The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance

by Trisha Telep

  I was shaking my head from side to side, even though no one was paying attention to me any more, it seemed. Talking wolves didn’t exist. Muscular men didn’t walk around naked in the forest, chatting with non-existent talking wolves. Why couldn’t I wake up? And what was that noise? It was getting louder, like a swarm of bees approaching.

  When the grey wolf sat down, shuddered, and its fur began disappearing into its body, I didn’t even blink. I was concentrating more on finding the source of that buzzing noise. It was almost deafening now.

  The last thing I saw before the noise rose to a crescendo and my vision went black was the wolf’s fur being replaced by skin . . . and the body of a naked man where the grey wolf had just been.

  Two

  Pain tugged on my leg. My eyes opened with a rush of terror as my last memory came roaring back. The wolves. Attacking me.

  “No!” I screamed, trying to defend myself.

  Something big held me down. I was so panicked, it took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t biting me or covered in fur.

  “You’re all right, the doctor is just setting your ankle,” said a deep voice.

  My head felt cottony, but I tried to shake that off. I was in a bed. An older blonde woman was giving me a mildly irate look as she bent over my ankle. Someone held my upper body in an unyielding grip, and whoever it was didn’t look like a nurse.

  “Let go of me.”

  That grip didn’t loosen. “Doc?”

  “You can let her go, Daniel,” the blonde woman said.

  In my next blink, I was free, staring around the room with its wood walls, rustic interior and bloody bandages on the floor. Sure, I had healthcare, but unless medical standards had really dropped, this wasn’t a hospital.

  It took a second for me to recognize the tall, russet-haired man by the bed. “You’re the naked guy,” I blurted. He wasn’t naked now, wearing a pair of loose-fitting denim jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.

  He smiled, but it looked strained. “You remember.”

  Not all of it. I knew he’d stopped the wolves from attacking me, but I couldn’t remember how exactly. Or why he’d been naked in the woods in the first place.

  There was something about the wolves. Something really important that my groggy mind couldn’t quite recall.

  “The wolves—” I began.

  “I need to finish this,” the woman interrupted me. “Hold still. You’ll feel some pressure.”

  She certainly sounds like a doctor, I thought. Professional, uncaring and using the word “pressure” to describe what would probably hurt like hell.

  My premonition proved correct. A burning pain started in my ankle as she probed, muttering to herself while she shifted it a few times.

  “Where am I?” I asked, biting back a yelp. “Is this a Ranger station or something?”

  The man stared at me, his hazel eyes seeming to probe as much as the doctor’s pitiless fingers.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Marlee. Marlee Peters.”

  “The sedative shouldn’t have worn off this quickly,” the woman remarked when I couldn’t help but yank back as she manipulated my ankle in a direction it didn’t want to go. “You know that, Daniel.”

  “So give me another one,” I said, clenching my teeth as the pain began to throb. “Pressure”, my ass!

  Daniel, as the doctor called him, let out a sigh. “Damn Gabriel,” he muttered.

  Gabriel.

  The name conjured up an image of a huge grey wolf glaring at me, one eye bleeding. “They hunt us,” it had said. Then it started writhing on the ground, its fur disappearing . . .

  I tried to bolt out of bed, but Daniel had me pinned back before I’d even cleared the covers.

  “It’s all right, Marlee,” he said.

  “Like hell it is!” Whatever remained of the sedative they’d given me wore off in the flash of that memory. Run, my mind urged.

  From over his shoulder, I could see the blonde woman sit back in disgust. “I can’t work like this,” she said.

  “Get Joshua,” Daniel told her, still holding me to the bed.

  I screamed for help, which drowned out any reply the woman made. I kicked, too, even though that hurt my ankle like I’d set it on fire.

  Daniel went from holding me down to flattening me on the bed with his body. It was like a ton of bricks just landed on me. He even had his legs tangled in mine so I couldn’t kick.

  I couldn’t move, but I could keep screaming, which I did, long and loud.

  He winced. “Stop that. You’re hurting my ears.”

  His arms were pinning mine down, but his hands were loose near my face. He could have covered my mouth to shut me up, but he didn’t. That meant he wasn’t concerned about anyone overhearing, which meant there was no one near enough to help.

  I stopped screaming and tried another tactic. “Let me go. I’ll leave and you’ll never see me again.”

  “Why were you in the woods alone, Marlee?” he asked. “That’s not very safe.”

  Considering my current situation, the absurdity of that statement made me laugh. “You don’t say?”

  He ignored that. “You remember what you saw. That’s why you smell like fear now.”

  “It wasn’t real,” I muttered. “I was tired, I’d been lost for days, and I panicked because of the attack.”

  “You know it’s real,” he cut me off. “Sorry, but you know, so we can’t just let you go. Even if nothing comes of your bites.”

  That froze me more than the 200 pounds of muscle holding me down. I’d been bitten - several times, in fact. I’d seen the movies, knew enough of the folklore to know what happened to a person who’d been bitten by a ...

  “This can’t be real,” I whispered.

  His gaze was grim. “It’s as real as it gets.”

  I insisted on sitting in a chair to meet Joshua. Daniel stood next to me, his presence a silent threat that any attempts to leave would be quickly stopped. Still, when one met the leader of a pack of werewolves, one wanted not to be trapped under another werewolf in bed, right? Yeah, I thought so, too.

  Of course, I was also still thinking - hoping - that I’d just eaten some bad mushrooms along the trail and none of this was real. Be careful what you wish for, ran through my mind. I’d wished for years to go to Yellowstone. My ex-boyfriend Paul and I had planned this trip, down to the places we’d hike and where we’d camp. We were thrilled when my best friend Brandy and her boyfriend agreed to come. The more the merrier, right?

  But things changed. Paul moved to Manhattan, our relationship couldn’t overcome the long-distance strain and, four months later, I ended up being a third wheel on this trip instead of it being a fun, couples’ getaway. Add that to being overworked and underpaid as a paralegal, and my fervent wish for something new and exciting to come into my life.

  Looks like I got that wish, though it might come with a set of claws. I waited, missing my small cubicle at the office more than I’d ever missed anything.

  Ten minutes later, the blonde doctor returned with a man in his late forties. He had edges of grey on his temples, but the rest of his hair was thick and auburn — the same colour as Daniel’s, actually. He also had a similar large, muscular build, albeit not quite as lean as Daniel’s. He wore a tan jacket and vest over his collared shirt, with a pair of denim pants.

  In short, he looked like your typical Yellowstone tourist, not the leader of a secret pack of monsters.

  “I’m Joshua,” he introduced himself, holding out a hand.

  At a loss over what else to do, I shook it. Part of me wanted to run screaming out of the door, and the other part wanted to burst into tears. Surprisingly, this myriad of emotions left me feeling slightly numb, like I was running on autopilot.

  “Marlee.”

  Joshua sat on the edge of the bed. His posture was casual, but there was nothing relaxed in his gaze. He looked me over as if I were a potentially contagious virus. I fought not to hold my breath.
>
  “What happened yesterday was very unfortunate,” Joshua began.

  “Yesterday?” I couldn’t help but exclaim, glancing at the window. It was nearly dusk. I’d thought it was the same day as the attack.

  “Yesterday,” Joshua repeated, giving me a frown that said he wasn’t used to being interrupted. “A member of our pack was . . . distraught over his wife’s death. He and a few others began hunting you. You were lucky Daniel found them when he did, but you’d been bitten, so we couldn’t drop you off at the nearest hospital. You haven’t heard of our kind before, Marlee, and there’s a reason. We do whatever’s necessary to protect our existence.”

  We’ll kill for it was left unsaid, but I heard that loud and clear. I nodded, striving to hold on to my numbness. Hysteria wouldn’t help me, no matter how tempting it was to give in to it.

  “A person has to be bitten several times to be at risk of transforming, and half the people who’ve been bitten still don’t shift,” Joshua went on briskly. “We won’t know whether you’ll turn into one of us until the next full moon, two weeks away.”

  Two weeks? It would take that long for me to find out whether or not I’d become a monster? I’d go insane wondering until then. And if it did happen . . . well, suicide didn’t sound like a bad idea all of a sudden.

  “What happens if after the full moon, I’m not... ah ... like the rest of you?” I couldn’t bring myself to say “a werewolf. I just couldn’t.

  Joshua gave me a thin smile. “That depends on you. Either you stay with us, as a member of the skinwalker part of our pack, or . . .” He shrugged. That single gesture completed his sentence. Or we kill you.

  One way or the other, I was screwed.

  Three

  “Hungry?”

  I sat in the chair, my broken ankle finally in a cast, and glared at Daniel before replying. “Somewhere between the death threats and the thought of turning into a four-legged monster, I lost my appetite.”

  Part of me wondered why I dared to be so surly. The other part figured I was as good as dead anyway, so it didn’t matter.

  Daniel grunted. “Suit yourself, but I’m getting something.” He stood, stretched, and then held out a hand.

  I just stared at it. “What?”

  “You’re coming with me,” he replied. “Who knows what kind of trouble you’d stir up if I left you alone?”

  “And I suppose you’ll just drag me along anyway if I refuse?”

  A smile quirked his mouth. “You learn fast, don’t you?”

  I gave Daniel another withering look that didn’t seem to faze him. He was extremely striking, in an outdoorsy-type of way. His hair was chin length and russet, and he had a faint weathering to his features that spoke of long days outside. Daniel only looked a couple of years older than me, which would put him at about thirty, but there was an air of command about him that made him seem older. None of the lawyers at my office had such a dominating presence, in fact.

  But I wasn’t about to let him know how much he intimidated me. Wasn’t there a saying that showing fear in front of an animal made it more aggressive? “So, you’re the group’s babysitter, is that it?”

  “I’m the Pack’s enforcer, so it’s my job to make sure anyone who’s a danger to us - like you - doesn’t get away. And I’m very good at my job, Marlee.”

  At over six feet tall with muscles bulging from every limb, yeah, Daniel looked like he did a good job of enforcing. He’d scare anyone with half a brain.

  “What are you going to do with me for two weeks? You can’t keep me tied to your hip.” I didn’t even want to think about after that, or what might happen on the full moon.

  He rubbed a knuckle under his chin and considered me. “With your limp, you wouldn’t get far even if you did manage to slip away from me - which you wouldn’t. So, let’s get some dinner, then you can wash up and begin plotting ways to outsmart us dumb animals.”

  Daniel said that last part with a challenging look that let me know he was both aware of my aversion to what they were and of my dreams of escape. I glanced away, gritting my teeth.

  “Didn’t you say you were hungry?”

  He held out his hand again. “Come on. Let’s eat.”

  I had to take Daniel’s arm to avoid hopping on one leg to the dining lodge. They didn’t give me any crutches, which I supposed was deliberate so as to keep me at a disadvantage. It looked like I was in some sort of tiny Wild West town, of all things. A narrow strip of street ran down between the twin rows of shops, lodgings, and . . . were those saloons? I half expected someone to gallop by on horseback, shooting at the moon.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  Daniel grunted. “Not what you were expecting, right? Let me guess. You thought we’d live in a big den in the woods?”

  From his expression, he was teasing, but I wasn’t trying to make friends with my kidnapper.

  “The 1800s called. They want their town back,” I replied. Two could play at being a smart ass.

  Daniel kept perfect pace with me. I was using his arm as a sort of brace. His reflexes were so fast that he counter-balanced my every step so I almost walked at my normal speed.

  “You’re not far off,” he said, ignoring my sarcasm. “This was an old mining town back in the nineteenth century. It was empty for decades after the silver dried up, but then some of my relatives bought it and the surrounding land. We restored many of the original buildings and cabins, plus added upgrades. Now, we rent it out seasonally as a private resort area.”

  That brought me to a stop. “Werewolves running a resort town?” I asked incredulously.

  He shrugged. “We have to make a living, just like everyone else.”

  This was like being in an episode of The Twilight Zone.

  We passed several people on our way down the street. I was surprised at how normal they looked. There were men and women of varying ages, plus a couple of children, and everyone appeared to be minding their own business - aside from all the sideways glances I was getting.

  “Are all of them like you?” I asked, keeping my voice calm. My heart had started to pound, however, and if the movies were right, they could hear it. There were so many of them. How would I ever get away?

  “Most of them,” Daniel said. “The others are skinwalkers — normal people to you. But you don’t have to be afraid of anyone, Marlee. We’re not what you think.”

  “I’ve already had some of your group try to kill me, and you and Joshua seem pretty open about how you’ll finish the job,” I replied shortly. “So you’ll excuse me if I don’t buy the whole ‘we’re misunderstood’ speech.”

  Something flashed in Daniel’s eyes. It made me back up a step, but his hand shot out and gripped my arm.

  “Why’d you bring that gun camping with you?” he asked, his voice soft. “You brought it for protection, right? Because if anyone tried to hurt you, you’d hurt them, right? Well, now imagine someone’s trying to hurt your entire family. How far would you go to stop that?”

  Daniel leaned in, tightening his grip so I couldn’t pull back. “I’d do anything to stop that,” he whispered near my ear. “Including holding you hostage. If you got away, you’d tell people about us. People who would come and hurt my family. So yeah, I’m ruthless when it comes to protecting my pack. But don’t pretend you wouldn’t be the same way, if the shoe were on the other foot.”

  That gleam of wildness was in his eyes again. The otherness that reminded me that an animal lurked inside him. I shivered.

  “Let go of me.”

  He did, dropping my arm only to hold his out again. “We’re almost there,” he said, nodding at the square building to the left.

  I balanced on his arm again. We didn’t speak as we walked the rest of the way to the dining lodge.

  It looked like any normal, rustic restaurant inside, if a little more upscale. Instead of smaller tables scattered throughout, there were several long tables arranged in the room, each seating over a dozen. The food seeme
d to be served family-style, with large dishes placed in the middle of the tables from which everyone took their servings. There was a moment of quiet as Daniel and I walked in.

  “This is Marlee,” Daniel said to the room at large. “She’s joining us.”

  I didn’t know if he meant for dinner, as a possible new werewolf, or some other cryptic thing. I didn’t argue though. Not while feeling like a piece of meat dangled above a crocodile pit.

  “Hi,” I said. God, that sounded stupid, but what else was I supposed to say? Somebody call 911 sounded tempting, but I didn’t think it would do any good.

  An older woman bustled up to me, smiling. “Welcome, dear! Aren’t you pretty? Such beautiful brown hair.”

  I just wanted to sit, hide, and plot my escape, not exchange pleasantries with Mrs Butterworth’s version of a werewolf.

  “Um, thanks.”

  “Let’s set you up over here, it’s quieter,” she said, leading Daniel and I to a table that only had four other people at it.

  “Thanks, Mom,” Daniel said.

  I stopped so fast, I almost staggered. “Mom?”

  A grin edged his mouth. “Everyone has one, after all.”

  “Quit teasing Marlee, she looks starved,” his mother said to Daniel, holding out a chair for me. “We have excellent venison stew tonight. That should help put the colour back in your face.”

  I sat at the table, avoiding eye contact with the other four people, though I did notice one was a female. Daniel sat next to me, that half-smile still on his face.

  “Not what you expected again?” he asked.

  I glanced around the room once more. People were laughing, eating and chatting. Sure, I kept getting discreet looks, but no one was licking their chops in a menacing way at me. It all looked terribly . . . civilized.

  “No,” I replied, and left it at that. These people might look nice, but they were my kidnappers. My executioners if I refused to become one of their group. All the table manners in the world couldn’t make up for that.