Grayslake: Furrever Yours (Kindle Worlds Novella) by Georgette St. Clair

ensure our safety. Hospitals, police department, fire department, city hall.”
    “Fascinating,” she marveled as she followed him back out.
    “Hey,” Clarence said to her in a low voice, as she and Knox joined him by the exit door. “That nurse, Kerry. What’s her story?”
    “Uh, single, if that’s what you mean,” Heather said. “Husband ran out on her a few years ago. Hard worker, ferocious advocate for her staff. Why do you ask?”
    “Not you too,” Knox muttered at Clarence. “We’ve got to get going.”
    “Just asking,” Clarence said in a wounded voice. “Doesn’t hurt to ask, does it?”
    “No, it hurts to want what you can’t have. Just think before you leap,” Knox said. Then he smiled and winked at Heather. “Of course, sometimes you get really, really lucky and all the pain is worth it.”
    * * * * *
    After work, Heather got in her car and followed Knox back to his home in Sugar Creek County.
    Now she realized that he didn’t just live with his family – he lived with his pack. There was a big main house at the end of a long dirt road, and a scattering of other houses near the main house, and a small dairy farm, which was the family business.
    The main house was a two-story Colonial-era house built in the early Classical revival style. There was a main entryway with four two-story-high columns under a triangular gable. A porch wrapped around the house, and there was a porch on the second floor as well, also supported by round white columns. Magnolia trees with fat white blossoms perfumed the air, and orange and yellow and pink bougainvillea twined up trellises near the house. There was a lush undergrowth of flowering bushes around the house, which was set among towering oak trees.
    He took her into the huge kitchen, which had two gas stoves and a wood stove and three refrigerators and a walk-in freezer. The pack was gathered around waiting for her, most of them looking eager and excited. He began introducing her to pack members.
    She’d already met Clarence, who apparently was not just his deputy but his Beta. There was his Aunt Janet, his Uncle Wilfred, and their teenaged daughter Lark; they ran the dairy farm. There were about a dozen other people there whose names Heather struggled to remember. Then there was a woman named Sasha whose name Heather would definitely remember, because she glared at her with more hatred than Heather had ever seen in a person’s eyes before.
    Sasha stood with a dour-looking older couple and a tall, sullen-looking young man. She was slender, and had bleached blonde hair and eyebrows plucked to thin, perfect arches. Knox introduced the young man as Peter, Sasha’s brother. Nathanial and Louise, the older couple, were her parents.
    “May I speak to you alone?” Sasha said to Knox, raising her voice to be heard as pack members crowded around Heather and offered her trays of appetizers.
    “No, you may speak to me right here,” Knox said. “Anything you want to say to me, you can say to Heather as well.”
    “Fine. She’s human. She’s not your mate. And you brought her back here,” she said to Knox, eyes sparking with hurt and fury.
    An ex, then.
    Peter nodded. “She’s right,” he said indignantly.
    “Yes, your Alpha made the decision to bring her here. Do you have a problem with that?”
    “You’re risking the lives of our entire pack,” Sasha said, her tone turned wheedling.
    “She’s right,” Nathanial chimed in grimly. “And I own part interest in the dairy, so I have a say in who’s allowed on our property. This doesn’t just affect you, it affects all of us – every man, woman and child who lives here.”
    “Do you think that I would ever put my own personal interests ahead of the pack’s?” Knox snapped. “I know this woman. She would never reveal our secrets, and she would never threaten us.”
    “It’s true,” Heather said, speaking up quickly. The last thing she wanted was to cause tension in his pack. “I would never