3

It turned out that people weren’t lining up around the block for a marriage that would come with an immediate, non-optional bloodbath.

It didn’t help that the pack wasn’t exactly flush with cash. Lydia’s mate, whoever he would be, wouldn’t be getting a fortune along with his bride, especially since neither she nor her grandparents had ever approved of alphas taking a chunk of their pack’s income. When the town heard what she had planned, they took up a fund to serve as a kind of alpha-dowry, which was unbelievably touching ... but Ruth said, and Lydia guessed she agreed, that they couldn’t let anyone make that kind of sacrifice. She was the alpha-in-waiting; it was her job to fix the problem.

So: no money. Not much, anyway.

Mountainview’s natural beauty was stunning—no one was arguing with that—but it didn’t come with many extras. The packs that had tried to nibble its edges away in the past would have been happy to have the land, but now when Lydia offered it to them, it turned out they didn’t want the responsibility of the people who came with it.

That made sense, but Lydia still had the sense that she was getting the runaround. This wasn’t about someone who was shying away from suddenly becoming an alpha who’d have to scrimp and save for a lot of retirees they’d never even met before. Most wolves never even got the chance to head up a pack, so being an alpha—even under imperfect circumstances—still came with honor and prestige they might never get another chance at.

And even though people these days didn’t usually want to have their mate-bond dictated by sheer political convenience, that probably wasn’t the real problem either. Lydia was no supermodel, not by a long shot, but she wasn’t hideous, either. So far, everyone she’d approached with this peculiar proposal had met her at least once or twice, and Lydia was pretty sure they’d formed the same impression everyone always did. Lydia Vasquez: practical, easygoing, steady, dogged. Easy to get along with.

Okay, so that description made her sound more like a reliable sedan than the heroine of some grand love affair, but if you were at all willing to enter into a political marriage like this, a reliable sedan was probably exactly what you were hoping for. This mate-bond would be a working partnership, and hopefully a friendly one. It didn’t have to be more than that.

But she still couldn’t get any bites. She got some genuine apologies and some shifty expressions, and that was it.

They were afraid of Reeve.

Werewolf packs weren’t as openly aggressive as they used to be. Turf wars and alpha challenges, however fatal, were still accepted under wolf law—you just needed to keep the whole business away from humans, who were understandably alarmed by it—but again, they were mostly symbolic these days. They were rare, and they were getting even rarer.

People wanted quiet lives, not brutal violence. Lydia felt the same way. But that didn’t change the fact that her pack was vulnerable to a bloodthirsty bully.

She was willing to put her life on the line to protect them, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that nobody else felt the same way. Why should they? They didn’t care about the Mountainview pack. They might eventually, but they didn’t want to join it and die for it on the same day.

There were a handful of strong, physically fit guys in her pack, but most of them were already mated. The ones who weren’t all had responsibilities like kids and elderly parents who needed attention. They had quietly made it clear they would do whatever she needed them to do to help out, but she didn’t like the idea of taking them away from the people who really needed them.

And it still didn’t feel right to draw her mate from inside the pack; her wolf revolted against it, and she understood why. They were in desperate need of fresh faces and fresh blood. She didn’t want to marry people who felt like family.

Lydia let herself collapse for a second, planting her elbows on her knees and resting her head in her hands.

Her grandmother wasn’t the kind to give her a soothing “there, there” on the shoulder.

“You don’t have time to sulk,” she said crisply. “There are still other options.”

“Like what?”

“There are some wolves we haven’t talked to yet. Ones who are ... known to be fighters.”

Lydia lifted her head up so she could give Ruth an incredulous look. “You mean the ones I struck off our initial list of candidates? Those guys are almost as bad as Reeve.”

Was that really what it would come to? Her having to choose the very-slightly-lesser of two evils?

Was her own grandmother really advocating that she marry someone like that?

Of course she is , Lydia realized with a sinking feeling. You know Ruth always puts the pack first. She has to. Like I’ll have to, when I’m really alpha.

It gave her a tiny bit of comfort that Ruth didn’t seem to like this “solution” any more than she did.

“We’re in a tight corner,” Ruth said. “Only a fool would ever have gone to them first. I know the men you ruled out, Lydia. They’re violent, heavy-handed, and, well ....” She made a dismissive, weary hand gesture that Lydia assumed was supposed to cover at least half-a-dozen different varieties of interpersonal shittiness. “But you may need to go down that road. Are you willing to?”

“I have to be, don’t I? We’ve already exhausted all our actually good options.”

She could still hear Reeve in her head: Clock’s ticking .

Lydia said, “I’ll call those guys in if I need to. I have to do whatever I can. They’re bad, but Reeve is worse. You know I literally saw him kick a dog once? And it’s not like it bit him. It was just happily playing fetch near him, and that was enough. That’s how mean he is.”

Ruth nodded without much interest. She was too worn-out these days to devote much time to anything besides the pack, so a dog she’d never seen didn’t merit a lot of attention.

She gave Lydia a critical once-over, though, and Lydia wondered if this conversation was about to take a particularly bizarre turn. Was her grandmother going to tell her that if she wanted to get a man, she needed to smile more? Wear more makeup? Ditch her usual long-sleeve tees and flannel work-shirts?

But Lydia had forgotten that every now and then, in her own undemonstrative way, Ruth did try to look after her.

“Go out tonight,” Ruth said.

“What?”

“You could use a night away from a dying woman and a town in trouble.”

“Ruth—”

“Don’t argue with me.” There was a flare-up of pure, unadulterated alpha force in her voice right then, and it instinctively snapped Lydia’s mouth closed. “I’m not going to die in the next twelve hours. And if you’re going to have to start asking any brute who can shift to be your lawful wedded husband, you deserve one more night on the town first.”

Lydia stared at her. Are you telling me to go get laid?

“That’s right,” Ruth said, meeting Lydia’s gaze as unflinchingly as ever. “You must have a place you like to go to meet men. You’re not the first alpha in Mountainview’s history who’s slipped off to a neighboring town for a night, and, God willing, you won’t be the last. I did the same thing before I married your grandfather, and it was a lot harder back then. Go out, find someone you like, and ....”

Ruth couldn’t finish her sentence.

It was maybe the first time Lydia had ever heard that happen to her, and she knew why. It wasn’t that Ruth was too shy to say “find someone you like, and ride him until the bed breaks.” If anything, this conversation had already shown that she was far more comfortable talking with Lydia about sex than Lydia would like.

No, what Ruth meant but couldn’t bring herself to say was more like, Go out, find someone you like, and get any hint of romance out of your system, because when you come back, you’re going to have to marry someone only the tiniest bit better than your worst nightmare.

Find someone you like, and then get ready to marry someone you hate.

Ruth was sending her off to have what could be the last flirtation and last bit of good sex of her life, and both of them knew it.

Lydia swallowed.

“Yeah,” she said. “I guess I’ll do that.”

*

Ruth was right: Lydia did have a place she went to when she felt like she was going out of her mind with loneliness. No one in Mountainview had ever felt like a real option to her, not when she had always known she would be alpha one day. Everyone here was a responsibility, not a potential lover. It was hard enough even trying to have real friends.

So when she needed to blow off some steam, she went one town over, to the Rip-Roarin’ Roadhouse. The name went a little too heavy on the alliteration, so everyone Lydia knew, including the owners, called it the Rip-Roar.

It sounded more boisterous than it was. The owners kept a tight lid on any trouble, cutting off anyone who seemed like they were getting too drunk for their own good and kicking out anyone who seemed to be spoiling for a fight. They made sure the only ripping and roaring that happened was the fun kind.

There was almost always good live music, too, and tonight was no exception. It was heavy on the blues, which suited her mood. Even if Lydia didn’t meet anyone, she’d enjoy getting to listen to the band.

She didn’t even make it through her first hard cider before she started thinking that actually, maybe enjoy was the wrong word. Every song felt like it was reaching inside her chest and hooking its fingers into her heart. The singer’s smoky, scratchy, sultry voice couldn’t take the edge off the raw pain in the music—and maybe she didn’t even want it to. Maybe this ache was exactly what she was going for.

It was fantastic, but it was almost too much for Lydia to stand. She felt like she was standing on a wide-open landscape, with no help or shelter in sight, watching dark storm clouds roll in. Electricity crackled all around her.

This was a mistake. She shouldn’t have come here, no matter what Ruth had said. She didn’t need a break, she needed a solution .

Reeve was going to ruin everyone’s lives.

Her bottle of cider slipped between her fingers as her hands went nerveless on her. It clanged on the bar, a little cider sloshing out.

Never mind the drink. She had to get some air. Right now .

A voice, warm and steady, suddenly interceded: “Hey, it’s okay. Do you want to go outside?”

It wasn’t one of the Rip-Roar owners or bouncers making sure she didn’t have a panic attack in front of the rest of their clientele. It was a guy she’d never seen before.

He was tall and strong, lean but well-muscled. He was dressed about the same as she was, in a navy shirt and a worn denim jacket with a fleece collar. He had dark brown hair—a shade or two lighter than hers—and calm gray-green eyes with delicate crow’s feet etched around them. His cheeks looked a little windburned, like he did a lot of work outside.

On the edge of panic or not, Lydia couldn’t help thinking, God, I’d like to climb him like a tree. She hoped that didn’t make her blush too much.

“Yeah,” she said, thankful that her voice didn’t come out as a croak. “Yeah, I think I’ll go out and catch my breath. Thanks.”

To her surprise, he came with her, even swiping her cider off the bar in case she wanted it.

He didn’t push her to talk, either. It was like he was perfectly fine wasting his evening by standing on the Rip-Roar’s porch, letting the balmy night breeze brush up against them, listening to the distant sounds of the music inside. He didn’t even have a drink.

Lydia could feel her curiosity about him—and, to be frank, her attraction to him—starting to distract her, pulling her back from the brink of whatever blues-induced breakdown she’d been about to have. She took another swig of her cider for courage and then said, “I’m Lydia, by the way. Lydia Vasquez.”

“Case Jackson.”

Case . Short for Casey, she was guessing? She liked it. There was a solidity to it that suited him.

Oh, get a hold of yourself. You don’t even know him.

To her surprise, her wolf intervened, even though it usually didn’t take much interest in purely human affairs: You know that he noticed you were upset, and that he bothered to do something about it. That’s not nothing .

True. And she knew that this couldn’t be how he’d planned on spending his evening, but he was still hanging out here on the porch with her without complaining about it, which wasn’t nothing either. He didn’t seem anxious for her to say that she was okay so he could escape back inside. He was content to stand here and keep her company. That was a rare quality.

It was also one she shouldn’t take advantage of.

“You don’t have to stay out here. I didn’t mean to take you away from the music.”

Case shrugged, letting that roll off him like it was nothing. “It’s not like you dragged me out here.” His smile was so easy and charming that she felt like seeing it made everything better. “Besides, if it helps, it’s a big improvement over the last time I was at a live show.”

“What happened then?”

He touched his head. “Somebody cracked me with a beer bottle and I woke up in jail.”

He sounded rueful, not upset, but Lydia was already prepared to be outraged on his behalf.

“They threw you in jail for being the victim ? I always thought this town was better than that!”

“Oh, not here. Over in Oregon. I move around a lot.”

“That must be incredible,” Lydia said before she could stop herself. She could hear the throb of longing in her voice: thirty-plus years of pent-up wanderlust and wearying responsibility briefly escaping into the atmosphere like a cloud of steam.

She’d always known that pack alphas’ lives were about duty, not freedom or pleasure, and she had accepted that a long time ago. She could never leave Mountainview for too long, and Ruth had to be even more careful than that. When Ruth was gone, Lydia would be as trapped by obligation as her grandmother was.

It was part of the job, and there was no use wishing it was otherwise. But for a second, she wished she could leave her home behind—not forever, just for a week or two—and move through the world as easily as Case seemed to.

“Uh, except for the beer bottle part,” she added hastily, both to him and to her own daydreams. “That bit doesn’t sound like it was much fun. Did he just not like your face?”

She found it hard to imagine anyone reacting badly to Case’s face, but maybe he’d been jealous.

“Technically, he didn’t like that I shoved him,” Case said, with a wry twist to his mouth, “but I was trying to stop him from kicking somebody’s service dog.”

That riled up her wolf, understandably enough: a dog was practically a cousin. It let out a low growl inside her head, and she adamantly seconded it.

“He tried to kick a dog? What an asshole! I’m glad you shoved him. I hope it hurt.”

“Probably not as much as it should have, but I did punch him after the bottle thing.”

“Good,” Lydia said fiercely. “Was the dog okay?”

“As far as I know.” A melancholy look flitted across his face. “That’s the problem with moving around so much, I guess. You don’t always know how things work out.”

A couple left the Rip-Roar arm-in-arm, sidling past Lydia and Case as they crossed the porch to head to their car. She had been so wrapped up in Case that it felt strange to see anyone else, to be reminded that the rest of the world was still spinning on. All her problems were still there, even if she’d temporarily forgotten about them. It was like a mysterious bubble had been popped.

But somehow it was better than it was before. If the panic attack had been lurking around the corner waiting to pounce on her all over again, Case’s presence had somehow scared it off. She still felt tired and worried and scared, but he had made her feel—

Lydia’s thoughts skidded to an abrupt halt.

What had she said to Ruth a couple hours ago?

You know I literally saw him kick a dog once?

That was why Reeve spelled so much trouble for Mountainview. He was callous and cruel, and he didn’t need a reason to lash out at whoever was around him. He would cause harm just because he could. And for the last few weeks, Lydia had been begging for help from men who understood that fact as well as she did but who wouldn’t do anything about it because, well, it wasn’t their dog.

But Case had stepped in to save a stranger’s dog. When he had seen trouble on the horizon, he’d done his best to stop it, even though it had meant putting himself on the line. He hadn’t even needed to think about it.

Unfortunately, Case couldn’t be her co-alpha. He couldn’t help her fight off Reeve. Alpha challenges were for werewolves only, and Case was human. Lydia was sure of it. Shifters could sense each other.

He doesn’t have to stay human , her wolf said, nosing forward inside her head. Its attention was at its sharpest now.

That ... was technically true. It was possible to turn a human into a werewolf.

Possible but difficult. It was risky to even propose turning someone: the shifter world only survived because it was good at keeping secrets. Telling humans the truth usually only came after years of friendship and careful, thorough vetting. These days, shifter law usually demanded that humans sign formal nondisclosure agreements before they dared to open up to them.

Of course, if magic became public knowledge, suing someone for violating an NDA would be at the bottom of everyone’s to-do list, but at least the documentation underlined how serious it all was. It told the human in question that this was a big deal.

The pack does have a lawyer , Lydia reminded herself, trying to stay hopeful. We can get the paperwork in order.

Unfortunately, the NDA was just the tip of the iceberg. There was also the turning process itself. A shifter’s bite could pass on the potential to transform, but there was only about a fifty-fifty chance that it would actually take. Many humans rejected the change completely: they spent weeks tossing and turning with fever and pain instead, until the bite’s effects faded away. There wouldn’t be any permanent ill effects, but that was still a lot of potential suffering.

And even if it worked—

A lot of humans only thought of werewolves in terms of horror movies. She could be taking a good man and making him feel like a monster.

He’d be saddled with new instincts he wouldn’t know how to deal with. As co-alpha, he would have bonds and obligations that a human could never fully understand.

Asking someone if you could turn him into a werewolf was like asking him if you could break every bone in his body, give him a psychological complex, and then bring him to your family reunion.

And then, in her case, saying, “Now can you marry me and help me out in a fight to the death?”

Even if Case divorced her the second Reeve left town, it was still an appalling position to put someone in. But if it worked out, it could be a thousand times better for her people than some Reeve knock-off. It could save them.

Case would be good for Mountainview; Lydia knew that all the way down in her bones. It might have even been why her wolf had taken such an immediate interest in him.

“Lydia?”

The plan was nuts. The plan wasn’t a plan at all.

But it was all she had.

“You said you move around a lot.” Her jangly nerves had left her mouth so dry that she found it hard to get the words out. “Do you need to move on from here anytime soon? Because I have a problem, and I was thinking that you might be the only person who can help.”