Suddenly Wolf(6)

“No fair,” Daegan said from the doorway. The wolf wagged its tail as if pleased by the outcome. Daegan merely laughed again.

“Oh crap,” Andrea exclaimed as probably the least important fact she could think of at this particular moment leaped into her head. “Does this mean I can’t make jewelry out of silver anymore?”

“Actually,” Daegan said as he stepped closer, “silver is a myth. It doesn’t hurt werewolves—well the bullets do, but it doesn’t kill us—but don’t go telling the monster hunters. As long as they think they killed us, they leave us alone.”

“Can I wake up now, please?”

The wolf moved closer, and Daegan stepped to the edge of the bed and touched her face with a callused finger. “I’m sorry, beautiful, there’s no going back. Under normal circumstances we would have explained all of this before we turned you, but you were dying, and we needed to act.” He ran a finger over her lips and smiled softly. “And besides we’ve lived too long without you.”

“Without me?”

“Yes, beautiful. We’re your mates.”

“Mates?” She knew what that meant in the wild, but what, exactly, did that mean to werewolves?

“Yes, Andrea, in human terms it means we’re your husbands.”

“Husbands? Both of you?” She wriggled off the bed, stood up, placed her hands on her hips, and yelled at the top of her voice. “Not on your fucking life!”





Chapter Two



Xavier stepped into the small store. The lights were off, but he could make out the dark stain, smell the spilled blood, and knew that his brothers were telling the truth. Their phone call had been short and to the point. They’d found their mate dying and had no choice but to turn the woman. Nobody in his family had expected his younger brothers—identical twins and therefore extremely unusual for werewolves—to find a mate, so if she was truly the one made for them, then Xavier was very happy for his younger brothers.

It wasn’t often that werewolves discovered their mate was a human, but it did happen. Usually, though, the human was introduced to the werewolf way of life before they were turned. Humans didn’t feel the same mating link that werewolves did, so it was only fair to give them a choice. Almost all chose to stay, but Xavier knew from years of experience that taking away a human’s right to choose their future was a very bad idea—especially for modern women.

He had a feeling that his younger brothers may just have bitten off more than they could chew. If the conversation he could hear going on upstairs was any indication, he was going to have one very pissed-off female wolf to deal with.

He got to the door of her apartment just as the argument exploded.

“Now, beautiful—” Daegan began, but she cut him off with a voice angry enough that he could hear the deep growl of her wolf.

“Don’t you ‘beautiful’ me! I’m not marrying two strangers. No way, no how, never, ever, ever, ever going to happen.”

Xavier opened the bedroom door to find Isaac in wolf form sitting in the middle of the bed tracking the woman’s pacing movement. Daegan was quite happily watching the woman rant.

But it was the woman herself that caught his attention. She wasn’t at all like the women Daegan and Isaac usually dated. Even when they dated werewolves, his younger brothers tended to go for the timid, quiet, less confident females. This woman seemed to be the exact opposite and at the moment looked angry enough to remove their testicles and serve them up for lunch.

So intent on pacing, the woman Xavier assumed was Andrea didn’t even see him step into the room. Something must have alerted her to his presence, though, because she stopped dead and turned her eyes on him. Anger gleamed from their brown depths, and his wolf did happy circles in his head.

Oh, hell.

“Who the fuck are you?”

He glanced at his brothers, saw their incredulous stares, and said the words anyway. “I’m your mate, too.”

“Not happening. Absolutely, not fucking happening.” Andrea returned to her pacing. At this rate she was going to need new carpet very soon. “Who are you people? Any more ‘mates’ where you come from?”

“I fucking hope not?” Daegan said with an irritated scowl.

“Don’t swear in front of our mate,” Xavier said without really giving it much thought. His mother had always taught him not to swear in front of females—perhaps old fashioned but something he’d tried to uphold—yet he was fairly certain his mom hadn’t taken into account foul-mouthed females like their mate.

Oh, this was going to make Thanksgiving dinner so damn extra special this year.