“You could smell his putrid fear, woman!” He pulled her against his body and kissed her hard on the mouth, no teasing or waiting for her approval — just pure lust, conquering and decisive. And she loved him, every bit of the dangerous and feral lupus garou that he was.
Her body melted to his touch, but Volan’s musky, bloody scent drifted to her on the breeze. Panic sliced through her. Volan would claim her now. But if he caught Devlyn touching her.
Volan appeared in a couple of bounds in his ebony-pelted wolf form, his eyes narrowed with hate. He growled, and immediately Devlyn released her. She stepped back, assuming Volan would kill Devlyn for his actions, the thought wrenching at her gut.
Devlyn stood his ground. “I tried to convince her how stupid she was for feeling anything for the human.”
Volan turned to Bella. He’d show her how a male wolf took a mate. The moisture from her throat evaporated. The image of him trying to take her when she was much younger still fed her nightmares. A streak of shudders racked her body.
Volan turned his attention back to Devlyn. The hair stood on end from the nape of his neck to the tip of his tail. He advanced aggressively, then stopped.
Torn between giving herself to Volan to protect Devlyn and fighting Volan herself, she knew neither would work. Devlyn would hate her either way — damn his male wolf pride.
Volan growled again. Devlyn yanked off his shirt. His muscles flexed as he tugged at his belt, his golden skin shimmering with sweat in the summer sun. Any other day, she loved to see every bit of his handsome physique — his muscled thighs, the dark patch of curly hair between his legs, and the erection she’d encouraged. But not now, not with Volan threatening to rip him to shreds.
As soon as Devlyn stood naked, he began to change, his body twisting into the form of a wolf, his snout elongated. A thick brown pelt as rich as a mink’s covered his long legs and torso. He howled as the change took place. Volan waited patiently before he lunged.
She couldn’t watch him rip Devlyn apart. She couldn’t stomach seeing the bully hurt any other wolf of the pack. But certainly not Devlyn, with whom she’d played as a pup, not Devlyn who’d rescued her from the wildfire that took her red wolf pack’s lives. She couldn’t save him now... only maybe herself. Yet when Volan lunged for Devlyn, she dashed between them to protect him. Volan clamped his teeth down on her arm, having the ability to crush the bone with his powerful canines. She cried out when a streak of pain shot up her arm and blood dripped from the wound. Though his eyes reflected remorse at once and he released her, he growled at her to stay out of the way. And so did Devlyn.
Maybe if she ran, Volan would come after her. Maybe she could save Devlyn that way. But she would never return to the pack.
She bolted, with her legs stretched far out, her heart pounding, her breath steady, but her mind frantic — her only chance was to toss her clothes and run like the wolf.
Chapter One
Present Day Portland, Oregon
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.