Rejected Mail-Order Bride is Rescued by a Lonely Sheriff – She Has No Idea He’s a Shifter

Chapter 10

The street in front of the jail was packed by the time they reached it. Vane had dragged Lucy through the town like a banner, and every soul in Wolf Hollow had turned out to see what a mining man with a gun and a screaming child wanted with the sheriff.

“Good people of Wolf Hollow!” Vane called, his voice carrying over the murmurs. “I believe it’s time for a reckoning!”

“Let the girl go, Vane.” Gideon’s voice was flat and cold. He stood at the head of the crowd, his injured shoulder seeping through his shirt, his gun belt conspicuously absent. “This is between you and me.”

“Oh, it’s between you and everyone now.” Vane dragged Lucy behind him, and she was crying, and Margaret’s heart was a fist in her throat. “Your beloved sheriff has been lying to you all. He’s not what he appears. Show them what you are, Cross — or I put a bullet in the girl.”

“What’s he talking about, Sheriff?” someone called.

Gideon’s eyes never left Vane. “You don’t want to do this.”

“I’ve waited five years.”

“Gideon—” Margaret started forward, but a hand caught her arm — Mrs. Whitlock, her face pale but steady.

“Let him speak,” the older woman said. “He’s been waiting for this too.”

Gideon unpinned his badge and set it in the snow. He looked out at the crowd — the families he’d fed and protected and buried and loved for five years — and something in his face went quiet and clear, like a man laying down a burden.

“Step back,” he said softly.

And the people of Wolf Hollow stepped back.

Then, before their eyes, Sheriff Gideon Cross began to change. It happened fast, faster than the night in the clearing — bones cracking, skin rippling, fur bursting across his shoulders. The screams started. Women clutched children. Men looked around for weapons.

“See!” Vane shouted. “The monster who’s been living among you!”

The wolf stood where the man had been, enormous, silver-gray, breathing hard. And it did not attack. It stood still, its amber gaze fixed on the child in Vane’s grip.

“Who will help me kill it?” Vane demanded.

Silence.

And then Mrs. Whitlock stepped forward, small and unshaken, and her voice rang out over the crowd.

“I don’t think so, Mr. Vane. That beast has protected this town for five years.”

She turned to face her neighbors. “When the Miller baby was lost, who found her? When the outlaws came through, who ran them off? When my own roof fell in, who fixed it before the snow came?”

“He saved my Lucy,” Emmett Sutton said, moving to stand beside her. “That’s good enough for me.”

“He taught my Danny the law,” Mrs. Hughes added. “Blew out the woodshed fire himself.”

“Wolf Hollow takes care of its own,” Mrs. Whitlock said firmly. “And he’s one of ours.”

“She’s right!” someone shouted. “Leave him be!”

Voices rose, a tide of them. Vane’s face twisted. “You’re all mad. All bewitched!”

“Then put the gun down,” Mrs. Whitlock said, “and go home.”

Vane raised the gun.

Margaret drove her elbow into his ribs and wrenched Lucy free as the weapon fired harmlessly into the dirt. Vane howled, reaching for her — and the wolf lunged, a silver blur, jaws closing around his arm with a sound that made the crowd gasp. The gun clattered to the ground. Townsmen surged forward and dragged Vane off, and the wolf released him and stood panting, blood seeping from his reopened wounds.

And then, before the hushed crowd, the wolf lay down and began to shift again — fur receding, limbs straightening — until Gideon Cross knelt in the snow, gasping, naked and human and bleeding.

The blacksmith stepped forward and draped his coat over the sheriff’s shoulders.

Gideon looked out over the silent crowd. Margaret moved to his side and knelt beside him, her hand finding his.

“You’re bleeding again,” she murmured.

A ripple passed through the crowd. Then Mrs. Whitlock stepped forward, bent, and picked up the badge from the snow. She polished it against her apron and held it out.

“I believe this is yours, Sheriff.”

Gideon stared at it. At her.

“Wolf Hollow takes care of its own,” she said again.

One by one, heads nodded. Not all — but enough. More than enough.

Margaret helped him to his feet. With hands that barely trembled, he pinned the badge to the borrowed coat, and the town that had watched him become a wolf watched him become their sheriff again.

“We’ll take Vane to the territorial court,” the blacksmith said. “He’ll hang for the child, if nothing else.”

Gideon nodded. He looked down at the badge on his chest, then at the crowd, then at Margaret.

“Now what?” she whispered.

“Now we live,” he said.