ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS LATER—AGING ONE YEAR for
every thirty that passed once a lupus garou reached puberty—Bella was the
equivalent of a human twenty-one-year-old. She longed more than ever to have
Devlyn for her mate, wishing she hadn’t had to hide from the pack all these
years. The burning desire for him flooded her veins whenever she came into the
wolf’s heat. Her body craved his touch, but her mind had given up hoping to
ever have him for her own. If she could find a strong, agreeable human mate, she
could change him into a lupus garou, and he would keep her safe from Volan.
She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the image of the brutish fiend,
and continued to pack her overnight bag. Any man would be better than he—a
good mate who would help her establish her own pack.
She turned to look at Devlyn’s photo sitting on the bedside table, the most
recent one that Argos, the old, retired pack leader, had sent her. Taking a deep
breath, she threw another pair of jeans into her bag, determined to get her mind
off Devlyn.
Knowing she couldn’t put off mating much longer, she realized that one’s
second choice far outweighed living alone; even the sound of a dog’s howl on
the night’s breeze triggered the gnawing craving to be with a pack.
She stalked into her office and left an email message for Argos, a routine
she’d adopted because he insisted she keep him posted whenever she went into
the woods. As a loner, she’d have no backup. Off to the cabin for the weekend
again, Argos. Give the pack my love, in secret. Yours always, love, Bella
She didn’t have to tell him to keep her correspondence a secret; he knew. what would happen if Volan learned where she was….
Turning off her computer, she picked up her phone and called her next-door
neighbor—a woman who had partially eased Bella’s loneliness after losing her
twin sister in a fire so many years ago. “Chrissie, I’m going to my cabin for the
weekend again. Can you keep an eye on my place?”
“Sure thing, Bella. Pick up your mail on Saturday, too, if you’d like. And I’ll
water your greenhouse plants. Hey, I don’t want to hold you up, but did you hear
about the latest killing?”
“Yeah, the police have got to catch the bastard soon.”
That was one of the reasons she was going to her cabin, to get away, to
consider the facts of the murders, to search for clues in the woods. He had to be
from Portland or the surrounding area, since it was there he’d killed all the
women. And he had to take a jaunt in a forest from time to time. The call of the
wild was too strong in them. She hadn’t expected to smell red lupus garou in the
place where she ran, as far away as it was from the city. For three years she
hadn’t smelled a hint of them. Not until last weekend. Was one of them the
killer? She had to know.
Bella tossed a pink sweatshirt into the bag.
“You be careful, honey. The victims are all redheads in their twenties. And
the last was killed not far from here.”
“Don’t worry, Chrissie. I’ve got a gun for protection.” Well, two: one at her
cabin, and one at home, but who was counting? Silver bullets, too; Bella had
them made for Volan. It wasn’t the lupus garou way, but she had no other way
to fight him. She would never be his.
“A…a gun? Do you know how to shoot it?”
Yep, she’d learned how to shoot a gun a good century and a half ago, ever
since the early days when she had lived in the wilderness, trying to survive in the
lands west of Colorado.
“Yeah, don’t worry. Give your kids hugs for me, will you? Tell Mary I want
to see the painting she did for art class, and tell Jimmy that I want to see his
science project when I return.”
Chrissie sighed. “I’ll tell them. You be careful up there all by yourself. That
is, if you’re going all by yourself.”
Always checking. Chrissie was looking for husband number two, and she
assumed Bella rendezvoused with some mountain man every time she returned. to her cabin.
“See you Monday.”
“Be careful, Bella. You never know where that maniac will end up.”
“I’ll be cautious. Got to go.”
Bella hung up the phone and zipped her suitcase. Before it turned dark she
had every intention of searching the woods for further clues concerning the red
lupus garou—not a wild dog, a mixed wolf-dog breed, or as some thought, a pit
bull that some bastard had trained to kill his victims—that might be killing the
women.
Why had she caught the scent of red lupus garou in the area near her cabin
now, when the woods had been free of their kind for the last three years? She
envisioned a lone female wouldn’t stand a chance at remaining that way. Her
stomach curdled with the idea that she’d have to give up her cabin and find a
new place to run. Just one more concern to add to her growing list of worries.
Later that day, when Bella arrived at her cabin, the waning moon called to
her though it was still fairly light out. She tilted her nose up to the breeze,
standing on the porch of her cedar home in the woods, the building now a faded
gray. It served as her hideaway on the weekends when she lived on the wild side,
away from the hustle and bustle of the city of Portland. She would be the right
age to be Volan’s mate, if he ever found her. Smiling at how clever she had been
to avoid him, the smile faded as a coyote howled. She wasn’t meant to be a
rogue wolf, living alone without a pack. Some were naturally geared that way.
Not her.
More than that, Devlyn still held her heart hostage, damn him. She could still
feel the way his strong fingers had gripped her shoulders with possessiveness,
smell his feral craving to have her, feel his heart thundering when he crushed her
against him. Why couldn’t he have run with her?
She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts of the one who’d possessed
her soul since the beginning.
It wasn’t that she didn’t care for the gray wolf pack, the lupus garou family
who had taken her in. It was the unfathomable notion that she’d have been
Volan’s mate that fired her soul to the depths of hell. Stronger than the rest, he. wasn’t brighter, nor caring in the least bit. Just a bully, such as in ancient times
when the strongest men ruled. Why couldn’t she find a mate who would treat her
as…as…an equal?
Somewhere, such a male had to exist.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled off her sweater, turtleneck, denims, and
hiking boots, and dropped them on a porch chair. Standing naked, she shivered,
then breathed in the heavenly scent of pine needles, the smell once again
triggering the memory of Devlyn kissing her. No man since had kissed her like
he had.
She gritted her teeth and swallowed hard. He stirred primal longings in her
too strong to quench. The desire to feel him deep inside her, filling her with his
seed, producing their offspring, their family—sharing a lifetime commitment as
mates forever—overwhelmed her. But he wasn’t the leader of the pack. Even if
she wanted Devlyn for her mate, she didn’t think he’d ever be strong enough to
have her. Yet, she couldn’t help but keep in touch with Argos, the old former
leader of the pack. Knowing Devlyn was alive and well….
She growled with exasperation. For now she had to hunt like a wolf, and in
the interim, search for a different prey—the feral predator that stalked human
redheaded females and murdered them like a rabid wolf.
Stretching again, her lean body began to take the form of the wolf. The
painless transformation always occurred quickly and filled her with a sense of
urgency—to hunt, to run wild among the other creatures of the forest.
A thick cinnamon-red pelt covered her skin as her nose elongated into a
snout, and her teeth grew ready for the hunt. She straightened her back, howled
with the change, then dropped to her paws. Her nails extended into sharp claws,
itching to dig into the pine needle-cushioned earth.
Though she preferred venison to rabbit, she hunted the latter. Killing deer out
of season constituted a crime. If anyone found the leftovers of such a kill, an
investigation would follow. Soon word would spread that a wolf was killing deer
in the area. A wolf that might next go after ranchers’ sheep or cattle, or
household pets, or children. A wolf thought to be extinct in these parts.
Leaping off the porch, her long legs carried her with graceful bounds through
the wilderness. She traveled through several hundreds of acres before spying
another cabin—quiet, vacated. Since it was winter and no longer hunting season,
except for the end of dusky Canadian goose season, she shouldn’t glimpse
another human being. She thought she caught a whiff of something familiar. Pausing, she sniffed
the air, and recognized the distinctive smell of lupus garou—red lupus garou.
Loping toward the origin of the scent, she darted past pines and firs, ducked
beneath low-hanging branches, jumped a moss-covered log in her path…then
halted.
A patch of red fur clung to the bark of an oak. Definitely red wolf; and
because none existed here, it had to be a red lupus garou’s.
She contemplated returning to her human form and taking the evidence back
to her cabin, but she was miles from there, and as cold as it was, her human
counterpart probably wouldn’t make it.
The breeze shifted. She smelled the red’s scent stronger now. He’d just
urinated somewhere nearby, marking his territory. She hesitated. If he were
looking for a mate, she’d be a prime target; and if he were an alpha male, she
wouldn’t be strong enough to fight him if he decided to force a mating.
Leaves rustled. A twig snapped underfoot a short distance away. A chill
raced all the way down her spine to the tip of her taut tail. An eerie feeling she
was being watched froze her in place.
What if he was the killer? What if he was hunting her now? But what if she
could lure him into the open, play his game, and turn him over to whatever pack
happened to live in the area? Even if he were a loner, the pack in the territory
would condemn him to die. Killing humans put every lupus garou at risk.
Keeping their secret hidden was the only way for them to survive.
Then again, he might just be a pack member hunting for fresh meat—
enjoying the freedom of the change like she was—who had come across her, a
loner lupus garou violating the pack’s territory. Unless…unless their reds had a
shortage of females like the Colorado grays did, and….
Damn, why hadn’t she considered that before now?
She stared into the shadowy woods where bugs cricketed in a raucous chorus
and a breeze ruffled the pine needles in a whispered hush. If there was a severe
shortage of female lupus garou, was the killer trying to turn a human female in
the ancient way? To make her his mate?
Not good.
She dashed to where he’d left his mark. No sign of him. But the urine was
fresh. Too fresh. He had to be close by, but if he were stalking her he couldn’t be
an alpha male. An alpha male would have already approached her and let her. know he wanted her, if he needed a mate. He had to smell how ripe she was and
know she was ready, too. Was that why he went after female humans, because
they were easier to take than a lupus garou? Maybe he was afraid to advance on
a loner who was more feral, warier, more unpredictable.
She caught the scent of another. Also male. Except for twitching her ears
back and forth and withdrawing her panting tongue, she listened and sniffed the
air but stood in place.
She smelled—water.
Swallowing, she felt parched, and loped toward the sound of Wolf Creek, the
water bubbling nearby. At the fringe of the forest she hesitated, not liking the
way the stream’s banks were so exposed. For several minutes she stood
watching, listening for signs of danger—human danger.
Nothing.
The water beckoned to her. She swallowed again, stared at the rush of the
stream, then walked cautiously across the pebble bank.
Unable to shake the feeling that someone watched her, she waited like a
rabbit cornered by a wolf, cemented in place.
Ice-cold water from melting snow off the mountains dove over rounded rock.
She dipped her tongue into the water and lapped it up; the liquid cooled and
soothed her dry throat.
She couldn’t help wishing she were back in Colorado, running with Devlyn
like they’d done when they were younger—chasing through the woods, nipping
at each other’s hindquarters, feeling the wind ruffle their fur. God, how she
wished he’d mated with her.
Water trickled and gurgled at her feet, birds chirped overhead, and sugar-
drained oak leaves rustled in the breeze all around her. But then a flash of red fur
caught her attention, and she turned.
The glitter of the sun’s fading reflection off a wolf’s amber eyes captured
her, held her hostage, but her gaze held him captive, too. But only for a moment.
His head whipped to the side. Another flash of fur, and another male appeared.
Then, the wave of a wolf’s tail as the lupus garou made a hasty retreat. She
should have heeded the instinctual warning. Instead, she gauged the remaining
wolf’s posture, the way he turned his attention back to her, closed his mouth, and
almost seemed to smile before dashing after his companion.
The crashing through the underbrush couldn’t hide the most dangerous sound
