Lone Wolf_Tales of the Were

by Bianca D'Arc

  “Does this happen a lot?” He wanted to escape, but he felt compelled to know more about this strange woman and her incredible gifts.

  “Whenever it’s important. When She feels the need to get Her message directly to those who need to hear it.” She sat up straighter. “Since I’ve been living out here, She’s had a way of directing specific people to my door that She wants to have a chat with. I figure that means the message has to be pretty urgent, for Her to go to such lengths. But it’s all good. She put this whole thing in motion. My presence here, in the middle of nowhere, is all according to Her plan. My ability to channel Her words is a dangerous gift. I’ve been targeted before. I’ve been chased, hunted, trapped and nearly killed more than once. Living way out here seems to be the best alternative of the choices available.”

  Josh understood about being hunted. His problems had started more recently than hers, but he had a great deal of compassion for the life she must have lived until now. Being a target sucked. Big time.

  Deena tried to get up but swayed a bit too much on her feet. She would have fallen except Josh moved as fast as his inner animal allowed, to catch her once again.

  “Sorry,” she whispered, looking up at him. The moment seemed to stretch as their gazes met…and held.

  This time, Josh ignored the little voice in his head that told him this wasn’t a good idea. He lowered his mouth to hers, meeting her soft lips in a gentle kiss.

  Why in the world had he thought this wasn’t a good idea in the first place?

  She tasted like heaven and fit perfectly in his arms. He’d noticed that before, the first time he’d had to catch her. She just felt right. As if in his arms was where she belonged. Always.

  Whoa. Dangerous thought. But it didn’t seem to matter. Not as long as his lips were on hers and she was all yielding softness in his arms.

  Deena lost all sense of the world around her for those moments when Josh’s lips touched hers. It wasn’t like the warm nothingness she felt when the Goddess borrowed her body. No, this time, Deena was fully present, fully involved in the moment, but her focus had narrowed down to just the two of them. Josh’s strong body close to hers, their lips touching, their mouths opening…consuming…combining.

  It was heaven. Or, at least, as close as one could come while still on Earth.

  She liked the stroke of his tongue and the taste of him. A little wild, a touch exotic. Shifter…and intense magic. She felt his power tingle along her skin, their energies feeling each other out on the magical level while their bodies got to know each other on the earthly plane.

  Each connection drew them nearer. She could get drunk on his kisses, though his magical energy nearly singed her senses with its intense, incredible, absolutely stunning power. But it wasn’t a power that could hurt her. Quite the contrary. His power seemed to intensify hers, feeding it, helping it grow.

  Now wasn’t that interesting?

  This had never happened to her before. It felt like the fey in her own background was reaching out to caress—or be caressed by—the fey magic in him. There was a hum where their power joined…and meshed. Compatible on a level most beings wouldn’t even recognize, much less experience.

  Wow. A sizzle of reactive magic made her pull away, as if a little jolt of benign lightning had just struck the spot between them. She could feel the residual electricity against her exposed skin and smell the faint odor of ozone between them.

  “What the hell was that?” Josh murmured, his gaze still half-lidded with pleasure but rapidly growing aware of the hint of danger that had just sparked between them. She could see the predator in his eyes, and for the first time in her life, she was attracted to the wildness in a man’s soul.

  She’d known her share of shapeshifters, but as much as she loved helping defenseless animals, the predators that shared the shifters’ spirits had never done anything for her. Oh, they were handsome enough. All shapeshifters seemed to be blessed with impeccable physiques and chiseled features. But she’d never been tempted to get this close to one of them before.

  Maybe it was that Josh was only half-shifter. Then again, the wild wolf in his eyes right now seemed to speak to her on some unconscious level in a way no other shifter predator ever had. Maybe it was just Josh. Maybe he was the key. The reason for the attraction was the man himself…in all his complexity.

  “Our magic is compatible on a basic level, but there are differences,” she explained, drawing farther away from him once she felt steady on her feet. “There are bound to be sparks when any two magic users get as close as we just were. Physical proximity intensifies the reaction of my magic brushing against yours. Believe me, it could’ve been a lot worse. In general, we’re a lot more compatible than most.”

  “If that’s compatible, I’d hate to experience incompatibility,” he said, shaking his head as full awareness returned. She felt a dash of feminine pride that her kiss had been able to muddle his keen shifter senses for even that small space of time.

  She had to chuckle at his words. “Explosions are not unheard of,” she told him.

  “I’d say that was pretty explosive just now,” he mused, his mouth turning up at the corners in a bad boy grin that made her insides quiver. He was just too handsome. Josh was appealing in almost every way. And his magic meshed well with hers. What were the odds?

  She tore her gaze away from his and moved around him, heading for the kitchen. She needed a glass of water. Or maybe she could just dunk her whole head under the open tap. Just for a minute or two. Maybe he wouldn’t notice the steam coming off her skin or the flush on her cheeks.

  As she filled a glass at the kitchen sink, she glanced out the window, noticing the pony cart just visible along the edge of the cornfield. Little Grace had come to visit with her black and white pony, Mergatroid, clopping along at a jaunty pace. The pony was small. Not as small as a true miniature horse, but not the size of what most people thought of as a pony. His attitude, though, was as big as any of the much larger carriage horses that shared the family barn.

  Deena smiled, watching them approach.

  “Company?” Josh’s voice came from behind her.

  Drat. How was she going to explain his presence to Grace? For it was a certainty that Grace would carry the news back to her mother, and within a day, it would be spread all over the surrounding farms. The Amish were masters of the grapevine, even without telephones.

  “Yeah. The youngest daughter from a neighboring farm. She comes around sometimes to visit my animals and learn about healing them. She brings me patients sometimes too. Sweet kid. And her family is a kind one.”

  “So I get to try out my Cousin Josh from North Dakota disguise?”

  She met his gaze, finding amusement sparkling in his eyes.

  “It’s worth a try,” she said, wondering if Grace would accept the story. Innocent as she was, she wasn’t ignorant. She’d probably see the attraction sparking between Deena and her supposed cousin.

  “We can be kissin’ cousins,” Josh whispered near her ear.

  When she turned to swat him, he was already halfway across the kitchen, heading toward the guest room she’d given him. Good. Maybe he was going to put on a clean shirt.

  “Try not to say anything unless we have to,” she called after him. They might get away without too many questions from little Grace this time, but Deena was sure the next time she ran into one of her neighbors, there were going to be a lot of questions to answer. She only hoped she knew what to say when that time came.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  When Josh stepped outside a few minutes later, he found himself smiling at the scene before him. The little black and white pony basked in Deena’s attention while a young girl in Amish dress, who must be Grace, talked in quiet tones, working to unhitch the happy pony from the small cart.

  Josh approached cautiously. He didn’t want to spook either the animals—for he could scent more than just the pony as he drew closer—or the females.

  “Grace, this is my
houseguest, Joshua,” he heard Deena say. She hadn’t turned, which meant she was becoming as aware of him as he was of her. Interesting.

  The girl looked up, surprise on her face. Wide blue eyes met his, and he tried to look as unassuming as possible. He didn’t want to be the ogre that went around scaring little girls.

  “Josh, this is Grace and her pony, Mergatroid. They live on the next farm over. Grace’s father and brothers run a dairy herd, and they’ve sent me a small patient. Would you give us a hand lifting him out of the cart?”

  Josh had scented the calf in the back of the cart and moved around to peer down into the small compartment. Sure enough, there was a little black and white calf with what looked like a broken leg. Josh shook his head. To his admittedly limited knowledge, such an injury wasn’t something most people would even try to heal on this kind of animal.

  Nevertheless, he scooped the calf into his arms as gently as he could and walked over to the barn, placing the little guy where Deena directed, on a pile of soft straw. The Amish girl trailed behind them, saying nothing.

  Deena got right down on the floor with the calf, running her hands over its shaking body. She frowned a few times, but after a thorough examination, she looked up, her gaze skipping from Josh to Grace.

  “Can you help him?” Grace asked in a piping voice that fit her small body.

  “I think so. But it will take a long time before he can walk properly on this leg. He’ll be missing his mama, and his mama will be missing him too,” Deena said softly.

  “Oh, no,” Grace answered. “His mama died in the accident that hurt his leg. My father said if you wanted the calf, you could have him. The injury was beyond him, and he said to leave the calf’s fate in the hands of the Almighty.”

  Deena nodded solemnly. “We are all in the hands of the Divine,” she agreed. “I will take in the calf and do my best to help him heal. If it is the Almighty’s will, he will live. And you can come visit him anytime you like.”

  That put a smile on the girl’s face. “Oh, thank you, Miss Deena. Thank you for taking him in.”

  Deena nodded, smiling. “It’s all right. Do you want to help me set the bones?” Grace scrambled into the box stall and eagerly knelt at Deena’s side. “Josh, would you bring me the red nylon bag from the tack room and a bucket of clean water from the spigot?”

  Josh went off to fetch and carry, bemused. He spent the next hour doing whatever Deena asked while she patiently taught Grace about how to set bones. She was a good teacher and a good doctor. She did her best to calm the skittish calf, and it lay docile while she worked on it with the medical kit Josh had fetched.

  At one point, Josh looked up to find Mergatroid standing next to him at the entrance of the stall. He looked for all the world as if he was watching how the treatment was progressing before wandering off to snatch a bit of hay with his teeth from a small stack near the door. Other animals approached, though none got as close to Josh as the fearless pony. All the barn residents seemed interested at one point or another in what was going on in the formerly empty stall.

  A short while later, the calf’s leg was set, and Grace bounded up, clicking her tongue to attract Mergatroid’s attention. The pony acted more like a faithful dog, prancing up to Deena for a pat on the head when she exited the stall. Mergatroid followed Grace back to the small homemade cart that sported bicycle tires and was custom made to the pony’s low height.

  “I have to get back. I’ve got chores still to do,” Grace explained as she hitched the eager pony to the cart. Mergatroid was already heading towards home when Grace jumped aboard the cart, waving as she went back the way she’d come, over the grass tracks between cultivated fields.

  Deena came up beside Josh, watching the young girl and the perky pony take off.

  “Well, that did it. Every neighbor in the valley will know you’re here by tomorrow night,” Deena observed.

  “But I thought the Amish didn’t have phones?” Josh asked, turning toward her and seeking her gaze.

  She smiled at him. “Who needs phones when you have a professional grade grapevine? You’ll see. We might get a few visitors tomorrow. The neighbor ladies will probably drop by with innocent excuses to check you out and see if everything is in order around here.”

  “In order?”

  “That we’re not living in sin or getting up to ungodly hijinks.” She chuckled as she said it, turning back toward the barn.

  “And what if we were?” Concerned, he followed her into the barn and over to the stall where the calf was now resting comfortably.

  Josh stopped short when he saw the resident cow, Maisy, had found her way into the stall and had lain down behind the calf, so it could snuggle against her warm, furry side. Deena’s animals were really something. Independent thinkers with a compassionate streak that was pretty obvious if you observed them for a while.

  “I don’t want to get you in trouble with your neighbors, Deena,” he told her in a quiet voice, not wanting to disturb the bovine bonding that was taking place a few feet away.

  “It’ll be fine,” she said. “Just be polite and stay outdoors, working. Woodwork is preferable. They respect men who know carpentry. The Amish never stop working, and they appreciate industriousness in others. I’ll handle the nosy questions.”

  Josh was silent as Deena moved back into the stall to check on the little calf. He left her to her healing work and decided retreat was the better part of valor at the moment.

  They dined together in her kitchen that evening. The meal was plain but bountiful, and Josh realized Deena must have gone to some trouble to prepare so much food. He saw the way she lived. Simply. She kept a huge kitchen garden and seemed to live off the land. She’d told him the neighbors kept her supplied with things she couldn’t produce herself, and he saw evidence of that on the supper table.

  He was certain, for instance, that she’d never had one of her animals butchered, but there was a big roast in the center of the table. She’d probably served meat knowing his wolf was a predator and therefore a devout carnivore. He had the impression that she hadn’t put the roast out for her own benefit, though she did eat a small slice.

  Her thoughtfulness once again humbled him, but he didn’t know how to thank her without making things awkward between them. Scratch that. More awkward between them.

  Ever since they’d kissed, that was almost all he could think about. Kissing her again. Taking it a little farther this time…if she’d let him.

  After dinner, Deena went out to the barn to see to the animals and check on the calf before dark. Josh offered to help, but she politely declined. He had to work off some of his restless energy, so he decided to shift and take a prowl around the perimeter of Deena’s property as night fell in earnest.

  He had about an hour to kill before the moon would rise. He’d be sure to circle around to the standing stones just before so he could keep his promise to join Deena for the full moon ceremony she’d invited him to earlier. He figured he’d go in his furry form, since the pull of the moon made it harder than usual to keep his human shape. He could participate in the ritual in either form, so it didn’t matter much to him.

  Though, if he was being honest with himself, going in wolf form was a bit of a test for Deena. So far, she hadn’t really seen him in his fur. Oh, she might’ve glimpsed him prowling out of the yard the night before, on his way to do a perimeter check, but she hadn’t confronted him about it. He wasn’t sure she would be entirely comfortable with the stark evidence of his dual nature, but if he was going to get involved with her any deeper, he had to know if his wolf side was going to pose a problem.

  He didn’t really know why it was so important, but it was. He could learn from anyone willing to teach, but if he was going to get involved on a more personal level, he didn’t want there to be any question of her acceptance of his wolf. For not only was his human mind nearly consumed with thoughts of kissing her again, but his wolf half was starting to have very serious thoughts about the futu
re. With her. A future where the wolf ran in the cornfield behind this very farm, hunting unseen prey—or anything that might pose a danger to Deena. The wolf was feeling protective. Very protective. And more than a little possessive.

  The thought should have frightened him, but it didn’t. In fact, it felt right. Comforting. Almost inevitable.

  The wolf was thinking…mate.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Deena hadn’t seen Josh since just after dinner, but she knew he was around. She could feel his presence in the woods that hid the stone circle from casual observance. The magic infused into the earth in this place was mostly what kept non-magic folk from seeing it, but the surrounding trees did their part as well.

  Deena came out just before the moon was set to rise and felt the stones welcome her as they always did. She felt lighter within their sheltering circle, yet also more grounded to Mother Earth. It was a bit of a paradox, but it also made a perfect kind of sense to her magical perceptions. She went about her preparations as usual. There wasn’t much she needed inside the circle. In fact, she could do this ritual just about anywhere, with no props at all, and it would still be valid and true.

  The fact that she’d been gifted this sacred spot when she’d been granted guardianship of this land—however temporary—meant that she could do more. A lot more, if the occasion warranted it. For tonight, however, she would keep things simple.

  A chalice of pure water. A lit candle, the flame dancing merrily into the cool evening breeze. Her athame—a dagger-like knife inscribed with powerful runes of magic and protection—and a few other things. Some herbs, salt, a few small semi-precious gemstones. She placed all these things around the stone circle in places of honor and power, keeping the chalice, candle and blade with her in the center, on the low slab of living rock that served as an altar stone.