Peeking out from behind the wood pile, he let out an amused puff of steam when he spied the battle that had broken out. Snowballs flew in every direction as children flung them with more enthusiasm than skill. The little ones in their coyote shapes sprinted back and forth, jumping high to nip at the balls as they flew above their heads. It was pure, blissful chaos.
Camille stood across the yard, a smug smile on her glossy lips and her gloved hands propped on her waist. Little Bea’s content face peeked out from her lapels, a perfect defense.
Dodging wasn’t an option. Neither was throwing a snowball. Even if she didn’t have Bea, he wouldn’t have done it.
There was only one choice.
Viktor charged into the fray with a howl. Snowballs pelted him from every angle as he became the main target of every child with a fistful of snow. He didn’t stop. Viktor sprinted toward his mate, heedless of the frigid water seeping into his clothes, and snagged her around the waist with a satisfied growl.
Camille and Bea’s laughter rang in his ears as he swept them both in a circle. “You’re in trouble now, sweetheart,” he warned, dropping his mate onto her fur-lined boots.
Cupping her flushed cheeks, he pressed a fierce kiss to her luscious mouth. Snowballs pelted his back, but he didn’t care. Nothing could tear his focus from his mate when she gave him a sharp nip.
Whispering into his lips, she asked, “Good start to our first Burden’s Moon?”
“Thebest,”he answered, stealing her beret and plopping it onto his own head. Pressing a kiss to the top of Bea’s hat, he added, “But maybe warn a man next time, huh? It’s just sporting.”
Camille gave him one of those razor-sharp smiles he loved so much. “Don’t count on it, alpha.”
Shaking off the snow covering his back so it hit Camille, who shied away from the spray with a squawk, he thought again,I’m one lucky bastard.
Wolves in the Woods
Wolves got a bad rap.It was true, but it was also earned.
Juniper could admit that among shifters, they were usually the loudest, most boisterous, and leaned perhaps a little too close to arrogant. They also tended to run in large groups, which only made all those traits harder to ignore.
But for every less than stellar trait, she firmly believed that wolves embodied the very best of their kind.
Wolf packs rarely dissolved into bloodshed when alphas changed or circumstances necessitated that they split into new groups. They had some of the lowest rates of violence of any shifter type. They raised strong, honorable pups who knew how to laugh and how to protect.
And during the holidays, they knew how to throw a party.
Juniper tossed back her silver snout and let loose a jubilant howl as she raced her cousins through the trees of their territory. Sea cliffs lined one side of the forest and mountains the other. Beyond the cliffs lay the sparkly and deadly Bay, with its crown jewels of the Golden Gate Bridge and San Francisco beyond it.
Her pack owned most of Marin, which had been left wild and beautiful. Salt flats sprawled undisturbed, and the redwoods grew to enormous sizes from a lush carpet of ferns and nativeshrubbery. Only a small town and a scattering of cabins called the non-pack land home. The rest was theirs — and they loved every inch of it.
Juniper had grown up in the woods. She’d been a wild naked pup once, left to her own devices in the dense forest. She’d captured red salamanders in her tiny hands and sipped from free-flowing creeks before running home for dinner on four legs or two.
It was a perfect sort of life. Even as she grew and things became more complicated, as they tend to do with the onset of puberty, it’d never been a life she took for granted.
It was a special thing to be a wolf. And it was a perfect thing to be a wolf who was loved.
The soft fur of her cousins’ pelts brushed up against her own as they dodged around tree trunks and nipped at each others’ heels. They were a pack of several dozen now, four generations strong, and they danced together in the green undergrowth.
Patches of moonlight filtered in through the thick canopy, and every once in a while she’d break through near the edge of the cliffs to get a lungful of salty air. There was such wild joy in the annual run, in knowing nearly all her loved ones were experiencing the same moment with her.
Her parents were somewhere up ahead, no doubt nipping and yipping at one another flirtatiously like they were still caught in the mating fever, and even her grandparents joined in, though they stayed closer to the back. Nearly all her cousins had turned out, and only the youngest, sick, or otherwise unable to attend stayed back.
On the longest night of the year, they ran as one in the moonlight. Toward what, she couldn’t say. The end wasn’t the point.
It was the delight of togetherness on a night that otherwise might’ve been the loneliest. That was the destination, the goal, and the privilege.
Alashiya and Taevas Give Gifts
His queen had beenin the kitchen all day, and that meant his Wing had been, too.
Taevas leaned against the door jamb to observe the scene. The kitchen in the guest accessible area of the roost was massive, as it was built to accommodate a fleet of cooks in the event of parties or other large gatherings. It still somehow managed to look crammed to the rafters with dragons hovering around his Chosen.
