The wolf pup in Jeremy’s arms was the first thing that had made him smile in months. Quinn knew she should say no. A real wolf, a predatory animal, in her apartment above the inn? It was absurd.
But Jeremy had been so quiet since they moved to Pine Haven, and his eyes held a desperate hope she hadn’t seen in a long time. “Just for tonight,” she’d said, ignoring the voice in her head that warned her she was making a mistake. She had no way of knowing that the wolf was actually a nine-year-old girl, or that the pup’s father—an alpha werewolf whose blood ran cold at the thought of humans touching his daughter—was tracking her scent across miles of wilderness, heading straight for Quinn’s front door. Three months of backbreaking work had gone into turning her great-aunt’s rambling Victorian into a functioning inn, and Quinn was barely making ends meet.
She was a single mother with bills piling up and a son who never asked for anything. So when Jeremy appeared out of the woods with a wounded wolf pup cradled in his arms, she couldn’t find it in herself to turn him away. The next morning, Jeremy insists the wolf is a girl and refuses to take her to the vet. Quinn is too busy managing the breakfast rush to argue.
The dining room is filling with weekend guests, and she’s refilling coffee cups when a tall man with dark hair and broad shoulders walks into the lobby. Her hands go numb. The coffee pot nearly slips from her fingers. It’s Mason Keane.
The love of her life. The man who left her ten years ago without a word. The man whose heart she thought she knew until his gaze meets hers across the room—those familiar amber eyes that once looked at her like she was everything. Now they hold her with a guarded tension that makes her blood boil.
He books a room. Indefinitely. Quinn wants to scream at him for showing up here, in her inn, as if the past decade meant nothing. She tells Meg he’s married, but Mason cuts through the tension and says the truth: “I’m widowed.
” Quinn freezes. His wife is dead. He never even told her. She walks away, but he grabs her arm, demanding she wait.
She hears the flutter of that familiar voice, the voice that used to whisper promises against her skin, and she feels the old wound tear open all over again. Jeremy doesn’t know about the man downstairs. He’s in his room with the wolf pup, whom he’s named Fangs. After his mother leaves for breakfast service, Jeremy talks to Fangs, telling her about his new school and how he misses having someone to talk to.
And then Fangs does something impossible. She yelps, dives into his closet, and a moment later, a redheaded girl emerges, wrapped in Jeremy’s blue sweater. “I’m Eva,” she says, holding out her hand. “I’m a shifter.
I can turn into a wolf. ” Jeremy’s mind spins. Fangs is a girl. Fangs is a werewolf.
She ran away from her pack because she couldn’t shift back, and now she’s hiding in his closet. “Please don’t tell your mom,” she begs. Jeremy’s too stunned to refuse. He’s never had a secret before, but he knows he’d do anything to keep this one.
When Eva shifts back into a wolf for him—just like that, a flicker of fur and she’s gone— Jeremy decides he’s made a friend for life. She’s the coolest thing that’s ever happened to him, which is why he decides to keep her secret, no matter what. Downstairs, Quinn is trying to avoid Mason. Every time he catches her eye, her heart lurches.
She knows the truth—that his family had arranged his betrothal to another woman while she was falling in love with him, and that he’d chosen duty over her. She’d thrown herself into the arms of the first man who looked at her afterward, gotten pregnant, and been left again. Now, facing Mason again feels like picking at a scab that never fully healed. He asks personal questions.
He apologizes, sort of. Quinn snaps back with sarcasm, but she can’t quite bring herself to walk away. Even after all these years, there’s something about him that draws her in like a moth to flame. Back upstairs, Eva watches from Jeremy’s window as the tall man in the expensive sweater walks the grounds behind the inn.
“That’s my alpha,” she says, her voice dropping to a whisper. “He’s my dad. ” Jeremy grabs her arm, dragging her away from the window. If Mason is here, that means he tracked Eva.
And if he finds out Jeremy’s been hiding her, the alpha might tear down the inn to reclaim his daughter. Jeremy’s heart pounds. “We need to get out of here,” he says. “If he sees us, we’re done for.
”
Eva agrees. They decide to sneak out, but before they can, there’s a knock at the door. Jeremy opens it to find a tall man with dark hair and amber eyes staring down at him. “Where is she?
” Mason growls, his voice low and dangerous. “Where’s my daughter? ”
Jeremy stands his ground, trembling. “Who are you?
” he stammers. “My name is Mason Keane,” the man replies, stepping inside. “And that wolf you’ve been hiding? She belongs to me.
”
The next few minutes are chaos. Mason bursts into Jeremy’s room, finds Eva, and scoops her into his arms. “I’m taking you home,” he says firmly, heading for the door. Jeremy tries to stop him, but Mason moves too fast, too powerfully.
He’s gone before Jeremy can even react, leaving behind a slammed door and a broken-hearted boy who just lost his friend. Quinn makes it upstairs in time to see Mason’s car peeling out of the driveway. She stands frozen, her mind racing. He came to take his daughter—but how?
How could that wolf be his daughter? Mason had a child with someone else. He’d been a father this whole time, hiding this from her, and he hadn’t so much as said goodbye. But Eva’s words echo in her head, the words she’d spoken before Mason arrived.
“My dad can shift, too. He’s a werewolf. ” Quinn suddenly understands everything—the fear in Mason’s eyes, the way he left all those years ago, the distance he kept even when they were together. He wasn’t choosing his family over her.
He was protecting her. He was afraid of what he was. Jeremy is heartbroken. Eva’s gone, and his mom is a mess.
Quinn cries at night, and Jeremy hears it. He knows the truth now, but he can’t tell her—he promised Eva. Instead, he watches his mom pretend to be okay, and he decides he can’t let her suffer. More than that, he decides he can’t let Eva go.
There has to be a way. One night, Jeremy opens his bathroom door and finds himself in a strange, dusty bookshop with towering shelves and a girl named Iris. “You’re in a magic shop,” she tells him. “This is Adrien.
He grants wishes. ” Adrien is tall and thin with green eyes that glow in the dim light. “People come here when they truly desire something they can’t obtain through ordinary means,” he says. “What do you wish for?
”
Jeremy tells him about Eva and Mason, about his mother’s broken heart, about being a family. He asks if he can wish for his mom to be a werewolf, too. Adrien shakes his head slowly. “There’s a price,” he warns.
“I take whatever you value most. ” Jeremy thinks about his absent father—the hope he’s clung to all these years that maybe someday he’d come back. “I wish that my mom and I could safely be turned into shifters if we wanted to,” he says, his voice steady. “To be with Eva and Mason.
”
The shadows in the shop seem to deepen around Adrien as he closes his eyes. When he opens them, they glow with an unearthly light. “Wish granted. ”
Quinn wakes the next morning to find a wolf sitting on her doorstep.
It’s Eva, shifted back. The girl tells Quinn the truth—all of it. Mason is a werewolf. He’s an alpha.
He left to protect her. Quinn’s shock gives way to understanding, then to aching empathy. She holds the crying girl close and promises to take her home. When they find Mason, he’s pacing in front of the pack house, haunted and afraid.
Jeremy is with him. “I have your kid,” Mason says hoarsely. Quinn looks at Eva. “And I have yours.
” They stare at each other, the air between them thick with all the things that have been left unsaid. And then Mason admits it: he never wanted to leave. He was afraid he’d lose control, like his brother Elliot did, and hurt her. He left because he loved her too much to risk her.
Jeremy interrupts, brimming with confidence. “Actually, I fixed it. I met a magician named Adrien. He granted me a wish—that me and my mom could become werewolves safely.
” Quinn stares at her son, her jaw dropping. Eva starts bouncing with joy. Mason’s face cycles through shock, horror, and disbelief. “You made a conditional life-altering wish to some unknown dark magician without telling us?
” he chokes out. Quinn feels the world tilt. Her son bargained with a magical being to win her a future she never thought possible. She’s furious, sure.
But what she feels most is hope, burning brighter than she’s felt in years. “You are in very big trouble, young man,” she says, though there’s a smile pulling at her lips. A year later, the inn’s garden is filled with twinkling lights and white roses, and Quinn pledges forever to Mason with the pack celebrating around them. That night, alone in their bedroom, Quinn tells Mason she’s ready.
“Are you sure? ” he asks one last time, his wolf glimmering behind his eyes. Quinn lies back, her throat exposed, her heart racing not with fear but with certainty. “Do it,” she whispers.
He nuzzles her neck before biting down. The pain steals her breath—fire in her veins, muscles shifting and reforming. Mason’s voice anchors her through the agony. When she opens her eyes, she’s a wolf, powerful and silver-streaked with fur, every sense heightened and alive.
The mate bond floods her mind, his love washing over her like warm sunlight. They race through the night, two wolves beneath the full moon, and when they shift back, Quinn stands before Mason with fierce joy. “I want all of you,” she tells him. She kisses down his neck, then bites, tasting copper and magic as the bond ignites.
Forever, they promise. Downstairs, Jeremy and Eva laugh with the pack. The future opens before them, whole and shining. Quinn Davis, Luna of the Pinehaven Pack, smiles against her mate’s shoulder.
She finally found her happily ever after.
