by Sarra Cannon
Her wolf sniffed and whisked her tail, left, then right. Free at last.
The first scent to stand out—jump out, was more like it—was Zack’s, and she fought the urge to hurry back inside. She tilted her nose higher to catch more distant scents and slowly honed in on her prey. There—there it was. Warm-blooded. Musky. Meaty. Something young and healthy. Something strong. She drew the scent deep into her lungs until it practically circulated in her bloodstream and she could imagine a dotted line snaking over the lumpy landscape to her quarry. Then she shook her pelt and set off on her hunt.
Hunt. A term that was frequently misunderstood—especially her kind of hunt.
Only certain hunts involved killing, and sometimes that task fell to her—to cull the weak and give their bodies back to the earth, their spirits back to the sky. That kind of prey often recognized their time had come and succumbed quickly, even gratefully. That’s what her bow was for—to deliver a quick and merciful end.
Tonight, though, would be a different type of hunt, and it wasn’t about killing. It was the trickiest kind of hunt because catching prey alive and uninjured was a far greater challenge.
Rae set off at a trot, ears perked, eyes wary. She’d have one chance to get this right.
She settled into a long lope, trying to foresee how tonight’s hunt would unfold. Her prey would flee, fight back, do anything to keep away. If only her prey knew what was best for them, her life would be a lot easier.
Her wolf pulled its lips back in a grin. Now, what fun would that be?
One mile stretched into two, then three, as she wound through the scrubby terrain, closing in on her prey. Her paws pounded over dirt and rock, nose high in the air. Zack’s style of tracking would be different: nose to the ground as he traced his quarry by following their trail. Hers involved teasing her prey’s location out of the myriad scents in the air and closing in on them. She could take shortcuts a tracker couldn’t for fear of losing the trail. But it had to be a fresh and active scent for that to work. A tracker like Zack, on the other hand, could follow older trails, and over longer distances.
We’d be a good team, her wolf decided.
She pushed the thought away. Hunting was a solitary occupation, right?
Wasn’t always that way, her wolf grumbled. In the old days—
Rae cut it off there. Yes, she’d heard the stories of the glory days, when entire packs would join the hunt and run as one in the night. But those days were gone. Her kind had become as rare as the species it was her job to protect, and group hunts even more rare.
Even alone, it felt good to be out running in the night, to feel her heart pounding in her chest and her claws skittering over ground. She raced up a rocky mesa then padded to a stop and crept over a ridge. Below her, a tight little valley with a tall line of trees followed the meandering path of a stream. She could smell fresh water and the lush scent of the plants sucking it all in.
There. Her quarry was there, in the shadows below.
It was drinking from the stream in short sips, popping its head up regularly to scan the area before ducking down to drink again. Its movements were barely perceptible in the gray-on-black shadows, but once Rae had honed in on it, the shape grew clear.
A pronghorn. A magnificent desert pronghorn, one of the rarest of the rare. The pure white of its rump flashed against the landscape, while the darker lines accenting its curves blurred its edges, making it a mere ghost in the night. A female. Young and sturdy, and very much on edge.
As the doe should be. The few pronghorns left in the wild were valued by trophy hunters for their beautiful pelts and one-of-a-kind horns. They’d been hunted to near-extinction before making a tenuous recovery—but who knew? Every individual was critical to the species’ survival—especially a young female like this.
Except it was too early in the season for the gazelle-like creature to be in this neck of the desert. What was the silly doe thinking?
Sadly, pronghorns weren’t known for their brains.
She’ll be fast, though. Her wolf licked its lips. Fast enough to give a good chase.
Therein lay the challenge. A wolf would have to be clever and fit to catch a pronghorn like this.
Watch me, her wolf grinned.
She pressed her belly to the ground and let the earth’s heat seep into her body as she formulated a plan. She’d circle and approach from the west, sticking to the thick line of scrub flanking the trees. Then she’d—
A twig snapped on her right and the desert went deathly still. The pronghorn flicked its ears—once, twice—then fled.
Rae cursed and whipped her head toward the intruder: a coyote, just coming over the rise. He’d been quiet, but not quiet enough.
No, not a coyote. A wolf. Or was it a coyote?
Something in between, she decided. A very sexy something with the imposing size of a wolf but the coloring of a coyote.
Zack. She hated that part of her gave a happy zing to see him. The other part, however, couldn’t help a yelp of protest. He was ruining her hunt!
She took off after her quarry, claws scuttling over the earth while her wolf lodged an entire catalog of complaints.
Stupid man! Stupid tracker! Stupid…Then the memories kicked in. Sexy man. Sexy tracker. Sensitive lover…
Enough! The hunter in her roared and concentrated on the chase. She could hear Zack tearing through the brush behind her; no reason for stealth now. Her ears flicked forward, concentrating on the pronghorn. She had to get it!
The pronghorn was fast but foolish in its panic. It crashed through the thicker scrub along the creek bank while Rae pounded a parallel path in the clearer ground above. She stretched her muzzle forward, lengthening her stride, needing every inch to keep pace with this fleet-footed doe.
The chase stretched on, over rock and gully and hill, and Rae lost herself in the sensations: the desperate hoofbeats over gritty earth ahead, the rhythm of her pounding heart, the sound of her fellow wolf close behind.
At first she’d been annoyed. What was Zack thinking, coming after her like this? But having him involved in the hunt added to the thrill. She’d done all her hunting alone, and while she’d never felt lonely, she’d also never felt so connected to her own kind.
In the old days… her wolf started.
Yes, she’d heard about the old days, when wolves hunted in packs and tended their territories as one. They kept the herds strong by culling the weak, the old, and the sick. In return, the herds kept the wolves fed. It was an ageless, symbiotic relationship that ensured balance and survival of both species—and a responsibility still honored by hunters like her.
Rae ran as she’d never run before, tuned in to both the quarry ahead of her and Zack behind. To share the thrill of the hunt… There was a certain rightness to it.
Her mind spun as her limbs continued the chase. If the hunt was once a pack affair, then…
Her ears flicked back to Zack. Did he know anything about her kind of hunting? Would he know how to work in tandem to bring down their prey—not to kill it, but to send it on a better path?
She flipped through a hundred possible scenarios. Could she trust him?
In an instant, her decision was made. All or nothing. She cut sharply to the right, up the hillside. Could she trust Zack?
There was only one way to find out.
Chapter 15
Jesus, but the she-wolf could run. That pronghorn, too.
Zack panted and searched for another gear to throw his four feet into, but he was already going flat out. Yeah, he really ought to feel guilty for scaring off her prey, but hell, he’d still been half asleep when he came across them. And anyway, Rae was the one who’d walked out on him in the middle of the night.
A night he’d thought was perfect, until he woke up alone.
He couldn’t believe it at first. A couple of rounds of intense sex, a quick cuddle, and Rae had made tracks.
Well, maybe she was smart to do so. After all, a man like him couldn’t offer m
uch: just a shack on the edge of the ranch, a crazy job, and an uncertain pedigree. The only thing he could really offer was his heart, and that was worn as thin as an overused couch.
Still, it hurt. Bad. Because that feeling of being left behind was an old one, and the pain went further back than a couple of hours. It went back years. Lots of them.
One night, his father would be there, the warm bass of his voice filling the house; the next, there’d be the roar of a motorcycle engine, carrying an impatient man out of a young boy’s life. Every couple of months, his dad would drop in, looking clean and repentant and deceptively sincere, which would last just long enough for Zack to save up a little hope. Long enough for it to sting three times worse when the man disappeared again. In and out, in and out, with little Zack hiding beneath his patchwork quilt, afraid to fall asleep for fear of who might come—and worse, who might go. Wondering what it might be like to hear an engine coming instead of going.
He’d pushed the memories away for so long that when they came back, they came back with a bang.
At first, he’d sat slumped on the bed, kneading his brow and wondering at what point in the night his subconscious had decided that things could be different. Where had the wild ideas come from? Ideas like sleeping long and solid and off guard, knowing that he’d have a person he loved for more than one night.
He caught himself there. He wasn’t a kid any more, and as for love—no, he didn’t love Rae. More like…liked her. And he’d had his fun, so what more did he want?
More, his wolf whimpered, morose. Mate. Keep.
Forever, the coyote added.
He shook his head. He couldn’t love Rae. It was forbidden. This whole night was a mistake.
Coyote and wolf voices roared in unison in his head. No mistake!
He’d been planning to sit there and feel sorry for himself a while longer, but his nose had started twitching. There was something was in the air, and not just the scent of regret. Some nocturnal event; something exciting. His hands fisted in the sheets. Was Rae in danger? Was Jed back? He leaped to his feet, flung the door open, and shifted to his wolf form, senses on full alert while scents and sounds assaulted him.
The new moon. The desert, caught between two breaths.
Something was happening out there.
He paced on the porch, sniffing. Where was she?
Like needles on a thousand tiny compasses, every sensor in him swung north. There. She was there. He took off at a punishing pace, tracking her fresh scent through the night. It wasn’t long before the anger and pain gave way to the thrill of the chase. There was a high in it, running through the cool night air. His legs were strong and sure as they carried him over the hill, around a mesa, up over a rise—
Two heads had popped up in surprise, and he let out an inner curse. Shit.
One was the slender face of a pronghorn—a doe with wide eyes, erect ears, and inward curving horns. The other was a she-wolf with a silky brown-gold coat, long legs, and an aristocratic tilt to her chin.
Rae yipped her displeasure at his loud approach then shot off after the pronghorn.
The promise of a double chase pushed away any instinct Zack had to hang his head in shame. The pronghorn was off, Rae was off, and damn it, he was off, too. He would not be left behind!
So there he was, running with his paws on fire, his teeth clenched in resolve. But damn if the two females weren’t giving him a run for his money. He caught glances of the pronghorn’s sticklike legs pistoning up and down, its flag of a tail flicking as it covered ground in great leaps and bounds. The doe was running on high-octane fuel: fear for her life.
Rae, on the other hand, seemed to run on the wings of some desert spirit. There was an aura about her, a glow. Her coat shouldn’t shimmer quite so much on a moonless night, but there it was, flashing over the landscape like a golden fish in murky water. He’d never seen a wolf move like that: a tight package of grace, determination, passion, and pure feminine power.
Oh, but you have seen that, his coyote hummed. And not too long ago.
He nearly stumbled when the image jumped into his mind: Rae, tugging him toward the bed between flashes of lightning. Rae, lying back and inviting him to explore. Rae, writhing in pleasure as he pushed into her, again and again.
His inner thermometer jumped by twenty degrees. OK, so the two of them had been on fire. It was only sex, right?
His coyote snorted. Who else ever lit you on fire? Who else ever made you feel so alive?
He thought long and hard but came up empty. Worse, he was lagging behind. He pushed the thoughts out of his mind, determined not to lose contact with the chase.
But there was determination, and there was sheer inborn speed. His tongue lolled sideways out of his mouth while the females showed no signs of tiring. If anything, they were inching away. The pronghorn had two hundred yards on Rae, who had half that distance on him. And Christ, he wasn’t sure he could catch them, not even at a full-out sprint.
Then his she-wolf suddenly cut off at an angle and hammered upslope, away from the pronghorn. He slowed, torn in two different directions. What was Rae doing?
His ears flicked, picking up a whisper in the night. By the time it wound its way into his mind, though, it was more image than sound. If he stayed behind the pronghorn, then drove it right…
An entire scene played out in his mind as he shot off after the pronghorn. If he edged left, the doe would veer right. And if Rae was fast enough, she could cut over the hilltop and cut the pronghorn off on the other side.
We hunt as a pack, the whisper told him. Like the old days.
Zack wasn’t sure what those old days were, but he grinned all the same.
Clever, his human side decided.
Insulting, his wolf huffed. She wants us to play sheepdog?
Cunning, the coyote smiled. She does her part, we do ours.
It was two against one, because the man in him was with the coyote: smitten with the challenge. And hell, he’d never been on a hunt like this before. Tracking was in his blood, but that was slow and steady, his nose testing every inch of earth before moving on. This was a high-speed chase with whipping branches and crashing hoofbeats and pounding hearts. This was thrilling, instinctual. The only times he’d been out on this kind of hunt had been frivolous affairs, the opportunistic chase of a wayward deer. A pronghorn was in a totally different class, especially one as fleet as this.
Rae was in a totally different class, too. She carried her nose straight as an arrow, her tail proud as a banner. Everything about her screamed Expert: Do not try at home.
His wolf wasn’t sure he liked the arrangement, though.
Aren’t men supposed to lead and women to follow? Shouldn’t an alpha fight from the front and force victory with raw power?
The coyote laughed the notion aside. Hate to point it out to you, wolf, but we’re bringing up the rear. And the view ain’t half bad.
He watched Rae disappear into the scrub from the corner of his eye as he followed the pronghorn. Maybe there were other ways to achieve a goal. Maybe a smart alpha knew when to lead and when to follow.
His eyelid twitched, the wolf in him uneasy. Me, a sheepdog?
His coyote snorted. Pompous fucking wolf.
He swung left, decision made. If Rae wanted a sheepdog, he’d give her one. He took a deep breath, lifted his muzzle, and let out a howl as he raced along—a good howl, one that warbled and rumbled and threatened a thousand bloody deaths. Of course, running at full tilt like that, it was more hot air than anything else. A wolf would never fall for that bullshit, but a pronghorn…
Sure enough, the doe skittered right, just where he wanted her.
He bayed and yipped and put on a hell of a show that filled him with childish pleasure, just like the kind he got from revving his Harley at a red light.
And it worked. The doe went wide-eyed in panic and drifted right, still a good hundred yards ahead. It was a gap his burning lungs would never close. But it didn’t ma
tter, because there was a flash of gold and a grunt on his right. Rae came flying through the air like a Valkyrie straight out of hell. She pounced, and wolf and antelope went rolling in a flurry of flailing hooves, wild grunts, and gleaming teeth.
His heart seized. One lucky kick and the pronghorn could crush Rae’s ribs, smash her head, or put out an eye. There was nothing certain about a hunt. Shifters healed quickly, but they weren’t immune to pain. Besides, a lucky kick would let the pronghorn get away, and something about Rae’s urgency told him that couldn’t happen tonight.
When he was two steps away, the tussle came to an abrupt stop, and he skidded to a halt. What the hell was going on?
Rae had the pronghorn pinned as sure as any cowboy threw a steer. Her jaws were clamped around its neck, her body forcing the doe down. She huffed once, twice through her teeth, ordering her quarry to submit. He could see the panicked whites of the pronghorn’s eyes roll, its striped flanks heave in terror.
But there was no death bite, no gush of blood. Rae wasn’t killing the doe; she was holding it. There was a grunt and a wiggle and then only silence as the pronghorn’s eyes registered something else. It ceased the struggle and just…listened.
Zack listened, too, tilting his head to catch it. There was a whisper in the air, faint as filtered starlight from a thousand light-years away. A whisper that carried images, not words, and a scene formed in his mind.
There was a brokeback mountain, a crooked stream, and a wide, green valley swimming in grass. Somewhere up north. Not that he’d ever been there; he just knew. There was a rocky outcrop and an irregular hillside and a flash of white: the tail of another pronghorn. A big male, by the look of it.
There, the image seemed to be telling the doe. That is where you must go.
Rae loomed over her prey, forcing it to listen to that whisper that came up out of the ground. Then the images rushed into a blur in a bird’s-eye flyover of the route to that special place.