Discarded cover art:
We decided not to use this cover, though I liked the effect. Chase was entirely too soft, if you see what I mean. And his hair would never be that flyaway.


Deleted Chapter: Andrea and Andrew

Insert between page 41 and 42 if you're reading the pdf version. Insert between "Fire in the Hole" and "March 14, 2009 -- D-Day minus one" if you're reading another version

Andrea and Andrew

A piercing whistle sounded, distracting Andrea from the hated task of signing bridal shower thank you notes. She smiled, knowing her brother would soon try to slip away. Sure enough, at her feet, Andrew scrambled toward the door in a bid for freedom.

“Oh, no you don’t!” She snatched the puppy’s wriggling body up and moved over to her bed, cuddling him close. “You don’t get away that easily, cub.”

Blair Spencer-McCallum’s gruff little voice floated up the hall, making Andrea smile and Drew whine. “Hi ’Drea, I’m here! Drew! Come’ere, Drew; come’ere and play with me, boy!”

“Blair! How many times have I told you not to whistle for your cousin like that?”

“He don’t care, Mama. He likes me an’ I like him.”

Grinning at her little cousin’s confident attitude, Andrea tightened her grip on her struggling brother, whispered in his ear, “I’m not letting go yet, so you might as well stop fighting me. I’m still stronger for the moment. It won’t hurt Blair to wait on you for once.”

Drew snarled, snapping at her and she cuffed him gently. “Don’t even think about biting me. I’ll tell Papa Fort on you.” She flipped him over on his back and tickled his belly, knowing he couldn’t control his ticklish response.

When his playmate didn’t show up, Blair whistled again, the shrill sound ringing in the close confines of the house.

“Mind your mama, cub.”

“Yes, sir,” Blair answered obediently.

“Apologize and mean it or there’ll be no pony rides for a week.”

Tio Hunter’s low growl made Andrea’s pulse jump. She paused in her play, took a deep breath and held it, waiting for her heartbeat to ease. For a moment, he’d sounded just like her fiancé. The two wulves -- Hunter and Chase -- were first cousins, sons of twins and except for the color of their hair, so much alike at times, it was uncanny.

These last few years, knowing she’d soon be intimately close to a body very like his, Andrea had taken to covertly studying Tio Hunter a lot. The two males were close in age, Hunter being Chase’s elder by six or seven years.

Ripped, tall -- way over six feet -- both carried their almost three hundred pounds lightly. The only major physical difference was their coloring. Hunter allowed his unruly black hair to fall as it may while Chase kept his blond locks tamed with a suave salon cut.

Hunter was a retired Navy Seal and retired police man and had the rough-hewn powerful body to prove it. Chase also had the muscles, but he’d chosen to flex them running his businesses, amassing a fortune to rival Bill Gates’. Suave, cool and ultra sexy, his blond good looks made Andrea weak at the knees. Brad Pitt, eat your heart out.

Though his unmarried state trapped him as a puppy in status, Chase wielded a powerbase equal to that of a Prime Alpha. With his carefully coiffed hair and designer suits, he sometimes appeared softer than his harsher looking, older cousin, but appearances were deceiving. Only a fool would make the mistake of crossing either wulf.

“Sorry mama, I sorry.” Andrea heard the sweet, smacking sounds of little lips making pucker noises, which told her Blair was accompanying his apologies with kisses. “You forgive me?”

“Of course, I do, baby.” Tia Melody’s voice signaled her capitulation.

Of course you do, Andrea thought, snickering, knowing how effective that boy’s sweet cuddling could be, having been the recipient of those mushy kisses numerous times as his babysitter.

“Now call for your cousin correctly, and you can go play in the back yard while daddy and Uncle Fort talk work,” his mama suggested gently.

“An-drew, I’m here! Where are you? Wanna play?”

When Andrew didn’t come running, Blair called again, a little more forlornly this time. “Don’ you wanna play with me, Drew?”

Finally, he sought out his aunt and asked, “Tia Rosa, where’s Drew? Where is he? He always comes when I call him.” The plaintive note in the little boy’s gruff voice made Andrea’s lips turn up. She could just see him turning those big liquid brown eyes on her mom, playing her with that Cupid’s bow smile of his -- small white teeth shining in contrast to his rich dark brown skin. Tia Melody’s boy was a charmer for sure.

“I know mijo, be patient. He will come to you.” Rosa’s voice held laughter as she called her daughter. “Andrea, your Uncle Hunter and Aunt Melody are here. So is Blair, as I’m sure you’ve heard. Stop holding Andrew and get out here. It is time to go.”

“Be right there, Mom.”

Andrea gave her little two-year-old brother one last tickle on his soft underbelly before setting him on the floor. She grinned as he rushed for the door, his hind legs losing traction on the slick tiles. He skidded before managing to gather them under him and loped off to greet his four-year-old cousin.

She shook her head, watching him go. It was funny the things that could become commonplace to a person, what could -- no matter how strange it started out -- grow to seem normal and right. Her brother was a dog. Okay, a puppy.

Andrea thought back to the day Andrew had first shifted. God, had that been a mess, what with Mom screaming and crying hysterically while Drew ran around wildly, pissing on the living room carpet and sniffing people’s crotches. Papa Fort had tried not to preen with pride, trapped between having to placate Mom and make Drew feel like he’d managed a major accomplishment.

No matter how many times Tio Hunter and Papa Fort had tried to prepare them, neither she nor her mom had truly believed her adopted brother would turn into a wulf cub around his first birthday -- give or take four months -- and remain that way for the next two or so years. The older wulves had tried to explain why -- something about wulf puppies taking the least vulnerable shape after weaning -- but it had all been Charlie Brown’s teacher to her and mom: a bunch of wah-wah-wah…until it happened.

Overnight, her baby had disappeared, and in his place was a rambunctious overgrown canine that still craved cuddling in his mother and sister’s laps, bedtime stories, and warm milk but no cookies before bed.

It had hit Mom hard. She loved that little boy so much it was easy to forget he hadn’t been carried under her heart. Drew was adopted, but no one cared about that. To Rosa, Fort, and Andrea, Andrew was theirs, the glue that bound their small family together -- a Christmas gift from a magical Brownie. So Andi thought it perfectly natural Rosa still struggled with the recent turn of events.

As for Andrea’s take on the situation, she kind of liked having Drew this way. She could play with him, babysit without being stuck in the house, and most wonderful of all, he was practically indestructible. Add the fact they could still talk mind-to-mind, and it was all good as far as Andrea was concerned. She didn’t understand what had Mom so weirded out. After all, it wasn’t like he was going to stay like he was now. Eventually, once he reached four or so, Drew would morph back and stay in skin form until he hit adolescence.

Things would remain status quo until puberty set in, when his shifting would again become erratic and uncontrollable. Over time, as he matured, he’d gain control, but the teenaged years would be the dangerous ones, when anger or other strong emotions could tip him into changing against his will.

Thankfully, none of that would matter since, Fort and Rosa would be moving their family out of the public human eye shortly after Andrea’s wedding to Chase. Her fiancé had offered Papa Fort a house on Pack land and a job, if he wanted one. Fort had accepted the house, though he refused the job, opting instead to assist Rosa -- who’d urged him to accept Chase’s offer -- in establishing a new gallery.

Andrea suspected Mom had other reasons than Andrew’s safety in mind when she agreed to sell her art gallery and relocate to the East coast. A reason named Andrea Montalvo, soon-to-be McCallum. Rosa would consider being close enough to keep a mother-in-law’s gimlet eye on her eldest baby’s new husband a compelling argument.

For once, she had no quarrel with Rosa’s over protectiveness. Thinking about her upcoming wedding loosed a horde of nervous reactions. Butterflies erupted in her belly, their steel-tipped wings slicing up her peace. Andrea pressed a hand against her tummy, swallowing bile, fighting feelings of sick dread and heady anticipation that had taken up residence, building within her since that fateful prom night. The night she’d waken to the desires seething inside her. Since Valentine’s Day, those needs had escalated.

Three years she’d waited for Chase to claim her. Tomorrow, on the Ides of March, the day she turned eighteen and became a woman in the eyes of the law, he’d do so. First, in a public human wedding and later the same evening, in a very private Wulven ceremony, Andrea would become Chase’s mated bride. She wondered if all brides suffered from the growing premonition of impending tragedy. She, for one, knew what Julius Caesar must have felt standing before the Senate right after Brutus betrayed him -- a sinking sense of doom.

Andrea sighed. After three long years of looking forward to her eighteenth birthday, it was ironic to realize she might be nowhere near ready for the changes hurtling toward her.