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time I saw Eric, I felt a little more cheerful. And finally, I had my very own orgasm, a moment so explosive it was like I’d been saving up for a holiday.
    “You . . . Are you all right?” Eric asked. His blue eyes looked down at me, and he was half-smiling, as if he weren’t sure whether he should be clapping or calling an ambulance.
    “I am very, very all right,” I whispered. Grammar be damned. “I’m so all right I might slide off the bed and lie in a puddle on the floor.”
    His smile became more secure. “So that was good for you? Better than it’s been?”
    “You knew that . . . ?”
    He cocked an eyebrow.
    “Well, of course you knew. I just . . . had some issues that had to work themselves out.”
    “I knew it couldn’t be my lovemaking, wife of mine,” Eric said, and though the words were cocky, his expression was definitely on the relieved side.
    “Don’t call me your wife. You know our so-called marriage is just strategy. To get back to your previous statement. A-one lovemaking, Eric.” I had to give credit where credit was due. “The no-orgasm problem was in my head. Now I’ve self-corrected.”
    “You are bullshitting me, Sookie,” he murmured. “But I’ll show you some A-one lovemaking. Because I think you can come again.”
    As it turned out, I could.

Chapter 1
    APRIL
    I love spring for all the obvious reasons. I love the flowers blooming (which happens early here in Louisiana); I love the birds twittering; I love the squirrels scampering across my yard.
    I love the sound of werewolves howling in the distance.
    No, just kidding. But the late, lamented Tray Dawson had once told me that spring is the favorite season of werewolves. There’s more prey, so the hunt is over quickly, leaving more time to eat and play. Since I’d been thinking about Weres, it wasn’t such a surprise to hear from one.
    On that sunny morning in the middle of April, I was sitting on my front porch with my second cup of coffee and a magazine, still wearing my sleep pants and my Superwoman T-shirt, when the Shreveport packleader called me on my cell phone.
    “Huh,” I said, when I recognized the number. I flipped the phone open. “Hello,” I said cautiously.
    “Sookie,” said Alcide Herveaux. I hadn’t seen Alcide in months. Alcide had ascended to the position of packleader the year before in a single evening of mayhem. “How are you?”
    “Right as rain,” I said, nearly meaning it. “Happy as a clam. Fit as a fiddle.” I watched a rabbit hop across the clover and grass twenty feet away. Spring.
    “You’re still dating Eric? He the reason for the good mood?”
    Everyone wanted to know. “I’m still dating Eric. That sure helps keep me happy.” Actually, as Eric kept telling me, “dating” was a misleading term. Though I didn’t think of myself as married since I’d simply handed him a ceremonial knife (Eric had used my ignorance as part of his master strategy), the vampires did. A vampire-human marriage isn’t exactly like a “love, honor, and obey” human pairing, but Eric had expected the marriage would earn me some perks in the vampire world. Since then, things had gone pretty well, vampire-wise. Aside from the huge glitch of Victor not letting Eric come to my aid when I was dying, that is—Victor, who really needed to die.
    I turned my thoughts away from this dark direction with the determination of long practice. See? That was better. Now I was hopping out of bed every day with (almost) my old vigor. I’d even gone to church the past Sunday. Positive! “What’s happening, Alcide?” I asked.
    “I got a favor to ask,” Alcide said, not entirely to my surprise.
    “What can I do for you?”
    “Can we use your land for our full-moon run tomorrow night?”
    I made myself pause to think about his request rather than automatically saying yes. I’m learning through experience. I had the open land the Weres needed; that wasn’t the issue. I still own twenty-odd acres around my