Chapter One
There were certain things expected of a werewolf alpha female: take care of the pack, exert leadership, change to wolf form with ease. Appease the alpha male. Dominate the females of the pack.
Filling out a dating profile for lonely women? Not on the list. Not even close.
To make matters worse, I was embarrassingly bad at filling out the profile. I chewed on the end of my pen-cap with vigor as I re-read the line of questions on the form, loathing the process with every fiber in my wolf-being.
I am a ______ seeking a ________.
My brain filled in the obvious. I am an idiot seeking a clue, or else I wouldn’t be here. Instead, I wrote down ‘woman’ and ‘man’ in the blanks, and then frowned. Could I be any more vague? I scratched them out and wrote above them ‘wolf female’ and ‘companionship.’
The next question was even worse. Body type: __________.
What the heck did they want there? Tall? Short? Female? Werewolf? Alive? Or was it what I wanted in a man? Would ‘breathing’ qualify? I resisted the urge to snarl at the paper and placed the end of the pen in my mouth again, chewing hard with anxiety.
The woman seated across from me at the small desk stopped typing and gave me a faint smile. “Did you have a question about the form?” Her gaze flicked to the mangled pen in my mouth, then back to my face again.
Oops. I kept forgetting that the employees here at Midnight Liaisons were human. No wonder she was so uncomfortable at the sight of a wolf with a chew toy. I yanked the pen out of my mouth and gave her a reassuring smile. “Just thinking.”
“About the form?”
“Yeah. I, um, want to make sure my answers are right.”
“Take your time.” She returned back to her typing with a smile of her own, and my estimation of her went up a notch. As frightened humans went, this one seemed less fazed by my snarly attitude than most. She wore a distracted expression on her round face and looked about my age. Except I was wearing jeans and a ratty Star Wars t-shirt and my hair was a stringy, unkempt mop of dark brown waves. She, on the other hand, was dressed in a baby pink sweater, black skirt, and her hair was pulled up in a long, pale blonde ponytail. She didn’t wear perfume, which allowed me to catch the barest whiff of were-cougar on her despite the cloying human scent.
Judging from the pictures on her desk (most of them of her with her arms around a very large wildcat), she was either married to a shifter or had a thing for hugging dangerous animals. I was going to guess the former, given that she worked at a shifter dating agency.
Interesting. I didn’t pay much attention to stuff outside of werewolf politics, but I didn’t realize that the Alliance – or whatever they were calling themselves – allowed that sort of thing. Humans were usually seen as…well, a bit…unwelcome. Not quite unsanitary, but not quite worthy of notice, either.
The woman glanced back over at me with a slightly wry smile that put me at ease. “I don’t show we have your pack in our database – is this the first time you’ve signed up with any Alliance-related business?”
I clasped the paper tightly, mangled pen clutched between my fingers. “The Savage pack is very…traditional. This is my first time applying at a dating agency. You’re the only one I know of that deals with shifters, and there’s no way I’d be caught dead with a…” the word died in my throat.
I was going to say ‘human’ because, well, they smelled way too human and they didn’t understand shifters. Dating one would be like dating your weird cousin Ralphie. It would reek of desperation and make you the laughing-stock of the entire community. No matter how hard up you were for prom, you never went to Ralphie-level. But then I glanced back at the happy pictures on her desk. On one, the cougar was licking her face as she smiled into the camera.
Maybe the Alliance was growing more accepting of humans? I mean, this one seemed nice. She couldn’t help that she was born human. I suppose. “First time,” I repeated. “Wolves sort of keep to themselves.”
She gave me a gentle look and nodded at the form in my hand that was becoming crumpled around the edges with my rough handling. “What did you have a question on?”
I set the paper down and pointed at one line in particular. I noticed as I pointed that I’d shredded the plastic end of the pen with my teeth. I probably had blue all over my mouth now. “Um,” I said uncomfortably, wiping at my lip with the sleeve of my shirt. “It says ‘status’ here…you mean like alpha, right?”
She blinked at me, her eyes slightly owlish in her pale face. “Alpha? Oh. No. We don’t normally ask that of our applicants.” She took the paper away from me and studied it. “It’s for ‘single’ or ‘networking’ or ‘in a relationship’ or things like that. So people know by looking at your profile what exactly that you want out of connecting with them.”
“Oh.” I stared down at the paper. Well, that was dumb. And useless. It should have been about pack status, not networking. “Single.”
She smiled at me again, that same shy, almost reluctant smile. “I don’t see why we wouldn’t ask about pack status,” she said in a brisk voice that belied her delicate, girly sweater and wide eyes. “Makes sense. We don’t get a lot of wolves, I’m sorry to say. It would be easy to update the forms though.” She seemed intrigued by the thought.
“Great,” I offered, not sure what else to say. So she didn’t get a lot of wolves. Either that was code-speak for ‘you’re the only loser wolf I have’ or she was lying to make me feel better. I sure hoped it was option two.
“Great. We can fill out the rest of the form as we go. I’ll start entering in your profile.”
I nodded as she turned back to her computer and glanced at the stuff on her desk. Bathsheba Ward-Russell, her desk plate read, and the name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it. The Savage pack was kind of cut off from the rest of the world lately.
Was I supposed to know who she was? The thought depressed me as I wiped my lip, looking surreptitiously for blue ink. Some alpha female I was. The male alpha dies and instead of me holding everyone together, I was falling to pieces and desperately seeking help at a dating agency.
She began to punch things into her keyboard. “So are you interested in another wolf?”
Not really, if I was being honest with myself. I had so much on my plate right now that I wanted to run away more than anything else. I wanted some time to myself, time to recreate myself, to be just Alice, instead of the Savage alpha. Cash’s sister. And being in this dating agency office, seeing the posters of happy couples hugging? Seeing Bathsheba’s picture of her with her arms around the cougar and the look of intense happiness on her face? Maybe I wanted something like that.
Except that I was out of options. “Yep. I need a male wolf.”
She leaned forward and her long ponytail plopped onto the papers there, sending out another wave of human scent that tickled my nostrils. “We don’t have a lot of wolves in the Alliance yet,” she murmured, her voice low, as if sharing a secret. “We’ve had some, ah, boundary issues.”
AKA, wolves didn’t play well with others that weren’t wolves. I knew that already. But I feigned ignorance. “Oh?”
“Yes.” She didn’t go on for a moment, and then added, “They’re not very fond of my husband. He’s a cougar.”
“Ah,” I said, and turned back to the monitor, dread gnawing at my stomach. I’d made a mistake coming here. No wolf in their right mind would show up at a dating agency that was ran by humans and populated by were-cats. What was I doing here? Frustrated, I grabbed my purse and began to tense my legs, rising from the chair.
“So are you looking for an alpha?” Bathsheba asked in a friendly voice. “Since you’re not interested in dating outside of the wolf-packs?”
“Yes. Do you have one?”
That coiling in my stomach wasn’t hope, was it?
Bathsheba pursed her lips and then turned the monitor screen back to her. “Well, I don’t know for sure. I can call all of the profiles and ask them their designation, and then get my webmaster to update their profiles. It might take a few hours but if you like, I can get it finished by the end of the business day. Like I said, we don’t have that many wolves in our system. Probably about a dozen.”
“That would be wonderful,” I said, getting out my debit card. “How much extra will it cost?”
She shook her head at me and gave me a faint smile. “No charge. But I do have a request.”
Oh, here we go…my hackles rose slightly.
“If you do find an alpha, I’d like to ask both of you to talk with my husband about your pack possibly joining the Alliance. We’re looking to strengthen our ties with the local wolves and can’t seem to get a toehold in the door. Nothing much, I promise. Just dinner and discussion. No pressure.”
Ugh. That had all the appeal of a timeshare sales pitch, but I desperately wanted the list of alphas she could get me. “You got it.”
Chapter Two
An hour later, my own profile was posted with a bad photo of me that looked more like a mug shot than a plea for a date, and I drove my F150 back to Little Paradise, Texas.
By the time I’d pulled the truck into the driveway of the Savage house, my phone had rang three times. I let them all go to voicemail, every single ring filling me with dread. If one of the pack needed me, they’d text. Trina had them all addicted to texting.
Only strangers called anymore. Strangers, and bill collectors.
The lights were off as I drove in, but again, no surprises. Since Cash’s death, the kids in the pack had seen my pain. Seen me struggle. Watched the house fall down around my ears. They’d found ways to be scarce, to give me time to grieve. Even Holly spent most evenings god-knows-where with baby Eddie, just so I could have alone time. They were all on skittish footing around me. As a result, my normally warm, enormous house lay cold and empty.