(Sandy's Perspective)

I come awake slowly, groggy with my interrupted sleep, and feel as though I can't possibly have slept a full night. Beside me, my mate, Sean, is still sleeping—I can tell by the slow, deep breaths from his side of the bed—and for a second, I debate yanking the covers over my face and rolling over to sleep for a few more hours. In the early chill of Candlewood spring, it's an especially nice thought, and if Sean's still sleeping—well, there's no rush for me to rise. I can afford another five minutes, give or take a few, before I force myself out of bed and into the shower.

After two and a half years, things in Candlewood have finally slowed to the lazy comfort I knew growing up here as a child. Especially after the three-ring circus of utter chaos and insanity that was the vampire and zombie attack on Candlewood and nearly leveled the place. It killed almost four-hundred of the small-scale city's inhabitants, both wolf and human—including my elderly mother—so as far as I'm concerned, that return to peaceful tranquility is long overdue.

The subsequent rebuilding of the city center and the plaza park, the completely leveled, formerly-historic Maison des Saisons hotel and the Main Street leadership offices for the Candlewood triumvirate was a veritable explosion of activity that we all could have done without. Especially immediately in the aftermath of a two-tailed zombie and vampire apocalypse.

I suppose the ends justify the means, but as a Fae with a potential lifetime measured in millennia rather than years and one who spent forty years living in the rivers outside Candlewood in the forest wilds and some time in the open Pacific, I'm equally as inclined to abandon the entire place after that sort of calamity. Let nature have it back, to be completely candid. The human population of Candlewood didn't much share that sentiment though, so they're fortunate that Ian, Candlewood's Alpha, is sagacious enough to plan for such catastrophes.

Which is weird to even imagine that he thinks about such stuff. Then again, he is mated to my half-sister, Darby, and she's the same way—except Fae about it instead of Were.

It's as I'm forcing my mind to full consciousness and contemplating sliding one leg from under the warm comforter that I hear the reason I'm awake. Sean's cellphone on the opposite nightstand is buzzing briefly and softly at long intervals—the alert for a missed text.

Opening my eyes, I glance at the bedroom windows and realize why it's been so ferociously hard for me to wake—even for spring in Candlewood, it's presently early and still dark. With a wide yawn, I roll to my elbow and glance over my sleeping mate, frowning when I see the simultaneous flash of blue light on Sean's phone—the visual cue that coordinates with the soft vibration of his missed text.

With everyone home—Ian and Darby and their three-year-old terrorist triplets, Jack, Anna and Lili and their son and daughter, my half-brother Leo, and Sean and me—there's a single person that the early morning text might have come from—Sean's brother Silas, the Alpha of Desert pack. I huff my irritation that it woke me and not Sean, and debate whether or not I'll even wake him. After all, if it was that important, wouldn't Silas have simply called?

Then again, in my experience, wolf pack alphas have an atrocious habit of erring on the side of caution in my humble opinion. Besides that, my Fae temperament tends to get away from me that way.

I heave a dramatic sigh, then shuffle the covers over me as I work my way across the bed. Slithering over my mate's broad chest, I reach for his phone. Beneath me, Sean gives an annoyed grunt, stirring from his sleep as my weight increases on him. It rapidly morphs into a low husky growl as he comes awake and feels my body on top of him. His huge hands cup my bottom, then begin the slow appreciative roving upwards.

"To what do I owe the pleasure of this?" he purrs, lifting his head. His lips find exactly that spot on my neck that sets every nerve in me quivering and alight.

Yanking his phone off the charger, I backpedal hastily, then slap my palm and his phone against his chest as he starts to pursue. "Your phone," I snap. As his hand covers mine, I withdraw, deliberately shuffling so my back is to him and tugging more than my half of the covers with me.

Sean merely chuckles at my irritation. "Bratty little minx." Then he snuggles up behind me, weaseling as much of his sizeable werewolf form beneath what I've left of the covers, which isn't much.

"What's it say?" I demand, referring to the text, then heave an appreciative sigh as Sean's preternatural werewolf heat begins to seep into me.

In response, he utters a coarse oath. "It says, '9-1-1. Call ASAP'," he reads aloud, following it with a remarkably foul curse. "This won't take long, I promise. Then I'll make it up to you for the rude awakening."

"Hmmm." I smile. "I'll bet."

Over the silence of our room and the sleeping Candlewood packhouse, I hear the soft sound as his call connects and the phone begins to ring. Then I hear his brother's voice, so much like Sean's, even tinny and distant through the phone.

"Sean?"

"Of course it's me. Who the hell else calls you on this number?" Sean demands testily. "And at this hour, Silas, somebody better have died."

"As a matter of fact, someone did. Several someones," Silas replies.

Rolling over rapidly, I bully my way into Sean's robust arms and up his bare chest so I can press my ear against the phone too. Beneath me, my mate has gone stiff with tension.

"What's happened?"

The concern in Sean's voice is enough to set ice in my veins. My heart begins to pound and I pray fervently that it's not another vampire attack.

Or worse.

With an exhausted sigh, Silas replies, "The development off Demons Tangle Shoals has been attacked again."