She shook her head and gave him a wobbly smile. “I think I’m just on edge.”

They finished packing the storage unit, and Anna seemed to recover from whatever had bothered her. She teased Tag about his cauldron as she helped them get the last of Carrie’s things back into the unit. By the time they were headed for the hotel, Charles was convinced that Anna was fine.

Tag and Anna carried in the items they’d collected from the storage unit and Charles added them to the collection of grimoires. He sent the other two out for a walk while he reinstated his safeguards. It was more difficult than it had been the last time, which he found worrying.

They are bored, said Brother Wolf in answer to Charles’s silent grumbles.

“Who?” asked Charles.

The grimoires, said Brother Wolf. They want to come out and play.

Charles made very sure his wards were effective.

* * *

*

    THE BED SQUEAKED again and Anna giggled. She hadn’t noticed that the bed squeaked last night, but once she noticed, she couldn’t quit hearing it. After a moment—during which she failed to control herself—Charles rolled away. She worried for a minute that she’d offended him. A giggling partner is hardly flattering when you are in the middle of lovemaking. But then he reached out and pulled her all the way on top of him, while she still snickered helplessly. He held out until the bed squeaked again, and then he was laughing, too.

Eventually she caught her breath. Charles’s laughter was rarer than blue diamonds and more precious. She wouldn’t have felt prouder of herself if she’d won Olympic gold.

She crawled up his body while he was still laughing and said, “I guess I can deal with three in the bed. Me.” She gave him an openmouthed kiss and felt the laughter flee his body in favor of something more urgent.

“You.” She undulated. At the increased pressure, every muscle in his body tightened, and she felt the joy of being desired by him.

She almost forgot where she was going with this, but managed to hold on to her self-control. She leaned down and dropped her hips abruptly. He gasped—and the bed let out a shrill complaint. “And the bed.”

She sank limply to his chest and started giggling again.

“Fair enough,” he growled, rolling over, but there was a quiet joy in his eyes that made her want to bask in his gaze.

“But,” he said, “I draw the line at three of us.” As if to prove his words a lie, his eyes brightened with Brother Wolf’s laughing spirit.

And then Charles made sure that Anna didn’t have the breath to tease—or, after a minute or two, the desire to do anything but soften for him. He was a man who knew what to do with hands and mouth and skin—and he was not satisfied until she had much better things to pay attention to than a squeaking bed.

The end result left her limp, facedown on the bed, her hand in his, and the bed squeaking softly with the force of their breathing.

“You,” she said, hearing the roughness of the past few minutes in her voice, “are dangerous.”

“How so?” he asked—which was a ridiculous response from the Marrok’s hit man, possibly the most feared and dangerous werewolf in North America.

She couldn’t help but laugh again as she rolled over—and the bed squeaking didn’t help with that. She had to let go of his hand to complete the maneuver, and felt ridiculously bereft until she rolled up against his damp side.

“To my heart,” she said seriously. “To my soul.”

He pulled her tight against him. “I will defend your heart and your soul with everything in me.”

She felt her eyelids close even as her mouth turned up. “I know,” she said. “Me, too.”

“Even if you insist on inviting squeaky beds to our lovemaking,” he murmured as she drifted off.

* * *

*

THE WIND WHISTLED outside, a forerunner to what felt like a fearsome storm. The energy overhead was wild and untamed. There would be lightning and thunder with this storm, she thought.

It was time.

She slipped out of bed, half aware of the big hand sliding off her hip. She felt hollow, as if there were nothing inside her except the music.

“Not Pachelbel’s Canon,” she said out loud. It felt like it was supposed to be defiant. But no one answered.

She dressed, not worrying about noise. No one would hear her. She wasn’t sure how she knew that, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except that it was time for her to leave.

She pulled on clothing appropriate for a long hike in the mountains: jeans, hiking boots, shirt—and over that a red flannel shirt that was way too big for her and smelled like home. She fished the keys out of her purse but left the purse itself on the desk. She closed the hotel room door behind her with a feeling of accomplishment.

She got into the SUV and it purred to life. She smiled happily and petted the dashboard. How lovely to have the means at her disposal to complete her task. The smile stayed on her lips as she drove into Happy Camp.

She pulled over at the snow cone stand, which was dark and locked. But that was okay, too. She just had to wait a bit.

He knocked at her window and she opened the door.

“Hello, darling,” said Zander, leaning over to kiss her mouth, one hand at the back of her neck.

That made her stomach tighten—and not in a good way. She stiffened under his hold.

“Shh,” he urged, and kissed her again.

It still felt wrong.

“We’ll give it a little time, shall we?” he suggested, and she could have wept in gratitude. She wanted to make him happy. She just . . . she just needed time.

He released her and gave her an odd smile. “Anna,” he said. “How old are you?”

That was a stupid question, she thought. Who greets someone with a how-old-are-you?

“Jailbait,” she said primly, to punish him.

He laughed. He had a beautiful laugh. She liked to make . . . well, it had to be him, right? She liked to make . . . people laugh.

“How old is that?” he asked.

“Seventeen,” she said.

His eyes were soft and deep. Gentle. He was everything she’d ever dreamed of, she thought. Why was there some part of her that wanted to run? He wouldn’t hurt her. He wasn’t the kind of man to be afraid of. Not like . . . She couldn’t quite complete that thought, and it made her worry.

“Of course,” he said, reaching out to smooth her forehead with a thumb. It seemed as though her worries fled before his touch like birds flushing before a wolf. “Jailbait indeed.”

“How old are you?” she asked, because turnabout was fair play.

“Older than you,” he said with a wry smile. “Here, move over. I’m doing the driving tonight.”

She climbed over the center console obediently and put the seat belt on. She pressed her face into the leather and inhaled. It smelled of mint and musk and . . . something familiar. Something safe.

“What are you doing?” he asked her, a smile in his voice.

“It smells good,” she said, feeling as though she was being held, warmth against a storm. She pulled up the flannel shirt and found herself huddling down deep. Some part of her was lying low, and that part thought that the shirt was a way to hide.

“Are you cold?” asked Zander. He turned up the heat and then started forward without waiting for her answer. “I thought you might bring something waterproof. It’s going to rain tonight.”

“I don’t mind the rain,” she said truthfully, pressing her cheek against the window and staring out into the darkness. Her right leg began bouncing with her growing agitation. It was probably the storm that had her tense. There was such energy in the air.

The dash lights hollowed out his cheeks and hid his eyes. For a moment he looked like a stranger. She averted her eyes and saw the big Sasquatch statue.

“Do you think,” she said, because it felt like the right question, “that Sasquatches are as big as that statue?”

“I’ve never seen one,” he said shortly. He lied.

“I have.” Which was a lie, too, right? But it didn’t feel like a lie. She had never been in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest before.

What was she doing here? In this car with this beautiful stranger? She made a sound like a whine. There was something wrong. She wanted . . . not her dad. She wanted . . . She reached for the door handle, though they were going faster than the thirty-five-miles-per-hour speed limit.

He started singing. There were words to his song, but they weren’t in English. Or any other language she’d ever heard.

“Not Pachelbel,” she said as her hand dropped away from the door.

He didn’t quit singing, but she could hear the smile in his voice.