“Didn’t you?” Guthrie asked, taking her into his arms.
She smiled. “Must have been Julia or the ladies. Want to open our stocking presents first?”
“Ahh, lass, all I need is you.” But Guthrie grabbed their stockings and cuddled with her on the couch where they opened the gifts to each other. For her, a super-duper online scheduler and three books on creating memorable parties.
She loved them.
And for him, a financial planner, a fancy pair of argyle socks, and a package of bonbons. He laughed. “You’d been eyeing these at one of the stores.”
“Aye, for you,” she said, smiling.
“Do you want one?”
She grinned. He laughed.
They danced then to the music, but when they finally headed for the keep and his bedchamber, the place was all quiet except for Julia, on her way back from getting her required cup of hot chocolate.
“The party was the best,” Julia said. “And now that you’re family…”
Calla laughed. “I get to plan it for free, aye, next year?”
Julia gave her a hug. It was all in the plans from the start.
They watched her head to the stairs to the bedchambers.
“I think Julia had this in mind all along,” Calla said, loving his family as much as she did him.
Guthrie wrapped his arm around Calla and headed for the stairs. “So do I.”
***
Bright and early the next morning, candles were lit in all the windows to guide strangers to warmth and safety. Everyone gathered around to see the ashes in the great hall fireplace. A foot-shaped pile of ash pointed toward the inside of the house, foretelling a new arrival that would come in the New Year.
Everyone sat around the huge Christmas tree and unwrapped presents. What Calla hadn’t expected was for Guthrie to get her a MacNeill plaid skirt, with the ladies’ help in picking the right size. She gave him a hug, her eyes misting with tears. She was now truly one of the pack.
She had bought him a lovely soft wool sweater that she could snuggle up against, so it was as much hers as it was his.
But the most special gift was Julia’s Christmas present to Ian. A baby-sized kilt. Everyone was thrilled. And several commented on the prediction of the Yule log’s ashes.
Ian smiled broadly, lifted Julia from the chair and hugged her, then swung her around in his arms, and everyone looked on and cheered. Guthrie squeezed Calla’s hand, assuring her she would be there one of these days.
All the ladies hurried to give Julia hugs after that.
They sat down at noon to a Christmas feast of turkey with all the trimmings, bannock cakes made of oatmeal, and a chocolate cake from Sweden. Mulled wine, champagne, and whisky were served too.
At each place was a Christmas cracker—a cardboard tube covered in colorful gift wrap twisted at both ends. Each was handmade and personalized for the recipient by another member of the pack. Everyone took their cracker in their right hand and crossed arms with their neighbor to grasp his cracker with their left hand. With a tug, the crackers made small pops or bangs all around the great hall. Inside the crackers were colorful paper crowns that everyone, from the youngest to the eldest of the wolves, proudly placed on their heads.
Each cracker also contained a joke, love poem, or limerick, as well as a small gift.
Calla smiled at the sparkly coin purse that Guthrie had given her. “That’s all I have money for now,” she joked.
He opened his and found a sterling silver money clip personalized with his initials—and laughed.
“Before long, we’ll fill the coffers all over again. Don’t you worry, lass. And thank you. I love my gift.” He leaned over and kissed her. Though he was starving for the meal, he craved returning to bed with Calla even more.
She kissed him back and opened her note. “To my dearest, Calla, the love of my heart. Ahh, Guthrie,” she said and pulled him into a tighter hug and another kiss.
“I’m afraid I’m not much of a poet and that was the best I could do.” He opened her note to him and smiled. “To the hottest wolf in a kilt, fighting or not, with the sexiest legs a lassie ever set eyes on.” He chuckled and ran his hand over her lap, covered in her new plaid skirt.
A bonfire was lit outside after the meal, and everyone went out to dance and sing while the bagpiper played. Calla hadn’t realized all the fun she’d missed out on when she was living alone. She loved the big pack’s traditions and danced the afternoon away with Guthrie, glad he loved to dance too. An English Christmas tea followed that with cheeses, crackers, pigs-in-blankets, Christmas pies, and snowman buns.
She didn’t think she’d ever had this much fun—until she retired to be with Guthrie that night. Who knew that she could live on so little sleep?
The day after Christmas, they planted the Christmas tree in the ground—a new tradition for the pack—so no one was saddened about the tree decorations coming down. Besides, next up was Hogmanay, the Scottish New Year, and the anticipation of those celebrations was just beginning.
And then there’d be a wedding that the whole clan was taking part in, using Calla’s book on planning parties on a budget.
Best of all, although Calla and Guthrie were starting the New Year a little broke, they had all the love they could share—and that they would never find lacking.
Read on for a sneak peek at the next book in Terry Spear’s jaguar shape-shifters series
Jaguar Pride
At dusk in the Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica, Melissa Overton barely heard the constant sound of crickets chirping all around them. Prowling through the dense, tropical rainforest as a jaguar, she listened for the human voices that would tell her that her prey was nearby.
Waves crashed onto the sandy beaches in the distance as she made her way quietly, like a phantom predator through the tangle of vines and broad, leafy foliage, searching for any sign of the poachers. Humans wouldn’t have a clue as to what she really was if they saw her—to them, she’d just be an ordinary jaguar. And she and her fellow jaguar shifters planned to keep it that way.
Her partner on this mission, JAG agent Huntley Anderson, was nearby, just as wary and observant. Martin Sullivan, director of the JAG Special Forces Branch—also known as the Golden Claws and only open to jaguar shifters as a force that protected both their shifter kind and their jaguar cousins—had ordered them to capture a group of poachers. After that, Melissa and Huntley were to let the Costa Rican authorities take it from there, which didn’t sit well with Melissa. She understood Martin’s reasoning, but she’d rather end the poaching in a more…permanent way.
An ocelot caught her eye, but as soon as he saw her, he quickly vanished. It was May and the rainy season had just begun—a time when many tourists avoided the area, as flooding made hiking more dangerous. She and Huntley made their way through the tiny section of over 103,000 acres of tropical rainforest, searching for Timothy Jackson, the leader of the poachers, and his men. Intelligence at JAG headquarters stated this was their favorite area to poach exotic cats from. Jackson was an enigma. He’d fought bravely in the desert on two combat tours and left the service with an honorable discharge, but when his wife took their baby daughter and ran off with another man, the shame and anger seemed to have consumed Jackson. He’d finally quit his job as a Veterans Administration clerk and had turned into something dark and twisted.
Stepping through snarled roots and wet and muddy leaf litter, Melissa’s paws didn’t make any sound. She moved through the towering tropical trees with her ears perked, listening for human voices.
Wearing his black jaguar coat, Huntley was sniffing the air nearby, pausing to listen. Darkness had claimed the area, the trees and rapidly approaching rain clouds blocking any hint of light at dusk. Though Melissa’s golden coat, covered in black rosettes, was difficult to see at night if anyone should shine a flashlight on her, Huntley was even harder to see, making him hauntingly ghostlike. In broad daylight, his rosettes could be seen, but in a darkly el
egant way. She’d never tell him though. As hot as he looked, he probably knew it well, and she didn’t want him to think she was interested or anything. Not when they were both currently seeing someone else.
She loved working with him, though.
Black jaguars, a melanistic form, averaged about six percent of the regular jaguar population. The jaguar shifters weren’t sure about the ratio with their own kind. Huntley’s mother was a beautiful black jaguar, and his dad, golden. Both his brother, Everett, and sister, Tammy, were golden also. For whatever reason, Huntley’s coat appealed to Melissa, especially on missions like this. He seemed like a Ninja warrior in jaguar form, sleek, agile, and deadly. And she liked that he was wild, like she was, able to live in their native environments without a hitch.
She realized more and more, she should have hooked up with a cat like him to date—and not a city cat like Oliver Strickland, who didn’t ever shift or want to experience his wild side. How boring was that? She had believed if she showed Oliver how much fun it could be, he might change his mind. She should have known that altering someone’s personality wasn’t going to happen unless the person wanted it to. Oliver was strictly a human who kept his jaguar persona hidden from everyone. Including her.
Switching her attention from thinking about her tame boyfriend and her hot JAG partner, she listened again for any human sounds. Nocturnal animals were out hunting, which included all the wild cats that lived there—the pumas (also known as cougars, mountain lions, and a variety of other names), margays, ocelots, oncillas (a small wild cat, also known as the little spotted cat), and the jaguar. All wild cats being territorial—the jaguar was king.
Melissa and Huntley were searching for the poachers at night because that’s when the men were most likely to be hunting. This was the second day of trying to locate the poachers, and she wanted to find them now.
Mosquitoes buzzed around her, and she was glad for her jaguar fur coat. The sound of insects roared in the thick, humid air. An owl hooted. A vampire bat flew overhead, and she was kind of surprised to see it, as they often stayed near herds of cattle. She glanced up at the cloudy sky. Vampire bats didn’t like hunting during the full moon when visible. Only the stout of heart would come to the rainforest during the rainy season. That meant more of a chance for her and Huntley to catch those who weren’t there just to sightsee.
Martin had said that the poachers had been seen hunting their prey in this very area—suspected to be hunting here at night, sometimes when the jaguars went to the beach to eat sea turtles. It was the perfect hunting ground for the poachers, who would use the beach to escape with their bounty. She loved it there in the South Pacific region. This was a favorite vacation spot for her, so she hated to think that poachers would be there hunting any of the beautiful cats. Or any of the animals, for that matter.
Startling her, she saw two spotted cubs sniffing around the ground, and immediately Melissa stood still. A mother would be nearby. And dangerous. Melissa couldn’t tell from this distance and without being able to smell the cubs’ scents whether they were jaguar cubs or pumas. They were so similar before they were six months of age that they were hard to tell apart. In the tropics, jaguars and pumas were known to overlap territories to a degree, unlike in other locations, though if the puma came across a jaguar, he’d give way to the bigger cat.
Her heart pounding, Melissa caught sight of the mother—a tan-colored puma. She nudged one of the cubs, who looked to be about four months old. And then the mother and her cubs disappeared into the rainforest.
Men’s voices deeper in the rainforest caught Melissa’s attention. She couldn’t make out what they were actually saying. Huntley was beside her in an instant. Were the men camping in the rainforest? She’d heard at least three different voices. She could smell whiffs of smoke from their campfire. She and Huntley headed in that direction, growing closer until they could hear the three men talking—about rugby, girlfriends, and sex. Australians. Most likely they were not who she and Huntley were looking for.
“Hey, mate, look at this. Hold the light closer.”
One of the men was holding a flashlight as they looked at a tiny, neon orange poison dart frog sitting on a broad green leaf.
They thought that was exciting?
To give the men an experience of a lifetime, and before Huntley could dissuade her—if he thought to, or before he did it first—she ran near the camp and past it. She caught one of the men’s attention before she disappeared into the rainforest.
“Holy shit!” the man said, scrambling to his feet.
“Was that a—?” another man said.
She heard Huntley chasing after her.
“Two of them?”
“A black jaguar?”
“Did anyone get a shot of them?”
The men were so excited that they continued to talk about their experience, wishing someone had gotten a picture of them.
Both Melissa and Huntley were well out of sight, having disappeared into the foliage seconds after their appearance in camp.
Huntley was close enough that he brushed his shoulder against her hip in a playful way—amused at what she’d pulled, and playing along. She grinned back at him, showing a mouthful of wicked teeth.
He grinned in response.
He could have gone on a path parallel to hers, staying hidden, but no, he had to follow her, probably giving the tourists a near heart attack when they saw not one but two jaguars.
She smiled, never knowing what to expect from her partner. He would likely say the same about her. Sure, he would have an inkling of what she was about to do from the way she would shift her footing, tense her body, preparing to lunge or run. But he wouldn’t have enough time to react.
Wouldn’t the tourists just love to tell the park rangers that they had spied two jaguars running together? Jaguars rarely made an appearance for them. A black jaguar was even rarer. But a female and male running together? In the jaguar world—as opposed to the jaguar shifter world—the big cats only did that when they were courting.
She smelled the salty ocean and headed that way, intending to see if maybe someone had ditched a boat at one of the isolated coves. She and Huntley finally made it to one of the beaches, where the warm ocean waters lapping at the sandy shore teemed with marine life, brightly colored coral, and rock formations. She sniffed the ground and the air, trying to smell any sign of insect repellent or suntan lotion. Neither. She glanced at Huntley. He shook his head, indicating he hadn’t smelled anything, either.
Then they spied a jaguar at one end of the beach searching for sea turtles. She’d read where the park used to have over a hundred jaguars and now it was down to between thirty and forty. This jaguar was one of the lucky ones.
She and Huntley avoided it and took off in the opposite direction. She ran along the sandy beach, her paws leaving imprints in the sand, then she and Huntley reached the mouth of the river—and saw fins. Bull sharks—only one of a few kinds of sharks that could survive in fresh and salt water. She was surprised to see so many, as by all accounts, illegal poaching of shark fins was decimating the numbers.
Melissa and Huntley needed to cross the river to get to the other beach and continue their search for a boat tied off on the shore. She was certain this wasn’t an ideal spot to traverse.
But Melissa found it awfully tempting. She attributed having such a reckless nature to her father, who had always encouraged her and her twin sister, Bonnie, to take risks, when their mother would have had a stroke had she known.
Melissa studied the water again, wanting to take the quickest path to the beach on the other side. The bull sharks were definitely feeding, their fins showing, then disappearing and reappearing. She thought she counted about eight. The problem was that the farther away from the mouth of the river she and Huntley got, the more trouble they could have with crocodiles and caiman added to the mix.
Huntley nudged her to get her to move through the rainforest further. She grunted at him. What did he think?
She was a daredevil? Well, she was, to an extent.
Lightning briefly lit up the gray clouds and then thunder clapped overhead, making her jump a little. Then the rain started pouring down. As deep as the river was, they would have to swim, not walk across it like they could in the dry season. Jaguars were powerful swimmers, so at one point where the river narrowed a little, they finally made the decision to go for it, side by side, protecting each other’s flanks.
Her heart thundering, she crossed the warm river. A small croc was resting on the shore, eyeing them, another slipped into the water, and a bull shark passed by. When she and Huntley finally reached the other side, they bolted out of the water and away from the riverbank. They headed again through the rainforest until they reached the beach along the coast.
For a moment, they just stood there, the rain pelting them as they listened for the sound of a boat engine or men talking. She smelled gasoline down the beach. Her heart began to beat faster. The gasoline smell had to have come from a boat. She and Huntley loped toward the cove hidden by trees.
When they reached the edge of the beach and looked right, they saw a boat sitting in the protected cove. She felt a hint of relief and a thrill of the chase. If it was the poachers’ transportation, they could escape with their “catch” without having to leave via any of the park entrances. She had to remind herself that others used boats to reach the shores for tours, so this might not be a poacher’s boat.
She and Huntley drew closer under the cover of the rainforest, though it was pouring and dark.
Then they heard something moving through the brush. She and Huntley stopped.
“Hurry up,” a man said, heading in the direction of the beach.
A light wavered through the dense foliage. The men had to be human, not shifters, or they wouldn’t have needed the man-made light.
Suddenly, someone came out of the rainforest in a different direction. A man yanked up the zipper of his trousers while he watched for his comrades. Dressed in a white shirt and pants, he stood out in the black rain that soaked him and everything around him.