One

Chapter 1 – Nathan

Leaping over an obstacle in the path, I landed with a grunt but didn’t stumble, diving right back into the punishing pace I’d set for myself. My human knees were much less forgiving about the hard-packed dirt of the forest trails than I was used to. There’s a reason you run as a wolf most of the time, I reminded myself, pounding out the steps back to the main trail from the winding extension I’d been on a minute ago.

Running in wolf form had a lot of benefits, actually. Freedom,

comfort, and the smells—nothing compared to the wild, earthen aromas of the forest experienced through a canine nose. The tang of pine needles, the musky bodies of prey, the deep loam of soft ground when you rolled in it.

Micah and I came out together as often as we could get away from the office. We could drive the backroads to the reservoir in our sleep and knew exactly how many steps inside the tree-line it took to elude prying

eyes and shift safely. Sometimes, we spent whole days in the woods carousing in wolf-form, burning off the stress of another busy week.

But there was no Micah today. He was halfway across the country meeting with a client. It was just me left to man the office of the consulting business we shared and deal with the latest pack drama.

I’d tried to sleep. Alone with the chaos in my head, I’d tossed and turned, unable to settle. Around 3 a.m., I gave up and headed downstairs to my lavishly outfitted home office to do a few hours of work. Micah would be pissed when he realized I hadn’t slept, but he wouldn’t be sorry to find the latest reports in his email when he woke up.

When the sun had cracked over the horizon, I’d surrendered to the impulse to go for a run. I’d grabbed my sneakers, thrown on jogging pants and a sleeveless shirt, and driven out to the reservoir alone. Selecting the

hardest trail, I’d set a brutal pace, determined to clear my head. An hour and a half in, golden sunlight was slanting through the dense, fat-trunked

evergreen trees that towered over the path and lined its edges. A clean breeze tickled my skin and cooled the sweat that dripped down the back of my neck. It had warmed up a little, and all signs pointed to a gorgeous day.

A gorgeous day that I had absolutely no hope of enjoying once I left this trail.

You didn’t have to make it this hard, I thought, unable to stop the bitterness welling up inside me.

My father couldn’t hear me, of course. While his ghost had haunted my steps every day since he died, he was no better a listener now than when he’d been alive.

Five years. I should have been a powerful Alpha by now, not a figurehead trapped in limbo and fighting with the pack Elders under

constant threat from the neighboring pack.

What the hell were you thinking? I demanded silently. An arrow- shaped sign nailed to a tree on my left announced the trailhead just ahead,

and I slowed to a jog, then a walk. My panting breaths and pounding heart were loud in the early morning stillness. They seemed to emphasize the feeling of isolation as if my father was scoffing in disgust from beyond the grave.

He would, of course. We both knew exactly what he’d been thinking. The same thing he’d always thought, despite thirty years of

evidence to the contrary—that he could forcibly stuff me into the same mold he’d been made in. An old-school Alpha, he’d believed to his last breath that he could coerce me into doing things his way. His last will and testament had been his trump card.

Bastard, I thought, crunching across the gravel where the trailhead met the parking area. All you did was screw us over. The whole pack.

Whatever endorphins the run had flooded my system with dissolved in the face of my unrelenting resentment. Every week, the Alpha of the neighboring pack upped his threats to forcibly annex my pack and territory into his own. I fought endlessly with the pack Elders over how to handle it but got nowhere.

They steadfastly insisted that the only way to take my proper place as our pack’s official Alpha was to comply with the cryptic instructions he’d left in his will. Until I “started a family,” I could not be endorsed, and the waking nightmare that had become my life would continue.

You knew, I thought viciously as I slid into my car and started the engine. You knew full well that the only woman I’ve ever loved wants no part of me.

Pulling out onto the road, I set my jaw and pressed the accelerator to the floor. The throaty roar of the engine matched my inner growl as I turned the car toward home. I’d long ago accepted that I’d never be the son my father wanted, but crippling the entire pack in one last attempt at a power move was something I could never forgive.

Pulling into my driveway a little while later, I thumbed the button for the garage door opener, then did a double-take. It was 8 a.m. on a Sunday morning, and there were visitors waiting on my porch. What the hell had Kurt gotten up to now?

Driving into the garage, I shut off the car and stalked into the house via the side entrance. It was tempting to ignore the Elders. To just let them sit on my porch and stew as I showered off the sweat of my run and made

breakfast. Biting back the impulse, I crossed the kitchen, tossing my keys in their usual bowl as I passed.

I might not be the successor my father wanted, but I was Alpha by right, and I wouldn’t mistreat my pack just because I was in a surly mood. Not even the Elders, for all that they made my life hell. This mess made their lives just as hard as it made mine—a fact I reminded myself of every time I wanted to bang their heads together.

I turned left into the central hall and strode to the front door. Making short work of unlocking it, I pulled the heavy wood-and-leaded-glass door open and addressed the three men comfortably lounging at the glass-topped table that dominated the left-hand side of the porch.

“Gentlemen.”

“Nathan.” Phillip stood first, his wiry gray hair catching the sunlight as he nodded at me. Ancient and skinny as a rail, he had been an Elder my whole life. He had a steadfast politeness about him that spoke of an era long since passed.

I returned the nod as he passed me, stepping into the house. Daniel rose next. He nodded too but didn’t speak. The quietest of the Elders, he

looked like a stereotypical mousy accountant type, but beneath his unprepossessing demeanor, he had a spine of steel. Unfortunately for me, he’d been deeply loyal to my father, which meant that he refused to bend so much as an inch on enforcing his will for the pack, no matter how divisive it proved.

“Did you have a good run, Nate?” Gideon rose last and smiled at me as we entered the house together. Micah’s father, he boasted the same warm brown eyes as his son, and his tanned, weathered skin crinkled when he

smiled.

I dredged up a half-smile of my own, wishing for the millionth time that he could have been my father, too. “It wasn’t bad. We may as well use the office,” I told them, waving toward the open door immediately on our left. This wasn’t a social visit, and I had no intention of pretending otherwise. “What brings you three out this early on a weekend?”

“You know why we’re here, Nathan,” Phillip reproved, lowering himself onto the fat sofa near the fireplace. “The pack cannot continue without clear leadership. Kurt made two new overtures this week.” He leaned forward, propping his bony elbows on equally knobby knees and lacing his fingers together. “He will move to take over leadership of this

pack unless you step into your role as Alpha. Make a powerful statement of your position.”

“I have stepped into my role as Alpha,” I snarled, stalking across to the mini-fridge I kept behind the desk and snagging a bottle of water. “I took the mantle the day my father died! I’ve done everything an Alpha is

expected to. More, even! The only reason there’s a lack of clarity is that you refuse to acknowledge me and keep making your own decisions instead of backing mine!” I glared at him as I twisted the cap off and downed the

water.

“You cannot be formally instated as Alpha until you comply with the terms in your father’s will,” Daniel said implacably. “He required that you ‘start a family’ as a prerequisite to being acknowledged as Alpha. It is your continuing refusal to do so that keeps us all at risk.”

The condemnation in his voice raised my hackles. “We’ve been over this,” I gritted out. “I don’t have a mate, and I sure as hell won't take a

partner just to get a pup. You may have forgotten how ugly my parents’ divorce was, but I haven’t. I won’t set the pack up for new problems a few years down the road just to wriggle out of this mess now.”

“Of course you won’t,” Gideon spoke up from where he ensconced himself in the overstuffed chair that abutted the sofa. “And you’re wise not to.” He crossed one ankle over his opposite knee and steepled his fingers in a thoughtful pose I knew well. “But we’ve been thinking.”

I raised an eyebrow and, because it was Gideon, swallowed the

snarky reply on the tip of my tongue. Instead, I asked civilly, “Oh? About what?”

“We’ve gone over your father’s will again with a fine-tooth comb,” Gideon said. “We think we’ve found a loophole.”

“A loophole,” I repeated, making no effort to hide my dubiousness. We’d been dealing with this mess for five years, and they’d somehow just discovered a loophole?

“Your father required that you start a family,” Gideon explained, his steepled index fingers tapping with restless energy. “But there is no legal definition of family in this context, and Michael didn’t spell out what

starting a family entailed for the purposes of the will.” “Meaning what?” I demanded impatiently.

“We’d like you to consider having a child,” he said simply. “We’ve been over this!” I snapped. “I will not—”

“Not a mate,” Phillip interrupted. “Just a child.” I stared at him, uncomprehending.

Something that might have been embarrassment flashed across his face before his expression went earnest and determined. “There’s an agency.

Discrete. They specialize in shifter surrogacies. They could facilitate the

creation of a child—your child—with no need for a mate. Technically,” he hurried on, glancing at Daniel, “that would fulfill the requirements of your father’s will, allowing us to formally instate you as Alpha. It would also

send a clear statement to Kurt’s pack about the strength and unity of our pack.”

“No.” I could see their surprise at my flat refusal and smell Daniel’s frustration, but just because they were out of their minds didn’t mean that I was. “I know what it is to have a mother that doesn’t want you for you,” I hissed. “And I would never intentionally inflict that suffering on a child.”

Gideon’s expression softened. Phillip winced. Daniel simply

scowled at me, his irritation unabated. I glared back. They had all watched my own mother abandon me as a child and seen the gaped hole it left in my heart. How could they even think of asking me to put my own child through that?

Gideon rose. Moving to my side, he placed a fatherly hand on my shoulder. “I would never ask that of you, Nathan,” he said, sincerely.

“Believe it or not, we did consider that concern.”

I knew enough to recognize that he meant he had considered it and stood up for me on the point. My heart squeezed with gratitude.

“We think we have a solution for that, too,” he finished.

“While the agency provides surrogacy matching,” Phillip picked up the thread, “they also accommodate situations in which clients have made their own matches, providing the genetics are sound.” He cleared his throat. “We would like one of the women in the pack to serve as the surrogate.

That will provide the opportunity for the child to know her and have a healthy, if somewhat unusual, relationship with her as it ages.”

One of the women in the pack. It took precisely two seconds to run the mental math on that nice, euphemistic phrase. Picture all the women in the pack. Eliminate those related by blood, the underaged, the already- married, and the ones too old to carry a child, and there was exactly one

eligible woman left.

I felt all the blood drain from my head to the point that I actually felt lightheaded. “That …” I swallowed hard. “I appreciate your thoughtfulness, but that’s not going to be possible.”