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

“If you could wake him up, we’d appreciate it,” Colby said. “And we’d appreciate anything you could tell us too.”

“The three of them—Eli, Weston, and Luke—came to town in January, I think. That’s when they found me, anyway. Eli sniffed out me and mine and turned up to introduce himself. I never met Weston at all, but Luke came by later.”

“What was your impression of Eli?”

“I won’t lie, he scared me a little. I’m as tough on four legs as I need to be, and I’ve got a wicked bite, but when I’m human, I’m tiny. I didn’t like the way he kept smirking at me. Like I was a fluffy little bunny he was thinking of snapping up.”

Luke had mentioned Eli’s habit of looking for women who felt like rabbits to him.

And Mel looked sort of like a fluffy little bunny, Aria had to admit. But if Eli had missed the aura of concentrated power radiating out of her, he’d made a big mistake.

One he was about to pay for. Hopefully in spades.

“He did that with me too,” Aria volunteered.

Mel nodded. “That doesn’t surprise me. These extreme, ‘more wolf than thou’ kinds of guys—they talk big about following the laws of nature, but for the most part, they don’t even know what those are. Their wolves wind up as dazzled and messed up by their human halves as their human halves are by their wolves. A male wolf, just by nature, wouldn’t disrespect a female one. Wolves have female alphas just like they have male ones, and anybody can be the junior member of a pack. Eli’s all hung up on the idea that he’s holding true to some ‘natural’ idea of men being tougher or more important than women... but that’s not natural at all.”

She sounded incredibly irritated by it, and Aria could understand completely. What was more annoying than someone who ran their mouth off about how capital-R Right they were when they really couldn’t be

more wrong?

Especially when it came to bullshit about a man’s “natural” right to be a dick. You only had to look at Colby to see how a real alpha acted.

Colby leaned forward. “So what did he say? Once he got done being an asshole.”

“Honey, he was never done being an asshole. But what I think might help you, in among all his dick-swinging, is why he said he was hanging around here so long in the first place.”

She paused for dramatic effect, something Aria would have found more relatable if she hadn’t just desperately wanted to cut down on how long she had to think about Eli Hebbert.

“He’d clued in by then that I wasn’t impressed with him, and he knew he was out of his league. I wasn’t going to go off with him, and I wasn’t going to find him charming, so he decided to rub in that he already had his eye on someone anyway. He said she’d make a solid second choice.”

“Aww,” Aria deadpanned. “How sweet. True love.”

“It’s just like Casablanca,” Mel agreed dryly. “I was about to swoon right then and there.”

“So... this wouldn’t be his mate, right?” She looked at Colby.

“If he’s calling her a second choice, she’s not his mate.”

“And if he really cared about her at all,” Mel said, “he wouldn’t have talked about her like he did. I know more about the woman’s bust measurements that I need to. Basically all I know is that she’s substantially gifted in that area.”

Aria had never been so grateful to be comparatively flat-chested. It would have been her worst nightmare to have Eli Hebbert out there lusting after her.

She said, “You don’t know her name?”

“He was the kind of man way more interested in discussing her smell than her thoughts and feelings. Let alone her name. But Luke might know.” She stood. “I’ll go get him. But I have to warn you, he’s going to be a little surly when he’s been pulled out of bed.”

15

It was amazing how much better Luke looked after a single night under Mel Wondery’s roof.

He was in new clothes, ones without obvious holes in them, and some of the fear had bled out of his face. He even smelled like he’d actually grabbed a recent shower.

It was probably a new phenomenon for him, Colby thought, to be able to drag his heels and complain about being forced to wake up before noon. He probably wouldn’t have done it around his cousins, not when they might have responded by pounding him into the dirt.

“Hey, kid,” Colby said. “Glad to see you landed on your feet.”

“Stop calling me kid,” Luke said automatically. Then he shuffled his feet. “Yeah. Mel’s nice.”