Going Deeper (Wolf Appeal #3)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Holding her breath, Cindy eased open the oven door and peeked inside. Then let the door drop with a thud when she saw what was waiting for her. It was her second attempt at making the apple bread recipe, and the second failure.

Grabbing the potholders that matched her pretty lemon-printed apron, she pulled the loaf pan out of the oven and set it on the counter. The “loaf” looked like an incredibly soggy pile of brown…well, it looked highly unappetizing.

Ah well, it was time to declare the recipe a failure.

The question was, should she inform the company that had sent it to her—asking her to feature it on her blog—that she wasn’t going to be able to accommodate them, or post the recipe, showing pictures of the failed results, asking her readers to do their own tests and report back with outcome? Decisions, decisions.

She was glad she’d tried the recipe now, in her familiar oven. If it had failed in her new oven, once she moved, she’d have wondered if the appliance was to blame.

Grabbing her camera, she took several shots of the mess, just in case.

She wasn’t against posting failures, sometimes they were appreciated by her readers, but she preferred to be able to end the post with success, or be able to identify what she thought was wrong with the recipe.

Well, she’d give it some thought, but had the pictures recorded if she needed them.

Leaving the pan to cool before she attempted cleaning it out, she hung up her apron and went to her office.

While the kitchen looked spotless and beautiful, in her ever-so-humble opinion, the office looked like a disaster, with moving boxes piled high and her desk empty of everything except the computer and printer.

The bookshelves were all packed up, and she’d decided to work on the linen closet next.

She put the camera on the empty bookshelf and grabbed the tape gun and large marker.

When the phone in her pocket rang with her mother’s ringtone, she tried not to grimace. And failed. She plucked her earbuds out of her pocket and plugged them in before pressing the button to accept the call. No way was this going to be a short conversation.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Cynthia, how come I had to hear from your aunt Laura that you’ve rented your house out?”

“I told you I decided to rent it out instead of selling it.”

“Yes, but not that you’d found someone.”

“It’s a nice house in a good location, especially for another pack member. I told you I didn’t think it would take long to find someone.”

Her mother ignored that reminder. “I’m still not convinced this is a good idea.”

“Flying to see you in Texas won’t be much different if I’m coming from Arizona than when I come from St. Louis.”

“I know, it’s not that. But what can Myra be thinking, leaving her pack? They love her, and I thought she loved being alpha of St. Louis. An alpha can’t just up and leave her pack on a whim, it’s not natural.”

“If her mate had been anyone else, certainly another alpha, one of them would have had to leave their pack, and you wouldn’t have thought anything of it.”

“I don’t think I trust this Adam character,” Dana said, switching tacks.

Cindy bit her tongue, figuratively, and counted to five. “You haven’t even met him.”

“It’s not right that he’s been in hiding all these years. What does he have to hide? A strong alpha, a good one, should have been part of a pack.”

“Mom. You know he was turned against his will. Why would he then jump right into pack life with a bunch of werewolves, after being viciously attacked by them?”

“That rogue pack was not normal and you know it.” The indignation in her mother’s voice was clear and had Cindy rolling her eyes as she taped the bottom of a box closed and flipped it over. She took it to the linen closet and studied the contents.

“I do know it. It was crazy and I still can’t believe it happened, but it did. But he had no way of knowing that, so why would you be surprised that he stayed away from anything werewolf until he found out otherwise?”

“If he’s smart, it shouldn’t have taken him so long.”

Cindy sighed. “Mom, when you heard that Zach out in Mountain View had found his mate the same way, finding Hillary, who’d been avoiding wolves since she was attacked by those same crazy people, you didn’t mistrust her. You were sympathetic and worried about her.”

“It’s not the same.”

“Why? I think you’re being sexist.”

Her mother sputtered, but Cindy thought she was on to something.

“You hold Adam to a different standard than you did Hillary. If Myra hadn’t decided to leave St. Louis, Adam would be coming here to be my alpha anyway.

So what’s the difference if I choose to go to Arizona, and they are too, and so they’re my alphas there instead of here?

” She was genuinely confused about her mother’s problem.

Dana sighed. “It’s time you came back home to Texas. There’s no reason to move to another state again.”

“Ah.” She put the box down and flopped onto the couch. That was so not happening. Ever. And she was shocked her mother wanted it to happen.

“It’s embarrassing that you make like our pack’s not good enough for you.”

Cindy tried, in vain, to formulate a response to that ridiculous statement, but her mother forged on.

“You know that Brenda wouldn’t be a problem if you came back home, right? Whatever issues you girls had in the past, I’m sure you could—”

“Mom,” Cindy interrupted. “It’s not about Brenda. I like the idea of helping to build a new pack from scratch. I don’t know that I’ll ever go back to Texas.”

When she’d moved eighteen years ago, it hadn’t been because of her old boss, Brenda, though she supposed her mom would see it that way.

Her first job out of college hadn’t gone well, mostly because she’d lost respect for her boss, who happened to be the fourth in her pack’s hierarchy.

The respect issue had been about Brenda’s business decisions, but she couldn’t deny that it carried over into her respect of the woman as a pack leader.

The hierarchy was the pack leadership, with the pack alpha at the top—two, if they were mated—and then the first, second, third and fourth, down from there.

The ranking was based purely on power, with each wolf or mated pair taking different responsibilities in the running of the pack.

If Cindy had chosen to stay, it would have been a bit of effort to not let that lack of respect show amongst the pack, but she could have done it.

“Really, I didn’t leave because of Brenda. I told you, once I started looking for another job, I realized that the whole country was available to me, and I liked the idea of trying out somewhere new.” She had, in fact, told her parents that several times.

“You didn’t even keep the job in St. Louis for very long before quitting,” Dana said, as if that meant the choice to move there had been a mistake.

“No, because the blog took off in a way I never could have foreseen. It gave me an interesting challenge for a long time, but now it runs so smoothly, I think changing things up again will be good for me. Call it my midlife crises if you want.”

“Cynthia, you’re only forty-one.”

“The perfect age to try something new. It’s not like there’s a risk to it, Mom. My job is very stable and successful and I can do it from anywhere in the country. Heck, I could go to Europe if I wanted to.”

“You need to stop gallivanting around and find your mate.”

Cindy sighed, but not audibly. How in the world her mother could sound insulted over this conversation was beyond Cindy. And wasn’t gallivanting around going to make her more likely to find her mate than staying home, where she already knew her mate wasn’t?

Having no idea how to respond, she just waited.

“It’s not too late to have children, you know.”

This time, she let the sigh be audible. “I don’t have a whole lot of control with the whole finding-my-mate thing, Mom. You can’t blame me for that one. And traveling around, meeting more packs, that will help with my chances, don’t you think?”

Werewolves knew pretty quickly when they’d met their mates.

They could have relationships before that, but they usually didn’t last long, as both parties knew it wasn’t the real thing.

She’d enjoyed several relationships, but none longer than eight months.

And it was very rare for a werewolf to get pregnant from anyone other than their mate, so even her mother couldn’t blame her for not producing grandchildren.

“That’s true.” Apparently this was a new idea to her mom, because Dana’s voice brightened at the idea. “You said you were going to help Myra interview some of the wolves who wanted to join the new pack?”

“That’s right.” Myra, her best friend for sixteen years, was her current alpha.

She’d been the one to shut down the Mesa Pack when Hillary had mated Zach, and it had been discovered that there was a rogue pack doing horrific things out in Arizona.

It had been Myra’s job as the National President, elected to serve a one-year term as the head werewolf in the United States, to determine the fates of every member of both packs.

She’d had to condemn to death the wolves who had been actively involved in abducting, attacking and murdering people in the supposed effort to turn them into werewolves.

Since that wasn’t how werewolves were turned, it wasn’t a surprise to any sane wolf that the process hadn’t worked most of the time, and only two people had survived—Hillary and Adam—several years apart.