or from Canada or some from right here in America, but the ones most associated with my neighborhood tended to come from Germany. In fact, some of the pure-bloods like this Alpha even called us mixed breeds by the old German name, Mischling. It was a little derogatory—okay, make that a lot.

It was more or less synonymous with “slut,” or at least it was to us. But it was mostly the older, wealthier families who called us that, and I had a strong feeling this Rolf Degan might be from one of them.

But back to Willie—who really wasn’t exactly my friend—he claimed that he would have been an Alpha if not for his half-human mother. But then he would have done anything to get his hands on power and money and wasn’t too particular about how he came by it either.

I think craving power like that might have depended on how much emphasis your family put on having money and status when you were growing up. My mother hadn’t cared much about money at all, though my human dad had been tight with his cash—tighter than a gnat’s ass. He seemed to be always short of money, but he wasn’t mean about it. Well, maybe he was a little bit—like telling me that Santa Claus had died every year just before Christmas, just so I wouldn’t expect any big presents to magically appear on Christmas morning. He did that until I got old enough to catch on. My dad died from a heart attack just after his forty-fifth birthday, but I still kept the thermostat on sixty-five in the winter and eighty in the summertime because of his influence. Old habits died hard.

I handed Degan back the card and he looked down at it and smiled as he read it. “Your name is Levi? It suits you. No last name though? Do you go by just the single name, like Cher or Bono?”

I flushed. “No, my last name is Jones.”

“Well, Mr. Jones, it’s nice to meet you, and I hope to see you again soon. I’ll call you.”

He left then, but he was as good as his word. I got off my shift at 5:00 o’clock and had barely started walking home when my cell phone rang. When I answered, Rolf Degan said, “Are you still going to be able to meet me somewhere, Levi?”

I sighed. I was dying to see him again and dreading it at the same time.

“Yeah, okay. Meet me at Balls to the Wall. It’s a bar on Twenty-seventh Street.” The Alpha chuckled at the name—at least I hope that’s what he was chuckling about—and said he’d be there soon. I only hoped that when Rolf Degan saw this shabby gay bar where I’d suggested we meet, he didn’t question my motives in inviting him there and immediately take offense. And if he was homophobic, like some European wolves were known to be, he just might.

It was a calculated risk. Most Alphas were at least bisexual—at least they had no qualms about hooking up with omega males—but that wasn’t always the case. They were a touchy and volatile bunch—and ready to fight at a moment’s notice. Pure-bred wolves, like this one were also known to be a little short tempered, and Alphas were even worse than most. I’d heard it said that they were even bigger assholes than Mongrels, but that was saying a hell of a lot. I felt like I could speak on that subject with some authority, having trouble with my temper as well.

I was worried that this was a huge mistake, and already regretted saying that I would meet him. So that begs the question—why had I caved in and agreed to do it?

Because of the aforementioned muscles and good looks, that’s why. What can I say? I was a bit of a Mischling, I guess. And don’t forget, an omega, whose nature it was to agree to whatever an Alpha asked of them.

Twenty minutes later, there I sat in the crappy little bar, which was aptly named, and frankly, just as cheesy as it sounded. The more well-known bars in Valleywood like Wilde or Forbidden Underground were much nicer, but I didn’t think they weren’t exclusively for gay men like this one was. Too expensive for my blood, too. I had chosen this one because I thought meeting in this much smaller, much less well-known and much seedier place had been my best chance to keep this meeting a secret. That had been my plan anyway. Most people in the neighborhood I lived in knew about the place, though I’d never actually met anyone who admitted to going there.

But that wasn’t why I wanted to meet him here. I had no designs on the guy, despite the fact that he was fucking gorgeous. Okay, maybe I did, but none I took seriously. He was gorgeous, and way the hell out of my league. Usually, the Alphas had an arrogance about them that made them easier to resist. Not Rolf. So, I reminded myself a stuck-up pure-bred would never bother with some Mischling like me, and I tried to make myself believe it. Besides, he was probably some kind of law enforcement, and I tried to always steer clear of them.

I’d decided on this place because I figured my friend Willie Watusi and his group of mongrel thugs wouldn’t be caught dead in here, or anywhere in the vicinity, because most Mongrels like Willie and his friends, hated anything gay. They also hated Democrats, liberals, Catholics, Hispanics, African Americans, Asian Americans, and anything or anyone they deemed “woke.”

They didn’t really know what that term meant, but they’d heard it on Fox News a few times and decided it was something they should probably be against.

They especially hated anyone and everyone who identified as LGBTQ+, so it followed that they wouldn’t be likely to see me meeting the Alpha here in this gay bar, right? That had been my thinking, anyway. I thought it might be a good cover for me.

When I’d arrived and walked inside the bar for the first time in months, I remembered why I hadn’t been there in a while. The place had seriously gone down since it changed ownership, and it was now just a complete dump. I took one look around and wondered what in the hell I’d been thinking suggesting this place for a meeting. I mean, despite its grimy walls and even grimier patrons, I had always sort of liked it the few times I’d been there in the past. Now, I’d need to make sure my typhoid shots were up to date before I drank out of one of their bar glasses.

But the longer I sat there on my stool at the bar, waiting for the Alpha hottie to arrive, the more comfortable I began to feel. After all, I sure wasn’t fancy myself and had never lived or worked in a fancy place. No use “putting on airs” like my father used to say. This was a place for outcasts and misfits, so maybe it was my kind of place after all.

There was certainly a free-spirit, anything goes vibe about the place. At any other time, I might have almost enjoyed it, but tonight my nerves were frayed all to pieces. I should never have agreed to meet Degan to answer his questions about Willie. In fact, it was my personal policy to never put myself in any kind of danger or difficulty whatsoever and to always keep myself out of the line of fire. I made it a rule never to stick my neck out for anybody. Not ever. But I couldn’t seem to say no to Rolf Degan.

This bar was close to the café, at least, so I could stay in my own neighborhood. It helped me avoid all the hassle of getting a bus or paying for a Loxie to pick me up, which I couldn’t afford in the first place. And best of all, Willie and his little group wouldn’t be caught dead in the place. It was kind of perfect, except for one thing. It suddenly occurred to me that this Alpha I was meeting might not be any more thrilled about going there than Willie and his gang would have been.

This place didn’t look like much from the outside—or from the inside either for that matter. It was a little hard to find, as there were none of the usual neon beer signs in the windows that I normally associated with bars. As a matter of fact, it didn’t have any windows facing the sidewalk at all. Inside, it was dingy and dark, and the lighting was so dim it was hard to see the roaches on the floor or the ones crawling down the walls. That was probably by design, though.

I glanced down at my watch again and saw that Rolf Degan was late. He should have been there twenty minutes ago. Had he been so offended by my choice when he saw it from the outside that he’d not even bothered to come in?

As far as I knew we were still on track for meeting. I sighed impatiently. I’d give him a few more minutes and then I was out of there. Besides, a lot of people knew Willie. I sure as hell didn’t have any special information.

Was this Alpha a cop? I thought so. There had been talk by city officials recently of getting the police to put a stop to the worst of the Mongrel criminal activity for years. They seemed to have the idea, from the articles I’d read about it in the newspapers, that if they used pure-bred wolf-shifter cops, then they would be able to intimidate the Mongrels. The idea being that pure-bred wolves were so much stronger and smarter than we were. It simply proved that they didn’t know shit about Mongrels. Or pure-breds either, for that matter.

The Mongrels were a savage and crazy bunch—and that was always a bad combination. Then again, the pure-breds didn’t really give a shit about anyone but themselves. Cops in a position of power or those who were being paid well might be different, but it seemed to me that that idea was doomed to failure from the start.

If this Degan guy was a cop, which he more than likely was, seeing as how he had approached me out of the blue about Willie and his group, then I figured maybe the mayor, or somebody else in power had finally decided to crack down on Mongrel violence in the city. If the mayor had gotten the pure-breds interested, then that meant there must be a shit ton of money being offered. Those old, rich wolf families didn’t do anything without there being something in it for them.

At any rate, I was sure that if that’s what this was—a crackdown on the Mongrels—then it would end badly. Most wolves didn’t get along great with other clans, but all the pure-breds hated and reviled the Mongrels. Really, if they ever did form a group to hunt them down, it would be an ugly incident waiting to happen. Mongrels were mean, but certainly no match for pure-breds. But here’s the thing—they were stupid enough to fight them anyway.

If the city fathers were trying to get rid of us, we wouldn’t go easy, so if and when the Mongrels resisted, it would be a total bloodbath. I wanted no part of it, really, but on the other hand, if it was coming anyway, then I guess I needed to know about it if for no other reason than to avoid it.

I turned around and scanned the room, in case I’d somehow missed him coming in. Not likely but I looked anyway. As an Alpha, he would have been hard to miss. Betas were the most commonly seen around the city, followed by omegas. More and more wolf shifters were coming in all the time, though, from all over the world to vibe off the magic in this city, which was pretty damn potent.

For the past couple of minutes as I’d waited, I’d been toying with a none-too-clean glass of cheap gin and tonic on the bar in front of me. A big, ugly guy came in from a back room, spotted me and did an almost comical double take. He was mostly naked and gave me a broad wink. Though I ignored him, he sidled over to me to try and get me to leave with him or go with him to a back room.

I said, “Not just no, but hell no,” and even showed him my teeth, hoping to convince him that not only was I not the least bit interested, but that it would be a serious mistake to offer up any more conversational gambits to me. One thing I maybe forgot to mention was that like all Mongrels, I was pretty strong. Not as much as most, but stronger than a human, despite my small size.

When the idiot put his hands on my ass, I overreacted a bit, and the next thing I knew he was lying on the floor, crying about me breaking his arm—I did try to warn him.

The barman came out from behind the bar, yelling at me to get out. He had a metal baseball bat and started tapping it in his hand. And that was the exact moment the front door opened, and Rolf Degan sauntered in like he owned the place.

There I was, on that filthy barstool looking sideways at the bartender who was standing over me with a baseball bat in his meaty grip. The ugly, naked dude on the floor was still yelling and while I was momentarily distracted, the bartender hit me hard upside the head with his bat. I fell to the floor like a pole-axed steer.

Rolf waded into the brawl. When the smoke cleared and the dust settled, the bartender and his three-hundred-pound bouncer, who had also come running from the back, had managed to throw us out the front door, because Rolf was pulling his punches, and he hadn’t shifted, but the two of them were much the worse for wear. The bartender was crying about having to go to the hospital and the bouncer had both his eyes blackened for him and had lost a couple of teeth. Still, they managed to get us out on the sidewalk, and we were sprawled on our backs out front, looking up at the stars.

“That was fun,” Rolf said, jumping to his feet with a big grin to offer me his hand. I waved him off and scrambled up on my own, only a little dizzy from the blow I’d taken to the head.

“Not so much fun for me,” I griped and heard him laughing.

“Why not?” He bent closer to me. “Oh, poor baby, does your head hurt?”

“I’m okay. That guy can’t swing for shit.”

He looked back at the entrance. “I thought this place was an interesting choice when you suggested it. It used to be a BDSM bar, as I recall. Are you a part of that scene?”

“What? No. Hell no, I am not.” I glanced back at the bar. “I had no idea about that,” I said, lying again. “It’s just close to where I live.”

He smiled at me, and I could feel a slight warming of my cheeks and prayed that I wasn’t blushing. Rolf was uncomfortably close, his big body hemming me in between him and the building. He had to be six foot four or five, at least. I wondered how big he’d be in his shifted form and decided he must be massive. And gods help me, he was an Alpha in every sense of the word. I had been sure of it in the café, but up close like this, I could smell his Alpha scent even more strongly. He smelled wonderful, and I wanted to drop to my knees and offer myself to him. Damn it, he was putting my heat cycle into overdrive.

Something in my demeanor must have tipped him off to how I was feeling. I tried to take a quick step back to cool my passions, but the next thing I knew, he had me right back up against the wall again, leaning in to sniff me.

“Are you coming in heat, sweetheart? You are, aren’t you? Why aren’t you on suppressants?”

“They make me break out in hives. I just try to stay home and isolate when it hits. My cycle is irregular anyway.”

It wasn’t only omegas who were affected by the omega heat cycle. Alphas were too, indirectly, and they had been known to chase omegas down the street if it got really bad. On those few days every month when I had my cycle, I had to take off work and just stay at home so I wouldn’t be molested by any Alpha customers, who might come in and be overwhelmed.

Rolf stared down into my eyes. He looked a little dazed. “Are you coming into your cycle now?”

“How is that any of your business?”

“It isn’t. Not exactly.”

“What do you mean by not exactly?”

“It means I want to make it my business.” He shook his head as if to clear it and gazed down at me again. “I think we need to go somewhere…somewhere more private...I need to talk to you.”

“Oh, I’ll bet you do,” I said, getting a feeling that I knew why, but wanting him to say it. “About what, exactly?”

“I’ll tell you when we get there.”

He took my arm in his and pulled me with him to his truck. Okay, he didn’t have to pull too hard. I was right there beside him. He was, as I believe I have mentioned a time or two, really gorgeous, and he was an Alpha, and I was a little bit in heat. I knew I should say no, but how could I turn down a chance at this gorgeous man?