Falling for a Wolf Box Set

by Mac Flynn

  I snorted, but didn't attempt to open the bag. "All right, but can you at least tell me what's in it?"

  She smiled and shook her head. "I won't spoil the surprise. From what you've told me about your adventures I'm sure you'll find out soon enough."

  I wasn't sure whether to thank her or curse her for jinxing us. "Um, thanks, Mom," I replied. I tucked the bag into my larger one.

  Dad stepped in front of the door and turned his attention to Adam. "I did as you asked and placed a call in to the local car rental place. It should be ready to pick up when we get there."

  Adam bowed his head. "Thank you for your help."

  Dad scoffed. "It's not you I'm helping, it's Chris. I don't want her any deeper into this mess than she is."

  "Dad," I scolded him.

  "This isn't a fun adventure like you'd read in some book. This is real, with foes who could really hurt you," he insisted.

  "Dad, this isn't my first run-in with werewolves, remember? I told you about the other times," I reminded him.

  "That doesn't make this time any safer," he countered.

  Mom placed a hand on his shoulder and her calm voice soothed my dad's worries. "We should go, dear, otherwise it'll be dark before they leave the county."

  Dad harumphed, but pulled his keys out of his pocket and turned away to face the door. "You'd better protect her with your life. . ." he mumbled.

  "Always," Adam promised.

  Chapter 4

  We piled into the old station wagon and Dad drove us into town to the local rental car business. A smiling employee and a sleek, four-door sedan awaited us.

  My dad pulled out his wallet to pay the fee, but Adam interrupted his plan. "I will pay for the car to avoid any trace back to you," he offered.

  Dad paused and frowned at my fiance. "I'll pay for it to ensure you're extra careful with both the car and my daughter," he insisted.

  "Dad," I hissed.

  Adam smiled and bowed his head. "A very wise idea. I will bow out."

  I sidled up to my dad as he paid the bill and folded my arms across my chest. "I know what you're trying to do," I whispered to him.

  "I'm trying to keep you as safe as I can. That's what fathers do," he told me.

  I sighed and patted him on the shoulder. "I'll be fine. This'll be over in a couple of days, a week tops, and we'll come back to eat your food and watch you mercilessly tear into some machinery."

  That got a smile on his face. "You'd better because Old Greg happens to have a four-wheeler he doesn't want any more. Something about it not running. I might be able to-"

  "-make a mess of the engine and give the parts to someone who can use them. I know the drill," I teased.

  "Good, so you'd better be there for the operation. I can't do it without my surgeon's assistant," he insisted.

  I snorted and gave his shoulder a hearty shake. "I'll be there."

  "Chris, we must be leaving," Adam called to me as he stood by the driver's door of the rental car.

  "Coming." I returned my attention to my dad and jumped onto him. He wheezed when I gave him a big, strong hug. "Just a few days. A week, tops," I whispered into his ear.

  "I'll be waiting," he promised.

  I slid off him and hurried to the car. I didn't want my parents to see the tears in my eyes. It was never easy leaving those crazy two, but this time it was extra hard to force myself from their warm, protective embraces and into the arms of Madam Danger. I slid into the backseat because the two front ones were occupied. I leaned forward between them and glanced at Adam, the driver, and Cain, the front passenger.

  "How come I'm not driving? I always drive," I wondered.

  "We are more familiar with the way, and should something happen I want you to hit the floor," Adam explained.

  "Comforting thought," I quipped as we pulled out of the lot.

  I turned around and waved at my parents through the rear window. Dad cupped his hands over his mouth. "Look straight ahead and put on your seatbelt, young lady!" he yelled at me.

  I snorted, but did as I was commanded. We bumped onto the road and sped our way northward along one of the busier state highways. Traffic was light because of the mid-morning hour, and the gray skies were nonthreatening and promised to remain so for the rest of the day. I leaned my back against my seat and sighed.

  "So anybody know any good car games?" I asked the pair ahead of me.

  Cain turned his head so one side of his face was towards me. There was a small smile on his lips. "You seem very relaxed for a dangerous mission such as this."

  "It's my defense mechanism. I act brave until I accidentally shoot someone," I quipped.

  Cain chuckled. "You seemed very brave handling the werewolf and the three drug dealers," he commented.

  I raised an eyebrow. "How much did you see spying on us?" I leaned towards him and looked him in the eye. "You didn't peak into the cabin at any time, did you?"

  The man coughed and looked ahead. "Perhaps more than I should have seen, but my propriety forced my eyes away at the intense moments," he assured me.

  I was not assured. Actually, I took a hold of the headrest atop his seat and yanked it off. "You sneaking, disgusting, perverted old wolf!" I yelled, and proceeded to beat him with his own headrest.

  Cain raised his arms to protect himself from my blows. "I sincerely apologize! Mercy! Uncle!" he pleaded.

  "I am trying to drive!" Adam reminded us as he veered us from one side of our lane to the other.

  I stopped my thrashing on the old werewolf and sullenly sat back in my seat. "He deserved that. . ." I muttered.

  Cain straightened in his seat and smoothed out his filthy clothes. He looked to Adam with a ghost of a smile on his lips. "I can see why you chose this human as your mate. She is as feisty as you are," he commented.

  I raised the headrest in both hands and glared at him. "Feistier," I corrected him.

  "You still have yet to inform us how you found me," Adam interrupted my little fun.

  Cain shrugged. "Like I said before, I kept tabs on your whereabouts, or the general area of them, and I knew you always kept your first name whenever you changed identities. I merely asked around the local general store for those in the area and your name came up in the conversation."

  I frowned. "Wait, so you're the guy Agnes warned us about? The one asking who lived up in the mountains?"

  "Guilty as charged," Cain admitted. "I watched your adventures with the drug dealers. It was a very-well, electrifying experience watching you both outmaneuver them."

  "And that wasn't enough to prove to you Adam could help you?" I asked him.

  Cain shook his head. "I needed to know how well he could handle our kind, thus the new recruit. I knew the online papers would sniff out the sensational story faster than a werewolf on the trail of a deer, and my intuition was correct. That, and I did happen to put in a call to your employer giving them a hint of the story," he admitted.

  "So if you've been around that long how come Adam hasn't smelled you?" I wondered.

  Cain raised a clothed arm and I wrinkled my nose. "My clothes are infused with natural aromas so I could blend in with the environment. That is how I alluded capture, and how Adam wasn't made privy to my presence."

  I waved a hand in front of my nose. "I can smell why."

  "Does Judge Hawthorne's men still surround the manor?" Adam spoke up.

  Cain pursed his lips. "I have no conclusive evidence, but his policy is to maintain control over a crime scene until the crime is solved."

  "Even after two months?" I pointed out.

  "Even after two decades," he told me.

  "That guy has the patience of a saint," I commented.

  "And the tenacity of a devil. If he finds our trail he will stop at nothing short of exposing the existence of werewolves to capture us," Cain warned us.

  With that gloomy information we retreated into our own thoughts. Mine had images of us being led to an execution platform with hanging nooses, so I forsook th
inking and glanced out the window. The white world of winter passed by in blurs of deep snow, and the farther north we traveled the higher grew the piles along the road. The outside air grew chilly and I was glad to have packed a pair of long underwear and an extra sweater.

  Several hours later we found ourselves approaching a gas station. "We will stop here for a moment," Adam announced as he pulled us into the pump area.

  "Good. This old bladder of mine isn't what it used to be," Cain commented. He jumped out and scurried for the convenience store attached to the filling station.

  I leaned forward between the two front seats as Adam shuffled through his wallet for his credit card. "So how far until the fun starts?" I wondered.

  "If my memory recalls, and I haven't been there in many years, we should arrive tomorrow. That is, if we don't meet with resistance from the weather or the judge and his deputies," he told me.

  "And how dangerous are these deputies? I mean, if they attacked us would we be dead?" I asked him.

  "Perhaps. Judge Hawthorne is without mercy, and surrounds himself with like companions. If they see we will not be taken they could decide they would rather drag us dead to Hawthorne then have us escape."

  I cringed. "Nice guys."

  His soft eyes swept over me and he pursed his lips. "Do you regret coming?" he wondered.

  I snorted and waved my hand at him. "And let you have all this fun? No way. I want to see if these werewolf deputies know kung fu or ninja moves."

  Adam smiled. "Werewolves have little use for dexterity when our strength is so great," he reminded me.

  "So no ninja moves?"

  "Not likely."

  I sighed and slid backward so my back hit the rear seat. "Well, a girl can hope. Anyway, you think your old mentor really didn't attack this guy in a drunken rage and kill him?"

  "Positive. I have known Cain to become argumentative when he is intoxicated, but not to the point of violence. There must be something more to this murder than we are seeing," he mused.

  "So all we have to do is get past a bunch of Disciples, a Judge, and the weather to snoop through a large old house for clues to a two-month old murder?" I guessed.

  "Exactly that."

  I snorted. "Oh, is that all? And I thought this was going to be hard."

  Adam stepped out to fill the car, and Cain stepped inside after relieving himself. He half-turned in his seat so he could look at me out of one eye. "I have yet to congratulate you two on your coming marriage. It can't be easy to tear yourself from the prospect of such happiness to help a strange old werewolf."

  I shrugged. "We've been through this before. Well, sort of."

  Cain smiled. "You must love him very much to trust him to contain his wolf side. He can mark you at any moment and the life that you would know would be gone."

  I snorted. "There isn't much there except my parents and my job, and I can live without the job."

  Cain dropped his voice, and there was a tinge of sorrow in his words. "But a human life is a very precious thing. To grow old with your peers and experience the same joys and cares. That is something we of great age have difficulty sharing. You would know the same if you became as we are," he warned me.

  I frowned and leaned forward so my arm draped over the back of his chair. "I don't know what you saw peeking through windows and listening in haylofts, but I'm not going to leave Adam. Werewolf or not, I want to be by his side until one of us kicks the bucket."

  Adam opened his door and slipped into his seat. His eyes flickered between us. "Is there a problem?" he asked us.

  Cain chuckled and shook his head. "Not at all. I was just discussing your future marriage plans with Liz."

  Adam raised an eyebrow. "And?"

  "And you are very fortunate to have found such a human. She will make an interesting addition to our small community, if you will allow it," Cain told him.

  My fiance pursed his lips together and started the car. "That is still to be decided."

  Chapter 5

  We drove down the road and the farther north we drove the more the cleared pavement iced over. Ten miles from the gas station I noticed Cain and Adam stiffened at the same time. They sat up and tilted their noses up to sniff the air. I coughed to hide my laugh. "Found something, boys?" I teased.

  Cain looked to Adam and his eyes were narrowed. "Pull over."

  Adam pulled the car over onto a maintenance shoulder and they stepped out. I whipped my head between them and scrambled for the driver's door. "Hey, wait for me!"

  Adam's face appeared at my window. "Stay here. You will only get wet."

  The pair crossed the road and dove into the deep snow in the ditch. "Oh hell no. Not this early. . ." I muttered as I opened the door and slid out. Literally.

  The maintenance area was plowed so there was a thin sheet of packed, slick snow on the ground. My feet were swept from under me and I clung to the door to keep from falling. Maybe this wasn't such a great idea, but as the men waded farther into the snow my stubbornness rose. I clenched my jaw, gathered my feet beneath me, and pushed off from the car. I slipped, slid, and ran in place a few times, but a few seconds later I was at the border between the road and the great white abyss of snow.

  Adam turned and noticed me. "Stay there!" he commanded.

  "Yeah, that'll happen the day after you change me," I quipped as I took a tentative step into the ditch.

  It was impossible to tell the depth, so I tumbled face-first into Adam's path. I arose sputtering snow and with the sound of Cain's chuckle in my ears. "Your fiancee is as stubborn as you are, Adam," he commented.

  "Unfortunately, more so," Adam replied.

  "Damn right!" I crowed as I waded through the snow after them. I reached them and proudly stood before the two bemused werewolves. My pants and shirt were wet, I was cold, but by god, I was with them. I waved at them to continue. "Come on, move along. What are we waiting for?"

  Adam sighed, but there was a ghost of a smile on his lips. "We have reached the spot we sought."

  I blinked and whipped my head left and right. We stood in a small patch of emptiness twenty yards from the road. Ten yards ahead of us was a wilderness of trees, and all around us was unbroken white stuff. "Um, very scenic," I commented.

  "And very informative," Cain spoke up. He pointed at a small depression in the snow. "Werewolf tracks."

  I squinted at the indent and noticed there was a line of them like footprints. "That's what you guys smelled?" I asked them.

  Cain nodded. "Yes. I smelled the same scents when they arrived at the manor during my-ahem, quick exit. They traveled through here only last night, and a fresh skiff of snow covered most of their tracks."

  "So are these the deputy guys?" I guessed.

  "Yes, and they are farther south than I hoped," Cain mused.

  "Meaning what?" I asked him.

  "Meaning they may be on my trail, and that is a greater danger to all of us," he explained.

  I turned back to the car and wrapped my hands around my chilly arms. "So what are we waiting around here for? Let's hurry up before-before-achoo!" My sneeze was powerful enough to fling me back. A pair of strong arms caught me, and I sheepishly looked up into Adam's face. "Before they find us."

  "And before you catch your death of cold," he added.

  "That, too."

  Adam and I made to leave, but Cain paused and swept his eyes over the white snow. His eyes narrowed and he frowned. "There is something amiss here. I can't see where one trail leads-"

  Snow exploded upward and outward as something broke the surface some ten yards from us. A tall, beautiful woman stood waist-deep in the snow. I thought she wore a golden fur coat until I realized the fur was attached to her body and poked out through her cloth coat. She was beautiful with her long blond hair trailing down her back like a mane, and her skin smooth and chilled from the snow. Her yellow eyes, as cold as the snow from which she'd come, glared at us. Her gaze stopped on Cain.

  "Cain Dayton, I am Miranda, depu
ty to Judge Gideon Hawthorne. The judge demands an audience with you. You will come with me," she ordered him.

  Cain stepped back. "I'm afraid the judge will have to make an appointment himself, and my schedule is quite booked at the moment."

  "This is not a joke. You are accused of murder, and the penalty for being found guilty is death," she reminded him.

  Adam stretched out his arm in front of Cain and frowned at the woman. "We wish you no harm. We travel northward to find proof of Cain's innocence."

  Miranda scoffed. "His guilt is already established. It is now only up to the judge to fulfill the role of jury and see that justice is served."

  "He would only be performing an execution on an innocent werewolf," Adam protested.

  Miranda's eyes narrowed and she crouched down. "If you choose to interfere than I must deal with you all."

  She pushed off from her snowy hole and launched herself at us. Adam shoved me back so I fell into the deep snow drifts. I came up sputtering and was in time to see Miranda fall into Adam. Her hands were outstretched and I saw her fingers were lengthened into claws. Adam, too, had his arms outstretched, and his were longer than hers. He grabbed her coat and fur, and tossed her over his and my head and into the snow.

  Miranda broke from the surface sputtering like I had and her heated eyes could have melted the snow. "You will pay for interfering with our law!" she screeched.

  She was so busy shouting at Adam that she didn't notice Cain come up behind her. He whacked her upside the head with his fist. Her eyes rolled back in her head and her legs buckled. She fell forward face-first into the white powder and a poof of snow rose up around her.

  Adam came over to me and helped me out of my snow pile. When I stood firmly on my feet I pressed my palms against his chest and sweetly smiled at him. "Adam, why did you do that?"

  "To protect you. She could have scratched you," he explained.

  I traced a teasing pattern across his chest with one of my fingers. "So you don't think I can handle myself in a fight?"

  "That isn't-" I didn't give him time to finish before I shoved him backwards. He fell butt-first into the snowy path he'd made, and I towered over him with my arms folded across my chest.

  "I can handle myself, Adam. You just need to trust me more," I growled.

  "It isn't a matter of trust, it's a matter of strength," he argued as he climbed to his feet.