Chapter 1

Wiley

S ly and I take a seat on the bench outside of the sweet shop on Main Street. The wind is whipping through downtown, nature forewarning us of the approaching evening thunderstorm. The building at our back shields us, and any raindrops will fly over our heads into the street instead of on top of our heads.

Not that it matters. We've ridden in worse.

Hell, our animals have hunted and slept in much worse.

I scroll through my phone as Sly looks over my shoulder. "Are you on a dating site?"

"Yeah."

He snorts. "Seriously?"

"Yeah."

He narrows his eyes and stares at the profiles I'm scrolling through. "Are you looking at men?"

I side-eye him. "If I were?"

He shrugs. "You know I don't give a shit, but I didn't realize you swung that way."

Sighing, I close the app. "I don't. I'm looking for Nan. But don't tell her because she will fucking skin my hide if she finds out."

His brow furrows. "What's going on?"

I slide my hand down my face in frustration, unhappy about voicing my concerns out loud. The truth is, saying them to somebody else makes them more real, and that terrifies me. "Remember last month when that motherfucker tased her?"

"How can I forget? Your wild ass wolf ripped the fucker's throat out and left him bleeding all over the floor."

"Yeah, I wish I could do that again." I smile wistfully. He tased my sister and then used my pack member's Fated mate as a human shield.

Piece of shit lawyer deserved a lot worse than what I gave him.

"And?" Sly prompts, bringing me back to my point.

I shake my head. "She didn't shift. Thirty thousand to 50,000 volts going through you, her wolf should've taken over immediately, but she didn't. Nan works a lot of hours, stays in her human form longer than the rest of us, and even though she hasn't admitted it, I'm worried it's getting harder for her to shift. She needs to find her mate, but refuses to stop working long enough to look for him."

"How is finding her a human male going to help that?"

"I heard through the grapevine that shifters are using mainstream dating apps and putting a little code in their profile to let other shifters know their status. I thought, maybe if I could find a few within a two hundred-mile radius, I could get her to him or vice versa and let nature take its course."

Sly shakes his head. "She's going to fucking kill you."

"Only if she finds out."

Jimmy walks out of Michelle's Sweet Shoppe with two ice cream cones and a small cup. He likes to buy us little treats like this now that he's making money. He doesn't make much at the diner, but it's the first time in his life he's ever had his own cash. You'd think he'd be hoarding every dime like a little pack rat, but nope. He's one of the most generous guys I've ever met.

"Rocky Road and Pecan Praline for you." He hands Sly a giant waffle cone with two scoops, and me a regular size single scoop of vanilla with rainbow sprinkles in a cup.

That's right—rainbow sprinkles. I dare someone to give me shit about it. "Thanks man."

Jimmy sits down on the bench between us with his own cone and motions to a woman with a small child across the street. "You see that little boy over there?"

"What about him?" Sly says around a mouthful of ice cream.

"I overheard him on the walk over asking his mother for a treat, but she said they couldn't afford it. I thought about turning around and offering to buy him something, but I didn't know if it was appropriate."

I take a harder look at the mother and child, not recognizing either, which is odd since our small town isn't known for its tourism. It is summer though, so we get more visitors during this season than any other, except for our fall and spring festivals. She's wearing a lot of clothes for a summer day, her arms and face shielded from the wind and threatening rain. She also has an overstuffed backpack on her shoulders and a tight grip on her child.

The wind is blowing hard enough to carry their scent in the opposite direction of us, but judging by their dirty clothing, I believe they can't afford anything more than the bare necessities.

Which begs the question: what are they doing here?

I hand Jimmy my cup. "Why don't you run this over to him?"

"You don't want your ice cream?" Jimmy's brow arches.

"I don't have the sweet tooth that Sly has, but I appreciate you buying it for me."

Jimmy accepts my cup and hands me his cone. "I'll be back."

Sly and I exchange a look, watching the interaction from a distance. We don't need our shifter hearing to see the woman is leery of strangers. She keeps her back to us and pulls her child against her legs, shaking her head at Jimmy's offer. But when the little boy cries, she relents and lets him accept the sweet treat.

He tells the little boy to take care of his mom and have a good day, then gives them this weird wave as he runs back to us.

"That was nice of you." I chuck him on the shoulder and hand him his cone.

Jimmy's been in our lives for a month now, ever since we found his tortured and broken body at Johnston Ranch. Six evil, self-indulgent assholes who have more money than compassion hunted him and his—for lack of a better word—sister Dinah for sport.

Well, they had more money than compassion. They're very dead now, not that the police or anyone else besides the eight of us know that.

We fixed that problem quickly and revealed our shifter secrets in the process.

Truthfully, I revealed our shifter secret—me and my wild ass wolf alone.

It could have been a big problem for us. We rarely expose our animals to humans, even though we live amongst them. But Dinah and Jimmy took it better than expected and now keep our secret.

Dinah is the Fated mate of one of my best friends and pack members, Kade. He and I—as well as Erick, Cricket, and Sly—served in the military together. We were members of a secret SpecOps team of shifters embedded within the Joint Special Operations Division out of Tampa, Florida. Although we're all civilians now, we take the occasional job when Colonel Packard calls us. It pays better than regular Army and is a lot more fun.

Kade and Dinah are out of town and will return tomorrow. He's introducing her to his bear shifter family in Fortune Falls this weekend, and I can't wait to hear what she thinks of them—especially the triplets who I've heard are teenage terrorists.

Jimmy's been living with my sister Nan since he got out of the hospital, his wound healing swiftly because of the special serum injected directly into his IVs. Add the healing properties spun out of our blood to the mind-meld Sly did with him in the hospital, and Jimmy's body has changed for the better.

No, he's not becoming a shifter. That's not possible and something you only see in the movies. But his bones and muscles healed faster, and he's getting stronger at a rapid rate. If we didn't know better, we would've thought he was juicing steroids.

"Something's wrong with that mother and child," Jimmy says cautiously as he accepts his ice cream cone from me. He's still learning how to integrate himself into society and understand which questions and observations are appropriate for public consumption and which ones should only be shared between friends.

"What do you mean?" Sly asks.

"The little boy is covered in bruises. So is the mom, but she's working hard to hide them."

I snap my gaze back to them, scanning the spot they were standing in, only to find they're not there. "What kind of bruises?"

"The kind you get when you're beaten." Jimmy stares at his ice cream cone, all traces of joy gone.

"Shit. Where did they go?" I stand up and jog across the street, not waiting for an answer. I look inside the rock shop and the clothing store, but they are nowhere to be seen. Could they have taken the path to the creek?

I sniff the air where they were standing, my wolf sitting up to take notice. There's something that grabs his attention, but the wind is moving too fast to leave a discernible trace.

Well, damn.

I jog back over to Sly and Jimmy as the first raindrops hit the pavement and the sky overhead threatens to open up.

"No trace?" Sly looks up from his mostly devoured cone.

"Not in this form. I suppose I could shift and hit the pavement before the rain washes away their scent."

Sly arches his brow and projects his thoughts to me. "If she was afraid of Jimmy, what do you think seeing a giant gray wolf will do to her?"

"You're right, but I hate the idea of a mother and child being trapped in this storm."

"You better hurry."

I nod, leaving it to Sly to explain to Jimmy what's going on. We try not to speak telepathically around him—we want him to feel included as he finds his way in his new reality—but sometimes it's necessary.

I jog down the block to the clinic, slide into a room to strip off my clothes, and slip out undetected. One good thing about small towns in Montana, seeing a giant wolf on Main Street doesn't cause the humans to grab their rifles or pitchforks. We've worked hard to educate non-shifters about the local wildlife, spreading the word that as long as they don't pose a threat, most bears, wolves, cats, or anything else they come across aren't interested in interacting. Still, we don't hold parades in our animal forms or anything like that. The less we advertise, the less we need to worry about non-locals coming around to take pictures, or worse, trophies.

Hence why Erick and Kade own the local gun shop, Bearclaw Ammo. Any hunters to come through are usually flapping their gums about something we want to know while shopping for the equipment we don't want them to have.

Plus, we have Junta in Fortune Falls who built computer programs to scour the internet and look for message boards about hunting, wildlife, or any other dangers to pack land close to the Canadian border.

The sky cracks overhead as I dart across the street to the last spot I saw them standing. One sniff of the ground where she stood, and my wolf howls at her faint but distinct scent.

No fucking way. It's not possible.

What are the Fates doing to us?

My wolf snarls as Mrs. Martin comes to the rock shop door to look out at the storm breaking overhead. She screams when she sees me in her doorway. "Shoo! Shoo!"

Ignoring the woman, I place my nose to the ground as the sky opens up and hard rain washes away my mate's scent before I can memorize it.

My Fated mate.

Another human.

Fucking hell.