Half Wolf

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  “Michael asked you to watch over me?”

  “He is concerned.”

  “Are you older than Michael? I get that impression, no matter how much courtesy about adhering to a neighbor’s wishes passes between you.”

  “Older by a few years. Nevertheless, age has nothing to do with how we treat an Alpha in a different territory.”

  “I see.” She was beginning to view the shape of more of the rules these Weres lived by. “And the bad ones? The bad Weres? Like the old clichés, they are evil and ignorant?”

  Dylan said, “Some of them merely choose to ignore the things the rest of us believe are good for Weres as a whole.”

  “Does that apply to the guy you chased here?”

  “Unfortunately, Chavez is the worst of the lot. He kills Weres and humans alike, going out of his way to do so.”

  “Weres never kill other Weres?”

  “Not if they want to live for very long among us.”

  Kaitlin leaned against the wall. “You police your own kind?”

  “Seems like every damn day.”

  She saw that Dylan was tired, and changed the subject. “On your way in, did you pass the guy who left here?”

  Dylan’s eyes met hers with a strong, intense gaze. “Someone was here?”

  “Yes. Minutes ago.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. Whoever it was didn’t speak to me, but left when I asked him to, so I figured he had to be all right. One of the good guys.”

  “Scent?”

  “I couldn’t tell. Maybe I’m not ready to detect some of the nuances.”

  She witnessed a flash of apprehension in Dylan’s eyes. “Well,” he said. “Can’t be too bad, then, if whoever it was behaved.”

  She might not have been one hundred percent up on scent, and yet Kaitlin sensed Dylan was lying about his thoughts on that. Like Michael, Dylan didn’t want to frighten or upset her further. He tried not to overtly sniff the air in order to get a whiff of her visitor, but the action was uniquely Were and hard to camouflage.

  Dylan’s long fair hair swept across his shoulder, almost platinum in color. His eyes were light. His skin was a mild golden tan. All the Weres she had met were beautiful. She wondered if all the bad guys would look like the fiend in the library, and also wondered how much these friendly Weres knew about the depth of her feelings for Michael, her growing ability to read other Weres and what had gone on tonight when she and Michael were alone.

  “I’m aware of most of what goes on around me, as most Lycans are,” Dylan said. “I’m not here to point a finger at anyone, for any reason, since my mate was human not all that long ago.”

  Dylan offered her a brilliant smile and a further explanation. “Reading other Weres is a degree of telepathy that saves us a lot of time and repeated conversations. That ability is stronger when we’re in wolf shape, though it never disappears completely.”

  He smiled again—a nice, earnest smile. Charming.

  “Your mate,” Kaitlin said. “If she was human, doesn’t that mean you broke the rules?”

  “It means exactly that,” Dylan replied. “Some of us have found that love usually wins in the end, and over everything else.”

  He waved a hand at the room. “Now, would you like to share something to eat, or do I really have to earn my keep by avoiding the kitchen?”

  “Earn your keep by keeping me in your sight?”

  “That was the task assigned to me. However, if I don’t get something to eat soon, we’ll have to worry about my partner, Dana, coming here to see that I do.”

  “She keeps tabs on you?”

  Dylan grinned. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Kaitlin looked to the door. “Capable or not, Michael might get hurt out there.”

  “I doubt a Were or two can get the better of a Michael and Adam team. Michael seems to have a good handle on what goes on around here.”

  “Does that include the mysterious black curtain in the park?”

  “Do you know something pertinent about that?”

  “It doesn’t scare me the way the vampires do.”

  “That’s curious, since it rubs everyone else the wrong way.” Dylan glanced over his shoulder. “Can you tell me anything else about your visitor here tonight?”

  “Afraid not, other than that the room seemed cooler when he was in the doorway, as though he’d left the front door open.”

  “You said he. The visitor was male?”

  “That’s just the impression I was left with.” She pointed to Dylan’s nose. “What do you perceive?”

  He didn’t have to reply, Kaitlin supposed, but he did. “There’s a lingering scent of nature. Trees. Flowers. And straw. No species I know of smells like that.”

  Another chill wafted over Kaitlin. Those were the same things she had smelled. Trees. Grass. Open spaces. She had dreamed of those things, and had placed Michael in the dreams. The fact that Dylan had sniffed them out and, as experienced as he was, didn’t have a conclusion to the question of who those scents belonged to, was disconcerting.

  Expecting more of an inquisition from this tall blond Were, Kaitlin was surprised when she didn’t get one.

  “Do you think you might find the kitchen while I have one more look around?” Dylan asked.

  “Then we can have a nice chat at the table while bad guys and vampires threaten the town?” she volleyed.

  “The first thing to learn about vampires,” Dylan explained calmly, “is that daylight isn’t their friend. That much, Hollywood got right. As for the other bad guys, we have that covered for now, and will remain vigilant.”

  Kaitlin glanced to a shuttered window. Dawn had a distinct taste that coated the back of her tongue. Daybreak wasn’t too far away, and she couldn’t wait to see the sun.

  “Hell of a day,” Dylan agreed. “Michael will be back shortly. For now, we do the best we can to ensure that we’ll be ready if a call to action comes. That readiness includes fuel. So, how about it? Kitchen?”

  Kaitlin closed her eyes. “I can’t.”

  “You’d be surprised by what the smell of a good sandwich can do. If that won’t entice you, it would be nice if you’d keep me company until my friends arrive.”

  “All right,” she conceded. “I can rustle something up for you. I need to keep busy. I hope you’re not disappointed though.”

  “In the company?”

  “In my lack of kitchen skills.”

  *

  “It’s not so easy to hide a pile of bones,” Adam Scott said, staring at the heap of them on the grass. “I guess we could always throw these back.”

  “They did this in seconds,” Michael mused. “Unless they have a different sense of time than we have, and the two time frames don’t align. That’s about as possible as anything else that’s gone on here tonight.”

  Adam kicked at a femur bone with the toe of his boot. “Dylan mentally included me in your earlier conversation, Michael. I just wasn’t sure where this thing was. Another layer of the world was how one of your friends described this place, right? I have to admit that it’s been a long time since I personally have encountered something completely new.”

  “As a cop, I thought you’d have seen it all.”

  “More than I would have cared to see, believe me. But the real world has nothing on the supernatural one. That’s where the truly interesting stuff is.”

  Adam absently touched his scar before continuing. “I thank whoever counts as being thankable that most of the people in this world don’t yet know what goes on beneath their focus.”

  Michael pointed to Adam’s scar. “Chavez did that?”

  “Not himself personally. The wily bastard put me in the ring with a bunch of hyped-up, drugged-up, drooling monsters. That was my first sight of werewolves, my first inkling that they existed. It was also my crude initiation into the moon’s cult.”

  Michael shuddered to think of how that had gone down. “You survived.”

  “
Tory, whom I had met prior to that incident, raced to the rescue and called in the good guys. That’s how I lived to see another day.”

  “And your life changed,” Michael said.

  “Yes.” Adam’s hand dropped from the scar on his face. “While a maniac named Chavez got away.”

  Adam moved another bone with his foot. “Got a big bag handy? There are a lot of bones, and I’m guessing we can’t just leave them here.”

  “We can wrap some of the bones in my shirt.” Michael began to unbutton as he studied the black curtain. “I don’t suppose we can thank whoever is back there for taking care of these two idiots, or that they’d want to hear anything from a couple of werewolves.”

  “I don’t suppose they would,” Adam agreed. “This might have another meaning altogether, you know.”

  “A warning? Our visitors showing us an example of what they can do?”

  “We can’t rule it out.”

  “Then why don’t they come here and finish us?” Michael asked.

  “Who’s to say they won’t if we stand here long enough?”

  When nothing jumped out at them to make that suggestion a reality, Michael spoke again. “You can take the bones back and dispose of them. I’m not leaving this spot, in case some unsuspecting human stumbles in.”

  “What if it stays here permanently?”

  “We’d have to post a red flag. Seriously, I don’t think it will remain.”

  “You think this, why?”

  “Sooner, rather than later, we’re going to have to find out exactly what it is, and what they want. We’re going to have to deal.”

  “By bringing Kaitlin here?”

  Michael opened his shirt. “If I have to.”

  “Okay.” Adam looked down. “I’ll cart some of these things away. You can bring the rest with you.”

  They kept their eyes on the black curtain as they scooped up the bones that made the bad-guy tally two less than before, hoping this would cramp Chavez’s style. When they were done Michael sensed yet another Were’s approach. Adam didn’t have to intervene. This scent was now familiar to Michael.

  “Go,” Tory said to Michael with her eyes on Adam, the mate she had played a big part in rescuing, much in the same way Michael had rescued Kaitlin.

  Tory understood longings and needs. She also had seen what Kaitlin could do to a glow factor. No doubt she had been listening in on the Were hotline and heard about what they were facing here, as well.

  “Go to Kaitlin. I’ll stay here,” she said, waving a hand to ward off any protest. “Perhaps, if hybrids aren’t their cup of tea, they’ll like me. If not, I hope whatever comes out of that black hole tastes good.”

  There was something to be said about a tough Lycan female with a sense of humor, Michael decided as he helped Adam hoist the detritus of a branch of their bloodline that had gone bad.

  He would have liked to spend downtime with all of these Miami Weres, and vowed to do that one day if things in Clement got settled. He would take Kaitlin, as Tory suggested. Having already met three members of that pack, Kaitlin might be at ease among them. Since Tory and Adam were accepted by the others in the Landau compound, he and Kaitlin also stood a chance. It seemed that the Miami pack didn’t mind too much about breaking old Lycan rules.

  He’d also take Rena, Cade and Devlin. He would see his father after two long years spent in Clement, which he told his father were designed to form a small pack of his own.

  He had chosen misfits for his pack-mates—humans who had been bitten and turned and now were in need of a family. He had helped to ground Rena, Dev and Cade, explaining about the species they were now part of. That had turned out well. He had found a home among them.

  “Is Tory this fearless and formidable all the time?” he asked Adam as the street came into view.

  When Adam smiled, Michael took that for a yes.

  *

  “I have questions,” Kaitlin said to Dylan. “Before Michael gets here.”

  Her bones still ached. Being in Michael’s house gave her feelings of comfort that she feared might not last long if there was going to be a war between species in Clement. Daylight, arriving soon and welcomed, would eventually turn into night, with more action for the pack and more surprises for her.

  She was sorry she used to think that school was boring.

  “Wouldn’t it be better for Michael to hear what you want to ask?” Dylan said.

  He laced his fingers together, which seemed to her such a normal thing for a werewolf as powerful as Dylan was to do. He had polished off the sandwich they had made in record time. Weres had fast metabolisms, Michael had told her not long ago. She had made Dylan another sandwich, and toyed with her own.

  “No. He’ll be…” she started to say.

  “Preoccupied? Tired?”

  Kaitlin nodded. “And you’re…”

  “Not involved, other than in my hunt for Chavez,” Dylan said before grinning sheepishly. “Sorry. I’m used to thinking ahead of people. It’s part of my job as a DA. When we’re around other Weres the telepathy process speeds up. Please excuse me for finishing your remarks, and go on.”

  Kaitlin drew in a breath, failing in her attempts to make sense out of all of this. “The visitor who came here tonight might have been looking for Michael.”

  “Possibly,” Dylan said tentatively.

  “You believe this person came to see me?”

  “I think that’s more likely.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d have any idea why.”

  “I do. And so do you, Kaitlin, if you think about it. You’re not what you might have seemed to be all this time, and others are taking notice of the changes.”

  “This visitor wasn’t Were, and if it had been a vampire, I wouldn’t be sitting here. Plus, Michael mentioned that vamp and Were blood don’t mix, in terms of wanting to suck some of mine, so I don’t get what the appeal might be for the vampires.”

  She eyed Dylan soberly. “Do you believe that visitor came from behind that curtain in the park?”

  “I’m almost certain of it,” Dylan replied.

  She had to take a few seconds to ponder the meaning of that, shook up by the adamancy of Dylan’s reply.

  “Michael thinks so, too?”

  “That makes the most sense,” Dylan explained, “given that the curtain appeared very near to the place where you were originally attacked.”

  Kaitlin glanced at him. “You know about that, too?”

  “Michael hardly thinks about anything else, and beams his fear that you might be harmed again.”

  Michael was taking on the world for her.

  “Given that vampires don’t like wolf blood, why would they be after me now?” she asked. “Do you have a theory?”

  “That’s a big question mark, isn’t it, and why we’re leaning toward believing you must also be something of a delicacy to them.”

  Kaitlin shuddered. “Delicacy? Why? What are the beings that live beyond that curtain?”

  “As frightening as it might sound, there has been a suggestion that the Fey species lie beyond that black veil, and that you could be one of them.”

  Yes. She had heard this and had to at least consider it.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” she said. “I’m lucky to be here at all, and am breathing only thanks to Michael. I’ve been over this and can’t come up with any explanation to suggest that the hypothesis about being connected to that thing in the park is true.”

  Dylan moved his plate to the side. “Maybe these others sense that you were hurt and have come to see for themselves. Wolves can perceive when a pack-mate is in trouble from quite a distance away. This could be true of your…”

  She didn’t let Dylan finish that statement, and turned the tables on mind reading. “My species? That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it?”

  “I wonder why you don’t know about that, and about what else you might be, other than like the people you’ve been living among. It’s fairly c
lear that you are connected to that dark spot somehow.”

  Her protest was vehement. “I was beside that curtain tonight, and no one came from behind it to confront me.”

  “I believe you might have been a wolf at the time,” Dylan reminded her. “That shift might have been enough to confuse the issue and postpone a meeting.”

  Damn it. Did everyone know about her transition tonight? Weren’t werewolves able to hold any secrets sacred, and keep things to themselves?

  On the other hand, Dylan wasn’t treating her any differently than he treated the others in Michael’s pack. He showed no sign of prejudice against another species that didn’t have fangs…as far as they knew. Dylan was calm and rational when she wanted to scream.

  “I don’t understand how I shifted,” she said, modifying her voice so she wouldn’t come off as hysterical. “I think Michael drew that part of me to him.”

  She didn’t add that she also believed her transformation might have been sexually sparked, and that her emotional reaction to Michael at the time had been overtly passionate and possessive.

  “That thought was personal. Sorry.” Kaitlin avoided Dylan’s watchful scrutiny.

  “It’s all personal. You can learn to block certain thoughts with practice.”

  She glanced at Dylan again through half-lowered lashes.

  “That’s often how this wolf mojo works,” Dylan explained. “Wolf calling to wolf is a powerful lure that rivals the call of the moon in many of us. Lycans are particularly susceptible to emotions trapped in the body. In this case, however, becoming a wolf might have saved you from becoming something else.”

  A cold feeling came over Kaitlin, because Dylan could be right in believing that whoever had brought that dark spot here had come to see her. They might have been surprised, confused and angry with her shape-shift. Maybe they hadn’t recognized her. If they had truly come for her, that is. And if she was half something else, and that half was like them.

  “Just who the hell are they, anyway?” she asked.

  Kaitlin felt the twitch of her own anger rising over her ongoing ignorance. The heat caused by her tremors began to chase the chills away.

  “All I have to do to prove any of this is to go out there and knock,” she said. “Questions would be answered pretty quickly.”