The Werewolf Lawyer's Human Mate

6- Taking Claire With Us

Jeremy Anderson’s POV

The forest remained peaceful- the silence that settles after violence, when even the wind seems to wait. Moving out of our nest, first, I sniff the air repeatedly, then crouch behind a tree, scanning the white around me for any disturbances.

Nothing. I motioned for Claire and Daniel to follow me, and they pressed close, every muscle locked tight, every sense stretched to its limit. My son’s trembling is violent now, teeth chattering hard against my collarbone. His fingers are numb. So are mine, if I’m honest. The cold has teeth of its own, and it’s been gnawing at us too long.

I sniff the air again, grabbing him up and opening my jacket for him to be closer to my body heat, holding it close around him when his legs clamp around my body.

Our would-be killers have retreated, most likely withdrawn, for now. But I am not one hundred percent certain- this f#cking coldness! I wait another full minute anyway. Then another. Patience keeps you alive. Recklessness gets you buried.

Daniel whimpers softly, and that decides it. I rise slowly, scanning the tree line, feeling the cold bite deeper as I step out of cover. Nothing moves. No shift in wind. No crunch of boots. No wrongness crawling up my spine.

“They’re gone,” I murmur, for Daniel’s sake. I want him to feel safe. Claire’s shoulders sag with relief that lasts all of two seconds before reality sets back in.

“We can’t stay here,” she whispers through the slowly falling snowflakes.

“No,” I agree. “We’re going back to the cabin.” I don’t like it, but freezing to death in the woods doesn't help anyone.

Back inside, I move fast. I strip Daniel’s wet clothes off with numb fingers, wrap him in blankets, and press warm packs against his skin in front of the fireplace. He clings to me like a lifeline, still shaking.

“You’re safe,” I tell him, over and over. “Dad’s got you.”

When the color finally creeps back into his cheeks, I dress him in layers. Too many. I don’t care. The temperature’s dropping again, and we’re not staying.

Claire hovers nearby, pale, quiet, watching me with eyes that see too much and understand too little. She looks worried, so worried that I do not tell her I had been shot. I dressed my wound out of sight. “You’re coming,” I tell her, already pulling on my jacket.

She blinks. “What?”

“I saved you,” I say bluntly as I pack my bag with our essentials. “That makes you my responsibility until this is done.”

She opens her mouth, then closes it. Nods once. So that’s what had her worried- that I would have left her. Logically, everyone else probably would have- this is not a situation to play hero to a damsel.

My wolf scoffs at my thinking. I know it’s because I feel a pull towards the woman who has me wanting to drag her along with me.

We leave the cabin behind, slipping back into the trees. The snow is deep, unforgiving. Daniel’s steps slowed almost immediately, exhaustion weighing him down. After ten minutes, he stumbles. I scooped him up without breaking stride. He curls into me instantly, head dropping to my shoulder, breath warm against my neck. The weight grounds me. Focuses me.

We reach the first rented cabin just after dark, and it’s quiet, except for the sounds of the few insects of the night.

Too quiet.

I circle it once, sniffing the air. My stomach tightens. There’s a scent here- faint, old, layered beneath hours of cold. My client’s trail is thin, disrupted. Panic hung in the air, then vanished, which meant he had been attacked. And the men who came after him came after me next, and if they’re alive, they’ll come back. If they’re dead, their absence will be noticed.

Either way, staying still is suicide.

We move on.

The next cabin has a light burning behind drawn curtains. I slow, breathing carefully, sifting through the scents. Just warmth, wood smoke…soup. Human life continues here, blissfully unaware of the surrounding danger.

Unless our attackers are holed up inside… I sniff more, my instincts sharper and harder because I have two with me to protect me. I can never be too careful, since the freezing air hides things from my senses.

Safe.

I knock, and a face appears at the window almost instantly. An older woman, eyes sharp, startled. She hesitates… then sees Daniel asleep in my arms, and the door opens.

“Oh my,” she breathes. “Come in, come in, he’ll freeze out there.”

See what I mean? Inside now, I pick up another scent. An old person. Why would old people come here to punish their old bones?

Inside is warmth, real warmth. The kind that seeps into bones and makes you ache with it. The woman fusses quietly, ushering Claire inside, setting a blanket down. “Storm stranded you?” she asks. “You can stay the night, goodness, Mr. Jared is supposed to have been by by now, right?”

Mr. Jared is one of the people who owns most of the cabins here.

“Yes,” I answer, which is not a lie. Just not the whole truth. I want to put the kind old woman at ease when I detect the faint smell of fear now rising, so I add, "I need to contact Nora Price." Nora Price is part of the sheriff's department, and I want her to know I know them and not some crook entering her place.

The relief floods her. "No phones, sorry."

Yeah, I figured as much. The whole point of being here was to get away from the world and relax with nature.

Daniel never wakes when I set him down onto the couch and wrap the blanket around him, and that alone tells me how close I cut it.

“Jim’s asleep,” she details to us unnecessarily, and I nod when she begins taking out a bowl of soup. Jim is the old man I smelled, and I hope we don’t disturb his sleep.

“I’ll be back,” I tell Claire quietly. “Do not open the door for anyone but me.”

Her eyes widen, watching the old woman in the tiny kitchen who places the bowl down and takes up another to place soup in. “Where are you going?”

“To make sure no one follows.” My heart is scared for us, but she does not know because humans cannot feel this pull that we wolves feel when we're attracted to someone. What I feel for this woman is more than that...

Outside, I move carefully, deliberately erasing our trail. I drag branches, scuff snow, and circle wide to confuse any tracking. My hands burn with cold. My arm throbs where the bullet kissed it earlier. Healing is slow because the cold works against me, I know that. Even with wolf blood in my veins, healing isn’t instant when the air freezes everything it touches.

The wound in my arm aches dully, stiff and slow, blood reluctant to clot when the cold keeps my vessels tight and unforgiving. The wolf part of me gives me endurance, strength, pain tolerance, yes, but the cold drags me back toward human limits, stretching what should be hours into days. I push through it anyway, jaw clenched, because slowing down isn’t an option when my son and Claire are counting on me.

Thankfully, I had bled into my clothing and not the ground below. I’m also grateful my now enemies were human and not wolves, to pick up the smell of my blood too.

This is the part I hate- torn between the human part of me that abides by law. A law that screams at me about justice for all, not an eye for an eye, and the wolf in me that wants to circle back and hunt them down, shred them to pieces.