Cuffed By the Wolf

Chapter 1

Chapter One

SASHA WALKER

Ican’t believe this is my life right now.

How could this happen to me? Hands gripping the leather-wrapped steering wheel, I speed down the highway from Charleston, South Carolina, toward a small town called Lupton, Georgia.

I love small towns. I can’t even enjoy the pretty summer window displays because my life has imploded in my face.

I pull into the gravel parking lot behind the row of shops.

“You need answers, Sasha,” I say aloud as I kill the engine.

My mind replays what has gone wrong in my life. I slam my fist against the steering wheel several times while cursing obscenities. Onlookers walking over to the pop-up shop a few feet away whisper to each other while gawking my way.

The heat in Lupton, Georgia hits differently than Charleston heat. Charleston heat wraps around you like you’re sitting in a sauna with a bit of a warm breeze. Lupton heat feels like you’re sitting in a sauna wearing a wool sweater with a light warm breeze.

It’s been four minutes. Time to get out and get answers.

Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. That’s the number burned into my brain, has been for three weeks now — the wire transfer that traces back here, to this exact zip code, tangled up somewhere in the mess of shell companies and dead-end LLCs that used to be my clean, careful career.

Somewhere in this town is the person who knows what happened to the Delacroix that vanished off my gallery wall.

Somewhere in this town is the reason my phone stopped ringing.

My repeat customer trusted me to sell the painting that has been in her family for years to the right client.

I exit the car, and the sun beats down on my back. A handheld misting fan would come in handy right now.

The antique shop has a hand-lettered sign — Della’s Antiques & Oddities — and a bell over the door that jingles like it’s tired of doing its job.

A man and a woman are standing near a glass case of antique jewelry when I walk in, and they both turn to look at me the way those in small towns look at anyone whose car doesn’t have local plates.

“Help you find something?” the older man says. He doesn’t move.

“I’m trying to track down a wire transfer that went through here a few weeks back. Whitfield Holdings.” I keep my voice level, the same voice I used for donor calls before donors stopped taking my calls. “Does that name mean anything to either of you?”

The younger woman — wearing a colorful flannel despite the heat. Did she tie-dye the flannel?

Focus, Sasha.

She shoves her hands into her jean shorts pockets. Two mousy brown French braids hang down from the weathered blue baseball cap she’s wearing. Her gray eyes move over me unhurriedly.

The man huffs out a laugh. “Lady, this is Lupton. We got a hardware store and two churches. Ain’t nobody around here doing holdings.”

“I have documentation.”

“Documentation,” he says the word like it’s an accusation. “You’re not from around here.”

“Charleston,” I say, and I regret it before it’s even fully out of my mouth, because his whole face shifts.

“Charleston.” He repeats it back at me slow, like I’ve just confessed to something. “That where they teach you to walk into a man’s shop and call him a criminal?”

“I didn’t call anyone a criminal. I asked a question.”

“Sounded like an accusation to me.” The young woman drifts closer now. “We don’t need Charleston money coming down here treating us like thieves ‘cause you lost track of your own business.”

“I didn’t lose anything.” Three weeks of saying that exact sentence to people who’ve already decided I have. “A painting was stolen from my gallery. The money trail leads here. I’d like to know why, and if either of you actually knows something instead of just being offended on principle— “

“Careful,” the woman says, and steps in close enough that I can smell the beer on her from lunch. “Coming in here calling us thieves— “

“I called you nothing— “

She stretches her hand out like she’s going to push my shoulder. I twist away on instinct, hard, and her hand catches on the leather strap instead, and then it isn’t a conversation anymore. It’s a shoving match next to a display case of antique jewelry.

“You don’t put your hands on me,” I spit.

“How dare you do that fancy move grabbing my hand with your purse strap,” the woman accuses, getting in my face.

“Oh please. You were going to put your hands on me.” I shove her backwards, and the lamp on the counter is knocked sideways, rocking on its base.

The older man gets involved, taking up for his little girlfriend. His fingers close too tight around my wrist as I wrench free of it.

“Get your hands off me,” I shout.

The bell over the door jingles again. This time it doesn’t sound tired at all.

“That’s enough.”

The voice doesn’t shout. It doesn’t need to. Every single person in that shop goes still like someone’s flipped a switch, and I turn to find a man filling the entire doorway. He’s tall and clearly all muscle.

Sheriff. I’d have known it without the badge glinting on his chest. It’s in the way he stands — feet planted, shoulders set, a stillness that isn’t calm so much as contained, like something bigger than the room is holding itself back on purpose.

He’s enormous. Maybe about six-five. I can feel the pull of him before I understand why — the low, steady hum under my skin that I’ve felt maybe twice in my life and never once around a total stranger.

His uniform sleeves are rolled to his elbows, and I catch the ink snaking up his forearms before it disappears under the fabric. Dark brown hair, a little too long for regulation. A jaw that looks permanently set to no.

Green eyes that sweep the room once, land on each of us in turn, and settle on me half a second longer than they do on anyone else.

I file that fact away under deeply unhelpful and do my best to ignore it.

“Everett had her by the wrist,” the woman says fast, which is technically true and an outstanding attempt to redirect blame that I resent on principle.

“I didn’t have anyone by anything,” Everett snaps. “She grabbed for the register.”

“I did not grab for the register, I was trying to get away from him— “

“She’s a thief, Sheriff. Came in here asking about wire transfers like we’re running some kind of operation— “

“Everybody stop talking.”

He hasn’t raised his voice once, and somehow that lands harder than shouting would have. His eyes find mine again, direct this time, and something flickers there — surprise, maybe, or something he decides on the spot not to examine — before it smooths back into flat, professional appraisal.

“You. Name.”

“Sasha Walker.”

“Ms. Walker.” He says it like a verdict already reached. “You want to tell me what happened, or should I just arrest the room and let the paperwork sort it out?”

“I’d love to tell you what happened. You’ve clearly already decided, though.”

Something close to amusement crosses his face and disappears before I can be sure I saw it. “Try me anyway.”

I don’t get the chance. Everett’s talking over me, the woman is talking over Everett, and the sheriff closes his eyes for exactly one second like he’s asking the goddess who watches over small Georgia towns for patience he already knows he isn’t getting.

Then he just starts making decisions, unhurried, unstoppable.

He removes the cuffs from his belt like this is less an arrest and more routine housekeeping.

“Hands where I can see them. All three of you.” He’s already moving toward me, and I catch it then — underneath the shop’s must and old varnish, something warmer. Toasted sugar. Dark chocolate, rich and a little sharp, like it’s daring me to want more of it.

“Everett, you’re coming in for assault. Breann, same, plus a general nuisance to my afternoon. Ms. Walker— “

“I didn’t do anything— “

“You’re coming in for questioning, and because you’re standing in the middle of a fight, I now have to file three separate reports about.” He turns me, gentler than I expect, and the cuffs click shut around my wrists. “Accommodations are lovely this time of year. You’ll see.”

“I hate this town already,” I mutter, loud enough that I know he hears it.

He reads me my Miranda rights as his hand closes around the strap of my bag to keep it from swinging as he walks me out, and my stomach drops — the pill case.

It rattles once against the buckle before I manage to knock the flap shut with my elbow.

Omegas aren’t supposed to hide. We’re supposed to be found, matched, claimed — not standing in a stranger’s parking lot praying a small-town alpha sheriff doesn’t catch the one thing about me I’ve spent two years making sure no one can smell.

If he clocks it, I don’t know what that costs me in a town this size.

I don’t know if there’s a law against it here, or just a look people give you once they know.

If he notices. He doesn’t say so. But something in his jaw eases, just slightly, like whatever he’s holding back amuses him more than he’d like to admit.

“We’ll see about that,” he says, and steers me out into the Lupton sun, one hand steady at my elbow, close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him even through my sleeve.

Two sheriff's Broncos pull up. The townspeople stop, stare, and point.

“All this police presence for little old me?” I ask with my Charleston twang, peering up at him.

He chuckles. And addresses the officers exiting their vehicles.

“Tyson, Blake — bring Everett and Breann down to the station.”

“Yes, Sheriff,” they each reply before entering the front door of the antique shop.

The sheriff opens the rear passenger door and places me inside.

“This must be the most excitement your town has seen in some time, huh?” I pause, and my eyes move to his badge. “Sheriff Drake.”

He doesn’t crack a smile as he closes the door and rounds the back of the vehicle. “Nothing to see here. Go on about your day,” he tells the townspeople with a Georgia southern drawl.

The heat sits on my back like a lump of burning coal. I feel the sweat dripping down my spine.

Must he carry on a conversation with the locals.

“Mr. Officer, it’s hot in here.” I didn’t mean for that to come out like a mash-up of Lil Wayne’s “Mrs. Officer” and Nelly’s “Hot in Herre.”

He entertains an older woman now. Maybe if I’m quiet, he’ll get inside the SUV.

Two more adoring fans approach and chat with him. It feels like a theme here. Is he single? Is that why they are all so smitten with him?

I just want out of this tiny little town.

Finally, the driver's side door opens and he climbs inside. He slips mirrored aviators over his eyes, meets my gaze in the rearview mirror, and turns over the engine. “Nice and comfortable back there?”

“Peachy.” My smile disappears. “I’d feel better on a beach wearing a two-piece bikini enjoying the ocean.”

He arches a brow, then finally turns on the cool air.

Sheriff Drake pulls out of the parking space and drives down the road.

“You know that’s no way to treat an innocent person. Making me sweat back here.”

“I don’t know if you’re innocent yet. How about you zip it. We’ll talk down at the station.”

He turns on the radio and ignores me.

“Aren’t you supposed to listen for dispatch?” I ask.

“You’ve already ruined my afternoon. I’ve told you to be quiet.”

“Just let me go,” I whine.

He smirks. “I think I’ll save questioning for tomorrow morning.”

My brow raises and a bead of sweat drips into my eye. I know I look crazy now. One eye closed. “You can’t do that.”

“I’m the sheriff. I can do what I want.”

I already know this is going to be a very long night.