The dumpster kept me from getting the truck all the way up into the property.
Waving to my father, I motioned him to the porch.
“Fergus wants a confab with you at lunch. He needs some direction on how to deal with the exiles and their marking the place.”
He nodded. “Of course. I’m glad he’s smart enough to ask for help.”
“Well, no one wants a repeat of ’thirty-three.”
With a pointed look at the kitchen and the women, my father hushed me. I wasn’t being overly cautious, and I had to be.
“We’ve got a winner!” Delia said. “Bathroom number one has a color!”
Vladimir, appearing out of seemingly nowhere, snatched the color sample from her hand and studied it, grinning.
I rolled my eyes. They’d picked a premium color.
“I’ll call down to the store and have them mix it and bring it up. At the rate Vinny and Rig are going, you’ll have walls to paint later today. You’re also going to want to pick out a tub, toilet, and vanity. I’ll give you the models of the tubs we have in stock so they can bring it up with the paint.”
“Service with a smile!” Delia crowed.
“Service with a profit,” my father grumbled.
I couldn’t hold back my laugh.
* * *
“I need to run down to the truck to grab a wrench,” Garrett said. “It’ll just take me like ten minutes.”
I waved him off. “I have one more wall to paint here, so go and I’ll be done by the time you get back.” I really wanted to get this bathroom finished. That Garrett’s brother and his friends had demolished and put the walls back up on the bath in just one day had me shocked.
Maybe we wouldn’t be sleeping on the floor the whole three months we were here.
Patrick and his buddies were going to be back tomorrow, bright and early to get the toilet and sink in and finish the tub. I’d forgotten that the bath had to be built around the tub.
Thank goodness for local supply stores. Vladimir was so accommodating—but there was something about him that also spoke of a snake oil sales man.
Maybe his hardware store was his way of staying honest.
Garrett’s feet retreated through the house and down the porch, and I desperately threw myself into getting the last wall coated with the waterproof undercoat.
Basically, because I didn’t want to think about Garrett too much.
Another night in his bed. I was weak. He had been right, though—I didn’t have a set a mourning period for anything. I felt like he was the right man in the right place for me to take my healing to the next step.
The next step was apparently wanton requests for sex bent over his vanity in the bathroom.
Aaaaaand, there was the panty-drencher. I couldn’t keep my libido under control around him. I didn’t know if I wanted to. I know I didn’t have to. He wanted me as much as I wanted him, so it was so much more than nice.
I heard footsteps in the living room and glanced at my watch. Garrett hadn’t been gone two minutes. He’d probably forgotten his keys.
The deafening howl from that room changed my mind instantly.
I froze.
Garrett knew the coyotes had been around all day and he never would have left the door open. How the hell did it get into the living room?
I leaned the paint roller on the wall, trying to make no noise. The handle touched the ground without a click and I held still. If the coyote was in the living room, they might not see me in the bathroom. I went to reach for the door, and—
Remembered they had taken the door off.
Shit.
I had to get out of the bathroom. I had to put something between me and the wild animal. Like several miles. But a few walls and doors would do.
My sneakers were quiet on the floor, but as I looked down the hall to the back door, I knew I had to be extra careful. The floorboard creaked and popped loudly in the middle of the day. At night, it would be like the blitz if I stepped on one.
I pressed my back against the wall out of sight of the living room and slowly rounded the corner. With the utmost care, I walked step by step down the hall, letting my whole foot settle before I took another step.
I got all the way to the back door and had it open, when the hinge screamed and squealed.
That was that.
I yanked it open, jumped outside, and slammed it after me. The body of the animal slammed against it. Barely in time. I turned and ran off the porch as it raised a huge howl from the inside the door.
I meant to run around the house, toward the truck down the road, but as soon as I turned the corner, I pulled up short.
The coyote pack was there, stalking toward me.
“Garrett!” I screamed his name at the top of my lungs. “Garrett!”
They stalked closer. I tossed a look over my shoulder, and there was nothing behind me that I could see. I angled myself toward the woods and was really glad I was wearing my sneakers.
One of the coyotes in the front lunged.
I didn’t wait—I turned and ran like the bat out of Hell in to the dark woods there. I wasn’t going to hang there and try to fight them off.
I couldn’t see much. It was dark, but the moon was up. I pumped my arms and legs as hard as I could, jumping logs and dodging trunks. The ground was impossible to see for all the undergrowth.
Someone had lied when they said that nothing but pine grew in Alaska. There were all kinds of shitty vegetation obscuring my run.
I could hear the pack all around me, smashing and destroying the underbrush with me, and I could see the foliage shaking as they passed.
A horrible realization slid over me.
They were toying with me. This was a game for them. I was merely a human who couldn’t run and couldn’t see in the dark of the night through the Tongass pines.
I was dead.
I pulled up short, stopped running. I found a branch in the underbrush and slammed my back against a thick, ancient tree trunk.
“All right, you furry fuckers. I’m not going down without a fight. Come get me!”
The rustling circled me. Yips and barks filled the air, pulling in the pack. I waited, patiently. I hoped they were fast and took me down throat first. I could bleed out in just thirty seconds if they hit my jugular.
It would be the best way to die.
One single coyote walked toward me. The one with the stripe on the side of its head. The one Delia had said looked like the guy at the bar. Snarling and drooling, he stepped on silent paws toward me.
“This is Brandy Yéil’s land! You don’t get to claim it. This is her house and her land, and you can all go to Hell!”
The coyote stopped. Its eyes were almost human, and I could believe that it cocked its head at me, considering me.
“That’s right. Yéil.”
I shouted the words again. I didn’t understand why the name was important, but it was.
Shaking its head, it snarled again and crouched back. He was going to pounce on me and kill me.
I pulled back the branch.
This wasn’t going to go well.
Just as the coyote left the ground, a blur of white and gray fur blasted out of the undergrowth. It intercepted the coyote midair and threw it forty or fifty feet away from me.
The blur of fur landed nearly soundless on its own paws, just a few feet away.
A giant wolf.
Correction. A fucking huge wolf.
Five foot at the shoulder, head as wide as a serving platter.
And he was coming straight at me.
At least a wolf would make a better story in the afterlife.
Instead of wrapping those massive jaws around my head, he sniffed my head, then my neck, then sat down next to me on the ground, facing the coyotes that still wandered the underbrush.
A deep, rumbling woof emanated from the massive animal, clearly an understated threat. Two of the coyotes lunged forward in response, but the huge wolf batted one away and caught the other in
its jaws in midair.
Shaking the smaller animal with dangerous intent, the wolf tossed him back to the pack that hid in the foliage.
“Go! Get out of here!” I couldn’t believe I was being this brave, but the wolf was clearly on my side. “You saw what he can do!” I pointed in the direction the first coyote had been tossed.
Two more coyotes advanced, but the wolf moved between me and them and let out a growl. Deep, threatening, and there was no understated threat this time.
The coyotes backed up, but never dropped into submissive. They were only leaving because this massive beast was standing in front of me.
He sat again, pressing his furry, warm flank against me. We stood like that until the last of the yips and barks and rustles of the forest were taken over by the silence of the nearly full moon and the small creatures that normally scurried through the trees.
I slid down the bark of the tree and landed squarely on my ass in the dirt. I was still holding the stick, and suddenly had a ridiculous image of me tossing the stick for the wolf to catch.
He sat down next to me. All the way down, tummy on the ground, forepaws out. He cocked his head and whined at me, then licked my face.
I had a wolf friend.
Go to Alaska, Brandy said. We can relax, Addi said. It’ll be fun, Delia said.
And here I sat with a fucking wolf after being attacked by coyotes.
Fuck Alaska.
My hand found the wolf’s ears of its own violation and scratched just behind them in the plush, rich fur.
“I’m petting a wolf. I’m petting a fucking wolf. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the camel.”
The wolf chuffed.
He sounded like he was laughing.
I covered my face with my hands and tried to re-center myself. The damn wolf laughed at me again and I scrubbed a hand over my face, then stared at him. “You cheeky bastard.”
Then, I witnessed the most shocking thing I had ever seen in my entire life.
A shimmer ran down the wolf from nose to tail, and behind the shimmer the fur started to recede, and the whole body of the wolf started to change. It reshaped, pulling in its snout, shortening its forelegs, relocating its ears down. The head shrank, the torso narrowed, and the legs reshaped into human legs.
The last thing that went were the teeth and the claws.
And Garrett sat there, naked.
“You know I’m cheeky.”
I launched myself away from him, hard, dragging the branch with me. I was trying to scramble to my feet to run the hell away from this nightmare, but I tripped over the damn branch and hit the ground, face first.
Garrett’s hands were on my shoulders. “Are you okay?”
“Get away from me!” The words shrieked through the forest and I tried crawling.
“Jess, stop, stop.” Garrett’s hands tightened and held me in place.
I wasn’t going to be held down by anyone. I jumped away from him with as much strength as I could muster, dragging the branch with me.
“Stay away from me.”
“Jess, please…”
I swung the branch at him and hit him on the shoulder, forcing him to stagger to the right. Swinging it all the way around again, I nailed him in the side, slipping under his raised arm.
“Jess!”
I came around the other way with the branch and aimed for his head.
He knew what I was doing, and I saw the wolf in his eyes at that moment. His hand wrapped around the limb I was swinging at him and halted it dead in the air. With barely a flick of his wrist, he jerked it out of my grip and flung it away from us.
My hand secured quite a few splinters and I yelped from the pain.
He looked pitiful that he had hurt me. He put his hand out as if I were a wounded animal—irony?—and just walked toward me a bit. “Take a breath. Christ, please breathe before you pass out.”
I hauled a breath in and tried to let it back out slowly, but it had other ideas and rushed out.
Next thing I knew I was on my hands and knees hyperventilating.
There, next to me in a flash, rubbing his hand up and down my back, Garrett mumbled calming words and I finally started to catch my breath. I turned my head and looked at him.
“You’re naked.”
“Well… that happens around you.”
“Fuck off.”
“Come on, sit down. Take it easy.” I heard him chuff like the wolf had. “I did this wrong.”
“Paint fumes.”
“What?”
“I inhaled too many paint fumes.”
He pulled me against him on the ground. I was shocked at how warm he was, naked, but his broad chest was a support I needed at that moment. Even though I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on.
Chapter Seven
Well. I fucked that up.
Even though Jess was leaning against me, I could feel her trembling and smell her fear and confusion.
I had been halfway back to the truck when I heard her scream my name, and the yip of a few of the coyotes. I didn’t have time to run after her in human form. They were after her and I needed all four paws to catch up.
Jess was fast, but not fast enough to outrun the coyote exiles.
I managed to yank my pants off before breaking into my own run and shift. I lost my underwear, socks and shoes in the mess, but I’d be able to save the pants when I got back to them.
For once.
Roland had just lunged at my mate when I caught him midair and tossed him away. I knew I knocked him out, and he was probably still lying where he hit.
Jeron and Fuller also tried to charge her, and my wolf did not like that after that last warning. I swatted Jeron out of the air and grabbed Fuller by the neck. I didn’t want to kill him, so I just shook him and threw him back like a puny fish.
I thought that showing Jess my secret right then was a good idea.
Sometimes, I was a real idiot.
Even after a hundred eighteen years.
“I fucked a wolf.”
“You’re great for the ego, you know that, Jess?”
“Ego? You’re worried about your ego when I’m a participant in goddamn bestiality?”
“Jess, I’m as human as you when I’m human. There’s nothing unnatural about it.”
“Unnatural? You’re a wolf.” She studied me for a moment. “You saved me.”
I nodded, not wanting to say anything else, lest she want to crush the rest of my ego or my actual balls. I just let her panic again for what seemed to be an hour but was probably more like five minutes.
I opted to break the silence.
“Are you feeling calmer?”
“Am I dead?”
“No?”
“Then I must’ve fallen asleep in the bathroom with all the paint fumes screwing with my brain.”
“No, babe. You didn’t.”
“Work with me here, Garrett. I couldn’t have just seen that happen.”
I turned her in my lap. “You did see it. I’m sorry. I thought you’d be okay about it.”
“You were a fucking wolf! Of course I’m not okay about it!”
She was hopping mad, which was better than fearful, but not as good as I’d hoped.
She inhaled a few times. “This shit doesn’t happen in the real world. This is paranormal romance crap. This isn’t something a Northwestern graduate candidate encounters.” She stared at me, eyes wide and shining in the moonlight. “I’m a scientist, for God’s sake.”
“Well, you saw for yourself…isn’t that observation?”
She stilled. “You’re really a werewolf?”
“Mm, wolf shifter.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Werewolves were cursed to their form and are beholden to the moon. They aren’t as common as simple shifters.”
“You left out wolf.”
I sighed. “Jess. I’m naked and there’s dirt in my butt crack. Can we go find my jeans and talk about this at my house?”
Her eyes traced my features in the moonlight. Jess was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, and it seemed to go right down into her soul. She was smart, polite, sweet, curvy, willingly sexual—
—and there went my dick. Sticking its head up where it wasn’t really appropriate.
“Are you seriously sporting a chubby?” she asked.
“Yeah, sorry about that. You just… do that to me.”
“To you or the wolf?”
“Same difference.”
She shrunk back. Wrong answer, moron. A century, and I couldn’t handle women.
Well, this one was different.
“I am the wolf and the wolf is me, Jess.”
“So did I sleep with an animal?”
“I’d like to think so.”
She rolled her eyes and stood from my lap. “Well, at least you have a man’s sense of humor and shit timing.”
I climbed to my feet and turned to her, dusting off my bare ass. “I am naked and erect, with dirt on my balls and possibly a rock lodged in my ass. I have screwed this up beyond my own comprehension. So, forgive me for being a little flippant about what’s going on.”
Blinking a few times, Jess seemed to reassess our surroundings and swallowed hard. Her eyes landed on my cock, and she pursed her lips.
“Let’s find your pants.”
I let out a breath. It was something.
“Thank you.” I offered my hand out to her. “Come on. I see better in the dark and I know about where I tossed them near the truck.”
We walked in silence for a few moments, when a giggle escaped her. I glanced back, and in the next instant she burst out laughing.
“What?”
“You didn’t just Hulk-bust out of the pants?”
I let out breath. “I was all pleased with myself that I managed not to this time.”
“This time?”
“It’s a bad habit.”
Jess doubled over in laughter. It was high and hysterical, and I knew it wasn’t all just about me Hulk-bursting out of pants. She was hysterical from everything that had just happened to her in the space of fifteen minutes.
I pulled her to me and wrapped my arms around her, holding her carefully.
She burst into tears as her cheek touched my chest.
“They were going to kill me!”
There was the freak-out I was really waiting for. I couldn’t even comfort her with a ‘no they weren’t’ because then I would have to qualify it with what those sickos were going to do, the imprisonment being the least of it.
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