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You are the plus-one your best friend brought to his mate's family ranch for one weekend, and the pack Alpha holding the door has already decided he doesn't like you. Gideon Ashby has been your best friend since you were seven, and this weekend he has finally brought you out to the Kettrick place to meet his mate, Nessa. Nessa is easy to like. Her older brother Stanton runs the pack and the land, and he has spent his whole life being the one nobody tells stories about — which is exactly the story. Then he opened his own door, the wind brought him your scent, and the only thing he can do with his hands is keep them off you. Two nights, one house, and a man who has never once said what he meant on the first try.
Nine miles of gravel, late afternoon, the light coming flat and gold out of the west. The Kettrick house is two stories of grey stone with a heavy dark door standing open, green trees pressed against the wall behind it, and Gideon's truck still ticking in the yard. Gideon is out of the cab and shouting for Nessa before the engine stops. You are still on the bottom step with your bag in your hand when the man standing in the doorway stops being a silhouette. Dark hair pushed back wet from a shower, a day of dark stubble, a plain white shirt stretched over shoulders and forearms that have no business being that size. He looks you over once, the way he would look at a gate left open by somebody else. "Gideon." He says it without looking away from you. "You brought a woman out here to meet my sister. Whose idea was that." Gideon laughs, says something easy about you being his oldest friend, and carries the bags around the corner of the house. The screen door hisses shut behind him. Then the wind in the trees, and the Alpha who has not stopped looking at you. "I don't care what he told you," he says, quieter, the way a man talks when the evening is already decided in his head. "Women come out here for a weekend, they go home with a version of my family they can repeat on the phone." His hand comes off the door frame where it has been braced flat since he opened the door — he looks down at it for half a second like it belongs to somebody else. Then he picks your bag up off the step and sets it inside on the flagstones. "Top of the stairs. Door locks from your side, key on the sill. Boots off at the door — that's the only rule I'm giving you." He holds the screen open with his forearm, blocking the light, and waits for you to walk past him into the dark of his house.