Mate Marked(11)

“You’re wearing them,” Ryan called.

“Of course I am.” Edna fingered the stems of her glasses. “Isn’t he an angel?”

Joyce glowered down at her younger brother. She was still gripping his collar. “I’m not going to answer that question.” Then she glanced at her grandmother and her gaze softened. “Do you want to go out for a dip in the mineral springs before I start working on dinner?”

“That would be lovely. Let me just go get a towel.” Her grandmother scampered off, leaving Joyce shaking her head in frustration. Her grandmother’s mind was wandering farther and farther afield these days, and now all this business with the sheep and the fences being torn down, uncomfortably close to their house. It made her afraid to leave her family to go to work, but she had to go to work or they wouldn’t eat.

If only their house were worth a dime, she’d sell it so she could move them all out of there and go back to college. They sat on five beautiful wooded acres of property. However, they were completely landlocked between the Rodgers ranch and the wolf shifters’ territory. The quasi-legal dirt road that led to their house snaked right through shifter territory, and then onto the Rodgers ranch, and finally on to the main road. Nobody would pay them for an old, falling-apart ranch house that was practically on top of pack lands.

“I’m here!” Her grandmother hurried towards her. Wonder of wonders, she hadn’t wandered off somewhere; she’d shimmied into her bathing suit and sandals, and was holding a towel. She did love her dips in the hot springs that had opened up after last year’s earthquake; claimed they helped her “Arthur-itis”. Of course, the bad news was that she kept sneaking off to take mineral spring dips by herself; Joyce kept making her promise not to, and her grandmother kept conveniently “forgetting”.

Joyce glanced at her brothers, biting her lip. “Maybe you should come with us.”

“Wolves can’t come in our house,” Shawn told her. “We’ll be fine. And I know how to use the shotgun.”

“But they can’t come in anyway,” Ryan reassured her, then a look of doubt crossed his face. “Right? They can’t?”

“Right.” She nodded firmly. “But lock the door behind me.” They’d never locked the door before, not in her whole life.

Some people were whispering that the wolf paw prints came from the kind of wolves who could, in fact, open doors—from the shifters who owned the territory next to the Dudleys’ land.

But why would they suddenly start stealing sheep? She knew a lot of people were wary of wolf shifters, but they’d always been nice to her and her family. They were her best customers at the Hootenanny, and one of them…well, there was no point in thinking like that. He came from a pack that was moving on soon, and she was working seven nights a week to keep gas in the car and food on the table. She didn’t have time to think about a handsome wolf shifter with soft amber eyes who tipped his hat every time she walked by.

“And yet there I am thinking about him,” she muttered.

“Are you talking to yourself? Goodness, Joyce, you must be getting senile,” Edna said, looking at her with concern.

“Must be!” she agreed brightly. Then she called out to her brothers, “Keep that door locked, I mean it,” as she led her grandmother out the door.





Chapter Five




The Sheriff’s Department was located in a small, red brick building located next to the equally tiny town hall. The jail had one cell. Apparently the citizens of Silver Peak generally stayed on the right side of the law.

Heck, anybody could do this job, Chelsea thought as she flipped through the pages of the county’s book of criminal statutes. Why had they gotten such a bee in their bonnet about hiring a new sheriff? They barely even needed one.

“You’re a deputy,” she informed Pepper, who rolled over onto her back and waved her paws in the air to show how much she appreciated the new title. “It doesn’t come with any money, but I can promise you treats and belly rubs.”

It was five p.m. She’d already unloaded all her belongings at the small log cabin style building that would be her new home. It didn’t have an oven, just a hot plate and a microwave. She’d have to figure out how to finagle an oven out of the townspeople. Somebody must have a spare oven. She needed to keep her baking skills up, because one day, no matter how long it took, she would be opening a bakery of her own.

It was still early, and she’d already had quite the eventful day. She’d signed the papers that said she was a member of the Silver Peak pack, shifted, inked her paw print and stepped on the appropriate spot on the registration papers with her inky paw. The mayor had hurried off to fax the registration to the Council of Shifter Affairs.