19

Without realizing it, Case had half-expected their happiness to evaporate on the drive back to Mountainview. It was impossible to miss that as much as Lydia loved her home, it stressed her out.

But to his delight, he seemed to be helping her with that. Either that, or discovering that they were fated mates had brightened her day in a way that almost nothing could dim. They chatted easily on their way back to town, talking about their favorite books—she made his face burn by mentioning his in that conversation—and movies. Most of Lydia’s, he couldn’t help noticing, involved immersive settings she didn’t seem to visit in real life.

“I know,” she said, when he mentioned that as delicately as possible. “I’m an armchair traveler. I wish I got the chance to be something else, but—” She shrugged, like there was nothing that could be done about it.

But was there nothing that could be done about it?

We want our mate to have what she wants ! his wolf said.

Case couldn’t agree more.

If she wants to see an Eiffel Tower, we will bring her an Eiffel Tower between our teeth, it said firmly, raising its chin. If she wants a Parthenon, we will bring her a Parthenon. We will bring her the Taj Mahal!

I don’t think you know what any of those things are , Case said.

“It’s fine,” Lydia said before he could say anything to console her. “Books and movies are more than enough to keep me happy.”

He wished that sounded more convincing. But he didn’t think she wanted him to say anything more about it right now, so he just held up Shadows instead. “Want me to read a little more?”

She brightened. “Yes, please. You’re like my own personal audiobook. And I feel like we’re this close to figuring out what kind of book it is.”

“My money’s on fantasy,” Case said, finding where they’d left off last night. “Levi’s daughter keeps talking about unicorns. I know he thinks it’s just her imagination, but I’m not so sure. She’s nine, that’s a little old for invisible unicorn friends.”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure the author’s great at writing kids. Maybe he didn’t know that. I think it’s one of those ‘college professor has sad affairs’ books.” She frowned. “He teaches geography, though. I think they’re usually English professors in those books.”

“Well, maybe we’ll find out in a minute.” He cleared his throat. “‘Levi flipped through the atlas, looking for the right map—as if he could somehow place himself on it once he found it, as if it would make everything clear. He would be one more landmark, firmly located amidst the rivers and the elevation shadings. But before he could find himself in the book’s pages, he noticed a smear of glittery gold ink on his fingertips. Susie had written ‘here be marvels’ in the margins of almost every page.’”

“In unicorn blood!” Lydia exclaimed.

“Dark,” Case said. “‘He couldn’t think how to tell her that there were no marvels, not in the real world described by these maps. He had known that since 63, when his twin brother killed their parents.’ Wait, what ?”

Lydia let out a sound that was half-gasp, half-strangled laugh. “There’s an evil twin now?”

“That’s so clumsy, too! Why would you write it like that? What the hell—wait, Lydia, look!”

Wendy, the clerk who had helped them fill out their marriage license, stood in the middle of the street, frantically waving her arms at them.

Lydia braked hard, and Case didn’t need his wolf nose to help him catch the strong smell of burning rubber.

He knew what she was so afraid of, and he just had to hope she was wrong. Surely Lydia’s grandmother hadn’t died in the short time they had been away. Someone would have called them if things had gotten that bad, even if it had been sudden.

Wendy lurched towards them, but Lydia was frozen in fear now. Case had to reach past her to roll her window down so Wendy could talk to them. Having someone actually help her out for a second seemed to give Lydia what she needed to pull herself together.

“Wendy, what is it?” There was a sharp note of panic in Lydia’s voice, but it was under control. “Is it Ruth?”

Wendy hadn’t caught her breath yet, but she shook her head emphatically, sending her hair tie flying into the street.

“Okay.” Lydia was steadier now. “If it’s not Ruth, it can wait. Take a minute.”

Wendy curled her fingers around the edge of the window, hanging on to it for dear life while she panted. She was as flushed as if she’d run all the way from the courthouse.

“It’s Reeve,” she said finally, in between still-ragged gulps of air.

A hard, cold jolt went through Case, and he felt his lips wrinkle back in an unconscious snarl as his wolf prepared for a bloody showdown at hearing the name.

In any other company, that kind of reflexive, animalistic reaction would have raised some eyebrows. But Lydia was doing the exact same thing, and Wendy, if anything, looked pleased to see that they were both spoiling for a fight. It meant that her alphas—or soon-to-be alphas, anyway—were at the top of their game.

“What about Reeve?” Case said, not bothering to stifle the growl that came along with the name.

“He’s gone!”

*

There was no way Lydia was going to risk getting this wrong. It was too important.

She’d probably heard Wendy wrong because panic still had the blood pounding in her ears. She couldn’t let wishful thinking take over.

“What?”

“Reeve’s gone,” Wendy said.

Lydia traded incredulous, hopeful glances with Case.

He said, “When you say ‘gone,’ do you mean ... what do you mean?”

Lydia’s mind was working overdrive now, and it instantly presented her with a bunch of possibilities before a still-breathless Wendy could answer.

Maybe finding out about Case had churned Reeve up into a frothing rage, and he’d zoomed around town, furious and reckless, and gotten into an impromptu drag race with a cop. Maybe he was suddenly looking at ten years in prison, ten years where she wouldn’t have to worry about him at all.

Maybe he’d picked a fight in a human bar, and the same asshole who had brained Case with a bottle had wound up sucker-punching him and putting him in the hospital. If he could be out of commission until after Ruth’s funeral, until after she and Case had taken control of the pack, he wouldn’t be legally able to challenge them.

Maybe—

“He left!”

For the first time in her life, Lydia actually felt her jaw drop.

I wouldn’t have thought of that one. Not in a million years .

She wasn’t alone in thinking it had to be too good to be true, because Case was also blinking in stunned surprise.

“He left ?” Case said. “How do you know? Where did he go?”

Wendy was too excited to tell the story in a straight line, but Lydia put it together as she went:

Wendy had a friend, an antelope shifter, who worked at the nearest airport. The friend, Wendy assured them, was usually scrupulously ethical when it came to privacy concerns, but she knew that Wendy’s pack was having a really tough time with a troublemaker named Reeve Steele. (“And his name stuck in her head, because, you know, his name is Reeve Steele,” Wendy said. “I’m ninety percent sure he must have changed it. Nobody’s born with a name like that. There are no toddlers named Reeve Steele.”)

So when Reeve showed up at the airport, Wendy’s friend remembered him. But what had really raised her eyebrows and made her give Wendy a call was the fact that Reeve hadn’t just caught his flight today, he’d bought his ticket today. Airport employees tended to notice that kind of thing.

Reeve was on the move. He wanted to get far away—all the way to Florida, according to Wendy’s friend—and he wanted to get there fast.

He must have wanted it pretty badly. Most wolves—lifelong wolves, she amended, thinking of Case, who thankfully wouldn’t have to deal with this problem—didn’t fly unless they absolutely had to. Their animal instincts usually wanted to keep them on the ground. People who were turned later in life usually had the memories of previous successful flights to convince their inner animals that it was fine, but it was a fear natural werewolves had to actually work to overcome.

Reeve didn’t strike Lydia as a guy who had done a lot of work grappling with his own problems, so if he’d taken to the skies, he must have been pretty desperate.

“This is a long shot,” Case said, “but did he happen to tell your friend why he was leaving?”

Wendy shook her head with an obvious pang of regret, but then she immediately brightened. “But isn’t it obvious? He’s intimidated by you! The plan worked! Reeve’s not prepared to fight two people, so now he’s on the run!”

That was what Lydia wanted to believe, of course. It wasn’t even implausible. Reeve had clearly been shocked and appalled that Lydia would dare “cheat” by enlisting Case as backup. Besides, in their brief showdown on the porch, Case hadn’t had any trouble knocking Reeve away from her. Sure, Reeve hadn’t expected any interference at all, but there were plenty of wolves he could have thrown aside without batting an eye. Case obviously wasn’t one of them. Now Reeve knew that. And he definitely struck Lydia as the kind of guy who preferred to only take on people who were weaker than he was.

Did that mean that he’d run away with his tail between his legs? She wasn’t sure, but she couldn’t think of any other explanation.

“It makes sense,” she said slowly. “Wolf packs talk to each other, but usually only if they’re close. I don’t know any packs on the other side of the country. So I couldn’t warn anyone there about Reeve.”

She was pretty sure he was from Alabama, though, so he might have passed through Florida before. Maybe that had been enough of a warning for any packs around there, and they’d know to keep their distance. She hoped so.

Wendy nodded. “New territory. He’ll have fresh pickings, and he won’t have to face up to any rumors about running away from a fight.”

“And if he wanted to save face,” Case said, “I’m guessing he’d have to get out of town before ....”

Before Ruth dies . Lydia could understand why he didn’t want to say it, especially around her, but unfortunately, she had a lot of practice thinking about it. It was inevitable, and Ruth had never let her shy away from inevitabilities, especially ones she had to prepare for in order to protect the pack.

And he was right. All of Mountainview had known, for months now, that Reeve was waiting in the wings. He would want to avoid the maximum humiliation of them actually seeing him not challenge her and Case.

So he’d gone off to get a fresh start somewhere else.

This could be over. She was finally starting to believe it. Weeks and weeks of tension left her body, and the heavy weight of dread shifted off her shoulders.

... And underneath it all was a flicker of jealousy.

Why does Reeve get to get away, and I don’t? Why can’t Case and I catch a flight and get out of here?

What was she thinking? She hadn’t even taken on an alpha’s full responsibilities yet, and she was already daydreaming about abandoning her pack? What was wrong with her? Mountainview deserved better than that. Didn’t she want to be here? Didn’t she care?

She was a little afraid of what answers she might find if she really asked herself these questions—let alone what ones she’d get if she asked her wolf, which would freely express all the selfishness she might try to keep hidden.

The only possible option was to bury all of it as deeply as possible. What she would want her life to be in an ideal world didn’t matter. In the world she actually lived in, she’d gotten great news. Reeve was gone.

Even thinking that helped banish that strange, momentary flicker of envy, and she could follow it up with something even better.

Reeve was gone, and Case was her mate. Everything the two of them had been feeling was finally out in the open. They loved each other, and they were meant to be together. And Mountainview was safe. When she added all that up in her head, she couldn’t stop a grin from spreading across her face.

Wendy saw it and grinned back. “Exactly!” she said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll keep spreading the news, if that’s okay.”

Technically, Lydia should make sure Ruth heard about it before anyone else, but she couldn’t bring herself to dampen Wendy’s exuberance. Proper pack etiquette could take a backseat for once. She’d tell Ruth herself.

“Go ahead,” she said.

Wendy gave a little cheer and took off, clearly enjoying her new and hard-earned role of town crier.

Lydia sat back.

“Reeve’s gone,” she said, trying the words out loud to see how they sounded.

Answer: pretty damn good.

“Gone,” Case repeated, but he sounded more thoughtful than dazed.

Lydia turned to look at him. “You think it’s wishful thinking?”

He sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, and honestly, hearing that he’s out of town makes me really happy, even if I don’t know if he’ll stay gone. He tried to kill you. I want him as far away as possible—and my wolf wants him in the ground just to make sure of it. I can believe that he’s the kind of guy who will run away from a fair fight, but on the other hand ....”

Lydia waited, letting him think it through. She trusted his instincts—his human ones and his wolf ones.

“On the other hand, I can also believe he’s the kind of guy who would never make things that easy. Not that it’s been easy on you—”

“No, I know what you mean.” She tucked her head against his shoulder. “Well, this last part’s been really easy on me. I was prepared to marry whoever I had to, and I wound up with my fated mate.”

Her heightened shifter senses could pick up on the spike of Case’s adrenaline.

“I still hate to think about how close you came to having to do something awful,” he said.

“You stopped me.”

He shook his head. “You stopped yourself by thinking, ‘Hey, maybe I could turn that guy into a werewolf.’”

Lydia laughed softly. “That was my best idea ever.” She breathed in his warm scent—denim, mountain air, and a slight hint of salt and musk—and then reluctantly sat up again. “We should go talk to Ruth. I want to see how she’s doing anyway. Is it okay if I tell her about us?”

Case didn’t even hesitate. “Of course. I’d tell people if I knew anyone who would actually know what it meant. I need to figure out how to tell my family about all this.” He scrubbed at his stubbled cheek, and Lydia realized that they’d had to peel out of the lodge in such a hurry this morning that Case hadn’t had time to shave.

Just time to make me coffee the way I like it , she thought fondly. I’m going to have to make sure to take care of him the way he takes care of me.

“We’ll work it out,” she said. “We can transform in front of them if that will help.”

“We can do that? Do I have to get them to sign a nondisclosure agreement first?”

“Declan would probably say I should say yes, but no. I had to do it with you because I had to basically spring the existence of shifters on you before we really knew each other.” She trailed her fingers up the sheepskin collar of his jacket. “Deep down, I already knew you wouldn’t flip out and reveal our existence to the rest of the world, but—”

“But you still had to be cautious.” Case didn’t sound ruffled by that at all, which she liked. “It wasn’t just your own secret on the line, it was everyone’s . Don’t worry, I get it. You had to listen to your head—and your lawyer—on that one, not your instincts.”

“Thank you.” She kissed him on the cheek. “But I promise that most of the time, deciding whether or not to tell someone isn’t that formal, because you’re only going to want to tell people you already know and trust. You just go for it. And looping in close friends and family is pretty standard.”

“They’re going to ask you a billion questions,” Case said as he climbed out of the truck. “They’re both big on nature documentaries. And horror movies.”

Lydia could handle explaining the ins-and-outs of being a wolf. It would be kind of fun, actually: before Case, she had never gotten to think about her life from the outside.

I’ll have to talk to him about getting his moms to come to us, though, she thought. He might be imagining us taking a road trip, and I don’t think staying away for more than a night or two is ever going to be in the cards. Ruth never acted like it was.

It was an unsettling reminder that even though she might have gotten Reeve out of her life, she hadn’t exactly gotten rid of all her problems.

Before she had realized Case was her mate, she’d thought that if he hated being stuck in Mountainview, he could leave, even if it would break her heart. But now ... now she knew that nothing would ever make him break her heart like that. He would put up with any amount of unhappiness in order to stay with her.

Fate wouldn’t have matched us up if we couldn’t be part of each other’s lives without being miserable, she told herself. He wouldn’t be perfect for me if he wasn’t also perfect for Mountainview.

She hoped that was true. She could ignore her own unhappiness whenever it flared up, but it made her sick to her stomach to even think about ignoring his.

But he wasn’t unhappy right now, not as far as she could tell. She would cling to that.

She let them into the house and called back to Ruth and Andrea.

It was a relief to have Andrea answer at once—and even sound cheerful. “We’re back here in the bedroom!”

As wispy and crackly as Ruth’s voice had gotten over time, it was still impossible for a member of her pack to miss her retort: “I’m hardly ever anywhere else these days.”

It was sadly true, but since Ruth didn’t take well to pity, Lydia stayed brisk.

“Thanks, Andrea, you can take a break. And you were in the living room yesterday morning,” she added to Ruth as Andrea slipped out into the hall.

“Briefly,” Ruth said, “and only for a very good reason.” She scrutinized Case before turning back to Lydia. “I’m glad you got it done.”

Lydia held up her hand so Ruth could see the ring, but Ruth didn’t have any interest in it.

“Not just the marriage,” Ruth said dismissively. “The mate bond.”

Oh God. There’s nothing like your grandmother knowing that you’ve slept with someone.

Her cheeks burned, and she knew she couldn’t do anything about the way they were coloring up. Ruth didn’t mean to pry, exactly, but she was so blunt and practical that she saw no reason to not treat human relationships as exactly the same as animal ones. Especially when they were relevant to the overall condition of the pack. And since the physical act of love was needed to establish the mate-bond that had made her and Case a “unit,” it was relevant. Lydia was thankful that it would never, ever be relevant again.

Case looked back and forth between them. “Wait, are you actually talking about—”

“Sex,” Ruth said. “Don’t be a prude, young man.”

“I’m not. There’s a difference between being a prude and thinking that something’s private.”

Ruth laughed. It was a raspy, pained sound that had Lydia reflexively reaching for the ever-present pitcher of water to pour her a drink. “All wolves can sense a mate bond, and nothing is private in a pack. You should learn that sooner rather than later.”

“I don’t know if that has to be true,” Case started to say, but Lydia met his eyes and gave him a little shake of her head. She’d only been embarrassed for a second or two; it wasn’t worth getting into an argument with Ruth about it. She did like that he wanted to defend her from even the most minor of mishaps, though. It was incredibly sweet.

They had something more important to focus on, however. She gave Ruth the glass of water and the news at the same time:

“Reeve just caught a plane to Florida.”

If she’d hoped to get some sign of surprise or pleasure, she would’ve been disappointed. Ruth was as stoic as ever. There wasn’t even a wet squeak to show if she’d suddenly gripped her glass a little more tightly.

Instead, she went straight to the point: “Will he stay gone?”

“We don’t know. We’re not even sure why he left. We’re hoping it’s because Case knocked him down. If he thinks he’s outmatched now, maybe he’s not interested in a fight, and he ran home—or near home—to lick his wounds.”

“That would be the best option, of course,” Ruth said.

“But you don’t think it’s the truth,” Case said, studying her.

“Life has taught me that the best option doesn’t come up very often.” She took a small, bird-like sip of her water. “Life is a hard slog, and the only satisfaction comes from getting through it and knowing that you’ve pulled everyone else along too.”

Lydia had heard this speech a hundred times. It had been the background noise and elevator music of her entire life.

Case was the only person who had ever really made her doubt it. He’d swept into her life, and all of a sudden, she’d had not only a mate but a helping hand and a compass to direct her to all the small pleasures she had spent years missing. Red velvet dresses that fit her like a glove. Linzer cookies with their pops of tart raspberry jam. Mind-blowing, life-changing sex.

Okay, that last one wasn’t really a small pleasure.

“We’ll see what happens with Reeve,” she said firmly, before Case could try to convince Ruth that life was more than a gray, grim march of doing your duty. She didn’t think he was going to pry Ruth’s vision of the world out of her hands, not at this point. “There’s something else I wanted to tell you, though. Case and I ... we’re not just mated. We’re true mates.”

That jarred Ruth, even when the news about Reeve hadn’t. She looked back and forth between Lydia and Case like she was trying to see what they added up to.

“I never ....”

Ruth coughed, and the cough turned into an agonizing wheeze with a horrible rattle at the end. It hurt Lydia’s heart to hear it. Ruth deserved an easier exit than this. It was awful that she was having to go through so much.

When Ruth got her breath back, she said, “I never thought they were real. They seemed like nothing but a fairy tale for shifters. No one around here has ever found a fated mate, not that I’ve ever heard.”

“None of us have ever really tried,” Lydia said gently. “You probably have better odds of meeting the one person for you if you meet more people to start with. Usually everyone in Mountainview stays home.”

“Home is the only thing that matters. It’s the only thing you can count on.”

“I can count on Case.”

“And I can count on Lydia,” Case said. “I’ll always do my best to make sure to live up to what she needs from me.”

“As long as you make sure the pack doesn’t get lost in the shuffle,” Ruth said. She closed her eyes. This was a longer conversation than she usually had these days, and between that and the big revelations, Lydia could tell she was exhausted. “Put it first, the way you would a child. Even more than you would a child.”

Lydia bit her lip. She knew exactly how Ruth’s pack-first approach had messed with her dad’s head. It was hard to always come second—sometimes even a distant second—in your own parents’ eyes. She didn’t ever want her own kid to feel like that. She didn’t even know if she wanted a kid at all—she’d never had much time to think about it.

For the first time in her life, she felt like she could think about it, and she even had someone to talk it all over with, someone who didn’t already have a “right” answer in mind that he was waiting for.

The pressure of following in Ruth’s footsteps hadn’t gone away, but Reeve’s sudden departure had bought her time to deal with it. And she had Case. Thinking his name made her reach out and take his hand, so she could lace her fingers in with his as they left Ruth alone to sleep.

She could still feel every worry she’d pushed down swimming around inside her, making her wolf yip nervously from time to time, but that was something she could get over. This was as good as her life could possibly get, so no matter what, she was going to focus on her happy ending.