It was hard to tell where the winter's chill released its grip on the mountains, and the spring truly and properly began. Was it back in Washington? Later in Oregon? I only know that when Harold and I left the Trail and entered the rolling and green foothills of El Dorado County, California in April greeted us with the kind of warmth I didn't expect in Grauberg until July.

Humans enjoyed it too, so for the last few days we rarely shifted. Winding our way between the slopes covered in brilliant green grass, trees crowning them, and small mirrors of ponds, we looked like regular tourists.

Despite the weight of the pack being harder on the human skeleton, I enjoyed sunlight on my bare skin, though I was worried I'd pay for it in the evening, since no amount of sunblock could save me from a sunburn even up North. Harold's tanned complexion was much more at home here than among the snows of Grauberg. His strides grew sure, with such a sense of belonging, that I stopped for a second on top of a hill we'd just climbed. "Are we on the Ranch Almarr already?"

"We've been crossing it for a while," he said, pointing further west, toward more hills sporting fluffy white shapes over the grass. "The principal estate is way over there, but my grandfather bought out parcel after parcel in the forties and fifties, so...it's large. But not too far to go now."

Wind rustled in the leaves. Some bird trilled overhead. A ladybug landed on my forehead with a light bump. It was absolutely idyllic, except his mood was turbulent; and I sensed it, despite not a muscle moving in his face. "Worried?"

"No," he lied and pointed again. "We have a welcoming committee."

A little further down, a brown ribbon of a beaten trail waved through the green carpet of grass. A couple of horse riders moved on it, toward us. They had extra, unsaddled horses in tow.

I chewed my lips. "Maybe they are just out for a ride..." Goddess, I hoped so.

"Horses aren't your thing, are they?"

What gave me away, I wonder? The lip-chewing, the anxious glances or slowing down of my steps?

"I like horses perfectly well in the movies." Or from the distance that separated us now. "They are graceful, majestic beasts, but so are many other animals, and I never wanted to ride one."

"Really?" His wide, dark brows quirked in a heart-achingly familiar amused mime. "I always dreamed of riding a lion as a kid. Or a dragon. A giant fire-breathing red dragon."

Too bad you settled for riding a hellhound. We had just gone ten days without mentioning Scarlett, so I held back this low blow. The spring day was too beautiful to spoil. And, I didn't want to hurt him...yet.

"Good luck with that." I shook my head and started downhill.

Harold followed, chuckling. Sunlight filled his irises with a twinkle. When he was like that, I didn't want to hurt him at all.

I barely reached the bottom of the hill when the riders popped seemingly from nowhere.

The horses reared to a stop from a gallop. Sixteen hooves stomped the ground in a thunderous accord three yards from me. The horses' massive chests shone with perspiration and—I swear—steam erupted from their nostrils. Bridles cut tight across the enormous yellow teeth as they whinnied, protesting that they didn't get to run me down.

The riders probably spotted us from afar, the same way Harold saw them and cut across, but my panicking mind didn't have time to process it.

I staggered backward until my pack bumped into another wall of solid, sweaty flesh—Harold—and froze, gasping for elusive oxygen.

"Beta Matthew, how's things in your neck of the woods?" Harold bellowed, putting protective hands on my shoulders.

I shivered under his touch, but a rejuvenating breath trickled down my throat and my sweaty palms uncurled. If the guy planned to ride dragons, surely he can handle these wild horses?

The older of the two riders, a grizzly man, tipped his cowboy hat with a Hollywoodian gesture. "Ain't bad, and getting better now, seeing you're home with a pretty lady-mate. Mistress has been running us up and down to make sure you don't sneak in on the sly."

The younger rider was a girl in her late teen or early twenties, with two thick braids running from under a similar cowboy hat. Below the neck, the Wild West vibe abruptly ended. Her cropped top, distressed jeans and thick-soled sneakers belonged on the cover of a fashion magazine.

She chortled, a dimple on each brown cheek. "Pops, they're too tired for your silliness."

He harrumphed. "You'll be mucking the stables tonight, Gamma."

"My humblest apologies for this atrocious insubordination, Beta." She waved her hat in the air at us. "Giddy up! Showers and cold beer are a stone's throw away."

My heart basically stopped as my glance traveled past the girl to the two spare horses. They were large and pretended to be tame, but the white one smirked at me: Julia, we see right through you.

"No," I said.

A frown added more creases on Beta Matthew's already craggy face. He talked over my head to Harold. "Your mate isn't a city slicker, is she? I heard they had horses in Washington."

"Julia is a fine rider," Harold said, and I nearly choked. "But I promised her a romantic dance down the Turkey Hill straight out of the musicals. You'll take our packs, Beta, and we'll meet you at the house."

His voice reverberated on the last sentence: an Alpha's command was faint but unmistakable. Without waiting on an answer from a stunned Beta, Harold loosened the straps of my pack and dropped it to the ground, then shimmied out of his own. The two thuds punctuated the tense silence.

Harold trying out his new power startled me too. If I didn't expect him to pull rank so fast, I expected his warm, dry palm to clasp my hand even less, so I cried out when he did.

He tugged me, and we climbed a few steps up the next hill—just high enough to tower over the mounted werewolves. Which wasn't strictly necessary, since Beta and the Gamma dismounted after trading a glace. Not hurriedly, mind you, but they lost some of their laid-back attitude.

Without the weight of the pack, my spine sprung, and my muscles pumped with renewed energy. I could fly to the top in one go, away from the confrontation, but Harold stopped as abruptly as he took off.

"Tell Luna Patricia to expect us by four," he said.

His words were casual, but if in the beginning the pair was talking down to us from the backs of their steeds, the situation was exactly reversed now, and each syllable snapped.

I tried to disentangle my hand from Harold's. "Luna Patricia?" I hissed into his ear. "Otherwise known as Mother Dearest? Seriously, Harold, seriously?"

His lips barely moved, he put so much effort into schooling his face to a stone stillness. "By the time we arrive at the ranch, I want everyone to be aware of my changed station. They can't treat me like a kid coming home for summer."

"Oh my Goddess, you're power tripping, and we hadn't even met the pack."

His chin jutted up half-and-inch higher. His gaze browsed the valley from up high too, in an aquiline fashion. "I'll not tolerate disrespect. Not to me, and not to you. When we were kids, I thought teasing was just a bit of fun, but I regret not stepping in back then, Jules. No more of that. I won't let anyone doubt that I'll protect my mate."

I stopped trying to wrench myself free, so when Harold resumed walking, we went together like a happily mated couple, hands linked and everything. My heart pounded louder than the hooves of the horses that took off down the trail at about the same time as we sailed up the hill.

I tried to say something to him and my tongue wouldn't move while my thoughts raced.

Nobody had ever said anything like that to me before. Those who even cared about my complaints, always shrugged. Let it go, Julia. Or: be strong. Or: you're worked up over nothing.

Sure, this injury was long in the past, but Harold proved to be frightfully good in bringing my past to the forefront, making the dull aches stir with a new intensity under the band-aids of time.

What if he had this revelation when we were in high school?

I gasped, imagining Harold telling off my bullies the way he'd just told off the older Beta.

Cool, but would it have changed anything?

I might have deluded myself into believing the Goddess meant us to be together a bit earlier; I might have acted like the poor Monica...which would have made the awakening even more bitter.

But nothing important would have changed. I would have still gone to the East Coast. I would have still gotten the front-row seat to his fated romance with Scarlett, while the Goddess robbed me of everything he gave me. I would have still ended up Julia the Doc slash Thornback.

These sober, sad thoughts were just as unhelpful in finding something to tell Harold until we crested the next hill. "Wow!"

I know it wasn't exactly eloquent. But wow! was completely warranted by the view.

Sun rays poured into a wide bowl-shaped, flat-bottomed valley between the hills. Even in the sun-drenched California, it was doing it with glee, giving the vegetation such a lush hue, that the evergreens of my native North felt hopelessly bleak in comparison. A sparkling lake occupied the farthest end of this hidden valley. From it stretched an orchard, then a protective circle of trees to shelter the beige-and-white mansion.

In Grauberg, the neoclassical Olympian soared above the town-site, but Almarr's place was grand in a different way. While it was too small to be a public building, it was far larger than any one family required, speaking of the enormous private wealth that commissioned it. And it was far more ornate than an image conjured by the words 'ranch house'. The long facade of the mansion, with the rows of windows on the top floor, wasn't big enough for the previous generations of the Almarr clan, because a wing ran perpendicular to it on one side. Where the mirroring wing should have been lay a rectangular garden, with boxwood planted in Celtic knots and bright beds.

"Did someone intend this as a pack's lair?"

"This obvious?"

"Uh-huh."

"My great-great-grandfather. He never became an Alpha though, so the construction ground to a halt. The following generations prettied it up and pretended it was the plan all along. Plus, they bought more land."

"I see that thwarted ambition and prickly pride runs in the family."

He laughed, then made a haughty grimace. "I was born to fulfill the clan's destiny. Many ancestors would roll in their graves if I screwed up."

"A heavy burden you never told me about before." The banter was lightning-fast, all fun and games, but... "You never told me much about California. It's like you disappeared for a couple months in the summer, then returned to pick up right where you left. But in truth you had a second life here."

"Because Dad needed me to fulfill my destiny in Grauberg." Just like I, Harold failed to maintain the lighthearted tone. "That was more than enough for one poor rich boy to complain about."

The valley below suddenly didn't look all that happy any more. I shivered and on some instinct leaned closer to him, until our shoulders brushed against one another. Through the skin and the fingertips of our linked hands, the vibrations of his pulse echoed through me. It only took a few heartbeats for them to come into sync. I was looking straight ahead, not at him, but our breath would have mingled if I did, because our inhales and exhales also matched. And if we kissed...

"Look at us," I whispered, wishing he wasn't holding my hand so I could twist my fingers together, "faking a mated couple to a T. I guess your plan to hike together worked."

"Thanks, Jules." He stroked my fingers clasped in his, examining it so intently, as if he'd only just discovered our handhold.

Don't thank me yet. I moved away an inch, breaking the spell and pointed at the fluffy white shapes that dotted the slope. "Are those goats? Not sheep or cattle?"

A martyred sigh escaped his lips. "Ask Mother about it. She'll chew your ear off and you're guaranteed to be her favorite person. Speaking of Mother, we need to get moving if we are to make it all the way down by four."

I squinted, estimating the distance. "We'll make it, Harold, if you make good on that promise you had allegedly made me."

His brows shot up. "What promise?"

"To waltz down the Turkey Hill, while belting a merry tune like in an old musical. This is Turkey Hill, isn't it?"

"That it is," Harold said, "but Jules, singing? Can we howl a merry tune instead?"

"So long as we run!" I dashed down the hill, pulling him along.

He let a tentative howl out. I joined, letting the wonderful sound free. It bounced off the sides of the hills. Somewhere in the wilder parts of the ranch, Harold's guiding wolf answered, then mine...then, more howls peeled away from the mansion, blending in, washing my face like the onrushing wind.

For a second, no worry could touch me.

I raced forward, holding Harold's hand, and the howling of our pack welcomed us. We ran so fast; we broke free of our past for a few perfect minutes, and the mansion, the future and its obligations were far off. Our pulse, our breath, and our voice was one.

If we could always exist in this moment of unity, alone and a part of someone in the gorgeous world, with all complications swept aside...why, that would be happiness!