by Dawn Forrest
“Stop, woman,” he shouted loudly.
Yeah right. Katherine slammed on the brakes, and she saw his face flush with arrogant satisfaction. The look quickly morphed into one of shock and disbelief as she shifted the vehicle into reverse and hit the gas. She heard a roar of what sounded like a curse—it was in Hindi, but some things you just know—followed by a sickening thud as he disappeared from view. It was her turn to look satisfied.
“That’s for Alison and Connor, you fucker,” she snarled, as she immediately hit the brakes again, shifted into first gear, and put the pedal to the metal.
The wheels skidded and dirt scattered as she shot out of the damaged shed. As she expected, the Were was a tough son of a bitch, and he was scrambling up before she’d gone thirty yards.
“Stop, woman,” he yelled again. “You are mine!”
Oh really? Join the queue of Alpha assholes, fella. I’m outta here.
She kept her foot down as she saw him charge after the car. Jesus, he really was fast, but with a silver bullet lodged somewhere in him and possibly a few fractured bones, he wasn’t faster than the top-of-the-line Range Rover. Again she gave thanks for Connor’s preparations. When she was certain that Khan wasn’t going to catch her, she put the window down, stuck her arm out, and flipped him the middle finger. His roared response told her that the gesture hadn’t been lost on him. He probably didn’t expect her answering maniacal laughter, which lasted until she was well out of earshot.
What the bloody hell was she going to do now? She had the three hours it took to drive to Edinburgh Airport to think about it. Inverness was closer, but she had been warned not to risk the more obvious choice. She was supposed to go to a safe house in Ireland where Connor’s cousin was the Pack Alpha, but what if Connor was dead? That seemed more than likely. Would it mean that Khan could claim her? The Lore, as it applied to female werewolves, was both vague and antiquated.
She simply couldn’t take the risk Khan posed to her unborn child. A beast like that would want her pregnant with his own child as soon as possible, and that wouldn’t happen while she was carrying the offspring of another male. She’d watched enough animal documentaries to know the truth of it. There was no way she was going to let anything bad happen to her baby.
What if Connor was miraculously alive? He was a fair man, but she didn’t love him and wanted more from life than producing his babies. They were not bound, so what would happen to her if he found his true-mate? Would she be packed off to the next Alpha in line and forced to leave behind her child or children? Not an ice cube’s chance in hell.
The more she thought about it the more she guiltily realized that this was a golden opportunity to just disappear. She changed out of her pajamas when she got to Edinburgh airport and left the car at the short-stay car park with the parking ticket on the seat and the keys in the door. Hopefully someone would steal it soon and throw a pursuer off her trail. Instead of flying to Dublin, she bought a ticket to the large and busy Heathrow Airport in London.
The flight was uneventful, and she had time to think about what to do next. Where would be the safest place to flee to? One of her fake passports identified her as an American called Kate O’Connor. America was a big country, they spoke English, and the Prime Alpha of the North American Packs would not be looking hard for her. Although unmated, he had not made a bid to claim her. She had been surprised at the time, because he was known to be a strong and powerful werewolf who would most likely have defeated Connor or any other contender in a physical challenge. When she’d looked over the files of Alphas considered possible candidates, his Native American looks and long black hair had appealed to her. She wondered if he was holding out for his true mate as she wished she could.
At Heathrow she bought a ticket on the next available flight to the USA, which just happened to be to Newark. Once she was there, she hoped that she could stay hidden and protect her baby.
Chapter 1
Twenty-four years later
Katherine was stressed and angry. Like a deep splinter, they niggled and worried her, never leaving her in total peace, and now one was sniffing around her daughter. Joanna had called to tell her that she had detected the scent of a male werewolf near her employer’s offices. Fortunately she had her emergency bag already packed and ready at her apartment and was leaving immediately. She was going to come to Katherine in Onancock, in Accomack County, Virginia.
For over twenty years, Katherine had effectively been in hiding or on the run. The first five years had been difficult, with a baby and then young child. She had considered contacting her parents and the Maori Pack and sending Joanna to live with them, but she worried that her daughter might become a target for any desperate male trying to find her. She decided instead to stay hidden, incognito, a rumor on a breeze and nothing more to fuel a full hunt. It was a lonely life.
The money that Connor had given her access to helped. She had immediately set about clearing and closing those secret accounts. The funds were transferred into an American bank account, which she’d opened using her new identity, Kate O’Connor. The only person who could possibly trace the transaction was Connor McDonald, but she assumed that he was no longer living. She could only hope that Ashok Khan had underestimated the degree of Connor’s paranoia. She now topped up her funds by writing under the alias Katy Hydes—her little joke. She had written a series of adventure novels and one-off thrillers. It didn’t make her rich, but it gave her something else to think about other than avoiding detection. It meant that she hadn’t needed to use the money originally from her own New Zealand account until Joanna went to college. It was the money that Connor had paid to her when he’d claimed her. It just about covered the college fees.
Having Jo had kept her sane and given her something to live for. When she turned five years old, Katherine had to put her into boarding school. She hated being apart from her daughter but had done it for her little girl’s safety and well-being. Katherine’s strategy was to move around the country, stay in small towns, and avoid Pack strongholds such as the Prime’s home area, north Montana. When Jo was younger and still at school, the holidays were spent in quiet places where she could easily detect the scent of a male werewolf. If the holiday coincided with a full moon, she had employed a child minder to stay overnight while she went into an isolated forest for the change.
Fortunately it appeared that she had a better sense of smell than other werewolves, and it allowed her to stay a step ahead. Of the few who had caught her scent, the majority seemed confused, judging by their erratic patterns of movement and behavior. It was as if they couldn’t quite believe what their noses were telling them, and that enabled her to outmaneuver and avoid them. Only a very small number had acted decisively and given chase.
When Jo was old enough, Katherine had taken her to a cabin in the Colorado Rockies and had explained what she was and their heritage. At first her teenage daughter had assumed that mom had read too many paranormal stories and had literally lost the plot. After preparing Jo as best as she could, Katherine had changed that night under the full moon, in front of her daughter’s saucer-sized eyes. She was proud of the fact that Jo hadn’t gone to pieces when faced with a six-and-a-half-foot creature with viciously long claws and very big teeth.
Werewolves could not make a complete change from human to beast except on a full moon, when they were compelled to transform into an anthropomorphic creature that had wolf- and human-like qualities but was in fact different and unique, something bigger and scarier. The body shape was close to human but increased in size and muscle mass and was covered with a fur pelt, sometimes short, sometimes shaggy. They had strong, long arms with large hands and long fingers extended by lethal claws. They mostly walked upright, on elongated paw-like feet and strong, powerful, muscular legs with a human-type knee joint, but they could also lope easily on all fours for speed. Their eyes became darker and the pupils more dilated, and their mouths morphed into a muzzle full of wickedly sharp teeth. They were predato
rs, built for the hunt and for the kill.
In beast form she was a smaller version of the males, with small breasts and wider hips. She became an animal, more elemental and subject to her physical desires. The need to run, to hunt, to find her mate and rut was foremost in the beast’s primitive mind, but she wasn’t completely lost to her beast self and would never hurt her daughter or, she hoped, another human. The latter were to be avoided.
Jo had studied English literature at a college in Denver and was now working for a publisher. She had been living as normal a life as she could, while she could, but it looked as if that time had come to an end. Unfortunately, last month, at the age of twenty-three, Jo had “become.” For Katherine and Jo, the first change had coincided with the onset of menstruation which, for all girls from Were families, occurred much later than in normal humans.
It was totally unheard of for a female werewolf to give birth to another female werewolf, yet against all odds it had happened. For hundreds of years there had been no females, and now there were two. Katherine had felt a strange mix of joy and sorrow. She had been brought up in a Were community that celebrated a female’s maturation and a male’s first change, but now it looked as though the relative freedom Jo had experienced was over. It was both a miracle and a curse, but one thing she was certain of, there was no way that her daughter would be sold or forced into reproductive slavery, not while there was breath in her body.
Katherine shook herself out of her brooding thoughts and considered her position. She had arrived in the pretty fishing town of Onancock, exhausted. For over a month she had not been able to rest and relax because a particularly persistent bastard had found her in Texas and tracked her across numerous states. She’d finally managed to give him the slip after taking three flights to major busy airports full of confusing scents and ended up in Washington, DC. She had purchased an old car and headed to Onancock because from past experience she knew that it was a good, quiet, relatively safe location.
Onancock Creek wrapped around the picturesque waterfront town, which in turn was located on land surrounded on three sides by the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. There were winding waterways, forests, and farms, which all provided potential places to hide and ways to leave quickly. She had thoroughly checked out the place and set up different escape options. Then slowly, over four blessedly peaceful weeks, she began to rest, recuperate and relax. Until her daughter called. She only hoped that Jo was vigilant and careful getting here.
Jo was her pride and joy. She was a smart and beautiful twenty-three-year-old who deserved to have opportunities, make free choices, and experience life to the fullest. Hell, didn’t they both deserve that? Instead, because they were female werewolves, their choices were limited and frankly bleak.
Katherine was feeling the urge to settle down in one place and to truly belong somewhere, yet that was impossible the way things currently stood. This untenable situation couldn’t go on. Something had to be done. She knew that the time was fast approaching when she must take action, because simply reacting to threats all the time was not a good life strategy for her and certainly not something she wanted for her daughter. She had lain awake last night pondering her predicament, and the more she considered various courses of action the more the options narrowed down to one certainty, that she must contact the North American Packs.
* * * *
Jo Akara didn’t hang around. After speaking to her mom, she called her best friend, Lynne, and asked her to meet her at their apartment. She rode her motorbike there as fast as she could without breaking the speed limit. Taking the stairs six at a time, she reached the sixth floor much faster than the elevator without breaking into one bead of sweat. Were genes, oh yeah!
On entering the apartment she immediately began to spray everywhere with a particularly pungent-smelling chemical. Lynne walked in and began to cough and splutter.
“Ugh, what’s that stink? What the heck are you doing?” she asked half in jest and half in irritation.
“Oh Lynne, it’s to keep you safe. I’m so sorry. I have to leave for a few weeks.” All the while she spoke she dashed from room to room, dousing everything.
“Safe from a pet invasion? Why are you spraying the stuff people use to stop cats and dogs pooping on their property? You haven’t got a cat, have you? They hate you, and they don’t like me much either. Are you having some kind of breakdown?” Lynne’s eyes were wide, but the laughter that was on her lips died when she saw Jo’s face.
“I really can’t explain. I wish I could, but I can’t, and you probably wouldn’t believe me anyway. Listen, I have to go away for a while. Leave my things where they are, but you must spray this awful stuff around the front door, my room, and the windows every morning and night for a week.” She saw the astonished look on Lynne’s face. “I’m not kidding, Lynne. As your landlord it’s a new condition,” she said with a mock frown.
“Jesus, don’t you think you’re taking this cat business a bit too far?”
Jo couldn’t help but snort a laugh and muttered, “It’s big mangy mutts I’m more worried about.” Then she grew serious because she understood that her life as she knew it was over. “My bike is parked in the underground space, please look after it and cover it for me. If any handsome, unfamiliar, sexy, muscled man starts hanging around, you must leave and stay with a friend for a while. If one should ask about me, tell him I left and said that I wasn’t coming back. Don’t tell anyone that I own the place.”
“Handsome, sexy, muscled man,” Lynne repeated, counting out each attribute on her fingers, “and I have to turn him away? That figures.” She pouted.
“It shouldn’t be a problem for you as you’re so darn picky about men. I was beginning to doubt your heterosexuality. Haven’t you noticed that I’ve been clutching my bath towel tighter lately?” she joked.
“Oh that’s the pot calling the kettle black!”
Sadly true.
“I’m only kidding. Just keep an eye out, and I’ll call you when I can. If the coast is clear, I’ll be back in a month or so.”
Unfortunately it wouldn’t be to stay but to pack up her stuff.
“Joey, are you in serious trouble?”
“Not yet, I’m just making sure it stays that way and that you’re safe, too. Don’t tell anyone else that you expect me to come back. I’ll contact my boss.” Her cell phone rang. “That’s my cab, gotta go.”
She slapped her friend on the back and ran out of the apartment with her backpack bouncing on her shoulder. She jumped down the stairs, clearing each flight in a single leap. The cab was waiting outside on the street. The driver wrinkled his nose when she got in.
“Dog problem,” she muttered. “Denver International Airport, domestic terminal. I’m running late so please don’t spare the horses.”
She waved a fifty-dollar bill at him so he didn’t think she was a cheap student without a tip. It worked, and they made excellent time. The rest of the journey to Onancock was thankfully uneventful.
Chapter 2
Three weeks later
Kilchil Hunt decided to get something to eat and so pulled his chopper over at a small rest stop with a tired and weathered-looking diner. He took his helmet off and ran his long fingers through his rough, short, and spiky black hair. It was late afternoon, and although the frail warmth of the beautiful spring day still lingered, it would soon fade fast along with the daylight. He removed his sunglasses and squinted at the menu displayed on the door.
He was close now, and he knew that he needed to be fresh and energized when he finally caught up with the rogue he’d been hunting for over a week. As the Prime Alpha’s Chief Enforcer, he had to find and eliminate any dangerous werewolves who had no Pack and could cause problems for the rest of them. This particular fellow had been very troublesome indeed and had so far managed to avoid all other enforcers, which was why the task had now fallen to him. He was confident that he would catch him and rip his throat out if he had to.
The rogue
, Daniel Watts, had killed at least three human males that Kil knew of. He had first brutally screwed, disemboweled, and then partially eaten each man while in beast form. It couldn’t be tolerated. It wasn’t just a sloppy disregard of protocol in those rare instances where, through an unfortunate series of events, an accident occasionally happened on a full moon. No, this was the kind of sadistic, intentional, careless violence that could soon lead to public revelation, and that simply wouldn’t do.
Kil walked into the diner and, as usual, all eyes briefly settled on him. As a six-foot-eight Native American, built like a linebacker, wearing black leathers and a jagged, livid scar across his cheek, he was used to the less-than-furtive attention. Of course, no one ever met his eyes or looked too closely for too long, no one ever did except Will Hawke, Prime Alpha of all the North American Packs.
As usual, he sat with his back to the wall, facing the door, and gave his order to a jittery young waitress. Most human women and unmated Were females were part scared and part attracted by him. The mated Were females who got to know him better, or rather, got to know about him from their mates, were usually terrified. He ate a very rare, almost-mooing steak and downed a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. He paid with a nice tip, took a quick piss in the restroom, and headed outside. He stood by his customized chopper and inhaled deeply through his nose. Daniel’s scent was very faint but detectable in the cross breeze, and it looked as though he was headed in the direction of Onancock.
* * * *
They had both finished work for the day and sat on the swinging seat on the little back porch, enjoying a Coke, each other’s company, and the early evening sunset. Katherine was happy with the final chapter of her next book that she had just completed. She knew that she was always more productive when she was feeling settled and could get into an uninterrupted routine. Nothing killed her muse faster than distractions, and she’d had a lot of those lately.