"You caved in, and it's your new guiding wolf then? When did it happen?" Harold asked me.

That's right, Harold hadn't met her. "Three years this June." When he was balls deep in Scarlett, maybe hatching their plan to take the pack from Blake. How could one of the biggest events of my life compete with that?

Harold folded one of his arms under his large lupine head to better watch us. The other was slung over his guiding wolf still. I couldn't escape the sense of unity with the four of us huddling so close in the wilderness. Just a tiny pack making our way through the world with our Alpha...

"I'm glad you sought another wolf out," he rumbled. "After things didn't work out with the first one."

"After she abandoned me," I corrected him dryly. The school that accepted me was on the East Coast. Eventually, I found my way back, but by then the accord was broken.

"Well..." I was glad Harold didn't add some platitude or blamed me, and just trailed off.

My new she-wolf's breath warmed my neck and cheek. Warmth spread across my chest as well. "I didn't seek her out," I whispered. "Just...lucked out that among the wolves pups also don't think their mothers are always right."

"I'm glad," Harold repeated. "And I'm glad she's on the trail with us."

A nervous chuckle escaped my lips. "Guess she doesn't take her chances with me." Deep down, I couldn't blame my first guiding wolf for moving on to another werewolf. Because wasn't that why I moved across the country, to break ties, old and forming?

"Or she senses how much you offer to a companion. I sure do," Harold said.

My guiding wolf produced a soft whine, either agreeing with his sentiment, or questioning my intention toward this nice man. "Ah...whatever the case, I'm glad you let her into the camp without questioning."

Harolds sat up. "Jules, don't take it the wrong way, but I would have welcomed any wild wolf willing to make this journey with us and start a pack in California. The population there grew in the past twenty years, but we need to work harder, not just take credit for natural migration like Beaumont. When I'm Alpha—"

He cut himself off with a bark-cough. "Guess I'll have to rehearse this speech, so I don't sound like an excitable boy."

"I like it as is," I said. "It's coming from the heart." And I had no idea he felt so strongly about the wild wolf conservation in California. Since when?

"Well, don't look so surprised." He grumbled, glanced at the sky where the blue overtook the pink and gold of the dawn, and shifted to his human form.

This time Harold emerged fully clothed, to an absurd pang of regret in some really deep corner of my soul. He was gorgeous, but we grew up together, so I was used to it. In my profession, human and werewolf bodies were anatomy, not a subject of obsession. I shook my head in consternation. I would have wagged my finger too if I had a mirror...

My inner meandering probably made me appear unfocused and sleepy to Harold, because he touched my shoulder. "Get ready for the road, Jules. I'll help you pack the camp."

If I hadn't completely awakened already, the jolt that went through me with his touch would have woken me up. But it also confused me, because we were fake mates and I wasn't in heat, so I shouldn't have any physical reactions to Harold.

Was the Moon Goddess messing with my head to prove her power over me? At any rate, I stood there slack-jawed, and the minutes dragged as Harold ably rolled my mat and bag, folded my tent...damn him, he whistled while he was at it! "Jules?"

"Ah...yes." Goddess, I hoped he didn't catch me staring or, worse, caught onto the reason I was staring at his shoulders while he was rolling, folding and lifting my things. "M-mornings are not my best time."

"You used to be bright and bushy-tailed at the first crack of dawn." He shrugged. "I guess we both changed with age."

"Just...just put some coffee up." I gritted my teeth and rushed into the bush.

As soon as I was out of sight, I grabbed a trunk of a skinny pine bending over a creek and blew out a few calming breaths. Harold thought I was old; I was slow; I was daft...his opinion shouldn't have mattered to me, but my cheeks burned with embarrassment. This wasn't going well at all. I splashed numbingly cold water into my face. "Pull yourself together. Just do it. You'll get him in the end."

When I returned, our campsite was in a perfectly natural state. Once our packs were gone, human park rangers wouldn't know anyone was here. My lupine nose was harder to trick. The scent of the two wolves lingered in the air, though they were gone already. Another reminder of our tardiness was a powerful whiff of coffee. It blended with the smell of pine needles, melting snow and sunlight in such a delightful way, I didn't even feel guilty that I was making Harold wait.

He inserted a steaming travel mug into my hands. "Wow, what a change. Your cheeks are like rose blooms."

I rolled my eyes to cover up the fresh tidal wave of blush and accepted the mug from his hands. I swear, it was he who paused for a second longer than was strictly necessary for this exchange, while our fingers were linked.

"I...I found a stream about five hundred yards due east. You can wash up there and—ah...wash up." Goddess, why was it so difficult to finish my sentences when I ought to have finished it?

"Thanks, Mom. I think I know what to do." He raced into the woods, still chuckling, while I gulped down coffee, planning to hide my face under the werewolf fur before he returned.

The delayed start meant we sped up to reach our planned camping spot before the darkness fell. I preferred it, since the punishing pace made a casual conversation impossible. Silence was only partially bliss, however, since my mind raced, turning over every detail of my morning exchanges with Harold, trying to determine in which one I sounded the least lame.

I didn't reach any conclusion by the nightfall, when we stopped for the night. Harold turned to me as soon as he dropped the pack from his shoulder and assumed a human shape. "Jules?"

The transformation softened his straight-after-the-shift face. I hunted for the exact thing that reduced the rigidity—Shadows? Sheen of perspiration? Fatigue in his red eyes?—when his lips moved again. "What do you really think?"

I shifted to hide my confusion. By the time my human form settled, Harold was speaking again. "About the new direction for the Californian pack. It won't happen overnight, I understand...but for many years when I spent my summers there, it was the same thing. They are so wrapped up there in pursuing power and vanities dictated by their human side, they shrugged it off as the natural order of things when the wolves became extinct in California. It wasn't through any efforts by Beaumont that the black alpha wolf traveled from Oregon to start a new pack, just a sheer coincidence that it happened on his watch!"

As he spoke, and that first softness gave way to zeal, I had my answer: doubt relaxed the etched lines of his face. While I was bellyaching about personal social flops, he was measuring himself against the Alpha stick. Even with my determination to hate everything about him, I couldn't bring myself to hate the cause he picked for himself. "Beaumont is gone and the wolves have been returning. It's the right time to rebuild the natural connection."

A wide grin split his face. "I knew you would understand. You're a Goddess-send!"

His joy seeped through the invisible cracks in my armor. His gaze didn't just soften, it warmed up, and I basked in it.

For a second, I pictured the alternative future, where our hearts beat as one, united if not by a romantic folly but by a true worthy undertaking. He could do a lot of good yet, if his charisma and predatory instinct was harnessed, managed. Even if he was a lying, cheating bastard, what politician wasn't? Maybe it wouldn't be as spectacular a vengeance as I had imagined, but—

But what? Would I never learn? No matter how it went for Harold, it would end with him leaving me exhausted and heartbroken. So, no. That way lay only madness.

"You will make a formidable Luna for the Californian Pack," Harold said blissfully. "My Luna."

I winced. How could I forget that dealing with Harold in good faith meant crawling before the fickle Moon Goddess and asking for the Mark of Luna? Begging for her forgiveness after I haughtily rejected her power over our life and death for years...shit.

"What's wrong, Jules?" he asked, finally catching up on my mood.

I grasped at the obvious plausible reason to mask my true thoughts. "A Californian Luna from Grauberg... Did it never occur to you that the locals might take it as an affront?"

Unfortunately, I realized too late that it sounded too plausible and alerted him to a glaring flaw in his plan. When my actual goal was to make the pack reject him. I should inflate his ego, cultivate his naturally overconfident nature—

"They will love you once they see your quality, even though you are not local," he replied. "I thought about looking for a like-minded Californian she-wolf, but the amount of intrigue and effort...no. Why look for something when you are already perfect?"

Thanks Goddess for his nature! My blunder wasn't nearly enough to make him second-guess his choices. He suckled self-assurance with his mother's milk. A first-born son of an Alpha. Handsome. Excelled at everything he put his mind to. Of course, he was confident!

It should have made me expel a breath of relief, but I sulked. It was so damn difficult to work against him when he was showering me with compliments and beaming like a boy half his age.

"I'll try to win their hearts." I would do no such thing, of course. I was already lying to too many good people.

Harold nodded. "You will, and don't worry. My mother will help you decode the Californian society. She's welcome everywhere and she knows what it means to become a Luna outside the home pack."

I cleared my throat. "If you intended it as an encouraging example of a glowing success...it's not, Harold. Your mother didn't stay on as our pack's Luna."

Harold's chin lifted, and his jaw tightened. "Through no fault of hers, Jules. The pack accepted her and loved her. My father was another matter."

"I'll take your word for it." I'd always trodden carefully around Harold's parents' split when we were kids, despite not remembering Lloyd's Californian Luna. His second was from Grauberg, but she didn't stay on much longer than Luna Patricia or the third one...then Blake became the Alpha and he was unmated for a time. I liked Celeste, but truth be told, all this shuffling didn't produce a role model for me, the ideal Luna I wanted to become. Then it's for the best you won't be one, sheesh.

"The ranch has probably been buzzing with activity ever since I called Mom with the news," Harold said, smiling.

"The ranch..." Dammit, the things were becoming too real, too fast!

"Yes," Harold said. "The Ranch Almarr, the place where I spent every summer since my parents had separated and my father gave it to my mother. Is everything clear now?"

A groan escaped me. "But I don't want to meet your mother. Or live on her ranch."

I sounded petulant, and I couldn't help it. My parents' lifestyle wasn't opulent. Ranch Almarr, from what I remembered of Harold's tales, was a country estate directly out of the bygone era of vast, fast, greedy fortunes. We used to laugh at how over the top it was.

Even less, I wanted to insert myself in an old feud between Luna Patricia and Lloyd Almarr. She didn't travel to Grauberg for the celebration of Blake and Celeste's wedding, because she didn't want to be in the same town as him. After swearing she would travel to Mars, were it possible, to be on a different planet than Lloyd Almarr. Being a captive audience for this sort of thing 24/7, because I was Harold's fake mate...Goddess save me!

My fears probably reflected on my face, because a shadow crossed Harold's as well. The rose-tinted glasses through which he regarded the summers of his adolescence were coming off.

Unfortunately, his hesitation only lasted a moment.

"Jules, we have to. California is not like Grauberg, where the entire pack, from Alpha to Omega, is invested in the Olympian as the pack's lair, making it a shared expression of pride and wealth. California is all about dens, where each clan and clique entrenched in the various wilderness areas and national forests, one-upping each-other and vying to produce the next Alpha and for their property to serve as the pack's lair. The Ranch Almarr is my inheritance."

"Great," I said through gritted teeth. "That's just great."