Prologue
The Alpha makes all of the laws.
The Alpha is responsible for upholding all of the laws.
See #1.
— Pack Law
1
Evangeline woke up slowly.
The room was quiet. Peaceful. It had snowed the night before and she stayed up late, watching the big, fat flakes drift down while she waited for her mate to return.
Of course, as usual, Maddox stayed out far later than she could keep her eyes open. With the stress of everything that had been going on these last few weeks, Evangeline found it harder and harder not to just give in, pull her blanket over her head, and go to sleep. Thanks to the potion Luciana—the head witch of Coventry—brewed for her, Evangeline could finally have dreamless nights where she didn’t have to worry about Priscilla Winters trying to harm her while she was unconscious and too vulnerable to fight back.
Because, though it was now December and no one had seen or heard anything about the psychotic witch since June, Cilla was a constant threat that hung over Evangeline’s head. Maddox wouldn’t let her forget that the witch was still out there, and he vowed that, between him and his brother, the two shifters would track the witch down and have her tossed in the Cage.
Only Colton was dealing with a whole other threat currently, and Maddox decided that whisking his mate away to the solitude of the mountains was his best option while Evangeline was still at risk. Which was fine—she’d do anything that made her mate happy—except for the fact that he didn’t seem to realize how worried she was about him.
It was a relief when he slipped into their bed sometime late last night, pulling her close and nuzzling her neck, letting her know that he was home.
That he was safe.
Evangeline knew she was being ridiculous. Her mate was a big man, with shoulders that put any linebacker to shame, and sculpted muscles that she adored running her fingers over. He was also an alpha wolf shifter who could transform into an oversized grey wolf with a snap.
His fangs were longer than her pinkie finger while he was in that shape. His claws were sharper than a chef’s knife. The laws regarding Paras might have blunted them a little, but when it came to protecting his territory—his home, his pack, and his family—Maddox would stop at nothing to keep them safe. His obsessive need t0 mark his territory lines and patrol the boundaries surrounding the rustic, two-story cabin he claimed as his showed just how far he was willing to go.
Even if Evangeline wished he’d spend more time inside of the cabin with her than outside guarding over it…
Hey, at least he was in their bed now. Or, she amended, the bed that would be theirs for the foreseeable future. Their home was back in Wolf’s Creek. The bed they were lying in? The cabin in the mountains where Maddox had taken her after he claimed her nearly six months ago.
And, okay, the same cabin he brought her to after he abducted her last summer.
Cilla couldn’t get to it. It was on pack land, tucked away, secluded and protected. The group of Nightwalkers that were terrorizing the area surrounding Colt’s Bumptown, all the way to Grayson, where Evangeline used to live? She was sure they couldn’t touch them there, either.
Which was a good thing. Due to her history with a Grayson police officer, and her being mated to an Alpha’s son, the Nightwalkers were as much a danger to Evangeline as Cilla was.
Hiding out in the mountains, she was as safe as she could be—but tell that to Maddox’s wolf. The overprotective beast wouldn’t settle for less than constant patrols, marking the outer boundaries of pack land, verifying that no one else was around for miles.
Once he was satisfied, only then did her mate return to her side. The dip in the bed as Maddox’s weight joined hers on the mattress woke her up last night, alerting her to the fact that he’d finally gone to bed.
To her surprise, Maddox had reached out for her when he slipped into the bed, his hand going straight to her hip. She was wearing pajama pants that had shifted while she tossed and turned, leaving the patch open and inviting for her mate. He had barely grazed the curve of her naked skin, though, when he pulled his hand back like he’d been burned.
“It’s cold as shit out there,” he said, shaking his hand as if he was trying to get rid of the chill. “Sorry, Ang.”
The way he touched her before immediately moving away left her feeling far colder than the temperature of his skin.
He’d been doing it a lot lately. Moves just like that, where he absently went to stroke her, nuzzle her, kiss her… then didn’t. He just stopped.
Mating?
Forget it.
She kept waiting for him to make the first move. It had been ages since he even tried. When was the last time they actually mated?
Beginning of December?