Werewolf in Alaska: A Wild About You Novel Read Free Page A

that was, except that it was somehow linked to the carving on his mantel.
    Her ability to capture the wolf’s spirit in her work had spoken to him on an unsettlingly deep level. Something wordless and intense had passed between them that day at the general store. He feared that she saw things about him that she shouldn’t see.
    He’d also sensed she was attracted to him, and if he was right about that, any further contact would be unfair to her and irresponsible of him. Thinking about her still brought a surge of lust that should have weakened by now. Instead it grew stronger by the day. And that was damned inconvenient for a werewolf who despised the concept of Weres having sex with humans.
    He’d dedicated himself to that cause for personal and family reasons, and he wasn’t about to stray because of his tempting neighbor. He had a duty to uphold Were tradition, partly because his mother, Daphne, had been a Wallace, a direct descendent of what had once been werewolf royalty in Alaska.
    Under the leadership of the Wallaces, the Alaskan Were community had amassed a fortune following the gold rush in the late 1890s. As the pack had prospered, splinter groups had migrated throughout North America. No Wallace pack members lived in Alaska anymore. His mother had mated with Benjamin Hunter, whose pack was based in Idaho, and that’s where Jake had grown up.
    Werewolves, including the Hunter pack, had created financial dynasties in all major North American cities, a fact unknown to the human population. The pack based in New York was the only one to continue the Wallace name.
    Jake’s mother had settled in Idaho with her mate, but she remained proud of her Wallace heritage. Before Jake had reached puberty and developed the ability to shift, his mother had taken him to visit the historic Wallace lodge set deep in the forest near Sitka. It was now a private museum known only to Weres.
    That trip had convinced Jake that he wanted to live in Alaska and dedicate himself to protecting the Were legacy. Because he believed that Were-human mating threatened that legacy, he had been opposed to it ever since.
    Unfortunately, prominent werewolves had already mated with humans. Worse yet, two of them were from the historic Wallace pack. So far those humans had not revealed the existence of werewolves, but some Weres believed the time had come to end the secrecy. Jake viewed that as a recipe for disaster.
    During last fall’s WereCon2012 in Denver, a newly formed governing body called the Worldwide Organization of Werewolves, or WOW, had tackled the issue. To Jake’s disappointment, they’d left it open to interpretation by individual Weres. Although Jake had been an elected WOW board member, the group’s liberal stance had forced him to resign. He’d founded WARM and had cut back on his wilderness guiding while he rallied support for his cause.
    Meanwhile, Rachel Miller’s career had skyrocketed, and her trademark was the wolf. Not just any wolf, either. Her name had become synonymous with carvings of a particular wolf—one that looked just like his carving. One that looked almost exactly like Jake when he shifted.
    Any Were who’d seen him in wolf form and also knew Rachel’s work had remarked on the similarities. She’d captured the shape of the eyes and the faint diamond pattern on his forehead created by a soft mixture of gray and black. Humans might think that all wolves looked alike, but Weres recognized even subtle distinctions. Rachel’s wolves all resembled Jake.
    He’d seen the speculation in the eyes of his fellow Weres. No doubt they wondered if he’d been careless enough to accidentally let Rachel photograph him in wolf form, or, even more damning, if she knew him this well because he’d had a relationship with her. No one had accused him of anything . . . yet.
    If and when they did, he could honestly say Rachel’s wolf wasn’t him. At first he’d thought it was, too. But after the initial shock, he’d