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cute little overbite that caught his bottom lip when he tucked the smile away.
    “Hey, Clay, what are you doing with the mail?” I asked, grinning at him.
    Clay shrugged. “Samson was pressed for time, so I stopped by the Grundy post office to pick up the mail for him.”
    I frowned. Clay worked in a garage on the outskirts of Grundy. But the errand still meant he had to drive twenty minutes out of his way to do something Samson was supposed to do three times a week.
    “Oh, you did, did you?” I narrowed my eyes at my cousin. “You were pressed for time? Would that be nap time?” Samson shrugged. “I’m giving Clay half of your paycheck.”
    “I knew I should have made you sign it,” Samson muttered.
    Clay chuckled. “I don’t mind. I got to stop by the saloon for one of Mo’s burgers.”
    “Aw, why’d you have to go and mention Mo’s burgers?” Samson moaned.
    “Oh, cheer up, buttercup, Mom made chicken and dumplings,” I told him.
    “Meh,” Samson said in a disinterested tone.
    “You’re going to be in soooo much trouble when I tell Mom you said that.” I laughed. Samson cringed. “Clay, are you too full to join us?”
    “I am never too full for anything,” Clay said solemnly.
    “I’ll call Mom, let her know you’re coming,” I told him. I turned to my cousin. “You, on the other hand, have some mail to deliver. Jackass.”
    “I’ll give you a hand,” Clay said, following a grumbling Samson out the door.
    “Suck-up,” Samson shot back.
    I was in a much brighter mood as I finished up a few housekeeping tasks and closed down my computer. I called my mom to warn her we’d be having a guest for dinner, but she didn’t pick up, which was weird. But Mom always cooked enough to feed an army with Samson around, so I figured we were covered.
    I left my office without bothering to lock it. I mean, seriously, there were sixty people in the village, and they had just as much business going into the building as I did. That was the benefit of being related to nearly everyone you lived with. There was a certain level of trust that was expected. As I walked the whopping half-block to my house, I congratulated myself on finding a pleasant evening’s distraction from plotting the violent demise of one Nicholas Thatcher.
    Clay and I had been on a few friendly outings that didn’t quite qualify as dates. I’d taken him hiking up the north pass, near the elk hunting grounds. We’d gone to see a movie, some date-appropriate Will Ferrell comedy we’d abandoned halfway through in favor of the action flick two theaters down. As a candidate, he was far less complicated than . . . other people, but he was a cautious soul, which I respected.
    Besides Clay, I’d gone on a fix-up or two with boys from other packs in Olympia and Anchorage. It always had this weird game-show feel to it. The grand prize being “lifelong mated bliss and a half-dozen purebred werewolf pups.” And then I realized that the reason these guys needed to be fixed up by the interpack dating service wasn’t the scarcity of female candidates but the fact that they were obnoxious, stupid, or creepy—or all of the above.
    Every once in a while, I thought an entrepreneurial were should set up some sort of online supernatural dating service. But, you know, that is the sort of thing that attracts attention. Some smartass little hacker would get into it, and next thing you know, there’d be a complete list of supernatural creatures in America, and some nut job might take it seriously and go Van Helsing on our asses.
    I spotted Clay’s truck in my great-aunt Billie’s driveway and decided to duck in to tell Alicia that her brother would be at our place for dinner. I took a few deep breaths before I knocked. Visiting Billie was always sort of awkward. Besides being a murderous, back-stabbing traitor, her son, my alpha predecessor, Eli, had also been the primary caretaker for Billie. Between setting us up for a takeover with another pack,