Hello, this is the long awaited sequel to The Wolf At My Door and Wolves Mate for Life. Sorry it took so long. I have tried to write this fic so that you don't have to read those fics to understand this one.

Thanks to everyone who has been so supportive of this series. Special hugs to Wolfmusic218, ReeseisLAVAhot and SVG67 for looking this over for me and giving such helpful feedback

Chapter 1 - A murder in Washington

The computer suddenly came out of sleep mode and beeped urgently.

Harold Finch was standing across the room in the library that had long ago been dubbed HQ by his team, flipping through his new first edition, enjoying the feel of the old book in his hands. He looked up, startled by the interruption. He returned the book to the shelf and limped back across the computer room, while the computer beeped urgently again. "What have you found now?" he muttered under his breath.

He sat down in his chair and rolled up to the desk. On the screen was a newspaper article from the Tacoma Times in Washington detailing a gas explosion that killed two people when it completely destroyed their home. Finch read through the article twice. He looked up into the webcam over his screen, "I understand," he said simply.

A few minutes later, Finch heard a happy yip of greeting from Bear and he peeked around his monitor to see John Reese entering the room carrying his usual box of doughnuts while Bear bounded up to him wagging his tail. John set the box on the table and knelt down to give Bear a good ear scratching.

Samantha Shaw was right behind him and she also lavished attention on Bear.

After Bear had been given a proper greeting, John stood up. "Morning, Finch. Do we have a new number?"

"In a manner of speaking. I think we will need to bring the Detectives in on this: would you please call Joss and have her bring Lionel?"

John lifted an eyebrow at the unusual request, but did as Finch asked. He was always happy to call his mate anyway. He pulled his phone from his pocket and punched the preset that was number one in his heart.

"What do you need?" his mate Detective Joss Carter answered the phone.

John pretended to pout. "What makes you think I want something? Can't I just call the love of my life to talk?"

John could hear Joss's eyebrow raise over the phone. "You called just to ask to talk?" in a tone of voice the plainly told him she didn't believe a word of it.

"Actually we have anew case. We need to you and Fusco to get over as soon as you can get here."

Joss laughed, "Thought so. We'll be there in a few minutes."

Carter and her partner Detective Lionel Fusco arrived a short time later. "What's up?" Fusco asked as he snagged a maple bar out of the box on the table.

John looked over at his boss, "I assume we have a new number."

Finch shook head, "No, this is a different type of case John. As you will recall, the Machine, since the virus set it free, has been rather more communicative than it was before."

"Yes, I know. It's been sending you more than just numbers on occasion," John said evenly.

"It sent me an interesting newspaper article today about the death of a pair of Alpha Wolves. In a gas explosion. In Puyallup, Washington."

John's eyes opened a bit wider and his lips got very thin, "My parents?" he asked softly, his eyes intense and hard on his employer.

Finch shook his head and then locked his eyes with John's, "No, this happened just last week."

John's face went white, his jaw tightened and he closed his eyes. Joss squeezed his hand, but he didn't acknowledge her. He opened his eyes, staring straight ahead while his jaw moved slightly from side to side. His eyes were glacial.

Shaw raised her hand, "Excuse me, can someone fill me in here? Last time I checked, Washington was on the other side of the country, well out of our sphere of influence." Shaw was Wolf herself and she knew Wolf Culture. She understood that the death of an Alpha couple was huge, but she could not understand why the death of an Alpha couple on the other side of the country was a big deal to this team.

Harold spoke first without taking his eyes off John, "Mr. Reese's parents were the Alphas of the pack in Puyallup and they were killed in a gas explosion when he was away in the Army. And last week, the current Alphas of Puyallup were killed in a gas explosion, just like the one that killed Mr. Reese's parents."

"Oh." Shaw looked sympathetically at John. "Well then I guess you need to go back and find out who did it," she said in a matter of fact tone.

John looked hard at Shaw. "I haven't been back in over 20 years," he growled deep in this throat. And then he got up and walked out of the room without looking back.

Shaw looked over at Joss. "Aren't you going after him?" she demanded.

Joss arched an eyebrow at Shaw, "Chill out, half pint. I need to give him a few minutes before I interrupt the brooding."

Shaw shrugged, "You know him best." To say Shaw was not good with people was an understatement of epic proportions. As she often said, "I'm much better at shooting them than I am at talking to them."

No one argued with that. She was, however, smart enough to trust Joss's judgment when it came to the complicated ex-CIA assassin.

"So why hasn't John been back home in over twenty years?" Shaw asked.

Fusco and Finch both looked to Carter, plainly deferring to her to answer the question

Joss took a deep breath, "The day his parents were killed, John didn't just lose his parents, he lost his whole pack. Right after his parents died, someone started the rumor that he was responsible for their deaths, that he had them killed so he could take over the pack."

Shaw frowned. "But that doesn't make sense; he was the son of the Alphas, a born Alpha, he would have taken over the pack anyway. He didn't need to kill to become an Alpha."

Joss nodded her agreement. "Yeah, and he had an airtight alibi to boot. The sheriff investigating the explosion cleared him within 24 hours, but the rumor had legs and just would not die. It basically drove John away from his hometown and all his friends. He never returned after his parents were buried."

"He grew up there, they knew them his whole life and yet they stabbed him in the back," Fusco growled as he curled back his lip showing some fang in disdain for those who'd turned their backs on his friend and Alpha all those years ago.

Shaw didn't know what to say. She hadn't known John very long and she was not the best judge of character, but she knew enough to know that John was a good man. To think he would kill his own parents was beyond laughable in her opinion. And the thought that the Wolves he had grown up with and who had known him all his life couldn't see that, was shocking.

Joss continued, "The betrayal hurt him so much, he renounced his Wolf side for years. He didn't morph, he didn't run with a pack. He only dated non-Wolves and hung with non-Wolf friends. He even denied being Wolf for years, until the CIA recruited him."

Shaw didn't know what to say, "Wow, that's rough."

"Yes, it is." Joss got up, "Now if you'll excuse me, I think it's time I checked on my mate." And she left the room.

Joss found John in the small conference room they had converted to a makeshift bedroom for those nights when it was more convenient, or safer, to sleep in the Library than it was to go home. He was sitting on the bed with his forearms on his knees, hands clasped together in front of him, hunched over, staring at the floor.

Joss sat next to him on the bed but he didn't acknowledge her. She reached over and held his hand while she put her head on his shoulder. John squeezed her hand and tilted his head so that his cheek was resting on the top of her head. They sat quietly like that for several minutes.

"I need to go to Washington; I need to go back," John finally said. "The person who killed my parents is still out there, still killing. I can't let that happen again."

Joss turned her head and pressed a kiss onto his shoulder. "I know and I'm going with you."

"No, you should stay here…."

"I'm going. I belong with my mate." Joss was quite firm.

"What about your job? What about Taylor?" John protested.

"I have a feeling that Finch will take care of everything," she said confidently.

John turned to her and she could see the tears beginning to pool in his eyes. "I shouldn't have left, Joss. I should have stayed and fought for my pack."

Joss was suddenly angry. "What was there to fight for John? Your parents were dead and your pack, your friends, those who had known you all your life, thought you were a killer and refused to stand by you. You were grieving and they pushed you away when you needed them most. There was nothing to fight for!" she hissed furiously.

John shook his head, "I spent my entire life learning to be an Alpha so I could take over the pack. They were my responsibility Joss, and I ran away and tried to pretend I wasn't a Wolf."

Joss turned John's face so he was looking into her eyes. "John, you were so young. You have nothing to be ashamed of, unlike your so-called friends," Joss said fiercely. The thought of a young John, alone and rejected by the very people he should have been able to count on in his time of grief made her furious.

John smiled at her, touched by her ferocity on his behalf. Once again he marveled at the fact that this smart, tough, beautiful woman was his mate. He pulled her into a tight embrace and buried his face in her hair, inhaling her jasmine scent. "Let's go catch a murderer."

Carter was right; Finch did take care of everything, allowing her to accompany Reese to Washington.

It took only about 10 minutes for Finch to hack the NYPD timecard system to show that Joss had requested a week off last month and that request had been approved. Her captain was quite irritated since he didn't remember granting her request, or even getting her request. But, as Fusco, all wide-eyed innocence, pointed out, "If you didn't grant her request, then how'd it get into the system?"

The captain was not an imaginative man, nor a particularly bright one. He had worked his way up the ranks the old-fashioned way: he kissed the right butts and didn't make waves. So when confronted by Fusco's question, he could not come up with a plausible answer other than "I forgot." The captain walked away grumbling under his breath and did not see Fusco's smug smile behind his back.

Taylor was unhappy that he was not going to get to go to Washington; however, getting to stay with Finch instead of his grandma helped take some of the sting out of missing the trip. He loved his grandma, but she had been ill recently and was not up to keeping track of an active teenager. Finch, on the other hand, was the over-indulgent Uncle every teenager wished he had. Whenever he was in charge the phrase "Don't tell your mother" was used a lot.

Finch kept an apartment not too far from Taylor's school stocked with every video game console on the market, all the latest games, and a freezer full of pizza and ice cream. Once the weekend came, Taylor and Shaw happily stayed up all night eating every scrap of junk food in the place and blasting away at bad guys on the screen. Actually Taylor did not eat one scrap of food the entire time his mother and step-father were gone that had any nutritional value whatsoever. And no, he never told his mother.