However, the joy of the others didn’t appear to be residual spunkiness from their nightly frolic. Instead, their happiness stemmed from Julian’s return. Every person came to him, and he set his hand upon them. A shoulder here, a cheek there, the top of a head, a pat on the back. Once he’d done so, they let out a sigh of utter peace and moved aside so the next supplicant could step forward.
Alex was so fascinated with their behavior and his, she neglected to keep her eye on the sun. Just as the last person was blessed by Barlow, and everyone turned to her, the rays of dawn cast over her face, and she shifted.
Julian waited for Alex to break and run—to burst into the grocery store, the bank, the café and try to find something, anything with which to cover herself.
But to her credit, she didn’t. She straightened from four legs to two, either refusing to be embarrassed by her nakedness or not embarrassed at all. If that was the case, she was adapting to being a werewolf much quicker than most. Even Alana—
Julian frowned. Alana had needed help to adjust; she hadn’t quite fit in. They’d fallen in love while Julian instructed the shy, sweet young woman in the ways of the werewolf world.
He pulled his attention from the past into the present where his people stood naked in the dawn’s hazy light. No one cared. They were pack. They had nothing whatsoever to hide.
“I told you to shift,” he murmured. “If you’d have listened, you could have grabbed some clothes before I called them.”
“I’ll shift when I want to,” she said. “Or when I have to. Not when you tell me to.”
He’d been right about her defying him. And about his enjoying it.
“Besides,” she continued. “They don’t have clothes; you don’t have clothes. Why should I have clothes?”
“Frostbite?”
“I’ll heal frostbite easier than I healed—” She glanced at her ribs. The bruises and the scratches were gone. She met his eyes and shrugged.
His people began to shuffle impatiently. The initial change left them warm enough to withstand the extreme cold. But the longer they were human, the more human they were, and while frostbite could be healed, it would have to wait until the moon rose to do so completely. A day of frostbite on tender extremities would not be a day full of sunshine.
“Everyone welcome Alexandra Trevalyn,” he said. “Alex. She is one of us.”
He felt her swift glance. Had she thought he would reveal her past? If his pack knew she was the hunter who had killed his wife, they would kill her.
If he’d wanted her dead, he would have ended her himself. Before he’d made her a werewolf.
Everyone moved closer, welcoming her. Pack members were touchy-feely, and that made Alex uncomfortable. Julian crossed his arms over his chest and watched as she tried not to squirm.
A sudden insight stunned him. He had not planned to bring her here. Therefore, he had not brought along the serum that would allow her to touch anyone but him in human form. Which meant she should now be writhing on the ground in agony along with everyone who had touched her.
“Enough,” he barked.
His people turned to him in surprise. Welcoming a new pack member meant getting to know their scent, their touch, and letting the new member get to know yours. They believed Alex had taken her medicine, as they all had. So why was he stopping them?
Since he couldn’t tell them that something very strange was going on, he chose to tell them nothing.
“Ella.” Julian addressed the oldest female in the pack—a dark, thin Frenchwoman who appeared the same age as Alex but in truth had narrowly escaped the guillotine during la révolution. “See that she gets settled.”
Ella moved forward, hand outstretched. Alex frowned, staring at Ella’s palm as if she had no idea what the woman wanted. She wasn’t afraid; she must have come to the conclusion that since she could touch Julian, she could touch everyone.
Alex backed up a few steps. “I’ll—uh—be right back.” She moved out of the crowd and came to Julian. “Where will I stay?”
“With Ella.”
“But I—” She broke off, biting her lip. “I just met her.”
“You just met everyone.”
“Not you.”
Julian blinked. “You want to stay with me?”
“I don’t want to,” she said at the same time he said, “That wouldn’t be smart.”
“Because of yesterday?” she asked.
The instant the words left her mouth, Julian remembered the taste of that mouth, the feel of it on his body, the scent of her all around him, and his penis leaped.
“Faen,” he muttered. Shit! He was naked. If he got a hard-on now—
He didn’t want to think about that. In fact, he’d better not think about it or he’d definitely get one.
Her eyebrows lifted, and her lips twitched as if she knew his every thought. “What if I promise not to jump you?”
“You’re admitting that you did jump me?”
“No.”
Her defiance caused amusement to flicker, quickly followed by annoyance at both his reaction and the sight of her face. How could he be both attracted and repelled by her every minute of every day? He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her, at the same time he wanted to throw her down on the ground and take her.
“Ella,” Julian snapped, and strode away without bothering to reiterate his orders. It was a sign of weakness to repeat himself, and Julian could not afford to be weak.
Just because he was their leader, and had been for close to a century, did not mean a wolf wouldn’t challenge him if given the opportunity. Julian had managed to keep the peace because he was the strongest, the biggest, the baddest when he chose to be. No one dared question him.
Except Alex.
He sighed, wondering if he might have to kill her after all.
Chapter 9
Following a long, hot shower where Julian both warmed his chilled skin and jacked off to ascertain he would not have any surprise erections later that day, Julian dressed, then checked his messages.
Between traveling, locating Alex, following her, and setting up his plan, he’d been away over a week. He had a lot to deal with. Julian was not only the mayor of what had come to be known as Barlowsville—a joke at first, but the name stuck—he was also the chief of police, the judge, and, when necessary, the executioner.
The latter was rare. For the most part they lived in harmony. But when dealing with nearly two hundred werewolves…well, shit happened.
Thankfully none of the messages awaiting him spoke of misbehavior so severe that capital punishment would be necessary. Just the usual minutiae of village life—boundary disputes, nonpayment for services or goods—and the minutiae of werewolf existence—the snatching of a rabbit from someone’s very jaws, the taking of more than one’s share of a larger kill—elk, deer, moose.
He put aside his duties until later. He had one duty he must attend to first.
His house, a two-story log cabin at the farthest edge of the village, backed a squat, white edifice that blended into the landscape during the majority of the year when snow covered the land.
Presently the snow reached Julian’s knees, but the distance between the rear of Julian’s house and the rear of the building was only a few hundred feet and wasn’t that difficult to traverse, especially for someone with the strength of ten.
Inside, the air was cool—though not unpleasantly so. Silence reigned, broken every so often by the click of electricity or the whisper of the wind through the eaves.
“Cade?” Julian called, but no one answered.
Typical. His brother often became engrossed in his work to the detriment of all else. If it weren’t for the full moon that forced the issue, Julian thought Cade might forget to shape-shift altogether.
Julian walked through the silent halls, ducked his head into Cade’s empty living quarters, then followed his nose to the laboratory where he found his brother boiling what smelled like death over a tiny blue f
lame. For a few minutes Julian just watched him.
As a Viking, Cade had been a bust. Without Julian to protect him, he would have died long before that fateful day in Scotland.
Cade was a gentle soul, a healer by trade. He’d been indispensable when they’d gone a Viking, his knowledge of the human body and the herbs and potions necessary to mend it vast.
Whenever they’d invaded a new country, Cade spent his time talking to the local healers, gathering knowledge from every corner of the earth. He fought, but not eagerly or well, which meant Julian always fought at his side.
Except for that one time.
“Hey,” Julian murmured, and Cade looked up, blue eyes widening when he discovered his brother in the room.
He frowned at the clock, then the calendar, then back at Julian. “What day is it?”
“Friday.”
The frown deepened. “But you left on Thursday.”
“I’ve been gone over a week, Cade.”
Cade glanced at the calendar again, then shrugged and murmured, “Huh. Is it morning or is it night?”
“I told you to put a window in this place.”
The laboratory was more like a fortress. The single window in the entire building existed in Cade’s living quarters, and that only because Julian had gone behind his brother’s back with the builders. He wasn’t sure Cade had even noticed.
“It helps me to focus,” Cade said. “If there are no windows, my only world is this.”
“Your only world has always been this.”
“True,” Cade agreed, and returned to his work.
Julian’s brother was shorter than he—though at six feet Cade was by no means short. He was also slim instead of muscular, pale instead of tan, and his hair, which had once been as blond as Julian’s, had darkened to a dusty brown.
While Julian’s brushed his shoulders, straight and smooth, Cade’s reached halfway down his back, the length more because he forgot to cut it—hell, sometimes he forgot to wash it—than for any fashion statement. He’d attempted to confine it in a ponytail, but strands had come free and billowed, curling into his face.
“You never said where you were going or why,” Cade murmured as he mixed a bit of this and a tad of that.
With good reason. Alana had not made friends easily, but she’d made friends with Cade. Her loss had hit him hard. If his brother had known why Julian was going, there would have been no leaving him behind, and Julian had needed to do this alone.
“I went to LA to follow a lead on Alana’s killer.”
Cade knocked one of the test tubes onto the floor as he spun. “Did you find anything?”
Julian stared Cade directly in the eye. “No,” he said.
Cade sighed, then he began to clean up the mess on the floor.
“What did you drop?” Julian asked.
“Human blood derivative.”
Julian straightened away from the counter. “You found it?”
“Not yet.”
“You will.”
“Sometimes I wonder.”
The need for human blood on the night of the full moon necessitated some fancy planning on Julian’s part. The amount of human blood necessary to satisfy the cravings of his entire village was copious, which was why Cade spent the majority of his time searching for a substitute. That and the fact that Alana had hated taking human blood. She’d said it made her feel ew-ky.
Julian smiled at the memory, but his smile faded as he recalled that her dislike of that basic need had eventually grown into a dislike of a whole lot more.
“You invented the serum that allows werewolves to touch in human form,” Julian blurted, doing his best to make the unpleasant memories go away.
And speaking of unpleasant memories.
“I brought a woman back with me.”
Cade, who had been choosing a new test tube from the shiny selection near the sink, nearly bobbled and broke another. “You what?”
“She was…dying,” Julian muttered.
Liar, liar, pants on fire, his mind taunted.
“What happened to the no-more-werewolves rule?”
“That isn’t the rule,” Julian said.
“Fine. You didn’t ask permission.” His voice twisted sarcastically on the final word.
“Since I’m the one who gives permission, I figured I’d save a step.”
Cade rolled his eyes, and Julian stifled a smile. His brother was the only one who dared stand up to him—although not often or very well—the only one with whom Julian could be truly himself.
Alex’s face flitted through his mind. She stood up to him. And if he wasn’t being himself with her—evil, murderous beast that he was—then who was he being?
“You’re growling,” Cade observed.
Alex seemed to have that effect on him, even when she wasn’t around.
“You said it’s dangerous to create a new wolf,” Cade pointed out. “That it should only be done by one who’s done it before, for a damn good reason, with the new wolf’s consent and preferably here.” Cade jabbed a finger at the floor.
“I say a lot of things,” Julian muttered.
“Besides, the village is packed. Where is this woman going to stay?” His eyes widened. “With you?”
“Hell no!” Julian erupted before he could stop himself.
His brother’s expression became contemplative. “Who is she?”
“Just some woman.” Julian put his hands in his pockets and became vastly interested in the ceiling. “She was lying there bleeding. What was I supposed to do?”
“You said yourself that we can’t save everyone.”
“I suppose, but there was something about her—”
That little matter of murdering my wife.
“Wait a second,” Cade began. “You were in LA?”
“So?”
“You made a wolf in LA? A place with the population of mainland China shoved into a shoe box. You know how a new wolf is the first time they change.” He walked away muttering. “Kill anything. Everything. Anywhere. Doesn’t matter.”
Cade booted up his laptop, typed a few quick commands, then peered at the screen. “No mass murders by unknown perpetrators. No wild dog packs loose in the suburbs. No rogue coyotes down from the hills munching on unsuspecting preschoolers.”
Julian lifted his eyebrow and let his brother rant on. Sometimes that was best.
Cade continued to scroll and click, Google and search, his mutterings lapsing into Norwegian now and then.
“Ah-ha!” Cade pointed at the screen. “Known child molester found with his throat torn out in a nasty area of LA. No suspects.” He cast Julian a glance. “That has you written all over it.”
Julian didn’t answer. Cade was right.
“Except…” Cade tapped his fingernail against the keyboard. “If you found this woman and she was dying, then you bit her and she shifted, she’d be ravenous. So how did you have time to find a child molester and take him for lunch?”
Good question.
Cade’s eyes narrowed. “It’s almost as if you’d planned it.”
His brother was too smart for anyone’s good. Especially Julian’s.
“I didn’t have to plan anything,” Julian said. “I’m magic, remember?”
“You use that as an answer to everything.”
“It’s a pretty good answer.”
Julian waited for Cade to call him a liar, but he didn’t. He couldn’t prove anything, and when it came right down to it, why would Julian lie?
“This woman,” Julian said. “I didn’t plan to make her.”
Liar!
“So I didn’t have any of your serum to give her.” Julian spoke more loudly, trying to drown out the accusing voice in his head. Cade frowned. “Yet when we came into town just now, everyone welcomed her, and no one got a headache.”
“That’s impossible,” his brother insisted.
“Since it happened, guess not.”
“Who is this woman?”
&n
bsp; “Name is Alexandra Trevalyn. Other than that…” Julian shrugged. “You’ve never heard of this happening before?”
“Never.” Cade turned back to his computer, hit a few more commands, then began to type. “Bring her here. I’ll need a sample of her blood.”
Julian sighed. He’d hoped Cade would have a scientific explanation that would set Julian’s mind at ease, or that his brother would at least say that while he didn’t know the cause, he had heard of the phenomenon a hundred times before.
No such luck.
Ella took Alex’s arm, ignoring her start of surprise. No one seemed to find it odd that they could touch, and since she’d been able to touch Julian, too, Alex guessed that this was just another of the many ways that Barlow’s wolves were different.
Alex wasn’t used to being touched so often and so easily. She’d lived alone for eight years. On the move. No friends, no family. Few reasons to touch anyone at all. Especially not a stark-naked woman she’d only just met.
“Welcome,” Ella said. “We don’t often have new arrivals.”
As the others dispersed every which way, the woman led Alex across the square to a side street opposite the one down which Julian had disappeared. Had he chosen Ella simply because her home was the farthest from his?
“No?” Alex extricated her arm. “Why’s that?”
Ella glanced at her. “Hasn’t Julian explained about Barlowsville?”
“Barlowsville?” Alex repeated with a derisive snort. “What an ego.”
Ella frowned, her dark eyes confused. “You sound like you hate him.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Alex muttered.
“He is our leader, our maker.”
Alex stopped walking. “He made all of you?”
“Yes.”
Edward had been right. Barlow was amassing a werewolf army. Although…the army didn’t appear to be very big or very vicious. But give them time.
Ella beckoned. “I have clothes for you. We seem about the same size.”
And it was pretty easy to tell.
Alex followed the woman, who had the slightest of French accents, to a single-story house partway down a street filled with others just the same. They were so similar, they appeared to have all come from the same kit. Slanted roofs, boxy exterior, two windows at the front on either side of the door, each painted the same shade of white as the snow, with chimneys that spilled wood smoke into a sky of pristine blue.
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