Embracing the Wolf

by Felicity Heaton

  Embracing the Wolf

  Kat, a hunter with the Werewolf Control Forces, fled her alpha werewolf lover, Amon, when he told her that she too had the gene in her blood and would one day mature into a werewolf—into his mate.

  Four years on, Kat has now matured. Each night she fights the ‘beast’ inside of her and her desire to return to Amon. She hunts rogue werewolves with a vengeance, hating her kind and her blood, gaining satisfaction from eradicating those that have surrendered to darkness and violence, but she can’t change her feelings and her craving for Amon is becoming stronger with every dream she has of him.

  When Amon’s pack finally catches up with her, she discovers that he’s dangerously close to turning rogue and only she can save him from the darkness. An encounter with Amon reignites the passion they had once shared, dreams constantly stir her hunger for him, and Kat finds herself faced with a hard decision. Will she let him turn rogue and hunt him, or will she embrace the wolf and mate with Amon to save them both?

  Embracing the Wolf

  Felicity Heaton

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2008 by Felicity Heaton

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  ****

  Chapter 1

  Four years.

  Four years ago, she had fled her home. Four years ago, she had run away from him and her feelings.

  Those four years had not erased him from her memory. She still recalled the heat of his touch and the tender brush of his lips against her skin.

  Amon.

  Kat ghosted her hands over her bare arms, over flesh chilled by winter night. As she thought of him, her hands became the intimate, loving caress of Amon’s. The memory weakened her and stirred desire to return to him. She cursed, breaking the silence of the cemetery. It was impossible to escape her feelings and her intense craving for him. No matter how far she ran.

  She stood on the stone sarcophagus in the centre of the cemetery, a breeze washing her skin. Inky darkness stretched in front of her. Bright moonlight-cast shadows stretched long from the trees, swallowing the graves that edged the crammed lot. Silence became a comforting shroud over the Earth.

  Her target lay dead below her. One less werewolf in the world. In human form again and naked, his body was bloodied and beaten from their fight. Lifeless eyes stared up at the moon, as though that goddess could still answer the prayers of her child.

  The recovery unit were coming to take the body away. Kat hated having to wait for them. With the hunt over, she had nothing to occupy her mind. Her purposelessness ate at her, opening up a hollow feeling inside her. It attacked the carefully constructed barriers around her heart and brought thoughts of Amon.

  Kat’s gaze rose to the moon. She sought the calm it normally inspired in her. Her black pistols weighed heavily at her sides tonight, their silver load dragging her insides down and turning her stomach to lead.

  She pressed a hand to her chest.

  The beast stirred in the depths of her heart and snarled for freedom.

  Amon had warned her that it would once she had matured. Back then, she hadn’t believed him. She had run.

  The idea of housing a werewolf in her body had frightened her. When her beast had risen, it had redefined the word ‘frightened’. Kat had been so scared that she had almost run back to Amon. He had been right. Her blood was werewolf, just as his was, but that didn’t mean that she was going to let it control her. She would never change.

  She was not an animal.

  And she would not surrender to it. Every day of her life, Kat fought it and hid her dirty secret. Every day of her life, she hunted her kin.

  Kat had joined the Werewolf Control Forces after they had rescued her from an attack in which a friend of hers had died. The commander of the group had taken pity on her and had offered to train her so she could have her revenge. She had gladly taken the opportunity.

  Back then, Kat had not known what tainted blood ran in her veins.

  When she had reached the level of hunter, she had met Amon. He had come to her unit and reported a rogue werewolf within his pack. Even though Kat had known what Amon was, she hadn’t been able to stop her feelings for him. He was everything good and, over time, she had come to see that not all werewolves were out to kill humans. It was only then that she had discovered she carried werewolf blood in her veins.

  If she had known about the genes she had inherited from her parents before she had joined the Werewolf Control Forces, she still would have gone through with it. Eliminating the rogue werewolves, those that had turned dangerous and had made it onto the WCF’s lists, gave her purpose.

  When she had found out about her blood, her job had given her something more too. It gave her a strange sense of satisfaction. She hated her kind more than ever. She hated the blood that ran in her veins. She hated that she had never known, and that her foster parents had never told her. She hated her dead parents.

  Now she hunted those her of her kin that had turned dangerous, those that had become lost in darkness and the violence that the beast inside called for.

  She killed others too, werewolves that were not on the list.

  Anyone that Amon sent after her met with a silver bullet.

  The beast inside her rose again. She forced it to heel. It fought back and she took deep calming breaths until the hunger to change had passed. Her hand trembled against her chest. It was growing stronger and harder to control, but there was not a chance in hell that she would let it take over.

  A large black van crawled along the winding gravel road of the cemetery. Stones crunched under the fat tyres. She gestured to it and then hopped down from the tomb.

  Her gaze fell to the dead werewolf.

  Amon would be angry.

  Tonight, it had been one from his pack. Amon was close to finding her. Or was she close to finding him? Her unit moved every four weeks. A few months ago, she had realised that her and Amon were gradually moving towards each other. Every new town brought them one step closer to meeting again and she could not bring herself to make the unit change its schedule.

  Not when she was so close.

  Every inch of her craved the fire of Amon’s touch. Every night she had dreamed of him, reliving each sensual and erotic moment of their time together. Those dreams had now turned to nightmares. And in those nightmares there was nothing but pain—agonising, searing pain—that woke her bathed in cold sweat and shaking.

  What did they mean?

  Her heart said that she knew the answer to that question.

  The sound of the van pulling to a halt snapped her out of her thoughts. Three men dressed in the standard black fatigues of her unit hopped down from the back. They grabbed the werewolf and hauled it into the van as though it was meat at a market.

  The commander offered her a lift. Kat waved him away and watched the van leave.

  The graveyard fell quiet again. The silence was comforting. Out here in the dark night, she could forget the horror of her dreams and the words they whispered.

  Kat turned slowly to regard the man stood barely fifteen foot from her. Leyton. It had taken him longer to arrive than expected. The grim set of his face said the dead werewolf was not the only reason for his visit.

  “Amon is in pain, isn’t he?” she whispered, afraid to raise her voice and acknowledge that Leyton was really there. He looked exactly as she remembered him, but then werewolves didn’t age once they had matured.

  Amon had sent him on purpose.

&nb
sp; Leyton was like a brother to her.

  A solemn nod was Leyton’s answer. Long pale fingers pushed through his sandy waves of hair, clawing it back in a movement of sheer frustration and helplessness. His hair fell back down when his hand had passed, brushing his forehead.

  “He needs you, Kat.” The deep voice didn’t suit his tall slight figure. Neither did the black jeans and dark zip up jacket. She was used to seeing him in smarter attire. Blue eyes held hers, bright in the moonlight.

  Kat knew what those words meant.

  Leyton took a step towards her.

  When werewolves reached maturity, the need to find their mate would arise. Once it had awoken, they only had a few years to complete the mating or they became feral and dangerous. The longest recorded time between the mating awakening and being completed safely was five years. Four years ago, Amon had told her that she was his mate. That night, she had fled. By now, he would be verging on dangerous. If he turned then she would have to kill him.

  As much as Kat feared that thought, the alternative frightened her more. To become his mate she would have to accept what she was and change. She couldn’t do it. The idea of becoming an animal, a hybrid being, turned her blood to ice.

  “He knows that he scared you,” Leyton said in a coaxing whisper, calm and measured. “He was only being honest that night. You’re his mate, Kat. Without you he’ll—”

  “Don’t!” Kat cut him off with a glare. Leyton didn’t need to tell her what would happen. She dealt with rogue werewolves on a nightly basis. She saw the dark, violent creature he would become. She closed her eyes and told herself that it would not happen to Amon. Leyton was only trying to scare her.

  The trouble was he was succeeding.

  “Will you see him?”

  Kat looked into Leyton’s eyes.

  There was hope in their depths. Meet Amon?

  She couldn’t.

  Every inch of her rebelled at the thought. It would be dangerous. Not because he could be close to turning, but because if she saw him, she might lose her nerve and return to him.

  She longed to feel his warm fingers stroking her skin, caressing her in a way that spoke so deeply of his love. She ached to have his soft lips sliding against hers. She craved the way it felt to be in his arms, comforted and safe from the world as she breathed in his spicy scent.

  Her eyes closed. She couldn’t do it.

  “You must feel it,” Leyton continued with a desperate note in his voice. Clearly he had realised that she needed convincing. If anyone could do it, he could. Leyton was Amon’s beta wolf and she had grown close to him during her time with Amon. She trusted him. He knew that and it seemed he was going to use it against her. “You must sense the looming danger.”

  Kat lowered her head and turned it away. She stared blindly at the grass. She did feel it. As a potential mate for Amon and someone who shared a love bond with him, Kat felt his pain as though it were her own.

  It ripped her apart each day.

  “Will you see him?” Leyton repeated, firmer this time. His tone demanded an answer. He stepped towards her, until she felt his presence close to her back. “Just see him, that is all I’m asking. It will soothe him. He will not hurt you.”

  Kat’s stomach turned. Was Amon that far gone? Icy fingers squeezed her heart. She couldn’t bear the thought that he might become dangerous and make it onto her unit’s list. The idea of having to hunt him turned her stomach, but her only other option was to give in to the werewolf inside.

  “No,” she whispered, unable to say that word with conviction when her heart begged her to go to Amon.

  Leyton stepped closer. Her senses detected the aura of worry surrounding him. Leyton never worried, not even about Amon. It confirmed her worst fear. Amon was growing close to turning.

  “I promise you, Kat, he will not know that you are there. Just see him and then make up your mind. The next time you meet, do whatever your heart decides. Save him or kill him.”

  “Perhaps killing him would be saving him,” she muttered to her feet and focussed on the bloodied grass. He wouldn’t know she was there? She could see him, could reassure herself and ease her fears, and he would never know she had been there. The temptation was almost overwhelming.

  Silence stretched into minutes as she waged an internal war—her heart against her mind. She ached to see Amon, but the price was too high. If she went, she might not be able to contain the beast within. If she didn’t go, the next time she saw Amon he might be her target. A vision of Amon lying dead at her feet as the werewolf had been tonight flashed across her eyes. Her heart won.

  “He won’t know I’m there?” Kat looked at Leyton and searched his face for the truth behind his answer. The craving was too strong to ignore but she had to be sure that Amon wouldn’t sense her. Once she had seen him again, she would make a final decision just as Leyton had asked.

  “I promise you that he won’t.”

  Those words weren’t a comfort. Would Amon not know that she was there because he was so far gone already, so close to the edge? Werewolves became deranged violent creatures when the beast took over. Their bloodlust nightmarish. She had seen them tear humans apart for fun or nothing more than sating their aggression.

  She hesitated a moment, still not sure this was a wise idea, and then pointed towards the cemetery gates. “Lead the way.”

  Leyton took her to an area deep in the city outskirts and far from the residential streets. Desolate red-brick factory buildings towered over her. Their tall windows were made of rectangular panes that were either smashed or coated by an impenetrable layer of grime. Winter wind whistled through them, a haunting symphony. The moon drained their colour. There was sadness about this place that left her feeling more lonely and cold than the cemetery had done.

  Kat walked in silence. Her right hand rested on one of her pistols. The feel of it soothed her raw nerves. Her steady heart beat a little quicker when Leyton brought her to the end of a small dark alley. He opened a door.

  Amon was in one of these dead buildings.

  She had thought they were only passing through this area into one less bleak.

  “We cannot move him again,” Leyton said in a casual tone, as though he was making small talk about the weather rather than his alpha.

  A glance into his eyes revealed that there was nothing casual about those words. The pain in their depths spoke to her heart. They silently begged her to give Amon a reprieve and accept the beast inside her so she could be the one to save him from a fate worse than death. Kat turned away and forced herself to scan the interior of the old factory. A good hunter knew every entry and exit. If Amon was close to turning, she might need them. Sometimes it was better to run than fight.

  Leyton led the way. She followed close behind, memorising the maze of metal walkways above her and the old dust covered machinery. They entered a bright white-washed and distinctly clinical-looking room, leaving the darkness and grime behind. The lights stung her eyes. They had to hurt Leyton’s too. Her fingers flexed around her gun when she sensed movement. They weren’t alone.

  Three huge male werewolves in human form stood before her. In large hands made for killing, each gripped a black rifle that looked like the type used for tranquilising wild animals. The males stepped forwards, their broad black-clad bodies a dark menacing contrast to the white room.

  They didn’t bother her.

  What they protected did.

  The werewolves partially blocked her view, but she could see enough to make her ache with sorrow.