The Wolf Marshal's Pack (U.S. Marshal Shifters 3)

“Your nana means that for a long time, only kings and other men like that got to make up words for things,” Aria said. “But that’s not true anymore. You can call your queendom whatever you want.”

“I’m going to have a queendom, then,” Mattie said. “And if someone says I can’t, I’ll fight them.” She bared her teeth in mock-ferocity and laughed when Aria pretended to quake with fear.

“Well, queen or princess or whatever you are,” Doreen said, “you need to sit down and eat your lunch and let your mom eat hers so she can go off and do some work.”

Thank you, Aria mouthed at her mother. Doreen waved it off as if to say not to mention it.

Her dad settled beside them on the blanket. Aria noticed with a pang that he winced when his knees popped on the way down. He caught her looking.

“Getting old,” Ben Clarke said. “Pretty soon you’ll have to take me out behind the barn and shoot me and make me into glue.”

Mattie giggled. “Why would anybody do that?”

“It’s what they used to do with h—”

Aria elbowed her dad before he could finish telling her daughter, with her collection of My Little Ponies, that anybody had ever made horses into glue. She glared at him.

“Handsome old fellows like me,” Ben finished. “That way you’d never get rid of us. I could stick to my favorite granddaughter just as close as ever.”

“You’re silly,” Mattie said severely. “I’m your only granddaughter.”

“That’s me,” Ben said, nodding. “Silly as can be.”

Aria leaned her head against his shoulder and was glad when he put his arm around her and gave her a reassuring squeeze.

“Brunch is served,” Doreen said.

“I thought it was lunch,” Ben said.

“If you eat it at half past ten in the morning, it’s brunch.”

Aria grinned and tucked into the enormous, fancy picnic her mom had made for them. If her life had pistachio chocolate chip cookies and homemade potato salad and picnics in beautiful nature preserves, if she had a mom and dad she loved and respected and a daughter she adored, what did she have to complain about? She wasn’t missing out on too much.

And she loved her job, too. Whether she was traveling to the middle of nowhere

or just walking around the preserve that felt like her own backyard, she loved having an excuse to romp around outside and enjoy the sunshine. She loved the moments when the whole world seemed to line up for her to get exactly the photograph she wanted.

She wouldn’t mind building up enough of those just-right pictures to maybe try for a gallery show someday.

Wishful thinking, probably. But with the funny, magical light all around them and the smell of wildflowers in the air, it felt like the kind of day for dreaming.

*

By the time Aria left her family at the picnic site, Mattie had fallen asleep on the blanket, leaving her flower crown smushed on one side. Aria twisted the little baby hairs close to Mattie’s neck around her fingers.

“She looks so sweet when she’s sleeping,” Aria said quietly. “No matter what kind of trouble she gets up to during the day, once she conks out like this, I can’t be angry anymore.”

“You always had an angelic way of napping too,” Ben said. “You’d curl up and put your hands under your head like a cherub in a picture.”

“Well, now I always worry I snore.”

“Ladies never snore,” Doreen said. “And if a man ever tells you that you do, he’s not any kind of gentleman.”

Aria, who distinctly remembered hearing her mother’s soft, snuffling snores through the wall when she was a kid, just grinned. She hoisted herself to her feet.

“Be careful out there,” Doreen said. There was a worried furrow between her eyes. “Susan Fowler from the community choir said she’s seen wolves prowling around.”

“Mom, there aren’t going to be wolves. And I know Susan Fowler. She’s sweet, but she’s jumpy. Dogs scare her half to death. She probably just saw one of them. And even if she had seen a wolf—”