“Thank you. And now we deal with my family. You haven’t met my grandmother yet.” She laughed. “She’s the one who presides over the ceremony that brings you into the Pack. Sort of the wise woman of Cascadia. Very woo-woo but she’s the coolest.”

“They’re okay that I’m not going to convert?”

Tegan nodded. “Not everyone does you know. It’ll be harder later, my lifespan is longer than yours but we’ll deal with it when it happens. The ceremony will recognize you as Pack, give you the protection of the Pack but you don’t have to be a wolf to get that. You’re mated to me and that’s good enough. You can assure your family that because you’re not a wolf, the part where the couple shifts won’t be included. Everyone will keep their human skins for the whole time. If you want to have a ceremony in a church later, when we return from the NC meeting, I’m fine with that. I want your family to be comfortable with our relationship. Or, as comfortable as they can be.”

“I may feel differently in a few years, hell a few months. That’s cool too, right? If I decide later I want to be converted?”

“I don’t want to push you into anything, so of course you can change your mind later. Now, I think I need to call my brothers about this flyer thing. Is there some sort of way you can check to see if there’ve been any other situations like this? If flyers were dropped anywhere else?” She moved back into the living room and sat on the couch and he followed.

“We have a database, a hate crimes activity database. I’m one of the paranormal liaisons so I have access to it although it’s not something I normally do upkeep on. I have a call in to the officer who works county-wide on this stuff, I’m hoping she’ll call me back soon. I can log in to the database from here though. Let’s look before you call Lex so we can give him a more complete picture.”

They searched and soon enough, several hits popped up in southeast King County where the Stoners lived.

“I know this is your world and all, Ben, but it seems to me that this is the kind of thing you should be notified about. I mean, you’re the liaison to the Packs, we need to know this.”

He sighed. “Yeah, I’m a little agitated about that myself. I suppose I just assumed they’d tell me.”

“Why don’t you check this database like once or twice a month or so? Or have some sort of notifier set to ping you when this kind of activity arises? I know you’re busy and you have other cases to work on that aren’t paranormal community related and all, but I’m guessing we can’t get access to the information ourselves so we rely on you all.”

Tegan found her phone and dialed Lex. It was late but he’d be up, he rarely slept anyway.

“I’ll make it part of my schedule to check it regularly. No, you can’t have official access but the computer here can look it up, I don’t mind you checking it out while I’m around.” He began to jot notes down as Lex answered.

“What’s up?” Lex answered.

She explained the situation including the call in to the officer in charge and the plans for the sketch artist. Tegan heard the contained anger in her brother’s voice as he questioned her about the whole thing.

“So, you’re telling me his mother believes this shit? That we’re tools of the devil and have no souls?”

“I don’t want to talk about that right now. I just wanted to fill you in. I’ll write up a report and send it along to National as well when I get in tomorrow morning.”

“Fine, you know I’ll just make you tell me when you get here anyway. I’ll set a meeting for the corps tomorrow morning around shift change time.” Lex told her he loved her, urged her to be careful and hung up.

She and Ben stayed up a while longer, her appetite had returned so she made a late dinner while he checked in with his sister and his parents.

“Come to bed, red wolf. I get the feeling we’re both going to have a very long day tomorrow.”

When she looked up at him in the doorway after they’d cleaned the kitchen and he’d taken out the trash, she noted the light in his eyes, the way his gaze held only her.

Everything else fell away as she nodded and moved toward him.

Chapter Twelve

Harried, Ben hustled through four witness interviews, wrote reports, took about two dozen phone calls, answered emails and did a scene investigation all before three that next afternoon. He’d also gone to the cop shop near the restaurant to be with his mom when she did the sketch. She’d seemed a bit calmer and more rational and he hoped that trend continued.

He hadn’t even had the time to check in with Tegan although she’d been on his mind after the night before. Hell, she was always on his mind. Smiling as he finished a report, he remembered how she’d looked spread out beneath him, a sheen of sweat on her flanks, her back arched to meet his mouth on her sweet pu**y.

Ooops, now he had a hard-on to deal with.

Still, that was easily dealt with when he paused to wonder how the meeting with her brothers had gone. He’d played phone tag with the county hate crimes liaison who finally just faxed him some information about anti-paranormal activity in the county, which appeared to be rising at a pretty steady rate since the same period the year prior.

He forwarded the info to Lex via email on his way out the door to yet another meeting and that had been several hours past.

The growling in his stomach and a sudden feeling of total calm alerted him. Looking up, he realized it had already gotten dark. He also caught a glimpse of his red wolf coming toward him, a bag of takeout in her hands and a smile on her face.