“No redheads in the area?” I asked hopefully, remembering my dream again. I’d thought that was my mother, but maybe it was this girl. And if it was her, why was I supposed to meet her?
“Oh, there’s lots of redheads,” the black guy said with a grin. “But they all live in First Valley, and they’re all Cayenne’s sisters. Her parents mate like bunnies.”
“Gross,” she said, swatting his arm. I looked from one of them to the next, trying to figure out which one she was with, but it was impossible to tell.
“So, there are really wolves here?” Jose asked, looking painfully eager. It broke my heart for him. He wanted a mate so badly that I knew he’d be devastated if we’d come all this way, and found real werewolves, only to find out that his mate wasn’t here at all.
“Yep,” said the guy with the big ears. “A whole mess of them. Just follow that road and take your first right on the old logging road to get to their community.”
I thought Jose’s eyes were going to pop out of his head at the thought of a community of his kind. Even Brooklyn looked excited for probably the first time in her life.
“Thank you so much,” I said. “I really appreciate it. If there’s anything we can do for you…”
“You could shift,” the guy suggested, grinning his fool head off.
“Boy, I will slap you into next week,” Cayenne threatened, raising a hand. They all cracked up laughing, including Cayenne and the guy she’d threatened. He pulled her into a hug and kissed her, and we took that as our cue to leave.
After a few more thanks and a wave goodbye, we left the shifters and started up the mountain toward the valley where a whole community of wolves waited. My heart thudded in my chest with every step. I knew that finding even one of my pack’s mates would be incredible, but I couldn’t help but dread meeting them. After all, Alarick’s mate might be among them.
Chapter Fifteen
We almost missed the old logging road, but I felt the zing of magic again, and when we looked around, I spotted the cleared entrance into the trees. I knew we were headed in the right direction the way I always seemed to know that. A raven perched in a tree overhead, watching us as we passed.
“I think that’s a shifter,” Alarick said as the bird flew off.
“I think you’re right,” I said. “But they have a right to know who’s in their territory. And we come in peace. It’s not like we’re here to kidnap their women.”
I realized what I’d said a second too late, and I reached out and squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged. “We barely knew our father, but we know he was an asshole.”
Adolf, who was on my other side, nodded. “You didn’t say anything that the whole world doesn’t already know.”
“Yeah,” Donovan said. “You have no reason to apologize, Timberlyn. Our dad was kidnapping girls.”
“You don’t miss him at all?” I asked, studying them from the corner of my eye. We hadn’t talked about their father’s death since it happened. Alarick wasn’t one to dig into his emotional baggage, and I wasn’t super close with the others, though we were comfortable with each other now.
Alarick shrugged. “There’s nothing to miss.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He was never a father to us,” Donovan said quietly. “He could have chosen differently, but he put us in foster care when we were little, and he didn’t come back for us until he needed something.”
I could feel some anguish coming from Donovan, even if he talked tough. I couldn’t tell about the other two. I could feel Alarick sending calming vibes to his brother through their bond, but I couldn’t tell if he cared about his father at all, or just his brother. I wasn’t inside the bond the way the others were. I could feel it, but it was different for me. Like the dominance display, somehow it didn’t really affect me.
“Look, it is what it is,” Adolf said. “Our dad was a selfish prick. He said he was coming back for us when we were kids, but it took eight fucking years for him to show back up.”
“And in that time, he had time to get rich, buy up a bunch of land around Ravenwood, and basically adopt Vance and Jose here,” Donovan added bitterly. “So obviously it wasn’t too dangerous for him to come back for us. He just cared more about making new pups than taking care of the ones already in existence.”
“I’m sorry, man,” Jose said. “If it makes it any better, we had no idea you existed until you showed up with Mr. Wolf at Ravenwood.”
“Exactly,” Alarick said. “And he didn’t bother to change that once he got us back. He could have still been a father to us, but he had other priorities. Don’t worry, I won’t be like that.”
He slid an arm around me and squeezed, and I almost lost my breath. Shit. Alarick was thinking about babies already?
“Getting a little ahead of ourselves here,” I said. “Let’s just see if your mate is here before you think about pups.”
“My mate is right here,” Alarick said, bending down to nuzzle the top of my head as we walked.
“Ugh, you two make me gag,” Brooklyn snapped.
“I’m okay with it,” Adolf said, throwing an arm around her shoulders. “We can watch.”
“Yeah,” Brooklyn said, fluttering her lashes at him. “Maybe you can pick up some pointers.”
“Hey,” he protested, and we all laughed, glad for the change to lighter topics.
A minute later, we emerged from the woods into a long, rectangular clearing. A small crowd gathered at the far end around a pavilion, picnic tables, and a huge
