His Hidden Mate: A Fated Mates Wolf Shifter Romance

In one month my husband will finally be out of my life.

The bruises are fading. The terror isn't.

This forgotten cabin deep in Michigan's Upper Peninsula is supposed to be my sanctuary. A place to disappear. To breathe. To remember who I was before Jake broke me.

Then the owner comes home.

He's enormous. Protective. Infuriatingly kind.

In my world, those are all red flags.

So why does walking away from him feel even more terrifying than being found?

Adam:

I’ve lived in the human world, and I don’t belong there.

A year after losing my wife, I'm bringing my daughter home to the Huron Mountains, where she'll finally learn who we really are.

My wolf has waited long enough. If I don't let him out, we’ll die.

But there’s a human in my cabin.

She's wounded. Terrified.

And now my wolf is using the m-word.

Mate?

No.

Absolutely not.

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This first book in the Huron Mountain Wolf Shifters series is a medium-spice romance, with flashbacks of DV (please be careful), a protective Alpha Wolf, and a human woman determined to escape the life that nearly destroyed her.

Chapter 1

Sadie

“No! Stop, dammit!” I slammed the door of the cast-iron stove shut and twisted the knob on the pipe that rose from the back. Smoke continued to billow into the room. I flung the back door open and escaped to the porch, coughing.

I’d been trying to get this thing going for an hour. How hard could it be to make a fire in a wood stove? And what the hell were there all those knobs and plates that moved back and forth?

And even worse, the wood box in the kitchen held only a few pitiful sticks, and the wood outside on the ground was soaking wet.

I just wanted to heat a can of soup so I could have a hot meal. Was that too much to ask? When I arrived yesterday, I found out that the cabin had no electricity—so no microwave, no heat, and an outhouse, for heaven’s sake. The kitchen sink didn’t even have running water, just a huge red pump with a handle that did nothing when I raised it. Who has a house with no working sink in the kitchen? Last night, I’d eaten soup straight from the can, too worn out to even approach the metal beast of a stove. This morning I’d made a sandwich. I desperately wanted something cooked this afternoon.

I stared out at the lake, my eyes watering up. I was physically and emotionally exhausted. It turns out that fleeing your abusive stalker husband and driving north to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to hide wasn’t easy.

But the tears weren’t from that, no. They were from the smoke. I was free, and I should be excited, not crying.

Right?

“Who are you and what the hell is going on?”

I whirled around. The biggest, broadest man I’d ever seen stood in the middle of the kitchen. He was easily six and a half feet tall, with short, straight black hair and piercing green eyes. He had on jeans and a heavy brown canvas coat over a white t-shirt. His arms were crossed, and he was not happy with me.

I fought my instinct to cower in the presence of male anger and reached for the shotgun propped right inside the back door.

“I think you’re the one who owes me an explanation,” I declared, struggling to control the trembling of my hands. “I have permission to be here. And I know how to use this, so I suggest you leave.” I thumbed the safety off.

He uncrossed his arms and let them drop to his sides, which did nothing to make his appearance less threatening. Then he wrinkled his nose and sniffed…and started coughing. Smoke still poured from the stove. He held up a hand. “Stay there. Don’t move.”

Determined to stand up for myself, I opened my mouth to tell him off, but the stove was filling the kitchen with smoke. If he could fix it, then maybe I should shut up.

He opened the small door where the wood was placed. “Was it working before?”

“Um, this is the first fire I’ve lit,” I confessed. “Ever.”

“Did you check the chimney to make sure it was clear?”

“Um…no?”

He gave me a side-eye and grabbed a metal pail near the stove. Reaching inside, he grabbed the unburned end of one stick and used it to sweep the rest of the smoldering mess out and into the pail. He strode past me and out the back door, down to the lake’s edge, where he tossed the contents into the water. It hissed and smoked, then died. He poked at it another moment before walking back up the grass toward me.

I stood in the doorway with the shotgun, watching.

He paused at the bottom of the stairs and gave me a thorough look, starting at my feet and moving leisurely up my body, pausing only briefly where my thin t-shirt stretched over my chest. His eyes gave a flicker of approval before he raised his attention to my face. The glower returned and his eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you put that thing down before you hurt someone?”

Having the shotgun in my hand made me feel more powerful that usual. I narrowed my eyes back at him, turned to my right toward the woods, and brought it to my shoulder. “See the moss on that tree?” I aimed and pulled the trigger, and the moss had a neat hole right in the center. “The only person I’ll hurt is you, so why don’t you tell me who the hell you are?”

He moved faster than my eyes could follow and ripped the shotgun out of my hand.

“Dad-dee! Are you okay?” A small tornado with brown curly hair tore through the house past me and down the stairs and threw herself at the intruder, who picked her up with his free hand.

“Leave my daddy alone!” the tornado ordered.

My bravado faded. Demonstrating my skill suddenly seemed like a really bad idea.

“As I was about to say, I’m the owner of this cabin. I’m Adam Lykos.”

“Owner? No, you’re not. The owner is Lucy Vilks, and she’s, um, renting this place to me.” I was hoping he didn’t know that Lucy Vilks was dead.

No such luck. “She was my grandmother, and she died six months ago. The cabin was being looked after by my cousin, Josh Lykos.”

“Oh, I must have talked to him,” I lied, a bright smile plastered on my face. I was floundering, and he knew it. “He said no one was living here and I could borrow it for a few days. I was going to pay, I swear!”

“Hmm. Funny, he didn’t contact me about this.”

I bit back a swear. “Well, maybe he was busy. Are you planning to stay long?”

“I’m planning to live here.”

Of course. I’d finally found someplace safe, someplace my soon-to-be-ex-husband couldn’t find, and I couldn’t stay. I sank down into a chair on the porch.

He put his daughter down, unlocked the shed I’d been trying to get into, and tucked the shotgun away right inside the door. I jumped back up.

“Hey, that’s mine!”

“Do you have a gun case for it?”

“No…” I hadn’t planned to let go of it long enough to put it away.

“Then it stays in the shed. I will not have an unsecured gun anywhere in the house, for any reason.”

“Then give it back to me, and I’ll leave. Please.” Being around another man, one who was very sure of himself, was scary. Jake had been confident, too. He was always right, and I was always wrong, and I always paid for it.

“I’m sure there are other cabins for rent around here.”

“No. Not the kind I need.”

“What kind do you need?”

I looked him in the eye. “The kind that takes cash and doesn’t ask questions.”

His eyebrow went north again. He whispered to the little girl, who nodded. When he set her down, she ran back inside the house.

He grabbed a long pole with stiff bristles and thrust it at me. I took it, confused. Then he dug into a box on the shed floor and came up with an armful of dry wood. He re-locked the shed.

“Hang on—” I hurried after him up to the house. If I was leaving, I wanted that shotgun!

The little girl was in the kitchen. “I found her!” she yelled, holding up a stuffed wolf. He tossed the wood into the wood box and swung her up into his arms. There was something about a powerful man holding a little girl that made parts of me ache. If my life had been different—if I could have had a child with someone who would love me…

“This is my daughter, Ella. And you are…?”

“Sadie. Sadie…Woods.” I managed the last name with only a moment of hesitation.

He gave me a skeptical look. “Hello, Sadie…Woods. Are you hungry?” he asked. “If you help me get the stove cleaned out, I can cook something for you.”

“Why would you do that?”

He gave me a long, searching look. “Why wouldn’t I?”

I opened my mouth to reply, but couldn’t come up with anything. In my world, doing something nice was transactional. If he did something for me, I’d owe him.

He put Ella on the floor and took off his canvas jacket. Underneath, the sleeves of his white t-shirt strained around the muscles of his arms. He turned to the stove, and despite my reservations about this whole situation, I let out a quiet breath of appreciation. This man was gorgeous.

A few minutes later he’d disconnected the vertical pipe from the stove and brought it outside. When he pushed the brush up the pipe, a collection of sticks and fluff flew out the top.

“Squirrels love to build nests in here. You’re damn lucky this didn’t light up. You could have had a nasty chimney fire. I’m surprised that Josh didn’t tell you?” His gaze held an accusation.

“Um, me too.” I stared at the floor.

He deftly reattached the pipe to the rest of the stove, then started a small fire with tinder and paper in the firebox. Th