Page 15 of Alpha Wolf’s Nanny (Silvermist Wolves #2)

It had been a hard hike through the forest, but this view alone was worth it.

Cassie had found a small clearing, the surrounding pines towering around her and framing a perfect circle of sky right above her head.

Even though she was desperate to set up her telescope and get to stargazing, she knew it was best to set up camp first. Once she turned her telescope to the sky, she would become lost in her own little world until her tired body finally demanded sleep.

As she wrestled with her tent, her thoughts turned once more back to Felix. In all truth, she hadn’t thought of much else on the hike. Just him. Only him.

It had been the incident this morning, she decided. Seeing him coming out of the shower. Being pressed so closely into his chest. Tilting her chin up, meeting his eye, willing him to close the distance between them and just…

Violently, she shook her head, letting out a growl of pure irritation.

Of course, he hadn’t been about to kiss her.

She’d replayed the moment over and over again in her head, and each time it warped into something new so that she hardly recognized it herself.

Whatever had passed between them, it wasn’t… wasn’t that .

But then again, it was hardly the first time they had gotten close. Sometimes, when she knew he thought she was utterly distracted by the boys, she would catch him watching her. Intent, calm, almost fierce. It would scare her if it didn’t…excite her so much.

Then there were the lingering touches. The eye contact that held just a moment too long.

The casual embraces that sparked with electricity and turned into something else.

If she didn’t know any better, she would say that Felix was holding himself on a very tight leash, and she could only wonder how long his self-control would last.

No. She shook her head again, kicking the ground, sending a spray of pine needles flying. She shouldn’t hope for that. She couldn’t hope for that. Professional. They were keeping things professional. Nothing more, nothing less.

It didn’t stop her wishing. Imagining. Dreaming of what would happen if she finally gave in to her desires.

And what would happen then, Cassie? You’d run off into the sunset? He turned you down, remember? You weren’t good enough for him. Why do you think that’s changed?

Unbidden, her throat grew strangely thick, and her eyes pricked with tears.

All of this imagining, all of this…this desire was pointless, anyway.

Felix was just being friendly; she was looking after his sons.

She was a woman in his house. Any attraction he had wasn’t anything to do with her.

Why would it be? She’d known all her life what she looked like.

How much she lacked compared to other women.

Felix was constantly surrounded by beautiful, confident, outgoing shifters.

What would he want with a plain little human like her?

With a huff, she sat down, pulling her telescope out of her bag and turning it over in her hands.

It was ironic, really, that her mother had named her after a queen who had been punished by the gods for her excessive vanity.

She’d questioned her mother over it several times, her nose wrinkling as her mother told the story.

“Have you ever considered that Cassiopeia wasn’t bragging at all? Have you ever considered that perhaps she was standing up to the gods when they tried to bully her and her daughter? There’s strength in standing up for what you believe in, Cassie, even if it’s something as trivial as beauty.”

The thing was, beauty wasn’t a trivial subject to Cassie.

She had been tormented by it, bullied, harassed, mocked.

It was something that had been used to grind her down to nothing.

If only she had the privilege of defending her beauty.

But she couldn’t. She was no great beauty.

After so many years of people telling her exactly what she was, she wasn’t stupid enough to think otherwise.

It was okay, though. She could hike and run and breathe and jump, all things that were taken away from her mother in her illness.

Her body stopped being the object of such fierce self-hatred when she saw all that it was capable of, beauty or no.

How could she resent herself when she had what her mother had lost?

If the gods were real, they’d punish her for that.

She wondered what her mother would make of all this.

Of her, on the run. Of her father, God knows where.

Of the position Cassie had found herself in.

As far as she knew, her mother had had as much knowledge of shifters as the next person, which is to say, not very much.

Would she be happy that Cassie had found herself a job? A community?

Or would she call Cassie foolish for putting herself into the situation she was in with Felix?

Her mother had been a practical woman. Not cruel, just…realistic. She would be worried, Cassie decided, to know that her daughter was getting caught up with such a powerful male. She’d think she was out of her depth.

And the truth was, she really, really was out of her depth.

It was fine. It was all fine.

Her stomach jolted as she remembered the knock on the door that morning.

It had set her nerves ablaze.

She had tried not to think about it on her hike, tried to shut out that part of her mind that screamed at her that danger was near. She’d always followed her instincts; they’d kept her safe so far, and right now they were telling her that something wasn’t right.

But maybe it was her fault. After so long spent on a knife’s edge, it would be impossible to expect that she could just walk away unscathed.

Of course, she would have lingering fears.

But she truly was safe here. She needed to believe that.

Needed that hope. Otherwise, she’d just spend the rest of her life constantly on the run, constantly looking over her shoulder for her pursuers. She needed to move beyond that.

Still, her instincts were hard to silence.

Cassie rose and stretched, rolling her shoulders and trying to focus on her surroundings instead. The clearing she’d chosen was far from any marked trail, but not so remote that she felt lost. She had mapped the route carefully, marked every turn. She knew exactly where she was.

She turned toward the far edge of the clearing, where a small rise in the earth offered the best open view of the stars. She’d test her telescope’s placement there in a few minutes. She’d already put up the tent.

Now, the fire. She wanted a nice, hot dinner after hours of hiking, and that required heat. She had once had a little travel stove, but that had been in the car in Iowa when the bastards had set it on fire. So, she would have to make do with what nature gave her.

She knelt and began gathering dry twigs and pinecones, setting them carefully into the pit she’d dug earlier. The silence of the forest had shifted slightly. It was deeper, heavier. The kind of quiet that made the hair on her arms stand up.

Cassie stilled.

Something was wrong.

The feeling struck so fast and so strong that her body responded before her brain had caught up. She stood slowly, her breath lodged in her throat.

A twig snapped.

Cassie turned.

But she didn’t even have time to scream.

A streak of brown and muscle launched from the trees, hitting her with enough force to expel the air from her lungs. The world spun, sky, trees, ground, until she was slammed to the earth, pinned beneath a massive weight.

She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

Her eyes locked with golden ones, wild and sharp and utterly inhuman.

A wolf.

Not Felix.

Not one she recognized.

Panic clawed in her throat as the creature growled, low and sonorous, the vibrations rattling her very bones. Its muzzle pulled back, revealing glinting, sharp fangs and hot, bloodied breath.

Cassie sucked in a shallow, shaking breath. The weight pressing her down hadn’t crushed her, not quite, but it pinned her like prey. Helpless, vulnerable. The wolf hovered above her, its golden eyes burning into hers. Intelligent eyes. Aware.

And not friendly.

In her haze of panic, she realized this must be someone from the pack, but she didn’t know who it was. She’d seen some of them in their wolf forms before, sure, but this one…this wasn’t one she recognized. Not Felix. Not Dane. Not anyone she could name.

She lay perfectly still, frozen beneath the sheer size of him, praying he wouldn’t snap. She couldn’t help a whimper that fell from her lips, and felt in that moment like a trapped deer, just waiting for the killing blow to land.

He sniffed again, lower this time, his nose pressing against her collarbone like he was trying to find something buried beneath her skin.

And then he growled.

A threat.

Cassie’s breath caught. Her fingers curled into the dirt, scrabbling, searching, hunting for anything that might help her—

A blur of motion exploded from the trees.

Another wolf hit the first like a thunderclap, so fast and hard that Cassie didn’t even see the impact, only the aftershock as both bodies tumbled into the underbrush in a snarl of teeth and claws. The air went white with fury. Branches cracked. Dirt and leaves flew.

Cassie scrambled backward, dragging herself out of reach on raw elbows, her heartbeat slamming like a drumbeat in her ears.

The two wolves clashed just feet away, massive, snarling, a brutal tangle of muscle and rage. The new wolf, darker, larger, clamped his jaws around the flank of the one that had pinned her and drove him to the ground.

She gasped, her hands shaking.

She didn’t know which of them was worse.

Didn’t know who was protecting her, if either of them was.

The brown wolf twisted, launching the darker one off of him. They crashed apart for a breathless second, then the dark wolf lunged again, taking the fight further into the trees.

Cassie didn’t move. Couldn’t.