The Unforgettable Wolf

“It screws with my head, but I can’t stop.” Nate gave a shaky laugh. “And I don’t see a queue of people lining up to take my place. So, worrying or not, I guess I’m the only werewolf hunter you have.”

Cal nodded. “I know this is no consolation, but Nevan has his own set of problems right now. As well as struggling to maintain control after a bloody fight to take over as leader, his youngest daughter has gone missing.”

“My heart bleeds for him.” Nate managed a sarcastic snarl that was a little too wolfish for his own liking. “Just so we’re clear...if the opportunity ever presents itself, I will do whatever it takes to make that bastard pay for what he did to me. With or without your approval.”

* * *

The party was in full swing when they arrived. Held in a vast, ranch-style house deep in the heart of a Vermont forest, it was unlike any other Violet had ever attended. The dress code was casual; there were no formal introductions, and, since dinner seemed to consist of helping yourself to raw steak and beer, there wasn’t a seating plan. The mortal realm was finally beginning to live up to its fairy-tale reputation.

Violet was conscious of the number of glances, both surreptitious and open, being cast her way as, with a proprietorial hand on the small of her back, Roko steered her out toward the backyard.

“Do these people know who I am?”

He shook his head. “No way. I haven’t told anyone. Only Teo. One word in the wrong ear and your father’s mongrels would find us and rip me apart.”

“Then why are so many of them staring at me?”

Roko flashed his grin at her. He hadn’t used it much since their arrival in the mortal realm, and somehow it had lost a lot of its impact. “Because you’re gorgeous.”

Teo, who’d overheard the remark, tilted his drink in her direction in an appreciative salute. Pack dynamics seemed to be off-kilter here in the mortal realm. In Otherworld, Teo would not have dared to cast a look in the direction of the daughter of the great Wolf Leader. Here it seemed to be okay to throw her a glance that blatantly told her he was picturing her human without any clothes...and her wolf self baring her belly in preparation for submission.

So far, the mortal realm had not lived up to Violet’s expectations. From the moment they entered it, they had been in hiding. Her father controlled all werewolves, not just those in Otherworld. Nevan’s word was absolute. From the minute they crossed the border from Otherworld, the search had been on. Violet was hunted, and Roko was a marked man. One or two narrow escapes had been enough to turn the swaggering, would-be alpha into a frightened, petulant cub.

Sunlight had become a distant memory. Hiding away indoors, staying cooped up inside for days on end, running scared: all of those things were alien to Violet’s natural instincts. And the food? Don’t get me started on the food. Prepackaged, tasteless and limited. It wasn’t even fit for dogs. How mortals survived on this crap, she would never know. She needed to get out, to run, to hunt, to sink her teeth into her own kill. A kill that was still warm...

The backyard was predictably more crowded than the house. Like Violet, most wolves would rather be outdoors than inside. She tilted back her head, drinking in the velvety night sky and sniffing appreciatively at the loam and pine scent of the forest.

There was nothing she’d have liked more than to slip out of her clothes and let her wolf self run free through the trees. There was just one problem. She cast a sidelong glance in Roko’s direction. She didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. Violet almost laughed out loud. She didn’t want to give him any ideas. Coming to the mortal realm in his company had been about the worst move she’d ever made. She wasn’t going to compound it by letting him think she was ready to mate with him. She knew Roko was waiting for a signal from her. A signal that was never going to come.

Violet found herself in a new situation. Strong-willed, headstrong and determined, for the first time in her life, she didn’t know what to do. Slink back to Otherworld with her tail between her legs, face her father’s wrath and the subsequent humiliation? Or remain here in the mortal realm with a man who wanted more than she was prepared to give? So far, there was no sign of the support he’d promised for the refugees, and she needed to get back to the Wolf Nation and back to her role in helping them. It was a dilemma, and she found herself paying more attention to her thoughts than to her fellow partygoers. The only thing she knew for sure was that she was never going back to her role as the oppressed daughter of the Wolf Leader. She wanted to do something with her life. What that something might be, she had no idea. All she knew for sure was that it would involve helping the oppressed werewolves under her father’s control...which meant she would be pitting her will against his.

After a few beers, Roko seemed to relax and was soon the center of a group of young males. Violet got the impression he was inviting their admiration because of her, in a look-what-I’ve-got way. It annoyed her, because it provided more evidence of her foolishness in being here with him. She drifted away from him slightly, following her instincts and allowing the woods and the night to call to her.

The moon was full, adding to her restlessness, and she walked deeper into the trees, leaving the sounds of revelry behind. She breathed deep, inhaling the darkness. Her inner wolf leaped at the scents and sounds around her. Damp earth, crackling leaves underfoot, scurrying creatures. Night sounds. A glance over her shoulder showed her the lights of the house, barely visible now through the dense tree trunks.

Why not?

What possible harm could there be? Violet’s wolf self nudged insistently at her human. Make it fast. No one will ever know.

Slipping off her sneakers, she tugged her sweater over her head. Jeans and underwear followed. The cool breeze felt wonderful on her naked body. God, she had missed this. How had she gone so long without shifting?

Hiding her clothing in a neat pile inside a hollow at the base of a tree, she was just about to shift when a low growl made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Looking up, she encountered the burning, yellow gaze of a feral werewolf.

Chapter 2 (#u989c0b99-ca17-5395-8e64-2bd75c237d68)

Using the photograph and information Cal had given him, Nate tracked down the young guy to a house in the town. He followed him as he left his home, and watched as he glanced furtively all around before making his way up to the woods. Nate observed in dismay as darkness fell and the fresh-faced young man shifted by the light of the full moon. The memories came flooding back. He saw the fear and confusion on this guy’s face just before his body altered. His heart ached for the other man. Nate knew exactly what he was thinking. I’m going out of my mind. It was what Nate himself had believed six years ago.

Now, of course, he knew exactly what had been happening to him. Back then, he had been twenty-two-year-old Nathan Jones. Zilar was his mother’s maiden name, and he’d been pushed into using it by his band’s manager, who wanted to go sexier and catchier. A promising music student, months away from graduation, he’d had his life turned upside-down. He’d been scared, lonely and unable to talk to anyone about what was going on inside his head and, even more frighteningly, within his body.

He clearly remembered the werewolf bite that brought about his transformation. It was after a night out with friends. He didn’t have the money for a cab, so he had walked home. Something or someone—he thought at the time it was a wild dog—had jumped out on him from a narrow side street in a quiet part of town. It went for his throat. He thought he was dead for sure, but a group of passersby disturbed the animal and it ran away.

Unconscious, Nate had been rushed to the hospital. He had bite marks to his throat and scratches on his chest and face. The police insisted they were looking for the same attacker who had brutally murdered a number of young men in the same area. He was lucky to be alive, they told him. It was only when the next full moon came around that Nate had known there was something very wrong. Lucky to be alive? He had lived with the irony of those words ever since.

Nate watched now as the werewolf crouched low, stealthily approaching the house through the trees. The backyard bordered the forest, and the businessman who lived here had chosen the location well. Privacy and country living combined to make this the perfect home for a werewolf blending into human society. He could hear the sounds of the party. The young werewolf sniffed the air, and Nate felt a fresh wave of pity wash over him. Acceptance and belonging were part of a wolf’s makeup. Pack instincts. The parts that had been stripped away from this youngster by whoever bit him. This youth was an outcast. No longer human or wolf. He belonged in neither world and would be destined to walk on the darkest edges of both. When the moon was full, his lust for human blood would be out of control, and, out of his mind and out of control, he would satisfy that lust with wild attacks on people, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. Until Nate put an end to his torment. The way I begged Cal to do for me.

And Cal had obliged. Because there was only one thing you could do for a feral werewolf. The final kindness you could do the poor, tormented scrap of humanity left behind after a werewolf attack was to kill it. But there would be no one to step in and rescue this guy the way Nate had been saved. No one was going to start his heart up again once the silver bullet had stopped it beating. Lucky bastard.

All werewolves, whether in the mystical realm of Otherworld, or here in the mortal realm, came under the rule of a single leader. The recent overthrow, and death, of the longstanding Wolf Leader, Anwyl, by his rival, Nevan, didn’t change that. A different face at the top didn’t alter tradition. Nevan was in charge. Just the mention of that name made Nate’s blood run cold, but he forced himself to focus.

The problem for the Wolf Leader was that these feral werewolves—the true werewolves of ancient human legend—were not members of any pack. No group would accept a feral werewolf into its fold. They didn’t obey the rules. They had no idea there were rules. The hierarchy that applied to wolves in the wild was equally important to werewolves. The social structure of an alpha male whose rule was absolute was unchanged. Anyone who was unwilling to accept that dynamic was cast out. Feral werewolves were not welcome in such a well-regulated society. They were the dirty secret of which werewolves didn’t care to speak.

When in the grip of their wolf selves, feral werewolves were governed by uncontrollable rage and hunger for blood. They were driven to kill everyone they encountered, regardless of their human part. Once they returned to their human form, they remembered nothing or very little of what they had done. The condition was transferred through a bite, assuming the bitten person survived the attack the way Nate had done.

Over time, werewolves had mutated, achieving a remarkable feat. They were able to gain control over their bloodlust, although their other lupine instincts remained intact. Gradually, the werewolf world had split into two packs. One dwelt in Otherworld, while the other chose to reside in the mortal realm. With strong leadership, they could have been an imposing force. As it was, they warred among themselves and more closely resembled a pack of rabid dogs.

Although they were becoming rarer, feral werewolves remained a problem. Six years ago, when Nate had been feral, he had been cruelly used as a weapon by Nevan in his attempt to destroy Stella. When Nevan had gotten inside Nate’s head he had urged him to rip out Stella’s heart. That sort of mind control over feral wolves wasn’t used often, but it wasn’t unknown. Often, they ended up in prison cells and mental institutions in the mortal realm, unaware of the terrible deeds they had committed when the moon was full.

That was where Cal, in his role as Otherworld peacekeeper, stepped in. He and Stella couldn’t save all feral werewolves the way they had helped Nate. That would have been an impossible task. The best Cal could hope for was to find a werewolf hunter who would destroy feral werewolves in a way that was as painless and humane as possible.

That was why Nate was here now, lining up this young wolf in his sights, preparing to fire a silver bullet into his heart before finishing him off by decapitating him with a samurai sword.

His finger tightened on the trigger. This part was never easy. There was always a temptation to walk away, to tell himself he’d done his share of these kills. To let someone else take over now. Except, as he’d pointed out to Cal in the early hours of this morning, there was no one else. And he couldn’t stop, even if he wanted to. He owed it to the poor bastards locked in this torment.

Just before Nate could pull the trigger, the werewolf’s lips drew back in a snarl and he crouched low, his eyes fixed on something a few feet away. Nate breathed a soft curse and turned to look at whatever it was that had caught the werewolf’s attention. A dog? Maybe a deer? There was enough light from the full moon through the tree canopy to illuminate the scene. Even so, he thought he must be imagining things. There, standing stock-still like a marble statue, her long, dark hair hanging loose about her shoulders, was the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen. He did a double take. The most beautiful naked woman he had ever seen.

The werewolf sprang, closing the distance between himself and the woman. His eyes glowed toxic yellow, and his huge fangs were bared. Frozen out of her immobility at the sight, the woman stumbled back. With not a second to lose, Nate fired while the werewolf was in midlunge.

The huge beast shuddered as the bullet caught him in the chest. At the same time, the woman lost her balance completely and began to fall backward, her arms flailing wildly as she tried to find something—anything—on to which she could grab hold and save herself. She was unsuccessful. Even across a distance of several feet, Nate heard the sharp crack of her head hitting a rock before the werewolf came crashing down on top of her. Her slender body disappeared under the pelt of the huge, feral animal pressing her into the forest floor.

* * *

She opened her eyes slowly. The black of the night sky was splattered with bright stars, and the full moon hung huge and low in the center of her vision. It was blurred, and she blinked in an attempt to clear it. Nothing happened, so she sighed and closed her eyes again. Her head hurt and there was a horrible smell, like rotten meat and unwashed bodies. She had no idea where she was or how she came to be here. A warm, drowsy feeling swept over her.

“Don’t go to sleep.” It was a man’s voice. Unfamiliar and authoritative.

She frowned and opened one eye, seeking the source of those warm, well-modulated tones. A face loomed above her. The moon was behind him so she couldn’t make out much of his features. She got the impression of strength and determination. As he leaned closer, she caught a whiff of his clean, masculine scent. Soap and cologne. Something woodsy, musky and warming. He wasn’t the source of that gut-churning smell. Although the scent probably wasn’t the most important of her problems right now.

The feeling of cold earth and damp leaves against her bare flesh brought another realization crashing over her. She struggled to move, but the pain in her head was too intense. “Why am I naked?”

“You mean you don’t know?”

He asked the question in a slightly incredulous manner that could have been intended to convey almost anything. She gazed up at him in horror. She couldn’t remember. Couldn’t remember why she was naked, why she was in these woods, why her head hurt, who he was. Who she was.

“What did you do to me?” The words trembled on her lips.

“Apart from saving your life, I haven’t done anything to you.” The words were harsh, clearly intended to put a swift end to any possible allegations.

She shrank back farther into the dirt. “I don’t believe you.”