Timber Wolf (Virtue Shifters Book 1)

  TIMBER WOLF

  Copyright © 2020 by Zoe Chant

  All Rights Reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author, mizkitink@gmail.com.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Artist: Ellen Million Graphics

  For Mabs, of course!

  Timber Wolf

  a Virtue Shifters novel

  Zoe Chant

  ONE

  Renovating a farmhouse and living off the land wasn't nearly as romantic as Mabs Brannigan had thought it would be.

  She'd inherited the house from a great-aunt she hadn't even known existed. It dated from the early 19th century—the house did, not the aunt, although apparently she'd been pretty old, too—and it looked like Aunt Doris had only lived in two rooms of the rambling old house for...a long time now. And neither of those rooms, it turned out, was a bathroom. Mabs had used an outhouse more in the past four months than she had in her entire life, including that one unfortunate summer camp when she was thirteen.

  Aunt Doris had apparently kept the place running on hope and a smidgen of rent from a couple of acres where a neighbor kept her horses. But that wasn't enough to renovate on, and Mabs wouldn't have jumped at the chance for a falling-down farmhouse in upstate New York if she'd been flush with money. Until the beginning of the summer, when she and her son had moved to the farmhouse, she'd been waitressing in the city.

  Now she was waitressing in Virtue, the small town a few miles away from the house, which was—honestly, it was better. The people were nice, and she'd made enough friends already that usually someone was willing to mind four-year-old Noah while Mabs was at work. It helped, of course, that he was mostly an outrageously charming kid, which definitely wasn't just her biased-mommy opinion on the matter.

  One of those friends—Sarah Ekstrom, who effectively ran a daycare out of the local library—was on her way over to the house right now to watch Noah for a while so Mabs could get some renovation work done without a small child's 'help'.

  Standing alone in the kitchen, Mabs pushed down a stab of panic and tears. Think about the good parts, she told herself. There was so much good about the old house. If she could just get it renovated....

  Which she never would now, because the contractor had just skipped town with the last of her money.

  She should have known better than to pay him in cash. She should have known...she didn't even know what she should have known. Mabs clutched her phone, trying not to think about the call from the hardware store, asking when she was going to pay them for the new copper fittings for the sink. A wave of dizziness had come over her as she'd whispered, "But I sent Chad over on Tuesday with the payment."

  The store owner's voice had gone a terrible combination of sympathetic and determined as she'd told her Chad had never shown up. Mabs whispered a promise to pay her soon, then called around to the kitchen store, the cabinet-makers, the electrician and the plumber.

  Nobody had seen her contractor since Monday, when they'd given him final quotes. Quotes that he'd brought back to Mabs, who had handed over the cash, thanked him for doing so much for her, and...

  ...and never seen him again. It was Saturday now, and nobody in town had seen Chad since Monday night. His apartment was cleared out, his car was gone, and Mabs...

  Mabs was screwed, and not in the good way.

  It was gonna be okay. It had to be okay. She and Noah didn't have anywhere else to go. She would figure it out, because she had to. Right now it was only mid-afternoon—she'd worked an early shift at the restaurant—so she could get a lot done before evening overtook her. Even if she was winging it. YouTube and do-it-yourself books could carry her a long way, but enthusiasm and tutorials didn't make up for a total lack of experience.

  Panic surged through her again and she forced it down a second time, swallowing against the tightness in her throat.

  "MAMA!" Noah came pounding down the stairs like a herd of elephants, threw the kitchen door open, and flung himself at her with the strength of a small tornado. Mabs caught him, staggered, and despite everything, laughed as he seized her face in both hands so he could look at her intently from five inches away. "Mama I'm hungry can I have a cheese sandwich and—" his blue-eyed expression went cunning— "pickles?"

  Mabs squinted at him, trying not to smile. "I thought you didn't like cheese."

  His expression went shiftier, gaze sliding back and forth as if searching the kitchen for an explanation that would satisfy his suspicious mother. "I might now."

  "Or you might just want a bunch of pickles."

  Noah's mouth and eyes both went perfectly round. "Mama! What a good idea!"

  Mabs burst out laughing and put him down on the rough-hewn plank floor that had been worn smooth by time. "I'm a genius, aren't I?"

  "Soooooper-genius!" Noah put his arms out and 'flew' with the drawn-out word, unconcerned with his safety as he careened around the kitchen. Mabs made a series of cut-off warning sounds as he ran, never quite actually damaging either himself or anything in the old kitchen.

  They'd been in the house four months and Mabs hadn't quite gotten over the kitchen yet. It was amazing. Antiquated, maybe, but amazing. It—and most of the house—was still loaded with original features, if only she could fix everything around them. Aunt Doris had installed an Aga cooker in the 1940s, which made it not exactly original-to-the-house, but certainly antique. It still worked like a charm, even if Mabs had needed a crash course in using it, and it heated up both the whole kitchen and the bedroom above it, which would be useful, come winter, if she couldn't get the rest of the place fixed.

  The fridge—also from the 40s—probably used more power than half of Virtue, but it was genuinely gorgeous in an obviously authentically retro way. Mabs pulled its door open, narrowly missing Noah, who continued bouncing around like a rubber ball, and got out a giant jar of cucumber chips. Noah skidded to a halt, complex disappointment dashing across his small face. "Don't we have any of the long ones?"

  "Nope. I don't like dill pickles."

  "I would eat them!" The degree of urgency placed in those four words could have powered the fridge for a week.

  "Yeah, but what would I eat?"

  Noah, disdainful as only a child could be, said, "Cheese sandwiches."

  Mabs laughed. "But I only like them with pickles!"

  Her son's eyebrows drew down as he considered this conundrum. Mabs, fishing pickles into a bowl with a fork, pointed at the kitchen door with her chin. "Close that, why don't you, so the heat stays in?"

  Noah bounced over, closing the door with authority and shutting the rest of the house away. There were four rooms downstairs: the kitchen and a dining room behind it, and, across the hall, a large living room that the door stuck on, which didn't matter because the roof also leaked, as did the windows, and...yeah. There was a lot to do there.

  Behind the parlor, across from the dining room, was what she'd learned had probably been a birthing room—basically a downstairs bedroom that a new mother, the elderly, or the infirm could use. She'd barely been in it; there was too much to do just to make a few rooms really livable, never mind trying to spruce up extra spaces.

  Another kitchen door led out to what she guessed had been a buttery, once upon a time. It still had the butter churn, and Mabs had dreams of doing something with it, someday.

  Someday.

  Behind that was a wh
ole other extension to the house that barely qualified as more than a ruin. All that functioned in it was a small, unpleasant toilet area that they used at night, but the outhouse was preferable during daylight hours. Mabs didn't let herself think about that side of the house at all, or the attic over the parlor side of the house, which she hadn't even ventured into, yet.

  But if she opened both the kitchen doors and the parlor door she could see the whole length of the front of the house with its original wooden floors, and the narrow stairway leading up to five bedrooms, with the attic above three of them. It was a genuinely amazing old place. All she needed to do was get it suitable to really live in, and then she and Noah would be...safe.

  She shook herself as she got the pickles. They hadn't been unsafe. It was just that Noah's father...

  Mabs made a sound under her breath. Noah's dad wasn't interested in being a dad. He just didn't want Mabs to move on, or have a life, or be certain of any choices she made, ever, unless he approved of them.

  He gaslit you, she reminded herself firmly. There was nothing wrong with the decisions she made. Noah's father had just...taken her confidence away.

  Her cell phone rang as she put Noah's pickles on his plate. She sat him, and them, at the long wooden table that sat beneath one of the house's many windows, and answered with a breathless, "Yeah?"

  "Mabs, hi, this is Sarah, look, a friend I haven't seen in a while stopped by just before I left the house. He's into old houses and I was wondering if it'd be okay if he came with me? I bet he can tell you things you never knew you never knew about Doris's place."

  Mabs bared her teeth in what she pretended was a smile. "Maybe he can tell me how to fix the whole place up on a budget of zero dollars and no cents. Or maybe that's no sense...."

  "Mama?" Noah looked up from his pickles, innocent gaze concerned. "Are you sad, Mama? Are you mad? You can use your words and tell me," he said encouragingly.

  Mabs blurted a laugh and went over to kiss the top of his curly head. "I'm okay, baby. Thank you. I love you."

  "I love you too." Noah offered her a pickle, as proof. She accepted it, because what kind of hard-hearted monster wouldn't?

  "Thank you, honey."

  "You're welcome," both Noah and Sarah, in Mabs's ear, said. She laughed again, and Sarah said, "We'll be there soon. It's gonna be okay, Mabs."

  "Yeah." Mabs's voice was hoarse, but she nodded. "I'm sure it will be."

  "Is that Auntie Sarah?" Noah asked hopefully. "Is she coming over to play with me?"

  Mabs said, "She is," as she hung up. "She's bringing a friend, too, but he wants to look at the house, not play with kids."

  Noah's expression said what he thought of that, but, reasonably content with his pickles, he didn't complain. Mabs got a glass of water and stood in front of the sink, trying to get the tap to stop leaking and trying to keep her eyes from starting to leak. Her phone rang and she startled badly enough to fumble it, and had to take it from the bottom of the wet sink to answer the unknown number with a shaky, "Hello?"

  "Hi, my name is Preston Cole with Cole Realty. May I speak to Mary Anne Brannigan, please?"

  "This is she."

  "Great, hi, Ms. Brannigan. Look, I don't want to waste your time, so let me get straight to the point. I'm—"

  "Representing the developer who wants to buy the farm?" Mabs sounded weary to her own ears. There had been a lot of paperwork with the inheritance of the farmhouse, and she'd gone through it all slowly, sometimes struggling to understand what it meant. One part that hadn't been hard, though, was the cash offer from some development company who wanted to build a mall or something where her house was.

  Mabs had thrown it away. Aunt Doris's house was hers now, and she was determined to keep it. Businessmen in expensive suits had come sniffing around a couple of times already and she'd run them off, but Preston Cole, and Cole Realty, were local. She guessed they were trying the soft touch now.

  "I was Doris Brannigan's realtor," Preston said with what sounded like genuine sympathy. "She was prepared to sell, before she died. I was hoping you and I could pick up where she and I left off."

  "Four months later?"

  "Actually, it's been almost a year," Preston said. "It took the estate executors a while to find you, Ms. Brannigan. I've been out of town, and didn't know you'd moved in. I wish I'd caught you before you did."

  "Well, thank you for calling, but I'm not interested in selling."

  "It's a half-million dollar deal, Ms. Brannigan."

  Mabs's knees buckled, but she caught herself on the counter. Butcher-block counter, oiled and sanded through the generations. You literally couldn't buy that kind of quality.

  But she had $113.44 in her bank account, and half a million dollars would solve all her problems, maybe forever. Eyes closed, heart pounding, Mabs whispered, "I'm not interested in selling, Mr. Cole," and didn't even believe herself.

  "I'll call again soon," Preston said in a gentle voice.

  He'd barely hung up when Sarah knocked on the door, shouted, "We're here!" and walked in with the most gorgeous man Mabs had ever seen.

  TWO

  Jake Rowly remembered the old Brannigan place from when he was a kid. Doris Brannigan had been a kind old woman even then, although in retrospect, he supposed she hadn't been all that old. Maybe in her sixties, which didn't seem so old now, from the thick side of forty himself.

  Regardless, everybody in Virtue called it the old Brannigan place, because it had been around for a couple centuries, regardless of how old its current occupant was. And he'd hung around the place a bit, especially in the fall when the apples were ripening—

  So we could filch them, his wolf said with a note of age-old satisfaction.

  Jake winced. We shouldn't have done that.

  Why not? She wasn't eating them.

  Yeah, but we should have at least asked. It's not polite to just go around stealing peoples' food.

  Cubs do it all the time, his wolf replied airily.

  And at the time, Jake supposed, he'd been close enough to a cub to count. Certainly too young to recognize the quality of the old farmhouse's build, anyway.

  But now, peering at it as they approached in Sarah Ekstrom's boxy old red truck, he could appreciate its bones, even if the poor old house was falling down around itself. The trees he remembered from childhood had mostly succumbed to Dutch Elm disease, leaving only one or two to keep the summer sun from broiling the front rooms of the house, and the glimpse he got of the back extension said its roof had pretty well given up the ghost.

  There were gaps around windows, and a sway-backed roof ridge on the main body of the house. Some inexpert repairs had been made to the wide front door, which had been painted a cheery bright yellow since he'd last seen it. He sat back against the hard springs of the truck seat and glanced at Sarah. "You're trying to set me up."

  Sarah, a striking woman who drove like she was in a road rally race, slid a falsely innocent smile at him. "Would I do that?"

  "Yeah."

  "Well, you're a carpenter, Jake, and it's a house that needs carpenting. And Mabs is nice."

  Doris Brannigan had been ninety if she'd been a day, when she'd died. Presumably any heirs of hers would be in their mature years as well, and God knew the house needed more work than an old lady could manage. He'd heard the new Ms. Brannigan had a son, but judging from the house's condition, he wasn't the handy type.

  "Nice is fine, but I hope she's rich, " Jake said aloud. "The cost of giving this place the TLC it needs is going to be catastrophic."

  "Yeah, well, you know, all of us rich Virtue-ese, sneaking around hiding our wealth in mattresses instead of the bank." Sarah pulled the truck up outside the farmhouse gates and swung out of the vehicle to march up to the door, knock, shout, "We're here!" and walk in without waiting for an answer.

  Jake, following her, took in the broad, short hall with its narrow staircase, the impression of an old, old chimney in the wall across from the stairs, and built a pict
ure of the kitchen in his mind before he even stepped through the second door that Sarah pushed open.

  One step through, though, and he forgot everything he'd ever known about architecture, or even carpentry, because Mary Anne Brannigan wasn't sixty and fragile, not one little bit.

  She was in her thirties and small, with the kind of round softness that often hid a lot of strength. She wore long hair loose and gently purple around a heart-shaped face, a black t-shirt with some kind of crazily-horned golden helmet and the words Say My Name printed on it. Jake, with a rush of heat, thought of a number of circumstances he'd like to say her name in. Her jeans hugged her waist and hips and thighs in the most attractive way possible before flaring at the calf until they looked like the bottom of a skirt. He could see half a tattoo under one shirt sleeve, and an ankh necklace peeking out of her neckline.

  She was, in other words, exactly Jake's type, and Sarah Ekstrom knew it.

  Sarah knows it? his wolf asked incredulously. You can't tell when fate throws your mate at you?

  'Exactly my type' is not the same as 'fated mate', Jake replied ruefully, and besides—

  And besides, there was a four-year-old bellowing, "Auntie Saaaaaaraaaaaaah!" and throwing himself away from the kitchen table to tackle Sarah's hips. Even if Jake was hoping to find the woman fate wanted him to be with—and he wasn't, not after last time—no shifter in his right mind would walk up to a lady with a child and say hey, fate says it's you and me, babe. How 'bout it?

  Or a lady without a child, for that matter. Not unless he wanted to get punched, anyway.

  But I'm riiiiiiiiiiiight. The wolf's voice sounded like a smug howl rising from Jake's soul. His gaze left the little boy and returned to Mary Anne Brannigan, whose soft smile for her kid said she was obviously pleased by his delight.

  Jake dearly wanted that same soft smile to be directed at him. Given how gun-shy he was about love right then, he was afraid the wolf was right. But even if it was—

  Smugly: I am.