Chapter 1
Sabrina McAllister reset her grip on the steering wheel and maneuvered her compact slowly along the tree-lined drive to Red Canyon pack’s compound, praying that her ancient, wheezing little car would make it. The oil light was on and the temperature gauge was tuned to ‘not happy’. She’d quit her job with the health food company for the promise of more money, job security, and wonder of wonders, her own lab.
And she really, really to make enough to get a new-to-her car.
At every family gathering, she’d heard her cousin Chris rave about the pack and how great Royce Hawkins was as its alpha. Recently, Chris had been promoted to an assistant job at the pack’s new clinic run by the alpha’s mate. By all accounts, she was beautiful, talented, and had risked her life to save her mate. Everyone loved her. And now, she was pregnant. With twins!
In a werewolf pack of hunters and fishermen all with their own successful YouTube channels, Sabrina was the oddball. Her brothers (all six of them) loved to laugh at her because she hated guns and couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn if it was five feet away. She hated catching fish on hooks and hurting them. Besides, they were slimey. Her few attempts to join in family camping trips had left her either covered with bug bites or permanently damp from overturning her canoe.
Her brothers had never liked school and loved hiding her textbooks to try and make her late handing in homework. Too bad their imaginations didn’t tend to varying the choice of a hiding place. When a book would go missing, Sabrina would sigh, get the step ladder, and retrieve her book from the spider and cobweb filled cupboard over the garage freezer. In their own weird way, they all loved her, they just didn’t know what to do with a nerdy girl werewolf.
She turned another corner along the tree-lined driveway. How far back from the main road was this place?
She’d been the slightly chubby kid who wore thick glasses and knee socks that kept falling down. She carried her books everywhere, was never late for class, was always on time with homework, and destroyed the grading curve for everybody else in school. Nope, she’d never been popular in school.
College hadn’t been much better. Oh, her freshman roommate had been nice, but she was more concerned about hooking up than looking up what projects they were supposed to do. Sabrina had tried to help, but quickly tired of being taken for granted. Starting her second year, her parents agreed to pay for a single room. She’d relished the solitude and the chance to escape wry glances and whispered comments from other girls who couldn’t understand her focus.
Sabrina had a plan. Pilates and yoga had taken care of the chub. She tried veganism, but it was too much for her inner wolf. They’d compromised at a pescatarian diet. She’d eat fish as long as somebody else gutted and descaled them, and sustainable fish meant Sabrina was doing her part to help the environment. Through four years of undergrad, internships at prestigious research labs and then two years to of post doc work, she learned to cook for herself and saved money to buy her used car. Then came thesis defense and oral exams. She survived the thrashing from her thesis committee, and got her doctorate before she was twenty-five.
She’d done it. Her family applauded politely at graduation, posed for pictures for the fireplace mantel, but Sabrina knew they still didn’t get why she loved chemistry, or why she felt so driven to carve out a life away from a wolfpack. Yet, here she was now, lured by her cousin’s stories and preparing to try and find a way to fit in with Red Canyon’s pack. She’d left behind heartache and misery at her last job and almost didn’t bite at this opportunity. But Chris’ stories had been so tempting.
Analysis of the unknown was her passion. No chemical was too obscure, no identification challenge too great. They wanted an analytical and research chemist, and that was her wheelhouse. Chris didn’t say much when he’d pitched her about the job, but she definitely got the vibe it might be sketchy and more than a little dangerous.
Dangerous. I’ve got this, she thought.Dangerous was mixing Sodium Hydroxide with Phosphoric Acid. Dangerous was an uncontrolled exothermic reaction. Dangerous was donning a clean suit and full respirator unit to handle virulent pathogens. She knew how to handle dangerous.
The pack compound came into view. Sabrina braked and stared. The place was huge. Every building was log and stone built. Some several stories tall. Large windows and sky lights glinted in the late afternoon sun. Solar panels sprouted from every roof. A large green common planted with wildflowers sat in the middle. Even at this distance, she could see bees and butterflies flitting among the flowers. People walked back and forth along mowed paths. Some sat on benches, enjoying the afternoon sun. After all, it was Friday. They were probably getting out early.
She took out her phone and glanced again at the directions from the email. She was supposed to look for the security office to check in. She started driving again, and finally came to a large parking area. She slotted her car as far as possible from the others. No sense making it hard on herself if they didn’t like her and she was told to leave. Then mentally she gave herself a shake. She was more than qualified for this job. She’d have living quarters and her own lab. Some blessed privacy and quiet and no messy office drama. She would make this work.
Signage in front of the parking lot told her the security office was to the left. She gripped her briefcase, told once again herself to buck up, and marched to the left.
A tall, muscular man with whiskey brown eyes was exiting just as she tried to enter. He smiled and held the door for her. “Welcome.”
Sabrina had read about charisma, but had never felt so much of it from one person. “Uh, thank you, she said, pursing her lips so her jaw wouldn’t fall open again. She ducked her head and went inside.
Two people were arguing at the front desk.
“Vic, I know you cheated.” This from the tall man with short, curly hair and black frame glasses.
The short woman on the other side of the desk cackled. That’s what it was, a cackle. “Drake, you wuss.I cleaned you out fair and square.”
“I’m good for it,” he said grumpily, handing over a thick stack of twenties. “Now, go away happy knowing that you’ve destroyed my weekend plans.”
“Plans? You were going to buy more memory for your computer to be able to play the new expansion.”
“Well, don’t you want to play it, too?”
She fanned the bills. “Yup.One my way to buy the additional memory now.”
Laughing, she turned, and Sabrina saw she was a vampire, a heavily pierced and tatted vampire with a wide, lovely grin and impish face. Sabrina tried a smile. “Have fun shopping.”
The vampire returned her smile, saying under her breath as she passed, “He’s grumpy because he lost. Don’t let him boss you around.”
“I can hear you,” he said.
Vic laughed again and breezed through the exit doors.
Sabrina shifted her feet, hiked her briefcase bag strap farther onto her shoulder. “I’m Sabrina McAllister, your new analytical chemist,” she said in a rush, and held out her hand. Then she realized she was six feet away from the desk and nobody but Mister Fantastic could stretch an arm that far.
He was tall and rangy with the bluest eyes she’d ever seen, mocha latte skin, a thin face with high cheekbones and pointed chin. Under an open denim shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows, he wore a faded Star Trek t shirt that clung to a sculpted chest. Wisps of a moustache and goatee sprouted on his face. He saw her looking at him and rubbed his wan attempt at facial hair.
“Well, Sabrina McAllister, you’re late.” And he turned away and sat down at a desk in front of four, count ’em four, monitors. His fingers flew between two keyboards as he ignored her.
Sabrina stood stunned. She checked her watch, double checked her phone, checked the email with directions and expected arrival time. The reminder text said the same thing. Again, she looked at her watch. “Excuse me, but I’m not late.”
“You were supposed to be here yesterday.”
She checked again. Checked the date. “Friday the twenty-eighth at four-thirty. It’s four thirty-three. I came through the door five minutes ago, that’s four twenty-eight. Excuse me, but I’m not late.”
He fisted his hands on desktop and his sigh would have billowed the sails on a two-masted schooner. “I’m messing with you.”
“Oh.” So, this is how it was going to be. “Do you want me here or not?”
That made him look up. “A little teasing get to you?”
“No, just a lack of common courtesy.
He flushed, stood and stalked to the desk, retrieving several pages of paperwork from the printer and handing them to her on a clipboard. “Sign in Miss McAllister.”
She took the paperwork. “Do you have a pen?”
“You don’t?”
“Never mind. Listen, I’m sorry you lost your money—”
“Eavesdropping, too?”
“It was a little hard not to.”
He put his elbows on the counter and covered his face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right, I’m being a jerk. I was really looking forward to the trip into town. But that’s not an excuse. I’m really sorry.”
Sabrina nodded, still not mollified, then sat and filled out the paperwork. It was pretty standard pre-employment information and questions. She worked steadily, read everything and made sure she understood it all, especially the NDA and intellectual property agreement.
“Does everyone sign an NDA?”
“Everyone.”
Still grouchy. “I’m done, here,” she said, sliding the clipboard across the desk.
“Here’s the key to your cabin. Your welcome packet is printing now.” He reached and their fingers touched.
Sabrina gasped at the shock that seared her fingers and ran along her arm. He must have sensed something too, because his eyes widened. But he didn’t move his hand, instead he wrapped his fingers all around hers. His hand was warm, the palm callused. Okay, so not someone who spent all day in front of a computer.
Tingling spread across her whole body and she felt unable to move, to do anything but stare into his eyes. They stood like that, holding hands across the counter and staring at each other while the printer churned out pages that fell to the floor and someone’s phone pinged with an incoming text.
Deep in her heart, in the place where she stored all the disappointments and longings of a lonely girl and teenager, her wolf raised her head, and in a small voice whispered, “Mate.”
