Canadian Wolf (Paranormal Nocturne Romance)

by Linda O. Johnston

  He’s the one man she can never trust...

  Sergeant Major Owen Dewirter lives every day with the guilt of having let a shifter hurt one of his own. Now he’s being forced to work beside Alpha Force newcomer Selena to train a new covert unit of shifters for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and stop a rash of serial kidnappings. Can Owen ignore his prejudices—and his fantasies—about his sexy new partner and do his job?

  When their passion ignites in the remote Canadian woods, the tension between Owen and Selena puts the joint mission in jeopardy. Can they learn to trust each other while tracking the enemy? Or will a cunning foe lure them into a dark and deadly endgame?

  She didn’t even think about resisting...

  When their mouths met, the whole idea of conducting research on her own to avoid him flew from her mind, even as she pulled him even closer.

  His hardness against her was irresistible. “Owen,” she whispered against his mouth.

  “Good thing we’re in your bedroom,” he said hoarsely. “Or was this why you came in here?”

  Despite herself, she laughed a little without pulling back very far. “Believe me, I came in here to avoid this.”

  “Nope, I don’t believe you.” He softened his words by deepening the kiss.

  Selena moaned against him, even as her most sensitive body parts warmed and tingled in anticipation.

  But though she still reveled in her memories of the last time despite recognizing what a bad idea it had been, having sex with Owen again would be an even worse idea...and it was absolutely foolish to even contemplate it here.

  Linda O. Johnston loves to write. While honing her writing skills, she worked in advertising and public relations, then became a lawyer...and enjoyed writing contracts. Linda’s first published fiction appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and won a Robert L. Fish Memorial Award for Best First Mystery Short Story of the Year. Linda now spends most of her time creating memorable tales of paranormal romance, romantic suspense and mystery. Visit lindaojohnston.com.

  Books by Linda O. Johnston

  Harlequin Nocturne

  Alpha Force Series

  Alpha Wolf

  Alaskan Wolf

  Guardian Wolf

  Undercover Wolf

  Loyal Wolf

  Canadian Wolf

  Back to Life

  Harlequin Romantic Suspense

  Undercover Soldier

  Covert Attraction

  Visit the Author Profile page

  at Harlequin.com for more titles

  Canadian Wolf

  Linda O. Johnston

  Dear Reader,

  In Canadian Wolf, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are determined to end serial kidnappings of wealthy executives of major companies and their family members. They believe the hostages are being held in a wilderness area between Canada and Alaska. All planes and drones attempting to confirm that location are sabotaged, but wolves and falcons can come and go at will.

  That’s why the special covert US military unit Alpha Force is contacted. The RCMP is forming the Canada Alphas, its own police unit of shape-shifters, but needs the guidance—and special shifting elixir—of Alpha Force.

  The chosen leader of the CAs is Sergeant Major Owen Dewirter, a dedicated, experienced—and sexy—RCMP officer who happens to believe in, and dislike, shape-shifters. The first Alpha Force team member to arrive in Canada is wolf shifter Lieutenant Selena Jennay. Despite their differences, these two must fight their sizzling mutual attraction as they work together with the CAs to try to rescue the latest hostage.

  Please visit me at my website, lindaojohnston.com, and at my blog, killerhobbies.blogspot.com. And, yes, I’m also on Facebook.

  Happy reading!

  Linda

  My special thanks to my wonderful agent Paige Wheeler of Creative Media Agency, and to my delightful Harlequin editor, Allison Lyons, who have been so fantastic in helping to keep the stories of Alpha Force an ongoing miniseries.

  Thanks, too, to writers Leslie Knowles and Ann Finnin, who read my manuscript and gave me some great revision ideas.

  And as always, thanks to my amazing husband, Fred, whom I always acknowledge in each of my books because he inspires me.

  Like my other Alpha Force Nocturne books, Canadian Wolf is dedicated to shape-shifters and the readers who love them.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Excerpt from Dragon’s Promise by Denise Lynn

  Chapter 1

  “I’m still so jazzed!” said Lieutenant Rainey Jessop, clasping her hands under her chin. “Working with Mounties. This’ll be so much fun!”

  Lieutenant Selena Jennay sent a wry smile toward her aide. Rainey had been excited from the moment the two of them had first been given this assignment—yesterday. As for herself, she was skeptical. She’d reserve judgment until she better understood the players in this new mission.

  She took a seat across from her aide at the table in the small meeting room with gray wallpapered walls, the secluded area to which they’d been shown after arriving at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s northwest Vancouver facility. Her cover dog, Lupe, a canine who resembled a mix between a wolf and a husky, lay beside her.

  She glanced at Rainey. “Do you think it’s more fun than working with shapeshifters?”

  Rainey looked momentarily shocked, a rare occurrence for the outgoing and chatty young woman. “Hardly. But I’m going to get to work with both Mounties and shapeshifters. Amazing!” She paused, and her smile morphed into a frown as two men in white shirts and blue pants walked into the room. “Although I’d hoped that we’d get to work with Mounties in their gorgeous dress uniforms and tall hats,” she added under her breath.

  Selena and Rainey rose to meet the men, smoothing down the camo uniforms of Alpha Force, the highly covert US military unit to which they belonged. Selena’s light brown hair and Rainey’s darker brunette locks were both pulled back tightly into clips.

  “Good morning,” said the first man to enter. He appeared middle-aged and had short white hair. Walking around the oval wooden table to where Selena and Rainey now stood, he held out a veined, long-fingered hand. “I’m Anthony Creay, deputy commissioner of the RCMP’s general policing services.”

  Then he was the head of the group who’d contacted Alpha Force, Selena reasoned. “Hello, sir,” she said, shaking his hand. She introduced both Rainey and herself. Then she let her gaze drift to the other man.

  “Sergeant Major Owen Dewirter,” he said, proffering his hand for a shake, too. “Also with general policing services.”

  And most likely the man with whom they’d be working over the next few weeks, Selena figured. The other guy was his superior officer and probably just wanted to make sure things got started well.

  “Which one of you is the shapeshifter?” Owen asked. The sergeant major had a distinctively handsome face, with brilliant blue eyes beneath strong brows that matched his short, wavy black hair. His nose was aquiline, his chin broad with just a hint of a beard
shadow.

  Yet judging by his unreadable expression, Selena had the impression that he wasn’t overly fond of shifters. Did he even believe in them? That wasn’t clear, at least not yet.

  “That would be me,” she said in as mild a tone as she could muster, considering her initial bout of irritation. She could be wrong. She didn’t know the guy, let alone how RCMP members thought or acted. He might be attempting to impress his superior officer by remaining emotionless.

  “How fascinating!” Anthony did indeed appear fascinated. He stood behind a chair at the opposite side of the table, his eyes wide, his mouth slightly open. “I’m pleased that you’re here to give us a close-up demonstration.”

  “Yes. About that.” Rainey drew their attention as she sat down again. Her movement caused Lupe, who’d stood up as the humans did, to sit as well. “We’ve discussed that and are not sure about the best way to handle it. You see, we need a bit of privacy. Actually, Lieutenant Jennay needs a bit of privacy,” she amended. “I’m her aide, and I’ll be with her, but a shift requires that someone, er—”

  “I’ll be nude,” Selena interjected. She remained standing for now, her arms crossed. “That’s why I have a female aide. We use a special proprietary elixir, and we will make some available to the shifters you have recruited into the new RCMP team that we’re to train. When the rest of our Alpha Force team arrives tomorrow or the next day, they’ll include a male shifter or two. They may be more amenable to being observed by men when they change. But although you can definitely see me once I’ve shifted, you unfortunately can’t watch me shift.” She found herself looking straight into Owen Dewirter’s still-unreadable gaze. “Too uncomfortable for me. And I don’t like to feel uncomfortable.”

  “I see.” The words were drawn out slowly by Anthony Creay as he sank down into a chair across from the two women. And clearly, to Selena, the point was that he could not see. Not everything. “Nude? I didn’t consider that—but I believe that observing a shift was part of our understanding. So we would be sure of the genuineness of the help we’re getting.” As he scowled, his fleshy lower lip protruded.

  Owen took a seat beside him, then exchanged glances with his superior officer. When he turned back to Selena, he had a decided frown on his face, too. “We need to work something out here,” he said. “We have to watch the process to be sure you’re a real shifter and not just trying to put something over on us.”

  His pronunciation of the word out—with an almost long O sound—emphasized that he was Canadian. But his accent wasn’t the only difference between them. He wanted her to get nude in front of him for her demo shift? Not gonna happen. Even though he was one great-looking guy. The thought of him observing her body as she stripped sent waves of heat through Selena that made her feel as if this meeting was on the hottest summer day in the US South instead of a cool evening in the Canadian West.

  Was this whole thing primed to be a fiasco? Selena hoped not. She and Rainey were here representing Alpha Force and, since they had been in the western United States and were therefore the closest of those in their unit who had been selected to help the RCMP form their own similar unit, they’d been ordered to Vancouver to give a small and limited demonstration.

  Limited being the key word.

  Even Lupe must have sensed the tension in the room since she stood beside Selena and whined. Selena reached out and hugged the wolf-dog closer to her.

  “Here’s the thing,” she said to the men in as reasonable a tone as she could muster. “Let me introduce you first to my cover dog. Lupe, this is Deputy Commissioner Creay and Sergeant Major Dewirter.” She scratched Lupe behind the ears in a manner that caused the dog to turn her head toward the two men, not that Lupe, a genuine canine, could understand her words. “Gentlemen, this is the canine who looks a whole lot like me when I’m shifted. The way I figured we’d do this demonstration is for Rainey and me to go into another room. You can keep Lupe with you and lock the door to the room. With Rainey’s help, I’ll shift. Then when you unlock the door there’ll be Rainey inside with a canine who looks a whole lot like Lupe. Voilà! That’ll be me, shifted. There’ll be no other person in the room. With doors locked and all, there’s no way we’d be able to do this without it being the real thing.” The very suggestion that they’d try to pull a scam on representatives of a national police department that had requested their help really peeved Selena.

  “But we understood we could see the actual shift take place.” Creay’s tone was icy.

  Selena glanced toward Rainey, who looked uneasy and bewildered. Well, she needn’t be. Selena was in charge here, at least for now.

  “I understand your wish to see the process, gentlemen,” she said. “Maybe you’d have been able to if you hadn’t requested Alpha Force’s presence so urgently. You said you needed at least our initial representation within one day. We were the closest team members available. So here we are.”

  “I recognize that,” Creay retorted. “But we don’t have any extra time, either, to wait—or to deal with a situation where things aren’t as represented to us.”

  “Are you accusing us of lying?” Selena hated to be confrontational, but their attitude was forcing her into it.

  “We’re not accusing you of anything.” Owen’s voice sounded placating, but his expression remained unreadable. “We just want to ensure we’ve got what we were promised by the US military.”

  Selena wanted to make good on that promise, too, for the sake of Alpha Force. She took a deep breath, then said, “Look, we want to cooperate with you—but certain things are nonnegotiable. If you don’t feel you can trust us, if you think we’ll play some kind of hoodwinking, magical game even when you can watch to make sure the room stays locked—well, maybe we’d better just leave right now.”

  Selena saw Owen glance once more into the angry face of his commanding officer. Then Owen looked directly toward Selena. “Okay,” he said. “We understand your concern, and I hope you understand ours. Our mission is highly important. And...well, it’s probably no surprise to you that not all people believe in shapeshifters. We just need—”

  “Do you believe in them?” Selena glared as if daring him to say that who she was, what she did, wasn’t real.

  “Yes,” Owen said quietly, planting his arms on the table in front of him and leaning toward her. “I do. But this is all new to Deputy Commissioner Creay and he has his doubts.”

  Interesting, Selena thought. Creay’s position was that of the majority of regular people. But the sergeant major was a believer. How did he know the reality?

  Well, if he was the one who’d be working with them, maybe she would find out. Or not, if things continued to deteriorate.

  He leaned in closer toward Selena, and his confrontational posture made Lupe tense up and growl. Glancing at the dog, he backed up slightly. “We seem to be at a stalemate. I’ll be with you at the headquarters of the new team we’re forming. But Deputy Commissioner Creay won’t be with us. He’s going back to our headquarters in Ottawa when we’re done here. I may be able to watch some of the male shifters change then, but he needs to see you shift now.” His expression changed then from demanding to something Selena couldn’t interpret at first. Challenging?

  Could be, considering his next words.

  “I’ll tell you what, Lieutenant Jennay. If you strip and show us your change, I’ll strip right along with you. That way we can both feel uncomfortable, not just you. Although I have to admit that I’m just a normal human being.”

  Selena blinked in surprise at his outrageous offer.

  Normal? She doubted that. The idea set her body on fire, and it was all she could do to prevent herself from letting her gaze slide down his fully clothed body toward the area she really would like to see nude.

  But was he serious? Or was this some kind of additional challenge? “That’s not—” she began.

  “Not necessary,” Deputy Commissioner Creay interjected. Selena drew her gaze away from Owen and focused on Creay.
His expression had calmed a bit. “I trust the people I spoke with at Alpha Force, and I’ll trust them more after one of us gets to observe a shift. But that’s apparently not going to happen now, so why don’t you do your shift, as you suggested, inside a locked room. We’ll check out the room before you enter and then monitor the shift from the outside. For now, that should be fine.”

  Selena gave a sigh of relief that the face-off had now been averted, even as she continued to watch Owen Dewirter. Now his eyes, too, were unreadable.

  What would he do if she told him that she accepted his offer to strip bare?

  No matter how much she liked the idea on some level—like, deep inside her now-blazing body—she wouldn’t agree. Handling her shift the way she had already described was the best way to go. It should satisfy them. This was an RCMP facility. Where would Alpha Force find another dog that looked like Lupe and be able to sneak it in?

  Besides, she was aware that others in Alpha Force sometimes used this method of shifting in a secured room to prove to nonshifters who—and what—they were, and she hadn’t heard of any problems resulting.

  But all she said was “Fine. So...shall we get started?”

  * * *

  Owen Dewirter observed Selena from across the table—for the moment, at least—as she stood.

  Maybe he’d been way out of line with his suggestion. It had been impulsive. But it had also been born out of irritation and a need to end their impasse.

  Owen hadn’t wanted to strip here—although the idea of seeing Selena Jennay nude definitely stiffened a certain part of his body. But he also knew Anthony Creay well enough to be certain that his superior officer didn’t like to be denied anything he believed he was entitled to.

  This way, Anthony wound up making the decision—a good thing, and probably the only way to make the superior officer stand down. And now what Lieutenant Selena Jennay had proposed had become acceptable. She would shift without a male audience.

  She would shift, though. He didn’t actually doubt that she was a shapeshifter.