Code Wolf

“Not an invitation,” Riley warned, turning her head to the side.

“Didn’t think it was,” he replied.

His voice was gruff, as if he hadn’t spoken in a while. At any other time, she probably would have been intrigued by that. Now she just wanted to go home.

He spoke again. “Will you be okay? I’m sorry, but I have to go. I’ll have to leave you here.”

The wail of a siren in the distance reminded Riley that this guy had mentioned something about calling in the incident. But as she contemplated that, wondering again why this Good Samaritan was roaming the city without his shirt, he disappeared.

His heat was gone and the night’s coolness returned. She had no one to lean against now. It was a miracle she was still standing.

The first thing that popped into her mind as she waited for the police to arrive was a ludicrous reaction to what had happened, and meant nothing, really. Nevertheless, she pursed her lips, took a deep breath and howled softly, almost to herself.

“Ar-rrooo-ooo...”

The heat returned, quick as a flash. The man who had rescued her was there to pin her to the wall again. With a mouth that was as feverish as the rest of his body, he brushed his lips across her forehead and down her right cheek. The featherlight touch, there and gone in a few fleeting seconds, left Riley breathless.

Had she made a mistake in thinking this was a good guy?

Inching backward far enough to put a finger under her chin, he carefully tilted her head so that he could look into her eyes with a studied observation. His eyes were light, maybe blue, and surrounded by dark lashes.

Riley couldn’t look away or break eye contact. The intensity in those eyes would have held her captive if his body hadn’t. In his gaze she found something weirdly beautiful and at the same time troubling. She detected a flicker of real wildness there.

Had she made this guy up in some head-injury-induced coma? Could she have banged her head that hard?

Because...

She was sure...

No. She wasn’t sure at all, actually. How stupid would that have been?

Riley listened to the absurdity of the words that came out of her mouth next, and winced when she was done.

“There are no such things as werewolves. You do know that?”

The smile this stranger offered her made her feel like she was being bathed in white light. She saw pearly teeth in a tanned face. The area around his eyes crinkled slightly at the corners, above chiseled features partially darkened by a five-o’clock shadow.

That’s all she got, all she was allowed, before she found herself alone again with the lost cell phone he had somehow placed in her hand...and a splitting headache.

Chapter 4 (#u5341ff3d-16b3-5b5e-99ed-7674e752762c)

Derek had to leave the woman or risk being caught by the people he took such pains to his hide true identity from on a daily basis. Dale was already sprinting in the opposite direction in human form, racing from shadow to shadow. But though Derek had also downsized to a human shape, he hated to leave before further help arrived for the woman they had rescued from harm. That part of being a werewolf sucked.

The woman had howled. Sort of. And she had mentioned werewolves. That alone would have intrigued him, even if she hadn’t been so damn beautiful.

What did she know about his kind? Anything? Could it be that she was just having him on with the werewolf remark, with no real idea how close to his reality she had come? Or was she fully equipped with knowledge about his kind?

She was a fierce little thing. No wallflower when it came to protecting herself. He’d witnessed that kick she had given to the imbecile he and Dale had left unconscious and handcuffed to a drainpipe.

She’d handled herself the best way she could without succumbing to shock. That took courage and also meant that her girl-next-door, wholesome looks were somewhat deceiving.

Small and feisty would have been a turn-on for a big bad wolf if he had time for such things...and if she hadn’t been human. Add to that her pale oval face, big eyes and mass of shiny blond hair, and she became a real curiosity.

With so many battles to fight these days, it was best for him to ignore distractions. He hadn’t indulged in anything that could have been considered a relationship since his heart had been broken, and he was still picking up the pieces of that breakup. It was also possible he had been wallowing a bit too long in its aftermath.

The only reason he had risked a shift back to human form in this woman’s presence was because she hadn’t been in any kind of state to have recognized what was going on at the time. Only by shifting could he have offered assurance that she was going to be okay. Her eyes had barely focused. She had been confused.

Still, and again, she had howled and mentioned werewolves.

Dale was waiting for him around the next corner, at the edge of a dimly lit parking lot. He stood in the shadows of a large sign, just any old half-dressed human to an observer’s eye. Dale also was a big guy, and formidable. No one in their right mind would have moved closer for a better look, or questioned his shirtless state. Dale’s posture alone would have prevented that.

“Do you know her?” Dale asked as Derek pulled up beside him.

“Never saw her before,” Derek replied.

“You got sort of cozy back there.”

“I just had to make sure she was all right.”

Dale grinned. “Yeah. Well, you took a while to do that. And you shifted in the presence of a human.”

“She was half-unconscious at the time,” Derek pointed out. “And she’s unusual.”

“She’s no Were,” Dale said. “I’d have thought you had learned a lesson about human women.”

Derek nodded. “Learned it loud and clear, my friend. Have no fear about that.”

Dale’s gaze swept over the parking lot. “It’s quiet now.”

Derek didn’t want to jinx things by agreeing or mentioning unnecessarily that there usually were a few moments of calm before a storm. The moon had only been up for a few hours. There was more night ahead. He figured that when word got back to the vamp queen about two of her young fledglings being dusted, vamp activity would pick up. He had a special sense for that kind of thing.

“We’d better get back to it,” he said.

“Right,” Dale agreed with a big breath as he stepped into the moonlight and, to get Derek to laugh, pounded on his chest the way male apes did in the wild. Then he pinned another grin to his rapidly morphing features. Unlike Derek, Dale was a more frightening rendition of their werewolf species—wolfish body, wolfish face, fur follicles and all.

When the light hit Derek, he closed his eyes. With an internal rumble, the changes began. The expansion of his chest came first, followed by an icy burn in his hips and legs as the mysterious chemical reaction coded into him gave his system a bump.

In a quick lightning strike of pain, his arms and torso muscled up, stretching his skin and the bones beneath. Light brown hair, usually only a little too long for a detective in Seattle, lengthened, as if a year had gone by with no trim. Last to alter were the parts of his face that took on another look with a brief, sharp, short-lived sting.

Weres, early in their lifetimes, had to either learn to adapt to these physical changes or die. The first shape-shift often weeded out the weak. There was no escaping or hiding from the inner explosions that set off a shape-shift. Everyone supposed this was a survival-of-the-fittest sort of biological trick. But getting used to the art of a body’s physical rearrangement was a Were’s mission. Being Were was a serious game of species-imposed destiny.

Dale was waiting for him to acknowledge the job of alley sweeping ahead, and Derek nodded. More vampires would come out sooner or later, and he and Dale had to be ready.

“I suppose you’d like to drop by that place and make sure the woman and her assailant were picked up?” Dale messaged wryly.

“Do you think you can read minds now?” Derek returned.

“Not all minds. Just yours.”