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  Christ, Rick could remember all this like it was yesterday. He could practically smell the peonies.

  “That’s where she saw them,” Lucy went on. “Behind the house. There were so many of them. Werewolves in their wolf form, lurking. She never told you about it. She just returned to the porch with a bushel of peonies in her hand.”

  Whitney had crept up behind Rick and it was now that she asked, “Do you believe us?”

  “How many are there?” he asked Lucy.

  And she breathed, “Hundreds.”

  ***

  As Rick drove Lucy Cooper back to Angel’s Food to deposit her in her apartment up above and pick up his take-out order, which was certainly stone cold by now, Reece jerked her hand out of Troy’s grasp from where they sat beside one another on her living room couch. The purple amethyst crystal fell to the wooden floor and rolled under the coffee table.

  The vision she’d shared with Troy had started out as light and bright as the essence of pure love itself. In it, Reece experienced herself as a star—tremendous and kinetic and as bright as the center of the sun—and Troy as utter darkness. She was the light to his dark, and he was the strength to her vulnerability. It was a vision of symbols and metaphors and feelings, and yet it was all crystal clear.

  But the vision had taken a turn for the terrifying. It had become too real. No longer unfolding as feelings and symbols and colors, Reece had been suddenly swallowed into what had felt like another dimension, a parallel universe, as real as her own life, as believable as reality itself.

  In it, Troy had been some kind of beast, some kind of monster, but she’d realized it too late. She’d already run towards him, something deadly chasing after her, gaining on her, at her heels. She’d careened into Troy’s strong arms just in time, the wilderness of Yellowstone darkening all around them. But when she’d glanced up to kiss Troy, that’s when she’d seen him transform, mutate, into some terrifying creature.

  “I’m different, Reece,” he said, having picked up the amethyst crystal from where it had rolled under the coffee table on the floor. “Could you see it?”

  “Yes,” she breathed.

  “I’m not the only one,” he confided.

  “What are you telling me?”

  “There’s more to Devil’s Fist than meets the eye,” he repeated. “There are more like me. Others who are different. And there’s one of us who’s gone rogue.”

  “The wolf that attacked and killed Holly?” she asked, putting the pieces together.

  Was he telling her that he was some kind of wolf himself? A werewolf? And that he wasn’t the only one in the Fist?

  “Yeah,” he said, taking both of her hands in his.

  She recoiled when the amethyst touched her skin and Troy set the crystal on the coffee table, because what he was about to do wasn’t about that—wasn’t about visions or warnings or the harrowing truth about this rural, Wyoming town.

  When he took hold of her hands again, lacing their fingers together and angling his dark eyes down into hers, she completely understood what he was asking of her, even though he hadn’t used a single word.

  Troy was asking her to trust him.

  He wanted her trust.

  Needed it.

  “Troy…” she began as she searched his dark eyes, hoping to peer into his soul, but it seemed too deep down to connect with. “Are you telling me there are werewolves in Devil’s Fist?”

  He nodded slowly, gauging her reaction all the while, and said, “And I’m one of them.”

  “This is craz—”

  Troy silenced her with a kiss, his firm, warm lips having crushed over her mouth.

  The next thing she knew, those large, warm hands of his were in her brown hair, fingers raking through until he was holding her at the nape of the neck with one hand, the fingertips of his other stroking down the length of her tender throat.

  She could feel her entire body melting into him. She murmured out a soft moan as his tongue began gently probing, gently exploring the soft curves and folds of her lips, mouth, tongue.

  Soon he was holding her in his strong, muscular arms. She rested her hands on the firm wall of his chest, as he deepened their kiss.

  “What if you really are the light to my darkness?” he asked, pulling back so that he could hold her and search her eyes.

  She couldn’t be entirely sure of what he meant, and she didn’t know how to respond.

  All she could do was smile and bring her lips to his once again.

  Kissing Troy was the only thing that made total sense.

  Chapter Eleven

  TROY

  It was like tasting a flower—kissing Reece.

  How many times had he imagined this? How many nights had he stayed up late in bed, unable to sleep, because he was envisioning how she might feel and taste and smell and sound if he ever got to experience a moment like this one? How many times had he hoped that renting a DVD from the library would ultimately result in this very moment?

  Countless.

  And yet, Troy had to wonder if he’d made a grave mistake.

  He’d told her that he was a werewolf. It was forbidden among the werewolf pack to tell the mortals of Devil’s Fist that they existed. But he’d disregarded the vow.

  There was only one reason to ever tell a mortal. If that mortal happened to be destined to be a werewolf’s one true mate, then it was a necessary step in the bonding process. But Troy had placed the cart way in front of the horse. In fact, because his father wasn’t alive to guide him with his gift of foresight, Troy couldn’t even be sure if there was a horse. He wanted Reece to be his one true mate. He hoped for it. But he didn’t know for sure…

  …and he’d just told her a secret that could potentially get him exiled from the pack, from the Fist, from all of Wyoming.

  As he deepened their kiss, he remembered Grandmother Sasha’s cryptic words, that the girl with red glasses would light his way. There was only one girl with red glasses and it was definitely Reece Gladstone. But did lighting his way imply that she really was the light to his darkness, his other half, his one true mate? Sasha hadn’t elaborated or clarified, and Troy had been left to guess.

  Emotions could be clouding his rationale. Who could be rational when feelings like the ones he’d begun to have for Reece were taking root in his heart?

  Reece murmured out the softest, most delicate moan, her lips loosening against his. He felt her melting into his arms and held her tightly, his large hand cradling the nape of her neck, fingers tangled in her fragrant hair, his other hand scooped around her hip and supporting her lower back.

  He breathed into the kiss, breathing her in and groaning softly himself on each exhale.

  If he’d scared her, she wasn’t acting like it. In fact, she was acting like a woman who might like to go to bed with him.

  He felt his body stiffen—hard—in his jeans at the thought.

  Reece had never been to bed with anyone before, not during her high school years like a lot of the other girls in the area, and not throughout her four years away at college. Troy would’ve smelled it if she had, that slightly altered anatomy between the legs—broken hymens. He knew the scent. She’d also remained single since graduating with her bachelor’s degree.

  She was a virgin, which made him hold her in the highest regard. It also made him seriously hesitate to scoop her up into his tattooed arms, carry her into the bedroom, and have his rough way with her, no matter what kinds of noises she was inadvertently tempting him with.

  Shifting on the couch, he held her pretty face in both of his large hands and studied her as her eyes gradually fluttered open, wondering where their kiss had gone.

  He groaned at a low whisper, “How come you’ve never been with a man?”

  “How do you know I’ve never been with a man?” she asked, her green eyes popping wide.

  As he tilted her head and brought his mouth to her tender neck, he breathed, “I can tell.”

  “You can?”

>   “I can smell it,” he clarified before delivering another soft, moist kiss to her sweet-smelling throat.

  “What does it smell like?”

  “You’re answering a question with a question,” he pointed out as he searched her eyes, wondering if kissing her had been enough to ignite his rightful gift of foresight. If she really was his one true mate, it might have. Might. The only guarantee, however, would come if they went to bed together and bonded in the most traditional sense of the word. “You were never curious? Tempted?”

  “It never felt right,” she whispered as her slender fingers traced their way down the firm wall of his chest. When she reached his belt buckle, she began fidgeting with it playfully, grazing her fingernail across its leather surface and hooking her index finger under the loop. “I could have. I’ve had opportunities. But I knew if I went through with it, it would be sex for the sake of having sex. I guess I never knew I wasn’t like that, one of those types of girls, until I was faced with the option. Not that there’s anything wrong with women exploring their sexuality and having sex for fun and only fun,” she quickly mentioned, staring up into his dark eyes for a beat. Troy could feel his mouth tug into a proud, approving grin. “It’s just not for me. It wouldn’t feel right.”

  He brought his lips to hers and kissed her, pressing their mouths together in a motionless, prolonged kiss. He breathed her in, savoring her sweet, flowery scent, and feeling Reece breathe in the musk of his skin as well.

  When he pulled back to look at her again, he asked, “Does this feel right?”

  She confessed in a whisper, “It does.”

  “What about this?” he asked as he caressed his large, warm hand across her taut stomach, slipping under the hem of her shirt.

  She let out a quivering exhale, her stomach tightening and sucking in from the light tickle.

  “That feels right, too,” she confessed.

  “And this?” he asked, taking it one step further, as he slowly and cautiously grazed his hand up against the hot wall of skin that was her slender torso until his large hand was cupping the perky shape of her bra-encased breast.

  The quivering exhale she let out this time sounded like a melting moan, and Reece went loose in his arms, her eyes drifting shut.

  It wasn’t until his hand traveled down the length of her in the direction it had come that she responded, saying, “Everything about you feels right. Why is that?”

  She was looking at him now. She laced her fingers through his, preventing him from exploring her body any further. But holding Reece’s hand was more than enough for Troy. If all he could do for the rest of his life with her was hold her hand, he’d feel like the luckiest man in the Fist.

  “I can’t be sure, not yet,” he replied, speaking truthfully but vaguely. “But it feels right to me, too. Without a doubt.”

  “I’ve wondered about you,” she told him, sitting up a little straighter. “I remember when I first took notice of you, that day on Main Street when you punished those boys for cat-calling me. It piqued my interest and yet, the way you defended me that day, and protected me… it didn’t really even seem about me.”

  He let out a little chuckle. “Why is that?”

  “Because you didn’t even look at me,” she offered quickly. “I honestly thought they owed you money or something.”

  Troy had to laugh at that.

  “From that moment on,” she went on to explain, “it was like I could feel you were with me at all times. Even when you were nowhere in sight, I felt this sense of protection, like if anything happened, you’d probably appear and save me.”

  “I would have,” he breathed into her ear before he began to nibble and kiss the lobe, work his way down her neck again, smelling the sweetness of her flowery skin.

  “But you never asked me out?” she challenged.

  “I think you know the answer to that,” he said cleverly.

  “Well, I definitely do,” she shot back and rephrased the question as a statement, “you never asked me out. You started coming into the library, and still you never asked me out.”

  “I had to start coming into the library,” he told her easily, “because that’s where you work.”

  “Very funny,” she said dryly. “Why now?”

  “Hmm?” he murmured, having become distracted by the elegant curve of her collarbone, which he was tracing the length of with his fingertips.

  “Why did you come into my life now?” she pressed. “Was it only because of what happened to Holly?”

  “Yes,” he said with no further explanation.

  So, Reece had to guess, “You didn’t want what happened to her to happen to me? And you wouldn’t be able to prevent it unless you got very close to me?”

  “See, if you already know all the answers, there’s no reason to ask.”

  “But I’m asking you, Troy.”

  Her tone had gotten serious so he sat back and looked her in the face, giving her his full attention rather than applying it to the gorgeous lines and curves of her beautiful body.

  He sobered up from the spell of her body, drew in a deep breath, and said, “I don’t think the rogue werewolf meant to attack Holly van Dyke.”

  “You think he meant to get me?”

  “That’s what I think, yes.”

  “Why me?”

  “I think he knows, or can sense, what you mean to me.”

  “But when it attacked Holly, you and I hadn’t even gotten together yet. We hadn’t even spoken beyond a few conversational exchanges in the library,” she pointed out.

  “Which leads me to believe that this rogue werewolf might be more powerful than I’ve been giving him credit for.”

  She sighed out a groaning breath, her eyes pinching shut, then grumbled, “I can’t believe there are werewolves in the Fist.”

  “There all werewolves all over the Continental US, some in Alaska, too. There aren’t any in Hawaii or Puerto Rico, unless I’m mistaken,” he added with an air of humor that Reece didn’t appear to appreciate.

  “I write about these things,” she said as if to herself, like she was trying to reason out some strange magic that refused to add up. “But it’s fiction.”

  “Remember when I told you truth is stranger than fiction?”

  “I’m familiar with the expression,” she allowed. She fell into deep, contemplative silence, her brow furrowing for a long moment. “I think I need to see it.”

  “See what?”

  “See what?” she mocked in a taken-aback echo. “What do you think?”

  “You want to see me shift?” he asked.

  Now it was Troy’s turn to be taken aback.

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Of course, I believe you,” she was fast to assure him, but the look that came over her expression next was one of doubt. “Well, no, maybe that’s not true. Why would I believe you straight off the bat?”

  “Why would I make something like this up?”

  “I have no idea,” she admitted and they both slipped into a silent standoff. “Don’t tell me I’ll have to wait until the next full moon.” When he didn’t immediately reply, she blurted out another question that seemed to come from out of nowhere, but was a highly intuitive thing to ask. “Why would a rogue werewolf want to go after someone who matters to you? What would make you a target like that?”

  He figured he might as well tell her, even though he knew that if she was struggling to wrap her head around the existence of werewolves, it would be an even tougher pill to swallow that he was the newly crowded werewolf king of all of Devil’s Fist.

  “Let’s just say, I’m the leader of the pack.”

  “You are?”

  “It’s a bloodline thing. I’m the oldest Quinn brother,” he told her.

  “So all of you Quinns are…?”

  “That’s right. My mother and grandmother, too.”

  “Who else in the Fist is a werewolf?” she asked.

  To which he immediately countered, “How mu
ch time do you have?”

  She smiled and teased, “All night, my dear.” But then it hit her and she exclaimed, “Is all of Devil’s Fist… Is the whole town overrun with werewolves? Has it always been like that, and I’ve never known? My whole life I’ve lived in the Fist, and I never suspected a thing.”

  “And all of us would like to keep it that way.”

  “Hmm,” she murmured thoughtfully.

  “There’s never been a single incident, not in all the centuries our pack has lived here—”

  “Centuries?” she asked in astonishment.

  “Never an attack,” he went on, “until now. More so than anything, my pack has kept the peace and protected the town in all the ways the sheriff can’t.”

  “And Rick doesn’t even know it,” she commented. “No one does.”

  “We’d very much like to keep it that way, which is why it’s my top priority to find the rogue werewolf as soon as possible,” he reiterated.

  “Do you suppose,” she began, diving into her next question, “that what happened to Angel Mercer was because of this… what have you been calling it? A rogue werewolf?”

  “I don’t know if the rogue werewolf had anything to do with what happened to Angel,” he admitted. “But it does strike me as odd that she’d have no memory of anything. Of course, in terms of what I know about my pack and werewolves in general, only certain ones can enter the mind of a mortal, compel them to act as their puppet, and leave them with no memory of the event.”

  “Certain ones?” she questioned.

  “The Royals,” he stated. “Those within the throne’s immediate bloodline.”

  “Are you a Royal?” she asked even though the look on her face told him that she’d put two and two together, Troy being the head of the pack and all, and had arrived at the correct answer herself.

  “Yes.”

  “And you dress like that?” she asked, and he had to laugh.

  “I’m keeping a low profile, if that’s alright with you.”

  “Why would a Royal have gone rogue?” she asked like a detective.

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure. Which is why I’m not sure that what happened to Angel had anything to do with the werewolves of Devil’s Fist. My suspicion has been that a Younger is responsible for what happened to Holly, and that what happened to Angel is an entirely separate, unrelated incident.”