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WES

I turned off the water and slid the shower curtain back. Steam had fogged up the small bathroom and coated the mirror. I stepped out onto the bathmat, grabbed a towel–one of Remy’s pink ones–and started to dry off.

Moving sucked. Moving as a single parent with a four-year-old was even harder.

I’d found the sheets, the pots and pans, the toiletries. All important things. But the box full of stuffed animals was missing or at least hadn’t been unearthed from the pile still filling the living room.

It had been a crisis, the missing box. Still was.

I’d gotten Remy to sit in her booster that lifted her up to the right height at the kitchen table and color while I showered the sweat and dirt from hauling boxes and rearranging furniture.

As a shifter, lifting heavy things was easy, but in July, it still brought out some sweat.

I swiped the mirror with my towel, then rubbed at my hair.

As I stared at my half-fogged reflection, I couldn’t miss how fucking tired I looked. I was a father, not a grandpa.

I took the day off to move, but Remy still needed dinner. Her own bath. Finding that missing stuffed animal box. Plus, I had to be up at Wolf Ranch at dawn. My responsibilities, here at home and at the ranch as the foreman, never ended.

“Food,” I grumbled to myself. “You need food, a beer, and some TV that doesn’t involve cartoons or princesses.” I wrapped my towel around my waist. Barely. I glanced down. I was not made for a pink toddler towel.

“Remy, what do you say to hamburgers for dinner?” I called.

She didn’t answer, which was a surprise because even though she was a tiny thing, she loved to eat. And being a shifter pup, she loved meat. She also loved to talk. To me. To herself. To her stuffed animals.

“Remy?” I came down the hall from the bedrooms, hand on the towel at my hip.

The one-story rancher I bought was in town on a nice lot. I’d chosen it because it had been completely renovated–new everything–which meant I didn’t have to spend any time fixing leaky faucets or updating an outdated bathroom. The location was perfect to get Remy to school, hang out with friends when she was older, and do all the kid things living isolated on a ranch didn’t offer. I’d waited to buy a house and move our shit out of storage until I was sure it was going to work out with the new job and pack.

It seemed we’d struck gold with the Wolf Ranch pack. They’d welcomed us both like we were family, not perfect strangers, who also happened to be shifters.

The routine and closeness was just the change Remy and I needed after being on the rodeo circuit for six months out of the year. Plus, things had gotten weird in our home pack. I’d heard that Remy’s mom had shown back up, and I hadn’t wanted her messing with our daughter’s head. Hell, I didn’t even want Remy to meet her.

It was hard enough that I had to explain to my daughter why her mom wasn’t around. The last thing our pup needed was to feel that abandonment more acutely after meeting her mom and having her skip town again. It was one thing to be abandoned when she was three weeks old. A four-year-old remembered everything. And everyone.

“Remy?”

When she didn’t answer again, I picked up my pace and frowned. The kitchen was empty. Her coloring was on the table, crayons strewn over the wood surface.

“Remy!” I called again.

She was probably playing hide and seek with me. Or was just absorbed in whatever imaginative play she had going on at the moment. Maybe she’d fallen asleep after exhausting herself with that meltdown over the stuffed animals.

But as I made a quick scan of each room and didn’t find her, the hair on the back of my neck started to rise.

Fuck.

She wouldn’t have left the house. With all the changes lately, she’d been more clingy. She hadn’t wanted to leave my side. Hell, she’d been whiny about me leaving her to get into the shower.

Now, my heart rate surged. My inner wolf grew agitated. He was pacing. We didn’t like not knowing where our pup was. Whether she was safe.

I raised my voice to a shout. “Remy?”

What if she wasn’t safe? Dammit! Where was she?

Turning, I ran from room to room, searching more thoroughly this time–opening closets and looking under the beds in case she was playing a game.

Where the fuck was my daughter?

Shit. Had someone come in and taken her? Had she walked out the front door?

“Remy Marie, if you’re hiding from Daddy, I want you to come out right now. You’re too good of a hider.”

Nothing.

Adrenaline started to pump through me. If anyone had touched my pup, my wolf would rip them into pieces.

I went to the front door. Locked. I went to the back door. Shit. Why hadn’t I noticed that it was open a few inches?

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

I flung it wide, stepped out onto the deck, and scanned the yard. It was an older neighborhood, so there were well-established trees and shrubs. Only partial fencing. I was getting a fucking full perimeter fence installed tomorrow to keep her in.

But right now I didn’t know where she was. I ran a hand through my damp hair.

What if she’d gotten lost? Wandered into traffic? Had been fucking kidnapped ?

“ Remy! ” I bellowed into the air. My voice held the deadly reverberation of a wolf in crisis. They talked about mama bears protecting their young. That was nothing compared to what a papa wolf would do if anyone so much as breathed on his pup.

“Over here, Daddy!”

Oh fate. Her little voice carried across the summer afternoon air. It came from the neighbor’s yard.

Thank fuck. My wolf howled in relief. I sighed, but my heart still pounded.

I was soothed, but I was pissed because she scared the fuck out of me. I’d left her to color or watch TV when I’d showered before. She’d never left the house. Not once.

But not once were we here in this new place, either.

I bolted across the yard, ducked under a low branch on an ash tree, and weaved around a lilac bush.

There, sitting on the concrete stoop of the neighboring house’s back patio, was Remy and a young woman. Giggling and laughing and eating fucking popsicles.

The young woman looked up at me with a wide, dimpled smile.

“Hi, Daddy,” Remy said brightly.