How To Train Your Werewolf

Parker Brooks did not do well at social gatherings.

As the Alpha of the Willow Creek Pack, his usual management style involved standing very still, glaring at people until they confessed their wrongdoings, and occasionally ripping the throat out of a territorial threat. None of these skills translated particularly well to his niece’s twenty-fifth birthday barbecue.

He was currently hiding behind the Weber grill, armed with a pair of stainless-steel tongs, radiating an aura of such intense, unapproachable brooding that the younger wolves were actively taking the long way around the patio to avoid his line of sight.

“Uncle Parker, you’re burning the hot dogs.”

Parker blinked, slowly turning his glare from the middle distance to his niece. Paige was wearing a paper birthday crown that was sliding precariously to the left, and she vibrated with the kind of high-frequency stress that only a newly-appointed pack Beta handling seventy rowdy werewolves could manage.

“I am charring them,” Parker corrected, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that usually made rival Alphas submit on the spot.

“You’re turning them into charcoal briquettes,” Paige shot back, entirely immune to his terrifying presence. “Please, for the love of the Moon Goddess, try to look festive? Or at least unclench your jaw. You look like you’re preparing to execute someone in the potato salad line.”

Parker let out a long, long-suffering sigh, a sound that rumbled deep in his massive chest. He was a terrifying sight by civilian standards, six-foot-three of solid, heavily scarred muscle, with piercing silver-grey eyes and a permanent scowl. Today, he was dressed in a black henley that strained across his shoulders, doing his best to blend into suburbia. He hated suburbia. It smelled like fabric softener and freshly mowed lawns.

“I am festive,” Parker grunted, flipping a thoroughly blackened hot dog with the precision of a deadly strike. “I bought the paper plates.”

“You bought black paper plates, Parker. They look like mourning tableware.” Paige dragged a hand down her face.

“They were on sale,” Parker said, as if this settled the matter of funeral aesthetics at a twenty-fifth birthday party. “The orange ones had balloons on them. I do not do balloons.”

“Nobody asked you to do balloons, I asked you to not do a wake.” “Just… stay here. Don’t intimidate the neighbors. My human friend Abby is supposed to be here any minute, and she doesn’t know about… you know.” Paige vaguely waved a hand encompassing the entire backyard of shape-shifting apex predators currently drinking cheap beer and playing hostilely competitive cornhole.

“I do not intimidate people,” Parker said flatly.

At that exact moment, a teenage pack member bumped into the grill table, took one look at Parker’s narrowed eyes, squeaked in pure terror, and practically army-crawled backward into the azalea bushes.

Paige gave him a flat, withering look. “Just flip the meat, Uncle Parker.”

Parker grumbled to himself as Paige jogged away to break up a minor dominance scuffle over a lawn chair. He hated human friends at pack events. It meant everyone had to suppress their instincts, keep their voices down, and pretend they didn’t want to tackle each other for the last pork chop.

He raised his tongs to flip another burger.

And then, the wind shifted.

It wasn’t a gradual thing. It was a violent, cosmic slap to the face. The suburban scent of cut grass and cheap charcoal vanished, instantly replaced by something so potent, so overwhelmingly sweet, that Parker’s brain short-circuited.

Vanilla. Sun-warmed sugar. And beneath that—a crisp, electric scent that smelled exactly like a thunderstorm rolling over a dry forest.

Mate.

The word didn’t come from his human consciousness. It came from the ancient, slumbering, 150-pound dire-wolf coiled deep inside his soul. The wolf, which had been perfectly content to nap and ignore the noisy party, violently threw itself against the bars of his ribcage, roaring with a primal, possessive frenzy.

MINE.

Parker’s grip on the tongs tightened so completely that the thick stainless steel bent in half with a sharp metallic snap.

He whipped his head toward the wooden side gate.

Standing there, struggling with the latch, was a woman. She was human, petite but soft in all the right places, with a messy bun of dark curls escaping a claw clip and a smudge of pink frosting on her left cheek. She was balancing a massive bakery box on one hip, muttering a string of highly creative curses as she tried to kick the gate open without dropping the box in her hands.

Parker’s heart stopped. The world around him completely desaturated into black and white, leaving her as the only source of color, the only source of gravity in the entire universe.

Go to her, his wolf commanded, completely unhinged. Claim. Bite. Protect. Fetch her a large slain elk.

Parker took a single, shuddering step forward, his eyes flashing a brilliant, luminescent silver.

Because werewolves operate on a deeply ingrained pack bond, an Alpha’s emotional state acts as a psychic weather system for the rest of the pack. When the Alpha feels mild irritation, the pack feels itchy. When the Alpha is furious, the pack feels the urge to fight.

When the Alpha’s soul suddenly snaps into a fated mate-bond with the force of a nuclear detonation, the entire pack gets the psychic equivalent of a flash-bang grenade to the frontal lobe.

Seventy werewolves froze.

Simultaneously.

The backyard went dead silent. The cornhole beanbags fell to the grass. A young werewolf mid-air into the pool simply accepted his fate and belly-flopped silently into the water. Every single set of eyes slowly, mechanically turned from the Alpha by the grill to the oblivious human woman standing by the gate.

Abby finally managed to kick the gate shut. “Take that, you stupid piece of wood,” she muttered triumphantly.

She turned around, shifting the cupcake box, a bright, apologies-I’m-late smile already forming on her face.

The smile faltered.

Seventy people were staring at her in absolute, terrifying, unblinking silence. Not a single person was moving. The only sound was the hissing of the blackened hot dogs on the grill.

Abby blinked. She looked down at her clothes to check if she was suddenly naked. She wasn’t. She looked back up. They were still staring. It was the kind of intense, predatory focus you usually only saw on National Geographic right before a gazelle had a very bad day.

“Um,” Abby said, her voice echoing in the dead quiet. “Hi? Did I… did I interrupt a cult meeting? Because I only brought two dozen cupcakes, and that doesn’t seem like enough for a proper sacrifice.” She squinted at the silent crowd a beat longer. “Also, for the record, if this is a cult, I want it on file that I only signed up for the cupcake club.”

In the center of the patio, Marcus, one of the oldest and most stoic pack elders, was holding a massive glass bowl of Paige’s famous sour cream and chive potato salad. Marcus was staring at Abby. Then he looked at Parker. Then he looked back at Abby.

Marcus’s hands slowly went slack.

Crash.

The glass bowl hit the concrete patio, shattering into a hundred pieces and sending a tidal wave of mayonnaise and potatoes across the deck.

The sound broke the spell.

Chaos erupted.

“Pollen!” Paige shrieked, sprinting across the grass like a woman possessed, waving her arms frantically. “Oh my god, the pollen count today! Wow! So high! Everyone is just… having a group allergic reaction! To the trees!”

The pack, realizing they were currently staring at their terrifying Alpha’s new fated mate like a bunch of creepy statues, immediately scrambled to look normal. It was a spectacular failure. People began loudly, aggressively talking about the weather. Two of the teenagers started fake-laughing so hard it sounded like they were choking. Marcus, the respected elder, was on his hands and knees frantically scooping potato salad into his pockets to hide the evidence.

“Abby!” Paige tackled her best friend in a desperate hug, subtly maneuvering her body to block Parker’s line of sight. “You made it! And you brought the cupcakes from the good bakery!”

“Paige, what is happening?” Abby asked, bewildered, peering over Paige’s shoulder. “Why is everyone acting like I just walked into the Matrix? And why is that older gentleman putting mayonnaise in his cargo pants?”

“It’s a family tradition!” Paige squeaked, her voice an octave higher than normal. “We’re eccentric! We’re a very eccentric, tightly-knit family who loves… squishy pockets and... he lost a bet.”

Abby raised an eyebrow, entirely unconvinced, but her attention had already drifted past the frantic potato-salad cleanup crew. It had landed on the grill.

Or, more accurately, on the mountain of a man standing behind it.

He was staring at her.

It wasn’t a polite, passing glance. It was a heavy, burning, entirely consuming stare that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. He looked like the kind of man who chopped his own firewood, built log cabins with his bare hands, and had absolutely zero sense of humor. He was rugged, dangerously handsome, and currently gripping a pair of barbecue tongs that were bent in half like a wet noodle.

Abby’s breath hitched, a completely involuntary reaction to a man who was undeniably, objectively gorgeous. But there was also something wildly intense about him. Something… feral.

“Paige,” Abby whispered out of the corner of her mouth. “Who is the guy by the grill? The one who looks like he’s trying to set me on fire with his brain?”

Paige turned, looked at Parker, and visibly swallowed hard. Parker had not moved. His chest was heaving. His silver eyes were locked onto Abby with the unwavering focus of a starving man looking at a feast.

“Oh,” Paige laughed nervously, her eye twitching. “That’s just… that’s my Uncle Parker. He’s… hosting.”

“Your uncle?” Abby’s eyebrows shot up into her hairline. The instant the word uncle registered in her brain, a massive, impenetrable steel vault slammed shut over her rising attraction.

Uncle. That meant he was family. He was older. He was a patriarch. He was entirely, fundamentally off-limits. Abby had a strict personal rule: never date a friend’s family member, and definitely never date a friend’s brooding, scary, intense uncle who looked like he could crush a bowling ball with one hand.

Suddenly, his intense stare didn’t seem smoldering anymore. It just seemed like he was deeply, awkwardly anti-social.

Oh, poor guy, Abby thought, her natural empathy completely overriding her survival instincts. He’s probably stuck hosting a party for a bunch of twenty-somethings and he hates it. Look at him, he’s having a miserable time. He doesn’t even know how to hold a normal conversation without glaring.

“Let me go say hi,” Abby said, shifting the cupcake box.

“No!” Paige grabbed her arm. “I mean, no need! He’s very busy! Burning the meat! He loves burning meat! It's his favorite past time. We don't want to disturb his process.”

“Paige, don’t be rude, it’s his house,” Abby gently pried her friend’s hand off. “I’m going to introduce myself.”

As Abby walked across the patio, the seas practically parted for her. Werewolves pressed themselves against the fence, giving her a wide berth, terrified of accidentally brushing against the Alpha’s mate.

Parker watched her approach. His internal wolf was currently doing victory laps around his psyche. She is coming to us. She approaches. Present her with a tribute. Give her the meat.

Parker’s brain, however, was experiencing a catastrophic system failure. He had negotiated peace treaties with rival packs. He had fought rogue vampires. He had managed a multi-million-dollar construction company. But as this tiny, dark-haired human stopped in front of him, smelling like absolute heaven, his vocabulary completely evaporated.

“Hi,” Abby said, her voice warm and melodic. “You must be Paige’s Uncle Parker. I’m Abby.”

She smiled up at him.

Parker stared down at her. Up close, her scent was intoxicating. He could see the pulse beating frantically at the base of her throat. He needed to speak. He needed to say something smooth, authoritative, and deeply impressive.

Say hello, you idiot, his human side demanded.

LICK HER FACE, his wolf roared.

Parker opened his mouth.

A low, vibrating, distinctly animalistic growl rumbled up from his chest. It sounded like an idling Harley-Davidson engine.

Abby blinked. She looked at his bent, mangled tongs. She looked back up at his face.

Instead of screaming and running away like a rational human being encountering a predator, Abby’s face softened with profound, misguided pity.

“Oh, wow,” she said gently, lowering her voice so the others wouldn’t hear. “Social anxiety, huh? I totally get it. Parties are the absolute worst. Especially when it’s a bunch of kids ruining your perfectly good backyard.”

Parker stopped growling. He blinked, the silver in his eyes momentarily dimming in pure confusion. Social anxiety?

“You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” Abby continued, giving him a sympathetic, utterly platonic pat on his massive bicep. Parker’s entire body went rigid at her touch. Sparks shot up his arm, settling directly in his chest.

“I…” Parker managed to croak out. His voice sounded like it had been dragged over broken glass. “I am… Parker.”

“I know,” Abby smiled brightly. “Paige talks about you all the time, Mr. Brooks. Thanks for having me over. I’ll just put these cupcakes inside so you can get back to… whatever it is you were doing to those poor, defenseless hot dogs.”

She gave him one last warm, totally asexual smile, and walked into the house.

Parker stood frozen behind the grill. His bicep still tingled where she had touched it. His mind was reeling.

Mr. Brooks.

She had called him Mr. Brooks. Like he was a high school principal. Like he was an elderly, frail neighbor.

Behind him, he heard Paige let out a squeak of despair.

The Alpha of the Willow Creek Pack looked down at his ruined tongs. The mate bond was singing in his blood, a perfect, unbreakable tether connecting his soul to the woman currently arranging baked goods in his kitchen.

And she thought he was a socially awkward, middle-aged uncle who needed a pity-pat on the arm.

Well, Parker’s inner wolf huffed, settling down in his mind with a disgruntled thump. This is going to require a tactical shift in strategy.