1
BOONE
* * *
She was here.
A scent in the throng activated my wolf. The delicious female scent had notes of honey and peaches. I never knew I liked them until now.
Mate.
I’d heard I was supposed to know the moment I scented my mate, but it was hard to conceive how that would feel. How amazing it was. And frustrating. I’d never felt it myself. Never imagined it since I’d lived so many years in a big city. Ironic, since there were so many people in comparison to Cooper Valley.
Now I knew. It felt like a switch turned on and there was no way to turn it back off.
My brain told me it made no sense. Nothing got between a shifter and his mate, including logic and reason. She was mine, wherever she was.
My breath rushed into my lungs in a huge gulp, and my blood traveled south to my dick.
Fuck me. I was instantly hard because of a scent.
Because of a mate I had never even laid eyes on. Thank fuck, I’d come down the mountain to drop off that load of firewood for Cody at his cabin, which forced me, the fucker, to come to the bar to get his payment in person.
Where was she?
Who was she?
I scanned the crowd, a hunter after his prey. I was sure my eyes changed color, sharpened like it usually did when my wolf became dominant. My nose zeroed in on that honey scent, but a Saturday crowd packed into Cody’s Saloon made it really hard to distinguish where it came from.
Where was she?
Females swayed to the rhythm of the country music, all decked out in their skimpy look-at-me outfits, despite the cold weather and piles of snow outside. Even more males packed in all around them, dancing closer, hoping to get lucky by the end of the night. Many of them would. Hopefully, I would, too.
Except their get-laid goals meant nothing to me and my wolf. They’d better get out of the fucking way because one of these females in here belonged to me.
I moved through the cluster of bodies, trying to trace the scent. The jolt I’d felt when I caught it the first time nearly made me shift right here in Cody’s, surrounded by a bunch of humans who would freak the fuck out.
I was thirty-eight. Fuck–I’d given up on finding my mate the second I left town to go to college. Yeah, me at Columbia University. At sixteen. I’d grown into my size by then and had refused to even consider a fight with Rob Wolf for alpha when his father died. I’d almost killed my father in that argument and had run–tail between my legs–as far as I could go from pack land to The Big Apple and college.
It had been safer for everyone with me gone, shifter or human, because I was a surly fucker even when I was feeling friendly. Except, years later, I also left New York City just as fast as I had Cooper Valley. I’d gone from fancy hedge fund manager to lumberjack recluse because it seemed no matter where I lived or what I did, I was bad news. I spent my days up in the woods. I chopped down trees for a living. I didn’t have coworkers for a reason. No watercooler talk. Hell, I was rusty at socializing, and this visit into town made it obvious. Except now I was obsessed with finding the one person I’d spend the rest of my life with.
Her.
With the memory of her scent permanently embedded in my frontal lobe, I was nearly feral. I felt my canines start to drop, ready to find, bite, and fuck.
If I didn’t find her and mark her soon, I could lose control, and that would be a bad thing. Staying up at my cabin wouldn’t keep me or anyone else safe any longer. I’d slowly go crazy and eventually moon mad.
I had to find her. I had to have her. I had to make her mine. Or I’d need to be put down.
I skirted the dance floor along the perimeter but couldn’t find the scent again.
I wasn’t a dancer. Hell, I didn’t really even like people, especially not crowds. Fuck it. I elbowed my way right through the center like a charging bull. I was a full head and shoulders taller than almost everyone in the place, even the guys wearing Stetsons, and the intensity of my need to find my female made me aggressive. As if they sensed the danger they were in, the crowd parted and made way for me.
Still, no mate.
Where the FUCK was she?
I sent a frantic glance toward the door. What if she’d been on her way out, and her scent still lingered, but she was gone? What if I fucking missed my mate? What if she was out there right now, never for me to find?
