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Dustin straightened his
shoulders and steeled himself, to speak softly to the lupa no matter her
reaction. “I am an
Úlfhédinn
, a wolf soldier of Odin.
I am my pack scout. And, yes, I was assigned by my alpha to watch you. I am
also your mate.”

CHAPTER
SEVEN

Holly would have
slapped Dustin Berg right then, hard as she could, even knowing she wouldn’t
have hurt the shifter. She would have gone straight for the phone and dialed
the Agency to come get her, to let them sort out which kind of wolf was which,
except that she was very likely one herself now. She would have screamed at…at
no one in particular, maybe herself, for ever having hoped that she could make
a way for herself after spending so long adrift without home or family or real
friends. For letting herself entertain her childish fantasies about a man far
too sexy for a woman like her, and that wasn’t just about her body. It was
about being hollowed out, invisible, a no one nowhere person. And here Dustin
was making ridiculous statements she didn’t even understand, about mates. Damn
him.

The sound of gravel
crunching under heavy tires cut off all those thoughts, all those other things
she could have done but hadn’t. Holly guessed from the way Dustin perked that he
knew the sound, the smell. His pack had arrived, and she had a whole new set of
concerns to deal with now.

Dustin came toward
Holly so abruptly that she couldn’t back away. He caught her by the shoulders,
but his hands immediately slid up the prickling column of her throat into the
hair at the back of her neck. She crinkled her shoulders and shivered, feeling
goose bumps rise along her scalp in a wave. Goddamn, how could the man still
make her tremble with longing when she hated him for what a fool he’d made of
her? Maybe he wasn’t the one making her the fool at all. Apparently, she could
handle that one all on her own, just by following her stupid fantasies.

“We only have a second,
Holly, so listen to me. Like it or not, you are an Odin’s Wolf. Whatever you
think of me, and whatever does or doesn’t happen between us, we have to get the
pack to accept you.”

The seriousness of
Dustin’s tone discouraged Holly from arguing out of hand. Dreading his answer,
she asked, “Or what?”

“Or that makes you a
varg.”

And what did werewolves
do to
vargs
?

“How the hell am I
supposed to get them to accept me?” She’d never been truly accepted anywhere.
It wasn’t in her skill set.

A car door slammed
outside, and Dustin actually jerked, his head swinging about toward the porch and
the approaching steps grating on the driveway. He turned back to Holly and
said, “We have one chance, and it’s not a sure bet or even a safe one. It won’t
be easy for us if the pack agrees. There’s no other choice.” He released her
and made for the door, then paused to look her way before he opened it to greet
the pack. “You have to trust me on this.”

It wasn’t as easy as it
should have been for Holly to put on that smooth mask she wore when she didn’t
want anyone to know what she was feeling, so they couldn’t feed off her fear.
She was so tired, weak in a way that made her think of Dustin and the toll
shifting took on him. And emotionally, she was drained, running on empty. “I
guess I’m following your lead.”

She thought she saw a
glint that looked like gratitude in Berg’s deep brown eyes before he drew open
the front door and walked out into the bright light. Holly hurried to follow
but shuffled to an awkward halt as soon as she got out onto the porch.

Five shifters stood
spread out in front of the cabin. Strange that Holly could tell now what they
were just by looking at them, at the highly developed musculature and the power
evident in movement and posture, and even a little by their smells. There was
an earthy scent about them, then little individual notes under that. Turning
her head just slightly as she stepped up next to Dustin, she caught his
familiar scent of wood and earth, but now she also detected undertones of
something oddly heady and homey. Coriander and sage, like her grandfather’s
garden, her grandmother’s kitchen, the sachets her mother had sewn into her
pillow and tucked into her nightgown drawer only without the sweet addition of
lavender that she still wore to this day. The overwhelming familiarity caught
Holly by surprise, and she wondered if she’d ever subconsciously picked up on
those smells, if that was part of the reason she had found Dustin so instantly
likeable. She took a sidelong step toward him for comfort before she realized
what she was going to do.

Four men and a woman.
That was the pack, or at least the portion of it that had answered Dustin’s
call for help. There was one man in particular they all deferred to—something
in the tension of their muscles and posture, in the way their glances kept
track of his position in relation to theirs. They let him take the lead,
flanking him like guards, despite the fact that he wasn’t the largest or
probably even the strongest, at least not in human form. Clean-shaven and
simply dressed in dark jeans and a black bomber jacket over his white shirt,
the black-haired man took the porch stairs one deliberate step at a time until
he stood face to face with Dustin. The power he exuded at this distance
screamed alpha to Holly’s newly awakened senses. She even had to resist the
urge to lower her head. It made her feel better to clasp her hands in front of
her, shielding her stomach somewhat with her arms, so she didn’t feel so much
like she was about to break down and spontaneously bare her belly to the
dominant wolf.

Still, Holly stole
glances rather than outright staring at the alpha. Not the face of a werewolf,
she thought to herself, though it was a silly idea. Did Dustin look like a
werewolf? Like a Wolverine reject with a furry face and wild hair? So there was
no reason for her to be surprised by an alpha who looked more like an upscale
businessman from the financial district, a David Gandy type with short-trimmed
but wavy hair and a touch of Mediterranean playboy to the blue eyes and
chiseled jaw. No reason to be taken aback by the bodybuilder second-in-command
with the long, pale gold hair and black sunglasses. Or by the brown-haired boy
next door lagging back by their navy blue SUV beside a bright, chubby blond
woman with enviable curls and a confidence about her that Holly found
intriguing in a fellow curvy girl. But the dark blond, the tall man standing at
the bottom of the stairs without a jacket in this chill, with his muscles
aggressively straining the cotton of his gray t-shirt…. That one Holly could
see as a shifter, and a dangerous one. One who didn’t like people. Or maybe he
glared at everyone like that.

It was the alpha
standing in front of Dustin and Holly that demanded their attention now,
however, simply by looking back and forth between them. After a few moments of
this, he rubbed his neck with one hand and sighed hard. “There’s more to all
this than what you told me on the phone, brother.”

“I’m sorry, Ron. I
didn’t know when we spoke.”

“About me, you mean?”
Holly asked before she could think better of speaking up, before she understood
the workings of a pack beyond what she’d seen in some cable network urban
fantasy romance series. Too late, she bit her lip, cursing her impulsive
outburst.

Luckily, the alpha just
nodded slowly. He gradually, very gradually, adopted a subtle smile. “About
you, Ms. Parker.” She shook off the dismay of him knowing her name without
introductions. There had been a phone call, after all, and probably status
reports from Dustin before that on what he’d learned about her. To Berg, the
alpha said in a slow drawl, “You’ve been keeping your distance lately,
brother.
 
Is this the reason why?”

“No, it’s the wilding.”
The answer came in a harsh grumble from the one in the gray shirt, the angry
one.

“Martin,” Dustin
cautioned him in a biting tone, “shut up.”

Yeah,
Martin, shut up
. Holly pressed the fingers of one hand
over her lips, trying to look thoughtful rather than distressed. Though she
hadn’t actually spoken up, she had to wonder where that thought
and the vehemence behind it
had come
from, if not a startling strong sense of alliance with Dustin.

The alpha—Ron was the
name Dustin had used—pivoted so he could look hard at both his subordinates as
they broke out in sudden bickering. “Seems like you and Martin have been
talking even if you haven’t been around. That’s a good thing.” He faced Dustin
fully again. “But it sounds like a matter I would have thought you’d bring to
me. Is that it, little brother? The wilding? You’ve been feeling it?”

His tone struck Holly
as fatherly, and this loosened some of the anxious knots in the pit of her
stomach. The idea of Dustin having a father figure among his pack left her
oddly grateful. She wouldn’t have liked the thought of Dustin—
or anyone
, she insisted to herself
silently but not very successfully—struggling through the confusion of becoming
a shifter without someone to guide her like…like she supposed he was trying to
guide her.

A little bit of her
suspicion of Dustin, her anger at him, slipped away tangibly enough that she
felt it. A weight lifted off the back of her shoulders. That was distressing in
its own way.

“What’s the wilding?”
Holly asked, fidgeting and unable to bite her tongue, obviously. Dustin’s only
response to her was an unease glance from the corner of his eye.

The scout let out a
heavy breath and told his alpha, “I asked Martin not to say anything for now.
Not to worry you. I’m feeling it, but it’s not….”

“Not something that had
you so anxious that you’d avoid your pack and try to deal with it alone?” Ron
suggested.

Also from the bottom of
the steps, on the opposite side from Martin, the long-haired blond man in the
shades spoke up. “Because it if it had really gotten that bad, we know you’d
have told us. We’ve only been your brothers since you were fourteen. You’d have
let us try to help you.”

“Not much help against
the wilding,” Dustin told them, shaking his head. Then, after a heartbeat’s
pause, he glanced again at Holly.

It was a small gesture,
but the hulking man in the shades caught it all the same and whistled sharply.
“Goddamn, man, seriously?”

Dustin tried to cut him
off. “Eric—.”

“He’s saying what I’m
thinking,” Ron said with a shrug. “That’s a hell of a lot to hide from your
pack—the wilding
and
finding a mate.”

“She only turned last
night.”

Martin took the bottom
two steps in one hard, sudden stride.
 
“She what? She fucking turned? No prep?
No bonding
, Dustin? What the fuck.”

Holly reared back a
half-step, though part of her she didn’t quite recognize wanted it to be a
half-step toward Martin instead. Dustin slid over in front of her. His breath
took on a definite rumble, a growl building in his throat as he eyed his
hot-head pack brother.

The alpha put his arm
out to block the angry shifter from advancing any further. “Dustin, is that
true? How?”

“I was out cold after
taking on that varg twice in less than an hour, and Holly didn’t know what
she’d found. She thought it was just a blanket.”

“The fur in the chest?”
Ron asked, and Dustin nodded.

“Whoever was here last
left it unlocked.”

Through clenched teeth,
Martin snarled. “She’d not bonded to the pack. And she even works for the
fucking Agency. You know what we have to do.”

From behind Dustin,
Holly saw the muscles of his back and shoulders twitch and bulge. She saw the
movement under his skin as a bristling wave of brown fur rose and receded, rose
and receded, with each increasingly labored breath.
Oh, shit
. She didn’t need the full rundown on pack etiquette to
know this was bad.

“Over your dead body,
brother,” Dustin threatened.

The whole pack grew
still, Martin chief among them.

“You’re going to say
that to me?” he asked the scout. “I’ve been one of your best friends since you
were a whelp who couldn’t turn without a pelt and gut full of Soren’s special
mead.”

Under the scrutiny of
his pack, Dustin held his ground. “I’m saying that to someone who should know
what finding her means to me.”

Martin continued to
stare down his brother, gaze unwavering, as though deliberately avoiding even a
glance Holly’s way. Without thinking about it, she put her hand on the small of
Dustin’s back in a soothing, supporting gesture. For the moment, the wolf in
him retreated, though she sensed it not far beneath the surface, watching and
waiting.

Holly hesitated, caught
flat-footed by Dustin’s reaction. She had caused that, she realized, brought
out both the protective flare and the soothing calm. She’d never had that kind
of influence over anyone. Again, something inside Holly, in her chest and
stomach, pulled hard toward Dustin like a magnetic surge, like an urge to
embrace him. It was like something inside her that wasn’t quite her
or was more than her
felt compelled to
stand with him. Her wolf?