But first he had to ensure Kay’s safety. And try as he might, he could think of only one place where she would be safe. And that was in Wyoming, with her father’s pack.

When Kay woke an hour later, he told her what he had decided. She was less than enthusiastic at the idea.

“I don’t want to go home.” She loved her mother and her father, but she wasn’t ready to surrender her freedom, not yet. Once she returned to the compound, she would be absorbed into the pack again, no longer truly an individual but a part of the whole, subject to her father’s will and the law of the pack.

She couldn’t help but envy Gideon. His life was his own. He had no one telling him what he could or couldn’t do, no one deciding who or when he would marry. He enjoyed the kind of freedom she would never have once she returned home.

On the other hand, he didn’t have anyone to care for him, either. No one to share his life, or comfort him when he was down. Still, it would be nice to be her own woman, to make her own decisions.

“Be reasonable, Kiya. It’s the only place I can think of where you’ll be safe. You know, safety in numbers. Even Verah doesn’t have the cajones to go up against a pack of werewolves.”

“But …” She shook her head. “I’ll never get the chance to be on my own again.”

That wasn’t the worst of it, he thought. Once she was back home, it was unlikely they would have many chances to be alone together. But it was just as well. She was practically engaged to another man. He had to remember that.

Kay stretched her back and shoulders. “How long will it take to get there?”

They had been driving for almost ten hours, stopping only to buy gas, or when she needed to get something to eat or drink. Gideon had left her alone in a truck stop restaurant for a few minutes while he preyed on one of the truckers.

He glanced her way. “Another ten hours or so. We’ll have to stop at the next hotel. The sun will be rising in about thirty minutes.”

Kay nodded, her thoughts turned inward. When she had convinced her father to let her leave the pack for a year, she hadn’t stopped to consider how she would feel about going back home when that year was up. It had never occurred to her that she wouldn’t be happy to go back. She hadn’t expected to find such joy and satisfaction in making her own decisions, or such relief at being away from her father’s constant demands. Knowing she was going home filled her with resentment.

There was a hierarchy in the pack that couldn’t be broken. As alpha male, her father was the undisputed leader. His word was law and pack members disobeyed him at their own peril. Kay’s mother was treated with the respect due the pack leader’s mate, but, as a human female, she had no say in pack affairs. No other pack Alpha had a human woman for a wife. If any of the pack’s members had objected to his choice, it was their right to protest, which would have involved challenging the Alpha, something that had never happened in Kay’s lifetime.

Kay’s aunt Greta was the Alpha female. Since Kay was only half werewolf, she had no more influence in the pack than did her mother. That had never bothered her until now, when she had lived on her own for almost a year and made all of her own decisions.

Among wild wolves, only the Alpha pair mated, but that wasn’t true with werewolves.

There were eleven other pairs in her father’s pack, thirteen children ranging in age from eighteen months to eighteen years, and three adult females who were in their early twenties.

Her aunt and uncle had one son, Isaac, who was sixteen. If he showed any Alpha tendencies when he reached adulthood, her father would send him away.

During the full moon, the dynamics of the pack changed, becoming more like that of feral wolves. As Alpha, her father stood more erect and carried his tail higher than the others. Lower-ranking wolves slouched toward the ground in his presence. The Alpha urinated by lifting his leg, the other males squatted. When a submissive wolf approached her father, it would lower its ears and put its tail between its legs, or show its throat to demonstrate subservience. Most of the pack did this without conscious thought.

Although Victor was the eldest son of the Green Mountain Pack’s Alpha, he was still subservient to his father, something she knew didn’t sit well with Victor. He had never said or done anything to indicate he coveted his father’s position, and yet Kay knew he resented his placement in the pack. She had often wondered if the day would come when he would openly challenge his father for leadership.

Kay sighed. One thing she had missed about being home was running with the pack during the full moon. In her wolf form, the world was a remarkable place. Wolves detected scents ten times better than dogs and a hundred times better than humans. She could determine where a particular scent had come from, who or what had made it, and how long it had been there. The males scent-marked pack territory by urinating on targets above the ground, like tree trunks and bushes, which warned members of other packs to keep out.

A short time later, Gideon pulled up in front of a five-star hotel, putting an end to her random thoughts.

She was all too glad to get out of the car and stretch her legs, even though she could scarcely keep her eyes open.

Gideon pulled their suitcases out of the trunk, then locked the car. Inside the hotel, he registered them as Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Adams of Palm Beach, Florida. He waved off the bellboy, picked up their suitcases, and headed for the elevator.

“Samuel Adams?” Kay lifted one brow as they stepped into the elevator.

Gideon shrugged. “You don’t want to be Mrs. Adams?”

“Why not?” she replied, chuckling. “I hear he makes a great beer.”

When they reached their room, Gideon inserted the keycard into the slot and opened the door. He took a quick glance around, grateful for the room-darkening drapes.

“Nice place.” Kay stifled a yawn while she waited for Gideon to lock the door, then she followed him into the bedroom.

“I don’t want you to leave the room,” Gideon said, dropping the suitcases on the flat wooden bench at the foot of the bed. “Not for anything. Understand?”

Nodding, Kay quickly changed into her nightgown and crawled under the covers. Five minutes later, she was asleep.

Stripping off his clothes, Gideon slid into bed beside her. He watched her until the sun came up and then he tumbled headlong into oblivion.

Kay sat up, yawning. A glance to her right showed Gideon was, for all intents and purposes, dead to the world. Undead or alive, awake or asleep, he was still the most gorgeous hunk of man she had ever known. She traced his lips with her fingertips, then leaned forward and kissed him. His lips were cool beneath hers. She brushed a lock of hair from his brow. It must be nice, she thought, never growing old or sick or feeble. Gideon would always look just as he did now, exactly the way he had looked when he became a vampire. Her people aged, but at a much slower rate than humans.

Being half werewolf and half human, Kay wasn’t sure if she would take after her mother, who was forty-three and looked it, or her father, who was in his mid-seventies and looked twenty-five. She was hoping the latter.

As a child, Kay hadn’t stopped to wonder why her mother aged and her father didn’t. She hadn’t really given it any thought until she turned twenty and realized that her father didn’t look much older than she did, which had made her wonder what it was like for her mother, being married to a man who looked so much younger.

Kay remembered asking her mother once if it bothered her that she looked older than her husband. Dorothy had shrugged, then said, “Of course it bothers me, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.”

The bitter edge in her mother’s voice had squelched any further questions on Kay’s part. At the time, Kay recalled wondering if one of the reasons her mother never left the compound was that people who saw the three of them together would likely assume that Kay and her father were siblings and that Dorothy was their mother, or perhaps assume that Kay’s father was her husband.

Rising, Kay went into the bathroom and closed the door. Slipping out of her nightgown, she turned on the taps in the shower and stepped into the stall, her thoughts still on her mother. Maybe Gideon could change Dorothy into a vampire, she thought, pulling the door closed behind her. Not exactly the best solution in the world, but it would keep her mother from growing any older.

Kay shook her head, horrified by the turn of her thoughts. Her gentle, soft-spoken mother, a vampire? She almost laughed out loud as she tried to visualize her mom with red eyes and fangs, stalking the night for prey. And then she did laugh. What on earth was she thinking? No doubt about it, hanging around with Gideon had definitely warped her mind. It was a moot point, anyway. Neither her mother nor her father would ever consider or consent to such a thing.

When she was clean from head to foot, Kay stepped out of the shower, dried off, and shrugged into the plush white robe the hotel had provided. A glance at her cell phone showed it was only eleven-thirty in the morning. What was she supposed to do all day while Gideon slept?

A rumble in her stomach made the decision for her. “Breakfast first.” Calling room service, she ordered French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, orange juice, coffee, and the morning paper.

With that done, she settled back on the sofa and turned on the TV. Switching through the channels, she was appalled by her choices—insipid game shows, silly soap operas, movies that were older than she was, and news, news, news, none of it good. Jobs were at an all-time low. The Dow was down five hundred points. The deficit was up another billion or trillion—who could keep track? The price of gas and groceries was rising every day. And Israel was at war again.

She had just settled on an old Clint Eastwood movie when her breakfast arrived. She thanked the young man who delivered it and signed Gideon’s name to the bill. Resuming her seat on the sofa, she ate slowly to prolong the meal.

When she was finished, she set the tray aside, then sat there, impatiently tapping her foot. Did she dare go downstairs and browse the hotel gift shops? It would only take a few minutes. She could buy a candy bar and a book and come right back. But even as she considered it, she heard Gideon’s voice in the back of her mind. I don’t want you to leave the room. Not for anything. Understand?