4
When Lydia Vasquez had asked him if he could stick around town for a while, Case’s heart had done a little flip inside his chest.
She was gorgeous, with a warmth and magnetism and presence that had effortlessly drawn his attention the instant he’d seen her. He had held off on any flirtation because it’d seemed like she was having a bad time, but he would have felt a pang at seeing her walk away and out of his life for good. But she wanted to see him again? That was incredible. She thought he could help her with something? He was happy to try.
Admittedly, he hadn’t guessed that help would involve him paying a visit to her attorney, but hey, that was on him for not having enough imagination.
Case lived an unusual life, but this was odd even for him. For right now, though, he was willing to roll with all the strangeness, and it wasn’t even because of the way little dark wisps of hair escaped Lydia’s tight braid and curled around the nape of her neck. That was probably part of it, but it wasn’t all of it.
She was in trouble. At first, back at the roadhouse, all he’d noticed was how her breathing had turned choppy and short, but then he’d seen how her eyes were white-walled with panic. There had been real fear there. While getting outside had helped her clear her head, it hadn’t made the fear go away completely. She was just so strong that she could keep a handle on it the second she got even the tiniest bit of help.
Something was up, and he didn’t want to leave her in the lurch. He didn’t know what was going on, but he was willing to put up with more weirdness than this to find out.
So here he was. If Lydia thought the best way forward was for him to talk to her lawyer, then he’d talk to her lawyer.
Turner, Lowe, and Associates had an elegant brick-and-stone building all to itself. Case had expected it to be one high-rise office building among many—this wasn’t the big city, but even plenty of mid-sized towns could scrape together a couple of steel-and-glass behemoths—but, oddly enough, it was instead placed on the outskirts of town. It wasn’t surrounded by the hustle and bustle of business but the gentle swishing of wind in leaves, since it backed up onto a pretty little patch of woodland.
Case liked it, but it was strange. Every choice made here seemed both perfectly right and a tiny bit askew.
Fits in with the rest of this week, then.
For one thing, there was the embossed brass plaque outside that read FOR ALL YOUR EVER-SHIFTING LEGAL NEEDS. It didn’t sound quite like any law firm slogan he’d ever heard before, and the plaque made it seem so ... serious.
And while Case had seen plenty of buildings with stern stone lions guarding the door, this was the first one he’d visited that had a mismatched set of stone animals, with a griffin on one side and a dragon on the other. Case considered them, decided he liked them too, and gave each stone head a pat before he headed inside.
The reception desk and its routine were more standard—at least up until the cheerful receptionist who checked him in issued him a blue sticker and told him to put it on his jacket lapel.
“What’s it for?” he said, planting it where she’d told him to.
“It’s a color-coding system we use to mark what kind of client you are.”
Like the defendant in a criminal trial vs. one plaintiff among many in a class-action suit vs. whatever the hell he was here for, Case decided. He guessed it sort of made sense, but he didn’t see why it was all that necessary. Lydia’s lawyer—some guy named Declan Harris—already knew what he was doing here, and the people Case might happen to pass in the hall wouldn’t care, would they?
He didn’t have much time to think about it, because Declan came out right away to show Case back into his office.
Declan looked unaccountably nervous for a guy on his own home turf. Maybe the blue sticker marked Case as trouble? But he couldn’t see why it would.
Case was getting more curious by the second, so once they got settled in, he turned down Declan’s offer of coffee or water and asked if they could get straight into it.
Declan got a pained look on his face, but he nodded. He had the awkward, fumbling vibe of a last-minute substitute teacher in a sex ed class.
“First—did Lydia mention this?—I need you to sign an NDA.”
That was also weird, but it was at least something Case had done before. If you worked enough construction jobs, sooner or later you came across a couple building a sex dungeon who understandably wanted to make sure you’d mind your own business about it. That was the one job people liked getting an out-of-towner for.
Case took the time to read the agreement over, although he was probably guilty of skimming a little bit because the need to know what the hell was going on was really getting to him by now. Most of it was standard boilerplate confidentiality agreement, anyway. Whether he proceeded in any kind of contractual relationship with Turner Lowe or its client, Lydia Vasquez, he was not to reveal anything he learned from this, either publicly or privately, unless it fell into the falling exempt categories ... and so on and so on.
What’s going on in your life, Lydia? Case thought as he signed on the dotted line. Who’s bothering you?
Somehow, being this close to finding out made him want to know more than ever.
“Thank you,” Declan said, retrieving the NDA from him. “I appreciate your discretion. And, of course, your willingness to jump through all these hoops with very little to go on.”
“Hopefully I’ll have more to go on now,” Case said pointedly.
“You will.”
Case waited.
Declan said, “How do you feel about werewolves?”
Case waited some more, because Declan’s question had made so little sense that at first he almost thought he’d imagined it.
It took a moment for him to accept that no, he really hadn’t. Even then, he didn’t remotely know what to make of it, but he tried to answer honestly. Maybe it was some kind of bizarre psychological test.
“I always liked them better than vampires. It’s one of those this-or-that questions people ask sometimes, you know, like ‘The Beatles or The Rolling Stones’ or ‘cake or pie.’ I always went with werewolves.”
“On a scale of one to ten—one being rejecting the possibility completely and ten being completely fine with it—how comfortable would you be with becoming a werewolf?”
“Um,” Case said. “Seven, maybe? Declan, whatever this is, I don’t get it.”
Declan sighed. “No, of course you don’t. I’m doing this all wrong. Actually, I think I won’t do it at all. I had you sign the NDA—that’s the important thing.” Before Case could ask him what he meant by that, Declan picked up his office phone and dialed out. “Lydia? Could you come over and tell Mr. Jackson exactly what’s going on? –Yes, he signed it. –Well, I haven’t done it before. It almost never comes up! Fine. Thank you.”
He hung up and turned back to Case.
“She’ll be here in a few minutes, and she can explain everything.”
The relief in his voice was unmistakable.
“Okay,” Case said, “but please tell me you know that this all seems really weird.”
“Oh, I know,” Declan assured him. “That’s why it’s so frustrating. I’m not used to sounding weird. I’m not used to dealing with—” He waved his hand. “Blue sticker clients. But if it helps, I think I can find a ... less bizarre way of phrasing things that will sate your curiosity a little bit before my client arrives.”
It wasn’t much, but he’d take it. “Shoot.”
“My client—Lydia, I should say, since you obviously know her—needs some assistance in a high-stakes situation. Think of it as a kind of local election, where everyone’s quality of life is on the line and the consequences of her opponent winning could be disastrous.”
Okay, Case could understand the gist of that. It resonated with him, too, especially after his run-in with Guthrie. But it was impossible to miss that “think of it as an election” meant that it wasn’t an election.
What were they really talking about here? Why did it have to be such a big secret? He had a hard time believing that the woman he’d met last night was mixed up in anything shady. Even though Lydia had been tense and worried, she’d still gotten genuinely outraged at him getting thrown in jail and a dog almost getting kicked by some drunken asshole. She had a good heart.
That gelled with what Declan had told him, too. Lydia wanted to protect her community. It made sense. But from what ?
Case reminded himself that Lydia was on her way. She’d explain what was going on.
To his surprise, Declan was studying him.
“The fact is, Lydia believes—and I think I agree with her—that you might be uniquely qualified to help her when no one else can.”
Case had to laugh at that. “That’s really flattering, but I’m pretty sure I’m not uniquely qualified to help anyone with anything.”
“That’s a bit too self-deprecating, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t mean it like that. I have some good skill sets, and I’ve worked hard to hone them. I’m just saying they’re not unique. It’s not like I can cure cancer or singlehandedly build a space station.”
“Well, Lydia and I have gone through a fairly exhaustive list of potential candidates for this particular, ah, role , and you’re one of the few names we have left. And you’re the only one she should trust with this level of responsibility, frankly. The others might help her win, but they would wreak their own kind of havoc.”
Interesting. Well, if the job was legitimate, there was no reason he shouldn’t take it. He wasn’t on his own way to anywhere in particular, and all he was doing was working on his next novel. It was going slowly enough that a distraction was just what he needed. His life was pretty much commitment-free, so he wouldn’t be letting anyone down if he made a sudden detour into ... whatever the hell this was.
Most people’s lives couldn’t be interrupted that way. Was that why he was a good fit for the job?
Like building a sex room , he thought wryly. Every now and then, who I am comes in handy to someone else. They just need me to help and move on.
He didn’t know why that idea left him feeling hollow.
*
Lydia hated how her palms kept sweating.
She hadn’t even been this nervous when she’d faced down Reeve out in the woods. Her pulse had been hammering away during that little showdown, but at least she hadn’t felt like someone was playing her nerves like a fiddle.
Her grandmother hadn’t exactly been a calming, reassuring presence this morning, either.
“ That’s what you’re wearing to go meet the man you’re going to marry?”
It was true that Lydia hadn’t glammed herself up for the occasion. She wasn’t de -glammed—she was neat, freshly showered, and in clean clothes—but she was in jeans, old boots, and a flannel shirt worn loose over a faded Henley. In a small mountain town, this basically qualified as a uniform. It was certainly what she wore most of the time.
“He’s already seen me. And I don’t want to mislead him.”
Ruth had tsked at her. “Our pack’s future’s at stake. At least put on some makeup.”
“I’m wearing makeup!”
“Put on a little more, then.”
Lydia had balked at that, but now, seconds away from proposing to the man who could make or break Mountainview’s whole way of life, she wondered if she should have listened.
No, she told herself as firmly as she could. You’re not trying to trick him into thinking you’re prettier than you are. You’re being honest about what you need and honest about what you have to offer. I’ll do a lot for my pack, but I won’t trick a good guy into making a bargain he’s going to regret.
She rubbed her hands against her jeans one more time, making sure no trace of her nervous sweat remained, and then she opened the door to Declan’s office.
The first thing she felt when she saw Case Jackson was a very shallow sense of relief, plain and simple.
He was as ridiculously good-looking in broad daylight as he had been at night. Sex wasn’t anywhere near being her top priority right now, but it was good to know that if Case somehow agreed to her wild idea to save Mountainview, their probably-brief married life would have at least one thing going for it. Or it would if he felt the same way, at least.
“Hi.” She held out her hand. “Good to see you again.”
Handshakes sometimes made Lydia feel like she was at a job interview, but Case’s didn’t. His was firm but friendly.
His hands were well-callused, she noted distantly. Despite Lydia telling him it wasn’t necessary, Declan had run an informal, rapid-fire background check on Case early this morning, and he’d said Case did a lot of work with his hands. Obviously that was true. It was a good sign. He was a guy who knew how to do things.
She took the other chair in front of Declan’s desk. Time to drop some bombshells. Luckily, Case didn’t seem like the kind of person who would run away screaming.
“There are people in the world who can turn into animals.” She was surprised by how easily the words flowed, even though she’d never had to say them before. A lifetime’s worth of secrecy around humans should have left her tongue-tied, but talking to him felt natural. “They’re called shifters. Actually, I’m one of them, so we’re called shifters.”
Case didn’t look like he was processing any of this.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Declan said, inching out the door with a preemptive wince on his face. Clearly he felt all the awkwardness she didn’t.
With him gone, the energy in the office changed. It felt more intimate, less official. Was that a good thing or a bad thing?
If all this went well, she would sink her teeth into Case. She’d go to bed with him. They would fight side by side, protecting their pack, and shed their blood together.
So ... intimate was probably good. And it felt good. It felt right .
She said, “I’m not surprised he’s not used to this conversation either. The firm usually only handles shifter business, and we don’t have to tell each other what we are.”
There was a sudden spark in Case’s eyes as he put something together.
“‘For all your ever-shifting legal needs,’” he murmured.
Oh, right, that was Turner Lowe’s motto! The law firm had been part of Lydia’s world for so long that she’d forgotten that it had a way of signaling to shifters that it was offering what they needed.
“Right. The motto’s their way of letting people like me know that they know.”
“Like a secret handshake.”
Lydia nodded. “Although when we meet up in person, we don’t need one of those, thankfully. We can sense when someone’s a shifter and when they’re not. So I know you’re human.”
“And you’re ... not.”
He didn’t say it with any revulsion, and Lydia didn’t even think she sensed any amused disbelief. If anything, he said it delicately , like he was worried it might offend her. He probably didn’t believe her all the way yet, considering how wild all this had to sound to a human, but he was obviously holding back any outright skepticism.
She trusted him enough to tell him the truth without stammering, and he apparently trusted her enough to listen without rolling his eyes or assuming this was some kind of joke. That felt like another good sign.
If she got to her proposal and he said no, Lydia didn’t know what she would do. This had gone beyond wanting to avoid mating with some Reeve knockoff. Now she wanted Case specifically —Case, with his easygoing curiosity and ability to reserve judgment, with his good handshake and sexy crow’s feet and warm gaze.
“No, I’m not,” Lydia agreed. “I’m a werewolf.”
She couldn’t think of any better way to prove it than to show him. Luckily, Declan’s office didn’t have a glass door, so there was no chance any more blue-sticker clients—ones who didn’t know about the existence of shifters—might wander by.
“Can I show you?”
Case’s eyes went wide, but he nodded immediately. “That would be great, yeah.”
She stood up and let herself flow into her other body.
She’d wondered last night if self-consciousness would trip her up on this. Maybe it would have, if she’d been with someone else, but Case had put her completely at ease. If he could face this down without flinching, so could she.
Soon she was standing there on all fours, looking up at Case. Through her color-blind wolf’s eyes, he was mostly shades of yellow and gray, but he still looked familiar.
And, she discovered with a twinge of embarrassment, she liked his scent. Really liked it.
She couldn’t lie and say that even as a human, she hadn’t noticed that he smelled nice. But that had mostly been about the cedar-and-salt scent of his aftershave. That was what her human nose could easily pick up on.
Her wolf nose caught everything, and it was pleased to inform her that even if it ignored the artificial scents Case had added to his body, he smelled pretty damn good. Better than good, actually. Sublime.
Clean masculine musk and wide open spaces. Wind and trees and sun-warmed grass.
Now that she knew that scent was there, she would be looking for it even when she was human again. And if she tucked her nose against his neck and breathed in against his skin, she would probably find it.
The thought almost made her shiver.
“Wow,” Case said. “That’s—that’s not a special effect. You are definitely a werewolf.”
Lydia gave a tiny yip of agreement, and Case laughed.
She shifted back, and somehow that look of stunned wonder on his face didn’t go away. It only changed key.
“Okay,” Case said, nodding a couple times. “You’re a werewolf. And you have a problem.”
“I do.”
She told him about her pack and about Reeve. The words came out slowly and haltingly at first, especially when she got to her run-in with Reeve in the woods, where he’d propositioned her and accidentally given her this whole idea.
When she talked about Reeve coming on to her, something flashed behind Case’s eyes, and the deep, luminous gray-green suddenly looked like hammered steel. Lydia’s breath caught in her throat.
“He didn’t do anything,” she said quickly, to avoid giving the wrong impression. “He—he just wanted to make me feel vulnerable. I don’t even know if he would have mated with me even if I had said yes. He might have just laughed at me.”
Case’s jaw had tightened up, but he forced it to unstick for his next question. “When you say ‘mated’ ...?”
That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it? Lydia had rehearsed an explanation for this, but now that she was face-to-face with him, all her prepared speeches seemed to fly right out of her head. Now it felt like she had to choose every word all over again, like she was putting magnetic poetry together.
“It’s like marriage. Nowadays, it is marriage, unless you’re part of some back-to-nature pack that doesn’t believe in paperwork at all. But between two wolves, it’s also about being part of the same pack. There’s a bond between you and your mate, like there is between you and your pack. It’s like your souls are tied together.”
“And you don’t want your soul tied to Reeve’s, obviously.”
Lydia’s laugh sounded brittle even to her. “I want my soul as far away from his as possible.”
“I’m glad you’re not taking his offer,” Case said quietly. “What are you going to do? How can I help?”
He hadn’t realized what she was asking him. Of course he hadn’t. No one in their right mind would jump to this kind of conclusion.
“I can’t fight Reeve on my own. As soon as my grandmother dies, he’ll challenge me for control of the pack, and if things stay the way they are right now, he’ll win.” She’d already told him that much, so she could see that he was still waiting for more. She took a deep breath. “I need a co-alpha. If I had one, Reeve would have to defeat us both to take control of the pack. And the only co-alpha I can have is a mate.”
She saw the instant Case understood what they were talking about. He went very still.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
“And the only mate I can have, the only one who can stand as co-alpha,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady, “is another werewolf. So what I’m asking for is something you probably won’t want to give me, and I can’t blame you for that. But it’s the only thing I can think of that might save my pack. I’d need to bite you, turn you—and I don’t even know if that would work. And we’d need to get married. All so you could fight for the happiness of people you haven’t even met yet.”
Case wet his lips. “And—and if I did all that—”
He wasn’t already saying no? Did she actually have some reason to hope?
“—what would happen after the fight was over?”
Lydia had barely let herself think that far ahead. Everything hinged on the fight itself. What happened after that might as well be a hundred years from now.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Whatever you want, I guess. You could leave. It would be hard at first, because you’d have a bond with me and with the pack, but those bonds do break, with enough time and enough distance. You could go back to your life like nothing ever happened. Werewolves don’t change with the full moon. Most of the time, you could ignore everything about being a shifter. But your wolf would be happiest if you let it take a run in the woods sometimes. Just speaking from experience.”
“And you would ... be okay?”
She would be lonely. Without her grandmother, without Case, she would have responsibilities but no allies.
But that wasn’t important, and she couldn’t use it to manipulate him. Besides, it probably wasn’t what he meant anyway.
“We’ll be safe,” Lydia said. “Reeve is only allowed one challenge. When he doesn’t get what he wants, he’ll skulk away with his tail between his legs. He knows that if he doesn’t, I’ll have him brought up before the Overpack.”
Case frowned. “Overpack?”
Oh, right, that wouldn’t exactly be common parlance among humans, would it?
“The governing body for werewolves. Sort of like our Senate, police, and EPA all rolled into one. They handle everything from violations of wolf law to declaring what land belongs to what pack. Right now, Reeve is trouble, but he’s on the right side of the law. If he keeps harassing us after he’s lost a challenge, then the Overpack will shiftsilver him. –Sorry, you probably don’t know what that means either, right?”
“Not even a little.”
“Shiftsilver is a kind of metal. If it’s touching your skin, it stops you from shifting. If it’s implanted under your skin—” She had to suppress a shudder from talking about it. She knew that sometimes locking someone’s wolf away was the only option, but no shifter liked thinking about it. “If it’s under your skin, then the effects will last until it’s removed. It’s the closest thing we have to a prison sentence, only used for the worst crimes, and Reeve would hate it. Anyone would.”
She didn’t expect Case—or any human—to understand the severity of it, but against all odds, Case looked like he did. He nodded, but there was a shadow across his eyes. She liked that. He understood that sometimes you had to use hard methods, but he also understood how hard they were.
In Lydia’s experience, that was a rare combination.
I want him , she thought. Not because I need a co-alpha, and not because I like his looks. I want him.
“I’ve asked everyone I know who could possibly fit the bill,” Lydia said, digging her fingers into her thighs to try to hold herself still. “They all turned me down. They’re afraid of Reeve. And then I met you, and the first thing you did was try to help me. And you spent a night in jail because you wouldn’t let an innocent dog get hurt. You stand up to people. You stand up for people. So—I know it’s an impossible thing to ask of someone, especially someone I don’t know. But I’m asking. I have to.”
“I ....”
He was going to turn her down. She had to accept that.
No, you don’t . That cold whipcrack of a voice wasn’t her wolf, it was her grandmother. It was generations of alphas telling her not to let them down. Tell him what’s in it for him. Sell him on it.
How? She was already sure Case couldn’t be won over by money, and even if he could be, she didn’t have that much to offer. Pack clout wouldn’t mean much to a human, so she doubted he felt any particular allure to being an alpha.
What did Case want? He wanted to help, she knew that. He would probably agree if she emphasized the kind of men she would have to go to next, but she didn’t want to do that. It was awful and manipulative and she hated it. The mere idea of playing that card made her feel like she was covered in a thin layer of slime.
He was a good guy. He didn’t deserve to have his goodness used against him. He deserved an honest-to-God reason, some sign that this wouldn’t be a catastrophically terrible deal for him.
Her wolf stirred. It didn’t usually pay much attention to humans, but it had been eyeing Case with silent interest.
He wants to help you, but he doesn’t want to lose himself , it said.
He won’t!
It growled at her impatiently. So tell him that!
“It’s good,” Lydia blurted out. “Being a wolf. I know I’ve always been that way, so I don’t know the difference, but it’s good. When I’m in tune with it, I feel more myself. Your wolf, um, talks to you sometimes? It’s like what your own instincts would say to you, but it’s also sort of like having a pet.”
Hey! her wolf objected.
Sorry, but it is.
“And when I’m out in the woods, as long as I’m not running into Reeve—God, it’s the best I’ve ever felt in my life. I’m free, and there’s nothing between me and the world around me. It’s incredible. And—and you don’t have to stay with us if you don’t want to, like I said. You can live your life however you want to, and you’ll have a friendly wolf in your head and a cool new superpower. You look like someone who should be a werewolf, if you ask me. So that’s—that’s my pitch, I guess.”
You look like someone who should be a werewolf? she said to herself incredulously. What the hell is that supposed to mean?
He does, though , her wolf said, utterly unrepentant.
The silence lasted too long, and Lydia knew it was over. Maybe the only answer was to disband the Mountainview pack for good. Reeve couldn’t take it over if they were all scattered to the four winds. It would mean losing the only family she had left, but—
“Okay,” Case said.
Lydia couldn’t believe she’d heard him correctly. “What?”
His face was pale, but that was the only sign that he was making a decision that was going to change his whole life.
“I said okay. Let’s do it.”