Chapter 12
MAISIE
The flight back to Columbus for a four-day Thanksgiving break costs six hundred and forty dollars.
I know this because I checked the discount travel sites at two in the morning three days before break, stared at the total with my jaw clenched, and then called my mom from the floor of my dorm bathroom so I wouldn’t wake Delilah.
“Don’t you dare spend six hundred dollars to sit on our couch for seventy-two hours, Maisie Jean,” my mom said immediately, her voice crackling through the static of our ancient landline.
“You come home for the full three weeks at Christmas when the tickets are normal. Eat some turkey on campus, study for your finals, and call your grandmother on Thursday.”
So that was the plan. Stay in the dorms, eat dining hall turkey with Delilah, and get a week ahead on Creature Physiology flashcards.
Then Boone found out.
He was sitting on the rug at the foot of my bed, taking up approximately seventy percent of the available floor space while supposedly reading a case study for his alpha leadership seminar. When I mentioned staying on campus, he went completely, unnervingly still.
“You’re not spending Thanksgiving in an empty dorm,” he said, his voice dropping into that quiet, absolute tone that usually means his wolf is about to start making executive decisions.
“Delilah’s here.”
“Delilah’s coven is doing a harvest ritual Wednesday night and she’s sleeping until Friday.”
“I have studying to do.”
“You can study anywhere.” He closed his textbook with a dull thud, looked up at me from the floor, and tried to make his face do something casual.
He failed spectacularly. His jaw was tight, his amber eyes locked on mine, and his hands gripped his knees like he was actively holding himself down. “Come home with me.”
I stared at him. “Home home?”
“My parents’ place.”
“You want me to go to your pack’s house? For Thanksgiving?”
“If you want to.” He said it like it was no big deal. His scent, however, spiked with enough nervous, desperate anticipation to fill the entire hallway. “My mom has an extra bedroom. Or you can sleep in mine. Whatever you want. Just... come with me.”
“Boone, meeting parents is a huge deal. Meeting an entire werewolf pack is a medical hazard.”
“They’re just people, Maisie.”
“Your dad is an alpha.”
“He also burns toast every Sunday morning and loses his reading glasses on his own head,” Boone said, reaching up to take my hand and tugging until I slid off the edge of the mattress onto the rug between his thighs.
He wrapped his arms around my waist, burying his face in the crook of my neck right against my mating mark, his hot breath soaking through my collar. “Come home with me. Please.”
I made it another four seconds before I caved.
Which is how, at six o’clock on Monday evening, I find myself sitting in the passenger seat of Boone’s heavy black truck, watching the highway give way to winding, two-lane mountain roads lined with dense pine trees and late-November frost.
The drive takes three hours north of campus, heading deep into the wooded ridge territory that the Kinkaid pack has owned for about a hundred and fifty years.
Boone has one hand on the steering wheel and the other clamped firmly over my right knee, his thumb rubbing slow, rhythmic circles against my denim.
He’s been doing it since we hit the state line.
“You’re going to wear a hole in my jeans,” I tell him, staring out at the darkening trees.
“Just making sure you’re still here.”
“I’m in the front seat, Kinkaid. Where would I go? Jump out into the brush at sixty miles an hour?”
“Wouldn’t put it past you if you got cold feet.”
“I don’t have cold feet,” I say, crossing my arms while immediately contradicting myself by bouncing my left heel against the floor mat. “I am perfectly calm. I’m a rational college student accompanying her boyfriend to a standard holiday dinner.”
Boone glances over at me, his lips twitching with suppressed amusement. “Mated partner.”
“Boyfriend sounds less like we’re about to perform an ancient blood ritual in your living room.”
“There are no rituals on Mondays,” he says mildly. “Those are strictly Thursday afternoons.”
“Shut up.”
“My parents are going to love you, Maisie.”
“You don’t know that. What if I spill gravy on your mother? What if I accidentally insult your pack’s territorial boundaries by parking weird? What if I use the wrong fork and your dad challenges me to single combat for dominance?”
Boone lets out a low, rough laugh that vibrates straight through the center console.
He squeezes my thigh, his palm radiating that steady, furnace-like werewolf heat that’s basically ruined me for regular body temperatures forever.
“My dad doesn’t care about forks. And my mom’s been asking for pictures of you for three weeks. ”
I turn my head so fast my neck pops. “She’s been what?”
Boone’s fingers freeze on my knee.
A tiny, fatal beat of silence fills the cab of the truck.
“Boone,” I say, narrowing my eyes. “Did you send your mother pictures of me?”
“I sent a picture.”
“Which picture?”
He clears his throat, suddenly finding the empty, winding asphalt ahead of us utterly fascinating. “The one from the fall festival. With the cider.”
“You sent your mother a photo of me wearing a cheap flannel with powdered sugar on my chin?”
“You looked pretty.”
“I looked like a feral raccoon.”
“You looked like my mate,” he growls softly, his scruff catching the dashboard lights as he shifts his jaw. “And she asked. She wanted to know who was turning her son into a functional human being who actually calls home on Sunday nights.”
“I haven’t made you functional. You still eat four protein bars before breakfast.”
I look out the windshield as the truck turns off the main road onto a wide, crushed-gravel driveway flanked by towering stone pillars. “How many people are actually going to be here tonight?”
“Not many,” Boone says easily, navigating the truck over a timber bridge that arches across a rushing creek. “Just family.”
Famous last fucking words.
The driveway opens into a massive clearing surrounded by old-growth hemlocks and pines.
Sitting in the center is a house that looks less like a single building and more like an architectural timeline of the last century.
It’s huge—dark timber logs forming the original lower half, expanding upward into a broad, three-story stone and cedar lodge with a wraparound porch, copper gutters, and warm yellow light spilling from dozens of multi-paned windows into the crisp mountain air.
There are also seven pickup trucks, two SUVs, and a Subaru with a dented bumper parked haphazardly across the gravel turnaround.
I stare at the fleet of vehicles. “Boone.”
“Yeah?”
“Define ‘just family.’”
"My parents," he says, throwing the truck into park and killing the engine. "Aunt Claire. Uncle Dennis. A couple cousins."
"There are ten cars in your driveway."
"People drop by," he says smoothly, unbuckling his seatbelt and leaning across the center console to cup the back of my neck.
His thumb finds my mark instantly, grazing the edge of my collar, and a jolt of warm, electric comfort washes through the bond, knocking the edge off my panic. "Take a breath, baby. You're with me."
"If I get eaten, I'm haunting your apartment."
"Deal."
The second we step out into the November cold, the front door bangs open.
The smell hits me first—woodsmoke, roasting meat, pine needles, and the distinct, crisp musk of half a dozen shifted and unshifted werewolves.
Before I can even reach the bottom porch step, a tall, broad-shouldered woman with dark hair streaked with silver and Boone's exact stubborn nose comes marching out onto the cedar planks, wiping her hands on a linen dish towel.
"Boone Thomas Kinkaid," she calls out, her voice carrying clear and sharp through the mountain quiet. "If you made that poor girl ride three hours in your truck without stopping for dinner, I'm taking your keys."
"We stopped for coffee in Canton, Ma," Boone calls back, grabbing our duffel bags from the bed of the truck with one hand and immediately locking his other around mine, his fingers tangling tight.
His mother doesn't wait for us to reach the porch. She comes down the steps in thick wool socks, stops directly in front of me, and takes my face between two warm, flour-dusted palms.
She doesn't sniff me like an animal. She doesn't circle me. She just looks at me with clear, intelligent hazel eyes that take in my messy bun, my oversized jacket, and the silver-edged scar peeking above my collar.
Her breath catches for half a second. Her thumbs brush softly over my cheekbones. Then she pulls me straight into a fierce, bone-crushing hug that smells like rosemary and vanilla.
"You're Maisie," she says against my hair, squeezing so hard I briefly wonder if my ribs are going to crack. "I'm Linda. Welcome home, sweetheart."
I stand there stunned, my hands coming up automatically to pat her back. "Thank you, Mrs. Kinkaid."
"Linda," she corrects, pulling back with a bright smile that lights up her whole face.
She glances at Boone, who's standing beside us with his chest puffed out like a proud golden retriever, looking entirely relieved.
Linda reaches out, smacks his arm with her dish towel, then turns back to me.
"Ignore him if he hovered the whole drive.
He gets it from his father. Come inside, you're freezing. "
The inside of the Kinkaid house is pure sensory overload.
The front hall isn't a foyer—it's a mudroom the size of my entire freshman dorm, lined with three dozen pairs of work boots, running shoes, and hunting jackets hanging from wrought-iron hooks.
Beyond that is a cavernous great room with vaulted timber ceilings, a double-sided stone fireplace roaring with split oak, and a dining table that looks like it was carved from a single redwood and easily seats twenty people.
And there are people everywhere.