Page 1 of The Wolf Guard's Mate

one

OLIVE

I scrubbeda sticky spot on the countertop, trying not to let my attention linger on the giant man in the corner booth.

I failed.

Like always.

I was pretty sure Hunter Savage was the one who had gotten me my job in the bar. He had played a massive role, at the very least.

And he had been there every time I worked since the very beginning. Through the entirety of every single shift.

I would’ve wondered if he was getting paid to do it, but he was the guy who paid everyone else’s checks. So it was pretty much guaranteed that he was there because he wanted to be.

We never spoke.

He just sat in the corner and nursed a glass of whatever drink he’d brought with him while working from both of his laptops.

I was pretty sure he was just drinking water, which was positively boring. It took a hell of a lot for a werewolf to get drunk, so it wasn’t like a glass of whiskey would cloud his senses in any way.

He never came up to the bar, and never asked for a drink. He never flirted. He rarely spoke to anyone—and if he did, it was only a work conversation with someone I recognized as one of the pack’s top enforcers.

We had never had a conversation, even though we were technically sort of related. My twin sister had married one of his triplet brothers. So, we were sort of… siblings-in-law? Or at least, his brother was my brother-in-law.

I’d taken to calling him my brother-in-law in my head, in hopes that it would ease my attraction to him. I knew his history with my sister, after all.

His wolf had claimed that she was his. He’d been overprotective of her, but absolutely disinterested in mating with her or even being friends with her.

If he’d never been attracted to Nova—and she was confident he hadn’t—then he sure as hell wouldn’t be attracted tome. I looked like the softer, weaker, less-tattooed version of her. And considering she was barely over five feet tall, she wasn’t exactly terrifying.

Werewolves respected strength, and my appearance absolutely didn’t scream “strong” in any way. It did, however, earn me lots of tips. Being small and pale with long, dark hair had benefits.

Despite the tips and some flirting, none of my customers had asked me out.

I was pretty sure my sexy brother-in-law was to blame for that somehow, and I had a plan to find out the truth.

Jake, one of my buddies in the pack, plopped down in the stool across from me.

“Hey, Oli Pop. Can I get a whiskey sour?” he drawled, flashing me a wicked grin.

Jake was an enforcer. At least, I was pretty sure he was. I hadn’t come out and asked, because I was still trying to figure out what was and wasn’t allowed in a werewolf pack.

My sister had turned me two-ish months earlier, and then she left Crimson River to go convince her mate that he wasn’t insane. Which was a long story. She’d only gotten back a few days ago, so there hadn’t exactly been time for her to teach me about being a werewolf.

I was figuring it out, though.

Sort of.

My first heat hadn’t hit yet, and I was more than a little terrified about that. The sex didn’t scare me, but supposedly there was some kinky wolf stuff that came with it.

It had been years since I screwed anyone—fuck you, breast cancer that made my life hell for so long and nearly killed me—so I really needed to get back in the saddle before heat decided to strike.

Nova had warned me about the tingle she always felt a day before heat came on, and I was trying to watch for that. But since I’d never felt it before, it was a crapshoot.

Anyway, Jake had volunteered to ride out heat with me when it happened. I was pretty sure he just wanted to experience the wolfy sex, but whatever. He was nice, and I wasn’t about to spend days in hell during heat for the sake of avoiding a few hours ofuniquesex.

“Of course.” I flashed him a smile and dropped my rag in the bin with the others. After washing my hands, I made the drink and brought it over to him.

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