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  Books. Change. Lives.

  Copyright © 2022 by Terry Spear

  Cover and internal design © 2022 by Sourcebooks

  Cover art by Craig White/Lott Reps

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  sourcebooks.com

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Excerpt from The Best of Both Wolves

  Chapter 1

  Back Cover

  Thanks so much to Darla Taylor, whom I hope to see in San Antonio when I can get to that part of Texas, for beta reading my books, for sending me flower seeds to make my garden pretty, and for being my good friend!

  Chapter 1

  Christmas Day was a little over a week away, and red wolf shifters Maverick Wilding and his older twin brother, Josh, were setting up their reindeer exhibit at a shopping mall in Astoria, Oregon, when they saw a competing Oregon reindeer ranch staff arrive to set up its own display with four sexy female elves and Santa.

  Maverick and Josh frowned at the lines of kids waiting to see the Calypso Reindeer Ranch Santa, some of the dads appearing more interested in Santa’s elves.

  “Hell,” Josh said. “I can’t believe they keep showing up at the same locations we are.”

  “To piggyback on our business,” Maverick said, motioning to the kids and parents, excited to see the reindeer calves he and Josh had brought. But this was the third damn time the Calypso Ranch personnel had arrived at one of the locations they’d booked with local businesses and tried to steal the show out from under them. “They’re watching our schedule that’s posted on all the social media sites, and since we scheduled these a year in advance and wanted the most media coverage for the buck, they’re using our promotions to bring our customers to their camp. They must have signed up at the locations we scheduled right after we did.” Maverick wished they could somehow stop the trend from continuing.

  “We’re not resorting to using sexy elves to boost our sales,” Josh said.

  Maverick chuckled. “Hardly. Bringing the reindeer calves this time has really changed the dynamics. The kids—and most of the adults—want to see the calves.”

  “Yeah, they’re not here to see sexy elves.”

  “Exactly.” Even so, Maverick wanted to turn into his wolf and chase off the other reindeer ranch hands. When they signed contracts for next year, Maverick and Josh would ensure that the place hosting them signed a clause that stated they would be the only ones providing a reindeer exhibit at that time in that place. But for now, they couldn’t do much about the situation through the rest of the holiday season.

  Then a dark-haired, middle-aged man and woman came up to speak with them, smiling, then frowning. They looked vaguely familiar to Maverick, but he couldn’t place them. Not with all the people they saw over the years at these exhibits.

  “Hey, you own the reindeer, don’t you?” the man asked.

  “Yeah,” Maverick said, shaking his hand. “I’m Maverick Wilding of Wilding Reindeer Ranch, and this is my twin brother, Josh.”

  “Andy and April Reynolds. We are the radio show hosts for Wild Times Radio Show. You probably don’t remember us, but we were here last year to see your reindeer. We’ve been here before that, but we might not have spoken.” The man smiled. “We love the calves. So what’s the deal with those people?” He motioned to the Calypso Ranch exhibit.

  “Usurpers, using our promo to promote their own ranch,” Maverick said, not about to water down how he was feeling. Over the years, they’d had no problems with either of the other two reindeer ranches in Oregon, so the Calypso Ranch’s actions had been a real surprise to them this year.

  “Well, that’s not right.” April sounded as annoyed as Maverick felt.

  “Yeah, we agree. They’re using our schedule to hop on the reindeer sleigh, and there’s nothing in our contracts that says we can stop them,” Josh said.

  “We’ll help you out there,” April said.

  Maverick smiled, figuring there wasn’t anything the couple could do, but he was glad to hear he and his brother had fans who loved their reindeer.

  “Seriously, Andy and I can talk about it on our show,” April said.

  Hell yeah! Maverick shared a smile with his brother. Josh was grinning from ear to ear.

  “We wanted to tell you that while we were hiking in the Fort Stevens State Park near here, we saw a reindeer,” April said. “We worried it might be one of yours since you were going to be here, and we wanted to see you. We didn’t realize the other reindeer ranch would be here too. They weren’t here the last two years when we came to see you.”

  “No, we’re not missing any.” But Maverick hoped the other ranch hadn’t lost one either.

  “We’ll check with them, then,” April said.

  “Okay, uh, thanks for alerting us. Let us know what they say, and if he’s not one of theirs, we’ll search for the one you spied in the state park after we’re done here.” Maverick wasn’t sure about it, figuring that the couple were mistaken and had seen a mule deer or a wapiti, another kind of deer that roamed the state park. But if by chance it was a tame reindeer, they had to find and capture him. They’d provide for it until they learned to whom he belonged.

  “Thanks. We knew you could be trusted to take care of him,” April said. “Come on, Andy. Let’s go talk to the others, then.”

  “Thanks for coming to see us,” Josh said.

  “You bet. We love the spirit of Christmas and everything to do with Christmas, including seeing your reindeer. Coming to visit them has become an annual tradition for us.”

  “Well, we sure appreciate it,” Maverick said.

  “Our pleasure.” Then Andy took April’s hand and headed over to the other reindeer ranch’s setup.

  They heard April say to the Calypso staff, “Are you missing a reindeer?”

  “No,” one of the Calypso Ranch hands abruptly said.

  “Okay, well, we saw one in the state park.”

  “You’re wrong,” the ranch hand said. “Unless the Wildings misplaced one of their own.” He cast Josh and Maverick a conceited smile.

  “Why are you attempting to steal the show here? We’ve been here to see the Wildings’ reindeer in the past and couldn’t believe you would try to rob their spotlight,” Andy said.

  With their enhanced wolf hearing, Josh and Maverick were enjoying the show.

  “Is that what they said?” the ranch hand asked, glancing in the Wildings’ direction, as if he planned to straighten them out for saying so.

  “They didn’t have to. We’ve been here before to see their reindeer, and you weren’t here. Don’t worry. We’ll let the public know.” April shook her head, she and Andy left, and the ranch hand stared after them as they headed back to the Wildings’ corrals.

  “That’s what we need. Fan support to spread the word,” Maverick said privately to Josh.

  Josh laughed. “Yeah. That was great.”

  When the couple reached them, April said, “Okay, we’ll be sharing this on our show tonight. They said they’re not missing a reindeer though.”

  “We’ll both be looking for him,” Maverick promised.

  “I told you they would,” she said to Andy. “Let us know if you find him. We�
�ll share that with our viewers.”

  “Sure thing,” Maverick said. He and his brother shook their hands, and then they left.

  “What do you think?” Josh asked.

  Maverick was certain it wasn’t a reindeer. “It’s probably just a deer, but we have to check into it, just to be sure. A reindeer wouldn’t normally be living on his own in the park.”

  “I agree.”

  After the show ended, the Wildings packed up their reindeer and took them to a wolf-run cattle ranch near the park. They always had gear in the truck on these trips in case they got stranded in bad weather, so they parked at the trailhead and began their hike, smelling for reindeer scents on the way.

  “We’ll set up the tent and then shift. We’ll be able to cover a lot more territory that way,” Maverick said.

  They finally reached the spot that was perfect to set up the tent, and Josh said, “We’ll start off together, but we’ll probably need to split up to search more of the area, not to mention traveling as two wolves could get more attention than we bargained for.”

  “Yeah.” That’s all they would need—for someone to see them as wolves, forget spotting reindeer in the snowy woods in Oregon.

  ***

  Gina Hutton, her brother, Weston, and two of his friends, Bromley and Patterson, were off on another Bigfoot hunting adventure, this time at Fort Stevens State Park, Oregon. Not that she really believed in the legendary creature, but she’d been hiking and camping with her brother since she was little, and she loved the time they spent together when they weren’t working. Now he was searching for elusive werewolves too, courtesy of his friends who had gone hunting in Maine for Bigfoot. They had claimed they had seen a woman shift into a white wolf, and then everything had twisted into some kind of a horror flick. Their friends, who were from Millinocket, Maine—calling themselves the Dark Angels, she’d later learned—had killed a couple of men they had sworn were werewolves after that. A wolf protecting his owner killed one of the Dark Angel hunters, and another of the hunters had gone to jail for murdering the men he believed were werewolves. The third Dark Angel hunter had just vanished—presumed dead.

  Gina and her brother had felt bad about what had occurred. They hadn’t been able to learn what had happened to the third hunter either. At least her brother and his friends had said there was no way they would have killed the supposed werewolves themselves. But what if they had felt they were defending themselves?

  Before they were able to leave for Maine on that hunting trip, she, her brother, Bromley, and Patterson had come down with a bad case of the flu and had stayed behind in Portland, Oregon, their home. She was glad they hadn’t been with the others in Maine because of what had gone down. They could have been caught up in the same crazy showdown if they’d been with the others. Though she had hoped if they had gone, they would have been able to stop the other hunters from hurting anyone in the first place.

  Her brother and his friends were still open to the possibility that a werewolf, not a real wolf as had been the case, had killed the one hunter and that the men they’d murdered had actually been werewolves. It didn’t matter that all the forensic evidence in the case pointed to the dead men having been fully human, no wolf DNA whatsoever. She did wonder if the coroner had really checked for that though.

  Still, Weston believed the Arctic werewolf had killed two of his friends, and now he was even more than determined to find werewolves too. He reasoned that if werewolves lived in Maine, they could live anywhere. Gina had always assumed—if werewolves were real—they would be gray wolves, not Arctic wolves.

  Bromley and Patterson, who believed the same as Weston, were setting up the campsite with him while Gina went to get some water from the nearby lake. The sun would be setting in an hour, and she wanted to get some pictures of the starry, full moon night later. She walked out on the ice for some distance, saw where the ice looked thinner, and began to chip away at it with an ice pick to make a hole. The guys always sent her because she was lighter than they were.

  Suddenly, she saw what looked like a reddish German shepherd running across the frozen lake straight for her. She scrambled backward away from the ice she was trying to break through.

  Just as the dog was upon her, woofing, the ice cracked and gave way, and he fell into the lake. She screamed. Her heart practically seized, her leg breaking through the ice, and she nearly fell in as well but managed to scuttle away from the edge, only getting one of her legs wet.

  “Ohmigod, no, no, no! Weston!” she screamed. She laid on her belly, reaching into the frigid water, trying to get hold of the dog so she could pull him out of the lake. But he was too heavy, thrashing about, trying to get out on his own, not trusting her to help him out in time.

  “Weston!”

  She knew the dog would exhaust himself before long, succumb to the cold, and drown if she didn’t rescue him soon enough. As a zoologist, Gina loved animals, and one of her conditions for going on the hunt with her brother and his friends was that if they ever found what they were looking for, they wouldn’t harm the werewolf or Bigfoot.

  “Weston!”

  “Gina, what’s wrong?” Weston shouted and came out of the woods and onto the shore, carrying some wood for the fire. He immediately dropped the firewood.

  “The dog was trying to warn me about the ice, and he fell through. We have to get him out.” She would never forgive herself if the dog drowned after trying to warn her of the danger.

  “I’ll get some rope.” Weston ran off.

  Gina reached into the lake again, trying to keep the dog’s head above water, when the ice cracked more underneath her, and the dog snapped at her in warning to get back, snagging his tooth on her hand. He cut the skin, and it stung like crazy. She hoped he’d had his rabies vaccination. She quickly moved back away from the widened hole in the ice, praying her brother would hurry with the rope.

  Then she saw all three men running toward the lake with ropes and a tarp.

  “The ice is cracking more,” she called out.

  “Come back to shore,” Weston said as Patterson tied the rope around his waist and then her brother walked more slowly across the ice to reach her and the dog, the second rope over his shoulder and the rolled-up tarp under his arm.

  On solid ground, Patterson and Bromley were holding the other end of the rope in case Weston fell through the ice.

  She was afraid they were going to think the mission of rescuing the dog was too risky. She didn’t want to leave him, though she was at a loss as to how to rescue him. She just didn’t have the strength to lift him out of the frigid water.

  “I’m going to get the dog, but if you fall in, you won’t have a safety line. Return to shore, Gina.” Weston dropped to his belly as he got closer to her, gingerly making his way out on the ice, sliding, and she slowly backed away toward shore, thinking belatedly that she hadn’t gotten the water to use to cook their meal, the water bag still hanging from her neck.

  She was nearly to the shore when her brother reached the dog. He laid the rope and tarp down, and then he reached into the water to try to pull the dog out, the ice cracking more.

  “Hold on, pooch,” her brother said. “I’ll get you out.” Then Weston tried again, and he had the dog partway out, his large paws scrambling for purchase, but then he slipped from her brother’s grasp. “Damn!”

  Gina’s heart raced, and she wanted to help the dog too. Maybe the two of them could do it together.

  “You can do it, Weston,” Patterson shouted. “Use all those muscles you’ve been working on.”

  “Yeah, unless you need Patterson to help you,” Bromley volunteered.

  She noted Bromley didn’t volunteer himself.

  “No, we can’t have too much more weight over here.” Weston grabbed the rope. “Stay where you are. If you come out here, your weight will likely put us all in the lake.”

  Hers might too.

  Weston quickly made a lasso. He leaned into the water with the lasso, pulled it over the dog’s head and around his front legs and body, and secured him. “Okay, come on, boy. You can do it. Jump up when I pull, and we’ll get you out of there.”

  This time Weston got some traction, and the dog’s front paws dug into the edge of the ice. Weston pulled hard, and he and the sopping-wet dog fell back onto the ice, safe for the moment. Feeling a modicum of relief, Gina and their friends cheered. But then they heard the ice cracking.