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

“I think you’re cool,” she said.

He could feel her breath stirring on his chest.

He had no idea how he’d ever lived without her. Maybe he didn’t know what they would do next, but with her at his side, he trusted that they would figure it out together.

10

“Does someone want to explain to me,” Doreen said, “why there is a dead wolf under the curtain?”

Not really, Aria thought.

“I’m also wondering what happened to these,” Ben said. He poked at Colby’s shredded clothes.

She didn’t want to explain that either.

r /> I knew we should have stayed in the kitchen.

“It’s werewolves,” Mattie said.

She had tucked herself, with childlike complacency, under the one upright part of the coffee table, and she was using her colored pencils to draw a wolf in a flower crown.

Aria looked at Colby, who looked back at her with a clueless expression.

“What makes you say that, honey?” Aria said carefully.

Mattie looked up in the middle of adding a bluebell to the flower crown.

“It’s obvious. Everybody knows that you rip your clothes like that if you turn into an animal. That means the bad guy came here to get you, and he was a werewolf, and Marshal Colby turned into something too, and they fought.” She selected a violet pencil. “And Marshal Colby won.”

“Mattie, I know you might see things like that on television—”

Aria interrupted her mom. “Actually, that’s... pretty accurate, Mom. Eli Hebbert is a werewolf. He knows I saw him change from a wolf to a human, and he doesn’t trust anyone, so that’s why he’s after me. This was his brother, who was also a werewolf.”

For the first time in her life, Aria saw her mother rendered speechless. Her mouth was even hanging open slightly.

She wasn’t even this shocked that time I told her I might get a tattoo.

“What I don’t know,” Aria said, “is how Mattie knows any of this. Is it just TV, honey?”

Doreen managed to find her composure long enough to add that she didn’t think Mattie was old enough to be watching anything violent enough to have werewolves in it.

“Pippa’s mom is a bear shifter,” Mattie said. “And her dad is a fox. Pippa says she has to wait a few more years before she knows what she’s going to turn into.”

Aria thought of Pippa Malone, who was a cheerful, redheaded hurricane of pranks and mischief. She couldn’t go more than ten minutes without getting into some kind of trouble now. Aria didn’t know that it would be a great thing for the universe if Pippa hit puberty and gained the ability to turn into a bear.

“This does happen sometimes,” Colby said. He looked like he was biting his lip to keep from smiling. “Kids aren’t always the best at keeping the family secrets. Most people don’t believe them if they start talking about it, but... it happens.”

“I told you about her dad,” Mattie said. She sounded betrayed that her mom hadn’t listened to her. “I thought you knew already.”

Aria dug through her memory, trying to figure out what Mattie could possibly be talking about, and then she groaned.

“Mattie, coming home from a sleepover and saying ‘Pippa’s dad’s a silver fox’ is not the same thing as telling someone about shifters.”

Ben made a strangled sound of suppressed laughter.

“I thought it was cute,” Aria said defensively. “Pippa’s mom and dad are always wrapped up in each other—I figured Mattie had just overheard Pippa’s mom calling him that.”

Mattie seemed to dismiss all this as adults being weird. She turned all her attention to Colby. “What do you change into, Marshal Colby?”