by Ellis Leigh
When the fish was fully cooked and looking delicious, she sat on the chair with the dogs at her feet. Each one received a small piece of fish from her plate, though none of them begged. They simply sat and waited, knowing they’d get something. She knew better than to feed a dog from the table—or counter, as it were—but she couldn’t help herself. The puppers were her babies, her family, and her only friends out there in the wild. Besides, she always had been a dog person, always felt more at home within a pack of furry animals than anywhere else. She liked to tell people that she must have been a dog in a former life, a thought that made her chuckle every time.
“Would you let me into your pack?” she asked, glancing over six sets of sharp eyes and pointy ears. “I think you would. I think you’d be just fine if I had four legs instead of two and fur instead of skin. Even you, Gunner.”
The big gray dog huffed, staring back with his cold, flat eyes. Yeah, he’d accept her. Him simply sitting so close to her was enough to tell her he saw her as one of their own. The other dogs—her sweet Moxie, old man Bert, excited Clara, sneaky Rogue, and lazy Lox—had been much quicker to allow her into their little world. Especially Moxie—the tiny pup had basically jumped into Cassiel’s arms as soon as she saw her.
Dinner eaten and dogs spoiled, Cassiel cleaned up her mess and readied the house for an easy morning. There was no staying up late or early morning alarm clocks in her world—you slept when you got tired and woke when you were rested. The dogs would make sure of the wake-up part better than any electronic device could, though. They were endlessly chipper and excited to be back outside in the mornings.
Knowing the darkness would only last for a handful of hours, Cassiel crawled into her bed, smiling as the telltale clicks and thumps of the dogs taking their places on the soft rug broke the silence. Once they had all settled, she laid her head on her pillow, ready to end one day and move toward another.
She was half asleep—right on that edge between awake and not even close, where she could no longer tell her dreams from her reality—when a call from her nightmares sounded through the range. A cry filled with hunger and cruelty, with deviousness and pain. One she hated above all others.
That sound was a wolf howling to the night sky, and nothing scared her more.
The second howl had the dogs whining, had her pulling the covers up tighter around her to fight the chill dancing along her spine. This wasn’t another nightmare—there was a wolf howling on the range. But she wasn’t alone—she had her six dogs with her. Animals with better hearing and senses than she could ever hope to have. No way would they allow a wolf anywhere near them without creating a cacophony of barking and whining. The wolf would pass—would go about its business in the woods. Would hopefully leave her and her dogs the hell alone.
And if not? Well, she had a couple guns close by that would help her eliminate the threat.
Danger. Wolves meant danger. And she wasn’t about to allow them anywhere near her land.
3
Luc had run all through the short night, searching out the wolf he’d heard howling, but to no avail. No matter how much he hunted, how wide he let his senses roam, no matter how much input he suffered under, the beast was not to be found.
Bones aching and paws bloody, he finally stopped moving as the sun began its ascent in the east. The lake before him sat crystalline and still, the water likely cold but beautiful. Fuck, he’d run to hell and back, ending up far closer to some tiny human town than where he should have been. He’d also led his packmates on that same wild goose chase—Phego and Michaela had followed him. He could sense them easily enough, but they weren’t alone in his head. There were also humans, members of the local native tribe nearby, likely hunting the caribou that migrated across the tundra and Boreal forests of the region, and all of their emotions had been hitting him for hours. The buzz of other minds and souls creating chaos where he craved calm, the feeling of other people’s noise scratching along his spine.
Needing a few seconds of peace and quiet, Luc took a moment to accept the others and simply be. To experience the emotional bombardment from people nearby and absorb it instead of trying to find a way to block it. To lose his own feelings. He stilled and let the world roll on without him involved as he looked over that clear, perfect lake. Observing and not participating. Coming to a stop mentally, physically, and emotionally. The lake soothed him as it always did, something about it calming the hell his mind could become.
It took him several minutes to unearth his own feelings and emotions from under the weight of everyone else’s, but in the end, he found them. And he wasn’t surprised.
Luc was tired.
Above all else, his soul felt weary. Not happy, not excited, not content, not sad—just tired. And not the sort of tired that would have meant he needed sleep—though he really did. This sensation went deeper—Luc felt exhausted all the way to his core. A thousand years was a long time to be alive, and dealing with empathic input for the whole of it only made things that much harder, especially as his ability had grown stronger over the centuries. He needed something to keep him going, to give him a reason to turn down the volume and live just in himself. Maybe that was what this search for the women was—a quest to keep his soul firmly planted on earth. A hunt for something that could help buffer him from the constant attacks. He couldn’t tell anymore.
Phego and Michaela yipped, breaking the silence of the woods to let him know they were coming, not that he needed the warning. Their love for each other preceded them, and the noises of their trek along his scent trail were impossible to miss. They were far from their camp, though, and there was guilt in that fact. Luc had led them out here for nothing. Had brought them all the way to Alaska for this unsolvable quest.
Luc had failed them as an Alpha.
He should have sent them home—sent them all far from him. Kept his Dire brothers and their mates away from his unhappiness and constant struggles and disappointments of late. Alas, his brothers would never allow such behavior. They’d always given him his space, but no way would they let him simply disappear into the wild, never to return. They’d drag him back to Merriweather Fields first, to the president of the NALB. To the man they should be serving instead of babysitting a sick pack and coddling Luc on his journey into madness as he searched for what would likely turn up as nothing. For ghosts.
Instead of moving toward Phego and Michaela, Luc took to his paws and plodded over the hill and in the direction of the lake below. He’d never been the biggest fan of water, having always preferred the freedom of a good forest, but something about this lake called to him. The size of it, the clear, clean water, the mountain in the distance—this area was truly a national treasure and one he loved. The entire Arctic region had intrigued him for a number of years, which was how he’d ended up there in the first place. It wasn’t the mountains or the wilderness that had sung to his soul, though—it had been the lakes. The inland waterways bustling with life. Cool waters that carved their way through the permafrost and refused to be quieted even once frozen over in the winter months. The water had always been a beacon for him, and yet this had been the closest he’d allowed himself to come to any lake since he’d arrived in the region. He couldn’t fathom why.
He worked his way through a small copse of stubby spruce trees, slipping silently across the spongy, mossy ground. Ignoring the world around him and completely focused on the lake ahead. At least until a scent hit his nose, one he recognized but that felt completely out of place. Lavender. Calming, soothing, subtle lavender, which shouldn’t have been growing anywhere near this part of the country.
Luc followed his nose, his pace quickening as other scents came out to play—roses, sage, Calendula. That last one sank him deep into his memories, picking at something from far too long ago to remember clearly yet too distinct to forget. His pack, his first pack when he’d been nothing but a pup, had practically worshiped the orange flowers. An old wolf with magic in her blood had dried them and made
tea and ointments with the petals, a sort of early world pain reliever that he hadn’t been able to find for a number of years. Someone was growing plants out here. But how?
Noisy humans forgotten, mind clear and on a new hunt, he followed the scents, wanting to know the who and how and why of growing those particular flowers and herbs. The how question was answered when he hit a patch of flat land with little spruce trees growing in the sunlight and discovered a structure. A very human structure. There was a shed in the wilderness, blooms of all kinds brightening the small windows on the sides as if some forest fairy had taken up residence there and figured out a way to grow her flowers in the harshest of environments.
Luc stared at those windows for several seconds, letting the colors and scents calm his spirit. He couldn’t resist taking a peek, so he trotted closer and stretched his neck upward, looking inside the steamy windows. Flowers lined every wall, bottles and jars sitting on a far shelf, and something copper that looked like a small version of what moonshiners used to make alcohol rested on a table in the middle. This was no moonshine operation, though—this was a place of healing. He could sense it. He could feel—
“Shoo, beast.”
Luc jumped and spun, nearly growling as a small woman rushed toward him. As fate sucker-punched him square in the gut when he finally saw the person who had somehow snuck up on him. Short with golden skin and dark hair, she sucked the air right out of the sky with her beauty, but it was her peaceful nature, the pure aura of calm around her, that truly set her apart from the rest.
Calm soul…but she looked terrified.
“Get out of here, wolf, before I have to shoot you.”
Luc watched with amusement as the woman scampered closer. Brave little poppet. Something about her appealed to him, something in the way her emotions touched him felt less intrusive than most. Hell, he hadn’t even realized she was coming, hadn’t sensed her out in the woods. Not until she was already right up on him. That alone was enough of an oddity to incite his curiosity. But when she finally met his eyes, when she looked right into the depths of his very being, curiosity went flying into space as fate slammed into his heart.
A bond, a sense of essential connection—a need to be with her and her alone. And yet…
Not.
The woman stood completely motionless, staring back at him with an intensity that seared him from a distance. Not breaking eye contact. The emotions within her—fear, mostly, along with some anger and quite a bit of yearning—danced along his senses, tiptoeing their way into his mind. Not blasting him as he would have expected. His emotions were, for once, stronger than those of others and they were clear—he wanted the little woman.
There was just one problem he could see. The pull from her, the rebounding attraction he’d felt through others including his own brothers and their mates, wasn’t there. But something was. Her feelings weren’t clear, but his were. He wanted to be with her, to befriend her. To care for her. All feelings he’d never experienced before. Especially not for—he sniffed, taking in her scent and verifying his assumption—a human.
But that felt wrong, calling her human. He sniffed again, pulling more of her scent even deeper into his lungs, not catching the notes of a wolf on her at all. And yet, again, there was something. A lupine whisper on the wind that didn’t belong there. A shadow of a beast teasing the air around her. Was she truly human or something else? A shifter of a breed he couldn’t place? A witch or a fairy, as he’d imagined? How was that even possible? All of his brothers had experienced bonds to females and found mates in Omega shewolves, strong creatures with a storied past and a legendary link to the Dires. If this woman was somehow supposed to be in his life, was to be bonded to him in some way, where was her wolf?
Unable to skip an investigation into the creature, he took a single step closer. That movement seemed to break the spell he’d put her under, though. Her eyes grew large, and her heartbeat raced loud enough for Luc to pick up the sound. He’d scared her…badly. Fuck.
The little woman turned and ran, staying in her human form. Not shifting as one of his kind likely would have done. Perhaps she really wasn’t a shifter—wolfless, but not quite human.
Fascinating.
Luc followed at a slow clip, curiosity and a deep need to keep her in his sights winning him over. The woman owned dogs—a number of them. She must have used them for transportation as there were a couple small sleds under a roofed structure at the far side of the fenced enclosure where the dogs seemed to be huddling. Lots of fish, too—dried fish hung under another open building, the telltale lines of flesh hanging from poles along the roofline common in this part of the country. Likely food for the dogs, if he had to guess. She’d built quite the life in such a desolate and aggressive region. He was impressed.
At least until she disappeared into her cabin, only to come back out with a shotgun. That was the moment she went from oddity inflaming his curiosity to someone to get the fuck away from. Not because she had a gun—living alone in the wild, protection from all manner of beastly things seemed a necessity—but because she raised the thing and pointed it right at him.
“I am not losing my dogs to some wolf,” she yelled, bringing the stock of the rifle to her shoulder. Aiming for him. “You’d better get off my land. Now.”
Anger, fear—she didn’t like him one bit. And still, he watched her. Wanting to know more about her and their connection, which didn’t make sense. Something was wrong with whatever bond they had with each other. She wasn’t shifting, not coming toward him, not even locking her gaze on his the way he would have expected had their union been prescribed by the fates. But there was more than that—more than a missing link where he would have expected something else. Her emotions brushed against him but never sank in, something he’d never experienced. He could feel the emotions of other people like punches to his gut, but hers were softer. Gentler. Almost a mystery. Something shrouded in secrecy and unable to penetrate his mind. He liked that. A lot.
But she couldn’t have been his mate—he felt no mating haze or deep, soul-driven bond reverberating off her. He felt his connection to her, but even that seemed weaker than expected. Perhaps all these years of feeling everything from everyone had deadened his own barometer, had overrun his feelings and left him empty. Perhaps she was meant to be another’s mate, not his.
A thought that had his hackles rising and his growl building.
Fine—she was his. But maybe, just maybe, the fates had been wrong. He was definitely hers, but perhaps she wasn’t his.
A one-sided mating? Just what he likely deserved.
But her lack of desire for him was really clear. And if the gun she continued to point at him was any indication, she certainly didn’t seem to be falling into any sort of haze of love. In fact, she seemed to want to kill him.
“I’m not kidding.” The woman pointed the gun in the air and fired once, making his ears practically bleed at the noise. “Get out of here, you giant mutt.”
Mutt? What the hell?
Unable to let this go without knowing what he’d just encountered, he took a step forward. She did not seem impressed with that decision.
“Don’t you even try it.”
Luc never had been good at following orders. He took a few more steps in her direction, keeping his head low. Holding in the growl he wanted to release so as not to scare her any more than he already was. Her dogs began to bark and whine, growling at him from behind the wall of wire. The noise grating to his ears.
The woman stayed in a human form through all of it. Stayed mad, too, and she never let that gun drop even an inch. “You’re not the first wolf to come up here and try to take out my dogs, and you won’t be the last. But unless you want to be buried in the same field those other ones are in, I’d suggest you move on out of here.”
Dead wolves. He was suddenly very aware that Phego and Michaela were close. Too close. This woman—this little wisp of a creature who felt very animal to him but wasn’t shifting—wa
s already uncomfortable with his presence alone. Adding two more might push her over some sort of edge of reason, and he wouldn’t risk his packmates on something as frivolous as his curiosity. He would have to figure her out another day.
Knowing it was time to go, Luc dropped his head even more. Showing his submission for the first time in too many years to count. He was the dominant wolf in any situation, and yet there he was. Creeping away from her like some sort of scared, fluffy forest creature. Ensuring his head sat lower than hers to make her comfortable. He wasn’t even sure she was a shifter—had no idea if she understood his actions—and yet he kept on. At least until he’d crept back enough to have coverage in the larger spruce trees, then he turned and ran away. Moving farther from the silence of her soul even as his wolf wanted nothing more than to stay beside her. A confusing emotional situation for sure.
It took him longer than he would have liked to meet up with Phego and Michaela, mostly because he kept stopping to look back over the lake, to try to pinpoint where that little cabin had been. The shed with the flowers. The dogs. The woman who’d somehow burrowed into his psyche. So yes, too long to meet up with his packmates, but not long at all to shift so he could address them in his human form once he had them close enough.
“There’s a problem.”
Phego shifted human, looking ready to kill. “What kind of problem?”
“There’s a woman in the woods.”
For a long moment, there was a stillness among the three shifters. The type brought upon by the inability to find the words one wanted to speak.
Michaela shifted from her wolf form, breaking that silence. “You found the women?”
“No. She’s not one of them. She’s…” He shook his head, seeking words he was certain didn’t exist in the many languages he’d learned over the years and coming up empty. “She grows flowers.”