Claimed (The Lair of the Wolven #1) by J.R. Ward

“Well, there you go. I guess the mystery’s solved.”

As Candy just stared across the desk, it was clear the woman wasn’t buying the story, but whatever, nothing to be done about that.

And then Lydia frowned at her check. “Wait, who should sign this? There’s no signature on the bottom.”

“You have to.”

“But I can’t sign my own check, can I?”

“Okay, fine. I’ll just go out into the woods and find a wolf to do it. But don’t worry, I’ll make sure the paw print is of age.”

“How about I start with looking at our bylaws.”

“All right, and when that tells you nothing, we’ll put the wolf plan in play.”

Lydia laughed a little and started to walk away. Then she looked back. “So I went to Lincoln High just now.”

Candy frowned. “What for?”

“Just needed to use the library. You used to be on the varsity track team.”

The woman laughed. “Oh, my God, you saw that picture. Makes my pink hair seem not so scary right? I had feathered hair for days back then. That was right after my parents moved us out of Brooklyn. As you’ve noticed, I kept the accent as a parting gift from my borough.”

“You were a seventies queen, for sure.” Lydia hesitated. “And your coach. That was Sheriff Eastwind’s father, right? They look … like twins.”

Candy’s face did not change its expression. And her voice didn’t alter. And … nothing really was off about the woman. But the air became charged around her.

“Yeah, that’s right. He’s the spitting image of his dad.”

There was a long moment. And then Candy’s brows lifted. “Is there something else?”

As Lydia’s temples started to ache, she rubbed one of them. “No, nothing. I just thought the resemblance is uncanny.”

With a shrug, Candy turned back to her monitor. “Sometimes that happens. Not that I know personally. My fur baby doesn’t look a damn thing like me.”





OUT IN THE preserve, Daniel took a break from the hammering. The temperature was around sixty degrees, which would have been fine for physical effort. The sky was cloudless, though, so the sun was baking him like a ham.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to go far for relief.

The last of the three bridges was the one in the worst condition, but it spanned a cool mountain stream that was running. Hopping down onto the stones, he bent over and splashed his face and neck. As he righted his head, the cool water dripped onto his chest and was absorbed by his T-shirt.

To get at the bridge’s problems, he’d had to de-construct the whole thing, taking the handrails off as well as all the planks. The three base supports were the issue, the stream having eaten away at their undersides to rot the wood span. The good news was that there was enough left intact on the ends at the shores so all he needed to do was run supporting twoby-fours across the damage and nail the fuck out of it all. He’d brought six ten-foot lengths with him on the ATV—and with them now bracing the weakened sections, he was confident they’d get one more season out of the thing.

Glancing around, he hopped back up onto the shore and started in with the planks. There were about two dozen of them. He’d be done in a half hour and then he could return to the WSP.

And check on Lydia.

After he removed the old nails from the boards, he laid everything in place and went about resecuring them. Which turned out to be a fucking production. The hammer in his hand felt like it weighed fifty pounds every time he raised it over his shoulder—another example of how powerful the brain was. Courtesy of his mood, the simple movements felt like he was pushing an Army tank uphill, even though nothing had really changed about his life, his situation, his reality.

Well … except for Lydia—

“Fuck!” he spat as he nailed his forefinger a good one.

Shaking his hand out, he hissed and looked up—

The flicker came from down on the right, at a lower elevation on the mountain. Narrowing his eyes, he put his hand up as a shield to the sun.

And there it was again, something metal catching the rays.

Going over to the ATV, he took out the binocs from the glove box on the dash. Training the lenses on where he’d seen the not-found-in-nature winking, he had to scan around before he caught it again.

A hatch. In the earth. Or at least that’s what it looked like.

Finally, he thought.

Quickly finishing up with the planks, he locked the tools and his cell phone up on the ATV, took the key, and pulled a camo-covered poncho over himself. With the hood in place, he went off away from the trail, moving fast through the trees, keeping his head down and his feet light.

His gun was in the palm of his hand. Or rather, the gun with the suppressor that he’d lifted off that stalker. Who’d conveniently disappeared.

As he descended, he was aware of everything around him: The breeze in the air, the twinkle of the lake in the distance, the soft pine needles under his boots. No one was following him.

That he was aware of.

Closing in on where the flash had come from, there was a sense of inevitability about his path, as if a chain had wrapped around his chest and was pulling him in to a predetermined location. It had been a long, hard road, and he was finally finished with the searching part of things. And yet with every step he took, he told himself not to get ahead of things. He didn’t actually know if this was what he’d come for … yet some sixth sense didn’t buy the mediation-of-his-expectations bullshit.