“Hey, Kane, can wolves laugh? ’Cause I swear I heard…”
“Shut up!” the blond man he referred to as Kane snarled as he bent over the prone animal. “I’d hoped that you would have managed to keep out of this a bit longer, Katie,” he whispered as he softly stroked the ruff of her neck fur with his gloved hand. “I don’t know how to help you now, other than to hope your boyfriend is tougher than the other wolves we have taken. I let you go once, but I think we’re both screwed this time.”
Then the golden wolf knew no more.
David awoke with a start in the gray light of dawn, alone in Katie’s room. The gas fireplace had been turned to low, and a red and black flannel quilt was tenderly tucked around his shoulders. He smiled at the thought of her covering him up so carefully. He had slept like the dead, the deep healing sleep of his people kicking in. He stood to stretch his sore muscles, the various pops and creaks telling him that sleeping on the floor in front of the fireplace was a romantic thing but not conducive to good back health. He thought of his beautiful mate and decided that breakfast would have to wait a few minutes. Hopefully she was getting in the shower instead of finishing so he could help soap her up. His mouth watered at the thought of touching Katie again, and his sluggish morning blood began to move in one central direction. He looked toward the bathroom, expecting to see a light under the door but saw only darkness. He suddenly felt the first twinge of unease.
“Katie?” Once again his wolf sense overrode his basic manners, and he opened the already cracked door and flipped on a light to survey the bathroom. The moment his eyes alighted on the envelope on the sink, he knew she was gone.
»»•««
The bear-man arose with an appetite that roared from the expanse of his stomach, but his hunger did not seem to be a priority in this household when he descended to find the kitchen and dining room empty of life and food. Nan and Bill were in their joint office, both with a phone on each ear, yelling at people in their thick Scottish accents and waving him off. Despairing of getting any information out of them, he went searching for David, who he then had to chase through the house, trying to find out why there was no breakfast to be had and no Katie.
David was truly Katie’s mate now. Frank had been fairly certain of the fact from the combination of scents that wafted around the girl’s room when he arrived there earlier to gloat. However, his goddaughter’s mate was now raging through the house, pulling on combat gear and arming himself with enough firepower to defend himself against an entire army. His accent got thicker and thicker the angrier he got.
“Damn that woman…that bastard probably already has her. Did she think that I would sit here and allow her to walk away? Does she realize that she could be…?” David stopped short.
“Pregnant? Yes, the first time for a mating pair of werewolves is usually pretty lucky in that area, I have heard, son.” Frank grabbed David’s shoulder and spun the other man around to face him, a formidable feat for any man except for one who, in human form, still resembled a gigantic brown bear. A hungry brown bear this particular morning. “Where is my goddaughter, boy? What did you do to her?”
David thrust the letter she left in Frank’s face as he began to rummage through the weapons cabinet. “Read this, but do it quick if you want to go with me to get her, damn it. We have to stop off to pick up some friends.” He gathered up a load of weapons into a black duffel, scooped it up in one arm, and ran out the door bellowing for Bill to call for the helicopter.
Frank grasped the tiny piece of paper in one giant paw, reading Katie’s terse words. She explained nothing, but Frank had talked to Nan and Bill during the night about David’s past, and he could add a few things together. He did not like what they added up to, but there was nothing he could do other than what he should have done years ago. Go get his goddaughter.
Dear David,
I have to leave. I have no choice. I will not allow anyone else to die for me.
Katie
“David,” Frank shouted as the younger man reached the outer hall. The were-bear’s voice was the bellow of a sailing captain and a marine sergeant from the trenches of two world wars. David froze. “I think we need to discuss something before we go after Katie, who I’m sure at this point is with Ambrose. Not only am I sure that she is with him, I’m fairly sure that she allowed them to take her to him. And I am willing to bet it is because of something you told her last night.”
David reentered the room and stared at the other man. “Spit it out, Frank. I don’t have much time.”
Rubbing his large stomach absentmindedly, Frank wandered to the window to stare out at the landscape of Shadow Mountain. “I spoke with Nan last night when I was up for my second dinner…after you left to take care of some business.” Here Katie’s uncle looked at David pointedly, who had the grace to color a bit at the innuendo in those words. “She told me of your parents’ deaths and the random hunting of Weres. Did it occur to you that Katie’s stepfather’s obsession with Weres and the hunting of Weres might be connected? Because I think Katie realized it immediately and has gone to Seven Devils Island to avenge not only her parents, but her people as well.”
The anger at his mate for her desertion dissipated, and David stared at Frank, feeling slightly ill. “What do you mean?” he asked
“Katie’s father, Mike Duncan, was an attorney in Charlotte, North Carolina, and his firm’s biggest client was Hugh Ambrose. They went on numerous hunting trips together, and that is where Hugh discovered the secret of the Weres. Damned Duncan always was a maniac. He probably Changed where Hugh could have spotted him. Duncan disappeared, and they found his body in the Catawba River weeks later. Katie’s ma was beside herself and terrified. For that simple reason, she allowed that snake Ambrose to whisper in her ear nonstop about how dangerous it was in the world for a woman alone with a little girl. The man was talking poison. Against my judgment, Katie’s ma and the idiot were married. I was cut off from them completely. When Katie showed up a few months ago with stories of Hugh holding her and her mother as prisoners on the island, experimenting on her blood and wanting her to bear him a child, I thought he was obsessed with only her.
“But what if Ambrose is obsessed with the race? What if he has been trying to make himself into a Were? This is more dangerous than anything I could have ever imagined. What if he manages to make a Were but does not follow the traditions and perform the rites? They are held for a reason when we are all born, to keep the evil from taking us when we Soul-Change. He could easily fashion his own demon.”
“I’m still going after her. I only have a better excuse to kill him. Coming?” David growled and his eyes turned to flame as he Changed in his agony, the bag of weapons dropping to the floor.
Frank swore and stalked out of the room to follow David to war. He had forgotten completely about his breakfast. The halls echoed with the sounds of his gastric distress.
“David, boy. I hope you have a lot of friends. We are going to need them. Katie has taken the honor of her family on her shoulders. We need to be there to hold her up.”
Katie woke swathed in silken sheets, the feel of early evening and more than a few lost hours registering on her internal clock. She knew instantly where she was, though she had not opened her eyes. She knew every item in the soft green and blue room, down to the large stuffed grizzly bear in the corner her godfather had given her when she turned ten. She was bare under the covers, the Change having occurred while she was unconscious. Wind whipped at the barred windows, and the deep growl of thunder over the Atlantic could be heard in the distance. One of the vicious winter storms of the coast was creeping in with the wind. Good.
“I know you are awake, Katie, my dear. Please open your eyes.” The man’s gravelly voice was the liquid essence of polite evil. She reluctantly opened her eyes to examine the man who stood in the doorway dressed ridiculously in jodhpurs and a military style sweater, complete with epaulets. All he needed was a whip. She held back the urge to giggle at the sight of him. He must think he had her paralyzed with fear, but for some reason she was not feeling her usual terror…was her wolf spirit giving her strength? She hoped that was it and she wasn’t just going nuts. She pretended to cower, and pulled the blankets up to her chin.
“W-w-what do you want, Ambrose?” The sound of his name on her tongue made her sick. She already knew what his answer would be.
He moved toward her in an undulating fashion, looking snakelike, down to his thick eyelids that blinked slowly, constantly. It was a shame there were no were-snakes, because Ambrose was a perfect candidate, she thought.
“Why, I want to take care of you, dear heart, you know that! It is all I have ever wanted. You need someone to care for you. Look at how weary you are from wandering the world without me by your side.” He smiled gently and place a sausage-sized finger tipped with an immaculately manicured nail on her cheek. She resisted the urge to flinch. He would not force her until he was ready. She knew the thought of taking her by force was repellent to him, a strange thing in such a beastly man, but as she knew from bitter experience, Ambrose much preferred breaking the mind before breaking the body. He had come so close to breaking her once, she had almost gone to him out of sheer weariness when he told her that someday he would take her anyway. She had gone on the run instead.
He leaned forward to take a deep breath, inhaling her scent, his overly large nostrils flaring, his eyes closed. “I hope you’ve been a good girl, my Kate. It would not do to discover you have been unfaithful to me. That would be…unfortunate.” He leaned in closer, his hands almost but not quite touching her.
She felt physically ill at his proximity but steeled herself. Her wolf spirit was here, and it made her strong. She could kill him in a minute if she had to. She might die doing it, but that was a chance she would take. But she needed more time. She had to find out exactly what he was up to and if any of her people were being held as his prisoners.
“And now, sweetheart, you will soon be able to truly be with me as an equal because I have discovered the secret of the Weres. Soon I will join the ranks of your people, and you…you will be mine.” A horrible smile spread over his face, and Katie swallowed the bile that rose in her throat. His eyes gleamed with madness.
“You will come to me when I am truly joined with your people, sweet. Think what we can do with the lifespan given to your kind. Think of the power I can accumulate over such a span of years. And the abilities. I do not understand why no wolf before me has risen up with the ambition to take all the world has to offer.” Sweat began to bleed across his forehead as he reached down to stroke her face.
Katie did not bother to tell him that one of the oldest traditions of her people was the discipline of compassion. The only animals that killed for fun or pursued power for power’s sake were human animals. If Ambrose succeeded in the Change, he would be hunted down by the Were community.
Of course, that’s only if there are any of us left to hunt him down,
she thought bitterly. Then there were the rites. Being a Were was more than biology…it was mystical and spiritual. He could never succeed.
“The Were ability is inherited, Ambrose. It is part magic, part biology. No matter what your scientists have discovered by cutting up Weres, and yes, I know all about it.” She pushed his hand away to sit up, covered by the sheet, and glared at him. “If the impossible happens and you
do
succeed, you will be exterminated, but then again,” her voice lowered huskily to a growl, “you might be exterminated now.”
For a split second, the large man seemed taken aback, shocked by her behavior. Katie had never before spoken to him this way. A chilling menace had seeped into her voice that she could not hide, and a blue light flared around her body under the sheets. A high-pitched scream flew from his mouth as she began to morph into part-wolf, part-woman before his eyes.
∙•∙
Ambrose knew this part of the transformation was possible, but Katie had never appeared in this form to him. He had not been sure that she was even
able
to Change into that form of a werewolf. He leaped back through the door as the huge, horribly beautiful creature rose from the bed, a dreadful threat in her eyes. Running through the door, Ambrose slammed it shut behind him, frantically twisting the lock on the faux painted reinforced steel door. A terrible blow hit the other side, and a loud, long squeal of protesting metal sounded as the she-wolf slowly ran her claws down the door panel. She undoubtedly made huge gouges in the metal to have produced that kind of noise. Would the door hold? The two armed guards looked at their boss in terror as an unearthly howl ripped at their eardrums. Then they all heard her husky voice again, an eerily sexy growl in the dark.
“You don’t have my mother’s life to hold over my head anymore. Nor do your whispers of how useless and helpless I am work their magic. How unfortunate for you…
Daddy
.” The growl of something inhuman ran over their skin and down their backs to curl up in their guts. There was no longer a helpless little girl or a brokenhearted young woman in the other room. There was now a killer on the other side of the door. And she sounded like she would be good at it. “Don’t come into my room uninvited again, Ambrose. I might not feel so…civilized.”
The bully that Ambrose was had never faced a werewolf armed with all of the terrible power a Were had at its command, preferring to do his work by stealth and in the darkness, behind the backs of his victims. He filled with red fury as he realized that she frightened him. But he was also filled with shatteringly sweet joy. The power.
“Hold her here and shoot her if she tries to escape. It will take…several bullets, gentlemen. She will either submit to me or die once I am better matched with her.”
The two camouflage-clad guards hesitantly took up their places on either side of the door. They were two of the few guards who knew about Katie’s true nature, but they had never heard anything out of the girl like they were hearing at that moment. The voice on the other side of the door was bloodcurdling.