1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I ’m a big guy, six-five and well over two hundred pounds. Thirty-seven years old, and I can turn into a wolf pretty much any time I want to. Fifth in my pack, and some of my fights to rise in the ranks ended before they began, with the other guy rolling over and showing me his belly.

And yet there I was, five o’clock on Halloween, standing in front of my Alpha in his soundproofed office and whining like a baby. “Do I have to?”

My Alpha glowered at me from under bushy brows. He was five inches shorter than me, but when his icy gray eyes fixed on mine and he said, “Hop,” I usually asked, “How high?” That night, I was pissed off, though, so I’d pushed back.

“Yes, you do.” Alpha didn’t sound like there was any give to his answer. He leaned his hip on the mahogany desk and crossed his arms.

Still, I kept trying. “Trick or treating? Why? There are only eight kids in the whole pack that age. Seventeen of us adult wolves, and all the wives. Why pick on me? A couple of their dads should be enough to chaperone.”

“Dylan’s going trick-or-treating as an orc, and you’ll be in fur as the Warg he’s riding. You’re the only guy big enough to do that easily for an hour.”

“I… what?” I blinked hard. I’d imagined Alpha wanted me lurking in the background as some kind of extra bodyguard. Thirteen years after coming out of hiding and revealing our existence to the human world, we wolves still ran across prejudices. I could act intimidating as hell, if for some reason Alpha thought there was a risk to the kids. But I hadn’t imagined going out in fur, or as part of the entertainment.

Given a choice, I’d had no intention of being around kids at all on Halloween night.

I had nothing against Halloween. In fact, it was my favorite holiday. Privately. Away from the pack. Ever since I turned eighteen. Because that was the one night I could go out to the gay clubs in a mask and disguise, and no one cared. I could dance with men out on the floor, flirt openly, pick up men, go to my knees and suck a guy off in semi-public, or put someone up against a wall and fuck them in a bathroom stall. For one night, I could be me openly, an escape, back through the bad years when being queer in wolf society meant a death sentence.

Even now, when wolves had been known to humans for over a decade and word had come down from the high Council to leave queer wolves alone, Halloween remained my night. I wasn’t planning to alienate my pack by coming out as gay, but now I could meet guys on the down-low without wondering if I’d die from taking that risk. So it was reasonable I didn’t want to hang out with children on my night to… well, not shine, or sparkle. Not my style. Break loose, maybe.

I bit back the words, “You must be kidding,” which I didn’t quite dare utter to my Alpha’s face, but I did repeat, “In fur ?”

“You’re a Warg,” Alpha insisted. “Or dire wolf or whatever the kid thinks he’s riding. Listen up, Trent. Alpha Rick Brown wants another round of ‘werewolves are only dangerous if you’re a bad guy.’ So we’re showing off the soft side of werewolves. Like a child’s furry pony.”

I snorted, and Alpha gave me a raised eyebrow, a glint of humor in his eyes.

Soft. Right. We’d both grown up when the answer to someone breaking werewolf rules was ripping their throat out and dropping their body into a mine shaft. As recently as thirteen years ago, that was how wolves operated. We were the product of generations when secrecy was critical to survival, and the only punishments we had were a beating, or death. One decade hadn’t changed us that much yet.

“Fake it,” Alpha said drily. “You’re going to be out there with this little kid riding your back, all tame and sweet. The pussycat of werewolves. That’s an order, Fifth.”

All I could do was bow my head. We wolves might look human, and mate with human women who bore our sons, but our Alphas and our strict dominance rankings still ruled us. Our DNA marked us as different, and werewolf laws of rank and power were written deep in our bones. I could no more defy my Alpha than I could fly.

“Good man.” Alpha gave me a cool stare. “You can disappear like usual after the kids are stuffed with candy.”

I flinched, trying to remind myself it was now okay that Alpha had noticed my tendency to take off. Old reflexes were hard to shake, though. I gave him the blandest expression I could, while schooling my breathing to stay steady. A little up-tick in my heart rate would be all he’d get from me, a minor reflex that could mean anything.

Alpha smirked. “I hear they have a saddle made for you. I hope it’s not too uncomfortable. Go on, Fifth, get the kid lots of chocolate.” He gestured me out the office door.

When I reached the main hall where the kids and parents were assembling, I spotted Dylan waving a plastic sword around and shouting, “Death! Death!” Dylan was the son of our Eighth and his wife, a five-year-old with a motormouth and a love of fantasy that’d amused me at a greater distance. Combining his enthusiasm with a sugar high and a weapon looked like a headache in the making. For me, anyway. I anticipated getting bopped a few times.

Dylan’s mom, Jang-mi, gave me an apologetic nod as I approached. “You don’t have to do this, Trent. Really. He can be a foot-soldier orc.”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” I told her, truthfully in the sense that missing my Warg duties would get my ass whooped by my Alpha.

Garrett, Dylan’s dad, said from behind me, “We appreciate you indulging Dylan. Although honestly, the riding-wolf part of his costume was Alpha’s idea. A bit of a surprise.”

I shrugged. “I gather it’s another publicity campaign out of Chicago.” The leader of our national werewolf Council was the top Chicago Alpha. We probably wouldn’t have made it through a decade of human politics half as intact without him, but he was an autocratic bastard. Our public image as wolves was always a bee in his highhanded bonnet. Not that I’d dare say anything other than “Yes, sir,” to Rick Brown’s face.

Garrett chuckled. “Oh, sure. Makes sense.”

“It does?” I glared hard at him.

Jang-mi laughed. “As much as anything werewolfy ever does, yeah. Calming human fears with happy children. If you want to go shift, we can see if this saddle I made fits. I rigged it up on Garrett but he’s a lot smaller than you.”

“Most of us are,” Garrett muttered.

“Sure. I’ll go, um, get ready.” I headed toward one of the smaller rooms along the far side of the meeting hall. Wolves weren’t generally prudish. Shifting meant getting naked first and we were all used to that. But with eight kids in the room, I wasn’t going to wave my naked dick around.

Safely in the private conference room, I shut the door and stripped quickly. I wasn’t as fast in my shift as our Alpha, but few were. Still, only a minute or so passed from when I lay down on the industrial carpet and pulled shift energy into my core to when I rose to all four feet in fur. I shook myself, my ears flapping, and blinked as I adjusted to the fuzziness and faded colors of wolf sight. By way of compensation, a barrage of information reached my sensitive ears and nose.

No one was in immediate danger, so I took a few seconds to stretch out the kinks in my muscles and settle into my fur. Shifting wasn’t horribly agonizing, but it wasn’t comfortable either, as muscle and sinew, organ and bone, reshaped themselves. I usually came out of my shift momentarily feeling like I’d been run over by a herd of buffalo.

That soreness faded fast, though. As I stretched, the joy of wolf , of nose and ears and strength and speed, washed through me. Humans would never understand. Even as a gay teen, hiding and afraid, the bad parts of wolf society had been worth it to scent and hear and feel the world beneath my four paws.

Now, as I hit the doorhandle with my paw and popped the lock to go out openly in fur, many of those bad parts were behind us. Gone were the days when the little pack kids couldn’t know about us till they hit thirteen, for fear of an incautious word. Gone were the days when even some wives were kept in the dark until their husbands felt sure enough of them to offer a mate bond.

I paced into the main room and Nick’s little human girl, his wife’s daughter, waved at me and called “Wolfy!”

I made sure to wag my tail hard as I crossed the room toward the kids. Teaching children who romped with wolfy family members that they still needed to beware of strange dogs was one of many unexpected new challenges. I heard Nick behind me telling his daughter, “Yes, he’s a wolf, not a dog, and see? He’s wagging his tail. That’s a good sign he’s happy but we still don’t run over there.”

Jang-mi rummaged in a bag as I reached them. “Here, let’s try this for size.” She pulled out what looked like a miniature pony saddle with a girth and extra straps.

Resigned, I stood in front of her as she buckled me into the device, adjusting several straps around my barrel and chest. When she went to pass another strap from the back of the saddle under my tail, I silently lifted a lip. Just no.

She sighed. “All right. We’ll do without the crupper strap, although the saddle’s more secure with it.”

I sheathed my fangs once she removed the offending bondage. My back wasn’t that high above the ground. Dylan could either stay on or get a bit of a bump. Kid would live.

Her overprotectiveness was understandable because she’d lost two pregnancies before Dylan. Sadly, our wolf DNA made that a common story. Our surviving children were precious to the whole pack, but that didn’t mean we needed to keep them in bubble wrap. In fact, our boys healed a lot better than human children. If Dylan fell off, his bruises would be gone within a day.

Garrett peered down at me as Jang-mi stepped back, and I— okay, maybe glared up, feeling foolish with that black and fake-gold saddle on my back and the straps wrapped around me. Luckily for Garrett, he kept the lurking smile off his face.

Respect, Eighth. I gave him a little rumble and he inclined his head. “Thank you, Fifth.”

Dylan waved his sword around with an agility that suggested the “armor” he was wearing had some give to it. His scent indicated foam, plastic, and new vinyl, and I wrinkled my nose, but his mother had done a surprisingly good job creating shoulder plates and realistic spiky bits. Dylan shouted, “It’s my Warg! I’m going to ride him!”

Jang-mi intercepted the flailing blade. “Not if you decapitate him with your weapon, young warrior.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Dylan eyed me, his head tilted as if wondering how close he could come to a killing blow.

Jang-mi slipped the sword from his grip. “I’ll hold onto this till we get there.”

Across the room, Leanne called, “Let’s get the show on the road.”

One of the older boys cheered. “Candy!”

“Everyone to the vans,” Nick directed, our pack Second naturally taking charge. “Follow Garrett.”

The pack hall was located out in a sprawling suburb, away from nosy eyes. The big properties and spread-out houses didn’t make for good trick-or-treating and in any case, we didn’t want to attract neighborly attention. We climbed into three big SUVs and headed into the city in search of candy.

Daylight was fading, the sky a purple velvet in the east and rimmed with gold and lavender in the west. Once we reached the neighborhood where the outing was planned, yards and front steps bore pumpkins and skeletons. Many trees were adorned with ghosts and orange lights and draped with festoons of fake cobwebs. We passed an animated monster and the kids cheered and waved.

Our little caravan pulled into the parking lot of a small local park and we got out.

As my paws hit the pavement, I sniffed the air. A little smoke reached my nose from blocks away, probably a woodstove but perhaps a bonfire despite the dry fall. The scents of grass and weeds, of people and werewolves, gasoline and hot metal, sun-warmed tar, fading flowers, distant curry simmering, and bread in the nearby trash can blended in a symphony of impressions. I could hear squirrels in the trees overhead, a mouse in the weeds, an owl waking to its evening hunt. When I was in skin, I loved my sharp color vision and my opposable thumbs, but this sensory intensity was one of the joys of being in fur. I inhaled more deeply.

Nick said, “Okay, we’ll head west first, hit up the next couple of blocks, then see how it’s going. Trent, let me know if you need to get the kid off your back and out of the saddle. Bark twice.”

I yipped once to show I understood.

Dylan wasn’t too heavy for me to carry. I’d occasionally run in fur with a backpack, and I could manage forty pounds. He was wiggly, though, and prone to clutching my ruff in a tight fist when he lost his balance. Alpha was going to owe me big for this performance.

By the fourth block, I had to admit the “charm people with the tame werewolf” idea was turning out to be a decent one. When I carried my little orc and his goodie bag up to the doors, and folks said, “My, what a big dog!” Garrett would say, “He’s a werewolf. One of our best friends.” Then I’d wag my tail, cock my head, pant, and act cute. We’d all studied the “appease the humans behavior-suite” lecture. Rick Brown had made training videos. Ears down, big eyes, look goofy. I knew the drill.

Reactions from the folks in the houses were mixed, of course. Some not great. No one slammed a door, but I got some glares and a few humans drawing back, the whiff of fear or anger in their scents. No slurs, probably because these suburban homeowners weren’t quite up to that language in the face of a princess, three elves, Superman, Batman, an evil wizard, a black cat, and their parents. Not to mention the cell phones the moms had out videoing the cute kids and incidentally, anyone causing trouble.

On the good side, a lot of people were fascinated and amused. With my orc bouncing in the saddle and the little princess clutching my ruff and leaning against my shoulder, my aura of danger was definitely defused. Operation “Werewolves Make Good Neighbors” seemed mostly successful.

The kids’ bags were bulging with candy when I caught an unhappy sound. Not near where we were walking, but somewhere a road or two over. A young child, crying out in fear. Maybe it was just a little girl reacting to a jump scare someone had set up— an axe-man in the bushes or a bat dropping from a tree. But the sound tugged at me.

I yipped twice, then twice again.

Garrett scooped Dylan off my back and I dashed off down the block. As I ran, I flicked my ears back and forth, trying to localize the source of that fear. In the distance, the child whimpered again, a sound of terror suppressed as if trying not to make too much noise. There.

I redoubled my speed, the stirrups flapping against my sides. Keeping to the shadows, I cut through a side yard, sprinted down the next two blocks, and turned left. As I rounded the corner, a streetlight illuminated a young girl a little older than Dylan. She stood clutching a sack of candy, while in front of her, two teenage boys nudged each other and giggled while pointing at her. The smell of whiskey on their breaths carried clearly on the air.

One of the boys said, “Give us your loot. Don’t make us come get it.”

The girl shook her head silently, her arms wrapped around the bag.

“Aw, come on.” The boys advanced on her a step, shambling and off balance but menacing all the same. “You’re not really gonna fight us for candy, are you?”

Enough was enough. I sprinted around some bushes and came up behind the girl. With my charcoal-gray coat blending into the night, and with the blur of whiskey onboard, the two boys took a moment to spot me. But when I stopped ten feet behind the child and silently bared my fangs, their heads went back and one boy gasped.

Mouth open, fangs gleaming, nose wrinkled and hackles raised, I paced forward one step, two, three.

The teens broke and ran, one of them dropping the stuffed pillowcase they’d carried. Tripping over each other, they bolted off into the night. My wolf wanted to give chase, harry them and nip at their heels and teach them the consequences of bullying. But the little girl sagged to the ground, sobbing, and I wasn’t about to leave her.

She hadn’t seen me yet, so I crouched low to the pavement, tail wagging furiously and yipped. The girl turned and her eyes widened, but she didn’t run. I crept forward a few feet, belly down, and paused there, my head cocked. I’d assumed she’d run home once her tormenters were gone. Instead, she stayed put, looking around her, then turned back to me.

“Are you a nice dog?”

I wagged harder. I was going to sprain my fucking tail at this rate.

“Good dog.” The child’s voice shook. “I think I’m l-lost.” Her next breath was a sob.

Well, fuck.

I could go get one of the pack adults for her, but they were several blocks away, and despite how fast the two boys had run off, I didn’t want to leave her alone. The bullies had been drunk, and a scare wears off quickly when your brain is pickled. They might come back and they’d be pissed off.

I could try to rouse someone from the house beside us, but I didn’t hear anyone home and the lights were out. Plus my size and wolfy appearance would be a strike against me in getting someone to open their door. This seemed to be the black hole of the neighborhood, with only one house decorated. Trick-or-treaters called to each other from the next block but none were in sight.

With my ears down and my mouth open in a doggy grin, I crept closer. The child’s scent lay on the sidewalk I was crossing toward her, which meant she’d come this way. Maybe by following her scent trail, I could guide her home. I reached her feet and lay down, licking her ankle delicately.

Her whimper turned into a giggle. “That tickles.”

I licked her again and got another giggle. But then she sobered. “I want my Daddy.”

My little yip was meant to be agreement, but she startled. I licked her foot again.

She pushed at my head, then plucked at the straps around me. “You have a saddle. I’ve never seen a dog with a saddle.”

I nudged her, wondering if I could get her to ride me. And whether I could carry her. I was big, but a wolf’s back wasn’t built for loadbearing, and she was taller than Dylan.

She got to her feet, dusting off her princess costume. She was probably some Disney something, but I had no clue. The dress had long gauzy layers and scarf bits from her shoulders that flapped and floated as she patted her skirt. Once she’d picked up her bag of candy, I stood slowly.

“Ooh, you’re big!” She eyed me. My shoulders almost came up to her chin. I nodded my head and she grinned. “It’s like you understand me.”

I nodded again and beckoned back the way she’d come with my head.

“Is home that way?” When I nodded a third time, she asked, “Are you a talking dog?”

A headshake this time.

Her eyes widened, but she patted me on the head. “That’s okay. I understand you anyway.” She tugged on one of my stirrups. “I wish I could ride you but not in this skirt. Will you come with me?”

I put my nose to the ground, sniffed elaborately along her back trail, then returned to her and yipped.

“You want me to follow you?”

Another nod.

“Well… okay.” She took hold of the strap around my neck and moved close, leaning on my shoulder. “Can we go home to Daddy?”