Defending Their Mate, Part One: A BBW Shifter Werewolf Romance (The Last Pack) by Mia Thorne

Fear drove her from her bed.
    It didn't make the least bit of sense. Grace knew that, even as she eased open her bedroom door and listened for movement in the lodge beyond. It was dark and still, as the world became only in those silent hours before dawn. A pack of werewolves living miles from civilization didn't need to keep normal hours, but by midnight most of them were usually asleep.
    Them . She'd been here three months, and that was still how she thought of the wolves. The pack, not her pack. The alpha might have offered her a place here, but Grace didn't know how to belong. She didn't even know how to be a werewolf.
    That didn't seem to matter to Lucas. He'd welcomed her as a member of his pack, given her the nicest bedroom she'd ever lived in, and made no demands in return. Everything she could possibly want appeared like magic—books, movies, her favorite brand of chocolate. Sometimes she wondered if they could read her mind.
    Hell, maybe they could.
    The thought made her shiver, her fear intensifying. Stupid, pointless fear. No one here had been cruel to her. No one had laid a hand on her or cornered her to whisper gross come-ons or dark threats. Not like the other wolves, the ones who'd snatched her off the street and into this hellish world.
    She doesn't even know what she is.
    They'd laughed at her when they realized. They'd laughed and then told her the truth, and she thought they were crazy.
    And when they showed her, she'd decided she was crazy.
    She probably was. It was past three in the morning, and she was hovering in the doorway of her too-good-to-be-true bedroom, the wooden floor chilly under her bare feet as she strained every sense for the tiniest hint that anyone else was still awake.
    No footsteps. No murmur of voices. Just the wind outside and the usual creaks and sighs of any large house, no matter how well-built.
    Grace slipped through the door and into the darkened hallway.
    The anxiety in her chest eased as soon as she moved. If she'd turned around and tried to go back to bed, it would have tightened around her until each breath was agony. Once roused, nothing would silence this inner prompting. She had to give in to it.
    Instinct . She'd overheard one of the wolves use that word. Connor, the nice one with the gentle smile. He was the one who kept making gifts appear, each offered so eagerly that turning them down felt like kicking a puppy.
    But he wasn't a puppy, none of them were. They were full-grown werewolves, full-grown men , and no matter how hard they tried to keep their distance, she could feel them watching. Hovering. Waiting .
    She knew what they were waiting for. They all did, even if they didn't talk about it. They were waiting for her body to heat, for the urge to mate to wash over her, uncontrollable and supposedly undeniable.
    She grounded herself by touching the banister as she started down the stairs. Slowly, placing each foot as silently as possible. The sixth step creaked if you hit it wrong, so she placed her weight on the left side and held her breath as it let out only a soft sigh.
    No doors opened. No one came running.
    Grace still held her breath all the way to the ground floor. To the kitchen, where the tiles were even colder than the wood floor, but she barely felt the chill. She'd woken up sweating and uncomfortable, her delicate nightgown a tangle around her body and terror burning in her gut.
    She didn't like the nightgown. It was too ruffly, too sweet. It fit, but too well. She couldn't disappear into it, hide the full breasts that drew men's gazes when she didn't want them. It didn't hide the rest of her body, either—the sharp flare of her hips, the fullness of her arms and legs, the way she was soft and curving everywhere, even though stress and starvation had left her face gaunt. Her body had been her enemy for so many years. Especially once she'd ended up on her own, struggling to earn enough money to scratch out a living until the next day. So many nights