The Wolf Marshal's Pack Read online

  THE WOLF MARSHAL’S PACK

  by Zoe Chant

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  THE WOLF MARSHAL'S PACK

  First edition. January 19, 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 Zoe Chant.

  Written by Zoe Chant.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  Epilogue

  A note from Zoe Chant

  More Paranormal Romance by Zoe Chant

  Zoe Chant writing as Lia Silver

  Zoe Chant writing as Lauren Esker

  Chapter One

  1

  “This is not exactly picnic weather, Aria.”

  Aria Clarke had been named after a beautiful kind of music. On this particular July morning, she didn’t think she’d ever looked less worthy of the name. She reeked of industrial-strength bug spray and was sweating through her paint-stained T-shirt.

  Maybe if Doreen Clarke had been able to foresee that her daughter would grow up into a dorky, frazzled nature photographer, she would have reconsidered the name and called Aria something sturdy and practical instead. But Aria doubted it. Her mom persisted in seeing the beauty and grace in everyone.

  But apparently she drew the line at seeing the beauty and grace in mud. Aria couldn’t blame her for that.

  She shifted her camera bag to her other shoulder. “I know, Mom. But I didn’t want to waste the light, and you know Mattie. She’s weather-proof.”

  “Yes, she takes after you and your father.”

  Her parents seemed about as mismatched as two people could be. Her mom was all about art museums and symphony orchestras, and her dad was all about roughing it out in nature. Somehow, though, they’d fallen for each other, truly and deeply.

  Aria thought that in general, she took more after her dad. And sometimes she wondered if anyone else would ever look at her—a stressed single mom with two very clingy parents of her own—and see the potential for that kind of grand, lasting romance that would go on in sickness and in health.

  Not that I make it any easier for guys, of course, Aria thought wryly. With all the dirt stains and bright orange flannel and the giant camera around my neck, perfectly designed to get in the way of my boobs. I can’t exactly be the easiest person to fall in love with.

  Well, she couldn’t exactly have a makeover right here in the middle of the nature preserve. And right now, all she wanted was a quiet morning to spend time with her family—before sneaking off to take some pictures with this gorgeous and eerie pre-thunderstorm light.

  Her mom was right. It wasn’t exactly picnic weather. But getting hit with a rain shower wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

  “I didn’t mean any disrespect to you as the only non-weather-proof member of our family,” Aria said now, shaking off her daydreams with a smile. “I brought plenty of ponchos, and I’ll have us out of here in a hot minute if a storm starts, I promise. If I’m off taking pictures, you’ve got my permission to grab up Mattie and Dad and high-tail it to the car to wait for me.”

  “The light is lovely,” Doreen admitted.

  If Aria had gotten her love of the woods from her park ranger dad, she’d gotten her aesthetic appreciation of color and shade from her museum curator mom. She should have known Doreen would see how haunting yellow-green color of that summer thunderstorm light was.

  “See? I have to drag you along places, Mom.”

  “To look after my grandchild while you have your adventures.”

  “To geek out over colors with me,” Aria said. “And because you make the best picnics. I guarantee you no other family out here has homemade sweet tea lemonade and lobster curry sandwiches. And your world-famous deviled eggs with smoked paprika.”

  She knew when she’d won. Doreen smiled, pleased. “Well, we can have an early lunch as soon as your father gets back from getting Mattie all filthy with mud.”

  Her dad had taken Mattie off to hunt up wildflowers to make a princess crown. He was a complete pushover for his granddaughter and would let her talk him into anything. And as a veteran park ranger, he knew all about how to comb through the woods for the prettiest blooms. Aria could remember him doing the same thing with her, back when he’d first been teaching her the basics of compass-reading and bird-watching.

  When it came to her family, she’d always been lucky.

  She and Doreen managed to find a flat and mostly dry cliffside rock where they could spread out the picnic blanket. They had just finished laying out lunch when Aria’s daughter bounced up to her.

  “Mom, look at my hair!” Mattie chirped, falling into Aria’s lap.

  Aria ran her hand over her daughter’s beautiful black curls. “You’re obviously the prettiest, smartest, toughest princess of any kingdom.”

  “Why do they call them kingdoms and not queendoms?” Mattie said.

  “That’s good, sweetheart,” Doreen said approvingly. “You keep on asking questions like that, and if someone tells you that’s just the way it is, don’t accept that as an answer.”

  “But what does that mean?”

  “Your nana means that for a long time, only kings and other men like that got to make up words for things,” Aria said. “But that’s not true anymore. You can call your queendom whatever you want.”

  “I’m going to have a queendom, then,” Mattie said. “And if someone says I can’t, I’ll fight them.” She bared her teeth in mock-ferocity and laughed when Aria pretended to quake with fear.

  “Well, queen or princess or whatever you are,” Doreen said, “you need to sit down and eat your lunch and let your mom eat hers so she can go off and do some work.”

  Thank you, Aria mouthed at her mother. Doreen waved it off as if to say not to mention it.

  Her dad settled beside them on the blanket. Aria noticed with a pang that he winced when his knees popped on the way down. He caught her looking.

  “Getting old,” Ben Clarke said. “Pretty soon you’ll have to take me out behind the barn and shoot me and make me into glue.”

  Mattie giggled. “Why would anybody do that?”

  “It’s what they used to do with h—”

  Aria elbowed her dad before he could finish telling her daughter, with her collection of My Little Ponies, that anybody had ever made horses into glue. She glared at him.

  “Handsome old fellows like me,” Ben finished. “That way you’d never get rid of us. I could stick to my favorite granddaughter just as close as ever.”

  “You’re silly,” Mattie said severely. “I’m your only granddaughter.”

  “That’s me,” Ben said, nodding. “Silly as can be.”

  Aria leaned her head against his shoulder and was glad when he put his arm around her and gave her a reassuring squeeze.

  “Brunch is served,” Doreen said.

  “I thought it was lunch,” Ben said.

  “If you eat it at half past ten in the morning, it’s brunch.”

  Aria grinned and tucked into the enormous, fancy picnic her mom had made for them. If her life had pistachio chocolate chip cookies and homemade potato salad and picnics in beautiful nature preserves, if she had a mom and dad she loved and respected and a daughter she adored, what did she have to complain about? She wasn’t missing out on too much.

  And she loved her job, too. Whether she was traveling to the middle of nowhere
or just walking around the preserve that felt like her own backyard, she loved having an excuse to romp around outside and enjoy the sunshine. She loved the moments when the whole world seemed to line up for her to get exactly the photograph she wanted.

  She wouldn’t mind building up enough of those just-right pictures to maybe try for a gallery show someday.

  Wishful thinking, probably. But with the funny, magical light all around them and the smell of wildflowers in the air, it felt like the kind of day for dreaming.

  *

  By the time Aria left her family at the picnic site, Mattie had fallen asleep on the blanket, leaving her flower crown smushed on one side. Aria twisted the little baby hairs close to Mattie’s neck around her fingers.

  “She looks so sweet when she’s sleeping,” Aria said quietly. “No matter what kind of trouble she gets up to during the day, once she conks out like this, I can’t be angry anymore.”

  “You always had an angelic way of napping too,” Ben said. “You’d curl up and put your hands under your head like a cherub in a picture.”

  “Well, now I always worry I snore.”

  “Ladies never snore,” Doreen said. “And if a man ever tells you that you do, he’s not any kind of gentleman.”

  Aria, who distinctly remembered hearing her mother’s soft, snuffling snores through the wall when she was a kid, just grinned. She hoisted herself to her feet.

  “Be careful out there,” Doreen said. There was a worried furrow between her eyes. “Susan Fowler from the community choir said she’s seen wolves prowling around.”

  “Mom, there aren’t going to be wolves. And I know Susan Fowler. She’s sweet, but she’s jumpy. Dogs scare her half to death. She probably just saw one of them. And even if she had seen a wolf—”

  “They don’t bother people generally, I know. But just in case, since you’re going off the beaten path, keep an eye out.”

  Aria smiled. “I will.”

  “And take a snack.”

  “I already ate enough for a small army!”

  Doreen wrapped up a few more deviled eggs in a twist of wax paper. “Well, your father will just eat these if you leave them here, and the paprika gives him heartburn.”

  “And it’s worth it,” Ben said.

  “I agree,” Aria said, tucking the eggs into her hiking backpack. “Unfortunately for you, Dad, I love them too much to give them back.”

  “Betrayed by my own flesh and blood.”

  Aria rolled her eyes, warned her parents again to keep an eye out for the weather, and ventured into the woods to get to work.

  She’d been coming to the nature preserve for years. Except for the carefully maintained hiking trails, it was dense, untamed forest that sprawled out for miles, but Aria knew every inch of it. Her dad had always said she had a compass in her head. She swung off the trail without any worries about being able to find her way back out again.

  Hot, muggy July afternoons weren’t exactly comfortable for her, but the woods loved that kind of weather. Every green thing around her had unfurled to soak up the heat and moisture. The colors looked more vivid than ever.

  And, best of all for a nature photographer, the heat had made the animals lazy. Aria snapped several pictures of unusually calm rabbits. There was one calendar that paid her specifically for bunnies, and she’d be able to fill half her quota with them from this morning’s work alone.

  Aria moved easily over the uneven ground. She climbed over fallen trees and dodged around tangles of poison ivy, heading deeper and deeper into the forest.

  She snapped a photo of a sullen badger lurking in its den, its eyes little light bulbs in the dark. She photographed a tree that had been struck by lightning, getting it from several different angles. The light was just as good as she’d hoped. It made everything look oversaturated, like the air itself had applied a heavy filter.

  A great day’s work, and all in a couple of hours! She couldn’t even be mad when the rain started up.

  She took her tightly folded poncho out of her hiking pack and unfurled it, pulling it over her head. Its bright red made her look like a living stoplight wandering through the forest. The animals would probably be scared off now, but at least no trigger-happy poacher would squint through the rain and mistake her for a deer.

  She chose a shortcut back to the parking lot. It would wind over some really uneven terrain, but it would save her a lot of time and get her back to her parents before they went crazy from being cooped up in a car with a bored Mattie. She would just watch her footing—hurrying over wet leaves and slick mud was how accidents happened.

  And the camera’s waterproof. I could even get some rainy weather shots if something jumps out at me. Hey, I could even do full-on underwater photography sometime if I learned how to scuba dive.

  The rain beat down even harder, like it was offering to teach her to scuba dive right then and there.

  Right. Save the daydreaming for later.

  She checked the map of the woods she had etched into her memory. A quarter-mile in this direction, and then she would veer north—

  There was a flash of something gray between the trees.

  Aria froze, her instincts kicking in before her mind could even tell her what she was seeing.

  Her heart was racing.

  There was a weird smell in the air. Like...wet dog.

  No way, she told herself. No way is it a wolf, no matter how big it looked. No matter what Mom’s friend said.

  It was probably just a dog. Dogs were officially banned from the nature preserve, since there was a chance they could get off-leash and scare the animals, but the rangers tended to turn a blind eye as long as the owners kept an eye on them and made sure they were well-behaved. And this dog could be well-behaved!

  Even if it was massive.

  She took a few slow steps back, moving as quietly as she could. She wasn’t walking through the woods anymore; she was creeping through them.

  Then she saw the streak of gray again, and this time there was no way to deny what she was looking at. She knew wolves: she’d photographed tons of them. And this was definitely a wolf.

  An absolutely enormous wolf.

  Its shaggy fur was dripping with rain, and its lips were pulled back just enough for Aria to see long, sharp teeth. And, as if to add to how impossible the sight already was, two more wolves followed along after it. The second one was smaller, with rust-colored fur and a limp, but the third was almost as huge as the first.

  Three wolves. There shouldn’t have been any at all. What was going on? Had they escaped from some rich guy’s private zoo?

  She had to tell the park rangers about this. Hopefully, they could capture the wolves and release them into a sanctuary that could actually accommodate them.

  She knew intellectually that wolves weren’t always dangerous to humans, and she had photographed plenty when she’d been working up in the Arctic, but there was a difference between going looking for them and stumbling on them by accident. She knew she probably didn’t have to be afraid, but she still felt paralyzed by fear.

  Almost paralyzed, anyway. Her hands were operating of their own accord, quietly unzipping her camera bag.

  No nature photographer in her right mind would turn down a surprise wolf-sighting. Besides, she’d need documentation if she wanted to convince the park officials that, yes, they really did have wolves roaming around their supposedly safe, family-friendly preserve.

  She snapped a few pictures, being careful to leave the flash off. The wolves didn’t have the color perception to see how bright her poncho was, and her smell would be blurred by the sheer amount of human foot traffic this place saw on a regular basis. With no big explosions of light, she should be safe enough.

  Okay. Done.

  Aria started walking away as quietly as she could, but she couldn’t resist looking back over her shoulder with every other step.

  Which was how she saw the lead wolf suddenly flex into an impossible shape, its body lengthening a
nd its fur smoothing out into skin.

  Where there had been a wolf, there was now a man.

  And his now-human eyes would spot her poncho a mile away. As fast as she could, Aria ducked behind a tree. She just had to pray he hadn’t seen her.

  Wolf, her shocked mind pointed out. Wolf! Then human!

  She had thrown herself behind the tree too late. When she peeked around the trunk, she could see him stalking towards her.

  He moved with an inhuman quickness, his gait liquid and graceful. Up close, he had that same wet dog smell. He was naked, but he didn’t even seem to notice that.

  There were tiny flecks of yellow in his eyes. They glittered with malice.

  He was tall and hard-looking, with features that looked like they’d been carved into his face with the blade of a hatchet. His smile seemed to have too many teeth in it, and his hair was thick and as shaggy as his wolf pelt. None of it made for a pretty picture, but it was the eyes that really freaked her out.

  “You’re in my territory,” the werewolf said.

  Aria swallowed. She made herself say, “It’s a public park.”

  She didn’t have a gun. She didn’t have a knife. She didn’t have the magical ability to turn into an apex predator.

  But she had to ignore the man’s toothy, unfriendly smile and think. What did she have?

  Enough experience to find her way out of the woods. She could lead this guy on a merry chase if he chose to follow her—as long as he didn’t change back into a wolf.

  She had a heavy, waterproof camera in a heavy, hard-shelled camera bag. The bag had a long strap. She could swing it and maybe clock him on the side of the head.

  Anything else?

  She had leg muscles honed by years of difficult hiking. Maybe she would never bench press twice her weight or feel confident in a bikini, but she had some faith that her body would take care of her.

  Oh, and she had three deviled eggs in her backpack. Maybe the werewolf could eat them instead of her.

  She had to stay calm, even though he was looking at her like she was the mint on his pillow.

  The first thing to do was to convince him that she hadn’t seen his transformation. She had to leave him believing that she didn’t know any of his secrets.