5

Call him a romantic, but for some reason Case had pictured them having the wedding first.

But that, he realized, was probably a sign of how dazed he was. He wasn’t exactly too stunned to think, but it was probably fair to say that he wasn’t batting a thousand right now.

Lydia needed to marry a werewolf , not Case Jackson, random citizen. If her bite didn’t turn him, there was no reason to go forward with the rest of it.

So the schedule was:

-get bitten

-get married

- familiarize himself with his wolf form as quickly as possible

- complete the normal honeymoon activity of fighting a brutal, bloodthirsty werewolf

Simple. Straightforward. Couldn’t imagine why he was too distracted to keep it straight.

If someone had asked him why he had agreed to all this, he wasn’t sure what he would say.

The simplest answer was that Lydia needed help, and he believed her when she said that he was her best chance for getting it. If he saw a car speeding toward someone, he would try to push them out of the way. This disaster might be unfolding in slow motion, but it was there , and no one could count on Lydia having enough time to find another candidate. The shocked relief on her face when Case had agreed had underlined exactly how bad her position was. So there was that.

For years, Case had lived a life with no strings attached. He knew a lot of people, even the ones who liked him, mostly looked askance at it and assumed he did it to steer clear of any commitments. People who didn’t like him made it clear they believed there was some dark story behind his life—he was skipping out on child support or alimony or trying to hide a criminal record, or he was just trouble and every town eventually drove him out on a rail.

He supposed he was biased in his own favor, but he didn’t think any of that was true. He had skimmed lightly over the surface of the world for years because he liked it—liked seeing new places and meeting new people—but also because somewhere deep inside him, there was an itch that had never been scratched. No place had ever felt like home.

Once, standing on the porch of a ramshackle beach shack he’d rented, drinking coffee and watching the sun rise over the ocean, Case had felt a glowing contentment. He still looked back on it sometimes as one of his favorite memories.

He remembered thinking, This is beautiful. God, it’s good to be alive.

But he also remembered thinking, This isn’t quite it. Not yet.

That thought had startled him. He hadn’t known what “it” was, and he still didn’t know.

But what if this was it? Not many people could afford to rush out to a middle-of-nowhere mountain town, get married to a stranger, and fight for a werewolf pack’s future. They wouldn’t have lives that could accommodate that kind of wild swerve. He did.

If he didn’t use that freedom when someone needed it, what was even the point of having it?

So there was all that, to start with, and it made some sense, if he squinted at it. It felt serious and principled, like a statement of his life’s purpose. He meant it.

But also, Case liked Lydia.

He liked how she’d talked about running in the woods. He liked how hard she was trying and how far she was going to keep her people safe. He liked her earnestness and her pragmatism and her honesty.

He liked her thick, wavy black hair and the way it wafted out a scent of toasted coconut shampoo whenever she moved. He liked her enormous liquid brown eyes, so dark and so intent.

Her muscles. Her curves.

The frayed cuff of her flannel shirt against the delicate inside of her wrist.

Let’s face it , he thought, trying to tease himself so the aching throb inside him would diminish a little. If anyone’s going to bite me, I’m glad it’s her.

So much for his efforts: the aching throb stayed exactly the same.

Well, he was here. Doing the bite at Lydia’s house had felt a lot less weird and impersonal than doing it at the law office, so she had given him the address. And let him sleep on it, which he thought was pretty heroic of her, considering what she stood to lose if he got second thoughts. He had shown up a few minutes early to drive home that he hadn’t.

Time to prove it. He raised his hand and knocked on the door.

Lydia opened it a few seconds later. Both the flannel shirt and the Henley had changed colors since yesterday, but otherwise her outfit was exactly the same.

Case found it bizarrely comforting. He couldn’t have lived a life full of new sights and new people if he hadn’t always had a few things to hold on to, a few touchstones that were always the same. Suddenly the familiarity of Lydia’s wardrobe seemed as vital to him as the constellations.

“I’m—I’m here,” Case said unnecessarily. She could see that much for herself.

“Hi,” Lydia said, thankfully just as awkward. “I’m glad you didn’t change your mind.”

“I won’t.”

Her lips flexed in a fleeting little smile that instantly engraved itself in his memory. “Come in? My grandmother—my alpha —wants to meet you before we do this.”

Case came in, noting how she’d corrected herself mid-sentence. He figured that meant that this wasn’t about her family wanting to meet the man she was going to marry, then; it was about a current alpha wanting to vet a future one. That notion was more alien to him, but he guessed it should be some comfort that he’d be out of his element in both scenarios.

Lydia sat him down on the velour sofa and went to go get her grandmother.

He knew he couldn’t really judge this based on about half-a-day’s acquaintance, but Lydia’s house didn’t suit her. It didn’t have the same lived-in, comfortable, classic feel as her clothes, and there were no signs of her taste anywhere that he could see: no books, no movies, no art. The den was as antiseptic as a hospital waiting room. The only hint of personality came from the fact that it would’ve been an old waiting room, since all the décor and color palettes felt like they’d been picked out decades ago.

Oh.

It wasn’t her house, was it? She lived here, but she didn’t have any real ownership of the place. It was her grandmother’s.

Now that he wasn’t fruitlessly looking for signs of Lydia, he could see that the room wasn’t as impersonal as he had first thought. It was just tightly controlled. It was the front room of a woman who was an alpha first and a person second.

You’re jumping to a lot of conclusions here , Case scolded himself. For all you know, once you get past the room where she talks to strangers, it’s all black velvet paintings of Elvis and chocolate fountains and books of French architectural theory and generally all the personality anybody could possibly want. You can’t judge a person off their living room, especially not when she’s a werewolf mayor.

He stood up as Ruth Willmore came into the room. It was completely unplanned: she was, apparently, the kind of person who made you pop up like a jack-in-the-box to make sure you showed your respect.

She was small and wizened, with dry, wispy white hair. Her complexion was lighter than Lydia’s, but by now her skin was more sallow than pale.

Case had spent a few months as a landscaper, and one of the businesses his company had covered was an assisted living facility. Some of the residents liked to soak up the sun, and Case had made friends with them—and then lost them, one after the other. He knew what it looked like when someone was close to the end. He had a fresh appreciation for Lydia’s sense of urgency now.

“Sit down,” Ruth said in a raspy, reedy voice that nonetheless had an iron core of strength in it. “I’m going to.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lydia’s quick smile quirk again. He probably wasn’t the only person she’d seen immediately pull out the “ma’am” around her grandmother.

He was a little afraid that Lydia would keep hanging back, deferring to her alpha so completely that she disappeared into the wallpaper, but to his surprise and relief, she came over and sat down beside him on the couch. They made a united front. Ruth raised her eyebrows a little at that, but then she nodded, accepting it.

She fixed her bright black eyes on Case. “So you want to be a wolf.”

He suspected this was a test. He knew there were people who apparently longed to turn into vampires; maybe it was the same with werewolves and other shifters. Maybe they always sort of wondered if humans wanted them or just wanted an upgrade.

“I’m fine with being a wolf,” Case said. “But before yesterday, I didn’t even know werewolves existed, so it’s not like I was desperate to turn into one.”

“He’s not using us to become a shifter,” Lydia said, which pretty much confirmed what he’d been thinking. “I asked him, not the other way around.”

“Why did she ask you?” Ruth said to Case.

Lydia started to answer that too, but Ruth cut her off with a wave of her hand.

“I want to hear what he has to say about it.”

That was fair, Case guessed, but he didn’t like how she’d shut Lydia up like that.

“Lydia thought I’d fit the bill for what she needed,” Case said, ever-so-slightly emphasizing the Lydia . “If you want any more insight than that, you’ll have to ask her.”

He would bet a hefty sum that Ruth had asked Lydia already. She didn’t need to get his story from him too. He didn’t like talking about himself, especially when it was supposed to be flattering.

Ruth squinted at him, like she was trying to make him out through a sea of fog. “Why are you agreeing to this?”

He also didn’t like talking about himself when he had no idea what to say. The truth was the shortest answer he could give, which kept him honest.

“I don’t know.”

“Guess.”

Case was keyed up and on edge. He had come here to get bitten and either to have his entire genetic makeup rewritten or spend a week or so shivering and sweating as his body refused to accept the change he was putting it through. With all that on his mind, he hadn’t exactly gotten a lot of sleep last night. When he had finally dropped off, he’d dreamed about playing basketball with a furry Michael J. Fox.

He wondered what Ruth’s reaction would be if he told her about that .

He meant to say something about helping out. About fate and freedom.

Instead, what came out of his mouth was, “I like Lydia.”

Beside him, Lydia flushed a dusky rose.

“You don’t know her,” Ruth said.

“I don’t know her well enough to marry her, under normal circumstances. But I can like her just fine, and I do. And if I can help her—and she thinks I can—then I want to.”

Ruth snorted. “If you already like her, you must like a lot of people.”

That rankled, but it was more or less true.

“I do,” he said calmly.

But I don’t usually feel like they’re already important to me.

Ruth was starting to look a little less appraising and a little more amused. Maybe even approving, although that could have been wishful thinking.

“You’re nice, but you don’t bend,” Ruth said thoughtfully. “That can be useful. I hope the change takes.”

Lydia lifted her chin. “I do too.”

Ruth studied her. “If your alpha forbade you to proceed with this plan of yours, would you still do it?”

What kind of question was that?

Lydia didn’t even blink at it, though. “Yes.” Her voice was perfectly steady, but Case could see that she had tensed up. She meant what she said, but it would tear her in two to go against her alpha and her only family. “I’m sorry, but right now, I have to focus on the future. I need to think about what’s good for the pack.”

Ruth leaned back in her chair. “Then you’re ready to be alpha. That’s good, Lyddie. No matter what happens, you’re ready.” She closed her eyes, and all of her years seemed to hit her at once. She had already looked old and ill, but right up until this second, she had been fighting that tooth-and-nail. Now she was giving in.

Lydia saw it too, and Case heard the sharp intake of her breath.

“Okay,” she said, almost to herself, and swallowed. She turned to Case. “Ready?”

No.

“Yeah,” he said—a little more hoarsely than he’d expected. “Let’s do it.”