Page 2 of A Wolf for Winter

No, actually. This was the opportunity he’d been waiting for. After that last disastrous mission with his Green Beret brothers, he finally had another chance to belong. To find new acceptance, new brothers. He wouldn’t be alone like his Nemean heritage had always destined him to be. In the face of such hope, he forgot his training and allowed his heart to hammer against his ribs.

The fox shifter heard his elevated pulse and smiled. “Guess that’s a yes.” Leather creaked as she stuffed her hand into her pocket and pulled out a small plastic case. “You’ll need these.”

Color contacts. To mask the gold of his eyes. A Nemean wolf dead giveaway.

He took them and slipped them into his own pocket. “Thank you, ma’am.”

Sionnach startled at the sincerity she heard in his voice. She didn’t understand what a gift she and the Coalition elders were giving him, but they didn’t need to know the why, only that he was grateful. So bone-deep grateful.

Sionnach cleared her throat as her gaze wandered around the prison cell. Allen had the impression that while Sionnach rarely projected any emotion other than aloof confidence, it was all a show to guard a sympathetic heart.

“Yes, well, it’s all in the file, but you’ll make contact with the local butcher and grocers, James and Kalina Root—they’re Coalition allies,” she informed him briskly. “You’ll be their delivery boy, so you’ll have access to most of the town and Hawthorne Hall. Don’t mess it up for them, okay? They’re good people and it took years to cultivate them in enemy territory.”

A sympathetic heart indeed.

She sniffed, stuffing both hands into her pockets and jerking her chin to the open cell door. “Well, come on, wolf.”

He followed, the implication that he was a dog obediently following after his master not lost on him in the slightest, but he’d let it pass. Just this once.

When they got to the cell door, Sionnach whipped around, her lean arm baring his path. He towered over the petite fox shifter, but she stood her ground. Had they been in their beast skins, she would’ve never dared. “I’ve never seen a Nemean wolf skinned before, but there’s always a first time, and you can bet it will be at the hands of a Hawthorne when it happens. So do this right, Allen. Don’t blow your cover and don’t let that pretty face of yours get you into trouble.”

As if he would let a woman or anyone else, including himself, jeopardize this for him. A spark of snark returned. “What do you want me to do, rub some dirt on it?”

“And add an exfoliant to your skincare routine? I don’t think so.” She turned to her bobcat shifter colleague and slipped her hand into the tote he held. “Wear this.”

Allen caught a nondescript green ball cap. Except it wasn’t just any green, it was Coalition green. The green of ancient pine trees in the depths of winter, a color that promised spring would return.

The lone wolf slipped the hat over his hair and pulled it down to shadow his face. A soft smile curved his lips. He was used to baby steps, small victories. It’s what wore the target down in time. What would ease the heartbreak of his last mission. This hat, this color, put him on the fringes of the acceptance and community he craved.

Fringes, he mused. Still counts.

CHAPTER TWO

PRESENT DAY.

Flour coated every surface in the Hawthorne Manor kitchen like a fine layer of snow. It had even managed to find its way on the bundles of herbs drying from their pegs in the rafters. Spilled granulated sugar lent an icy wonderland effect, and through it all, Lilac’s father rampaged like an abominable snowman with his furry butt on fire.

She sat on a bar stool on the opposite side of the island, where it was safe, and supervised the enchanted dandelions decorating an entire supermarket’s worth of sugar cookies. Lilac wasn’t allowed to touch them until the royal icing had dried, and then only to package them in cellophane and twine. Despite being a full-grown woman, she was to sit there like a pretty little doll on a shelf that was never played with until instructed otherwise. So she waited, keeping one eye on her frazzled father and the other on the dandelion helpers and feeling next to useless. It was a persistent emotion.

Stag Hawthorne was the baker of the family, but this was his wife’s kitchen, and if Mom had been around to see the mess he was trekking everywhere, she’d string him up outside on the garden trellis with the pole beans. But she wasn’t—she and the rest of the Circle of Nine, the robed elders of the Hawthorne coven, were halfway across the country and handling the issue of a runaway witch.

Meadow.

Lilac’s cousin, the brightest of their generation, the Hawthorne matriarch’s protégé. The very witch who had stolen their grimoire for some reason the older witches wouldn’t explain and leaving them open for an attack. But no one outside the manor knew that, nor would they ever know. Which was exactly why Dad was using up all the flour, sugar, butter, and eggs—he’d sent his bodybuilder of a son Boar outside to the coop to intimidate the hens to lay more—to bake all the sweets needed for the Yuletide Gala. The Hawthornes hosted the week-long celebration every year in the village at Hawthorne Hall, and they weren’t going to break a century-old tradition over a stolen spell book.

The show, and the lie that nothing was amiss, had to go on.

“How’s Rose doing with the wagon?” Dad asked for what had to the be the tenth time.

Her outdoorsy sister had prepped the wagon over an hour ago but had wisely not returned to the baking maelstrom inside. Always never around when there’s work to be done, Lilac mused. No doubt Rose was frolicking about in the snow like a husky without a care in the world. “We’re just waiting for the cookies, Dad.”

Her ivy-green eyes slid to the wooden crates stacked on the floor at the end of the island, each waiting to be packed with Stag Hawthorne’s baked delights. Except the bottom one. That one was an extra crate she’d hidden in plain sight just that morning. It was stuffed with potions, creams, and homemade goat-milk soap, all shrouded from sight in gingham. She’d left enough room to cover the bottles and bars with a layer of baked goods to prevent suspicion before smuggling it onto the wagon with all the other supplies.

Her father glanced at the clock on the wall and swore. With a flurry of practiced movements, he finished braiding a brioche dough into a wreath, jammed a motley assortment of spiced dried fruits into the plait, slathered it all with egg wash, and slid the tray onto the hearth stones of the kitchen fire. It would only take minutes to cook in a hearth witch’s fire.

Then, with a wave of his hand, he dismissed the dandelion helpers. The enchanted plants bolted, hauling their icing bags and jars of sprinkles with the same frenzy as if they’d just robbed a bank. Lilac knew what was coming—her father was a weather witch who had married into the Hawthorne family—and slapped her hands down on anything she didn’t want blown away. A second later, her father summoned a wind to blast the iced cookies completely dry. Lilac got to work, her slender fingers slipping six sugar-cookie masterpieces into each bag and tying it closed with a pretty bow of twine.

“Don’t cut yourself with the scissors,” he reminded her as she snipped the twine free of the spool.