Wolf Slayer
Wolf Slayer
Linda Thomas-Sundstrom
Forbidden desireDescended from a long line of werewolf trackers, Tess Owen knows everything there is to know about hunting the big, bad beasts… Except what to do when you find yourself falling for one.Solitary, powerful Jonas Dale is a legend among his own kind – and among those who want to destroy him. He’s also undeniably sexy. Longing intensifies Tess’s hunt for this lone wolf and Jonas’s passion matches her own. Meanwhile, a common enemy stalks them both! Will their desire save Tess and Jonas or will it destroy them?
FORBIDDEN DESIRE
Descended from a long line of werewolf trackers, Tess Owen knows everything there is to know about hunting the big, bad beasts—except what to do when you find yourself falling for one.
Solitary, preternaturally powerful Jonas Dale is a legend among his own kind—and among those who want to destroy his kind. He’s also undeniably sexy. Longing intensifies Tess’s hunt for this lone wolf, and her prey’s passion matches her own. Meanwhile, a common enemy stalks them both. Will desire save Tess and Jonas, or will it destroy them?
“Show yourself,” she demanded, though her voice was softer, lower and almost a purr.
Her tone stirred Jonas’s insides in a strange way, as if he could feel its vibration from where he stood. That purr melted into his skin, sparked his nerve endings in a way that created its own electricity.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea, do you?” he asked. “I can’t speak to the actions of any of those others. I can only repeat that I mean no harm to you and leave it at that.”
“Can you prove what you say?”
“I can prove it by turning my back and leaving you alone and in one piece.”
“Or by showing yourself,” she suggested, with more tension on the string of her bow.
Jonas stepped into the moonlight, allowing the rain of silver light to wash over him. His shape-shift was completed in the few seconds it took him to reach Tess Owens.
He had her knife in his fingers, her hand in his and the tip of the razor-sharp blade she carried tight up against his chest before her blue eyes, wide with shock, met his.
Growling was the only way Jonas now had of speaking to her. That growl rumbled menacingly as he held her gaze and pressed the tip of the blade into his own flesh.
“Do it if you don’t believe me, wolf hunter. Go ahead.” Was it the shock of his shift, his appearance or his speed that stayed her hand?
Or maybe it was the look in his eyes as they met hers...
LINDA THOMAS-SUNDSTROM writes contemporary and paranormal romance novels for Mills & Boon. A teacher by day and a writer by night, Linda lives in the West, juggling teaching, writing, family and caring for a big stretch of land. She swears she has a resident muse who sings so loudly, she often wears earplugs in order to get anything else done. But she has big plans to eventually get to all those ideas. Visit Linda at www.lindathomas-sundstrom.com (http://www.lindathomas-sundstrom.com) or on Facebook.
Wolf Slayer
Linda Thomas-Sundstrom
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Dear Reader (#u17f9a30a-ccc2-5dc6-9c34-e62c478c69a4),
South Dakota. Hills. Forests of trees. Secluded cabins in the woods. Acres of uninhabited space. Can you picture it?
This is where I’ve set the latest book in my Wolf Moons series, and I’ve been excited to explore the extremely fragile and always volatile relationship between werewolves and the hunters who go after them. Because not everything is ever as it seems with these two sides of the supernatural spectrum...and well, sexy is sexy, no matter where we find it. Right?
Two opposites, attracting. Forces beyond their control pitting a man and a woman against each other, and against what each stands for, as a truly dark entity comes prowling.
This is Wolf Slayer.
Imagining stories like this one is the reason why I enjoy writing about the werewolf world. I always look forward to finding out what these tall, edgy, gloriously sexy weres can do to make my blood boil. And then I hunt, as they do, for just the right adversary in the form of a strong, independent woman who might turn up. In this case...plenty of sparks fly!
I hope you’ll love Wolf Slayer as much as I loved writing it.
Please do check out my website to keep track of what’s coming up next. Connect with me on my Facebook author page. Stop by and say hello. I’d love to hear from you.
Cheers—and happy reading!
Linda
LindaThomas-Sundstrom.com (http://www.lindathomas-sundstrom.com/)
Facebook.com/LindaThomasSundstrom (https://www.facebook.com/LindaThomasSundstrom)
To my family, those here and those gone, who always believed I had a story to tell.
Contents
Cover (#ua2c69f6f-f6a3-59e7-ae33-31ce5d11003f)
Back Cover Text (#u8650cda9-c1cb-5ebf-8c5a-6a6fc269155b)
Introduction (#u94c2bd2a-a3a4-574b-8ccc-3912e7693edb)
Title Page (#u51788416-3ecc-5cd9-a22a-a623ce3b51b1)
About the Author (#uab7e1db2-f013-5336-a1ed-12023dd90b1e)
Dear Reader (#u569f24eb-593e-5ba8-9af8-f58b5ce1d237)
Dedicatin (#u82bf1152-d45b-5af2-9673-37b00177baf9)
Chapter 1 (#ua01bbee7-ad8a-52f4-90ca-3725301b37bd)
Chapter 2 (#u75e2b5f6-9878-5169-9933-35165ecedf2b)
Chapter 3 (#u3fbe0b6f-afc1-5f8d-a111-eb6cafd31259)
Chapter 4 (#u07ddd27c-cbcf-5871-8abc-c40a47bd9989)
Chapter 5 (#uca615254-401b-5928-b690-a8773ee3c81f)
Chapter 6 (#u1c049a3f-589e-5213-a0d9-7d2772fc3108)
Chapter 7 (#uad30369b-de27-537f-971d-2312152eab20)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#u17f9a30a-ccc2-5dc6-9c34-e62c478c69a4)
Tess Owens didn’t like dark things. Or the full moons that brought dark things out of hiding.
Standing in the front yard of her secluded South Dakota home, she could see a vague imprint of the moon rise over the treetops. Familiar sensations tied to the big silver orb flooded her system in waves. Flush of heat. Spikes in her pulse. A sudden upswing of anxiety.
Full moons messed with her nervous system in a way Tess supposed similarly affected the creature she’d go after tonight when the stars came out. Although it was only late afternoon, her body was doing its thing, readying, gearing up for the time when adrenaline would push her beyond normal human limitations and she’d become the thing she had been created to be. Hunter.
Tonight, she’d need every ounce of strength she possessed if she met up with the dark thing that had taken up residence in the area. Because tonight was going to be special.
Rumors about the newcomer had been spreading throughout the towns nestled in the hills of South Dakota for a few days, and those rumors didn’t begin to address the level of danger this new threat posed. She had been aware of the trespasser since it arrived.
The thing in these woods wasn’t human. Its otherness was rich and dangerous. Acknowledging it gave her a thrill, because hunting anomalies is what her family had done best when they were alive. As bad luck would have it, she just happened to be the only Owens left in this part of the Dakotas, so the job was hers.
Hunting big bad creatures after nightfall wasn’t for everyone and definitely not for the faint of heart—especially the kind of hunting her family was known for among certain circles. As far back as anyone could remember, the Owenses had been big-game specialists, not after lions or tigers, but wolves of a certain variety—the kind that walked upright on two legs and often looked like everyone else until a full moon rolled around.
“Plenty of light tonight,” Tess muttered.
There were no clouds and not one hint of a storm system rolling in...unless she counted that damn newcomer as a special kind of storm. The werewolf that had dared to come here.
“Wolf,” Tess said, standing near her front gate and searching the area west of the tall pine trees. “I know about you. I can taste your presence.”
The fact that ninety-nine percent of the world’s population didn’t know Weres existed was a testament to how talented that species was at keeping secrets. But Tess and her family had been wolf hunters for nearly as long as werewolves had been around.
She was going to have to be careful, though. The nervous twitch in her shoulders suggested that this sucker had an ominous vibe. Tonight wasn’t going to be easy. Even now, Tess breathed in the uniqueness of this creature’s essence.
Either a particularly powerful new werewolf had moved to the neighborhood, or she wasn’t worth the O carved on the hilt of her hunting knife.
O—the symbol for a pledge some ancient-based Owens had made to cull werewolf numbers.
O—a sign that was symbolic for zero, as in the number of werewolves that had gotten past her family since they had moved to the Dakotas thirty years ago.
O—for the look on miscreant werewolf faces when a well-placed silver knife or arrow terminated their freakish existence.
“And now you,” Tess said, pacing the yard. Although some were rumored to be good, she hadn’t seen the good stuff in any of the man-wolves she had hunted. Those creatures left a lot of damage behind. And she had never set eyes on a full-blooded Were, male or female, because Lycans, as those pure-bloods were called, tended to run in secretive, close-knit packs.
“So why are you trespassing where you don’t belong?” Tess whispered. “It’s my duty to catch you, you know. My job. My calling. I take my vows seriously.”
After her first hunting expedition with her father at the age of eight, she had accepted her role and had never looked back. At the ripe old age of twenty-four, she had the family name to live up to and didn’t take that honor lightly.
She was fast, strong. Her life depended on those things. One mistake, one too many hesitations and death would be the result. Even talented hunters didn’t usually last very long.
“I know you’re out there somewhere, wolf. Will you offer me a game of hide-and-seek or just magically appear?”
South Dakota wasn’t a hotbed for supernatural activity, unlike big cities in the West and East. There were slim pickings here for monsters, so a werewolf hadn’t crossed her path in months.
“Until you.”
She paused to scan more of the forest. Being alone for so long had made talking to herself out loud an acceptable habit.
“A beast like you took down both of my parents, leaving me without backup. But don’t assume that means I’m weak.”
On the contrary, the loss of her mother and father last year had energized her need to take care of problems that arose. So here she was, fighting back, fighting hard and willing to go to extremes in order to deal some payback to the creatures that had taken so much from her.
“I will find you. That’s a promise.”
If luck was on her side, the new Were wouldn’t get wind of her before she found it. Out of necessity, she had become good at stealth, but werewolves also had keen, fine-tuned senses that were apt to be better than hers. She bore the scars to prove it and wore those scars like notches in her belt to mark the fights she had not only survived but won.
Would this guy know about her?
“Twelve,” she said. “Twelve half-crazed werewolves have ventured too close to this part of South Dakota for their own good.”
She ran a hand down the left side of her face, tracing a line of lightly raised scar tissue. “Number seven did this to me, and regretted it.”
She raised an arm, showing off ridges on her left wrist. “Number nine.”
If the people in town knew about what she did—about how far she had to go and how much she had sacrificed to protect them from the monsters—her loner status would make sense. But they could never know.
“Can you hear me, wolf?”
Maybe it could hear her. And maybe not. Though the keenness of werewolf hearing was legendary, it wasn’t miraculous. They weren’t gods. Weres were just one of nature’s peculiarities.
Then again, possibly this one’s hearing was better than most.
Straightening up with a sudden jolt of insight that demanded her full attention, Tess focused harder on the trees.
Someone was out there.
Chills arrived before the next rush of heat obliterated them. That familiar flash of warmth, originating in her chest, quickly radiated outward to kick her adrenaline levels through the roof.
The creature was here.
Watching her.
The air around her vibrated with a telling whisper that said, Male werewolf. Big. Strong. Intense.
Tess gritted her teeth in anger. By coming here, that Were had crossed a line.
“I don’t care much for trespassers and haven’t asked for company,” she announced at a reasonable decibel. “Especially yours.”
No reply came.
He was sizing her up.
Tess shifted from foot to foot as a sudden external wave of heat blew in to raise her own rapidly escalating body temp even further. The damn heat wave was like being caught in a lava flow and so hot, her stomach turned over.
Tess widened her stance to meet that heat wave head-on. But it was gone as suddenly as it had come. Just like that, and as if the trespasser had merely called it back...
Leaving Tess breathless.
* * *
Jonas Dale stopped five feet short of the chasm dividing his land from his neighbor’s. Exceptional sight allowed him to peer through the trees.
The air was cool. An acrid odor of woodsmoke left a tang on his tongue. Aside from the normal forest fragrances of pine and scrub, he could detect a human.
He had heard about Tess Owens, of course. Word traveled fast and went something like this: hunter in residence. Wolves beware.
Coming here had been a risk. But he needed to be in the remote hills of South Dakota and about as far from his home in Florida as was geographically possible.
The choice of this location hadn’t been made without careful consideration. Tess’s family’s reputation preceded them. If the thing chasing him knew about the Owens family, surely it wouldn’t imagine he’d come here, so close to one of them.
In this case, he was using Tess Owens as camouflage.
Since word had come of the Owens deaths last year, Jonas figured he might get away with this. Still, extra caution would be needed when dealing with any member of that clan. Cunning and the power of persuasion might be the ticket to keeping Tess off his back if she would listen to reason.
Would she be open to hearing anything he had to say when her family was notoriously unforgiving to his kind?
He had come here today, near her home, for a quick look and to judge for himself about Tess. Finding her had been easy. She was standing in her yard, near enough for an agile werewolf with a grudge to take her on without the benefit of any moon-induced physical changes. He wasn’t that wolf, however. Not today. Not ever, hopefully, since his energy was needed elsewhere and he had little time to spare.
Underscoring the mixture of woodsmoke and wildflowers near the Owens cabin were hints of other scents that only a Were’s imagination would acknowledge. Energy. Anticipation. Blood.
Danger had its own unique fragrance, and this Owens offspring had Were blood on her hands. Her head was lifted, her posture tense. If she was good at what she did, there was no way Tess wouldn’t already have a bead on him.
It was a standoff, from a distance, before they had even gotten to hello.
Looks were fairly deceiving though, Jonas had to admit. Tess Owens didn’t look so formidable in person. She was tall but delicate, small-boned, long-limbed and young. Her shape was sleek and accentuated by tight jeans and a skimpy shirt that showed off too much skin and failed to reflect the current coolness of the afternoon temperature.
She had long, fair hair, most of it twisted into a braid that hung halfway down her back. A few unruly strands blew in the same breeze that had carried her scent to him, and those wayward strands were the only bit of wildness in her that he perceived.
The fair hair was a surprise, though. For some reason, he hadn’t expected this werewolf slayer to be a blonde. Not that the color of her hair made a difference in the long run. It’s just that he had a soft spot for golden-haired beauties. Still, Jonas wished he could see her face to witness firsthand the malice that had to be reflected in her eyes.
There were other curious particular details about her as well. Tess’s skin was paler than any outdoorswoman’s skin should have been. That little discrepancy seemed odd since she had to maintain her shape somehow and the great outdoors was her backyard.
Her shoulders were gracefully curved. Slender arms showed good muscle definition, as if she worked hard at something other than chasing Weres. Tess was visibly lean and fit. Too bad she wasn’t a Were, Jonas mused, because he appreciated her looks and could have made the most of them in other circumstances.
Lean, wiry, fierce females were his preference. Females who could hold their own and give back what they got. Females who didn’t usually bend unless they wanted to. He would have liked to run a palm over all that bare skin. Equally as pleasurable for him would have been to touch those silky golden tendrils currently hiding her face.
Wild was, after all, every werewolf’s middle name. In his twenty-eight years of dealing with his species, he had come to recognize the extremes of Were needs and wants...and tamp them down when he had to.
No such luck here, though.
Shaking his head scattered the impossible images taking shape in his mind. The only way he was going to touch Tess Owens would be in self-defense when she came at him with an intent to kill.
That was a shame because he knew instinctively that Tess Owens was something special and so much more than the reputation that preceded her.
He just couldn’t put a finger on how he knew this.
As his body shuddered with a mixture of appreciation and wariness for this new opponent, Jonas spoke softly so that Tess wouldn’t be able to hear what he had to say.
“Possibly that’s your greatest asset in dealing with my kind? We tend to underestimate you after a first glance? Pretty girl all alone in the woods?”
Inwardly, he also added, I vow not to become one of the suckers overly intrigued by those things. All I have to do is stay out of your way and hope you can determine friend from foe.
He prayed that Tess Owens might turn out to be an ask-questions-first kind of predator, just like he was. But this wasn’t the time for introductions and more wayward thoughts having to do with Tess’s tight jeans. Any hunter with a rep like hers wouldn’t let a full moon go to waste. Tess Owens would make the most of tonight and come knocking at his door fully armed and ready to rumble.
He had to keep her from doing so.
“I’m not what you think I am, Tess. I’m here, not to mess with you, but to protect a secret of my own. I’m needed. Someone else’s life depends on what happens here and what I do, and you just need to stay out of my way for a while.”
Did she get those confidences sent across the distance separating them? Jonas watched her turn her head as if she might have. He also felt a pull from somewhere behind him, an indication that he had to get back to his temporary home.
Having an Owens next door was one strike against him. The other creature that was looking for him was far worse.
Death was coming and would find him eventually. The black-cloaked, soul-catching bastard was the greater opponent, the mightier threat, and the monster he needed to keep at bay. Besides himself, there was only one member of the Dale family left, and his sister’s life depended on his ability to protect her. That had become his goal in life.
The bad news was the wave of aggression coming from Tess Owens and the silent words he swore he heard slip from her lips.
“It’s a date, wolf. Tonight. Don’t be late.”
At this point, so early in their association, probably nothing he could have said in return would have changed her mind.
Chapter 2 (#u17f9a30a-ccc2-5dc6-9c34-e62c478c69a4)
Tess paced the room as night began to descend. Wearing leather pants, a black shirt and black boots, she took a quick look in the mirror to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything that might make the difference between life and death when dealing with a werewolf.
She looked good enough, Tess thought, though people in town stared at her for other reasons when they met her. More than one of them had probably wondered where she might have gotten so many of the scars that crisscrossed the side of her face.
“Will he keep our date? What do you think, Tess?” she asked herself as she strode down the hallway of the cozy, eight-room, wood-paneled cabin.
Determined to find out the answer to that question, Tess entered the weapons room and chose a knife with a gleaming silver blade. She slung the bow and quiver of arrows over her shoulder, adjusting easily to the added weight, then rolled her neck to ease the tension building there.
Gloves on, weaponed up, she walked out of the front door. After giving the cabin a last glance, she set her sights on the trees and slipped into the dark.
* * *
“It’s okay.”
Jonas spoke softly to his sister, though he wasn’t sure how much of what he said ever sank in. There hadn’t been a verbal response from her since she had been attacked in a Miami park not too far from where they had lived.
Gwendolyn Dale had grown frail and lethargic on the outside—the parts others saw if they looked. He hoped the darkness he now sensed inside his sister would eventually fade away and be replaced by the happy-go-lucky sister he had always loved.
Sometimes, though, he wasn’t so sure about the darkness’s staying power.
Jonas tended to believe the attack in Miami had left Gwen with a black spot on her soul, and that she had been marked by Death in some way. This had to be the reason there seemed to be a specter on her trail. He thought it likely that his sister wasn’t supposed to have survived that attack, and that she had been slated, fated, or whatever the hell happened in the big cosmic scheme of things, to have died that night in Miami.
In the end though, what did he really know about such things? His entire repertoire of ideas was based on nothing more than conjecture and supposition.
“I have to go out, Gwen. Just for a while.”
Jonas laid a hand on his sister’s shoulder and winced at its thinness.
“I’ll be back soon, so take care while I’m gone and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Gwen would have laughed at the last part of that statement if she had been with him mentally as well as physically. Out of everyone else around them, his younger sister had been the most like him. She had been developing a similar kind of power and strength, even though neither of those things had helped the night she slipped out of the house with her friends without telling anyone and had encountered true darkness.
Gwen had been the only victim left alive out of the four young girls...if the term being alive could describe the state they had found her in. It had taken weeks of seclusion for her to recover enough to move her to this remote location. She hadn’t said a word to anyone since that terrible night.
Gwen was haunted. He knew that. She grew paler day by day and seldom ventured outside. Jonas wanted to believe she understood every word he said now, even as he could see her slipping further and further away.
“Your new companion will be here tomorrow,” he said lightly. “You probably need a female around. I think you’ll like her. She’ll stay for most of the day and go home before sundown. You know why she can’t stay here after dark settles in. That’s my shift. If you like her, we can see about having her spend more time here.”
Gwen’s pale blue eyes stared up at him as if she had heard him this time. She offered nothing in the way of facial expression.
“Right, then,” Jonas said. “I’m off to meet our neighbor. She sent me an invitation.”
In the old days, Gwen would have pleaded to go along. But even before her accident, she hadn’t yet been in full possession of the kind of skills that could have helped against things like experienced wolf hunters. It wouldn’t have been long, though, before his sister would have outshone every other Were in the area.
Gwen was an anomaly within an anomaly. A special being within the Were species. He wasn’t sure if she knew this.
“Wish me luck.” Jonas leaned over to place a kiss on his sister’s forehead and then headed out, knowing his meeting with Tess Owens couldn’t be postponed.
Keeping beneath the shadows of tree cover didn’t isolate him completely from the moon’s effects. Dappled light on his shoulders instigated sparks from nerves that buzzed, snapped and roused the wolf nestled inside him. His claws had appeared. Both shoulders ached. This was all part of the deal when the moon issued a come-hither.
After covering another acre of rocky, forested hillside, he got his first good impression of what was coming his way. Tess’s scent was in the air—that same mixture of smoke and flowers that had led him to her earlier.
The scent grew stronger as he walked. So did the moonlight. Jonas resisted the urge to shape-shift. Tess was here, just ahead, waiting for him. She had met him midway between the two cabins, which probably meant she knew where he was staying.
Tess Owens stood near a large rock pile at the crest of the hill overlooking property lines, surrounded by trees. She was partially camouflaged by shadows. The fact that she wore black would have helped to hide her from human eyes, but not from a werewolf’s. Jonas located her with a complex system of sight, scent and the image presented to him by way of her body heat.
It was showtime.
“Don’t bother to hide,” she called out in a tone that was both combative and dangerously sexy in equal measures. It was a deep voice for someone her size.
Jonas hadn’t counted on her ability to tune in to him so quickly, though. This was yet another detail that added respect and wariness to his initial assessment of her.
She seemed to be looking straight at him when she couldn’t possibly see that far. Night-vision goggles might have helped her to pinpoint him, but she wasn’t wearing them. Maybe she had heard his approach? The snap of a twig? A rustle of branches? He used to be better than this.
She spoke again. “These days I’m fairly good at what I do, and I get better with age and practice.”
Careful not to make a sound, Jonas inched forward with his wolfishness twisting his insides. A human growl stuck in his throat. The claws that had appeared made his human hands ache. His wolf side was willing to take on this threat, but it wasn’t time to let that happen. He doubted if Tess would take aim at a human form with the silver-tipped arrows he could now smell. Hunters rarely did.
“Are you coming out, or should I welcome you with a silver-coated handshake?” she challenged.
All hunters knew about the Were aversion to silver and a few other metals. Tess Owens seemed pretty confident about that aversion.
Blaming his comeback on his reaction to her voice, Jonas decided to oblige her request, at least in part.
He said, “Handshake? I wasn’t aware that you had social skills, Owens. People in town told me you rarely show your face there. To some of them, you’re more of a ghost than a neighbor.”
He wondered what that remark might do to her self-confidence and if it would shake her up in a way that might lead him to find a crack in her admirable armor.
“People in town don’t actually know me,” she returned, showing no sign of being affronted either by his remark or the fact that he had not shape-shifted like he was supposed to.
Jonas took another step forward, keeping to the darker spaces. His wolf urges were rising by steady degrees, drawn to the moon, drawn to Tess Owens, ready to take its turn in this face-off.
“Don’t stall the inevitable on my behalf,” she continued. “There’s no need to fight your true nature. You know you want a piece of me.”
“What nature would that be?” Jonas asked.
“The kind that howls.”
“I think I’d prefer to meet you on a more human basis, at least on this occasion,” he said.
“Should I be honored?”
“That’s up to you.”
“Show yourself and get this over with.”
“Put down the bow and I’ll think about your request.”
“How about if you reel in your claws?”
Her comeback was testy and insightful since she couldn’t actually see his claws. Wild guess?
Jonas asked, “What if I’m not what you’re thinking I am? Don’t you ever make a mistake when pointing a weapon at someone?”
“Only one mistake, and I won’t make it again.”
She might have been alluding to the death of her parents a year ago. But now that he was closer, Jonas finally got a good look at her face.
He suppressed a growl of appreciation. Tess was incredibly beautiful. All the right stuff was there, in all the right places. She had an oval face with perfectly symmetrical features and large, light eyes. Her brow was wide beneath a fringe of fair hair. Angular cheekbones gave her a regal look, though the deep hollows beneath them accentuated her thinness.
All in all, she didn’t look anything like any wolf hunter Jonas had ever seen.
However, she wasn’t perfect. Overlaying all that beauty was a trail of scars. Lavender lines, like crawling vines, crossed one side of her face, running from her forehead to her chin.
Jonas recognized those scars and knew what had made them. Tess had been mauled by a wolf, and that wolf had done some damage. Because she was here now, it was easy for him to see who the winner of that previous skirmish had been.
“Are scars the reason you stay away from town, or are hunters loners by necessity?” he asked, earnestly wondering about that.
A shudder of disgust ran through her, but Tess didn’t drop the aim of the arrow pointed in his direction. Still, Jonas thought he might have found that crack he’d been searching for, however small it might have been. Those scars bothered her.
“Old wounds come with the territory,” she said calmly enough.
Jonas nodded as he took another step toward her. She still wouldn’t be able to see him clearly, and he wasn’t going to allow verbal taunts or silver-tipped arrows to mess up this crucial meeting. Two more steps to his right and into the moonlight, and he would become the target she was looking for. He had to stave off that shape-shift. He had to hold on, sensing how badly she wanted to let that arrow fly.
Tess wasn’t just a hunter out to score. Her level of palpable aggression told him that she had a personal vendetta against the creatures she hunted. Six years on the force with the Miami PD had taught him a lot about dealing with emotion and the concept of revenge. Tess’s hatred for his kind left a sour taste in his mouth.
“Claws also come with the territory,” he said.
“Then use them. Do your worst. Or try to,” she taunted.
“Having animal in my DNA makeup doesn’t make me stupid, Tess.”
His use of her name surprised her. Her right cheek quivered.
“If true, that kind of insight would be a first,” she noted.
“You have no reason to fear or hate me. I’d like to offer a truce,” Jonas said.
“Like that will happen.”
“What can I do to force the issue? I have an agenda here that doesn’t include you. My reason for being in the area is important to people other than myself.”
“People?” She picked up on that word, emphasizing its misuse when pertaining to him.
Jonas wasn’t used to this kind of treatment. In Miami he was a respected detective on the job, fighting crime both in and out of the shadows. To Tess Owens, he was nothing more than an animal.
Turns out that she was formidable enough, he supposed. But she was also quite a sight standing there—a delicious, leather-clad, angry sight.
He wondered what she’d think if he mentioned how exotic he found her voice or how good she looked in that black suit. He could have bet she’d have been insulted then.
“I applaud your goals,” he told her. “But I’m not one of the bad guys.”
“Wouldn’t bad guys use that line?”
“Not around me,” he said.
Would Tess believe that Weres didn’t like bad guys of any species, including their own? Would she change her mind about werewolves if she knew how many decent wolves there were in the world, and how they fought behind the scenes to further the concept of peace and justice for all?
What if he showed her his badge?
“Most of the time, human is what I appear to be,” he said. “That’s what the world believes I am.”
“Except for those of us who know better.”
“Yes. But I’m not part of the reason you do what you do, and I’ve already stated that my intention for being here isn’t to cause you or anyone else around here harm.”
“Why here?” she asked, unshakable on her aim with that arrow.
“It’s as far away from others as I could find on the spur of the moment,” Jonas replied truthfully.
“What others?”
“People.”
“That’s rich,” she said. “And it would also be a point in your favor, if anyone was counting.”
All right, Jonas thought. That’s it. He had said more than he had intended, and Tess Owens had no right to question him further. Meeting her here had been a courtesy. He had hoped she’d see reason and leave him and Gwen alone, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen.
It was likely that Tess was driven to exterminate every werewolf she came across and had made up her mind about him being included in that goal.
“I suppose there’s no reasoning with you then,” he said.
“Reason? I’m pretty sure werewolves don’t know the meaning of the word.”
He nodded. “Well then, it’s been a pleasure, Tess.”
The calmness of his closing remark also seemed to surprise her. Another shudder ran through Tess that was sizeable enough to make her leather suit creak.
“Show yourself,” she demanded, though her voice was softer, lower, and almost a purr.
Her tone stirred Jonas’s insides in a strange way, as if he could feel its vibration from where he stood. That purr melted into his skin, sparked his nerve endings in a way that created its own electricity.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea, do you?” he asked.
“What it would do is make things a whole lot easier.”
“For whom? You?”
“Yes. For me,” she said.
“You believe that killing every Were you meet will bring your parents back? And that every Were is bent on carnage and destruction?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Then you don’t know much, wolf hunter, and your education has been sorely lacking.”
She spoke quickly. “You’re suggesting that you are not like the others? That you’re different?”
“I can’t speak to the actions of those others. I can only repeat that I mean no harm to you or anyone else around here and leave it at that.”
“Can you prove what you say?”
“I can prove it by turning my back and leaving you alone and in one piece.”
“Or by showing yourself,” she suggested with more tension on the string of her bow.
Okay. If you say so...
Jonas stepped into the moonlight, allowing the rain of silver light to wash over him. The wolf inside him barreled upward so fast, his shape-shift was completed in the few seconds it took him to reach Tess Owens. So fast, she didn’t have time to use her lightning-fast reflexes and let loose of that arrow.
She might have been primed and fighting fit, but she was no match for a full-blooded Lycan who had been shifting since his teens. She was no real match for a werewolf who was twice as fast as any werewolf in his pack and shifted without recognizing the pain of each physical transformation.
And she was no competition for a Were whose sole purpose in life currently was to guard the sister who stood on the brink of death.
He had the bow in his hands before Tess could blink or utter a groan of protest.
He had her knife in his fingers, her hand in his, and the tip of the razor-sharp blade she carried tight up against his chest. Her blue eyes, wide with shock, met his.
Growling was the only way Jonas now had of speaking to her. That growl rumbled menacingly as he held her gaze and pressed the tip of the blade into his own flesh.
Do it if you don’t believe me, wolf hunter. Go ahead.
Whether it was the shock of his shift, his appearance, or his speed that stayed her hand...
Or maybe it was the look in his eyes as they met hers...
Tess Owens didn’t make that thrust. She stood there, staring at him as if momentarily confused.
And since the advantage belonged to Jonas, he took it.
Chapter 3 (#u17f9a30a-ccc2-5dc6-9c34-e62c478c69a4)
The werewolf in front of her was huge, muscled, and faster than anything Tess had ever seen. The adrenaline punch that hit her when she looked into his eyes was a stunning blow to her confidence.
His eyes were blue and way too human.
Those eyes were intelligent and intense.
And the face...the werewolf’s face...was disturbingly human, as well.
He had angular features and no sign of anything that even hinted at a wolfish outline. No five o’clock shadow, let alone the typical werewolf’s layering of fine hairs and elongated bone structure. This guy actually was different. He was resetting the stats on everything she had known about werewolves. Meeting him, seeing him like this, sent the damn rulebook spinning.
Why had he turned the knife on himself? One thrust of the blade and he’d be toast. One plunge into that broad, naked chest with the sharp end of her silver dagger, and she would come out the victor.
That’s what she had to do. That’s what she had been trained to do. Raised to do. Taught to do. Remember... Too many hesitations and death will be the result.
Then why didn’t she edge that knife deeper into the wolf’s flesh? And why wasn’t he tearing her apart? He made no move to hurt her. The damn werewolf was waiting for something. She thought she saw a flash of curiosity in his eyes.
“Who are you? What are you?” she asked after a long overdue breath.
Because of their closeness, the next growl that rumbled from the Were’s throat also rumbled through her. Tess kept a tight hold on the hilt of the knife. Her bow, along with the arrow, lay on the ground where he had tossed them, and far from reach, but they wouldn’t have helped in this awkward situation anyway.
Push the damn blade.
He’s not human.
None of them are human. They ate my parents and made me a freak.
The wolf’s response to her question was to inch closer. A trickle of blood began to seep through the small hole where the blade pierced his flesh, and yet he didn’t blink.
What was he doing, though? Did he want to die, or was this merely a tactic to confuse her?
Well, damn it, she was confused, and had to either get her mojo back or suffer the consequences in the next few seconds.
One of you killed my family...
Nevertheless, whatever he was trying to do with this odd turnaround stayed her hand. After several more seconds of alarming eye contact and a lot of pulse acceleration, Tess stepped back with her heart beating way too fast and the bloody knife clutched in her hand. A brand-new kind of fear was setting in. She had never come up against anything remotely like this Were.
“If you think this changes anything, you’re wrong,” she said. “We’re on opposite sides of the game, and in any game, there can only be one winner.”
She watched the alarmingly large Were shake his head as if he understood what she had said, as well as the promise in it. True to his word though, he didn’t make any move to harm her. This close to him, she couldn’t see his claws or imagine what he might gain by holding back on his end.
So she waited for his next move, already planning hers. She’d duck to the side, come up to his right and use the knife. She wouldn’t be facing him then, wouldn’t have to look into those sympathetic blue eyes.
Yes, that’s what she had seen in them after the flash of curiosity. Sympathy.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” she demanded in a voice that didn’t sound as strong or as confident as she meant it to be. “One of us has to do the honors. If that’s you, so be it. If it’s me, all the better. That’s how this works.”
When he failed to respond, Tess’s gaze went to the blood dappling his broad chest. Red blood. Half men, half beasts had red blood like the humans they emulated.
She continued to eye the tiny hole in the Were’s chest until he began to back away. Given some distance, Tess’s nerves fired up, white-hot. Her arms began to quake with the need to do something—show him who she was and what she could do. She’d just had an intimate tryst with death and was still standing.
The Were was a good three feet away now and facing her. Tess’s first real look at the whole package he presented, head to foot, was another nerve-jangling revelation.
In this incarnation, the Were actually did seem more man than beast. Well over six feet of undulating muscle and sinew made it appear that he was moving when he wasn’t.
He had chiseled cheekbones, sun-streaked brown hair and blue eyes. If there had been an image of the perfect specimen of a man-wolf in that wolf hunter rulebook, this guy could have been the model. The real deal. The epitome of an evolved enemy.
She was looking at a Lycan. Tess knew this now. This guy was a pure-blooded example of the species. Her first.
No longer able to manage the internal quakes shaking her, Tess widened her stance. Her pulse was skyrocketing. Her fingers were bloodless from her grip on the knife. Confusion caused this delayed reaction, she told herself. She needed to lunge.
Do it now.
End this.
“If you go now, I will find you,” she vowed. Encouraged by the strength in her tone, Tess added, “Why prolong the inevitable? Tonight has to be the night. We both know this. Wolf and wolf hunter is the way this goes down. Werewolf and hunter.”
The wolf blinked his big eyes and then he shook his head. Within seconds, his body was against hers and she was wedged between his considerable bulk and the shadow-covered rock face behind her.
It was over. She had lost with supernaturally unlucky werewolf number thirteen. It was inevitable that this minute would come someday.
Tess closed her eyes.
Without sight, all of her other senses became acute, serving to enlarge every small detail of these last few seconds she had left. Her opponent’s breath was heated and slightly sweet. With the Were’s chest tight up against hers, she felt the steady rhythm of his heartbeat and the way his muscles twitched. Was he eager to win? Holding back for what? The hope that she might plead for her life?
Never...
With the weight of his body squeezing hers into submission, Tess discovered how close to humans Weres could feel physically. All of the masculine stuff was there, in spades. With her eyes closed, she might never have known what this bastard was and the extent of the danger she found herself in. Even his musky masculine scent was pleasantly unique.
“Sorry, Dad, Mom,” she whispered, ready to draw that last breath.
The Were’s muscle rippled as the shocking sound of muscle pulling on bone made Tess look up to meet the blue eyes that would be the last thing she’d ever see...and found them looking back at her from an exceptionally handsome human face that was a lie, at best.
* * *
“I told you I mean no harm,” Jonas repeated in a hoarse voice that hadn’t fully recovered from the shift. “What more do I need to do to prove that to you? What part of my explanation didn’t you get?”
Tess was barely breathing, and staring at him.
Jonas tried again. “We’re not all bad guys. Most of us aren’t, in fact.”
She said, “You could have fooled me.”
He could see she was scared, though not as frightened as anyone else in her current position would have been. Tess Owens had faced more than one werewolf with grit and dedication, though it was clear that she had never met anyone like him.
She expected trouble. Clearly, she was awaiting her death by his hand. Her face had paled to transparency. In that milky whiteness, her scars took on a pale blue cast.
Jonas touched one of those scars with a finger no longer blessed by a claw. The scar he chose was the one nearest to her temple. In response, she drew back as if she’d been struck. Her head hit the rock with a thud. She swore out loud, which seemed to make her feel better if the light that appeared in her eyes meant anything.
“Do it,” she challenged. “What are you waiting for? There’s only one way to end this, because I’ll never stop hunting you.”
She was so damned determined to fix this situation, so stubborn and brainwashed on the werewolf issue that Jonas had to smile. The smile kicked up the flames of her anger.
“Promise me something,” he said. “If I let you go, you’ll need to honor that promise.”
“I don’t owe you anything,” she snapped.
He pushed more of his weight against her. “No?”
“I’d rather die right here than to owe you anything at all,” she said.
He shook his head. “We both know that’s not really true. You have a calling and I can’t stop that. I wouldn’t stop that. Bad guys are bad guys.”
“Wolves,” she corrected.
“But I’m not one of those bad guys. This, I solemnly swear.”
“What would the world be like if I believed that line from every werewolf that trespassed here?”
“Did you give any of those Weres the chance to prove it?” Jonas asked.
“I caught them in the act. Devilish stuff. Killing sheep. Killing horses. Stealing. Brutally attacking people in the dark. Were those things supposed to continue without intervention? Knowing what those creatures are, was I supposed to allow it to go on?”
He said, “If that was the case, it’s likely those creatures deserved what they got. I might have done the same things you did in order to keep the peace.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You mean in order to keep your species a secret, don’t you? You’d condone culling a few bad seeds in order to keep most of you safe from the world discovering your existence?”
She had more to say. Jonas waited.
“So why here? Why have you come here?” she asked again.
“I’m here to keep something very bad from happening.”
She struggled against him. Jonas held her firm as he continued.
“I have a life, Tess. But I needed to come here to take care of an issue that arose. When that’s done, I’ll go back to my life, get on with my life, hopefully having helped to save someone very dear to me.”
Chances were slim that she might believe him. Nevertheless, Tess stopped struggling.
“Promise me you’ll let me do what I need to do here without interference and that you’ll give me time to take care of the thing I came here to do,” Jonas said. “That’s all I ask.”
“You’re kidding, right? Turn my back? Let you have free rein?”
Her tone hadn’t softened and yet her body had lost some of its stiffness. Hints of a darker ivory color were slowly returning to her cheeks. Jonas hoped this meant he was making progress.
Although the situation remained tense, his mind wanted to focus on Tess the woman, rather than as his rival. He was a male after all was said and done, and Tess Owens was young, strong and interesting.
Her tight leather vest cinched in her breasts in a way that made her appear almost boyish with a first glance, and yet pressing against her gave Jonas a good impression of what lay beneath all that leather. Her hips were narrow, but feminine. Prominent hip bones accentuated her leanness. Her legs were shapely and firm.
In her current position, Tess didn’t offer up one good quake. This hunter was all about secrets and the art of camouflage. Wasn’t his life similar in those respects?
Jonas swept a slow glance over Tess’s face, noting that her expression was blank. Though her eyes were intent on him, she didn’t meet his gaze directly. Tess might never have been up close and personal with a werewolf in human form.
In any case, she didn’t cringe, cower or plead for mercy. If she had a plan for getting her edge back, she had seconds to consider how to accomplish it. Barring that, he could see that she’d accept the ramifications of a meeting gone bad with dignity.
Tess Owens hadn’t done her homework regarding Lycans and the abilities that set them apart from other Weres, and he had just offered her a fast track to enlightenment. What she did with that was up to her. After a few more moments of body-hugging closeness, he’d let her go if she promised to behave.
“Get off me,” she said curtly.
“You haven’t spoken the magic words.”
He was angering her further and wasn’t enjoying that, but shattering her old habits would take time he didn’t have. And when she looked up, when her eyes finally met his, what he saw in them shook him up slightly. He saw sadness.
His body reacted with a twitch of understanding that was visceral. Tess had tucked that sadness so deep inside of her, he was witnessing only its tip.
“Go to hell,” she said.
She tried to shove him back, but was trapped.
“Promise me what I’ve asked for, and I’ll let you go,” Jonas said.
“I can’t do that. Won’t.”
“Because you’re too proud to admit what happened here, or because you have a stubborn streak?”
Flashes of defiance raced through her blue eyes, but she unwaveringly held his gaze. He couldn’t look away, couldn’t untangle himself from the sensations rushing over him. Lust, greed and hunger were all there, piling up. But there was also something else nagging at his consciousness that was at the moment misty and ill-defined.
Jonas had to force himself to speak. “Time is what I need. Then I’ll be gone and out of your life.”
Her lips parted as though she was going to challenge that statement, but no words came out. Reluctant to lose the eye contact that made him so interested in what lay behind those eyes, Jonas finally dropped his gaze to her mouth.
What would Tess Owens, werewolf hunter, taste like? He wondered if anyone had tried to find out.
If she rarely showed up in town, what were the odds she’d have a lover? Given what she did for a living and the secrets she kept, what kind of normal man could handle her or her choices? This could be the cause of her sadness. Tess was lonely.
Actually, he decided, a wolf would have been the better choice for someone like her, if the world turned on a different axis. If Gwen hadn’t been waiting for him, and if he hadn’t set himself up as his sister’s protector, he might have desired a lot more time with Tess Owens. As the only person in South Dakota who also knew about him, they might have been friends in some parallel universe. They might even have been lovers.
His body liked that idea. Both man and wolf sincerely appreciated the thought.
Tess’s lips moved again, keeping his attention there. He wasn’t allowing her much room to breathe, so either she was trying to take in air or a new protest had gotten lodged in her throat.
“What issues brought you here?” she eventually asked. “What are you escaping from?”
“That’s personal.”
“Maybe you just made it up to play on my sympathy,” she suggested.
Jonas liked the way her mouth moved. He liked the way Tess smelled. Again though—and a tough reminder here—they were, for all intents and purposes and according to Tess, enemies.
“Still waiting,” he said without easing up on the pressure that pinned her to the rock.
“If it’s a promise for me to turn my back, then you’ll wait a very long time,” she returned.
Jonas swore under his breath. Niceness wasn’t getting him anywhere.
“What you need,” he started to say, almost giving in to the impulse to tell her about Lycans and Miami and about his gig as a cop. But there was an interruption in the form of a sound that didn’t belong to the reasonably intimate moment he and Tess were sharing.
And Jonas knew without a doubt what that sound was, and who had made it.
* * *
Tess was screwed and hated to admit it.
She waited for death, knowing there was no one to mourn her and that not one soul would realize she’d been gone for some time.
This was not okay. It sucked. And yet here she was, pressed tightly to the body of a werewolf who had shown her both sides of himself in a matter of minutes and who had drawn the better hand in this game.
Not necessarily the winning hand, though.
She was a fighter, and not fully onboard with giving up. When the bare-chested werewolf, who was way too human at the moment, lifted his head and tore his attention away from her to tune in to a sound she barely heard, Tess stiffened in reaction. Without his eyes on her, she felt colder and even more alone.
Those reactions made no sense.
She saw that he was irritated by whatever he had heard in the distance. After tossing another glance over his shoulder at the moonlit field behind him, his attention returned to her.
His expression registered his disappointment over the timing of this potential interruption in their strange getting-to-know-each-other session. She, on the other hand, wanted to cheer and would have shouted to whoever was out there if the man pressed against her wasn’t a monster masquerading as a man.
When she felt the urge to speak, the wolf in human skin held up a warning finger. Then he did a strange thing. Leaning closer, he brushed his lips over her cheek—a surprising move that sent her insides skittering. One quick, light touch. The cunning bastard smelled like pine.
He didn’t bite her or break her neck. Nor did he shift to his scarier form. After that touch, he backed up and pulled her forward until she stood on her own. Then he nodded to her. His eyes never left hers. It seemed to Tess as though he was attempting to send her a message and willing her to keep her mouth shut.
What had he seen or heard out there?
Who was coming?
Why am I shaking?
Tess had to gather herself if she had any chance here. She closed her eyes and sent more of her senses outward, hoping to discover what had disturbed the Were because she couldn’t afford to be caught like this any more than he could. Hell, she was in possession of a bloody knife and a quiver of silver-tipped arrows. What kind of picture did that paint?
The Were turned. He took a few steps, daring to keep his back to her, leaving her the opening she had waited for. The knife was in her hand before her next big breath. She readied for the attack.
Before she could make that move, he said, “Trust me, Tess. Leave now. Go home. What’s out there isn’t something you’ll want to face tonight.”
And then he took off running.
Chapter 4 (#u17f9a30a-ccc2-5dc6-9c34-e62c478c69a4)
Tess stared after the Were’s retreating form for a few ticks of her internal clock before following him. In the pit of her stomach, she knew he had been upset by whoever this intruder was and that whatever was out there presented another kind of threat.
Since she had detected nothing in the periphery, she had no idea what that might be. Nor could she imagine what could be more dangerous to her, more lethal, than a Lycan with a jump on the human hunting him.
He ran like the wind, covering ground as if he actually was a wolf with four legs, instead of two. Tess knew she couldn’t catch up. Nevertheless, she wasn’t ready to give up. Not after the strange encounter with this Were that had set the hunter’s rulebook on its ass.
The werewolf had let her go. Not only that, he had tried to reason with her. He had issued a warning, presumably in an attempt to save her some future grief over whatever that other thing out there turned out to be.
His thought had been to help. What kind of werewolf wanted to protect the hunters who came after them? This one had told her he wasn’t one of the bad guys, but again, weren’t they all bad? Every last one of them? Weren’t they, by definition, monsters, or was there something she didn’t know, proving that her education was indeed sorely lacking, as this wolf had warned?
No time to ponder that...
She was geared up and anxious to find out what had made that wolf turn his back to her and what had made him turn the tip of the damn knife in his direction. She could have used that knife. If she had, this would have been over. Instead, she was charging after the Were as if she was part of his tag team, bringing up the rear.
Confusion didn’t begin to describe what she felt. Tess couldn’t shake off the memory of the moment she had looked into his eyes, and the feelings that came with that connection. Absurd feelings. Impossible feelings about wayward longings that had made her pulse thunder.
To say she was interested in this guy would have been an understatement when what she actually felt was something else entirely.
“You have to know that I’ll keep coming,” she said as she ran, needing to get those words out and into the open, hoping they might somehow reinforce her need to believe them when she now had doubts.
When a new thought touched her mind—one that wasn’t of her making—Tess nearly tripped over her own feet.
“Please go home, Tess. Do as I ask. Trust me just this once.”
It was him. His thought. She recognized the tone, if not the voice. The damn Were was speaking to her telepathically.
“Ridiculous,” she muttered. “Can’t do that.”
Weres could only link minds telepathically with other Weres, so the stories went. Still, other than the werewolves themselves, no one could possibly know that for sure.
The wind seemed to come alive with this guy’s next utterance.
“Now isn’t the time. We will meet again, I promise.”
Speaking with a tight jaw, Tess shouted, “No way, Lycan. This is my turf!”
But suddenly, unbelievably and as if another creature had simply dropped from the sky, Tess saw two forms running near the base of the hillside. One of them she recognized, having been close to the big Were. The other animal was a real wolf, on all fours, with fur that glowed silver-white in the moonlight as it streaked through the woods at the Lycan’s side.
There had been no warning for her of another wolf in the area, Were or otherwise. She didn’t smell that other wolf now.
What the hell was going on?
Mesmerized by the sight of the pair running in the field, Tess pulled up...and stared.
* * *
The sadness Jonas had seen in Tess’s blue eyes had moved him. Being a werewolf meant keeping company with his own kind mostly, so what about her life? Tess’s life?
Was culling werewolves her only form of excitement? He supposed that doing her job might make up for whatever else she lacked in terms of family and friends sometimes.
Looking into her eyes had left him with a flood of strange sensations. Staring into her eyes had created ribbons of light in the dark recesses of his soul. He had connected to Tess on a level new to him and somehow had been able to tap into her emotions. The depth of that connection, as well as the speed with which it had occurred, was disturbing.
Were to Were was how those rapidly formed internal bonds usually happened. Imprinting was the term used for the union of two souls, a state that only happened between Were couples destined to be mated for life. This sudden bond with Tess felt like a similar version of that, though he hadn’t experienced it for himself before. And she wasn’t a Were, so this had to be something else.
He couldn’t dwell on that now. His attention was needed elsewhere. He was needed elsewhere.
Gwen hadn’t listened to his instructions. In a rare out-in-the-open appearance, she was beside him—this unusual creature in his life who was so special.
Tess would have been even more surprised if she knew that his sister was a Lycan throwback to the earliest form of the werewolf species.
Gwendolyn Dale was a carrier of the original form of Lycan DNA—the only Were he knew of these days who was able to transform into a full wolf, and with no hint of wolf scent. A pure white wolf. Gwen’s presence on this earth made the necessity for secret-keeping all the more imperative.
And she had followed him.
He ran through the shadows of the trees in human shape for several more minutes with Gwen on all fours, dancing at his heels, before the moonlight performed its neat trick of setting his inner wolf free. Yet Jonas’s stomach stayed tight. He had been unprepared for Gwen’s latest streak of rebelliousness.
His sister had possibly just blown their cover, placing them in as much danger here as they had been in Florida. She had left the cabin and shown herself to anyone who might have been looking. If Tess had seen her, there would be a hefty price to pay. If Death’s minion had been here, the final fight for Gwen’s soul would soon be upon them.
They ran in silence, covering ground on legs burning with energy. Gwen’s white coat took on a silvery sheen in the moonlight. Few Weres had white hair or fur. Colorlessness would come from having survived heinous wounds, the way his sister had survived hers. Ghost wolves, these wounded warriors were called. Only one wolf remotely connected to the Miami pack had become a ghost, and that was another cop named Colton Killion.
Within their pack, his sister was to be revered. The unique blood in Gwen’s veins that allowed her to possess these special traits and the ability to avoid detection was going to be cherished. If passed along, the special ancestral particles in her bloodstream could reinvigorate the entire Lycan species.
No pressure there.
So he had to take extra care now to keep her safe and away from Tess Owens, who brandished silver-tipped weapons instead of claws. Blue-eyed Tess, who shouldered so much sadness.
One thing was for sure. Their circumstances had just gotten a hell of a lot more complicated. And if that wasn’t enough, there was the rather startling fact that he couldn’t wait to meet Tess again. The sooner, the better.
* * *
Tess swore out loud.
Unbelievably, she had let those wolves go. Now, she promised herself this was only a temporary setback. The werewolf wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. He had told her that, though his explanation for why he was here had been missing a few details. Like all of them.
This guy had even seemed reasonable.
Could that be right? Possible?
The fact that she had chosen to believe him might have made her an idiot and a shameful member of her clan.
Another hiccup in a night full of them was that this Were actually ran with real wolves. Rare ones with white pelts. Maybe there was a connection between pure-blooded Lycans and the wolves their species had sprang from. Lycans, who were the equivalent of werewolf royalty, had lineages that went way back.
This guy was a stunner. Up close, he had reeked of enough raw male power to make her feel tingly all over. Still, she wasn’t ready to concede and let this wolf chalk tonight up as a victory. Anger was flooding her with heat. She felt antsy, anxious and ready for a rematch. This time she would be prepared, she told herself.
“I know every inch of these woods and hillsides,” she called out, hoping her voice would carry. “So it won’t take me long to find you.”
Setting off again in the direction the unusual Were had taken, Tess imagined he sent a reply.
“Wait for me, Tess, but give me some time.”
Hell, that couldn’t be right. She could not have heard him. She couldn’t even see him. What she could do, however, was follow the trail of the scent that this big sucker left behind that was now deeply ingrained in her lungs. The scent underscoring the inexplicable tickle at the base of her neck and causing an internal shakeup. Her new target was both unbelievably handsome and monstrously unique. He was a worthy adversary and as powerful as Weres came.
She had met a Lycan, and he had not killed her when he had the chance.
All of those things factored into her renewed desire to find the bastard and put an end to whatever this was, and before she was declared certifiably insane.
“Give you time?” she muttered. “I don’t think so.”
She added a thought, “Got that, wolf?”
She didn’t expect a reply and absorbed another ripple of shock when one came.
“We are more alike than you know, Tess. If you hunt me, I will haunt you in return.”
“BS!” Tess shouted to the otherwise quiet hillside as she stood on another rocky ledge dividing her property from the property that she now knew had to be his. But she didn’t go any farther, bothered by the word haunt and inexplicably willing to give that damn Were one more night to get his act together.
Haunt her in the future?
Hell, he already was.
Chapter 5 (#u17f9a30a-ccc2-5dc6-9c34-e62c478c69a4)
Sleep was elusive. Jonas hadn’t stopped pacing since he and Gwen had returned to the safety of the cabin. Chastising her would have been useless and might have driven her further from him, so Jonas kept his fears to himself.
Tonight was the third time he had seen his sister shape-shift. The sight was both a blessing and a curse. He couldn’t foresee what kind of future Gwen might have if they made it back to Miami. The thought of taking her back there made him sick.
He doubted that anyone else in his family had known about how special she was. She would have been too precious to everyone in the Lycan community to be allowed to roam freely among the packs.
When they got back to Miami—and if they did—there would be a highly detailed plan for her to breed and pass along her genes. By bringing Gwen here, he had granted her the gift of more time away from all that, besides the other pressing issue of keeping her alive long enough to see that future.
In any case, his sister hadn’t yet fully healed from her injuries and needed more time to do that.
Jonas stood for a while at the window, searching for any hint of the things that would eventually come their way.
The night was quiet. Tess hadn’t followed them here, and he silently thanked her for that. As for the darker thing on their trail, Jonas hoped they would have a few more days of relative tranquility before that battle took place. He also hoped he’d have time to meet Tess in more reasonable circumstances, though that wish seemed like a stretch.
Already, and from his first sight of Tess, she had become an unshakable fixture in his mind. When Jonas closed his eyes, she was there. Each breath he took seemed to bring her closer. Leather, smoke and flowers were her calling card, and his cabin seemed to be full of those fragrances.
He glanced at Gwen’s door and sighed. Leaning a shoulder against the wall, Jonas sent his mind outward to test his theory about his uncanny connection to this hunter.
“Do you sleep, Tess? Are your dreams peaceful, or are they filled with dark things?”
It was stupid of him to believe she might hear him from this far away, and yet he could swear he felt his thought travel over the distance separating them. He almost felt himself beside her, as if his threat to haunt her had come true.
She would have a small bed in a small room, Jonas envisioned. Her fair hair would be loose and spread like sunshine across a lavender-scented pillow, because Tess Owens was actually a creature of sunlight, like other humans were.
What would you be wearing tonight, hunter?
He pictured her in something comfortable and light, rather than silks or satins. Tess wasn’t a girly girl.
Maybe you’ll rest in leather in case a werewolf comes calling?
After letting her go, she would be doubly on guard. She would have her knife handy. It was obvious that she knew how to wield a blade, as well as what she could have done with one if she had wanted to.
“Expect me, Tess,” he sent to her. “Rest tonight. Sleep in peace. Meet me tomorrow in the sunlight when the dark things are hiding.”
Did he see her open her eyes and turn from her pillow to listen? Was there actually a possibility she had heard him?
What would it mean if you are listening? Am I wrong about a bond forming between us?
He imagined Tess covering her ears in an attempt to ignore his mental invasion. But he also felt her tuning in, as if she were merely in the next room and straining to listen to him speak.
As the images floated away, he realized that Tess probably wouldn’t fall sleep in that bed tonight, and that wishful thinking on his part didn’t ease things for either of them.
“Tomorrow,” he said aloud. “Meet me tomorrow.”
He felt an unusual drag on his thoughts that made his heart pound and sensed that this new bit of awareness carried no hint of Tess Owens in it.
Jonas turned to find his sister in the doorway with a questioning expression on her face.
Had his thoughts been too loud?
* * *
Tess sat up in bed after tossing and turning her way through two hours of thoughts. After checking the corners of her room for werewolves a tenth time, she threw off the covers and walked to the window.
She couldn’t see out. The shutters were closed and locked tight in case he showed up unannounced. Without fresh air, the closeness in the room made her feel claustrophobic.
Tess doubted if she’d be ever able to sleep again until this werewolf issue was settled. She had an intuitive feeling that tonight wouldn’t be the time for a second meeting but had to remain on guard. There was no telling what this unusual Were might do.
“Get out of my head,” she muttered, shaking the shutter to assure herself that it was in place. Wood planks would be easy enough for a strong werewolf to destroy, but there’d be enough noise to alert her if one tried.
Tomorrow...
Since she’d first heard his invitation, the word had floated in and out of her consciousness with the tone of a whispered command.
“Get out,” she whispered again, forgoing the bed in favor of a trip to the front door.
Palming her knife, Tess left the cabin in her shorts and tank top to look up at the moon. Sensing no wolf presence, she sighed with relief and spoke out of frustration. “I accept, in case you’re the one sending this invitation.”
Brush rustled. Night birds sang. Bugs chirped as tree branches swayed in the wind. All this was normal. Usual. Except for one thing: the feeling of dread that invaded her as Tess studied the moon.
She dropped her gaze to search the area. Her skin bristled. Nerves again began to buzz. Something else was out there, and she didn’t know what. She didn’t recognize the sensations hitting her system. This was no wolf. So, what?
The air changed. Night seemed to darken as the overhead stars were erased. The moon disappeared as if a black curtain had descended over them and everything else. Tess looked at her knife. The silver blade had been swallowed by the roaming blackness. Its surface was dull. The shadows in her peripheral vision appeared to be moving.
Feelings of dread brought on a chill. Her knees felt oddly weak. But as quickly as it had arrived, the strange sensations drifted away as though this had been a bad dream.
The stars and moon reappeared. Tess took a breath and let it out slowly, listening for anything that might explain what had happened. She looked to the west, the direction the Were had taken after leaving her earlier that night, wondering if he had been responsible for what she had just experienced. The rolling blackness had moved off in that direction...toward her neighbor’s place and the wolf who had taken up temporary residence there.
“It’s coming,” she said, feeling silly for thinking the Were she had been hip to hip with a couple of hours ago would be able hear a warning he might not need.
And why would she warn him, anyway?
Tess cleared her throat and repeated the warning, concerned about why she would care what happened to a creature she was going to take down anyway when the next full moon came if he hadn’t caused that blackout.
I’m here to keep something very bad from happening, the Lycan had told her. Promise me you’ll let me do what I need to do here without interference, and that you’ll give me time to take care of the thing I came here to do. That’s all I ask.
A small shiver of incomprehension ran through Tess as she remembered those words. For the life of her, she could not imagine a greater threat than having a werewolf next door. But somehow she sensed that was about to change.
Chapter 6 (#u17f9a30a-ccc2-5dc6-9c34-e62c478c69a4)
Jonas smiled at his sister. “Sorry, Gwen. Did I wake you?”
She eyed him thoughtfully.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You can rest.”
Gwen didn’t move from the doorway. Her gaze moved past him, heading for the window.
Jonas looked out. “Has something else disturbed you?”
He felt the quake that ran through his sister from where he stood and turned to look at her.
“What is it? What do you see?”
If ever there was a time for Gwen to speak, Jonas would have liked that time to be now. But she didn’t oblige and continued to stare at the window as if expecting someone to show up.
He didn’t like this. Didn’t like the lack of expression on Gwen’s young face as she waited for whatever she thought was out there to come knocking.
Gwen might be tapping into other special powers that he had no knowledge of, but would that include an awareness of the presence of things no one else could see?
Chills dripped down Jonas’s back, taking their time, hitting every vertebra one by one. He had a really bad feeling.
“I can’t read your mind,” he said. “You’ll need to tell me what I need to know.”
When Gwen’s head tilted to the side as if she were listening to sounds other than his latest request, a cascade of pale hair slipped to cover half of her face. Her hair had been brown once, like his, before the attack that had rendered her speechless. Brown, straight and shiny. Massive injuries had instigated the change in this pretty teen and nothing could alter that.
Gwen was disturbed as she looked outside, and her inner distress was contagious. Jonas liked to believe he was still close enough to his sister to understand a few things, but until she decided to speak, he needed another way to find out what was going on.
“Gwen,” he said, hoping to get her attention. “I’m trying to protect you. Please help me do that.”
Her gaze traveled to him before again bypassing him in favor of the window. Feeling helpless, Jonas placed himself in front of the glass.
“What do you see?” he asked, his concern growing. Gwen’s skin had begun to ripple the way his skin did when a shape-shift was imminent.
Jonas held up a hand. “No. Stop, Gwen. Now isn’t the time. It isn’t safe. We aren’t alone out here. Our neighbor knows what we are.”
That last statement was only partially true, Jonas amended inwardly. Tess might know about him, but as for Gwen...
Gwen was something Tess Owens had no idea existed and would label a nightmare if she did.
His sister now had claws—ten short white claws nearly as colorless as her hair. She had become hyperaware of an issue she considered a problem and couldn’t fill him in.
“Shit,” Jonas muttered without daring to go to her, fearing that too much protesting might set her off in ways he wouldn’t be able to corral.
Gwen sidestepped him with a graceful move and joined him at the window. She pressed her face to the glass and ran her claws down the wooden frame hard enough to leave visible tracks in the finish.
Jonas took hold of one of her wrists and turned Gwen around to face him. He adopted a stern tone when repeating his last warning, hoping a repeat of the same stuff would get through to her.
“No, Gwen. Now isn’t the time.”
She raised her chin and looked directly into his eyes. What Jonas saw in those eyes frightened him more than the idea of what might eventually be out there somewhere.
And then he heard what Gwen must have heard: the echo of a distant voice.
“Whatever the hell this thing was is heading your way.”
The effort of absorbing that warning required Jonas to turn for the door.
* * *
Though she hadn’t meant to move, Tess found herself running.
Curiosity had gotten the better of her as to what that engulfing blackness had been, and yet she wasn’t a fool. Her property line would be the stalling point in going after it. She just wanted to see that thing again to make sure she hadn’t made it up. After all, not much about tonight had been usual. The wolf next door had seen to that.
And okay, maybe she was a fool for falling for his line about being needed elsewhere and about being a good guy. She found it difficult to explain the leniency of her actions and his. The damn Lycan’s face had been painted in her mind ever since.
It was in her mind now as she sprinted over the rocky ground in her bare feet, ignoring the discomfort, feeling lighter without her boots. The flimsy tank and shorts she slept in wouldn’t help her fend off claws if she bumped into that Lycan and his friends, but she didn’t think she would meet them. There was no sense of that Were’s closeness in spite of all that imagined telepathic mumbo jumbo. She just needed a better view of the fields.
Nevertheless, her heart hammered inside her chest, pushing adrenaline to the right places to fuel her muscles. The chill she had felt several minutes ago melted away as rising body heat took over.
It didn’t take her long to reached the crest of the hill where she had encountered the Were. Stopping, Tess waited in silence with her eyes trained on the valley beneath the rocky ledge. No new anomaly stood out as far as she could see, and yet she couldn’t shake the return of an inexplicable undercurrent of dread.
And then she saw something down there. It wasn’t a moving black curtain or the Were she had encountered earlier. This thing moved like the wind, like a white missile, close to the ground and heading straight for Tess’s home turf.
It was the white wolf. The Lycan’s pet.
Without hesitating to watch that ghostly apparition in action, Tess turned and retraced her steps, heading for home, clutching the knife in her hand and hoping to beat that animal there.
When she got to her fence, she found the place quiet. Nothing moved or jumped out at her, but she still felt a wolf’s presence. Inching toward the gate by walking backward, Tess scanned the yard.
“I know you’re here.”
Those words had become her mantra lately and seemed terribly inadequate for tonight’s level of activity.
“Cat got your tongue?” she asked with her heart banging against her ribs.
Cool air swirled around her as she waited. No big, hunky Lycan stepped out of the shadows. No rolling mass of darkness descended. Her only visitor could be the four-legged animal she had seen running in the valley—the real wolf she had seen loping along in the Lycan’s wake.
“No use hiding,” she said, hoping to lure that wolf out of the shadows, though it was, she supposed, silly to think that an animal could understand human speech.
The wolf emerged from beneath the trees as if it had understood her request, moving just far enough out of the shadows for Tess to see the brilliance of its silver-white coat in the moonlight.
“I have no problems with wolves. Real ones,” Tess said, speaking more for herself than for that animal.
As soon as she had spoken those words, however, Tess began to comprehend that this was no mere wolf after all. The vibes coming from it were altogether new and different. And honestly, she was getting sick of things being so far out of the norm.
The white wolf’s muzzle lifted as it sniffed the air. Tess couldn’t see its eyes or determine the animal’s actual size. After seeing the animal’s head, she guessed this visitor was a lot larger than any other wolf she’d seen in the wild. Twice as big, maybe more.
“This place is protected from the likes of you,” Tess said, moving toward the gate that would seal her off from immediate harm.
Her knife dangled from her hand.
“Try it, wolf. Take me on and see what kind of skills I have developed to ward off claws.”
Her dare was punctuated by a rustling sound in the brush. Tess couldn’t look there. Dividing her attention could amount to suicide.
Her heart could not have pounded harder. The fingers holding her knife were turning white due to the tightness of her grip on the hilt.
Damn it... There was another visitor. His approach hit her hard. Coming up against this particular presence was like running into a familiar wall.
“Tess,” the Were said, as if they were friends.
She refused to look for the speaker, already knowing who it was. No one else said her name like that, in the tone of a caress.
“Is that wolf with you?” she demanded with her gaze fixed on the white wolf.
“This wasn’t planned,” the Lycan said. “I’m sorry you were disturbed.”
Tess rallied. “This is the second time you’ve come here and gotten too close to where you aren’t welcome.”
The white wolf growled in response to Tess’s clipped tone. Tess raised the hand holding the knife.
“It’s all right,” the strange Were said in a placating whisper that reached Tess from a short distance. “I’ll take her home.”
Her?
Hell, Tess didn’t want to know what a werewolf might do with a female animal like this one. She was sorry she had believed this guy to be truthful and handsome. His looks might have been exceptional, but werewolves were still monsters in disguise. Being handsome and convincing didn’t mean he was exempt from her reaching current goals.
“We’ll go,” he said with the adamancy of a promise. “Turn your back, Tess, and we will be gone.”
“What sort of an idiot do you take me for?” Tess returned.
“She won’t hurt you. I won’t let her.”
“Do you have a leash? The beast keeps a beast for a pet?”
The white wolf growled again, forcing more of Tess’s attention there.
“She doesn’t like trouble,” the Lycan said.
“Then why is she here?”
“She sensed trouble and came to investigate.”
“Then she knows about me?” Tess asked.
“Yes, in theory.”
Tess turned toward the direction his voice had hailed from. “Because you told her, and she understands English?”
The problematic Lycan didn’t take on that question.
Catching a hint of movement in the brush, Tess backed again toward the gate with the knife raised and ready. Her sworn enemy didn’t make an appearance, and it looked like he wasn’t going to.
She heard him speak in soft tones to someone else. He had to be addressing the white wolf. But that wolf didn’t budge.
“Perhaps you’ve lost some of your power of persuasion,” Tess suggested nervously.
There was a lull before he spoke again.
“She believes trouble is near,” he said.
“I’ll second that,” Tess muttered.
“Maybe you can tell her it’s okay,” he suggested.
Unbelievable...
“Am I to invite her in and offer tea and cookies, too?” Tess fired back.
“I’m pretty sure that won’t be necessary. However, if you want her to go, you’ll need to let her see that there’s no cause for concern.”
“Because there isn’t?”
“Not from us. Not from me. Not from her. Not tonight.”
Tess thought back to their earlier encounter. “Is this wolf part of the reason you let me go without a fight? She is one of the things you’re protecting?”
It seemed that no replies to those questions were forthcoming, so she tried again. “Do you hold yourself up as some kind of wolf warden?”
“No,” he replied. “Nothing like that.”
The white muzzle shifted slightly before one silvery leg appeared. Slowly, that wolf left the shadows, and the sight of this animal robbed Tess of more breath.
The largest real wolf Tess had ever seen moved toward her with a growl rolling in its throat.
Chapter 7 (#u17f9a30a-ccc2-5dc6-9c34-e62c478c69a4)
Jonas lunged forward just as Gwen glided through full moonlight to reach Tess. He barked a command that Gwen ignored. His sister was interested in Tess. Whether that reason was a bad one that involved seriously twisted intentions, Jonas couldn’t tell.
He reached Tess seconds before Gwen did. Gwen butted her head against his thighs as if she would go right through him, but Jonas held steady and barked a stream of protests in return.
The moon was overhead, and he was standing beneath it. His claws popped before he had time to stop them. Neck muscles began to spasm. “No, Gwen,” he said with the last vestiges of a voice everyone here would understand. “Not today.”
He could see that Tess was both fearful and annoyed by his interference. Jonas sensed the silver blade she held without having to see it, remembering the way it had burned into his flesh. That knife would hurt Gwen when she had already suffered enough. He had to keep Tess from using it.
Tess’s hands were like fire on his back when she tried to push him away. Gwen growled again, letting him know that she also wanted him to move. Maybe this is the fight Tess had anticipated tonight...not with a rogue werewolf, but something more. Something priceless to the Were world. His sister.
He could not let that fight happen.
When Gwen hurled herself at him, he caught her by the fur on the back of her neck. Tugging hard, he maneuvered his sister to the side as his Were genes, triggered by the light, fully kicked in.
He heard Tess’s surprised intake of breath as he tightened his grip on Gwen’s fur and spun the white wolf around. Tess sprang forward with her knife in her hand. Gwen panted and growled, showing treacherously sharp teeth as she struggled to get free. But he was far stronger than either of these characters. He proved it now by lifting Gwen’s front paws off the ground until his sister and Tess Owens stood eye-to-eye with a distance of only six inches between them.
Tess froze. Gwen stopped growling. It was a scene straight out of a horror movie and yet as the hunter and the very special white wolf eyed each other, Gwen began to whimper. Hearing that, Tess, who seemed to be equally as stunned, lowered her blade.
Jonas hoped that Tess had seen something human in Gwen’s eyes that wasn’t obvious in the form his sister was able to take. He hoped his sister would accept the temporary truce of Tess’s lowered blade and take the opportunity to disappear.
He could have cut through the tension in the air with that damn blade in Tess’s lowered hand.
With the lull in aggression, however temporary it might have been, Jonas raised his face. He let loose a howl directed at the instigator of this current round of trouble. The moon. Then he hauled his sister back, gave Tess a quick bark of warning to stay back and led Gwen away from the big bad wolf hunter, who for some reason hadn’t been at her best tonight.
Lesson learned, Tess. Some of us truly are different.
He kept hold of Gwen by digging his fingers into the scruff of her neck fur, careful not to let his claws do any real damage. After her initial reluctance, Gwen allowed him to lead her away from the Owenses’ front yard.
Jonas had no idea what his sister might have been thinking by coming here. Lycans of her caliber had thought-blocking techniques probably unknown to every other Were, and that was damnably inconvenient.
On some level, he realized that Gwen had been as surprised as he had been by coming face-to-face with Tess. One close look at the hunter and Gwen had made sounds he’d only recently heard her make—sounds shockingly similar to the groans she’d uttered during the difficulty of her recovery from the injuries she had accrued on the night of her attack.
When standing eye-to-eye, she and Tess both had been privy to a sudden wave of insight that had quelled their urge to fight, at least for the time being. Jonas had no idea what that might have been but was thankful for the respite.
Show-and-tell time was over. Introductions between these two had been made. Tess didn’t know that the white wolf was a Were in wolf form, or that she was his sister. Full-wolf shape-shifts, so rare these days, would be new to Tess, since they were virtually unheard of outside of a sanctioned few elders and the families that lived with these rare beings.
If Tess setting eyes on Gwen wasn’t bad enough, the Owens woman had seen him shape-shift twice in a single night and might be wondering about that as well.
He wanted to know why Gwen had come here and if it could have been nothing more than a desire to meet the neighbor.
Perhaps Gwen had scented the hunter in the same way he had, and her instincts for survival had taken over. Maybe the strange DNA in Gwen’s makeup retained memories of hunters from times in the past.
Those thoughts were legitimate ones. Nevertheless, Jonas had a hunch the reason for Gwen’s visit could be blamed on neither of those things. Warning flags in his mind were waving. Gwen wasn’t struggling half as hard against his hold as he thought she might. He hadn’t even broken a sweat.
“Your big brother is keeping watch, Gwen,” he silently messaged his sister, pulling her along without pausing to address her second act of rebellion as a real issue. Just because he couldn’t hear his sister’s thoughts didn’t mean she couldn’t access his.
“Possibly you need to learn to use more control, hun.”
Jonas let her go in a spot near the rocky overlook and placed his considerable Were bulk between Gwen and the path behind them, daring her to try to get past him.
Gwen waited without moving for a minute or two before turning to focus on that path in a way that made Jonas’s neck chill.
Tess hadn’t been content to let the two Weres go. He should have known the white wolf would pique her interest and get her hunter blood pumping. Could he blame her? In Tess’s place, he probably would have done the same thing by following them. She was coming now.
Unfortunately, there was more at stake here than Tess Owens hoping to do her job. And he was caught between two females on opposite ends of the DNA spectrum that had gotten a good whiff of each other. Two females with the power to mess things up before the real mess began.
Christ, he could feel that other thing he had feared getting closer. The thing he dreaded most. The air was thicker, wetter. He didn’t want to lose Gwen. Besides his own feelings, the future of his species might hang on her survival.
In Jonas’s mind, the woodsy fragrance of the wolf hunter’s cottage was suddenly blotted out by the odor of impending doom. He now had Tess and Death to worry about, and it seemed that his worst nightmare was about to come true.
“Run,” he sent to Gwen, giving her a gentle shove.
For once, his sister did as she was told. She took off, heading west like a bullet shot from a rifle, leaving him standing on the rocks with his claws raised.
* * *
To Tess, this felt wrong—not only for the fact that she had let her family down, but because of the entire night and the way things had gone.
She had never seen a wolf like the one the Lycan had tamed into submission, and that brought the tally to two firsts in one night. It had been two wolves against one hunter in her front yard, and yet the handsome Were hadn’t allowed the white wolf to take her on when that would have served him better.
Uttering a string of curses and oaths, Tess again sprinted through the trees and brush. There was still time to put things to rights, she told herself...at least there would have been time for that if she hadn’t become so interested in this Lycan and what he was up to by showing her a sensitive side.
Not only had he not gone after her tonight, he had kept the white wolf from doing the same. Why?
What was his connection to that white wolf? Had his hesitancy to fight been due to his desire to see that real wolf unharmed?
She wasn’t dressed for this. Her feet hurt like hell and there was a good possibility she wasn’t thinking straight. The only weapon she had was the blade. One damn blade against that Lycan’s cunning and mounds of muscle. She was going after a werewolf in an outfit that amounted to little more than sleepy-time underwear.
What a pretty picture that presented.
But it was okay, Tess supposed, since it wasn’t in the Lycan’s favor to let her catch up with him. Additionally, he had no reason to want to see what she’d do next since he had gotten the better of her twice already without lifting a claw.
The differences between this Were and other werewolves she had dealt with were major and lent an air of fantasy to the craziness of this night.
If she could only get him out of her mind...
If only her wits would return and warn her that a strange attraction to this guy was surely going to be her downfall...
But she was fighting those what-ifs and in need of other answers. Tess wanted to stop the madness that had been caused by meeting this guy, no matter how interested she was in his behavior. She didn’t have to admit to anyone, including herself, that she was curious about him for more reasons than his actions alone.
That face.
The sculpted physique.
His deep voice.
It was strictly forbidden and an unforgiveable sin for wolf hunters to cozy up to their prey. They were two different species. Leniency showed weakness. If word about her inability to do her job were to spread, other monsters would arrive.
Still, deep down in Tess’s mind lay another reason for her interest in this guy that scared her more than anything else.
Having been tight up against him had caused her well-tuned willpower to backfire. In man form, he was mesmerizing. In the other shape, he was forbidding, but with an intelligent gleam in his eyes.
She wasn’t caving on the job. She just wasn’t sure what had happened tonight.
“There is something about you...” she said aloud. “And I will probably regret finding out about whatever that actually is.”
Against all inner warnings, though, Tess didn’t turn back. Sensing a change in the atmosphere, as if the moonlight had somehow suddenly grown brighter, denser, she slowed, then stopped to look up at the rocky ledge above her with her blade ready and her heart in her throat.
He was there. Contrary to everything she had just thought about the situation, he stood in the open—this tall, muscled, wickedly formidable and one hundred percent Lycan werewolf. He seemed larger than life and looked to have been carved from the surrounding stones.
Even in this setting where animals prowled, this guy with his bronze skin and light brown hair stood out as another kind of being entirely. Her new nemesis was a crazy anomaly within his species. Something new and exciting.
Maybe that’s why her heart was beating so rapidly she could barely draw a breath. Maybe it was also the realization that running wasn’t what had winded her. She was breathless because she found this Lycan so fascinating.
He had seen her. The growl he issued was soft, low, and did things to her that Tess refused to acknowledge. She didn’t speak, didn’t reply. Couldn’t do either of those things.
Though he was motionless, the werewolf wasn’t at ease. Tess sensed the tension flowing through him, and like an airborne contagion, that tension quickly transferred to her.
He was looking at her, not as if she might be his plaything, but as though he wanted to say something to her that his shape-shift had prevented him from saying several minutes ago.
Having witnessed his ability to manipulate his shifts so quickly, Tess observed him carefully, fully on guard. When she could draw a full breath, she said, “I don’t think I like whatever kind of game it is that we’re playing.”
He sank to a crouch. In other werewolves, this would have meant he was ready to spring. This guy didn’t translate that kind of intention to her. It was as if he didn’t want to appear too large or menacing.
He was still bare from the waist up and wearing faded jeans. The guy was a magnificent example of this species, and only by looking at him through narrowed eyes did Tess see the more wolfish parts. The harder she tried to zero in on those things—the extra layer of muscle and the claws—the less she saw. The wolf aura surrounding him hinted at the term werewolf, rather than anything pertaining to the purely physical aspects of his countenance.
Tess had seen him run. She didn’t take her eyes from him now. Man and wolf were such an unlikely combination, who else but the few people in the know would have believed anything like this possible?
She showed him the blade. “This is all I have at the moment. Will you challenge?”
When their gazes connected, heat streaked through Tess that was akin to having gotten too close to the sun. Her pulse thundered in her neck, pounding out beat after merciless beat that lifted the skin beneath her ears.
Her interest in him would be her death.
“So tell me,” she said, pitching her voice low to hide any telltale signs of quavering. “Is the neat trick of attracting the hunters who are hunting you some special kind of power you possess?”
The beast perched on the rocks above her couldn’t answer that question unless he used more of his magic Lycan voodoo to transform himself into a more vocal version of the one he presented to her at the moment. It was entirely possible that he wouldn’t change back, so that he could avoid answering her altogether.
His tension had become like a separate living thing. Swallowing back a lick of fear and determined to ride this out, Tess asked, “Do you also have the ability to call real wolves? I’m wondering if they realize what you are and that you might at one time have been related.”
The Lycan’s shoulders twitched briefly before quickly settling back to stillness.
“Why don’t you jump? I’m standing here like an idiot, breaking every rule I’ve ever had pounded into me about dealing with the likes of you,” Tess said.
The Lycan’s next growl was more like a touch than a sound and caused Tess to lean toward him. “Stop it,” she commanded. “I came here to ask you about another thing as well. That veil of darkness that blew in and passed over before you and your four-legged friend appeared on my doorstep.”
Breaking eye contact, he turned his attention to the distance.
“It rolled west, toward you,” Tess continued. “I liked it about as much as I like you. Still...”
Her voice trailed off.
The werewolf on the ledge above her took that jump and landed beside her. The blade in Tess’s hand was useless. Her lungs were useless, and so were her legs. She found herself in the Lycan’s arms, being swept off her bare feet.
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Linda Thomas-Sundstrom
Forbidden desireDescended from a long line of werewolf trackers, Tess Owen knows everything there is to know about hunting the big, bad beasts… Except what to do when you find yourself falling for one.Solitary, powerful Jonas Dale is a legend among his own kind – and among those who want to destroy him. He’s also undeniably sexy. Longing intensifies Tess’s hunt for this lone wolf and Jonas’s passion matches her own. Meanwhile, a common enemy stalks them both! Will their desire save Tess and Jonas or will it destroy them?
FORBIDDEN DESIRE
Descended from a long line of werewolf trackers, Tess Owen knows everything there is to know about hunting the big, bad beasts—except what to do when you find yourself falling for one.
Solitary, preternaturally powerful Jonas Dale is a legend among his own kind—and among those who want to destroy his kind. He’s also undeniably sexy. Longing intensifies Tess’s hunt for this lone wolf, and her prey’s passion matches her own. Meanwhile, a common enemy stalks them both. Will desire save Tess and Jonas, or will it destroy them?
“Show yourself,” she demanded, though her voice was softer, lower and almost a purr.
Her tone stirred Jonas’s insides in a strange way, as if he could feel its vibration from where he stood. That purr melted into his skin, sparked his nerve endings in a way that created its own electricity.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea, do you?” he asked. “I can’t speak to the actions of any of those others. I can only repeat that I mean no harm to you and leave it at that.”
“Can you prove what you say?”
“I can prove it by turning my back and leaving you alone and in one piece.”
“Or by showing yourself,” she suggested, with more tension on the string of her bow.
Jonas stepped into the moonlight, allowing the rain of silver light to wash over him. His shape-shift was completed in the few seconds it took him to reach Tess Owens.
He had her knife in his fingers, her hand in his and the tip of the razor-sharp blade she carried tight up against his chest before her blue eyes, wide with shock, met his.
Growling was the only way Jonas now had of speaking to her. That growl rumbled menacingly as he held her gaze and pressed the tip of the blade into his own flesh.
“Do it if you don’t believe me, wolf hunter. Go ahead.” Was it the shock of his shift, his appearance or his speed that stayed her hand?
Or maybe it was the look in his eyes as they met hers...
LINDA THOMAS-SUNDSTROM writes contemporary and paranormal romance novels for Mills & Boon. A teacher by day and a writer by night, Linda lives in the West, juggling teaching, writing, family and caring for a big stretch of land. She swears she has a resident muse who sings so loudly, she often wears earplugs in order to get anything else done. But she has big plans to eventually get to all those ideas. Visit Linda at www.lindathomas-sundstrom.com (http://www.lindathomas-sundstrom.com) or on Facebook.
Wolf Slayer
Linda Thomas-Sundstrom
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Dear Reader (#u17f9a30a-ccc2-5dc6-9c34-e62c478c69a4),
South Dakota. Hills. Forests of trees. Secluded cabins in the woods. Acres of uninhabited space. Can you picture it?
This is where I’ve set the latest book in my Wolf Moons series, and I’ve been excited to explore the extremely fragile and always volatile relationship between werewolves and the hunters who go after them. Because not everything is ever as it seems with these two sides of the supernatural spectrum...and well, sexy is sexy, no matter where we find it. Right?
Two opposites, attracting. Forces beyond their control pitting a man and a woman against each other, and against what each stands for, as a truly dark entity comes prowling.
This is Wolf Slayer.
Imagining stories like this one is the reason why I enjoy writing about the werewolf world. I always look forward to finding out what these tall, edgy, gloriously sexy weres can do to make my blood boil. And then I hunt, as they do, for just the right adversary in the form of a strong, independent woman who might turn up. In this case...plenty of sparks fly!
I hope you’ll love Wolf Slayer as much as I loved writing it.
Please do check out my website to keep track of what’s coming up next. Connect with me on my Facebook author page. Stop by and say hello. I’d love to hear from you.
Cheers—and happy reading!
Linda
LindaThomas-Sundstrom.com (http://www.lindathomas-sundstrom.com/)
Facebook.com/LindaThomasSundstrom (https://www.facebook.com/LindaThomasSundstrom)
To my family, those here and those gone, who always believed I had a story to tell.
Contents
Cover (#ua2c69f6f-f6a3-59e7-ae33-31ce5d11003f)
Back Cover Text (#u8650cda9-c1cb-5ebf-8c5a-6a6fc269155b)
Introduction (#u94c2bd2a-a3a4-574b-8ccc-3912e7693edb)
Title Page (#u51788416-3ecc-5cd9-a22a-a623ce3b51b1)
About the Author (#uab7e1db2-f013-5336-a1ed-12023dd90b1e)
Dear Reader (#u569f24eb-593e-5ba8-9af8-f58b5ce1d237)
Dedicatin (#u82bf1152-d45b-5af2-9673-37b00177baf9)
Chapter 1 (#ua01bbee7-ad8a-52f4-90ca-3725301b37bd)
Chapter 2 (#u75e2b5f6-9878-5169-9933-35165ecedf2b)
Chapter 3 (#u3fbe0b6f-afc1-5f8d-a111-eb6cafd31259)
Chapter 4 (#u07ddd27c-cbcf-5871-8abc-c40a47bd9989)
Chapter 5 (#uca615254-401b-5928-b690-a8773ee3c81f)
Chapter 6 (#u1c049a3f-589e-5213-a0d9-7d2772fc3108)
Chapter 7 (#uad30369b-de27-537f-971d-2312152eab20)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#u17f9a30a-ccc2-5dc6-9c34-e62c478c69a4)
Tess Owens didn’t like dark things. Or the full moons that brought dark things out of hiding.
Standing in the front yard of her secluded South Dakota home, she could see a vague imprint of the moon rise over the treetops. Familiar sensations tied to the big silver orb flooded her system in waves. Flush of heat. Spikes in her pulse. A sudden upswing of anxiety.
Full moons messed with her nervous system in a way Tess supposed similarly affected the creature she’d go after tonight when the stars came out. Although it was only late afternoon, her body was doing its thing, readying, gearing up for the time when adrenaline would push her beyond normal human limitations and she’d become the thing she had been created to be. Hunter.
Tonight, she’d need every ounce of strength she possessed if she met up with the dark thing that had taken up residence in the area. Because tonight was going to be special.
Rumors about the newcomer had been spreading throughout the towns nestled in the hills of South Dakota for a few days, and those rumors didn’t begin to address the level of danger this new threat posed. She had been aware of the trespasser since it arrived.
The thing in these woods wasn’t human. Its otherness was rich and dangerous. Acknowledging it gave her a thrill, because hunting anomalies is what her family had done best when they were alive. As bad luck would have it, she just happened to be the only Owens left in this part of the Dakotas, so the job was hers.
Hunting big bad creatures after nightfall wasn’t for everyone and definitely not for the faint of heart—especially the kind of hunting her family was known for among certain circles. As far back as anyone could remember, the Owenses had been big-game specialists, not after lions or tigers, but wolves of a certain variety—the kind that walked upright on two legs and often looked like everyone else until a full moon rolled around.
“Plenty of light tonight,” Tess muttered.
There were no clouds and not one hint of a storm system rolling in...unless she counted that damn newcomer as a special kind of storm. The werewolf that had dared to come here.
“Wolf,” Tess said, standing near her front gate and searching the area west of the tall pine trees. “I know about you. I can taste your presence.”
The fact that ninety-nine percent of the world’s population didn’t know Weres existed was a testament to how talented that species was at keeping secrets. But Tess and her family had been wolf hunters for nearly as long as werewolves had been around.
She was going to have to be careful, though. The nervous twitch in her shoulders suggested that this sucker had an ominous vibe. Tonight wasn’t going to be easy. Even now, Tess breathed in the uniqueness of this creature’s essence.
Either a particularly powerful new werewolf had moved to the neighborhood, or she wasn’t worth the O carved on the hilt of her hunting knife.
O—the symbol for a pledge some ancient-based Owens had made to cull werewolf numbers.
O—a sign that was symbolic for zero, as in the number of werewolves that had gotten past her family since they had moved to the Dakotas thirty years ago.
O—for the look on miscreant werewolf faces when a well-placed silver knife or arrow terminated their freakish existence.
“And now you,” Tess said, pacing the yard. Although some were rumored to be good, she hadn’t seen the good stuff in any of the man-wolves she had hunted. Those creatures left a lot of damage behind. And she had never set eyes on a full-blooded Were, male or female, because Lycans, as those pure-bloods were called, tended to run in secretive, close-knit packs.
“So why are you trespassing where you don’t belong?” Tess whispered. “It’s my duty to catch you, you know. My job. My calling. I take my vows seriously.”
After her first hunting expedition with her father at the age of eight, she had accepted her role and had never looked back. At the ripe old age of twenty-four, she had the family name to live up to and didn’t take that honor lightly.
She was fast, strong. Her life depended on those things. One mistake, one too many hesitations and death would be the result. Even talented hunters didn’t usually last very long.
“I know you’re out there somewhere, wolf. Will you offer me a game of hide-and-seek or just magically appear?”
South Dakota wasn’t a hotbed for supernatural activity, unlike big cities in the West and East. There were slim pickings here for monsters, so a werewolf hadn’t crossed her path in months.
“Until you.”
She paused to scan more of the forest. Being alone for so long had made talking to herself out loud an acceptable habit.
“A beast like you took down both of my parents, leaving me without backup. But don’t assume that means I’m weak.”
On the contrary, the loss of her mother and father last year had energized her need to take care of problems that arose. So here she was, fighting back, fighting hard and willing to go to extremes in order to deal some payback to the creatures that had taken so much from her.
“I will find you. That’s a promise.”
If luck was on her side, the new Were wouldn’t get wind of her before she found it. Out of necessity, she had become good at stealth, but werewolves also had keen, fine-tuned senses that were apt to be better than hers. She bore the scars to prove it and wore those scars like notches in her belt to mark the fights she had not only survived but won.
Would this guy know about her?
“Twelve,” she said. “Twelve half-crazed werewolves have ventured too close to this part of South Dakota for their own good.”
She ran a hand down the left side of her face, tracing a line of lightly raised scar tissue. “Number seven did this to me, and regretted it.”
She raised an arm, showing off ridges on her left wrist. “Number nine.”
If the people in town knew about what she did—about how far she had to go and how much she had sacrificed to protect them from the monsters—her loner status would make sense. But they could never know.
“Can you hear me, wolf?”
Maybe it could hear her. And maybe not. Though the keenness of werewolf hearing was legendary, it wasn’t miraculous. They weren’t gods. Weres were just one of nature’s peculiarities.
Then again, possibly this one’s hearing was better than most.
Straightening up with a sudden jolt of insight that demanded her full attention, Tess focused harder on the trees.
Someone was out there.
Chills arrived before the next rush of heat obliterated them. That familiar flash of warmth, originating in her chest, quickly radiated outward to kick her adrenaline levels through the roof.
The creature was here.
Watching her.
The air around her vibrated with a telling whisper that said, Male werewolf. Big. Strong. Intense.
Tess gritted her teeth in anger. By coming here, that Were had crossed a line.
“I don’t care much for trespassers and haven’t asked for company,” she announced at a reasonable decibel. “Especially yours.”
No reply came.
He was sizing her up.
Tess shifted from foot to foot as a sudden external wave of heat blew in to raise her own rapidly escalating body temp even further. The damn heat wave was like being caught in a lava flow and so hot, her stomach turned over.
Tess widened her stance to meet that heat wave head-on. But it was gone as suddenly as it had come. Just like that, and as if the trespasser had merely called it back...
Leaving Tess breathless.
* * *
Jonas Dale stopped five feet short of the chasm dividing his land from his neighbor’s. Exceptional sight allowed him to peer through the trees.
The air was cool. An acrid odor of woodsmoke left a tang on his tongue. Aside from the normal forest fragrances of pine and scrub, he could detect a human.
He had heard about Tess Owens, of course. Word traveled fast and went something like this: hunter in residence. Wolves beware.
Coming here had been a risk. But he needed to be in the remote hills of South Dakota and about as far from his home in Florida as was geographically possible.
The choice of this location hadn’t been made without careful consideration. Tess’s family’s reputation preceded them. If the thing chasing him knew about the Owens family, surely it wouldn’t imagine he’d come here, so close to one of them.
In this case, he was using Tess Owens as camouflage.
Since word had come of the Owens deaths last year, Jonas figured he might get away with this. Still, extra caution would be needed when dealing with any member of that clan. Cunning and the power of persuasion might be the ticket to keeping Tess off his back if she would listen to reason.
Would she be open to hearing anything he had to say when her family was notoriously unforgiving to his kind?
He had come here today, near her home, for a quick look and to judge for himself about Tess. Finding her had been easy. She was standing in her yard, near enough for an agile werewolf with a grudge to take her on without the benefit of any moon-induced physical changes. He wasn’t that wolf, however. Not today. Not ever, hopefully, since his energy was needed elsewhere and he had little time to spare.
Underscoring the mixture of woodsmoke and wildflowers near the Owens cabin were hints of other scents that only a Were’s imagination would acknowledge. Energy. Anticipation. Blood.
Danger had its own unique fragrance, and this Owens offspring had Were blood on her hands. Her head was lifted, her posture tense. If she was good at what she did, there was no way Tess wouldn’t already have a bead on him.
It was a standoff, from a distance, before they had even gotten to hello.
Looks were fairly deceiving though, Jonas had to admit. Tess Owens didn’t look so formidable in person. She was tall but delicate, small-boned, long-limbed and young. Her shape was sleek and accentuated by tight jeans and a skimpy shirt that showed off too much skin and failed to reflect the current coolness of the afternoon temperature.
She had long, fair hair, most of it twisted into a braid that hung halfway down her back. A few unruly strands blew in the same breeze that had carried her scent to him, and those wayward strands were the only bit of wildness in her that he perceived.
The fair hair was a surprise, though. For some reason, he hadn’t expected this werewolf slayer to be a blonde. Not that the color of her hair made a difference in the long run. It’s just that he had a soft spot for golden-haired beauties. Still, Jonas wished he could see her face to witness firsthand the malice that had to be reflected in her eyes.
There were other curious particular details about her as well. Tess’s skin was paler than any outdoorswoman’s skin should have been. That little discrepancy seemed odd since she had to maintain her shape somehow and the great outdoors was her backyard.
Her shoulders were gracefully curved. Slender arms showed good muscle definition, as if she worked hard at something other than chasing Weres. Tess was visibly lean and fit. Too bad she wasn’t a Were, Jonas mused, because he appreciated her looks and could have made the most of them in other circumstances.
Lean, wiry, fierce females were his preference. Females who could hold their own and give back what they got. Females who didn’t usually bend unless they wanted to. He would have liked to run a palm over all that bare skin. Equally as pleasurable for him would have been to touch those silky golden tendrils currently hiding her face.
Wild was, after all, every werewolf’s middle name. In his twenty-eight years of dealing with his species, he had come to recognize the extremes of Were needs and wants...and tamp them down when he had to.
No such luck here, though.
Shaking his head scattered the impossible images taking shape in his mind. The only way he was going to touch Tess Owens would be in self-defense when she came at him with an intent to kill.
That was a shame because he knew instinctively that Tess Owens was something special and so much more than the reputation that preceded her.
He just couldn’t put a finger on how he knew this.
As his body shuddered with a mixture of appreciation and wariness for this new opponent, Jonas spoke softly so that Tess wouldn’t be able to hear what he had to say.
“Possibly that’s your greatest asset in dealing with my kind? We tend to underestimate you after a first glance? Pretty girl all alone in the woods?”
Inwardly, he also added, I vow not to become one of the suckers overly intrigued by those things. All I have to do is stay out of your way and hope you can determine friend from foe.
He prayed that Tess Owens might turn out to be an ask-questions-first kind of predator, just like he was. But this wasn’t the time for introductions and more wayward thoughts having to do with Tess’s tight jeans. Any hunter with a rep like hers wouldn’t let a full moon go to waste. Tess Owens would make the most of tonight and come knocking at his door fully armed and ready to rumble.
He had to keep her from doing so.
“I’m not what you think I am, Tess. I’m here, not to mess with you, but to protect a secret of my own. I’m needed. Someone else’s life depends on what happens here and what I do, and you just need to stay out of my way for a while.”
Did she get those confidences sent across the distance separating them? Jonas watched her turn her head as if she might have. He also felt a pull from somewhere behind him, an indication that he had to get back to his temporary home.
Having an Owens next door was one strike against him. The other creature that was looking for him was far worse.
Death was coming and would find him eventually. The black-cloaked, soul-catching bastard was the greater opponent, the mightier threat, and the monster he needed to keep at bay. Besides himself, there was only one member of the Dale family left, and his sister’s life depended on his ability to protect her. That had become his goal in life.
The bad news was the wave of aggression coming from Tess Owens and the silent words he swore he heard slip from her lips.
“It’s a date, wolf. Tonight. Don’t be late.”
At this point, so early in their association, probably nothing he could have said in return would have changed her mind.
Chapter 2 (#u17f9a30a-ccc2-5dc6-9c34-e62c478c69a4)
Tess paced the room as night began to descend. Wearing leather pants, a black shirt and black boots, she took a quick look in the mirror to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything that might make the difference between life and death when dealing with a werewolf.
She looked good enough, Tess thought, though people in town stared at her for other reasons when they met her. More than one of them had probably wondered where she might have gotten so many of the scars that crisscrossed the side of her face.
“Will he keep our date? What do you think, Tess?” she asked herself as she strode down the hallway of the cozy, eight-room, wood-paneled cabin.
Determined to find out the answer to that question, Tess entered the weapons room and chose a knife with a gleaming silver blade. She slung the bow and quiver of arrows over her shoulder, adjusting easily to the added weight, then rolled her neck to ease the tension building there.
Gloves on, weaponed up, she walked out of the front door. After giving the cabin a last glance, she set her sights on the trees and slipped into the dark.
* * *
“It’s okay.”
Jonas spoke softly to his sister, though he wasn’t sure how much of what he said ever sank in. There hadn’t been a verbal response from her since she had been attacked in a Miami park not too far from where they had lived.
Gwendolyn Dale had grown frail and lethargic on the outside—the parts others saw if they looked. He hoped the darkness he now sensed inside his sister would eventually fade away and be replaced by the happy-go-lucky sister he had always loved.
Sometimes, though, he wasn’t so sure about the darkness’s staying power.
Jonas tended to believe the attack in Miami had left Gwen with a black spot on her soul, and that she had been marked by Death in some way. This had to be the reason there seemed to be a specter on her trail. He thought it likely that his sister wasn’t supposed to have survived that attack, and that she had been slated, fated, or whatever the hell happened in the big cosmic scheme of things, to have died that night in Miami.
In the end though, what did he really know about such things? His entire repertoire of ideas was based on nothing more than conjecture and supposition.
“I have to go out, Gwen. Just for a while.”
Jonas laid a hand on his sister’s shoulder and winced at its thinness.
“I’ll be back soon, so take care while I’m gone and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Gwen would have laughed at the last part of that statement if she had been with him mentally as well as physically. Out of everyone else around them, his younger sister had been the most like him. She had been developing a similar kind of power and strength, even though neither of those things had helped the night she slipped out of the house with her friends without telling anyone and had encountered true darkness.
Gwen had been the only victim left alive out of the four young girls...if the term being alive could describe the state they had found her in. It had taken weeks of seclusion for her to recover enough to move her to this remote location. She hadn’t said a word to anyone since that terrible night.
Gwen was haunted. He knew that. She grew paler day by day and seldom ventured outside. Jonas wanted to believe she understood every word he said now, even as he could see her slipping further and further away.
“Your new companion will be here tomorrow,” he said lightly. “You probably need a female around. I think you’ll like her. She’ll stay for most of the day and go home before sundown. You know why she can’t stay here after dark settles in. That’s my shift. If you like her, we can see about having her spend more time here.”
Gwen’s pale blue eyes stared up at him as if she had heard him this time. She offered nothing in the way of facial expression.
“Right, then,” Jonas said. “I’m off to meet our neighbor. She sent me an invitation.”
In the old days, Gwen would have pleaded to go along. But even before her accident, she hadn’t yet been in full possession of the kind of skills that could have helped against things like experienced wolf hunters. It wouldn’t have been long, though, before his sister would have outshone every other Were in the area.
Gwen was an anomaly within an anomaly. A special being within the Were species. He wasn’t sure if she knew this.
“Wish me luck.” Jonas leaned over to place a kiss on his sister’s forehead and then headed out, knowing his meeting with Tess Owens couldn’t be postponed.
Keeping beneath the shadows of tree cover didn’t isolate him completely from the moon’s effects. Dappled light on his shoulders instigated sparks from nerves that buzzed, snapped and roused the wolf nestled inside him. His claws had appeared. Both shoulders ached. This was all part of the deal when the moon issued a come-hither.
After covering another acre of rocky, forested hillside, he got his first good impression of what was coming his way. Tess’s scent was in the air—that same mixture of smoke and flowers that had led him to her earlier.
The scent grew stronger as he walked. So did the moonlight. Jonas resisted the urge to shape-shift. Tess was here, just ahead, waiting for him. She had met him midway between the two cabins, which probably meant she knew where he was staying.
Tess Owens stood near a large rock pile at the crest of the hill overlooking property lines, surrounded by trees. She was partially camouflaged by shadows. The fact that she wore black would have helped to hide her from human eyes, but not from a werewolf’s. Jonas located her with a complex system of sight, scent and the image presented to him by way of her body heat.
It was showtime.
“Don’t bother to hide,” she called out in a tone that was both combative and dangerously sexy in equal measures. It was a deep voice for someone her size.
Jonas hadn’t counted on her ability to tune in to him so quickly, though. This was yet another detail that added respect and wariness to his initial assessment of her.
She seemed to be looking straight at him when she couldn’t possibly see that far. Night-vision goggles might have helped her to pinpoint him, but she wasn’t wearing them. Maybe she had heard his approach? The snap of a twig? A rustle of branches? He used to be better than this.
She spoke again. “These days I’m fairly good at what I do, and I get better with age and practice.”
Careful not to make a sound, Jonas inched forward with his wolfishness twisting his insides. A human growl stuck in his throat. The claws that had appeared made his human hands ache. His wolf side was willing to take on this threat, but it wasn’t time to let that happen. He doubted if Tess would take aim at a human form with the silver-tipped arrows he could now smell. Hunters rarely did.
“Are you coming out, or should I welcome you with a silver-coated handshake?” she challenged.
All hunters knew about the Were aversion to silver and a few other metals. Tess Owens seemed pretty confident about that aversion.
Blaming his comeback on his reaction to her voice, Jonas decided to oblige her request, at least in part.
He said, “Handshake? I wasn’t aware that you had social skills, Owens. People in town told me you rarely show your face there. To some of them, you’re more of a ghost than a neighbor.”
He wondered what that remark might do to her self-confidence and if it would shake her up in a way that might lead him to find a crack in her admirable armor.
“People in town don’t actually know me,” she returned, showing no sign of being affronted either by his remark or the fact that he had not shape-shifted like he was supposed to.
Jonas took another step forward, keeping to the darker spaces. His wolf urges were rising by steady degrees, drawn to the moon, drawn to Tess Owens, ready to take its turn in this face-off.
“Don’t stall the inevitable on my behalf,” she continued. “There’s no need to fight your true nature. You know you want a piece of me.”
“What nature would that be?” Jonas asked.
“The kind that howls.”
“I think I’d prefer to meet you on a more human basis, at least on this occasion,” he said.
“Should I be honored?”
“That’s up to you.”
“Show yourself and get this over with.”
“Put down the bow and I’ll think about your request.”
“How about if you reel in your claws?”
Her comeback was testy and insightful since she couldn’t actually see his claws. Wild guess?
Jonas asked, “What if I’m not what you’re thinking I am? Don’t you ever make a mistake when pointing a weapon at someone?”
“Only one mistake, and I won’t make it again.”
She might have been alluding to the death of her parents a year ago. But now that he was closer, Jonas finally got a good look at her face.
He suppressed a growl of appreciation. Tess was incredibly beautiful. All the right stuff was there, in all the right places. She had an oval face with perfectly symmetrical features and large, light eyes. Her brow was wide beneath a fringe of fair hair. Angular cheekbones gave her a regal look, though the deep hollows beneath them accentuated her thinness.
All in all, she didn’t look anything like any wolf hunter Jonas had ever seen.
However, she wasn’t perfect. Overlaying all that beauty was a trail of scars. Lavender lines, like crawling vines, crossed one side of her face, running from her forehead to her chin.
Jonas recognized those scars and knew what had made them. Tess had been mauled by a wolf, and that wolf had done some damage. Because she was here now, it was easy for him to see who the winner of that previous skirmish had been.
“Are scars the reason you stay away from town, or are hunters loners by necessity?” he asked, earnestly wondering about that.
A shudder of disgust ran through her, but Tess didn’t drop the aim of the arrow pointed in his direction. Still, Jonas thought he might have found that crack he’d been searching for, however small it might have been. Those scars bothered her.
“Old wounds come with the territory,” she said calmly enough.
Jonas nodded as he took another step toward her. She still wouldn’t be able to see him clearly, and he wasn’t going to allow verbal taunts or silver-tipped arrows to mess up this crucial meeting. Two more steps to his right and into the moonlight, and he would become the target she was looking for. He had to stave off that shape-shift. He had to hold on, sensing how badly she wanted to let that arrow fly.
Tess wasn’t just a hunter out to score. Her level of palpable aggression told him that she had a personal vendetta against the creatures she hunted. Six years on the force with the Miami PD had taught him a lot about dealing with emotion and the concept of revenge. Tess’s hatred for his kind left a sour taste in his mouth.
“Claws also come with the territory,” he said.
“Then use them. Do your worst. Or try to,” she taunted.
“Having animal in my DNA makeup doesn’t make me stupid, Tess.”
His use of her name surprised her. Her right cheek quivered.
“If true, that kind of insight would be a first,” she noted.
“You have no reason to fear or hate me. I’d like to offer a truce,” Jonas said.
“Like that will happen.”
“What can I do to force the issue? I have an agenda here that doesn’t include you. My reason for being in the area is important to people other than myself.”
“People?” She picked up on that word, emphasizing its misuse when pertaining to him.
Jonas wasn’t used to this kind of treatment. In Miami he was a respected detective on the job, fighting crime both in and out of the shadows. To Tess Owens, he was nothing more than an animal.
Turns out that she was formidable enough, he supposed. But she was also quite a sight standing there—a delicious, leather-clad, angry sight.
He wondered what she’d think if he mentioned how exotic he found her voice or how good she looked in that black suit. He could have bet she’d have been insulted then.
“I applaud your goals,” he told her. “But I’m not one of the bad guys.”
“Wouldn’t bad guys use that line?”
“Not around me,” he said.
Would Tess believe that Weres didn’t like bad guys of any species, including their own? Would she change her mind about werewolves if she knew how many decent wolves there were in the world, and how they fought behind the scenes to further the concept of peace and justice for all?
What if he showed her his badge?
“Most of the time, human is what I appear to be,” he said. “That’s what the world believes I am.”
“Except for those of us who know better.”
“Yes. But I’m not part of the reason you do what you do, and I’ve already stated that my intention for being here isn’t to cause you or anyone else around here harm.”
“Why here?” she asked, unshakable on her aim with that arrow.
“It’s as far away from others as I could find on the spur of the moment,” Jonas replied truthfully.
“What others?”
“People.”
“That’s rich,” she said. “And it would also be a point in your favor, if anyone was counting.”
All right, Jonas thought. That’s it. He had said more than he had intended, and Tess Owens had no right to question him further. Meeting her here had been a courtesy. He had hoped she’d see reason and leave him and Gwen alone, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen.
It was likely that Tess was driven to exterminate every werewolf she came across and had made up her mind about him being included in that goal.
“I suppose there’s no reasoning with you then,” he said.
“Reason? I’m pretty sure werewolves don’t know the meaning of the word.”
He nodded. “Well then, it’s been a pleasure, Tess.”
The calmness of his closing remark also seemed to surprise her. Another shudder ran through Tess that was sizeable enough to make her leather suit creak.
“Show yourself,” she demanded, though her voice was softer, lower, and almost a purr.
Her tone stirred Jonas’s insides in a strange way, as if he could feel its vibration from where he stood. That purr melted into his skin, sparked his nerve endings in a way that created its own electricity.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea, do you?” he asked.
“What it would do is make things a whole lot easier.”
“For whom? You?”
“Yes. For me,” she said.
“You believe that killing every Were you meet will bring your parents back? And that every Were is bent on carnage and destruction?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Then you don’t know much, wolf hunter, and your education has been sorely lacking.”
She spoke quickly. “You’re suggesting that you are not like the others? That you’re different?”
“I can’t speak to the actions of those others. I can only repeat that I mean no harm to you or anyone else around here and leave it at that.”
“Can you prove what you say?”
“I can prove it by turning my back and leaving you alone and in one piece.”
“Or by showing yourself,” she suggested with more tension on the string of her bow.
Okay. If you say so...
Jonas stepped into the moonlight, allowing the rain of silver light to wash over him. The wolf inside him barreled upward so fast, his shape-shift was completed in the few seconds it took him to reach Tess Owens. So fast, she didn’t have time to use her lightning-fast reflexes and let loose of that arrow.
She might have been primed and fighting fit, but she was no match for a full-blooded Lycan who had been shifting since his teens. She was no real match for a werewolf who was twice as fast as any werewolf in his pack and shifted without recognizing the pain of each physical transformation.
And she was no competition for a Were whose sole purpose in life currently was to guard the sister who stood on the brink of death.
He had the bow in his hands before Tess could blink or utter a groan of protest.
He had her knife in his fingers, her hand in his, and the tip of the razor-sharp blade she carried tight up against his chest. Her blue eyes, wide with shock, met his.
Growling was the only way Jonas now had of speaking to her. That growl rumbled menacingly as he held her gaze and pressed the tip of the blade into his own flesh.
Do it if you don’t believe me, wolf hunter. Go ahead.
Whether it was the shock of his shift, his appearance, or his speed that stayed her hand...
Or maybe it was the look in his eyes as they met hers...
Tess Owens didn’t make that thrust. She stood there, staring at him as if momentarily confused.
And since the advantage belonged to Jonas, he took it.
Chapter 3 (#u17f9a30a-ccc2-5dc6-9c34-e62c478c69a4)
The werewolf in front of her was huge, muscled, and faster than anything Tess had ever seen. The adrenaline punch that hit her when she looked into his eyes was a stunning blow to her confidence.
His eyes were blue and way too human.
Those eyes were intelligent and intense.
And the face...the werewolf’s face...was disturbingly human, as well.
He had angular features and no sign of anything that even hinted at a wolfish outline. No five o’clock shadow, let alone the typical werewolf’s layering of fine hairs and elongated bone structure. This guy actually was different. He was resetting the stats on everything she had known about werewolves. Meeting him, seeing him like this, sent the damn rulebook spinning.
Why had he turned the knife on himself? One thrust of the blade and he’d be toast. One plunge into that broad, naked chest with the sharp end of her silver dagger, and she would come out the victor.
That’s what she had to do. That’s what she had been trained to do. Raised to do. Taught to do. Remember... Too many hesitations and death will be the result.
Then why didn’t she edge that knife deeper into the wolf’s flesh? And why wasn’t he tearing her apart? He made no move to hurt her. The damn werewolf was waiting for something. She thought she saw a flash of curiosity in his eyes.
“Who are you? What are you?” she asked after a long overdue breath.
Because of their closeness, the next growl that rumbled from the Were’s throat also rumbled through her. Tess kept a tight hold on the hilt of the knife. Her bow, along with the arrow, lay on the ground where he had tossed them, and far from reach, but they wouldn’t have helped in this awkward situation anyway.
Push the damn blade.
He’s not human.
None of them are human. They ate my parents and made me a freak.
The wolf’s response to her question was to inch closer. A trickle of blood began to seep through the small hole where the blade pierced his flesh, and yet he didn’t blink.
What was he doing, though? Did he want to die, or was this merely a tactic to confuse her?
Well, damn it, she was confused, and had to either get her mojo back or suffer the consequences in the next few seconds.
One of you killed my family...
Nevertheless, whatever he was trying to do with this odd turnaround stayed her hand. After several more seconds of alarming eye contact and a lot of pulse acceleration, Tess stepped back with her heart beating way too fast and the bloody knife clutched in her hand. A brand-new kind of fear was setting in. She had never come up against anything remotely like this Were.
“If you think this changes anything, you’re wrong,” she said. “We’re on opposite sides of the game, and in any game, there can only be one winner.”
She watched the alarmingly large Were shake his head as if he understood what she had said, as well as the promise in it. True to his word though, he didn’t make any move to harm her. This close to him, she couldn’t see his claws or imagine what he might gain by holding back on his end.
So she waited for his next move, already planning hers. She’d duck to the side, come up to his right and use the knife. She wouldn’t be facing him then, wouldn’t have to look into those sympathetic blue eyes.
Yes, that’s what she had seen in them after the flash of curiosity. Sympathy.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” she demanded in a voice that didn’t sound as strong or as confident as she meant it to be. “One of us has to do the honors. If that’s you, so be it. If it’s me, all the better. That’s how this works.”
When he failed to respond, Tess’s gaze went to the blood dappling his broad chest. Red blood. Half men, half beasts had red blood like the humans they emulated.
She continued to eye the tiny hole in the Were’s chest until he began to back away. Given some distance, Tess’s nerves fired up, white-hot. Her arms began to quake with the need to do something—show him who she was and what she could do. She’d just had an intimate tryst with death and was still standing.
The Were was a good three feet away now and facing her. Tess’s first real look at the whole package he presented, head to foot, was another nerve-jangling revelation.
In this incarnation, the Were actually did seem more man than beast. Well over six feet of undulating muscle and sinew made it appear that he was moving when he wasn’t.
He had chiseled cheekbones, sun-streaked brown hair and blue eyes. If there had been an image of the perfect specimen of a man-wolf in that wolf hunter rulebook, this guy could have been the model. The real deal. The epitome of an evolved enemy.
She was looking at a Lycan. Tess knew this now. This guy was a pure-blooded example of the species. Her first.
No longer able to manage the internal quakes shaking her, Tess widened her stance. Her pulse was skyrocketing. Her fingers were bloodless from her grip on the knife. Confusion caused this delayed reaction, she told herself. She needed to lunge.
Do it now.
End this.
“If you go now, I will find you,” she vowed. Encouraged by the strength in her tone, Tess added, “Why prolong the inevitable? Tonight has to be the night. We both know this. Wolf and wolf hunter is the way this goes down. Werewolf and hunter.”
The wolf blinked his big eyes and then he shook his head. Within seconds, his body was against hers and she was wedged between his considerable bulk and the shadow-covered rock face behind her.
It was over. She had lost with supernaturally unlucky werewolf number thirteen. It was inevitable that this minute would come someday.
Tess closed her eyes.
Without sight, all of her other senses became acute, serving to enlarge every small detail of these last few seconds she had left. Her opponent’s breath was heated and slightly sweet. With the Were’s chest tight up against hers, she felt the steady rhythm of his heartbeat and the way his muscles twitched. Was he eager to win? Holding back for what? The hope that she might plead for her life?
Never...
With the weight of his body squeezing hers into submission, Tess discovered how close to humans Weres could feel physically. All of the masculine stuff was there, in spades. With her eyes closed, she might never have known what this bastard was and the extent of the danger she found herself in. Even his musky masculine scent was pleasantly unique.
“Sorry, Dad, Mom,” she whispered, ready to draw that last breath.
The Were’s muscle rippled as the shocking sound of muscle pulling on bone made Tess look up to meet the blue eyes that would be the last thing she’d ever see...and found them looking back at her from an exceptionally handsome human face that was a lie, at best.
* * *
“I told you I mean no harm,” Jonas repeated in a hoarse voice that hadn’t fully recovered from the shift. “What more do I need to do to prove that to you? What part of my explanation didn’t you get?”
Tess was barely breathing, and staring at him.
Jonas tried again. “We’re not all bad guys. Most of us aren’t, in fact.”
She said, “You could have fooled me.”
He could see she was scared, though not as frightened as anyone else in her current position would have been. Tess Owens had faced more than one werewolf with grit and dedication, though it was clear that she had never met anyone like him.
She expected trouble. Clearly, she was awaiting her death by his hand. Her face had paled to transparency. In that milky whiteness, her scars took on a pale blue cast.
Jonas touched one of those scars with a finger no longer blessed by a claw. The scar he chose was the one nearest to her temple. In response, she drew back as if she’d been struck. Her head hit the rock with a thud. She swore out loud, which seemed to make her feel better if the light that appeared in her eyes meant anything.
“Do it,” she challenged. “What are you waiting for? There’s only one way to end this, because I’ll never stop hunting you.”
She was so damned determined to fix this situation, so stubborn and brainwashed on the werewolf issue that Jonas had to smile. The smile kicked up the flames of her anger.
“Promise me something,” he said. “If I let you go, you’ll need to honor that promise.”
“I don’t owe you anything,” she snapped.
He pushed more of his weight against her. “No?”
“I’d rather die right here than to owe you anything at all,” she said.
He shook his head. “We both know that’s not really true. You have a calling and I can’t stop that. I wouldn’t stop that. Bad guys are bad guys.”
“Wolves,” she corrected.
“But I’m not one of those bad guys. This, I solemnly swear.”
“What would the world be like if I believed that line from every werewolf that trespassed here?”
“Did you give any of those Weres the chance to prove it?” Jonas asked.
“I caught them in the act. Devilish stuff. Killing sheep. Killing horses. Stealing. Brutally attacking people in the dark. Were those things supposed to continue without intervention? Knowing what those creatures are, was I supposed to allow it to go on?”
He said, “If that was the case, it’s likely those creatures deserved what they got. I might have done the same things you did in order to keep the peace.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You mean in order to keep your species a secret, don’t you? You’d condone culling a few bad seeds in order to keep most of you safe from the world discovering your existence?”
She had more to say. Jonas waited.
“So why here? Why have you come here?” she asked again.
“I’m here to keep something very bad from happening.”
She struggled against him. Jonas held her firm as he continued.
“I have a life, Tess. But I needed to come here to take care of an issue that arose. When that’s done, I’ll go back to my life, get on with my life, hopefully having helped to save someone very dear to me.”
Chances were slim that she might believe him. Nevertheless, Tess stopped struggling.
“Promise me you’ll let me do what I need to do here without interference and that you’ll give me time to take care of the thing I came here to do,” Jonas said. “That’s all I ask.”
“You’re kidding, right? Turn my back? Let you have free rein?”
Her tone hadn’t softened and yet her body had lost some of its stiffness. Hints of a darker ivory color were slowly returning to her cheeks. Jonas hoped this meant he was making progress.
Although the situation remained tense, his mind wanted to focus on Tess the woman, rather than as his rival. He was a male after all was said and done, and Tess Owens was young, strong and interesting.
Her tight leather vest cinched in her breasts in a way that made her appear almost boyish with a first glance, and yet pressing against her gave Jonas a good impression of what lay beneath all that leather. Her hips were narrow, but feminine. Prominent hip bones accentuated her leanness. Her legs were shapely and firm.
In her current position, Tess didn’t offer up one good quake. This hunter was all about secrets and the art of camouflage. Wasn’t his life similar in those respects?
Jonas swept a slow glance over Tess’s face, noting that her expression was blank. Though her eyes were intent on him, she didn’t meet his gaze directly. Tess might never have been up close and personal with a werewolf in human form.
In any case, she didn’t cringe, cower or plead for mercy. If she had a plan for getting her edge back, she had seconds to consider how to accomplish it. Barring that, he could see that she’d accept the ramifications of a meeting gone bad with dignity.
Tess Owens hadn’t done her homework regarding Lycans and the abilities that set them apart from other Weres, and he had just offered her a fast track to enlightenment. What she did with that was up to her. After a few more moments of body-hugging closeness, he’d let her go if she promised to behave.
“Get off me,” she said curtly.
“You haven’t spoken the magic words.”
He was angering her further and wasn’t enjoying that, but shattering her old habits would take time he didn’t have. And when she looked up, when her eyes finally met his, what he saw in them shook him up slightly. He saw sadness.
His body reacted with a twitch of understanding that was visceral. Tess had tucked that sadness so deep inside of her, he was witnessing only its tip.
“Go to hell,” she said.
She tried to shove him back, but was trapped.
“Promise me what I’ve asked for, and I’ll let you go,” Jonas said.
“I can’t do that. Won’t.”
“Because you’re too proud to admit what happened here, or because you have a stubborn streak?”
Flashes of defiance raced through her blue eyes, but she unwaveringly held his gaze. He couldn’t look away, couldn’t untangle himself from the sensations rushing over him. Lust, greed and hunger were all there, piling up. But there was also something else nagging at his consciousness that was at the moment misty and ill-defined.
Jonas had to force himself to speak. “Time is what I need. Then I’ll be gone and out of your life.”
Her lips parted as though she was going to challenge that statement, but no words came out. Reluctant to lose the eye contact that made him so interested in what lay behind those eyes, Jonas finally dropped his gaze to her mouth.
What would Tess Owens, werewolf hunter, taste like? He wondered if anyone had tried to find out.
If she rarely showed up in town, what were the odds she’d have a lover? Given what she did for a living and the secrets she kept, what kind of normal man could handle her or her choices? This could be the cause of her sadness. Tess was lonely.
Actually, he decided, a wolf would have been the better choice for someone like her, if the world turned on a different axis. If Gwen hadn’t been waiting for him, and if he hadn’t set himself up as his sister’s protector, he might have desired a lot more time with Tess Owens. As the only person in South Dakota who also knew about him, they might have been friends in some parallel universe. They might even have been lovers.
His body liked that idea. Both man and wolf sincerely appreciated the thought.
Tess’s lips moved again, keeping his attention there. He wasn’t allowing her much room to breathe, so either she was trying to take in air or a new protest had gotten lodged in her throat.
“What issues brought you here?” she eventually asked. “What are you escaping from?”
“That’s personal.”
“Maybe you just made it up to play on my sympathy,” she suggested.
Jonas liked the way her mouth moved. He liked the way Tess smelled. Again though—and a tough reminder here—they were, for all intents and purposes and according to Tess, enemies.
“Still waiting,” he said without easing up on the pressure that pinned her to the rock.
“If it’s a promise for me to turn my back, then you’ll wait a very long time,” she returned.
Jonas swore under his breath. Niceness wasn’t getting him anywhere.
“What you need,” he started to say, almost giving in to the impulse to tell her about Lycans and Miami and about his gig as a cop. But there was an interruption in the form of a sound that didn’t belong to the reasonably intimate moment he and Tess were sharing.
And Jonas knew without a doubt what that sound was, and who had made it.
* * *
Tess was screwed and hated to admit it.
She waited for death, knowing there was no one to mourn her and that not one soul would realize she’d been gone for some time.
This was not okay. It sucked. And yet here she was, pressed tightly to the body of a werewolf who had shown her both sides of himself in a matter of minutes and who had drawn the better hand in this game.
Not necessarily the winning hand, though.
She was a fighter, and not fully onboard with giving up. When the bare-chested werewolf, who was way too human at the moment, lifted his head and tore his attention away from her to tune in to a sound she barely heard, Tess stiffened in reaction. Without his eyes on her, she felt colder and even more alone.
Those reactions made no sense.
She saw that he was irritated by whatever he had heard in the distance. After tossing another glance over his shoulder at the moonlit field behind him, his attention returned to her.
His expression registered his disappointment over the timing of this potential interruption in their strange getting-to-know-each-other session. She, on the other hand, wanted to cheer and would have shouted to whoever was out there if the man pressed against her wasn’t a monster masquerading as a man.
When she felt the urge to speak, the wolf in human skin held up a warning finger. Then he did a strange thing. Leaning closer, he brushed his lips over her cheek—a surprising move that sent her insides skittering. One quick, light touch. The cunning bastard smelled like pine.
He didn’t bite her or break her neck. Nor did he shift to his scarier form. After that touch, he backed up and pulled her forward until she stood on her own. Then he nodded to her. His eyes never left hers. It seemed to Tess as though he was attempting to send her a message and willing her to keep her mouth shut.
What had he seen or heard out there?
Who was coming?
Why am I shaking?
Tess had to gather herself if she had any chance here. She closed her eyes and sent more of her senses outward, hoping to discover what had disturbed the Were because she couldn’t afford to be caught like this any more than he could. Hell, she was in possession of a bloody knife and a quiver of silver-tipped arrows. What kind of picture did that paint?
The Were turned. He took a few steps, daring to keep his back to her, leaving her the opening she had waited for. The knife was in her hand before her next big breath. She readied for the attack.
Before she could make that move, he said, “Trust me, Tess. Leave now. Go home. What’s out there isn’t something you’ll want to face tonight.”
And then he took off running.
Chapter 4 (#u17f9a30a-ccc2-5dc6-9c34-e62c478c69a4)
Tess stared after the Were’s retreating form for a few ticks of her internal clock before following him. In the pit of her stomach, she knew he had been upset by whoever this intruder was and that whatever was out there presented another kind of threat.
Since she had detected nothing in the periphery, she had no idea what that might be. Nor could she imagine what could be more dangerous to her, more lethal, than a Lycan with a jump on the human hunting him.
He ran like the wind, covering ground as if he actually was a wolf with four legs, instead of two. Tess knew she couldn’t catch up. Nevertheless, she wasn’t ready to give up. Not after the strange encounter with this Were that had set the hunter’s rulebook on its ass.
The werewolf had let her go. Not only that, he had tried to reason with her. He had issued a warning, presumably in an attempt to save her some future grief over whatever that other thing out there turned out to be.
His thought had been to help. What kind of werewolf wanted to protect the hunters who came after them? This one had told her he wasn’t one of the bad guys, but again, weren’t they all bad? Every last one of them? Weren’t they, by definition, monsters, or was there something she didn’t know, proving that her education was indeed sorely lacking, as this wolf had warned?
No time to ponder that...
She was geared up and anxious to find out what had made that wolf turn his back to her and what had made him turn the tip of the damn knife in his direction. She could have used that knife. If she had, this would have been over. Instead, she was charging after the Were as if she was part of his tag team, bringing up the rear.
Confusion didn’t begin to describe what she felt. Tess couldn’t shake off the memory of the moment she had looked into his eyes, and the feelings that came with that connection. Absurd feelings. Impossible feelings about wayward longings that had made her pulse thunder.
To say she was interested in this guy would have been an understatement when what she actually felt was something else entirely.
“You have to know that I’ll keep coming,” she said as she ran, needing to get those words out and into the open, hoping they might somehow reinforce her need to believe them when she now had doubts.
When a new thought touched her mind—one that wasn’t of her making—Tess nearly tripped over her own feet.
“Please go home, Tess. Do as I ask. Trust me just this once.”
It was him. His thought. She recognized the tone, if not the voice. The damn Were was speaking to her telepathically.
“Ridiculous,” she muttered. “Can’t do that.”
Weres could only link minds telepathically with other Weres, so the stories went. Still, other than the werewolves themselves, no one could possibly know that for sure.
The wind seemed to come alive with this guy’s next utterance.
“Now isn’t the time. We will meet again, I promise.”
Speaking with a tight jaw, Tess shouted, “No way, Lycan. This is my turf!”
But suddenly, unbelievably and as if another creature had simply dropped from the sky, Tess saw two forms running near the base of the hillside. One of them she recognized, having been close to the big Were. The other animal was a real wolf, on all fours, with fur that glowed silver-white in the moonlight as it streaked through the woods at the Lycan’s side.
There had been no warning for her of another wolf in the area, Were or otherwise. She didn’t smell that other wolf now.
What the hell was going on?
Mesmerized by the sight of the pair running in the field, Tess pulled up...and stared.
* * *
The sadness Jonas had seen in Tess’s blue eyes had moved him. Being a werewolf meant keeping company with his own kind mostly, so what about her life? Tess’s life?
Was culling werewolves her only form of excitement? He supposed that doing her job might make up for whatever else she lacked in terms of family and friends sometimes.
Looking into her eyes had left him with a flood of strange sensations. Staring into her eyes had created ribbons of light in the dark recesses of his soul. He had connected to Tess on a level new to him and somehow had been able to tap into her emotions. The depth of that connection, as well as the speed with which it had occurred, was disturbing.
Were to Were was how those rapidly formed internal bonds usually happened. Imprinting was the term used for the union of two souls, a state that only happened between Were couples destined to be mated for life. This sudden bond with Tess felt like a similar version of that, though he hadn’t experienced it for himself before. And she wasn’t a Were, so this had to be something else.
He couldn’t dwell on that now. His attention was needed elsewhere. He was needed elsewhere.
Gwen hadn’t listened to his instructions. In a rare out-in-the-open appearance, she was beside him—this unusual creature in his life who was so special.
Tess would have been even more surprised if she knew that his sister was a Lycan throwback to the earliest form of the werewolf species.
Gwendolyn Dale was a carrier of the original form of Lycan DNA—the only Were he knew of these days who was able to transform into a full wolf, and with no hint of wolf scent. A pure white wolf. Gwen’s presence on this earth made the necessity for secret-keeping all the more imperative.
And she had followed him.
He ran through the shadows of the trees in human shape for several more minutes with Gwen on all fours, dancing at his heels, before the moonlight performed its neat trick of setting his inner wolf free. Yet Jonas’s stomach stayed tight. He had been unprepared for Gwen’s latest streak of rebelliousness.
His sister had possibly just blown their cover, placing them in as much danger here as they had been in Florida. She had left the cabin and shown herself to anyone who might have been looking. If Tess had seen her, there would be a hefty price to pay. If Death’s minion had been here, the final fight for Gwen’s soul would soon be upon them.
They ran in silence, covering ground on legs burning with energy. Gwen’s white coat took on a silvery sheen in the moonlight. Few Weres had white hair or fur. Colorlessness would come from having survived heinous wounds, the way his sister had survived hers. Ghost wolves, these wounded warriors were called. Only one wolf remotely connected to the Miami pack had become a ghost, and that was another cop named Colton Killion.
Within their pack, his sister was to be revered. The unique blood in Gwen’s veins that allowed her to possess these special traits and the ability to avoid detection was going to be cherished. If passed along, the special ancestral particles in her bloodstream could reinvigorate the entire Lycan species.
No pressure there.
So he had to take extra care now to keep her safe and away from Tess Owens, who brandished silver-tipped weapons instead of claws. Blue-eyed Tess, who shouldered so much sadness.
One thing was for sure. Their circumstances had just gotten a hell of a lot more complicated. And if that wasn’t enough, there was the rather startling fact that he couldn’t wait to meet Tess again. The sooner, the better.
* * *
Tess swore out loud.
Unbelievably, she had let those wolves go. Now, she promised herself this was only a temporary setback. The werewolf wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. He had told her that, though his explanation for why he was here had been missing a few details. Like all of them.
This guy had even seemed reasonable.
Could that be right? Possible?
The fact that she had chosen to believe him might have made her an idiot and a shameful member of her clan.
Another hiccup in a night full of them was that this Were actually ran with real wolves. Rare ones with white pelts. Maybe there was a connection between pure-blooded Lycans and the wolves their species had sprang from. Lycans, who were the equivalent of werewolf royalty, had lineages that went way back.
This guy was a stunner. Up close, he had reeked of enough raw male power to make her feel tingly all over. Still, she wasn’t ready to concede and let this wolf chalk tonight up as a victory. Anger was flooding her with heat. She felt antsy, anxious and ready for a rematch. This time she would be prepared, she told herself.
“I know every inch of these woods and hillsides,” she called out, hoping her voice would carry. “So it won’t take me long to find you.”
Setting off again in the direction the unusual Were had taken, Tess imagined he sent a reply.
“Wait for me, Tess, but give me some time.”
Hell, that couldn’t be right. She could not have heard him. She couldn’t even see him. What she could do, however, was follow the trail of the scent that this big sucker left behind that was now deeply ingrained in her lungs. The scent underscoring the inexplicable tickle at the base of her neck and causing an internal shakeup. Her new target was both unbelievably handsome and monstrously unique. He was a worthy adversary and as powerful as Weres came.
She had met a Lycan, and he had not killed her when he had the chance.
All of those things factored into her renewed desire to find the bastard and put an end to whatever this was, and before she was declared certifiably insane.
“Give you time?” she muttered. “I don’t think so.”
She added a thought, “Got that, wolf?”
She didn’t expect a reply and absorbed another ripple of shock when one came.
“We are more alike than you know, Tess. If you hunt me, I will haunt you in return.”
“BS!” Tess shouted to the otherwise quiet hillside as she stood on another rocky ledge dividing her property from the property that she now knew had to be his. But she didn’t go any farther, bothered by the word haunt and inexplicably willing to give that damn Were one more night to get his act together.
Haunt her in the future?
Hell, he already was.
Chapter 5 (#u17f9a30a-ccc2-5dc6-9c34-e62c478c69a4)
Sleep was elusive. Jonas hadn’t stopped pacing since he and Gwen had returned to the safety of the cabin. Chastising her would have been useless and might have driven her further from him, so Jonas kept his fears to himself.
Tonight was the third time he had seen his sister shape-shift. The sight was both a blessing and a curse. He couldn’t foresee what kind of future Gwen might have if they made it back to Miami. The thought of taking her back there made him sick.
He doubted that anyone else in his family had known about how special she was. She would have been too precious to everyone in the Lycan community to be allowed to roam freely among the packs.
When they got back to Miami—and if they did—there would be a highly detailed plan for her to breed and pass along her genes. By bringing Gwen here, he had granted her the gift of more time away from all that, besides the other pressing issue of keeping her alive long enough to see that future.
In any case, his sister hadn’t yet fully healed from her injuries and needed more time to do that.
Jonas stood for a while at the window, searching for any hint of the things that would eventually come their way.
The night was quiet. Tess hadn’t followed them here, and he silently thanked her for that. As for the darker thing on their trail, Jonas hoped they would have a few more days of relative tranquility before that battle took place. He also hoped he’d have time to meet Tess in more reasonable circumstances, though that wish seemed like a stretch.
Already, and from his first sight of Tess, she had become an unshakable fixture in his mind. When Jonas closed his eyes, she was there. Each breath he took seemed to bring her closer. Leather, smoke and flowers were her calling card, and his cabin seemed to be full of those fragrances.
He glanced at Gwen’s door and sighed. Leaning a shoulder against the wall, Jonas sent his mind outward to test his theory about his uncanny connection to this hunter.
“Do you sleep, Tess? Are your dreams peaceful, or are they filled with dark things?”
It was stupid of him to believe she might hear him from this far away, and yet he could swear he felt his thought travel over the distance separating them. He almost felt himself beside her, as if his threat to haunt her had come true.
She would have a small bed in a small room, Jonas envisioned. Her fair hair would be loose and spread like sunshine across a lavender-scented pillow, because Tess Owens was actually a creature of sunlight, like other humans were.
What would you be wearing tonight, hunter?
He pictured her in something comfortable and light, rather than silks or satins. Tess wasn’t a girly girl.
Maybe you’ll rest in leather in case a werewolf comes calling?
After letting her go, she would be doubly on guard. She would have her knife handy. It was obvious that she knew how to wield a blade, as well as what she could have done with one if she had wanted to.
“Expect me, Tess,” he sent to her. “Rest tonight. Sleep in peace. Meet me tomorrow in the sunlight when the dark things are hiding.”
Did he see her open her eyes and turn from her pillow to listen? Was there actually a possibility she had heard him?
What would it mean if you are listening? Am I wrong about a bond forming between us?
He imagined Tess covering her ears in an attempt to ignore his mental invasion. But he also felt her tuning in, as if she were merely in the next room and straining to listen to him speak.
As the images floated away, he realized that Tess probably wouldn’t fall sleep in that bed tonight, and that wishful thinking on his part didn’t ease things for either of them.
“Tomorrow,” he said aloud. “Meet me tomorrow.”
He felt an unusual drag on his thoughts that made his heart pound and sensed that this new bit of awareness carried no hint of Tess Owens in it.
Jonas turned to find his sister in the doorway with a questioning expression on her face.
Had his thoughts been too loud?
* * *
Tess sat up in bed after tossing and turning her way through two hours of thoughts. After checking the corners of her room for werewolves a tenth time, she threw off the covers and walked to the window.
She couldn’t see out. The shutters were closed and locked tight in case he showed up unannounced. Without fresh air, the closeness in the room made her feel claustrophobic.
Tess doubted if she’d be ever able to sleep again until this werewolf issue was settled. She had an intuitive feeling that tonight wouldn’t be the time for a second meeting but had to remain on guard. There was no telling what this unusual Were might do.
“Get out of my head,” she muttered, shaking the shutter to assure herself that it was in place. Wood planks would be easy enough for a strong werewolf to destroy, but there’d be enough noise to alert her if one tried.
Tomorrow...
Since she’d first heard his invitation, the word had floated in and out of her consciousness with the tone of a whispered command.
“Get out,” she whispered again, forgoing the bed in favor of a trip to the front door.
Palming her knife, Tess left the cabin in her shorts and tank top to look up at the moon. Sensing no wolf presence, she sighed with relief and spoke out of frustration. “I accept, in case you’re the one sending this invitation.”
Brush rustled. Night birds sang. Bugs chirped as tree branches swayed in the wind. All this was normal. Usual. Except for one thing: the feeling of dread that invaded her as Tess studied the moon.
She dropped her gaze to search the area. Her skin bristled. Nerves again began to buzz. Something else was out there, and she didn’t know what. She didn’t recognize the sensations hitting her system. This was no wolf. So, what?
The air changed. Night seemed to darken as the overhead stars were erased. The moon disappeared as if a black curtain had descended over them and everything else. Tess looked at her knife. The silver blade had been swallowed by the roaming blackness. Its surface was dull. The shadows in her peripheral vision appeared to be moving.
Feelings of dread brought on a chill. Her knees felt oddly weak. But as quickly as it had arrived, the strange sensations drifted away as though this had been a bad dream.
The stars and moon reappeared. Tess took a breath and let it out slowly, listening for anything that might explain what had happened. She looked to the west, the direction the Were had taken after leaving her earlier that night, wondering if he had been responsible for what she had just experienced. The rolling blackness had moved off in that direction...toward her neighbor’s place and the wolf who had taken up temporary residence there.
“It’s coming,” she said, feeling silly for thinking the Were she had been hip to hip with a couple of hours ago would be able hear a warning he might not need.
And why would she warn him, anyway?
Tess cleared her throat and repeated the warning, concerned about why she would care what happened to a creature she was going to take down anyway when the next full moon came if he hadn’t caused that blackout.
I’m here to keep something very bad from happening, the Lycan had told her. Promise me you’ll let me do what I need to do here without interference, and that you’ll give me time to take care of the thing I came here to do. That’s all I ask.
A small shiver of incomprehension ran through Tess as she remembered those words. For the life of her, she could not imagine a greater threat than having a werewolf next door. But somehow she sensed that was about to change.
Chapter 6 (#u17f9a30a-ccc2-5dc6-9c34-e62c478c69a4)
Jonas smiled at his sister. “Sorry, Gwen. Did I wake you?”
She eyed him thoughtfully.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You can rest.”
Gwen didn’t move from the doorway. Her gaze moved past him, heading for the window.
Jonas looked out. “Has something else disturbed you?”
He felt the quake that ran through his sister from where he stood and turned to look at her.
“What is it? What do you see?”
If ever there was a time for Gwen to speak, Jonas would have liked that time to be now. But she didn’t oblige and continued to stare at the window as if expecting someone to show up.
He didn’t like this. Didn’t like the lack of expression on Gwen’s young face as she waited for whatever she thought was out there to come knocking.
Gwen might be tapping into other special powers that he had no knowledge of, but would that include an awareness of the presence of things no one else could see?
Chills dripped down Jonas’s back, taking their time, hitting every vertebra one by one. He had a really bad feeling.
“I can’t read your mind,” he said. “You’ll need to tell me what I need to know.”
When Gwen’s head tilted to the side as if she were listening to sounds other than his latest request, a cascade of pale hair slipped to cover half of her face. Her hair had been brown once, like his, before the attack that had rendered her speechless. Brown, straight and shiny. Massive injuries had instigated the change in this pretty teen and nothing could alter that.
Gwen was disturbed as she looked outside, and her inner distress was contagious. Jonas liked to believe he was still close enough to his sister to understand a few things, but until she decided to speak, he needed another way to find out what was going on.
“Gwen,” he said, hoping to get her attention. “I’m trying to protect you. Please help me do that.”
Her gaze traveled to him before again bypassing him in favor of the window. Feeling helpless, Jonas placed himself in front of the glass.
“What do you see?” he asked, his concern growing. Gwen’s skin had begun to ripple the way his skin did when a shape-shift was imminent.
Jonas held up a hand. “No. Stop, Gwen. Now isn’t the time. It isn’t safe. We aren’t alone out here. Our neighbor knows what we are.”
That last statement was only partially true, Jonas amended inwardly. Tess might know about him, but as for Gwen...
Gwen was something Tess Owens had no idea existed and would label a nightmare if she did.
His sister now had claws—ten short white claws nearly as colorless as her hair. She had become hyperaware of an issue she considered a problem and couldn’t fill him in.
“Shit,” Jonas muttered without daring to go to her, fearing that too much protesting might set her off in ways he wouldn’t be able to corral.
Gwen sidestepped him with a graceful move and joined him at the window. She pressed her face to the glass and ran her claws down the wooden frame hard enough to leave visible tracks in the finish.
Jonas took hold of one of her wrists and turned Gwen around to face him. He adopted a stern tone when repeating his last warning, hoping a repeat of the same stuff would get through to her.
“No, Gwen. Now isn’t the time.”
She raised her chin and looked directly into his eyes. What Jonas saw in those eyes frightened him more than the idea of what might eventually be out there somewhere.
And then he heard what Gwen must have heard: the echo of a distant voice.
“Whatever the hell this thing was is heading your way.”
The effort of absorbing that warning required Jonas to turn for the door.
* * *
Though she hadn’t meant to move, Tess found herself running.
Curiosity had gotten the better of her as to what that engulfing blackness had been, and yet she wasn’t a fool. Her property line would be the stalling point in going after it. She just wanted to see that thing again to make sure she hadn’t made it up. After all, not much about tonight had been usual. The wolf next door had seen to that.
And okay, maybe she was a fool for falling for his line about being needed elsewhere and about being a good guy. She found it difficult to explain the leniency of her actions and his. The damn Lycan’s face had been painted in her mind ever since.
It was in her mind now as she sprinted over the rocky ground in her bare feet, ignoring the discomfort, feeling lighter without her boots. The flimsy tank and shorts she slept in wouldn’t help her fend off claws if she bumped into that Lycan and his friends, but she didn’t think she would meet them. There was no sense of that Were’s closeness in spite of all that imagined telepathic mumbo jumbo. She just needed a better view of the fields.
Nevertheless, her heart hammered inside her chest, pushing adrenaline to the right places to fuel her muscles. The chill she had felt several minutes ago melted away as rising body heat took over.
It didn’t take her long to reached the crest of the hill where she had encountered the Were. Stopping, Tess waited in silence with her eyes trained on the valley beneath the rocky ledge. No new anomaly stood out as far as she could see, and yet she couldn’t shake the return of an inexplicable undercurrent of dread.
And then she saw something down there. It wasn’t a moving black curtain or the Were she had encountered earlier. This thing moved like the wind, like a white missile, close to the ground and heading straight for Tess’s home turf.
It was the white wolf. The Lycan’s pet.
Without hesitating to watch that ghostly apparition in action, Tess turned and retraced her steps, heading for home, clutching the knife in her hand and hoping to beat that animal there.
When she got to her fence, she found the place quiet. Nothing moved or jumped out at her, but she still felt a wolf’s presence. Inching toward the gate by walking backward, Tess scanned the yard.
“I know you’re here.”
Those words had become her mantra lately and seemed terribly inadequate for tonight’s level of activity.
“Cat got your tongue?” she asked with her heart banging against her ribs.
Cool air swirled around her as she waited. No big, hunky Lycan stepped out of the shadows. No rolling mass of darkness descended. Her only visitor could be the four-legged animal she had seen running in the valley—the real wolf she had seen loping along in the Lycan’s wake.
“No use hiding,” she said, hoping to lure that wolf out of the shadows, though it was, she supposed, silly to think that an animal could understand human speech.
The wolf emerged from beneath the trees as if it had understood her request, moving just far enough out of the shadows for Tess to see the brilliance of its silver-white coat in the moonlight.
“I have no problems with wolves. Real ones,” Tess said, speaking more for herself than for that animal.
As soon as she had spoken those words, however, Tess began to comprehend that this was no mere wolf after all. The vibes coming from it were altogether new and different. And honestly, she was getting sick of things being so far out of the norm.
The white wolf’s muzzle lifted as it sniffed the air. Tess couldn’t see its eyes or determine the animal’s actual size. After seeing the animal’s head, she guessed this visitor was a lot larger than any other wolf she’d seen in the wild. Twice as big, maybe more.
“This place is protected from the likes of you,” Tess said, moving toward the gate that would seal her off from immediate harm.
Her knife dangled from her hand.
“Try it, wolf. Take me on and see what kind of skills I have developed to ward off claws.”
Her dare was punctuated by a rustling sound in the brush. Tess couldn’t look there. Dividing her attention could amount to suicide.
Her heart could not have pounded harder. The fingers holding her knife were turning white due to the tightness of her grip on the hilt.
Damn it... There was another visitor. His approach hit her hard. Coming up against this particular presence was like running into a familiar wall.
“Tess,” the Were said, as if they were friends.
She refused to look for the speaker, already knowing who it was. No one else said her name like that, in the tone of a caress.
“Is that wolf with you?” she demanded with her gaze fixed on the white wolf.
“This wasn’t planned,” the Lycan said. “I’m sorry you were disturbed.”
Tess rallied. “This is the second time you’ve come here and gotten too close to where you aren’t welcome.”
The white wolf growled in response to Tess’s clipped tone. Tess raised the hand holding the knife.
“It’s all right,” the strange Were said in a placating whisper that reached Tess from a short distance. “I’ll take her home.”
Her?
Hell, Tess didn’t want to know what a werewolf might do with a female animal like this one. She was sorry she had believed this guy to be truthful and handsome. His looks might have been exceptional, but werewolves were still monsters in disguise. Being handsome and convincing didn’t mean he was exempt from her reaching current goals.
“We’ll go,” he said with the adamancy of a promise. “Turn your back, Tess, and we will be gone.”
“What sort of an idiot do you take me for?” Tess returned.
“She won’t hurt you. I won’t let her.”
“Do you have a leash? The beast keeps a beast for a pet?”
The white wolf growled again, forcing more of Tess’s attention there.
“She doesn’t like trouble,” the Lycan said.
“Then why is she here?”
“She sensed trouble and came to investigate.”
“Then she knows about me?” Tess asked.
“Yes, in theory.”
Tess turned toward the direction his voice had hailed from. “Because you told her, and she understands English?”
The problematic Lycan didn’t take on that question.
Catching a hint of movement in the brush, Tess backed again toward the gate with the knife raised and ready. Her sworn enemy didn’t make an appearance, and it looked like he wasn’t going to.
She heard him speak in soft tones to someone else. He had to be addressing the white wolf. But that wolf didn’t budge.
“Perhaps you’ve lost some of your power of persuasion,” Tess suggested nervously.
There was a lull before he spoke again.
“She believes trouble is near,” he said.
“I’ll second that,” Tess muttered.
“Maybe you can tell her it’s okay,” he suggested.
Unbelievable...
“Am I to invite her in and offer tea and cookies, too?” Tess fired back.
“I’m pretty sure that won’t be necessary. However, if you want her to go, you’ll need to let her see that there’s no cause for concern.”
“Because there isn’t?”
“Not from us. Not from me. Not from her. Not tonight.”
Tess thought back to their earlier encounter. “Is this wolf part of the reason you let me go without a fight? She is one of the things you’re protecting?”
It seemed that no replies to those questions were forthcoming, so she tried again. “Do you hold yourself up as some kind of wolf warden?”
“No,” he replied. “Nothing like that.”
The white muzzle shifted slightly before one silvery leg appeared. Slowly, that wolf left the shadows, and the sight of this animal robbed Tess of more breath.
The largest real wolf Tess had ever seen moved toward her with a growl rolling in its throat.
Chapter 7 (#u17f9a30a-ccc2-5dc6-9c34-e62c478c69a4)
Jonas lunged forward just as Gwen glided through full moonlight to reach Tess. He barked a command that Gwen ignored. His sister was interested in Tess. Whether that reason was a bad one that involved seriously twisted intentions, Jonas couldn’t tell.
He reached Tess seconds before Gwen did. Gwen butted her head against his thighs as if she would go right through him, but Jonas held steady and barked a stream of protests in return.
The moon was overhead, and he was standing beneath it. His claws popped before he had time to stop them. Neck muscles began to spasm. “No, Gwen,” he said with the last vestiges of a voice everyone here would understand. “Not today.”
He could see that Tess was both fearful and annoyed by his interference. Jonas sensed the silver blade she held without having to see it, remembering the way it had burned into his flesh. That knife would hurt Gwen when she had already suffered enough. He had to keep Tess from using it.
Tess’s hands were like fire on his back when she tried to push him away. Gwen growled again, letting him know that she also wanted him to move. Maybe this is the fight Tess had anticipated tonight...not with a rogue werewolf, but something more. Something priceless to the Were world. His sister.
He could not let that fight happen.
When Gwen hurled herself at him, he caught her by the fur on the back of her neck. Tugging hard, he maneuvered his sister to the side as his Were genes, triggered by the light, fully kicked in.
He heard Tess’s surprised intake of breath as he tightened his grip on Gwen’s fur and spun the white wolf around. Tess sprang forward with her knife in her hand. Gwen panted and growled, showing treacherously sharp teeth as she struggled to get free. But he was far stronger than either of these characters. He proved it now by lifting Gwen’s front paws off the ground until his sister and Tess Owens stood eye-to-eye with a distance of only six inches between them.
Tess froze. Gwen stopped growling. It was a scene straight out of a horror movie and yet as the hunter and the very special white wolf eyed each other, Gwen began to whimper. Hearing that, Tess, who seemed to be equally as stunned, lowered her blade.
Jonas hoped that Tess had seen something human in Gwen’s eyes that wasn’t obvious in the form his sister was able to take. He hoped his sister would accept the temporary truce of Tess’s lowered blade and take the opportunity to disappear.
He could have cut through the tension in the air with that damn blade in Tess’s lowered hand.
With the lull in aggression, however temporary it might have been, Jonas raised his face. He let loose a howl directed at the instigator of this current round of trouble. The moon. Then he hauled his sister back, gave Tess a quick bark of warning to stay back and led Gwen away from the big bad wolf hunter, who for some reason hadn’t been at her best tonight.
Lesson learned, Tess. Some of us truly are different.
He kept hold of Gwen by digging his fingers into the scruff of her neck fur, careful not to let his claws do any real damage. After her initial reluctance, Gwen allowed him to lead her away from the Owenses’ front yard.
Jonas had no idea what his sister might have been thinking by coming here. Lycans of her caliber had thought-blocking techniques probably unknown to every other Were, and that was damnably inconvenient.
On some level, he realized that Gwen had been as surprised as he had been by coming face-to-face with Tess. One close look at the hunter and Gwen had made sounds he’d only recently heard her make—sounds shockingly similar to the groans she’d uttered during the difficulty of her recovery from the injuries she had accrued on the night of her attack.
When standing eye-to-eye, she and Tess both had been privy to a sudden wave of insight that had quelled their urge to fight, at least for the time being. Jonas had no idea what that might have been but was thankful for the respite.
Show-and-tell time was over. Introductions between these two had been made. Tess didn’t know that the white wolf was a Were in wolf form, or that she was his sister. Full-wolf shape-shifts, so rare these days, would be new to Tess, since they were virtually unheard of outside of a sanctioned few elders and the families that lived with these rare beings.
If Tess setting eyes on Gwen wasn’t bad enough, the Owens woman had seen him shape-shift twice in a single night and might be wondering about that as well.
He wanted to know why Gwen had come here and if it could have been nothing more than a desire to meet the neighbor.
Perhaps Gwen had scented the hunter in the same way he had, and her instincts for survival had taken over. Maybe the strange DNA in Gwen’s makeup retained memories of hunters from times in the past.
Those thoughts were legitimate ones. Nevertheless, Jonas had a hunch the reason for Gwen’s visit could be blamed on neither of those things. Warning flags in his mind were waving. Gwen wasn’t struggling half as hard against his hold as he thought she might. He hadn’t even broken a sweat.
“Your big brother is keeping watch, Gwen,” he silently messaged his sister, pulling her along without pausing to address her second act of rebellion as a real issue. Just because he couldn’t hear his sister’s thoughts didn’t mean she couldn’t access his.
“Possibly you need to learn to use more control, hun.”
Jonas let her go in a spot near the rocky overlook and placed his considerable Were bulk between Gwen and the path behind them, daring her to try to get past him.
Gwen waited without moving for a minute or two before turning to focus on that path in a way that made Jonas’s neck chill.
Tess hadn’t been content to let the two Weres go. He should have known the white wolf would pique her interest and get her hunter blood pumping. Could he blame her? In Tess’s place, he probably would have done the same thing by following them. She was coming now.
Unfortunately, there was more at stake here than Tess Owens hoping to do her job. And he was caught between two females on opposite ends of the DNA spectrum that had gotten a good whiff of each other. Two females with the power to mess things up before the real mess began.
Christ, he could feel that other thing he had feared getting closer. The thing he dreaded most. The air was thicker, wetter. He didn’t want to lose Gwen. Besides his own feelings, the future of his species might hang on her survival.
In Jonas’s mind, the woodsy fragrance of the wolf hunter’s cottage was suddenly blotted out by the odor of impending doom. He now had Tess and Death to worry about, and it seemed that his worst nightmare was about to come true.
“Run,” he sent to Gwen, giving her a gentle shove.
For once, his sister did as she was told. She took off, heading west like a bullet shot from a rifle, leaving him standing on the rocks with his claws raised.
* * *
To Tess, this felt wrong—not only for the fact that she had let her family down, but because of the entire night and the way things had gone.
She had never seen a wolf like the one the Lycan had tamed into submission, and that brought the tally to two firsts in one night. It had been two wolves against one hunter in her front yard, and yet the handsome Were hadn’t allowed the white wolf to take her on when that would have served him better.
Uttering a string of curses and oaths, Tess again sprinted through the trees and brush. There was still time to put things to rights, she told herself...at least there would have been time for that if she hadn’t become so interested in this Lycan and what he was up to by showing her a sensitive side.
Not only had he not gone after her tonight, he had kept the white wolf from doing the same. Why?
What was his connection to that white wolf? Had his hesitancy to fight been due to his desire to see that real wolf unharmed?
She wasn’t dressed for this. Her feet hurt like hell and there was a good possibility she wasn’t thinking straight. The only weapon she had was the blade. One damn blade against that Lycan’s cunning and mounds of muscle. She was going after a werewolf in an outfit that amounted to little more than sleepy-time underwear.
What a pretty picture that presented.
But it was okay, Tess supposed, since it wasn’t in the Lycan’s favor to let her catch up with him. Additionally, he had no reason to want to see what she’d do next since he had gotten the better of her twice already without lifting a claw.
The differences between this Were and other werewolves she had dealt with were major and lent an air of fantasy to the craziness of this night.
If she could only get him out of her mind...
If only her wits would return and warn her that a strange attraction to this guy was surely going to be her downfall...
But she was fighting those what-ifs and in need of other answers. Tess wanted to stop the madness that had been caused by meeting this guy, no matter how interested she was in his behavior. She didn’t have to admit to anyone, including herself, that she was curious about him for more reasons than his actions alone.
That face.
The sculpted physique.
His deep voice.
It was strictly forbidden and an unforgiveable sin for wolf hunters to cozy up to their prey. They were two different species. Leniency showed weakness. If word about her inability to do her job were to spread, other monsters would arrive.
Still, deep down in Tess’s mind lay another reason for her interest in this guy that scared her more than anything else.
Having been tight up against him had caused her well-tuned willpower to backfire. In man form, he was mesmerizing. In the other shape, he was forbidding, but with an intelligent gleam in his eyes.
She wasn’t caving on the job. She just wasn’t sure what had happened tonight.
“There is something about you...” she said aloud. “And I will probably regret finding out about whatever that actually is.”
Against all inner warnings, though, Tess didn’t turn back. Sensing a change in the atmosphere, as if the moonlight had somehow suddenly grown brighter, denser, she slowed, then stopped to look up at the rocky ledge above her with her blade ready and her heart in her throat.
He was there. Contrary to everything she had just thought about the situation, he stood in the open—this tall, muscled, wickedly formidable and one hundred percent Lycan werewolf. He seemed larger than life and looked to have been carved from the surrounding stones.
Even in this setting where animals prowled, this guy with his bronze skin and light brown hair stood out as another kind of being entirely. Her new nemesis was a crazy anomaly within his species. Something new and exciting.
Maybe that’s why her heart was beating so rapidly she could barely draw a breath. Maybe it was also the realization that running wasn’t what had winded her. She was breathless because she found this Lycan so fascinating.
He had seen her. The growl he issued was soft, low, and did things to her that Tess refused to acknowledge. She didn’t speak, didn’t reply. Couldn’t do either of those things.
Though he was motionless, the werewolf wasn’t at ease. Tess sensed the tension flowing through him, and like an airborne contagion, that tension quickly transferred to her.
He was looking at her, not as if she might be his plaything, but as though he wanted to say something to her that his shape-shift had prevented him from saying several minutes ago.
Having witnessed his ability to manipulate his shifts so quickly, Tess observed him carefully, fully on guard. When she could draw a full breath, she said, “I don’t think I like whatever kind of game it is that we’re playing.”
He sank to a crouch. In other werewolves, this would have meant he was ready to spring. This guy didn’t translate that kind of intention to her. It was as if he didn’t want to appear too large or menacing.
He was still bare from the waist up and wearing faded jeans. The guy was a magnificent example of this species, and only by looking at him through narrowed eyes did Tess see the more wolfish parts. The harder she tried to zero in on those things—the extra layer of muscle and the claws—the less she saw. The wolf aura surrounding him hinted at the term werewolf, rather than anything pertaining to the purely physical aspects of his countenance.
Tess had seen him run. She didn’t take her eyes from him now. Man and wolf were such an unlikely combination, who else but the few people in the know would have believed anything like this possible?
She showed him the blade. “This is all I have at the moment. Will you challenge?”
When their gazes connected, heat streaked through Tess that was akin to having gotten too close to the sun. Her pulse thundered in her neck, pounding out beat after merciless beat that lifted the skin beneath her ears.
Her interest in him would be her death.
“So tell me,” she said, pitching her voice low to hide any telltale signs of quavering. “Is the neat trick of attracting the hunters who are hunting you some special kind of power you possess?”
The beast perched on the rocks above her couldn’t answer that question unless he used more of his magic Lycan voodoo to transform himself into a more vocal version of the one he presented to her at the moment. It was entirely possible that he wouldn’t change back, so that he could avoid answering her altogether.
His tension had become like a separate living thing. Swallowing back a lick of fear and determined to ride this out, Tess asked, “Do you also have the ability to call real wolves? I’m wondering if they realize what you are and that you might at one time have been related.”
The Lycan’s shoulders twitched briefly before quickly settling back to stillness.
“Why don’t you jump? I’m standing here like an idiot, breaking every rule I’ve ever had pounded into me about dealing with the likes of you,” Tess said.
The Lycan’s next growl was more like a touch than a sound and caused Tess to lean toward him. “Stop it,” she commanded. “I came here to ask you about another thing as well. That veil of darkness that blew in and passed over before you and your four-legged friend appeared on my doorstep.”
Breaking eye contact, he turned his attention to the distance.
“It rolled west, toward you,” Tess continued. “I liked it about as much as I like you. Still...”
Her voice trailed off.
The werewolf on the ledge above her took that jump and landed beside her. The blade in Tess’s hand was useless. Her lungs were useless, and so were her legs. She found herself in the Lycan’s arms, being swept off her bare feet.
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Linda Thomas-Sundstrom
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Forbidden desireDescended from a long line of werewolf trackers, Tess Owen knows everything there is to know about hunting the big, bad beasts… Except what to do when you find yourself falling for one.Solitary, powerful Jonas Dale is a legend among his own kind – and among those who want to destroy him. He’s also undeniably sexy. Longing intensifies Tess’s hunt for this lone wolf and Jonas’s passion matches her own. Meanwhile, a common enemy stalks them both! Will their desire save Tess and Jonas or will it destroy them?