Every sense was shrieking, and he was on the edge of shifting for five minutes until she backed out, heaving an unconscious kid, who looked the worst of all of them; his nose and face were blue in the cold.
When Mateo heard blades in the sky above, he pulled her to him and kissed her hard on the lips before dashing away to land the helicopters.
10
“Well, it’s been fun, but can we go home now?” Nicolo asked Mateo from across the dining room table.
Mateo raised an eyebrow but said nothing. The kids were safe. Cat was back where she belonged with her coven. He was at home in the house his great-grandfather built on the opposite side of Silver Spring. All was supposedly right with the world, and yet his wolf felt like it was gouging the insides of his brain with its claws in its need to get back to the witch.
He glanced at the much larger man sitting across from him. Nicolo was younger than him but didn’t look it. He’d been an MMA fighter for years, which had left scars on skin that healed shifter fast. His wolf looked worse. He’d come on board as Mateo’s personal security years ago, even though an alpha werewolf needed the opposite of security. It was a leftover role from much earlier days, where an enforcer wolf protected the alpha. It was a wolf not dominant enough to challenge for leadership, but the largest and most violent. Nicolo was built for another age.
Mateo was surprised that he wanted to go home so badly. He would’ve thought the woods suited the fighter more. Nicolo spent long hours pumping iron and running enormous distances in New York just to manage the energy of his frenetic wolf.
Mateo snorted. Maybe that was the problem. They’d been cooped up in this house for three days.
“You should get out and run,” Mateo said and took another bite of pancake, reflecting on how much worse it tasted than Cat’s porridge. The thought disturbed him greatly because Maria was one of the best cooks in the world.
He glanced over at the older woman. She was the only one of her generation without a wolf and so had never married and spent her life caretaking the pack. He tried to get her to do many other things with her life and had gifted her an apartment in the building he owned for the pack, but she claimed that he was taking away her purpose.
When Romeo’s daughter didn’t shift and her mother skedaddled while shouting about false advertising, Maria had found renewed purpose. It doubled when Romeo’s second partner skedaddled before their new son even had a chance to shift.
Gianna was now seven years old and ran straight for Mateo.
“No, don’t!” Romeo said from the door.
The younger man shook his head at his daughter as she clambered onto Mateo’s lap and stole a bite of pancake off his fork.
Romeo had always been wary of the alpha wolf, and Mateo didn’t really know why, but he tried to be respectful of his brother’s desire to shield his daughter.
“G, what did I tell you about accosting strange wolves?” Romeo said hopelessly.
“That’s a rule for you, not a rule for you and me,” Gianna declared happily as her maple sticky fingers ruined his shirt.
Maria shook her head as she helped the one-year-old onto his booster seat. He still hadn’t shifted. It was early; there was still time. Mateo knew of one wolf who hadn’t shifted until three. But Tony was just a roly-poly, cheerful baby with no hint of predator in him at all. He didn’t like to play hunting games, watch scary movies, or eat meat.
Romeo had done his duty twice and failed twice; thus, he had also been banished to the wilds for fresh air therapy. He’d also committed the unforgivable sin of raising his own children. Normally, when kids didn’t shift, they were shuffled off to elderly relatives and barely spoken about, but Romeo would never countenance it.
Nicolo rolled up a pancake and ate it in one bite. “Have we had sufficient altitude sickness to transform our balls into baby-making machines?”
Romeo flinched. “Must you?”
“I like balls,” Gianna said and scrambled off Mateo’s lap, endangering his balls.
Romeo stared at Nico. “What did I just say?”
“Sorry,” the bigger shifter said, looking deceptively meek as he put the rest of his pancake in his mouth.
“I don’t think that’s the cure she was thinking of,” Mateo said carefully and looked down at the maple handprints on his shirt.
He was about to declare the entire project null and void, but the words would not come.
He hadn’t even gotten to say goodbye to Cat. He’d kissed her in the snow, then got the four kids loaded up in the helicopter and directed out of there. He’d tried to go back to her, but the police detained him to ask what the hell happened.
He ended up borrowing their radio to call for a different helicopter to take him home, and now he was here in this gigantic four-story house with thirty rooms meant for an entire pack of werewolves. Every wall had a nature picture on it.Everything was green and leather and wood, and he felt like he’d fallen back a century in time. There was a dozen more wolves in Colorado with him. They’d filled the plane, but they ate in shifts per Maria’s iron schedule so everyone would have hot pancakes.
This was not his house. This was not his life. He should return to his life and take his family with him, but the words would not come.
“I have to work.”
