Winter’s Knight
There is something in the forest around L’Ange that is making the animals nervous. In fact, they are running by Tucker Flynn’s windows at all hours of the night and day and no matter what anyone says, it isn’t normal. Of course, neither is Tucker being stuck on the sprawling grounds of the shifter sanctuary in Maine, in the dead of winter. He just wants to go back to Phoenix . . . if only his alpha would let him.
Tired of his concerns being dismissed, or worse, told that he’s flat-out wrong, Tucker sets out on his own, despite a broken ankle, to find proof of his suspicion—that there’s an apex predator, something far more menacing than any shifter at L’Ange, skulking in the woods behind his cabin. When everything goes sideways during his search, and he ends up passing out while staring into the face of a giant elk, only to wake up days later on a bed of furs, gazing into the eyes of the most gorgeous man he’s ever seen, the course of Tucker’s life changes in an instant. He has just found his mate. Now all he has to do is accept that he’s not the loser he’s always believed he was.
One
“There’s a predator in the forest.”
Kelvin MacCurdy, werewolf, former Fenrir, now in charge of security of the shifters taking shelter on L’Ange, squinted at me. Clearly, from his pained expression, he thought I was nuts. But when he spoke, he was nice enough not to say it outright.
“Aye. There are many on the property, natural as weel as shifters,” he agreed.
His thick Scottish accent only added to his seeming irritation at the moment, even as it was warm at the same time.
“I meant, I think there’s something out of the ordinary here, because there were wolves running by my windows last night. Out in the open,” I stressed to him. “Actual wolves ignoring the deer and elk they outran to get to the other side of the preserve.”
He grunted.
“Why won’t you believe me?”
“Weel, I ken that there be wolves on the preserve.”
He wasn’t listening to me. Hearing the words? Absolutely. But not taking me seriously. And I understood why. It was a large plot of land. Trying to convince him there was, in fact, an issue on the small piece of it my cabin occupied wasn’t going well.
L’Ange was, first and foremost, a château, a huge, rambling manor built before the Revolutionary War for the Howell family of Corbett, Maine. It had forty rooms, and the first floor housed one of the smallest yet most extensive museums in New England. Along with the paintings and antiques, there was a tapestry gallery, an enormous library, a grand salon, and a massive ballroom easily as long as a football field.
Unlike the first, the second floor wasn’t for the general public. It was for private tours instead, a reservation and guide required, restricted to scholars, authors, and researchers. There were books and maps in the temperature-controlled Victorian parlors, which could only be accessed with permission and supervision, some treasures handled exclusively by the staff.
The third floor was where the guest rooms were, as well as the private residence of Roman Howell, owner of L’Ange and mate of my alpha, Quade Danas. On the fourth floor of the château sat a rooftop garden and courtyard, and situated around that were three—originally four—private quarters accessible by a covered staircase that could be reached from the third floor, inside the house, or from the outside by a treacherous series of steep, worn, always damp, and in the winter, icy, narrow stairs without a railing. They led either to the roof or to the widow’s walk that, if you missed your step, would drop you like a rock into the roiling deep of the Atlantic.
The house—château—was impressive, but the estate was more than just the building; it was also the immaculately kept grounds closest to the massive structure and the hundred acres of lush forest that bordered a nature preserve.
That was what humans knew and saw.
Shifters like myself saw a place that offered sanctuary. For single shifters, the guest suites now had four to a room, and the many scattered cabins beyond the wildflower gardens along the river, planted there to deter prying eyes, had been erected to house families. The beds inside the mansion, as well as in the cabins near the forest, were meant for those who needed shelter and assistance of one form or another.
L’Ange was a place any shifter could come to, both predator and prey, and find refuge. It was a place to find your footing before venturing back out into the world to be reunited with a pack, or where inquiries could be made to be accepted into a new one. It was a place to come, first and foremost, for physical safety and a roof over your head; second, for food, clothing, and a fresh start; and finally, if needed, justice, rehabilitation, and, for many, reaching out to their families for reunification.
Quade and Roman had created the haven, and all were welcome. What had been working seamlessly for the past two years was a natural ebb and flow of people arriving and people leaving. Only a few lived permanently at L’Ange. I was not one of them. I was visiting, and it had not been my choice.
“I’m not crazy,” I assured Kelvin, which of course made me sound like a lunatic.
“No,” he placated me, “I’d nae thought such.”
I nearly growled, which would have been a mistake. Even in his human form, the man could snap me like a twig. If I shifted to my jackal, and he to his wolf, I was dog food, no question. “I just—I need you to check the forest for a predator,” I insisted.
“Aye,” he agreed, giving me the same look I’d been getting from everyone since I arrived two weeks ago.
I’d been in Yuma picking up a runaway a couple of days after New Year’s. She’d gone to a party, decided she didn’t want to go home, and called her mother to give her the news. Renau Santos, our beta, had sent people to find her as soon as he was alerted by her parents. The moment the news reached him and he was apprised of her whereabouts, he’d tasked me with picking her up. Since Quade wasn’t back yet—so I wasn’t working in my capacity as his guardian—I was the logical choice. When Quade, my alpha, was present, I was basically his bodyguard. When he wasn’t, I was at the disposal of my beta, and since we were friends as well, as soon as Renau called, I was in the car.
What I didn’t know, which was why I’d gone alone instead of asking my fellow guardian and buddy Garrett Lum to go with me, was that the local coyote alpha—and really, I had no idea coyotes even had alphas—had claimed the girl for his own.
The girl, Michelle Reider, made it back home and alerted our beta that I, Tucker Flynn, the anpu, guardian of the alpha, had saved her, but she was certain I’d been killed during the rescue. There were far too many coyotes for me to have fought off, even with how much bigger I was. By the time reinforcements arrived, no one remained at the bar. They’d all left and abandoned what was left of my body in the desert for the animals—the actual animals—to finish off.
It took three days, I was later told, to find me.
Once my body was discovered, I was brought to our pack doctor, Phyllis Seaborne, and she did everything medically possible that could have been done to heal either a human or a shifter. But having slipped into a coma, she was certain I was on the verge of death. There was nothing more to be done. Renau called Quade, his alpha, my alpha, and delivered the news he’d kept from him—that one of his two guardians would not make it through the night.