Wild Invitation

6
    HAVING SPENT THE remainder of the afternoon in 4B, Grace headed home at close to six p.m. All she wanted was to wash off the grime from crawling around in access corridors and narrow ducts she knew full well had been cleaned a mere two weeks ago.
    Too bad spiders only needed a day to build a sticky mansion, complete with multiple rooms and storage facilities. She shuddered at the reminder of the bugs she’d seen trapped in the webs. Yes, she was changeling, hunted when her wolf needed it. But there was something very creepy about keeping your food hanging around.
    Her comm panel chimed an incoming call just as she was stepping out of the shower cubicle. Recognizing the caller’s ID code, she wrapped a towel around herself and answered with a smile, picking up another towel to rub at her hair as the visual feed went live. “Hi, Mom.” It was a choice she’d made as a child, to call Milena and James Mom and Dad. It gave them the beloved place they deserved in her life while differentiating them from her lost mama and papa.
    “Hi, munchkin.” Milena beamed, the natural deep honey of her skin caressed by a glow that said she’d spent several hours outside under bright sunshine. “How was your day?”
    “Great.” Unable to resist, Grace bragged a little about how her crew was ahead of schedule, then asked her mother about the rest of the family.
    “I know you talk to Pia and Revel, too,” Milena said after catching her up on a few things, “but I don’t know how longI’ll be able to keep the two of them, not to mention your father, from paying a visit to check up on you.”
    “They turn up, I’ll kick them back out.” She cherished her family, but they continued to see her as the half-mute seven-year-old they’d taken in after her parents were killed in the catastrophic events that had overtaken the main Sierra Nevada den roughly two decades ago.
    So many children had become orphans, but none had been left without support, without family. Milena and James, and their teenage children, Pia and Revel, had become hers. Old enough not to mind the tiny intruder in their home, the teenagers had thrown their protection over Grace. Hardly surprising, since both Pia and Rev were strong dominants who now held senior soldier status.
    As a shocked child, she’d needed the comfort of their protective natures, needed the cage provided by falling asleep curled between her siblings, all of them in wolf form. It had made her feel safe when her world had splintered into so many pieces, she didn’t know what to do, how to survive each painful hour.
    But she hadn’t been seven for a long time.
    “I’ll pass on the message,” Milena said with a sigh, “but you know how stubborn they are.” Then she laughed, hazel eyes shimmering. “Look who I’m talking to—you always were a stubborn thing. I remember trying to get you to release your blankie so I could wash it. You didn’t scream, didn’t cry, didn’t claw out at me or growl, but would you let go? No. I had to resort to sneaking it away one night weeks later when you finally fell asleep without it clutched in your little fist.”
    The story was a favorite one of her mother’s and still made Grace laugh. Now, she reached out and picked up the furry orange teddy bear Milena had made from the scraps of her blankie after it had finally fallen apart. He’d survived her childhood and these days sat cheerfully on her bookshelf, next to photos of her family. “I wash him, I swear.”
    “Cheeky girl.” Blowing her a kiss, Milena said, “I better go. I promised your father I’d make his favorite quesadillas. I love you, baby.”
    “I love you, too, Mom.”
    As she ended the call, Grace thanked God that neither Pia nor Rev had been posted to this den—they’d have been appalled at the idea of their sister dating a lieutenant. Grace would have told the two of them to butt out, of course, but she much preferred to play with Cooper with no one looking over her shoulder.
    “Tell me what bad-girl things you got up to as a juvenile.
”
    Even as heat bloomed in her abdomen at the memory of that lazy, caressing voice asking her wicked, wicked things at dinner the previous night—while he fed her spoonfuls of decadent chocolate mousse—a message came in on her cell phone.
    Storm-damaged tree found along main den route. Needs to be brought down. Rain check for dinner? Coop.
    Disappointed, she went to say yes, paused.
Has your team eaten?
    No. Bethany’s bringing