Shifters of Silver Peak: Mate For A Month (2 page)

Tuesday morning

Eileen sat bolt upright, feeling disoriented and wondering why the air smelled so clean and crisp. Then she remembered where she was. She wasn’t in New York, where each breath tasted like grit and car exhaust fumes, even in her family’s rarefied neighborhood. She was in Silver Peak, Montana, sleeping under a down pillow that was as soft as a cloud.

She kicked the blanket off and instinctively glanced over at the sofa where, at home, her assistant Marisol would have laid out today’s outfit for her, complete with shoes, accessories and purse. Marisol would have selected the outfit from one of hundreds put together for her by Eileen’s stylist, Ambrose.

Of course, there was no outfit laid out for her, since she’d snuck away and come here alone. Her suitcases were stacked up next to the sofa.

She was going to be in town for two or three days; she’d brought four suitcases. It wasn’t like her to pack so light, but since she didn’t have her usual staff to help her, she had decided she’d just have a bare-bones, understated weekend. No more than three clothing changes a day. Maybe four, tops, if she could find a place to do some shopping.

She didn’t mind the inconvenience. It would be like camping, really. That went along with the whole atmosphere up here. Silver Peak was a tiny, remote town, nestled among towering pines and firs on a sub-Alpine mountainside. Like most shifter towns, the town had been plopped down in the middle of a vast, sprawling wilderness.

Eileen’s family was different. They didn’t live like that. They didn’t even refer to themselves as a pack.

Back in the 1930s, they’d been eminently respectable members of high society. Then the terrorist attack had changed their lives forever – but the Pennyroyals had spent the last eighty years pretending that nothing was different.

They’d never wanted to be shifters. Like tens of thousands of others, they’d made the terrible mistake of drinking tap water. And then they’d started to change. Into animals. This had been horrifying to them. It just wasn’t
done.

It turned out that saboteurs had broken into the secret government lab where different strains of shifters were being created, stolen the compounds, manufactured mass amounts of them and dumped them into the water supply in cities all over America.

The Pennyroyals had done what their type always did – pretended the problem didn’t exist. They strove mightily to deny their animal nature.

Since shifters need to change regularly, they joined with several other wealthy families in spending scheduled visits at a Connecticut estate, where they would discretely change form and stroll through the woods for a few hours a couple of weekends a month. Howling and loping were frowned upon.

Like all wolf shifters, they’d found themselves instinctively drawn to form groups – with others of the same station, of course. After all, they were Pennyroyals. Over the decades they’d finally admitted that each “group” had an Alpha, which was about as close as they got to admitting what they had become. Eileen’s father was the Alpha of their group, and she was expected to marry someone of the same station. Specifically the vain, arrogant prig of an Alpha’s son named Beacham Haversham, of the Connecticut Havershams.

Hell would freeze over first.

Eileen walked over to the suitcase and opened it. She should have organized it better; she’d never packed for herself before.

Well, she was a big girl, she could certainly dress herself. How hard could it be?

Half an hour later, the room looked like a bomb had exploded as she dug through every suitcase. She was getting rattled. This was the trip on which she was supposed to prove to her father that she was a competent, modern woman who could take care of herself and did not need to be married off.

But she was finding out just how pathetic she was on her own. For instance, she was a terrible packer.

Proof?

She’d brought one bra and twenty pairs of underwear.

She’d packed four toothbrushes and forgotten toothpaste. Good thing the hotel had toothpaste.

She’d only packed high-heeled shoes and boots, which, now that she thought of it, had not been the best choice for a visit to a tiny, rural community.

But she could do this.

She summoned up her mother’s voice again.

You can do this, baby.

“Easy for you to say,” she muttered rebelliously. “What do you need to color-coordinate these days? Your harp with your halo?”

She found herself getting teary-eyed at the thought, and blinked hard. It wasn’t her mother’s fault that she’d left Eileen. She hadn’t wanted to. She’d told Eileen that.

I can do this
.

She settled on a cream-colored silk jumpsuit. That way she wouldn’t have to color-coordinate two things. Shoes? What the hell, cream was a neutral, right? Should go with anything… She picked a pair of purple suede pumps.

Purse?

Damn it, this was so much work. She hadn’t brought a purple purse with her.

But it was either succeed here or marry Beacham.

She pictured the way he cut all his food into tiny little bites before he started eating, and the looks of disapproval he shot her as she tucked into her food with enthusiasm. The way he’d tell her sharply “That’s enough” when he thought she’d eaten too much.

She winced when she thought of the perfect golden waves of his hair, shellacked into place, and how he gently patted his hair and smirked when he thought nobody was looking.

She’d get that damned contract if it killed her. And everyone in the vicinity.

She went with a brown leather Coach bag. She grabbed a pearl necklace and matching bracelet, slapped on some makeup and was ready to go.

She headed out of her hotel. The hotel had been booked solid; she’d had to slip the manager a hefty bribe to find her a room. These days, people were flocking to Silver Peak because of the miraculous healing power of the mineral springs that had opened up on pack lands after an earthquake.

She headed out of her room with her map stuffed in her purse. She’d stopped and bought it at a gas station the day before.

Gas stations were fascinating places. She’d never been in one before.

She’d spent the day before doing recon, finding out everything she could about the area and the Kincaid Pack.

The town was one of the rare shifter towns located near human territory; there was a small human town called Juniper about ten miles away. A couple of years ago, an earthquake had rattled the area, and mineral springs had burst forth from the earth, located on both the Silver Peak pack’s land and the humans’ land. It turned out the mineral springs helped ease the symptoms of dementia and arthritis in humans.

The Kincaid Pack had settled there after the healing properties of the springs had been discovered. They’d been given a portion of the territory. It didn’t include land that contained any of the springs, but it was adjacent to that land, and they still benefited.

They worked in construction, and with the huge construction boom in Silver Peak, they were busy all the time these days.

Unfortunately, they were a notoriously private, reclusive bunch, even when it came to other shifters.

Her father had repeatedly tried to reach out to them, wanting to build a road through their pack property. It would be on the very outskirts of their land – it wouldn’t affect them at all – but they’d refused. He’d offered to pay them a lot of money, but they’d turned him down.

She knew how her father was. He was used to getting his own way. That worked in Manhattan, where he could intimidate people with his reputation and his fancy lawyers. That would not work somewhere like Silver Peak, Montana, where people were not wowed by the Pennyroyal name and were not easy to scare. They were very different from the types of shifters she was used to; much more macho and manly.

Images of the rude, handsome shifter flitted through her mind, and she banished them instantly.

Anyway – she’d go talk to them personally. She’d use her charm. That was the only thing she was good at; her father reminded her of that constantly. And charm was not a quality that he valued. He was more a fan of threats and brute force.

As she was headed out of the hotel, the concierge called out to her. “Miss Pennyroyal? You’ve got a phone call.”

Her heart sank. She hadn’t told anybody she was coming here. Then again, she’d booked the room on her credit card, which was on her father’s account, so she wouldn’t have been too hard to track down. A mistake, perhaps, but it wasn’t as if she had any money of her own. She worked in the marketing department of her father’s company, but she’d never saved up her paycheck before. There had been no reason to.

Grimacing, she walked over to the hotel desk and accepted the phone extended to her.

“Eileen, what are you doing going on vacation? And without me?” Marisol sounded irritated and mortally offended. That was pretty much the way all the staff sounded when Eileen made an attempt to do anything for herself. When she tried to learn how to cook. When she tried to hang up a picture by herself. It was like she was insulting them, or trying to put them out of a job. She wasn’t; it was just that she was twenty-two, a college graduate with a marketing degree, and she still didn’t know how to boil water. She felt like that might be a useful skill to have someday.

“I’m not on vacation. I’ve got to get going, Marisol, I’m late.”

“Late for what?” Marisol said huffily. “You need to be here for the dress fitting. I’m going to call the airline and see if I can get you back here by tonight. We can send a private jet if necessary, but I’ll tell you, this is
quite
an inconvenience.”

“I’m not leaving here tonight. What dress fitting?” Eileen felt a chill run through her veins.

“For the wedding? Obviously? We’re running the announcement in tomorrow’s paper.”

Most shifters referred to it as a “mating ceremony”, and they used the term “life-mate” more often than husband or wife, Eileen knew, but the Pennyroyals felt that the term “mating” was crude and animalistic.

Wait. They were going to run a wedding announcement? For
her
?

“Don’t you dare run the announcement,” Eileen said, furious. “I am not marrying Beacham. I’ve already told my father that.”

“Eileen, what do you think you’re playing at?” her father’s voice barked at her, and she started. So he’d been with Marisol, listening in on the conversation. Of course he had. “Do not speak to Marisol in that fashion. You’ll be back here tonight if I have to send my men to get you.”

She felt fear flaring inside her, but tried to sound calm and in control. “That would be called kidnapping.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The Pennyroyals do not kidnap. We relocate. I am simply looking out for your best interests.”

“You think it’s in my best interests for you to force me to marry a man I loathe?”

“Eileen, you are utterly incapable of taking care of yourself. The Havershams are wealthy and highly respected, and an alliance between our groups will benefit all concerned.”

Eileen had promised herself she’d stand up to her father. Distance made her bold.

“I came here to convince the Kincaid Pack to allow your company to build that road through their land,” she said firmly. “I am fully capable of working, and contributing to your company, and doing more than making copies and pouring cups of coffee.” They didn’t even let her
make
the coffee.

“The Kincaid Pack! Ha. They would chew you up and spit you out. My men will be there for you at seven p.m. Don’t keep them waiting.”

Panic clutched at her. “I already made the deal,” she lied quickly.

“What?” Her father’s voice rose in dismay. It was the first time she’d ever heard her father rattled, and she felt a surge of pride.

“And now, if you will excuse me, I have to go finalize the details.” She quickly slammed the phone down into its cradle and fled the hotel, heart pounding in her chest.

Now she had absolutely no choice but to get that agreement.

Tuesday morning

Roman stood on the front porch of the log cabin style building that served as the pack’s headquarters, struggling to keep his wolf contained. He was so pissed off that his fur kept shooting through his skin and his claws were curving out of his fingertips, and he didn’t give a damn.

The rest of the crew was on the construction site, and he was stuck here, dealing with one unnecessary crisis after another.

Including the fact that Marcus had missed the van to work.

Roman had sent Zeke to check on him; he’d found Marcus fast asleep, grumbling something about being up all night. Said he’d drive himself to work.

Zeke had mentioned that he had glimpsed broken furniture lying in piles on the floor inside Marcus’ cabin. Was Marcus going feral? What other explanation could there be for his increasingly irritable and antisocial behavior?

To top it all off, a representative from the Council for Shifter Affairs had showed up and was waiting in his office, with two big, burly shifter “advisors”. Advisors, his furry tail. They were Enforcers. She’d looked down her nose at him and told him this was just a random pack audit, standard procedure, and the first person she needed to interview was…Marcus.

And now this annoying city girl was yammering in his face, looking like she was about to cry.

“But if you’d just listen to my offer—”

“No,” he barked at the skinny blonde city shifter, anger boiling up inside him. “I already told you people, no.”

She seemed extremely distressed by this news. “But our company—”

“Your company tried to march in here and demand that you be allowed to build a road through this property. Your father actually had the nerve to start out his quote-unquote ‘offer’ with a threat. Informed me that they’d be building the road on our land, told me when they’d be starting, told me what he’d pay me, and said he hoped he wouldn’t have to bring his lawyers in, because if we caused him any construction delays, it would come out of our hides.”

He flashed a grin that was more of a snarl and showed a lot of teeth. “I made him an alternative offer. A death challenge if he or anyone who works for him sets one paw on our property. He tucked his tail between his legs. His lawyers tried to contact the council. Didn’t work out so well for him, obviously.”

She winced. “I am sincerely sorry about that. My father, ah…”

“Is a flaming asshole. No deal.”

Roman turned and walked away rapidly, ignoring her plaintive cries of, “But wait! Wait! I can make you a very attractive offer!”

Roman was literally about to bite someone’s head off.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t shred the flesh of the person he really wanted to murder – Verity Farragut, the pinch-faced, frowning representative from the Council for Shifter Affairs.

The problem was, she had the legal right to be there, and she had the legal right to demand to see Marcus, immediately. And she wasn’t entirely wrong. Marcus had spent so much time alone that he might risk turning feral, which was a danger not just to the pack but to the entire shifter race.

Every time a shifter went feral and word of it leaked, humans freaked out and there was the risk of backlash. More restrictive laws. Mobs and rioting and shifters being murdered. There were humans out there who wanted all shifters strictly confined to their territories, kept there under guard like animals in a zoo, forbidden from travel or interaction with humans.

The fact that Verity had brought two Enforcers meant that she wanted to do more than talk. She wanted to take Marcus into custody and take him back to the closest Council for Shifter Affairs facility for evaluation.

Roman knew Marcus well enough to know that the big, surly shifter would die before he let that happen.

Which was why Roman needed to stall her.

As if he didn’t have better things to worry about. His lovely mate Chelsea was going to give birth to their cub in a few months, and she was still working way too hard at the bakery she’d opened recently. He needed to convince her to cut back on her hours and relax.

Also, she was oddly fond of Marcus. Well, Chelsea saw the good in everybody. She’d even seen the good in Roman, and it had been buried very, very deep. Chelsea would be upset if these people tried to take Marcus. He was not going to let anyone upset his pregnant mate.

He walked back into the office building. Verity and her two “advisors” were sitting in chairs in the front office, scowling.

A group of pack members was standing by in case of trouble. Zeke and Avery and Leland, who were long-time pack members, along with Damien and Casper and Samuel, who’d joined more recently. They leaned on the wall, exchanging stony stares with the two “advisors”.

Verity looked up from her cup of tea – she’d brought her own teabag – with a frown.

She had brown hair cut in a severe chin-length bob and wore a two-piece brown woolen suit. She carried a shiny new brown briefcase. The only color on her was the slash of pink on her narrow lips. Her perfectly plucked eyebrows were drawn together in a suspicious scowl that seemed to be permanently stamped on her face.

“Look,” he growled at her, “I know why you want to talk to Marcus – because it looks like he hasn’t been spending enough time with the pack. It’s my fault. I lost some of the check-in sheets. I’m a lousy record-keeper. You can fine our pack for it.” And he’d make damned sure Marcus paid them back for it, too.

She gave him a tight, pained smile, and little cracks spread in her foundation near the corners of her mouth. “We already will be. But this has been an ongoing problem for over a year now. We need to evaluate him. You can either have him brought to the office, or we can go get him ourselves.”

Roman tensed.

This wasn’t going to end well…for anyone.

* * * * *

Eileen didn’t know whether she wanted to throw up, cry or scream in frustration. Really, she’d like to do all three, but she couldn’t decide which one she wanted to do first, so instead she paced furiously next to her car.

Damn her father, and damn that asshole Alpha Roman who’d just practically spit in her face. Damn him for being right, too. Her father had set things up so there was literally no way that Roman Kincaid could ever agree to building that road. You couldn’t talk to an Alpha like that; it was pretty much the same as throwing down a challenge to him.

She’d known that her father was a rude bully in his business dealings, she’d just had no idea how bad he was. Of course she hadn’t, because he always kept her out of his business affairs.

Son. Of. A. Bitch.

She was so screwed. She’d just had to go and lie to her father. Now she was going to look even more incompetent and pathetic.

Would he really send people to grab her and drag her by force back to Manhattan? She was afraid he might.

Technically, he couldn’t force her to marry Beacham…he could just cut her off, throw her out and leave her destitute. And he wouldn’t hesitate, she knew that.

She stumbled as she paced, wrenching her ankle. She glanced down at her suede pumps. Ruined, crusted in mud. Everything was all pot-holey and muddy here. She’d hoped her pale ivory jumpsuit would make her look mild and unthreatening. Instead it just showed every speck of dirt, of which there were plenty.

Could this morning get any worse?

“Are you lost again?”

She felt a sharp zap of arousal shoot through her, and looked up.

It was the rude shifter from yesterday. At least he had clothes on this time. Jeans, laced up tan construction boots, T-shirt, leather jacket. And the same scowl creasing his forehead. And her body was reacting to him in ways that it shouldn’t; she could feel her heart rate speeding up, her breath quickening and a rush of moisture between her legs.

“Why, universe?” she wailed. “What have I ever done to you?”

“Who are you talking to? My name’s not Universe. It’s Marcus.”

Oh, so the jerk had a name.

“I was talking to myself,” she said resentfully. “Go ahead, make fun of me.” If he laughed at her, she’d…she’d kick him. That was what she’d do. Right in the unmentionables. That was what her mother had called them.

“Why would I do that?” He looked puzzled. “I talk to myself all the time. Better than talking to other people.”

Of course he’d think that.

“You people are the worst,” she said furiously. “I hate all of you. Every last one.” Actually the rest of the Kincaid Pack that she’d met when she’d arrived had been nice, but she wasn’t cutting anyone any slack right now.

“Then why are you here?” he asked.

“Of all the nerve!” she shouted at him. “You want me to leave, do you?”

“I don’t want anything. You said you hated us. Why would you want to stay here if you hate us?” He looked even more confused.

“You are the rudest people I’ve ever met!” She stamped her foot, which sent mud splashing up her jumpsuit, ruining it. “And your roads are terrible!” she shrieked, tears burning her eyes. “You have horrible, horrible roads! You should be grateful we offered to build a road on your property, because we’d build a real road and your roads are made of dirt!”

“You’re mad because we have dirt roads?” He looked as if he were really trying to understand.

Her shoulders sank in defeat. Had she really just insulted him and his pack because they had dirt roads? What a snobby thing to say. She was starting to sound like her father. A fate worse than death.

“I’m sorry,” she said, blinking hard and trying not to cry. “None of this is your fault. I’m having a bad day. I’ll leave now.”

And then she burst into tears.

* * * * *

“Is that him?” Verity glanced out the window. Marcus was standing outside, a few hundred yards away.

Great. Of all the times for Marcus to decide to be social, it had to be right now.

Marcus was arguing with the blonde, who was yelling at him about something and waving her arms. They were standing so close to each other... Marcus never let people get that close to him physically.

It was weird how they were interacting. Roman felt an odd sense of déjà vu, then realized what they reminded him of.

Him and Chelsea, on the day they’d first met.

“Excuse me. I’ll go get him for you,” he said to Verity. “Stay right here.”

He hurried outside, running over to where Eileen and Marcus were standing.

“You want to build that road?” he said to her in a low voice. “Play along with what I say. It’ll only be for a few days, maybe a few weeks at most. Okay, maybe a month.”

Verity had ignored his orders; she trotted over to him with her “advisors” at her heels. His pack members had also followed him outside.

Roman turned around and said triumphantly, “Oh, and here’s the other reason why Marcus hasn’t been spending much time with the pack. He’s been too busy with his new mate.”