by Michele Hauf
Dread curdled in her gut. “What did you do?”
“We talked. No violence. Promise. Though my wolf wanted to kill the bastard.”
“Did he know what you were?”
“I don’t think so. He was...weird. He’s going after the ghost wolf. Said it was his final kill before he could save some chick. I don’t know what the hell that meant.”
She placed her hands about the fist he’d formed and kissed his knuckles. “Tonight all I want you to think about is me.”
“Easy enough.”
“Will it be? If you shift to werewolf, won’t the ghost wolf come out?”
“Uh...hell.”
She hadn’t considered that could be a problem, but it seemed Beck’s werewolf was only able to shift to the ghostly-white form that had been scaring hunters huntless.
Beck blew out a breath and sat back. She slid a hand up under his sweater, seeking the heat from his skin. He placed his hand over hers.
“I want to take the risk,” she said. “With your ghost wolf.”
“Daisy, I... No. It could be dangerous.”
“You won’t hurt me. You’ve already seen me while in your ghost wolf shape, and you walked away. And I’ll be wolfed out, so it’s all good.”
“I don’t know. I’m not the same werewolf I usually am. I don’t trust myself.”
“You said we could bond. I want that more than anything, Beck. To be yours. Bonded with you.”
“I want that, too, but maybe we should wait until I can be rid of the ghost wolf.”
Daisy nestled her head against his collarbone and closed her eyes. “Love should be daring,” she said. “It should feel like we’re racing through the forest over the snow and into the stars.”
“It already feels like that.”
She didn’t want to push him. And then she did. Daisy wanted to challenge Beck to win her, to choose only her, to make her his.
He kissed her suddenly. It was an invitation into his heart, one she had answered many a time, yet this time it was tentative, a little unsure. She shifted her hips and straddled his legs without breaking the kiss. Beneath her hands his hard pecs pulsed with his movement. She hugged his hips with her knees. Pressed her breasts against his chest. Melded into him. Became him as their breaths entwined and their heartbeats raced alongside one another.
“If you want me...” She rose and stepped back from Beck, pulling off her sweater to reveal bare skin. She glanced to the patio door. “Then you’ll have to come after me.”
Dashing to the door, she opened it and skipped out into the chill air. Beck called after her, but she laughed and shimmied down her jeans. She would issue the challenge. She had to. Time was running out for them.
Chapter 27
His beautiful lover with the pink hair and pale skin scampered across the snow. Before reaching the pond, she shifted to wolf shape. She wouldn’t stop there. She would shift to werewolf.
And his werewolf would go after her because instinct could not be ignored.
Standing in the open patio doorway, Beck pressed his palms to either side of the door frame. Inhaling the crisp winter air tinged with his lover’s feral aroma, he felt the rise of his wild within him. And he let out a howl that was matched by Daisy’s wolf.
“Don’t hurt her,” he said tightly as his body began the shift.
And the ghost wolf tracked across the iced pond, following the scent of the female. It held that scent in its nose, on its skin and fur and in its very being. She belonged to him. She was his mate.
Racing through the trees, the ghost wolf found the female werewolf, who stood bold and proud beneath the moon’s glamorous shine. She howled.
The ghost wolf matched her longing cry.
* * *
Beck stared up at the ceiling. Morning beamed golden upon the log walls and felt more promising than it had for months. Daisy’s scent filled his pores. The scent was tainted with a touch of dirt that he’d noticed on the sheets last night (probably from their wet paws) and pine from the forest (needles they’d tracked in on bare feet).
Closing his eyes, he smiled. Last night beneath the waning moon he had bonded with the woman he loved—and liked even more—and wanted to always have in his life.
Beck had sensed the moment his fears had been overwhelmed by desire. For his werewolf had gone after Daisy. The urge to mate had been fore, and while he only recalled bits now, he knew he had not hurt her. In fact, their werewolves had come together in a vigorous yet loving coupling. The ultimate bond. Howls had seasoned the night air, freezing above their heads and showering them with a sprinkle of faery dust.
Her faery had not come out, much to Daisy’s relief, yet Beck had found faery dust on his skin and in his hair after shifting back to were shape.
He felt Daisy on his skin still, her warm body moving against his, her sighs entering his pores, her moans of pleasure harmonizing with his. They had given themselves to one another last night, and he wanted no other woman. Daisy Blu was his. He was hers.
If he had to battle each of the Saint-Pierre wolves—including the iron-fisted faery—he would fight and scrape until he was bloody and they understood how much Daisy meant to him.
Turning onto his side, Beck spread his hand across the sheet...but it was cool.
He opened his eyes to find Daisy’s side empty. Thinking she might have started breakfast, or even thought to warm up the hot chocolate they hadn’t finished last night, he padded naked from the bedroom out to the kitchen. Cold stove. He looked out the window. Her car was still here. Where had she gone?
He glanced out the back window. An eerie fog hung over the frozen pond. Had she gone for a walk? An early morning run?
If she had waited for him, he would have gladly gone along with her. Daisy did like her alone time. He understood that. It was an introvert thing. But it wasn’t practical with hunters roaming the forest. Especially the dead-eyed Denton Marx.
Beck stepped out the back door and immediately picked up Daisy’s scent. None of her clothing was lying about. She had probably padded out of the bedroom naked, as he had. Then he noticed something that made his heart drop to his stomach.
Wolf prints tracked across the snow-frosted ground.
Breath fogging in the chill air, he shivered. It wasn’t from the cold that brisked over his skin, but rather the feeling of foreboding that tightened his veins and twisted.
Running across the surface of the pond, the loose snow did not promise sure steps from his human-shaped feet. He shifted midstride, and when his foot left the ground, it landed again as a wolf’s paw. His senses increased in this shape, though his thoughts quickly ceased to grasp his were thoughts, so Beck kept only one thing in mind: Daisy.
The wolf landed on the snow-banked shore. It tracked for a long distance before the awful whining noise of another wolf pricked his ears and he smelled her frightened scent.
The wolf nearly flew over the snowy surface, sensing that this was another whom it must be near. A female he knew well. He had bonded with her; she was a part of him.
Dodging a thicket of wild grass, the wolf slowed as it picked up more scents. Smells of machinery oil and...menace.
Human.
The wolf slowed to a walking pace as it approached the scene. One of the female’s back legs was caught in a trap. The wolf did not smell blood. She whined and struggled against the mortal means of harm.
He growled, showing his teeth as he caught sight of the human, who wore clothing in light colors that blended him into the pale landscape. He smelled of tobacco and oil. The human scent was familiar; he had encountered this one before. Yet now, the human did not approach the female, nor did he hold a weapon trained on her. Instead, he stood by, deadened eyes searching the area, as if in wait.
A trap, the wolf instinctually thought. One he must not go into on four legs.
Chapter 28
The ghost wolf came upon him quickly, shaking his body and stirring and stretching its bones. When fully formed, he howled
and leaped for the hunter, who now held a weapon aimed toward him. He felt the touch of an arrow move through his fur, but it did not cut flesh.
Springing from his hind legs, he landed on top of the hunter’s body. The weapon slid across the snow. The ghost wolf noted that the female struggling nearby had shifted. Another human caught in a trap? Wolf, maybe? He couldn’t be sure. He only knew this human beneath his claws had taken something from him, and he would retaliate by drawing its blood until it ceased to live.
Clamping its maw onto the human’s chest only gnawed the thick fabric that was not skin or bone. The werewolf shook the human, ignoring its shouts of fear. The acrid smell of urine spilled across the ground.
“No!”
Startled by the firm female voice, the ghost wolf released the human, but slammed a forepaw against its neck to hold it firmly beneath him. The wolf looked over at the human female, who struggled with the metal contraption and was finally able to pull free and roll away. She could not stand on the wounded leg, and flopped on the snowy ground.
“Beck, no!” she cried.
The wolf understood one of the words. It was related to him. He growled in warning at the female as she crawled toward him, dragging one leg. Only long, bright fur hanging down from her head, the rest of her was bare.
“Beck, this will not change things. Don’t kill him!”
The human pinned beneath him kicked up a knee and managed to twist its body and attempt to crawl away. The werewolf stomped on its spine, stopping it as if an insect.
“Call it off me!”
“He’s out of his mind in this shape,” the female said. “Stop struggling!”
“And let it kill me?”
Beck’s howl echoed through the forest and stirred up the crows perched high in the birch canopy. Wings flapped, and a dark wave swooshed low near where he stood.
* * *
Daisy dragged herself across the cold ground. Shivering from the pain tormenting her shin—her leg was broken—she bit down hard on her lip to redirect that pain. Her fingers clawed into the snow, and she reached out for the hunter’s head. He was weeping now, facedown on the snow. He cried out a name: Sencha. Beck’s monstrous ghost wolf crouched on top of him. The werewolf gripped the human about the neck and squeezed.
She couldn’t allow him to make the kill. She knew it was not Beck inside the wolf that was calling the shots right now, but that the ghost wolf was fueled by the rage over losing his father. They were connected. Because she and his ghost wolf were now bonded. If it murdered, she would feel the pain of that crime ever after.
“Please.” She slapped her hand over the werewolf’s paw that squeezed tightly about the hunter’s neck. “Listen to me. Look at me, Beck. It’s me, Daisy Blu.”
The wolf’s grip loosened as its red eyes peered at her. Up close he was all white, yet oddly transparent. As luminous as the moon. Faery magic at its worst.
“I love you,” she managed through tears.
The scent of blood pierced the air. The hunter’s blood.
Daisy gripped the wolf’s paw with both hands and tore it away from the hunter’s neck. “You love me! For your father’s sake, let it go. Just stop!”
The werewolf reared to stand. Daisy saw the claws swoop down before she could shuffle out of the way. Razor-sharp claws cut through the snowy ground, and the meaty paw slapped the hunter’s body to the side as if a mere doll. The man’s body collided with an oak trunk.
Beck landed on all fours above her. Daisy rolled to her back, instinctively putting up her hands to block an attack—
And then she breathed out, and put her hands down at her sides, making herself lax beneath him. Just last night this gorgeous, bold werewolf had bonded with her werewolf. She loved him, and she knew he loved her.
She just had to connect with that part of the animal’s brain that was still Beck.
“I like you,” she whispered. She winced. The broken bones were healing, but slowly.
The ghost wolf sniffed at her face, down her neck and over her breasts. And then it whined that particular noise a wolf made when it was showing submission to another. Ears back, and head bowed, it crawled backward off her.
Straightening, it walked onto its hind legs over to the hunter’s weapon. Gripping it, the beast broke the crossbow, and then the arrows, and tossed them aside. The hunter’s snowmobile was parked close. The wolf lifted it, and tossed it toward the trees, where it landed in a crooked tangle of branches five feet off the ground.
And then the ghost wolf surrendered to Beck’s will. It was the only thing that could truly push back the beast—Beck’s determination.
Her lover shifted to were form, standing over the human’s body. The hunter was not dead, but passed out from fear, and she suspected he’d taken a claw to the throat, but the blood was minimal.
Standing there, naked and stretching out his arms to fend off the final twinges of the shift, Beck yelled out in frustration. Probably anger, as well. And surely grief. He fell to his knees in the snow and yelled again, punching the air.
Tears froze on Daisy’s cheeks. She bent to feel at her shin. It was nearly healed, but she couldn’t walk on it. She wanted to run to Beck, to embrace him. To make his world a better place.
But the world was what it was. And bad things happened to good people. And good people tried to keep back the bad that wanted revenge. And today Beck had managed that.
“Beck?”
He twisted a look toward her, as if he’d forgotten she was there.
“It’s going to be okay,” she offered.
Stepping over to her, he bent and bracketed her face in his hands and kissed her deeply. “Sorry,” he whispered. “So sorry.”
“I was the one who went out on my own.” She pressed a finger to his mouth before he could apologize again. His body shook with contained rage. “You wouldn’t allow the ghost wolf to murder. You’re a good man, Beck. And that is what makes your father most proud.”
“Need to make it stop.”
“The ghost wolf?”
“The...the pain.” He pulled her against his bare skin, and they made body heat. “When will it stop?”
“When the time is right” was all she could say. Because she didn’t know. “I’ll be at your side all of that time. I promise.”
He glanced to the hunter’s prone body.
“He’ll survive,” Daisy offered. “It’s just a scratch. Let’s go home.”
He lifted her into his arms, and walked them through the forest and to his house.
They would be all right.
As soon as the ghost wolf was vanquished.
Chapter 29
Beck raced toward his home, fighting the painful stretches at the back of his legs with every step. It felt as if he were midshift and trying to move on bones that hadn’t completely solidified, wrapped by muscles that were too loose. By the time he reached the pond, he was thankful that Daisy hopped from his arms and limped toward the back of his house, his hand clasped in hers.
She dashed inside to the shower.
Now Beck could finally curl in on himself, there in the open doorway of his living room while snowflakes drifted across his shoulders. He wrapped his arms about his bent legs and held back a yowl that he suspected Daisy would hear even through the clatter from the shower. He cursed under his breath as his spine finally found its were position. But even as he stood, he wobbled, and caught himself against the door.
Breaths huffed out, panting. He did not feel exhilarated, but rather as if he wanted to drop in a sprawl and close his eyes forever. The ghost wolf had robbed him of vitality. But he would not allow Daisy to see his pain.
Closing the door, he forced himself to wander into the kitchen to make some hot chocolate for her, and by the time the shower had stopped, he was able to stand tall and wander back to the bedroom to kiss Daisy and tell her to go finish the drinks while he showered. He sat on the shower floor as the hot water beat on his aching muscles.
This had to
stop. He’d put Daisy in danger today.
She was right. He’d never have to repay the faery a favor as long as the ghost wolf did not accomplish its goal of killing the hunter.
Beck wasn’t sure the ghost wolf would allow him that restraint.
He needed to be rid of the monster within him. And the only way to do that was to either kill the hunter or the faery.
He couldn’t live with either of those choices.
After drying off and pulling on some jogging pants and socks, he wandered out to the living room.
“The hot chocolate is done,” Daisy said from the couch. “I was just resting my leg.”
“You stay there. I got this.”
Because she had had his back out there, Daisy had stopped his monster. When he’d been the ghost wolf he had known, somehow, that she would not guide him wrong. She had gentled his beast.
But tame it? He doubted that was possible.
“Wolf tamer,” he whispered as he poured hot chocolate from the saucepan into two mugs.
“What was that?” Daisy asked as he returned to the couch and settled next to her. She embraced him and pressed her cheek against his bare shoulder.
“I called you wolf tamer.” He turned to kiss her. She tasted fresh and sweet, and her wet hair spattered his face when he flicked it over her shoulder.
“The only place I want to tame you is in bed.” She winked and kissed his nose.
“Yeah, but I appreciate that you gentled the ghost wolf. Hell, Daisy, if you hadn’t been able to do that...” He swallowed. Thinking of the consequences brought bile to the base of his throat.
He sipped the hot chocolate and handed her the mug. He would sacrifice his wolf. He had to. It was the only way to not kill.
* * *
They sat quietly, snuggled on the couch before the fire. The silence felt good, their bodies against one another, surrounded by the sweet tease of chocolate. Daisy set the mug aside. Leaning forward, she stroked her shin and ankle. It was completely healed. She had survived. Yet, even though she’d been in wolf form and could remember but smells and feelings about the event, she sensed the hunter had wanted to keep her alive.