“Dangerous. Why? Do you think I can’t take every delicious inch of you? Do you think I can’t handle you?” He blinked, astonished by this statement and apparently at a loss for words. It was, she had to admit, the single cheesiest thing she’d ever said aloud. She watched him trying to figure out how best to react, while at the same time maintaining that stern, “we aren’t going to have sex, no-way, no-how” attitude. The longer they looked at one another without saying anything, the harder it was to keep a straight face. She couldn’t say who broke under pressure first, but suddenly both of them were laughing uncontrollably. She collapsed forward in hysterics, her forehead dropping against his chest. A few seconds later, she realized he’d gone completely still. He pounced.
Wolf’s Den by Aileen Harkwood
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental. Wolf ’s Den COPYRIGHT 2010 by Aileen Harkwood All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Contact Information:
[email protected] Cover Art by Nicola Martinez The Wild Rose Press PO Box 708 Adams Basin, NY 14410-0706 Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com Publishing History First Black Rose Edition, 2010 Published in the United States of America
Chapter One Before she woke, Luka became aware of two things: the steady hissing of snow at a window nearby and the coppery scent of blood. She lay sprawled on an old wooden floor. Her eyes were closed, and as hard as she tried, she couldn’t force them to open. The floor’s rough, worn texture pressed into her face, and a loose splinter jabbed at the palm of one hand, but she couldn’t move, not so much as an eyelid. Am I paralyzed? Panic swelled in her throat. What had happened to her? Something had happened, hadn’t it? Something strange. How had she gotten here, wherever here was? Her mind refused to answer. Was she drunk? High? Had someone drugged her? Was she sick? Hurt? Luka had no idea. The blood in the air, the overwhelming stench of it, added to her dread. That, too, seemed wrong, unnatural, though she could find no way to put the impression into words. Smelling it sent conflicting signals through her body. An urge to gag warred with a deeper excitement that caused her heart to race uselessly in her chest. Seconds later, a steely hand gripped her arm. “Up!” came a man’s growled command. Luka was yanked to her feet. Without control of her body, her head whipped about on her neck, and she swore she could feel her teeth rattle. “Wake up, Isabel,” the voice said, indeed sounding more like a growl than human speech. “Wake up, and look at what you’ve done.” Isabel? Who’s Isabel? Why is he calling me that? 1
Aileen Harkwood More startling was the way his deep, powerful voice affected her. Someone who sounded as if he might cheerfully murder her shouldn’t evoke desire like an aphrodisiac, yet her body began to wake in response. She grew instantly dizzy with hunger for him, even without being able to see him. His voice was threaded with a mysterious compulsion to listen she could not ignore. I should know him. But she couldn’t identify this place or the man, not from sounds alone. The horrible stench of blood masked all other smells, even his. Half-thoughts swirled maddeningly out of reach in her mind. What had she done to make him so angry? The past was a blank. She couldn’t remember where she lived, what she did for a living, or even if she was employed. When she searched her thoughts for a face, or a place, any clue that would explain her current situation, her mind was empty. She thought of herself only as Luka, but now that didn’t sound right. No more than the name he’d just called her, Isabel. I don’t remember who I am. This thought nearly sent Luka over the edge into full-blown hysteria. She struggled in the man’s grip, fighting to open her eyes. Flight was ingrained into her, into this body, at least. It instinctively sought escape. For all her efforts, however, all she heard was a strange moan. It took her several seconds to connect the unfamiliar sound with herself. Not only did she not have a last name or an identity, she didn’t recognize her own voice. “Open your eyes, damn you!” he said. Unable to obey, her eyelids like scales of lead, Luka had no logical way of knowing what would happen next. Yet she sensed the man’s hand pull back with the intention of striking her. She felt the fierce battle that raged inside him. Rage and frustration and… 2
Wolf’s Den Grief. Something had just happened to the man to cause him hard, stabbing grief, the type that took a person to a place of such pain that the limits humans placed on their own behavior no longer made sense. She could feel him, hovering there at the edge, fighting the need to punish her. Luka heard his ragged breathing just inches away. Her own struggles stilled, and she waited, preparing herself for the pain, when, at last, he reined in his towering strength. His hand dropped to his side. Luka’s eyelids flickered open at last. Her vision was blurry. She blinked several times. A wolf. She stared into the golden eyes of a wolf! The image of a creature with bone-snapping jaws flooded her mind, and she flinched. She heard a whimper. It came from her throat. Like a woman who was more canine than human. Then the blurriness cleared, and she saw the same golden eyes, but they belonged to a man, not a wolf. Intense and self-possessed, they were set in a face so unconventionally handsome, features so wild and sharp and angled, she swore what she saw was wolf. Broad shoulders and a powerful chest with just a hint of dark hair peeping over his shirt. Oh, God, he had the most gorgeous black hair. Long and thick and wavy. It reminded her of a wild animal’s pelt; she wanted to bury her fingers and stroke over and over again. He stood at least four inches over six feet and gave off the impression of towering over her, when in truth she was tall as well, her eyes on the level with his sinfully carved mouth. Another fact that felt wrong somehow. I’m not supposed to be tall. I’m short. Compounding her confusion, everything about this man felt familiar. The power he carried within. The sensuous, compelling voice that made her want to whine with need. Sex poured off him like musky, 3
Aileen Harkwood edgy cologne, and her nostrils flared. Luka tried to prevent her reaction to him, the sudden moist heat between her legs, but he knew immediately. Somehow, intuitively, he sensed her body’s response. Sensed it and wasn’t pleased. Get a hold of yourself, she thought. He studied her closely, frowning at her. Something about her puzzled him. Why did he look at her so strangely? As if he couldn’t place her any more than Luka could herself? He must know her. He’d called her Isabel. He thrust her away. “You can stand on your own now,” he said. Luka stumbled back a step, a brutal ache spilling throughout her body. Everything about her felt abused, her muscles, bones, even her skin. She moved clumsily, as if she didn’t know how to work her arms or legs. Her gaze drifted past the man toward a window. Outside, snow fell, icy, white pellets scratching at the glass. “Where am I?” she asked. “Where do you think? The cabin,” he said. “Where? I mean, where’s that?” “Anya’s cabin. North of Snoqualmie.” “Washington?” She gauged it to be late afternoon, dark enough for her reflection to appear in the window. Stunned, her lips parted. The reflection’s lips also parted. She stepped back, and so did the woman she didn’t know. “That’s not me. Who is that?” “Forget it, Isabel,” the man said, glaring at her. “Playing stupid won’t save you. If you’d burned yourself out just now, you’d be dead.” “What?” she said. “If I didn’t need to haul you in front of the council, you would be dead.” “I don’t understand.” “Stop it!” His powerful chest labored like a 4
Wolf’s Den predator’s, racing through the forest. Fear rose again in her, but once more he gradually gained control over whatever tormented him, and the warning growl she hadn’t realized he’d directed at her, faded away. Pain replaced the fierceness in his expression. He turned away. Luka glanced at her surroundings. As gloomy as it was in here, she saw they were in a cabin, a primitive one of rough-sawn boards, with dusty furniture and a cold, unlit hearth. A rudimentary kitchen, living area, and bunks all shared the same claustrophobic space. She noticed two doors, two potential exits from the room. One, the cabin’s front door, couldn’t be reached without winning her way past the man. The other stood to her left. She had no idea where it led, but she was willing to give it a try. Luka edged toward the second door when she heard him groan. She looked back in his direction, and when she didn’t find him in her immediate field of vision, she glanced down. He crouched on the floor. Next to…next to… “Oh, my God!” Luka cried out, a scream rising in her throat. “Oh, God!” A woman’s body lay pooled in blood on the floor. She’d been pretty, slim, petite. She was somewhere in her late twenties, her hair a startlingly white blond. That hair and her pale skin contrasted sharply against the vibrant red of the blood outlining her like a halo. She looked as if she’d been mauled, mangled by a wild animal. Great rents were torn in her flesh in rows of claw marks that crisscrossed her arms, legs, and abdomen. Luka detected bites, too, patches of the woman’s body which were ripped and had been, what, eaten? Luka could contain it no longer. She screamed, and the longer she screamed the more hysterical she felt herself become. She didn’t understand why, but the body before her meant something to her. She 5
Aileen Harkwood recognized this woman. She didn’t know her name, or who the woman had been to her, but the reality of her death horrified Luka on a level so primal, she knew that any second her mind would abandon her. “Quiet!” the man shouted at her. Standing up, he pivoted and gripped her shoulders. “Isabel!” That unfamiliar name shocked her so much it choked off her cries. She stared at him, completely lost. When he was sure she’d calmed, he let her go and returned to the dead woman’s side. Squatting down, he gently closed the sightless eyes, leaned over and kissed first one eyelid, then the other, and finally, her lips. It was a goodbye kiss, meant to last a lifetime, though one that fell short because the recipient wasn’t there any longer to respond. When he rose to his feet, she watched him struggle to bring his emotions in check. “Who was she?” He still wouldn’t turn to face Luka, but he had his voice under perfect, icy control. “Anya. My mate,” he said. “The woman you killed.”
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Chapter Two Griffin MacCrae left the mangled body that no longer held the precious soul he loved with all his heart, and strode to the woman who’d caused her death. It didn’t matter how long he lived, he would never forget the agonizing minutes it had taken Anya to die, nor the glee on Isabel’s face when she’d succeeded in stealing her from him forever. He’d never felt so helpless. He was the alpha of his pack. Alphas did not experience helplessness. They did not stand by while their mates—though not one of the Kith, Anya had been as close to being his mate as any human could get—were torn apart before their very eyes. Anya was strong; she’d fought Isabel’s magic without understanding what it was doing to her. She’d resisted Isabel’s vengeful fuil amhrán, bloodsong, with every ounce of will she had in her. Once begun, however, the song could not be halted before it reached its fatal last strain, enthralling any person within several paces of the singer or targeted victim, preventing them from interfering. Griff’s memories of his mate’s eyes pleading with him to save her still threatened to unman him. He struggled against the urge to weep; if he started, he’d never stop. Griff halted in front of Isabel, the bloodthirsty alpha female wannabe who’d challenged a human for mating rites with him. He allowed the deadliest of his wolf into his eyes, hoping that it would terrify and subdue her enough that she’d submit to her inevitable fate without a fight. “Look at her,” he said, pointing at Anya’s body. 7
Aileen Harkwood “Did you enjoy that? Because that’s what’s next for you once I deliver you to the council.” Each bite, each tear, each claw that had slashed Anya’s body was a mark left on Griff’s own soul. His own substantial power had been useless. As her body had done battle with itself, attempting unsuccessfully to answer the call of the song, he was left unable to help her, even to ease the pain. He could only kneel by her side, whisper words of comfort, and recite the love oath that bound them together as mates, even beyond the forests of life. That oath now guaranteed him his own death. Having declared a mate, his pack would know it the moment they scented him. They would also realize that his mate was dead, now a half-spirit, trapped in the between world, waiting for him to follow. Fergus, his brother, would be obligated to challenge him for dominance in the pack, and by tradition, Griff must allow him the killing bite, sending him on his way to join Anya for eternity. When he commanded it of her, Isabel glanced nervously at the body, then quickly turned her head aside, unable to stand the view. The trembling and awkwardness Griff had observed in Isabel since she regained consciousness now intensified until she shivered like someone descending into a lifethreatening state of shock. “I didn’t do that,” she murmured. “No? What’s that on your hands?” Dazed, she lifted her hands to her face and saw the blood staining them. “Oh!” she said, her eyes going wide. Aghast. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear she was surprised and repulsed by what she saw. If only he had arrived at the cabin in time to stop Isabel before she set the song’s deadly power in motion. His pack wouldn’t have denied him the right to kill her to prevent her using the forbidden weapon of their kind. Bloodsong was an abomination, the 8
Wolf’s Den oldest taboo. None besides the council’s leaders were supposed to know and keep the secret of the fuil amhrán. Where had Isabel learned it? From outcasts? Lone wolves at the fringes of pack lands? Lately they’d been rumored to be banding together, intent on challenging the council. If bloodsong became one of their weapons, the packs wouldn’t stand a chance. Desperately, Isabel tried wiping the drying blood off on her jeans, succeeding only in ruining her clothes. “That won’t help,” he said. “The guilt is on you. Anyone with a nose can smell it.” Their gazes met and locked. Containing his grief and righteous anger was next to impossible, but for a brief instant, something unexpected touched Griff, an urgent plea for help in Isabel’s eyes. He’d been struck by that same intuition just a few moments before, when he’d pulled her to her feet. His senses refused to give him a clear reading on Isabel. What had happened to the impulsive, selfish woman who thought of nothing but her own pleasure and power? He’d expected her to fight him when he’d dragged her to her feet, and she had, but the fight in her had been instinctual, a wolf’s reaction to an aggressor. It carried none of Isabel’s arrogance. Could the myths be true? Had uttering the fuil amhrán caused Isabel harm as well? Hell, what did it matter? She was fated to die now anyway. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong here. He was missing something important right in front of his eyes. He took the scent of her deep into his lungs. It wasn’t easy, separating the individual scents, with so much blood and death in the room. His powerful sense of smell found dying lust, terror, even love. He could still smell love in this room, a sad, bitter perfume that would haunt him every waking 9
Aileen Harkwood moment until Fergus did his duty. He detected a baffling difference in Isabel he could not tease out. She smelled like Isabel, but not like Isabel, a contradictory tangle of scents, like the kill of a sick animal in the dead of winter, which he expected of her, but also like fresh, new leaves on a tree in May, which he did not. The scent of her skin reminded him of the clean heat of summer in an alpine meadow, mixed with the cold breeze off a grave. He found himself attracted to the warm, intoxicating scents, while ignoring the cold and the dying. Isabel’s hair flowed around her shoulders and down her back like a secret waterfall in the dead of night. Her face was a combination of mystery and pouty sex, her full lips capable of the most scandalous and entertaining of pleasures. Her creamy breasts demanded to be touched, held heavily in the palms of a man’s hands and squeezed. Her tall frame, curved and streamlined in all the right places, implied that the body could carry through on anything the lips suggested. He stepped back and shook his head, immediately disgusted with himself. Had he just looked at Isabel and thought of sex? How was that possible? How could he consider such a thing? Griff needed to deliver Isabel to the council immediately. There, the Kith’s oldest wolf would sentence her. That person, and that person alone, had the right to mete out punishment for the worst crime the Kith could commit. Griff knew he must leave here with Isabel at once and go straight to his pack’s lands, higher in the mountains. But what about Anya? How could he leave her body here like this, savaged and without dignity? He couldn’t. He had to act to protect his mate even in death. Griff surveyed the room and its furnishings. This was Anya’s old family cabin, where Isabel had 10
Wolf’s Den tracked, hunted down, and cornered her. He’d never been here before, but remembered hearing Anya talk about it once while they lay in bed, sharing stories about their families. As isolated as this place was, he and Isabel were outside the Kith’s range. Humans reigned here, in complete control, with no knowledge that wolves who were not wolves existed. Anya had had little family left, an aunt she never liked and a few distant cousins. From the rundown, disused appearance of this place, it was obvious no one had visited it in years. Even so, someone would eventually come here. For the sake of the Kith’s preservation as a species, he knew he could not let them find her body. An initial examination might suggest Anya was mauled by an animal, but the moment a pathologist did an autopsy, he or she would receive the shock of their lives. Her bones would appear alien, distorted. The last thing the Kith needed was to have hundreds of conspiracy nuts combing these mountains, looking for creatures they wanted to hunt down, capture, photograph, or otherwise exploit. “Please, I can’t get warm,” Isabel said. “I can’t stop shaking.” Griff studied her. She wore only a strapless top, her generous breasts molded by its corset bodice, yet as one of the Kith the frigid air in the cabin should have little effect on her. True, Isabel had never been able to shift, to take on fur, but she did have her kind’s excellent tolerance for the cold. As he feared, she must be going into shock. He scanned the room again. Slightly grimy yet serviceable, an old crocheted afghan spilled over the back of an easy chair. He bent forward and reached for it. A bullet shattered the front window.
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Chapter Three Luka gasped as the bullet scored the air between them and drilled itself into the log wall opposite the window. Less than a heartbeat later, the wolf man shoved her to the floor and threw himself protectively on top of her. Luka was so stunned, her body’s reflexes took over, every sense going on alert, gathering information that went well beyond what she thought of as human. First, there was the acrid odor from the bullet. How could you smell a bullet? Yet, she did. She even knew the exact trajectory of the missile. Had he not bent down for the afghan, wolf man would likely be dead. Or had the bullet been meant for her? For all she knew, whoever had shot at them was firing blind, because snow continued to pelt downward, leaving visibility poor outside. Now that the window was broken, a whole host of sensations flooded her: the strong scents of pine and spruce; wood smoke from a distant cabin; an elk, startled by the gunfire, huffing in the freezing air upwind—that scent made her mouth water for reasons she didn’t understand—and men, several men surrounding the cabin. She not only smelled the tobacco, Jack Daniels, and garlic infusing their sweat, she heard the shooter crack open his rifle and reload. Closer, however, infinitely closer was the wolf man. Wolf Man. Since he hadn’t told her his name, and she was too afraid to ask, she decided that’s what she’d call him. He needed a name and Wolf Man fit. His heavy muscular body crushed hers to 12
Wolf’s Den the floor, and something inside her, over which she had no control, thrilled at the contact between them. She felt everything, his strong thighs lying atop hers, his broad chest shielding her back, his heart thudding behind his ribs, like a marathon racer putting on speed near the end of a race. His warm breath at her neck fluttered individual strands of her hair, and had the same effect as if he stroked her there, trailed his lips there. She felt his arousal begin, his sex pushing against her buttocks… “No. Uh-uh. Forget it,” Wolf Man told her, shaking his head, arms crossed in front of his chest. “This is as hot as it’s going to get for us.” He lay on the antique chaise in her living room, fully clothed, his shirt buttoned far too high for her tastes. She straddled him, at home in his lap. Her legs were up on the chaise, knees bent and feet flat on the cushion, on either side of his slim hips. “Come on,” she said, wheedled, smiling seductively at him. She used one of her knees to poke him in the side. Even through the time-softened cotton of his shirt she felt the hard muscle sheathing his upper torso. Muscles of her own, ones deep in her lower abdomen, fluttered in excitement at that brief connection with his body. “It’ll be fun,” she said. “Promise.” “It would be dangerous,” he said. It came and went so quickly, the dark, troubled look in his eyes, she wondered if she’d imagined it. What secret had he been thinking just then? Was it about her? She pretended she hadn’t seen what she’d seen. “Dangerous. Why?” she asked. “Do you think I can’t take every delicious inch of you? Do you think I can’t handle you?” He blinked, astonished by this statement and apparently at a loss for words. It was, she had to admit, the single cheesiest thing she’d ever said aloud. She watched him trying to figure out how best 13
Aileen Harkwood to react, while at the same time maintaining that stern, “we aren’t going to have sex, no-way, no-how” attitude. The longer they looked at one another without saying anything, the harder it was to keep a straight face. She couldn’t say who broke under pressure first, but suddenly both of them were laughing uncontrollably. She collapsed forward in hysterics, her forehead dropping against his chest. A few seconds later, she realized he’d gone completely still. He pounced. Taken by the shoulders, she found herself shoved backwards and pinned to the chaise, held captive under him like a predator would dominate its prey. Terror, deliciously sweet because it was not alarm for her physical, but rather her emotional safety, swept through her. Her upper body hung in midair past the foot of the chaise, and she strained to hold up her head while gazing into eyes that hungered like a wolf’s. She wouldn’t allow the thrill of true fear work its way inside her. Whatever it was he didn’t want to tell her, it didn’t matter. She let her head fall back and more laughter exploded from her. This is what she wanted, what she’d hoped for, for weeks, for him to stop treating her like a fragile flower. “Wait,” she said, giggling as he lowered himself atop her and ravished her with his lips, mouth hungrily working its way along the pulse point in her throat. “We can’t make love upside down.” “Correction,” he said. “You can’t make love upside down. Me? I can make love upside down, sideways, diagonally, or any other way you can dream up.” “Really?” she said. “As long as it’s with you.” An intense migraine stabbed through Luka’s head. Her eyesight briefly failed her again, leaving 14
Wolf’s Den her in the dark and in such excruciating pain, she thought she might pass out, even as the Wolf Man continued to cover her protectively with his body. What had that been, the vision in her mind just now, of she and Wolf Man making love? Memory? Hallucination? Fantasy? Whatever it was, it melted away, sending her back to a broken-down cabin where she heard some idiot outside reload his rifle. She forced air into her lungs, a deep, cleansing breath, hoping the torment in her head would recede. The Wolf Man went still. He was aware of her pain. Luka could smell his fear for her, as well as the lust. How odd, to be able to smell an emotion, a state of being. But there it was, his attraction to her. An instant later the scent and its accompanying emotion was cut off angrily. Placing the palms of his hands on the floor to either side of her, he pushed himself up and off her. “Stay down,” he whispered. “He’s reloaded.” “I know. I heard. I don’t know how I could hear that, but I heard.” He was silent for a moment. “You don’t know how?” he asked. “Have you forgotten even that you’re Kith?” “What’s Kith?” Silence again, while he considered her question, but this time he didn’t answer. Instead, he crawled cautiously to the front wall of the cabin, flattened himself against it near the window, then took a chance and darted a look outside. “Who is it? Why are they shooting at us?” Luka asked. “It’s Silas.” Now it was Luka who fell silent. The name. Silas. Unexplained anxiety gripped her at the mere mention of it. Though she had no idea who Silas might be, she wanted to shrink inside herself, find a place to hide where she could be invisible. She heard 15
Aileen Harkwood buzzing in her head, an icy chill touched the skin at her throat, and once again she was torn, dizzy and sick, from her surroundings. “Don’t,” Silas said. The hand that brutally grabbed her breast shocked her so much that her gasp, a rush of wind from the heart of her chest, was loud enough to draw stares from a couple on the other side of the busy street. Above her, a man’s face swam in and out of focus as the agony his fingers caused, digging into her soft flesh like articulated metal claws, nearly made her pass out. She glimpsed his light brown hair, short yet curly, which struck her as unnaturally boyish when paired with the bloated, prematurely lined cheeks, lips that were too small and pretty, and eyes that reminded her of ice and rotting seaweed on an alien shore. “Don’t lie to me,” he said. Pulling her into her building’s lobby, away from everyone on the street. “I saw you looking at him.” “Who?” she was foolish enough to ask. Even open-handed, the blow that followed rocked her so hard, she thought she heard her jaw break— Luka hissed in pain. She blinked and opened her eyes and there was the Wolf Man watching her closely, his attention piercing. “Isabel?” He started to lift his hand toward her, a gesture of concern, perhaps, then stopped himself. “Are you okay?” What was wrong with her? Why did she keep having these strange episodes? “Who’s Silas?” she asked. Bullets shattered another window. Glass rained down on Luka’s head.
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Chapter 4 “Anya!” a drunken voice shouted from outside the cabin. “Did you think I couldn’t find you, whore?” “That’s Silas?” Luka asked. “What does he want? Why is he doing this?” “Silas is Anya’s ex,” the Wolf Man said. “She’s…she was married?” Luka asked. Evidently Silas didn’t realize the woman was dead. “Her ex-boyfriend. Her stalker. You’ve met him.” He snarled. “Hell, you flirted with him.” “With that…out there…” Luka couldn’t help the disgust that came unbidden into her face. “No. Never.” Wolf Man’s perplexed expression returned, and he studied her silently. “I can shift,” he said, “and surprise them with a welcome they’re not likely to forget. “Shift?” Again, he stared at her as if she had lost her mind. He sighed, impatiently. “Never mind. It probably wouldn’t work. There are three of them out there, each armed. It would be suicide for us both.” So? she almost said. Only a little while ago, you pointed at the dead woman and said I’m next. As if he could read her thoughts, he shook his head. “Not like that. It will be bad for you. But at least you’ll have the dignity of being tried by, and dying with, your own people.” “Maybe I’d prefer this way,” she said recklessly. “If you let Silas shoot you,” he said, “it’ll be two bodies I’d need to bring back to the council, not one.” “Your choice,” she said. 17
Aileen Harkwood “You aren’t that brave.” “Maybe not,” she said, “but I’m tired of being accused of something I didn’t do.” “Amnesia isn’t a defense, Isabel.” Who is Isabel? “Well, then there’s no hope for me then, is there?” she said. His eyes burned at that. She saw the innate passion in him, fire that could be deadly, or keep a woman safe and warm. Gentle toward one he loved, or a savage in her defense. Wolf Man. Definitely an apt description. He brushed aside her talk of death to voice a new concern. “They’re going to come bursting in here at any second.” “There’s an old shotgun locked in a closet, down the hall through that door,” Luka said. She used her eyes to indicate the room’s other door. “What?” His eyebrows shot up. “How do you know that? Have you been here before?” He wasn’t the only one surprised. How had she known that? Mere minutes ago she couldn’t have even said where that door led. Now she knew a hallway and more was behind it? What trick of memory was this? Her panic returned, bone deep. None of what had happened so far made sense, not this body, with its weird, hyperactive senses, nor the image she’d witnessed of herself in the window. How could she be the woman she’d seen reflected back at her, with her midnight black hair and powerful, yet voluptuous body? Sinful, that’s what that body was. Dangerously sexed, ready to taunt when presented with the slightest opportunity. The woman she’d seen in the window was an operator. She lacked a conscience and would have no qualms about using sex to get what she wanted. Not Luka. She was someone else. She was not Isabel. She may not know much about herself, but of 18
Wolf’s Den this she had no doubt. “You didn’t have time to explore when you came in here and confronted Anya,” he said. “I know. I was tracking you. You were no more than two minutes ahead of me.” “I don’t know how I know, but there’s a hallway on the other side of that door. A gun is locked in a closet at the end of it.” Wolf Man obviously didn’t believe her, but he sighed in resignation. “Okay. I’ll check it out.” Inch by inch, like a soldier using his forearms and the toes of his boots to propel himself forward, Wolf Man crept toward the door. Reaching it, he eased it open a crack. He waited. No gun blasts splintered the wood above his head. Luka felt certain he had always realized no one stood behind it. For some reason she couldn’t explain, she understood that his sense of smell and hearing were like hers, inexplicably heightened. “Stay here,” he told her. That’s when she saw it. A quick turn of her head and her gaze traveled unwillingly over Anya’s body again. She cried out, unable to stifle her shock. A wolf’s claw, no, an entire forepaw, was embedded in one of Anya’s wounds. And not simply embedded in the wound. Protruding from it.
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Chapter Five Griff nearly forgot caution, wanting to leap to his feet at Isabel’s cry and go to her side. Only years of living on the edge, a wolf among humans who had to think twice about every move he made, saved him from exposing himself to Silas’s rifle aim. “What is it?” he said. Isabel stared at Anya’s body and looked like she might throw up at any second. She clearly wasn’t herself. When she’d first seen it, she’d reacted to the body the way a human woman would, one who had never before been confronted with violence and blood. No member of the Kith, not even a pup, would scream upon seeing a bloody body, no matter who or what had caused the death. It simply wasn’t in the wiring. A wolf might feel rage, grief, fear, triumph, or any number of emotional responses to a messy death, but the animal within always experienced the sight with them. Blood excited the Kith, even blood spilled in the taboo ritual of bloodsong, which forced the transformation from human to wolf, even if there was no wolf to call out. Isabel’s eyes were wide, her entire focus concentrated on a specific wound in Anya’s forearm. Griff saw one of the foreclaws of the wolf Anya had tried to become, jutting outward from the gash. Isabel appeared hypnotized by it, as if she’d never seen it before. And yet not fifteen minutes ago, she was the one who had opened the gash on Anya’s arm to release the foreclaw from inside. “Isabel!” he whispered harshly, striving to gain her attention. Isabel turned her face in his direction, her eyes 20
Wolf’s Den dazed. “I…I’m sorry,” she said She was sorry? Isabel was sorry? Never once had Griff ever heard Isabel utter an apology. What was wrong with her? It was yet another bewildering change in her since she’d woken. Her scent was wrong, her facial expressions foreign to the face that made them. Add all these things together and the woman before him was not the Isabel he knew. “Get behind the sofa,” he told her. “I’ll be back in a minute.” He didn’t wait to see if she obeyed. Once in the hallway, Griff left the door ajar and dared to come up into a crouch. He didn’t want to be caught in a vulnerable position on his belly should Silas or his men break in here. To classify the dark and dingy space as a hallway was generous. It continued for no more than six feet, with a door on the right and left, and a ninety-degree turn at the end. Human scents filled his nostrils, but the smells were old and degraded. No one had been here for years, not even Anya. Nor did he smell another wolf. He was baffled. How did Isabel know there was a closet with shotgun? Had Anya told her? No, that made no sense. His mate had been brilliant, not stupid. If she had been afraid of an enraged and jealous Isabel, she wouldn’t have warned an enemy that she was going to try for a weapon. Griff straightened fully, then passed by both doors, a bathroom and bedroom without entering. As he neared the end of the hall, he finally caught the faint whiff of ammunition behind a third door. He tried the knob. Locked. Too bad Isabel hadn’t mentioned a key. Grabbing the knob, he braced his other hand against the door frame, and gave the knob a powerful tug. He winced when the wooden door jamb splintered, the noise like thunder in his ears. He only hoped none of the men outside was 21
Aileen Harkwood close enough to have heard the sound. Behind the door, just as Isabel promised, was a shallow closet with a shotgun propped in one corner. A box of shells lay on the closet’s crowded upper shelf. He reached for the gun, when a shout came from outside. “You can’t hide, MacCrae!” Silas called. “I know you’re in there, and your slut, too.” MacCrae? Was that the Wolf Man’s name? Luka wondered. Since Anya was the “whore,” it was a good bet she was the “slut” to which Silas referred. Yet another name or label muddling her sense of identity, she thought wryly. Though the Wolf Man had told her she was a killer, she did not feel like a murderer or a slut. She instinctively thought of Silas and the men out there as the bad guys, while she and the Wolf Man were the good guys. “I know you’ve got your traitorous bitch in there,” Silas shouted. “I saw her in the window. I know what she is. I know what you are.” Luka shivered so violently, her muscles began to lock up and cramp. She listened to the man shouting outside, but her attention continued to be drawn to the body of the woman nearby. She’d assumed an animal had torn the unfortunate woman apart, but couldn’t figure out how one of its paws had become lodged in Anya’s wounds. Where was the rest of the beast? “You’re dead, bitch,” Silas called to her specifically. “I’m looking forward to skinning you and your boyfriend in the snow. The only question is which one of you will be alive to watch.” A shotgun blast rocked the room. It felt like a bomb going off in Luka’s head. Wolf Man pumped another round into the shotgun, fired, and then ducked below the window. Smoke curled from the weapon’s barrel. She must be far gone not to have noticed his return. 22
Wolf’s Den “Is your name MacCrae?” she asked. “Griff,” he told her. She’s worse, Griff thought. She doesn’t even know my name. How am I ever going to get her out of here safely? He hesitated, startled by this thought. Safely? Not only did he want to take his mate’s killer to safety, perverse instinct swamped him with the imperative to protect her, defend her against the man outside who’d just shouted his intentions to slaughter her like a wolf caught in a steel trap. The impulse to guard her was so strong, a ripple of wolf fur surfaced and traveled across his muscled chest, the beast in him fighting to get out and go on the offensive. He subdued the reaction in moments, but the primitive need to defend remained. His body was reacting as if Isabel was his mate now. No other relationship among the Kith rivaled the power of the emotions currently flooding his body with adrenaline. Griff felt like his mate was not dead, but huddled, living and breathing just feet away from him, in fear for her life. Wrong. This is all wrong. With difficulty, Griff forced these thoughts aside. He needed to concentrate. They needed a plan out of here. On the plus side were the shotgun and his ability to shift, though Silas had already hinted he knew they were Kith. On the minus side, the inexplicably altered Isabel. Then there was Anya’s body to consider. Supposing that he could bring Isabel back to a credible level of functioning, how could he guide one woman, while carrying the body of another, and still move fast enough through a storm to outpace their pursuers? Fergus! He sent a silent call into the night, hoping it would find his brother. His pack was almost a hundred miles away, and he had no idea if his call could be heard. Fergus was closest to him in blood. If 23
Aileen Harkwood any of the Kith could hear him, he would be the one. I need help, now! Isabel lifted her head and scented the freezing air flowing through the shattered window. “Fire,” she said. “I smell fire.” She was right. Someone had just lit the cabin on fire.
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Chapter Six “We’re out of time,” Griff told Luka. More bullets, fired from several weapons now, demolished what was left of the front windows. He took her arm, and they raced to the hallway. Inside the dim passage, her legs threatened to collapse under her. She didn’t want to be a liability to their escape attempt and dug for the little strength she had left. She pushed away from Griff and steadied herself. Her body mourned the absence of his touch, telling her the few inches separating them were a loss she shouldn’t have to endure. That same odd set of heightened senses with which she had awoken informed her that not only was her scent on the Wolf Man, his was on her. She liked this. It felt right. Wearing his musky, dominant scent, like a dress shirt stolen from his closet, was the way things were supposed to be. Snap out of it. Have you forgotten his only reason for saving you is so he can transport you to his council so they can put you to death? “There’s a back door around the corner at the end of the hall. Here,” he said, and handed her two lumberjack shirts he’d found in the closet. They weren’t terribly heavy, but at least they were wool. She grabbed one and slid it on over her bustier, then handed the other one back to Griff, who wore only a lightweight cotton shirt. He refused it. “Put it on over the other one,” he instructed her. “But you don’t have a jacket,” she said. “I don’t need one.” He didn’t need a jacket? Was he serious? They were about to head into a blizzard. 25
Aileen Harkwood “Hurry,” he said. The smoke grew thicker in the tight space; Luka choked and coughed. Raging heat from the main room seared her face. The cabin’s ancient, tinder-dry walls were going up like well-seasoned firewood. Outside, dusk fell as fast as the snow. “I’m not going with you,” he said. Fear shot through her. “You’re not staying in here.” He said nothing. “Are you suicidal?” “I don’t have time to argue about this.” She grabbed his arm, intending to drag him out the back if necessary. He stopped her and pried loose her grasp. “No, Isabel.” Luka wasn’t about to give up. Was this man nuts? He wanted to die in a burning building? No! Luka had no idea from where inside her such a vehement protest came, or why, but she would not let this man die. Think. Think of something. “I can’t go out there by myself,” she said. “What am I supposed to do out there in the middle of a blizzard with people shooting at me? And what about you? You can’t survive a burning house.” “I’m not staying in the house,” Griff said. “I’m going out the front.” “Where you’ll be shot before you make it five feet from the door.” He shook his head. “I’ll be fine.” “Coward. You want to die. You don’t want to live without her.” Fire jumped into his eyes, and sheer terror laced through her body at the fury she witnessed in their depths. His anger swept over her, like the flashover now consuming the hall ceiling in rolling clouds of flame. 26
Wolf’s Den “Isabel—” He gripped her by the upper arms, and she wasn’t sure what he would do. Was he going to shake her? Slap her? Push her out the door? “Stop calling me Isabel! My name’s Luka.” Griff froze. A strangled sound came from between his lips. He stepped closer, the scent of his animal rage washing over her, beating at her. His fingers abruptly and painfully tightened on her arms, bruising her. “Where did you hear that name?” he asked. “I didn’t. It’s mine.” “I don’t believe you.” A growl replaced the hurt sound that had come from deep in his chest. “Who told you? Are you a voyeur, as well? Did you spy on us while we made love?” Spy on him and Anya? Would she do that? “It’s my name,” she insisted, and then was overcome by a violent fit of coughing. She couldn’t breathe. The smoke was poisoning her lungs and starving her blood of oxygen. She grew dizzy. She watched him, the supreme effort it took to regain control, but he clamped down and put away his darker half. “Wait here until you hear the shots, then go,” Griff told her. “Head for the trees, and when you reach them, keep running. Don’t stop.” He turned, looked back once, and then vanished into the smoke and flames devouring the cabin. Luka, Griff thought. My God. My pet name for Anya. He’d only spoken it twice, and each time he knew they’d been alone. He would have scented, heard Isabel had she been spying on them. She might be Kith, but she wasn’t truly wolf. Her abilities weren’t as strong as his. Griff’s head hurt at the conundrum presented. How had Isabel come to know such an intimate fact about him and Anya? It fell into the same disturbing 27
Aileen Harkwood category as his mate’s dying words. He’d already sworn he would never repeat her last words to another soul. It had to have been the pain. In that moment, she’d ceased being Anya. No other explanation fit to explain her bizarre and cruel parting epithet to him. Confusion was an alien sensation for the wolf inside him. It didn’t do well when faced with uncertainties. It howled to shift then and there and leave his own pain behind. Worry over it later. If you survive, that is. Griff’s lungs rebelled at the sooty air filling the burning cabin. He all but stumbled through the inferno, blinded by the heavy black smoke, his sense of smell nearly useless. He navigated his way to the cabin’s bedroom by instinct alone, a process that seemed to take forever. It was all he could do to not cry out when his hand landed on the doorknob. The metal branded his palm like an iron left in the fire for hours to mark cattle. Bursting into the bedroom, he slammed the door closed behind him, a much needed barrier between him and the flames. A tiny grove of Douglas fir trees grew directly in front of the room’s only window, which faced the front yard. The firs screened the window from the men outside watching the cabin and would hide him from his enemies’ rifle fire during the first few seconds of his plan to cause a distraction. Isabel could use that time to escape out the back. He hoped. Griff worked the old and stubborn window open as far as it would go, as quietly as he could. He set down the shotgun and undressed. Though he hated giving up the weapon, he’d be unable to carry it with him. Forcing the change from man to wolf was like creating himself all over again, redefining who he was each and every time he did it. Those of his kind 28
Wolf’s Den who didn’t shift never understood, assuming the change was an automatic physical response. They believed that if a Kith wanted to call up his wolf, he merely needed to think wolf, and it would happen. Griff knew that it was never that easy, never as natural as it sounded. Pain blew through him with the unstoppable assault of a firestorm, like the very real conflagration feeding at the bedroom door. His body fought itself initially, wanting to be neither man nor wolf, until he found his control, gathered his muscles under him, and literally leapt into his other self. A thick pelt of black fur flowed into being at the same time his lupine form took shape. Begun on two feet, his great lunge through the window ended in his landing on four mighty paws.
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Chapter Seven Just inside the back door, Luka’s lungs convulsed with the need to open the door and breath in clean air. When she ran outside, she’d be popping into view like a duck in a shooting gallery. If she’d been wearing white, she might have some hope of camouflage, but in a red and black plaid lumberjack shirt atop another one that was green and yellow? She might as well paint a bullseye on her chest. Crack! A shot split the air, coming from the front of the cabin. More shots rang in rapid succession. Luka dared a quick glance through the window in the back door and saw a man in a soiled ski jacket break cover from behind a stand of trees at the back of the cabin’s yard. He must have been guarding her door, waiting for the fire’s victims to rush outside. He abandoned his post and hurried toward the sound of gunfire. This was Luka’s chance. She had no idea if another man lay in wait for her, but she couldn’t last a second longer in here. Cinders fell from the ceiling, threatening to set her hair ablaze, a terrifying sensation. As if a switch turned on inside her, she could hold back no longer the primitive need to run. She plunged into the storm. After the searing heat and blackness of the cabin, her first stride outside felt like heaven, the antidote to being broiled alive. Frantically, she beat at her hair, but she needn’t have bothered. The dense curtain of falling snow smothered any flames before they could begin. Though her breath wheezed in her chest from the smoke still trapped inside, she 30
Wolf’s Den kept her wits and did not allow herself the noisy gasping breaths of fresh air her body demanded until she could reach the trees and safety. Close to the house, the blanket of snow had been thin, a couple of inches deep at most, but the farther she went, the deeper it became until her legs sank up to her knees in the powder with every step. Clad in ridiculously tall spike-heeled boots not meant for anything more strenuous than vamping, her feet could not gain purchase, and she tripped again and again. Her toes continued to encounter hidden obstacles beneath the snow, rocks, tree roots, metal edging for the cabin’s summer garden, but she knew she couldn’t afford to be one of those cliché females who tumbled on their butts the second they needed to flee for their lives. Luka won the safety of the trees without a single shot fired at her, and though she allowed herself to take those huge gulps of clean air at last, she didn’t stop running. Nor did she come across another bad guy in hiding. Griffin’s ploy had worked. She was free. Under the shelter of the pines, the snow was only a little deeper than it had been next to the house, no more than half a foot, which meant she didn’t have to wade. Ahead were more trees. Apparently, the cabin was situated at the edge of a forest. If she stayed beneath the canopy of trees, chances were they’d deflect much of the snow, and the going would be easier. Where she was going, she had no idea. Survival skills she never realized she had kicked in. That primitive part of her, whose job it was to keep her alive, took over. The blizzard tossed and whirled the snow in a half dozen directions, but her nose told her which way was downwind, and she headed in that direction so that no one behind her could scent her. Her feet lifted and her legs drove themselves into the drifts over and over again on 31
Aileen Harkwood automatic pilot. She amazed herself with the endurance that sprang up from some untapped place within her. Once she relaxed and let her body judge the situation for her, she discovered she had an almost preternatural ability to gauge the terrain, the dangers, and the best paths to take through the drifts and trees. Wind scoured her bare skin and her clothes became soaked through, but none of it mattered. She ran like something that was meant to live in the forest, forging stealthily ahead at great speed through the trees, never making a sound. I should stop, she thought. Double back and try to find Griff. What had made him go so pale when she’d told him her name was Luka? He’d recognized that name. Her speaking it had hurt him. Why and how had she come up with it in the first place? Who was Luka? Yet another woman in the Wolf Man’s life that Isabel had destroyed? Obviously, Luka wasn’t her real name. This body, Isabel’s body, put a lie to such an assertion. She shouldn’t have said anything to Griff. She felt powerfully drawn to him. Whoever Luka turned out to be, she didn’t want to hurt him any more than she already had. I can kill you both, came the whisper from directly in front of her. Startled, Luka stumbled to a halt. “Who’s there?” In fact, I think I will. A soft laugh wove through the snow-draped trees. Luka turned around in place, her rapid breath steaming in the cold, while icy needles pelted her exposed skin. She couldn’t tell where the voice came from, but she swore she’d heard it before. Highly sexed and cruel. Why was it so familiar? She was given no time to ponder the question. Pain, sharp and sudden, unfolded inside her. Luka put her hands to her head and doubled 32
Wolf’s Den over, moaning. That blackness that robbed her of sight during the two flashbacks or visions in the cabin overtook her again. The spell plunged her into darkness, only to wrench her back a second later. Gone were the blizzard, the trees… “You know you’re only a diversion to him,” Isabel said. Isabel sat on the couch in the cabin. Her fingers toyed with the grimy afghan thrown over the sofa’s back, while one long leg dangled over the sofa’s padded arm, her foot in its spike-heeled boot swinging idly back and forth. From her arrogant posture, one might assume she was the owner of the cabin, not the woman standing near the door, whom she turned to and addressed. “I can see why Griff likes the other white meat.” Isabel licked her lips. “You’re very yummy.” Several inches shorter and her complete physical opposite, a living, breathing Anya faced the intruder who had made herself at home in her family’s cabin. Anya’s fine hair fell down her back like a shimmering light in the dark, its glow leaving faint afterimages in the eyes of any who followed her agitated movements. “Get out,” she said to Isabel. “I don’t know who you are, but you aren’t welcome here.” “Aren’t you feisty for a human.” Isabel cocked her head then, her eyes grew unfocused and it appeared she listened to noises Anya couldn’t hear. Her expression sparkled with malice. “Oh, my. Is Griffin on his way here?” She listened a few moments more. “Yes, he is. And he’s brought company with him, too. Lots of company.” Her nostrils flared as she delicately sniffed the air. “It’s your ex, Silas, with some friends.” Anya’s sharp intake of breath delighted Isabel. “He’s tracking Griff, who’s leading him right to this door. I wonder if Griff knows.” “I don’t hear anything,” Anya said. “Except the 33
Aileen Harkwood snow.” Isabel shrugged. “Of course not, how could you? You’re human.” “Why do you keep saying that?” “Aren’t you? Human, that is?” “And you’re what, from outer space?” Anya opened the door and gestured into the storm. “Leave now!” Isabel didn’t move. Her lower leg, still dangling over the sofa arm, kept swinging back and forth. “Why are you here?” Anya asked, demanded. “What do you want?” The leg stopped swinging. Isabel lifted it off the sofa and brought both her spiked heels together on the floor, preparing to stand. “I’m interested in you,” the dark-haired woman said. She left the couch. Slowly, she stalked toward Anya, and a feral look animated her features. Though more than ten feet separated them, Anya instinctively took a step back. “Why?” “I wanted to know who my mate is fucking,” Isabel said. Anya’s eyebrows drew together in confusion. “Your what?” Isabel made a strange noise, what a wolf might sound like if it could laugh. “I’m waiting for him to stop toying with his food,” she said. Anya took another step back, succeeding in trapping herself into the corner behind the open front door. “I’m waiting for Griff to snap you up,” Isabel said. “And chew.” Luka surfaced from the vision that had grabbed hold of her, and found herself standing in the blizzard, the grating sound of Isabel’s teeth echoing in her ears, as the woman made a grotesque mime of 34
Wolf’s Den eating. Clack, clack, clack. Luka’s mind filled with the image of great jaws snapping, and she shivered. Griff’s jaws. Biting and tearing. That was the picture Isabel had tried to instill in Anya’s thoughts, the bizarre concept of Griff and Isabel as vicious animals that would literally devour Anya. Isabel was a horrible woman, deranged, as much a sociopath as Silas. More than anything now, Luka didn’t want to think of herself as being that person. That’s what the visions were, she realized now. Flashbacks. Memories. Which brought up the question again: What had Isabel meant by continually referring to Anya as human? She’d said it as if it were a dirty word. Luka’s hair and upper body were already covered in snow, telling her just how long she’d stood motionless in one place. She shook off the white powder and began to run again, as fast as she could. She could almost feel a second presence inside her, one wild and inhuman, seeking escape from the memory of that confrontation between the two women in the cabin. She wondered where Griff was right now. Worried that one of those shots she’d heard had caught him. He’d told her to run, no matter what she’d heard. She’d done exactly that, obeying his command. Now she wished she hadn’t. Luka wished that the bizarre instincts that had guided her since she woke next to Anya’s body had not pushed her into flight so far from the cabin and safety. Griff could be injured or captured by that maniac, Silas, and his men. It might even be worse. Wolf Man could be dead. No, please. Her mind filled with the memory of their encounter together on the chaise, the intimate way her body knew his, from the taut muscles of his 35
Aileen Harkwood gorgeous ass, to the birthmark in the shape of a tiny dagger in the middle of his back, to the wellendowed length of him she shamelessly craved to ride. Yes! It struck her like a bolt out of the dark. I know him. Yet, that knowledge meant very little. Of course, Isabel knew Griff. Though he hadn’t claimed a relationship with her, he hadn’t denied one either. The mysterious, powerful man had also declared he meant to take her to his “council,” where she would be put to death for a crime she did not commit. Luka couldn’t let that happen. She couldn’t let anyone capture her. Now that she was in the forest. Now that she was free. Turn off your mind and run, a voice inside her said. So she did. **** Giving Silas and his trigger-happy drinking buddies the slip was much easier than Griff had thought. A fifth of Jack on a night like this went a long way toward spoiling a man’s aim. He counted at least eight rounds fired before he hit the trees, but none came anywhere near him. His keen ears flicked and caught the muffled sounds the woman made escaping out the back of the cabin. Luka. She’d said she was Luka. The secret nickname no one was supposed to know. Impossible. He listened for the direction she took fleeing the cabin, then ran the other way, drawing the men farther and farther away from her. Thud! A bullet lodged itself in a tree trunk inches from his tail. His hackles rose. Maybe Silas and his men weren’t as drunk as he’d thought. From upwind came the oily sputter of a snowmobile engine turning over, then a second one, a third. At the same time, Griff’s wolf suddenly lost the 36
Wolf’s Den woman’s scent. He could no longer hear her over the roar of engines, the rhythm of his own pounding heart. Worse, one of the snowmobiles peeled away from the others, gunning its way through thick, snow-draped foliage in the direction Isabel had taken. Silas was after her! God, no. He sprinted forward, driving himself harder, punishing every muscle in an effort to outdistance his pursuers. He shouldn’t feel the way he did about his mate’s killer. From a moral standpoint, it was completely illogical. From an emotional perspective, it made even less sense. Still he couldn’t deny what his wolf howled at him to do. He had to find a way to shake off his pursuers, change course, and go after her. Protecting Isabel was everything. Fergus! He tried to find and connect with his brother’s mind again. Hear me, he cried, the mental howl of a lone wolf to his pack. Fergus!
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Chapter Eight Something bit Luka’s shoulder. Ouch, she thought, but couldn’t open her eyes. A great weight pressed down on her. She was much too weak to push it off. She’d been asleep, was still asleep, continued to sleep. Teeth clamped down on her again. She tried to pull away and fumbled in the snow for leverage. Her hand went up in a feeble defense and met a well-muscled form covered in thick, silky fur. Isabel, a voice spoke inside her head. Get up. Can’t, she thought, not worrying at the strangeness of the conversation. Get up, the voice commanded. Too tired. Luka! Her eyelids parted, ice crystals scattering from her lashes, and she saw the wolf. Huge, she thought. She was too out of it to be terrified by the massive black wolf with his equally massive jaws. Teeth that could easily rip out her throat. Instead of attacking, the wolf licked her, nipped her shoulder again. Griff? Hold onto my fur. Let me pull you up. We need to get you to shelter. Her mind wouldn’t wrap around what she saw. You can’t be a wolf. Later, he said, shelter now. Luka sank her fingers into his thick fur in wonder. A wolf. Griff was a wolf, larger than any 38
Wolf’s Den normal one she’d ever seen. Now she knew she was hallucinating. He got her to her feet. His shoulders came up to her chest, and she leaned into him, allowing her to guide her while she trudged one slow, agonizing step after another. Again and again she fell, but Griff was patient, leading her, nudging her persistently forward. Eventually she found herself standing in front of a black hole in the side of the mountain. One of our dens, he told her. Ours? The Kith. You are Kith. Luka didn’t know what Kith was and didn’t care. Gnawing pains began to knot her arms and legs. The wolf’s muzzle pushed her toward the entrance to the den. You need to get out of the cold, or you’ll die. Griff had found her face down, unconscious in the snow. So cold was she, her naturally pale skin had turned an icy white, and her lips were the color of frozen blueberries. He had chivied her more than an hour to lead her to the den. He knew from her occasional soft moan how much the journey hurt her abused body, but unlike the Isabel he’d known most of his life, she didn’t utter a single complaint. They were incredibly lucky to find a den so far from his pack’s lands. He had no idea what had prompted his people to fashion one here, yet he gratefully bedded Isabel down in the oversized earthen cave with its floor of thick mosses and pine needles. Thankfully they were now out of the wind, but Isabel’s body temperature had fallen so precipitously that shelter alone was not enough to bring it back to normal. He lay next to her, thinking that his fur would serve as a blanket for her, but after an hour passed, and wave after wave of spasms continued to tie her muscles into knots, he knew this, too, had 39
Aileen Harkwood failed. Her body was shutting down. He had to think of something else. She wouldn’t last the night. Knowing how much energy shifting expended, he decided to try it right there in the cave, consciously directing much of the required energy for the transformation into heat. It was dangerous. He might not survive. Even if he did, he was worn ragged from everything that had happened over the last twenty-four hours. He’d be useless to defend the two of them should Silas succeeded in tracking them to the den. None of that matters. You can’t lose Isabel, too. Griff still didn’t understand his new feelings toward Isabel. Besides making no sense, the urges that his wolf summoned from him, the primal craving for sex with her, the urgent imperative to claim her as his territory before someone else could steal her from him, went well beyond poor taste. Such thoughts were depraved. Kith mated once and only once. They certainly didn’t bond with their mates’ killers. When he’d thrown himself over her to shield her from rifle fire in the cabin, his body had wanted what it could not, should not have. He wanted to plunge himself into her hot embrace, to pull her so close their bodies melted into one another. He’d drawn in the heated scent of the skin at the back of her neck and, as before, it confused him. She’d smelled like Isabel, but not like Isabel. It was a maddening perfume his body insisted he should recognize, enticing even as it eluded him. Nor had the desire to ravish her, to bring her to her sexual peak, faded as he lay atop her. His erection had strained at his jeans. Though he’d been powerless to control his body’s reaction to Isabel, it shamed him because it sullied Anya’s memory. Guard. The wolf told him, ignoring his human protests. Protect. In the end, he could fight his needs no longer. He lay still on the floor of the den now, closed 40
Wolf’s Den his eyes and summoned up the image of his twolegged form, imagining it whole, but cold, all but a fraction of the energy needed to maintain life flowing outward from him into Isabel. Luka jerked awake. She felt so hot, that for a few seconds, she imagined herself back in the burning cabin, unable to escape the fire. When a few seconds later she realized she was neither on fire, nor choking on sooty air, she tried to figure out where she was. She lay on something soft and fragrant in a large space that looked like a cross between a cave and an oversized hole in the ground. Moonlight spilled into the earthen room from a passage leading up and out. From this angle, she couldn’t see the opening, though she heard the wind whistling past it. It was toasty in the cave, den, wherever, and she was warm for the first time since this nightmare had begun. How had she gotten here? The last thing she remembered was running through a blizzard, not consciously picking a direction, but instead following instincts she’d never had before. They urged her downwind, cautioning her that she couldn’t allow her scent to be carried back to the men who pursued her. As if they were capable of detecting her by scent. No matter; some unfamiliar impulse compelled her, guiding her escape from danger. Those previously untapped instincts had driven her away from civilization, insisted that she travel into the high wilderness. Home. How strange. She had no home, or relatives, hadn’t for a long time. Wait! Had she just recalled something about herself? She had! All this time she’d wondered why she couldn’t remember who she was. Part of the problem might be that she wasn’t anyone special or memorable. If a person’s identity was in part defined 41
Aileen Harkwood by the people he or she knew, the ones who would miss her should she unexpectedly disappear, Luka knew she might as well not exist. None of this soul searching, however, answered her immediate question: how she’d ended up here. Again, she tried to solve the mystery. What did she remember? Running, freezing, feeling herself get sleepier and sleepier, no doubt in reaction to the bitter cold of the storm, and then slowing to a walk, a crawl, falling to her knees in the snow, letting her lethargy take her down. Until the wolf bit her. My God! What a hallucination. She’d imagined Griff as a black wolf who clamped his great jaws around her shoulder and wouldn’t let her sleep. Despite the tremendous pain every movement required, the wolf had forced her to get up, lean into its shoulder. Together, they’d made their way to some safe hole in the— “Ground,” she whispered to herself. Exactly where she was now. Dragged here by a wolf that spoke to her in her head, using Griff’s voice. What an insane fantasy. Griff! How could she be so out of it, that she not only wondered if he’d survived, but had failed to notice the man spooned against her, his arms imprisoning her in a possessive embrace? She looked down at the arm around her. It was Griff, naked, his skin cold to the touch, body still. She couldn’t even feel his breath at her back. Dread slammed into her, and she freed herself from his arms, pushing herself up on her hip, and then turned over to face him. He didn’t move. “Griff,” she said. “Griff!” He didn’t respond. His eyes refused to open. “Wake up. Please wake up.” Even in the depths of unconsciousness, every muscle in his magnificent body reminded her an 42
Wolf’s Den ancient warrior ready for battle. He felt as cold as marble, and Luka rubbed her hands up and down his arms in an effort to revive him, wondering what had happened to his clothes. She glanced quickly around, but when she couldn’t find them, she spread her hands over the powerful swells of his abs and pecs and massaged them. He remained quiet as death. Desperate, she tore off the two shirts she still wore, and placed them around his shoulders. Then she unhooked the bustier beneath, letting her breasts escape their constraints and pressed her bare flesh against his. Her arms went around him and she hugged him tight. Praying to whatever powers might listen, she silently begged that they give her Wolf Man back to her. It didn’t matter what happened to her afterwards, she couldn’t bear to think of him losing his life, while she lived on. Open your eyes, she thought. Please. “I should play dead more often,” came the whisper in her ear. His lips brushed her earlobe, bit down on it playfully. His tongue laved the overheated skin just below her jawline. “Mmm, you taste delicious.” “Griff!” She pulled away to study him, see that he was all right. His chest expanded with a powerful breath, but he still didn’t open his eyes. She sensed the supreme effort he put into staying there with her rather than lapsing back into a semi-comatose state. “Don’t you dare go away,” she said. “Don’t you,” he said, and pulled her back. She went into his embrace eagerly, needing to reassure herself that he was really alive and here with her. She needn’t have worried. His arms were rock solid, steady. Instead of being chill, his breath warmed the hollow at the base of her throat as his tongue swept over her, caressing her there. A moment later cool air touched the spot, creating the 43
Aileen Harkwood sensation that his kiss was like a heart on a gold chain, sliding into place around her neck, claiming her with his love. Every second that passed, his skin grew warmer with his desire for her, as did her own for him. She flushed when his tongue continued its playful route downward between the valley of her breasts, pausing to detour and nip at the tight peaks of her breasts, lavishly tasting the skin encircling her nipples. He suckled them until her body acted on its own and arched into him while she moaned. “Hmn. Maybe you aren’t as weak as I feared,” she said. His only reply was to growl with need. Through her jeans, she felt him grow hard, and her own animal hunger made her squirm restlessly against him. She wanted him inside her, now, all the way. Not just wanted, needed. If she didn’t have him this instant, she wouldn’t be able to stand it. She’d go crazy from the heat and exquisite pleasure swelling her clit as his tongue teased its way toward the waistband of her jeans. She’d come any minute if he didn’t stop. She didn’t want it to stop. He mustn’t stop. “Griff,” she said. “Isabel,” he said, drowsy with lust. “Oh, God, I want you.” Griff froze. “Isabel,” he said again, but this time completely alert. Quietly, he let her go and moved back. He rolled over, and after several seconds more, while she watched him bring his emotions under control, he rose into a crouch in the low-ceilinged den. “Isabel,” he said a third time. This time his tone was oddly cold and impersonal. Luka, bereft by the loss of his touch, looked at him in confusion. “What?” she asked. “What is it?” “Isabel,” he said again. 44
Wolf’s Den “What is it? I don’t understand what’s wrong.” “You didn’t correct me.” “What?” “I called you Isabel, and you didn’t correct me. You didn’t tell me that you’re Luka.” Damn. Luka had been so overwhelmed by her body’s craving for his, become so used to answering him no matter what he called her, that she hadn’t hesitated to respond to his foreplay, regardless of whom he thought she might be. Inside, she rebelled at being labeled Isabel, the murderess, but couldn’t say with absolute conviction, not one hundred percent, that she was, indeed, Luka. Other than the knowledge that there would be no one to mourn her, plus the brief, disturbing flashbacks she’d experienced over the last twelve hours, she still couldn’t remember a thing about herself. Nor had Griff told her why the name Luka caused him so much pain. “Get up.” His command was nothing like the compassionate one he had spoken in her mind the night before when she lay dying in the snow. That’s right. Look at him. It wasn’t a hallucination last night. There aren’t any clothes, because he didn’t need them as the wolf. What I saw was real. He saved me. He’s saved me several times now. He could have let me die at any point since I woke up. He’d saved her. That had to mean something, didn’t it? If he felt she was the evil he claimed her to be, a woman capable of doing what had been done to his—what did he call Anya—his mate, then he wouldn’t have saved her from being shot, or burned alive, or succumbing to hypothermia in the middle of nowhere. His actions went against rational thought. By all logic, Griff should have let Silas take care of her for him. It would have spared him the necessity of transporting her back to his “people.” Be killed out 45
Aileen Harkwood here or killed there, she couldn’t see how it would matter. Whoever the Kith were, they had a cruel sense of justice. “Put yourself back together,” Griff said, his gaze traveling to her breasts. “We’re leaving.” Luka glanced down and saw her bustier, still open from when she had pressed her bare flesh to his in an effort to warm him. Experiencing a sudden shame, which a part of her said was uncharacteristic for her, whoever she might be, she hurriedly refastened the garment. “That’s right,” she said. “Mustn’t keep the firing squad waiting.”
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Chapter Nine Damn, Isabel, Griff thought. Damn his own reckless lupine urges, which had almost led him to betray his mate. Anya might not be here with him in this life, but she was waiting in the in-between for him to join her, so that they could travel onward to the forests of his ancestors. What sort of perverted instinct would cause him to even contemplate making love to Isabel? Isabel had always been an amazing beauty among his pack. Even as a teen, her devilish allure ignited snarling contest after snarling contest for dominance among the younger wolves. The older, more experienced of them fought their own libidos, wanting to circle and nip and claim, while the calm, rational human in them knew that she was trouble. Despite his rage toward the woman who had killed his mate, even now Griff found himself drawn irresistibly toward her. He’d swear he could almost taste the erotic energies swirling around them. He’d been out, completely drained by the shift from wolf to man that had saved her life and left him feeling weak as newborn pup. His exhausted, nearcomatose mind conjured Anya in his sleep, so he had believed it was she he held in his arms, not her murderer. In the dream, Anya had discovered him here in the den, chill as death, and pressed her warm, lush breasts against him, skin to skin, in order to save him from falling deeper into a coma. It was her body’s erotic heat, not Isabel’s, his mate’s brilliant, silver-laced energy that pulled him back from the brink. Her soul surrounded him, wove its way through him, teasing him awake and begging 47
Aileen Harkwood him to fulfill his duties as her other half, to hold, protect, answer that insatiable drive to mate. Every Kith who had found his lifemate understood that basic, unquenchable need. Dream or no, he couldn’t excuse what he’d almost done. It confounded him that his nude body continued to display his attraction for Isabel. His hardon put a lie to his claims that he wanted her dead in payment for his mate’s life. Keenly aware that Isabel observed his sexual response to her nearness, he pivoted on his heels, still low in a squat and rummaged under a pile of moss and leaves at the back of the den until he found the niche he knew would be there. Every Kith den this close to the civilized world was required to be stocked for emergencies, and their current refuge was no exception. He found a large, weatherproof backpack concealed in the shallow hole, unzipped it and inventoried the basics it held, rugged clothing and a small pouch with water and food. He pulled a pair of jeans and boots from the pack, thankful that they would fit him, as well as a shirt and reversible down jacket. He handed the jacket to Isabel. She shook her head. “Take it,” he said. She shrank back at the snarl in his voice. “The shirts I have are wool. I’m good,” she said. “Take it!” “What about you? You haven’t warmed up much. You still look cold as a corpse.” She winced then at her choice of words, considering Anya was dead less than a day, and turned her face aside. He couldn’t believe it. Shame? Was that shame Isabel displayed? He couldn’t help himself, his mood toward her softened. “Kith dens are always outfitted with clothing for at least two adults. There’s another jacket in here for me.” 48
Wolf’s Den What he wished for were boots that would fit Isabel, instead of those insane, spike-heeled numbers she wore. How she’d managed to race flat out for more than eight miles through the forest last night in the footwear equivalent of medieval torture devices astonished him. Unfortunately, the second pair of boots in the pack were identical to the ones he now laced up on his own feet, which meant her dainty feet would swim in them. Isabel took the jacket and left the two lumberjack shirts, which still reeked of smoke from the fire, on the floor of the den. Griff debated leaving behind the food and water. Since finding something to eat or drink was rarely a problem for the Kith, such supplies were intended primarily for times when one of the pack was wounded or sick and couldn’t hunt. He hated to think that a member of his or one of the neighboring packs might seek out this way station and find nothing but a couple of soot-stained shirts. On the other hand, given Isabel’s present state of mind, he couldn’t imagine a better excuse to utilize what was here. If this wasn’t an emergency, he’d be hard-pressed to know what else qualified. Why she hadn’t returned to her normal self by now, and instead had adopted this startling new persona, Luka, he couldn’t say, but he didn’t trust her to follow her own wolfish instincts when it came to survival on the trail. They would need every bit of food, couldn’t let a single item go to waste. “Wait here,” he told her, making it another growled command. “I’ll call you when I know it’s safe.” Emerging from the den, he found the sun hidden behind advancing storm clouds. Without light to bring it to life, the snow refused to sparkle and the entire landscape took on the dull gray of cinderblock. Griff’s wolf warned him that a second round from the blizzard was on its way. Apparently the wolf had 49
Aileen Harkwood more sense than he did, because it wanted to crawl back in the den with Isabel and hunker down until it blew over, but Griff was determined. The sooner he delivered her to the council, the sooner the strange conflicting emotions grabbing hold of his libido could be put out of his life with her. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t comprehend what was behind the powerful attraction, his nagging doubts about her. She no longer acted or sounded like Isabel. Even her scent was entirely different now, with all lingering traces of the old Isabel, and that ugly stench of the grave gone. In its place, an intoxicating mix of wildness and open air, of sun-touched fur and the shocking splash of a mountain stream in midsummer, filled his nostrils. In some ways, the scents reminded him of Anya, the sweet, seductive taste she had been for him. No, it can’t be. He refused to entertain such an idea. It was grief playing tricks on him. What he scented from the woman next to him was Kith, not human, not Anya. A soft noise startled him, coming from upwind and behind a clump of spruce trees. His nose caught the scent of the blinding white snow hare before he heard the hesitant rhythm of its paws in the snow. His wolf’s mouth watered in anticipation of a quick and easy hunt, but he didn’t move, did nothing to alert the rabbit to his presence and thus frighten it. That white fur. He winced at the painful memory it evoked, of Anya’s body, in those final minutes attempting to become wolf. He watched the rabbit, its cautious, innocent path across his field of vision. It still hadn’t noticed him there. It hadn’t caught the conflicting scents that would confuse and startle it. Man and wolf together in one being. “It was white,” a voice whispered behind him. “What?” His reply erupted from the deep well of anger within him, a sharp bark of sound. Jerked to 50
Wolf’s Den awareness of the danger so close, the hare sped away. Griff didn’t dare turn around and face the woman who swore she was Luka. She would see what was in his eyes, the weakness that threatened to rob him of his natural alpha bearing. “The paw inside her was covered in white fur,” she said. “Don’t!” His voice lowered to a level even more dangerous. “Don’t what?” she asked. She stepped abreast of him. Thank God he’d gotten his grief under control again. “Isn’t it enough for you that she’s dead?” he said. “Do you have to throw the myth of the white wolf in my face, as well?” “Myth?” He took her by the shoulders and shoved her back a step toward the entrance to the den. “I told you to stay inside until I know it was safe.” “How long does that take?” she said, surprisingly unafraid of him, giving him sass he didn’t think she had in her. She was as self-confident as Isabel would be in that moment, but there was nothing at all of Isabel in her choice of words. “I was in there for frickin’ ever,” she continued. “And you’ve been watching that rabbit for the last ten minutes. Is that the big security threat you needed to protect me from?” Listening to her, Griff went suddenly still. “What did you say?” “I said you’ve been watching…and it’s gone now…that rabbit, for more than ten minutes.” “No, before that.” In all the time he’d known her, Anya had never once uttered a single swear word. Oh, she used equivalents for sure, but never once the F-word. It was always fudge or frig or frock or frickin’. Frickin’ was her favorite oath. Not once had he even heard Isabel use anything 51
Aileen Harkwood but the traditional fuck. “Never mind.” He cut her off before she could blither on. “We’re out of time.” He stepped away from the den’s entrance, ready to begin their journey. “Not until you tell me—” “Tell you what?” He cut her off again. “What happened to her, for starters. How the white paw got there. How I was supposed to have killed her. It looked like she’d been torn apart,” she said. “I may not remember much about myself, but I know I couldn’t kill like that.” He sighed heavily. He could see he was going to have to play along with her amnesia, or delusions, or whatever it was that had removed Isabel and put someone else in her place. “You didn’t. Kill like that. Not like an animal, anyway. Not with your bare hands.” “What then?” “The fuil amhrán.” Her expression was blank, totally lacking in comprehension. “Bloodsong. You sang her the song no one is supposed to hear.” “What are you talking about? A song that kills? Bulltaco. There’s no such thing.” He studied her closely. Again, instead of the expected bullshit, she’d used a made-up term. The very same one he’d heard Anya use at least a dozen times. “Bloodsong is a type of magic,” he explained patiently. “Taboo among us, the Kith. It forces the transformation from human to wolf. If you’re Kith, the song can kill, even if you are the most skilled of shapeshifters, because during the song the change is under your enemy’s control. For females, the song is almost always fatal because so few Kith females can shift at all.” Isabel frowned. “So Anya was Kith?” 52
Wolf’s Den “No, human. You know that.” “No.” Her face clouded. She appeared to struggle for knowledge that her mind concealed from her. “I mean, I…as far as I know, knew, everyone is human. I still don’t believe you’re what you want me to believe.” “That I’m Kith.” He laughed dully. “That you’re Kith.” “I’m not. I’m not a wolf like you. I’m not Isabel. Listen to me and hear me.” Her arms bent at the elbows, and she raised her closed fists in frustration. “I. Am. Not. Isabel.” He stared at her for several seconds, refusing to react to her pique. Finally, he turned and took up the path they’d take through the snow. “Are you coming?” he asked when he didn’t hear her following him. “No,” she said stubbornly. “You didn’t finish. What happens when the bloodsong is sung against a human?” “Death,” he said, still walking. “Every time. A human’s body will tear itself apart trying to become wolf. It’s as if the wolf attacks his or her victim from the inside out.” He heard her small gasp, but it was nothing to the horror that continued to revisit him again and again as he replayed Anya’s death. Sometimes, as was the case with his mate, a human possessed a small amount of Kith heritage, usually unknown to them. Initially it would seem as if the body might accept the bloodsong’s perverted manner of transformation, that the victim could make the shift. Griff believed this the worst of cruelties. Forced to observe Anya’s torturous death, he’d watched a beautiful wolf attempting to emerge in her, struggling for birth from her flesh and bone. One part of him had been shaken at the sight, initially stunned into silence by the torture Anya had endured; the other had fervently prayed for the 53
Aileen Harkwood impossible, begged the spirits of his ancestors to miraculously grant birth to the exquisite creature who tried so valiantly to live. A white wolf! Were the myths true? His own wolf had lied to him, telling him she was special, so she couldn’t possibly die. Inside Anya was a white wolf. She would live and not only become Kith, his true mate in every way, but the answer to a loss that had shamed the Kith for more than a millennium. Of course, he told none of this to Isabel. Such memories and disproved naïve hopes were too private, too hurtful to share with Anya’s killer, even if the woman claimed to no longer be that killer. He pretended not to care, but after several minutes, he heard her reluctantly trudging after him, and a few minutes after that, she began to run through the snow to catch up with him. Griff was able to outpace her for hours, but he couldn’t leave her to try and follow him in the dark, not with a blizzard coming on. He slowed his pace until he knew she trailed him by no more than a couple of yards. Since leaving the den, neither his preternaturally sharp ears nor nose had detected signs of Silas and his men. Being a wary creature whose first impulse was to mistrust everything he saw outside his pack’s native territory, Griff was not willing to bet that Anya’s stalker and his men had called it a night and gone home after Silas burned down the cabin and lost his quarry in the storm. They were out there. The hunters. He may not be able to see or smell them, but he could feel them. Luckily, the dull weather matched exactly the pale grey of their jackets. By day they blended well with the drifts and snow burdened trees. As night fell, they would be able to reverse the jackets so that their black interiors matched the night. Griff would have preferred to run as a wolf. 54
Wolf’s Den Human form dampened his senses, slowed him down. As a wolf he could scout ahead. Even if he weren’t burdened by the strange need to lead and guard Isabel, the shift to human last night had drawn heavily from his natural reserves. It would be dangerous to attempt another transformation so soon. To the west, amid the rugged peaks on the horizon were the Kith homelands, and the territory Griff’s pack claimed as its own. Behind them to the southwest, the city sprawled up the lower slopes, the population thinning in density the higher it climbed into the mountains. Few humans enjoyed the true heights, with their bitter winters and brisk summers, but he and Isabel still had miles to travel together before reaching the safety of a more desolate wilderness. What Griff dreaded most about the journey lay approximately an hour ahead on foot, the gorge. If any spot would afford Silas the maximum strategic advantage, the bridge was it.
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Chapter Ten “Isn’t there a road somewhere we could find?” Isabel asked. “Or a trail?” “Excuse me?” Griff said. He tilted his head, obviously puzzled by what she considered to be a completely reasonable question. He so resembled a massive wolf cocking its head while listening to a sound it didn’t understand, she couldn’t help it. A tiny laugh burbled up inside her. She smothered it, but he heard it anyway. Given the situation, she deserved the deep frown he gave her. He must think I’ve come unhinged. Laugh on the way to your death? Very sane. “Yes, there’s a road,” he said. “Then why aren’t we on it, or at least near it?” Luka asked. “Instead of wading through two feet of snow?” “Are you eager for a reunion with Silas?” Griff said. “No. You’re right,” she said, and put her hand to her head. At the mere mention of Silas’s name, her killer migraine returned. Her eyes lost their ability to focus and she knew, feared what was next. “Here we are, Anya,” Silas said. “Reunited at last. Did you think I couldn’t find you? Track you? You know how much I like to hunt.” His whisper in her ear, coming from out of the blue after seven months on the run, paralyzed her. He laid a hand on her shoulder, stepped around from behind her in the coffee bar, and she knew the pursuit was over. He’d cornered her. She looked up into those eyes, the color of a 56
Wolf’s Den mountain of decaying sludge rushing down to bury her alive. Terror and defeat warred within her, preventing her from doing what she should, scream, walk away, call for help, strike him, fling off the hand that roamed her shoulder toward her throat, then down and down until his thumb caressed her bare skin, just beneath the edge of her sweater’s neckline. Stroking. Softly stroking. She shuddered, repulsed by his touch. Anya wanted to cry. She’d run so far. Been so careful. She’d told no one her real identity when she came to this small arts town in the foothills. No one. She’d taken nothing from her old life to start anew. How did he find me? He smiled at her then, a self-satisfied smirk. “I’m good, Anya. I’m the best. No one is better than I am at what I do.” “Tracking.” “That’s right.” He leaned even closer, moved in and attacked her mouth with his own. His breath smelled like an ashtray into which someone had dumped shrimp that had started to go bad. He bit her, and she didn’t think to stifle the cry of surprise and hurt. He pulled sharply away, though his fingers clamped around her arm and held her helplessly in place. Astonished, Anya lifted fingers to her face and discovered the open gash Silas’s teeth had made in her lip. She dabbed at the blood with her fingertip, to keep it from running down her chin. All at once, she was aware of a lessening of the usual noises in the café. Total silence. Her small cry had motivated people to stare. Silas noticed, as well, and went rigid with outrage. He didn’t like to be embarrassed, which is exactly what she’d just done. Why did I make the noise? Why did I have to make that noise? He was remarkable in his ability to hurt her in 57
Aileen Harkwood public, yet normally he did it in a way that few observed. That she’d drawn attention to herself and the bite on the lip was her fault. She’d fought him when she should have simply gone along, perhaps until she saw an opening to run. Anticipating a swift, yet carefully concealed retaliation from Silas, she turned her head away and first realized he was there. The man was tall, at least a head above even the tallest person standing near the order counter. Hair so black and dense it was like a wild predator’s pelt. His huge, sleekly muscled body appeared to be in constant, restless motion, even though he had yet to move an inch since Anya spotted him. She had the sense of power coiling, preparing. Their gazes locked, and she was drowning in something wonderful. She gasped and blinked, and in the brief span of a single breath, her world changed. She changed. Strength flowed into her, belief in herself she’d never known she could feel. She glimpsed the reaction in him as well. His hard face relaxed for just a fraction of a second into something Anya could only label as shock and joy. The golden eyes of a wolf stared at her from his face and dared her to deny the connection that instantly flared to life between them. Then the moment was over. His concentration swept past her toward Silas. Was she the only one in the room that heard the low, warning growl that rumbled from deep in his chest? “Get down,” Griff whispered. He flung his arm around her and took her down, hurling both their bodies into the shelter of a drift. Luka’s body expelled a feeble cry as her head was wracked by pain. She’d just had another flashback! Much stronger than the others. Griff put his fingers to his lips to signal the need for silence. Unable to quiet her breath, she 58
Wolf’s Den nevertheless listened with the enhanced hearing she’d come to depend upon. They must be close to a road after all, because she heard an SUV’s tires crunching through snow that had fallen, melted, then refrozen. Its windows were open, and the smells of the two men inside blew downwind toward her. One of them, the stench of cigarette butts and rotting shellfish, she identified immediately as Silas. Seconds later, the SUV continued out of range, but Griff kept her half buried there in the snow, until they could be sure the vehicle wouldn’t turn around. “I’m sorry.” He spoke at last. “Did I hurt you? I heard you cry out.” “No, I…” Luka clutched her head in her hands as the pain beat at the inside of her skull, immobilizing her. He’s sorry? The big bad wolf is apologizing to me? “I’ve been having—” She tried to make the words come out. “What?” “I’m not sure,” she said. “They feel like memories. Of Anya.” Griff went absolutely still in the way of a wolf sensing danger. “That time in the bookstore café,” Luka said. “The gash in my…her lip. He did it,” she said, to mean the man in the SUV who’d just driven by. “Then you appeared, out of nowhere, and Silas had to let go of her…me.” “Stop it!” Griff said. “I don’t know how you know any of this, but I want you to stop it right now.” Luka fell mute. Griff stood, then reached down and asked for her hand. He hauled her roughly to her feet again. She stumbled into him on the uneven terrain and he instinctively put out his arms to steady her. Instead of letting her go, he held her captive a moment longer. What he did next seemed peculiar at first, but then an instant later it felt 59
Aileen Harkwood completely natural and right. He lowered his face near the exposed skin just above her down jacket’s collar and inhaled deeply. He filled his entire body with a single breath of her. Took in her scent and then imprisoned it inside him, refusing to let it out. A flash fire of sexual longing swept over. Her nipples ached and she felt her clit swell until it throbbed with anticipation. She wanted him now, hard, driving mercilessly inside her, expanding and filling her. That is the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen a man do. But it wasn’t just the man. It was the wolf inside him. The wolf was ready to take her there and then. In the open, for all to see. Claim. Possess. Mate with her. “I can’t help what I’m seeing, Griff,” she said. “The visions. Or that they feel like memories.” This latest one had, too. A major difference between the previous flashbacks she’d experienced and this one, was that in the others she might have been an outside observer only. Though she’d felt a connection to Anya, it hadn’t been a complete one. In the vision she’d just had of meeting the Wolf Man for the first time, she felt herself there. One hundred percent a part of the woman who was being stalked by a sociopath, and had discovered her only true love, Griffin. How could that be? She wasn’t Anya. Anya was dead. “You aren’t Luka,” Griff said. Anger suddenly ignited inside her. “No? Then who am I? Because I sure as hell feel like that’s my name. Luka. Whoever she is. I have no idea why Luka would remember what Anya would remember, but that’s just too damn bad.” She threw off his embrace, pivoted sharply, an astonishing maneuver considering her spike heels and the depth of the snow, and began to walk. She 60
Wolf’s Den was mad, and mad walked. “Isabel!” “Don’t call me that.” She couldn’t care less where she headed, or who might see her. If Silas even dared to come back this way, she’d personally bite his head off. “Luka,” he said tentatively. She tripped slightly, started by the way he said her name. It was, she’d swear, almost the way she could remember him saying it to her at some time in the past. She just couldn’t remember exactly what that past might have been. Luka turned and looked back at him. “You don’t really mean it.” “Maybe,” Griff said. “Maybe not.” She allowed him to catch up with her. “I don’t know who you really are anymore,” he said.
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Chapter Eleven Once the last of the day’s anemic sunlight faded and nothing but a dim glow tinged the western horizon, Griff had them turn their jackets inside out so that the darker fabric would help them blend with the shadows. Clouds continue to amass against the slopes of the mountain. Luka’s new senses detected the changes coming in the weather, the wind picking up, just a fitful and sporadic increase at present, but she knew the blizzard would soon return from the north. They were in for a horrific night, the snow worse than before. She and Griff adopted an uncomfortable truce, which meant sparse communication during the climb higher into the mountains. As a sign of how out of touch her inner self was with the rest of her, part of her wanted to leap in joy and eagerness the deeper they moved into the backcountry. It could barely contain its enthusiasm for the wilderness that met them, the paring away of the civilized world. She shouldn’t be feeling this. The closer they came to reaching their destination, the sooner would come not just death, but the type of death she’d seen in the cabin. No. No, I don’t want that. I can’t take that. I’m not strong enough to die that way. I shouldn’t have to. I know I didn’t kill that woman. “What’s wrong?” Griff asked her, his impatience obvious. Without realizing it, she’d halted in the snow, leaving Griff striding ahead for several yards. She gazed downward at her feet, which had refused to take her a step farther. Now she lifted her face and 62
Wolf’s Den looked him straight in the eye. She said nothing. Just looked at him. She studied every fascinating detail, from his intense, amber eyes with their quiet, commanding stare, so like an alpha wolf, to his wide shoulders and chest, now torqued in her direction, to the slim hips and powerful thighs, his booted feet having no more problem moving through the snow than any other forest predator. He looked unerringly grounded and connected to the earth, yet there was an undeniable edge to him. His aura shimmered and melded with the wildness of this place. Even when he was the human and not the wolf, that aura served to protect him, camouflage him. If it weren’t for her strangely heightened senses, which made even this moonless, cloud-shrouded twilight seem bright as day, she wouldn’t have been able to see him there at all. She expected him to speak, and he didn’t. He simply watched her, infallibly noting her distress, her mood. What am I doing, blindly following him to my death? Why don’t I run? I should run. That same part of her that rejoiced on this trek to the highlands, rebelled at the idea of submitting willingly to her future. He was patient. He waited calmly for her decision. If she ran, would he chase her? He would. He must. His ethics demanded it. She was a killer, whether she remembered committing the crime or not. Was there no way to evade what lay ahead for her? A moment later, she took a tentative step forward, and then another, until she reached his side. Without a word, he turned, leading them onward again. It wasn’t until another several minutes had passed that he spoke her dread. “I know you’re afraid. My wolf is just as afraid to die.” She looked at him, not certain she’d heard 63
Aileen Harkwood correctly. “The Kith are a people of twin souls, one human, one wolf,” he explained. “The human in me knows what must be done, but the wolf is more primitive. All it thinks of is survival.” “I get that, about the dual nature,” she said. “That’s not…it was the other thing you said. Why do you think you’re going to die?” “It’s what’s expected of me.” “To die?” “Yes.” “Why? I know you think I’m a killer, but what did you do that deserves death? He glanced at her in pity, she supposed because she’d likely “forgotten” another important fact about the Kith. “I’m the pack’s alpha. I’m not allowed to survive my mate’s death.” “Why?” “It’s the way things are. My brother, Fergus, will be obliged to challenge me as soon as we reach pack lands. He won’t want to do it, but I must allow him the kill so that he can become our new alpha.” “What! Who made up that idiotic rule?” She heard yet ignored his low warning growl. “My brother will know I have an obligation to my mate,” he said. “Anya is waiting for me in the inbetween, the Forest Between Life and Death. She can’t go on without me.” “And you’re going to do what? Commit suicide because you believe Anya’s soul is trapped in Limbo without her man?” He sped up momentarily, pushing on a few steps ahead of her. She could sense the emotion welling up in him. She knew he would rather expire right there than let her see as well as scent what she knew was on him, longing and yes, weakness. “Carp,” she said. He rounded on her so abruptly that she nearly 64
Wolf’s Den tumbled back into the snow. “Dammit, Anya,” Griff shouted. “Don’t you dare make fun of my people with your ludicrous, made-up swear words.” Her mouth dropped open and her eyes widened, stunned at his verbal assault. “What—” “Carp instead of crap. Bulltaco instead of bullshit. Frickin’ instead of fucking,” he said. “You may think it’s cute, but I’m not in the mood.” She closed her mouth and blinked, and hurt bloomed on her face, a look so foreign to the Isabel he’d known, for a moment he lost his bearings and the wolf thrashed fretfully inside him in confusion, wanting to go to her defense. Indignation. It lifted off her skin and swirled around him in an eddy of snow from an nearby spruce. She was indignant, and yet paradoxically he detected no anger in her. Instead, she shut him out, shuttered her emotions behind a façade that killed her natural scent as if she were buried beneath January ice. She squelched it all and composed herself. “What did you just call me?” she asked. “What? I don’t know. I don’t think I called you anything.” “Anya,” she said. “You called me by her name.” “No.” “Yes.” She retraced the ground she’d lost when he surprised her and almost sent her tumbling on her butt. She dared to get in his face. “You did.” “You’re Isabel.” “Why did you call me Anya? Was it what I said? The non-swearing? She didn’t swear, did she? I don’t like to swear, either.” “Right,” he said, skepticism clear in his voice. “You don’t like swear words. Isabel, you don’t know what you like anymore!” “For the last time.” She raised her voice to match his. They were being foolish, both of them, shouting when the enemy might be nearby. “My 65
Aileen Harkwood name is Luka! Who is Luka, Griff? Why does that name upset you?” She stopped, and they faced each other, their breathing rapid and excited. The ice in her was suddenly gone, indignation transformed into true anger. She smelled so much like Anya at that heated moment, like the danger that laced their sex, like the best type of hunger, one that created an anticipation of lifelong wonder. She gave off comfort and rightness and home. Compounding this, his wolf insisted that Isabel was his. It would not, no matter how much the human in him ordered the beast to forget such thoughts, act toward her as the enemy. Rather, in all ways that mattered, the wolf declared that Isabel, not Anya, was its mate. “Coileáinín gaelach,” he said. “What? Speak English. You know I don’t know your language.” “You don’t know Gaelic?” he asked. “Since when?” “Since never? It’s not like it’s a common language.” “You’ve spoken it all your life.” That did seem strange to him. Even if he wanted to believe that she has some type of amnesia, didn’t amnesia victims still remember their native tongue? “Was that an insult? Did you just insult me in Gaelic? “What?” he responded, surprised. “No.” Coileáinín gaelach. His endearment for Anya. Once, after a night of lovemaking, when their bodies were spent, he and Anya had lain tangled in each other’s arms and legs. He’d finally exhausted his wolf, and the tenderness in him made one of its rare appearances. He knew he was a hard man, an even tougher beast, with too much fight and tooth in him, but he’d learned early never to let his guard down among humans, and there he had been, his 66
Wolf’s Den limbs wrapped around Anya, her light-filled soul and seductive body bathing him in contentment, banishing the inherent blood lust of his kind. “Your hair,” he told her. “I’ve never seen hair that was a true silver blonde.” “No one else in my family had it either,” she said. “Everyone claimed I must be a changeling, left by elves or fairies or—” He interrupted her babbling with a ravenous kiss that charged the atmosphere around them, caused it to spark like the bright moonlight her pale skin and hair rivaled. She gave out a throaty moan while they wrestled each other for dominance in the bed, one more session of lovemaking with the winner on top. Anya dragged her fingernails across his back. He knew from the greedy way her tongue met his own thrusts that she was unaware she’d drawn blood. It thrilled him to discover his timid, little wolf coming into her own power underneath him. She acted almost like a true Kith lover, savage in her affections, fighting for what she wanted, needed, demanded to have. Pressing a kiss to the pulse point at her neck, he’d impulsively whispered to her in Gaelic. “Coileáinín gaelach,” he called her. Moon puppy. Drunk on their love, Anya tried to say it. He repeated the endearment several times for her, but she couldn’t master his native language. “Oh. Right. I’ve got it now. Luka!” she pronounced in triumph, latching on to the one sound in the entire phrase she pretended to understand. “Like the song, ‘My Name Is Luka.’ ” She wasn’t even close. Griff remembered laughing with an innocence he hadn’t believed existed inside him. “Luka was Anya,” he said. “It was my secret name for her.” When he looked at her, however, it was Isabel’s stunned face he saw, reacting to this revelation, not 67
Aileen Harkwood Anya’s. “Come.” He ordered her to follow. They’d been forging through the snow for hours. They needed a break. While he knew of no other Kith dens nearby, he had caught the trail of bear not far ahead, the scent old, yet strong. With luck they’d find a deserted cave or overhang to protect them from the elements long enough to give Isabel a rest.
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Chapter Twelve Luka hunkered down with Griff in an indentation in a rocky cliff that wasn’t a proper cave. Sort of a cavelet, she thought. Though it provided scant shelter and no additional warmth, at least they were out of the wind for a few minutes. She’d felt it strengthening, the blizzard that Griff had warned her about definitely approaching. None of this mattered, though, not after what he had told her. Luka was Anya. But I’m Luka. It didn’t make any sense. In a way, yes, because as hard as she tried, she was unable to connect herself with Isabel, the dark Amazon she’d seen reflected to her in the cabin window. She knew none of the things that Isabel was supposed to know. She remembered nothing, absolutely nothing of this woman’s life or self. The only memories she had of her involved episodes where Anya was present. Except the one where she and Griff made love, but she hadn’t seen herself in that flashback, only Griff, so who knew if that had been Isabel? Clearly, however, she couldn’t be Luka. Luka was dead. What had happened to her? Where had Isabel’s personality gone? Why did she have memories and behavior that belonged not to Isabel but her alleged victim? Who am I? What am I? An image suddenly arose in her mind, that grisly sight in the cabin. “The wolf inside Anya,” she said, “the one the bloodsong tried to bring out? It was white.” Griff turned and gave her that mysterious look 69
Aileen Harkwood of his, part resentment, part stoniness, and—to her bafflement—part smoldering. Yet, he didn’t respond to her statement. Only stared. “Earlier, you accused me of bringing up the legend of the white wolf,” she said. “Like it was something wrong. What does—” “The myth of the white wolf,” he corrected her. “Myth, legend, whatever. What is it? Is a white wolf special or rare somehow?” “There are no white wolves among the Kith,” he said. “But I saw—” “What you saw wasn’t Kith!” He paused, his exasperation with her rising. “It was an aberration. A distortion caused by the fuil amhrán.” “Humor me,” she said. “Tell me the myth.” At first she didn’t think he’d answer, but he looked off into the distance, at the mountain peaks that were their final destination. Then he sighed, closed his eyes and began to speak in the tone of a practiced storyteller, something she would never have expected of him. “No one really knows who came first, the Kith or humans. Some say the two were actually halfbrothers, one with a wolf for a father, and that the brothers fought, going their separate ways to create separate clans and hence two different lines, one human, one not. Some claim that humans came first, with the superior Kith supplanting them, while others claim the opposite, that the Kith are the more primitive, less civilized ancestors of modern man. A more egalitarian version of the story claims the two species developed independently. In the beginning, they were in constant conflict with one another, warring until mankind gained the upper hand, after which the Kith went into hiding, where they have been ever since. It’s true that we avoid humanity at all costs, living and traveling where most of them are afraid to go, living where they do not have the 70
Wolf’s Den gifts necessary to survive. “The Kith we know today are primarily dark of fur. Except for my cousin, Rufus, who is red as a fox, a fact for which he was teased mercilessly as a pup, those of my clan, the ones able to shift, that is, are among the darkest black of the Kith. Occasionally, you will see a grey Kith or one who is a combination of shades from black to grey or brown—” “But never white,” Luka said. He paused, opened his eyes again, turned and studied her for several moments. She imagined him remembering Anya in the cabin. That white forepaw. “Never white,” he agreed. “It wasn’t always so. Among our kind, we have a myth that thousands of years ago, there existed two separate lines of our species, one the dark and one whose people were the purest white of fur. The white Kith were rumored to inhabit the northern-most reaches of the continent, where snow was continually on the ground, but also these lands—he gestured at the landscape around them—and ones even further south. You see, they had the natural advantage at that time. They could hunt and scout and guard their lands, and none would know they were there. It wasn’t until a white wolf was upon its prey, and the victim glimpsed the pink of his or her tongue, the black of his or her eyes, that the unfortunate creature, or foolish man who tried to invade Kith territory, realized their mistake. By then, it was too late. “Then came a change. Where before snows and ice were continually on the ground, a friend to the white wolf because it camouflaged him so well, the drifts began to melt and the glaciers recede. First, summer invaded, looking more like what we think of as a frosty spring, and then true spring, summer, and fall. The advantage shifted, not only from the white wolf and his prey, but from the white Kith to his enemies.” “Man,” Luka guessed. 71
Aileen Harkwood “That’s right,” he said. “Man. The Kith have never considered Man to be prey. It would be like killing and eating a gorilla or a chimpanzee.” Ick, Luka thought. Very ick. “They were wary of man, of course, and would kill in defense of their pack, but they understood that the wiser choice was to never reveal their true nature to humanity. “Nature was against the white Kith nonetheless. Since their fur remained blindingly pale all year round, they became targets to predators in the newly reawakened forests. Few four-legged creatures would hope to take down a wolf, but humans prized their white fur to drape around their shoulders, make boots, and furnishings for their dwellings. “Sadly, the white Kith gradually died out. There is a myth among us, however, that the white wolf is not really gone. One day it will return.” “How?” Luka asked. “Dead is dead.” “You would think,” Griff said. “Some say the white Kith will return in the guise of the humans who hunted them to extinction. “My grandfather, our pack’s alpha before I took the role, told me this final part of the story on the night my grandmother died. He wanted me to be able to pass it down to the next alpha and thus onward through the history of our people.” Luka understood now the admission Griff had just made. He’d been forced to kill his own grandfather once his grandfather’s mate had died. His words were full of bitterness. Though he didn’t say as much, she could tell he longed for the past, and the childhood he’d spent with the elder member of his family. Luka couldn’t imagine what it had been like for him, to kill someone he obviously loved. “According to the myth”—Griff returned to the story—“the last white Kith were captured by trappers who didn’t want just their fur, but to take them alive, keeping them in cages, white demons 72
Wolf’s Den safely locked up and on display. These humans didn’t know the Kith secret, that the wolf was not just wolf but man, or in the case of the very last one, a woman. “This woman believed that she could save herself by revealing her true nature to the guard assigned to watch over her. He knew her as wolf, not woman. If he could see that she was not a wild, unthinking animal, but instead someone much like him, he might have the compassion, she reasoned, to let her go. Either that, or be so afraid of her that he’d run away.” “Which was it?” Luka asked. “Neither, unfortunately,” Griff said. “He didn’t run, nor did he free her. He saw her as an exotic, less than human, though close enough to himself that he could have what he wanted of her without consequence. He raped her.” “Oh!” Luka breathed. Griff’s tight grimace looked like, but was not, a smile. “She killed him,” he said. “It required impossible strength and endurance to shift three times within a matter of minutes, never mind the trauma of having been sexually assaulted, but she changed back to wolf, dispatched him for the savage he was, then changed to human form a final time. When the rapist’s business partners arrived and they found the man dead, they also found the female Kith, pretending to have fainted. She told them that he had accidentally loosed the wolf from the cage, that it had attacked him, and then ran away. “Apparently no one questioned what the man had been doing with a naked woman at his post. Perhaps he was known to bring prostitutes there.” “So she got away?” Luka asked. “She did,” Griff said. “But not without consequences of her own. She was pregnant, with twin daughters, half-Kith, but unable to shift. She 73
Aileen Harkwood raised them as humans, among humans. It’s said that the offspring of the last white wolf would forever pass along a piece of the Kith soul to their own daughters. “One day, no one knows when, these hidden Kith females will sense their true mates among the dark Kith, join with them, and become Kith again, resurrecting the white wolf line. “My grandfather told me that once bonded with their destined mates, they would be able to overcome all adversity to remain with their husbands. Not even death could undo the powerful magic such a pairing possessed.” Griff watched Isabel/Luka’s reactions as he told her the myth of the white wolf. She hung on every word of the story as if her life depended on it. Though the features were Isabel’s, again he was struck by the knowledge that Isabel had never, even as a child, held her face that way. Isabel had been born with an innate confidence and knowledge in her emotional mastery over others. The Isabel he knew had never been capable of the innocence he saw in the woman before him, because she had never been truly innocent. He’d always thought of her as born broken, too much wolf in a human body that couldn’t shift. He wanted this Isabel. Badly. He must be losing his mind. Was this what happened to Kith alpha when their mates died? If so, it could explain the reason why no alpha of his pack ever survived the death of his lifemate for more than a few days. It might be possible that a mateless wolf left behind became so unstable as to pose a danger to his pack, thus a ritual challenge had long ago been invented. Griff frequently wondered why the challenged wolf never emerged the victor, even in cases where he was the stronger of the two combatants. He’d always assumed that without his mate, an alpha was less of a wolf, half-defeated, ready to die. What if it was imperative that he be 74
Wolf’s Den put down before he lost control and fell on every female in the pack, regardless of whether or not she was already mated? He could see where someone like him, one of the most powerful alphas in several generations, could pose not just disruption and dissension within the pack, but threaten its very survival. Griff was ready to die for Anya, for her honor and that of the pack, despite his mate’s bizarre last words to him in the cabin. He still didn’t understand why she’d said to him in those final moments, using a bastardized Gaelic-English, tú feck cladhartha, you worthless fuck. The words were completely out of character, even taking the use of an actual swear word into consideration. Had the pain she endured suddenly made her despise him that much? It didn’t matter. She was beyond pain now, and he knew his soul to be fractured without her. The idea that anyone could experience the magnitude of sorrow, the sheer, crushing force of what he’d felt back in the cabin, was something previously beyond his comprehension. If he could have exchanged places with her, intercepted the song and taken Isabel’s hate-filled magic into himself, thus sparing his mate, he would have done so gladly. Further perplexing him, his loss had mysteriously lightened soon after her death. One part of him continued to mourn Anya and resent his obligation to safeguard her murderer until he could bring Isabel before the council. That part of him repeated over and over in his head that he was no longer whole, alpha in name only. His reason for living, Anya, was gone. In contrast, his deeper wolf nature did not understand why he was depressed. It was hungry as it had always been to survive, live well, to mate. Even more incomprehensible to Griff, he found that his wolf possessed a hard-wired reflex to defend Isabel with his life. 75
Aileen Harkwood “We need to move,” he announced. He had a bad feeling that Silas had something planned for them. Griff could not detect the hunter or any of his men close by, but he knew the man was a stalker through and through, obsessed, cunning. Something horrible waited for them. Another hour later they reached the gorge. And the bridge.
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Chapter Thirteen As he and Luka descended from a line of trees into the narrow gap between mountain ridges, Griff took her trembling hand in his own. He realized he’d begun to call her Luka in his own mind, though he couldn’t make the leap to thinking of her as Anya. Her scent might not be Isabel’s, but she looked like Isabel. Try as he did, he could not reconcile what his nose told him—that her scent belonged to his mate— with what his eyes showed him, Anya’s killer. He’d told her he had no idea who she was, and he still believed it. She wasn’t Isabel anymore, not the old Isabel at any rate, but how could she be his beloved Luka? Was it possible that at the same time Isabel had stolen Anya’s life, she had captured some of his mate’s memories, as well? Maybe the fuil amhrán had damaged Isabel’s mind, left it in pieces, so that she had attempted to fit it back together again with those memories that were freshest in her mind, ones borrowed from her dying victim. Griff sighed. He didn’t like what he had to do, deliver her to the council. He no longer knew what was right and not right in this situation. He did not have the luxury of time, however, to sit still and ponder his next actions. His mate, Anya, was dead. He was required to find his pack as soon as possible and present himself before them to be found unworthy of leading them as their alpha. He and Luka also faced an all-butinsurmountable obstacle below. At the bottom of this valley, a great, raw crevice spread open the mantel of granite and soil covering the mountains, its interior brimming with inky shadows. At night, it 77
Aileen Harkwood appeared to be a black river at flood stage, ready to spill over onto the snow to either side. Griff knew it to be just seventy-three feet wide where the road met it, but more than four hundred feet deep. The narrow, two-lane bridge spanning the gap was the only way across. A moment later, he saw Luka go on alert, every muscle in her body quivering with anxiety. She’d scented Silas. Griff watched her eyes scan the length of the bridge and find the vehicles parked on the other side. Two SUVs. An extra-long trailer had been unhitched from one of the trucks and three snowmobiles unloaded. Though technically they didn’t block the exit from the bridge, they stood lined up at the road’s edge, ready to pull out into the middle of it at a moment’s notice. “They’ve got the guns out,” Luka said. “They’ve been waiting for us.” “Yes,” he said. “Is there another bridge? Another way over?” “Thirty-odd miles from here.” He considered taking them down into the gorge itself to cross. They’d face grave difficulty navigating the gorge’s near vertical walls, a toss-up which half of him would fail the attempt first, human or wolf. The human would be an idiot to attack the descent without specialized equipment, while the wolf would likely drown in the white water rapids that roared through the bottom of the cut. And Luka? Climbing down in those boots? Without the ability to shift? Suicide. Which left the bridge. Fergus, he called to his brother again. There’s trouble! He closed his eyes and concentrated, casting his mind as far as his wolf’s abilities would take it, but met only silence. Either his brother was too far away, or somehow he’d learned of his mate’s death. If so, Fergus would no longer acknowledge him as 78
Wolf’s Den brother. Instead, he would wait in their home territory for Griff to appear as was tradition, to meet his death. No one, not even Griff, would even consider the possibility that he would go lone wolf on them. He and Luka had crouched down out of sight, and spoken in low tones, both of them immediately detecting the presence of the additional men Silas had summoned to watch the entrance to the bridge. One had found a nest for himself in a group of boulders, not a hundred yards from their location. “We can wait them out,” Luka said. “There’s a blizzard coming,” he reminded her. “So? You’re a wolf, right?” “Believe it or not, there are limits,” he said. “For you as well, since you can’t shift, and—” His voice tailed off. “I’m not in my right mind?” Griff didn’t answer. “What were you planning to do once we got across?” she asked. “The end of that bridge marks the beginning of Kith territory. There are several vacant dens we could chose from, created for pack members traveling to and from town.” Luka nodded in the direction of the poorly hidden sentinel among the rocks. “What’s he going to do once the snow hits?” “Probably go back to one of the vehicles. They all will.” “Let’s go then. When the snow starts.” “No.” “Why not?” “I hadn’t anticipated as concentrated a force down there,” he said. “I figured we were dealing with a mean drunk and a couple of his redneck friends. Not a barricade.” “I could have told you,” Luka said. “Silas is an expert at this. Hunting, strategizing. When he wants 79
Aileen Harkwood something he doesn’t let anything get in his way. You should see his trophy room.” She shuddered violently. “It’s not strictly animal heads.” He looked at her then, studying her expression. Did she realize what she’d just said, and how she’d said it? Those weren’t the words of someone pulling indirectly from Anya’s memories. That was Anya speaking to him. Everything about her except for her body was exactly as he remembered it. That mannerism just now, the shudder. The disgust she exhibited for Silas. It was in direct contrast to the acceptance and affection she displayed for Griff. Her alpha. The bond. His wolf sang inside him. The bond between mates. Griff felt it snap into place between them. He closed his eyes, his mouth set in a bitter line. Just because it was a bond, didn’t mean it was right. It didn’t mean she was Anya. Luka blinked, evidently feeling the link, though it was doubtful she understood it. She glanced at him quizzically, but didn’t seem to know what to ask. “It’s me that Silas wants,” Griff said, changing the subject. “He’s a stalker. A stalker only wants one thing,” she said. “To control his victim. To punish and torture and get a great kick out of all of it.” “Luka,” he said gently, reminding her. “His victim is dead.” It was obvious his words shook her badly. After a moment, she lowered her face so he couldn’t see it. He felt her eyes sting with threatened tears as if they were his own. “It’s me he wants now,” he said. “I don’t think he gives a damn about Isabel.” “Except in the role as Griffin’s ‘slut.’ ” She’d heard the words Silas had shouted to them while they’d been trapped in the cabin. 80
Wolf’s Den “Right,” he said. “He doesn’t care about Isabel. Instead, I imagine he wants ‘the prick’ that stole his victim out from under his control. He wants me, Luka. Deader than Anya.” She lifted her head at last, and he saw danger in the face before him. A warning to back off. It didn’t come from anything she said or did. She was the warning. He felt drunk just looking at her, the dark amber eyes that were Isabel’s, but nothing like Isabel. Those ripe, “take me now” lips Isabel had used to tease and torment every male in his pack were the same, but not. Seductive, yes, but parted in an invitation to plunder that was for him alone. He felt Anya in every move, every mannerism the woman before him made, sensed her beside him even in the silences between words or thoughts. It was Anya’s hand in his. He leaned in to her, forgetting what she looked like, the dark seductress, his mind instead remembering a woman with hair and personality as startling as a plunge into rippling, moonlit waters. Mine, he thought. Her eyes had closed. She didn’t move. She didn’t breathe as he angled his head to take what was his. He felt his breath enter her mouth, prelude to what he really wanted, and for the briefest second, she closed her lips, her tongue working inside as if tasting him. It was more than he could stand. His sex strained at his zipper. He groaned. God, he would take her right here in the snow, in the open, with enemies near. He didn’t care. He didn’t care what. He had to have his Anya now. No, he thought. He stopped. What had gotten into him? This was wrong, in so many ways. He released her hand and sat back on his haunches, sighed and gazed at a woman he’d known all his life. Isabel. She opened her eyes then, hurt and uncertainty 81
Aileen Harkwood shifting uneasily in their depths. So unlike Isabel, exactly like Anya. Isabel, Griff told himself. That’s Isabel. Her face. Her body. What you’d like to believed happened to her is impossible. He rose halfway out of his crouch and started downhill. “Stay here,” he told her. “Griff!” “Stay here,” he whispered. “I’m just going to go check out something.” Yeah, like the far end of that bridge. Her voice breezed into his mind without any conscious effort. It surprised him, made him smile, though his heart was heavy. She had guessed his plans. Did she even realize that she had spoken in his mind just now? Wolf to wolf? Mate to mate? He refused to reply to her smart remark about the bridge. He didn’t want to confirm her fears. During the past minute, Griff had finally made his decision about what to do with Luka or Isabel or Anya or whoever she was. He could not send her to her death. He had to give her the chance at life she deserved. In order to do that, he had to make himself the target for Silas and his men. As soon as he drew their fire, Luka could get away. Which direction would she run? he wondered. Toward the mountains? Or back into the city? What she did would say a lot about the mystery of who she was. Too bad he probably wouldn’t live long enough to watch her choose. “You aren’t a wolf,” Luka said. “You’re a pigheaded ass.” He turned back with a grin that hid the love he felt take root in his heart, but whatever retort he’d intended, vanished from his thoughts. Instead, he saw the horror and surprise hit her face a fraction of a second before he felt stabbing pain in his side. Stunned, he looked down at the 82
Wolf’s Den crossbow bolt protruding from his down jacket. It was slick with blood, having traveled through his body. A few ghostly white down feathers clung to the dark tip. Oh, God! Griff. Luka’s horror whispered in his mind. He ignored his injury, instantly terrified for her. Where was the shooter? How had he missed detecting the man’s approach? How had they been spotted? Both he and Luka had black hair and were dressed in black on a moonless night. Instinctively he glanced downwind. It was the only answer. His torso muscles clenched around the foreign object in his side, cramping in agony, but it was rage that tore through his body, the wolf snarling and ready to go on the attack. Not just Griff, but his mate was under threat. The wolf thrust the pain away, reacting to the danger that remained. He swung around, scanning the trees, scanning. There! An impossible forty yards away. Nightvision goggles. He couldn’t have said whether he saw or heard the slide and click of a second bolt being loaded in the bow, or whether it was sheer intuition. “Run!” he shouted at Luka. Instead of obeying and fleeing, Luka ran toward Griff. He was hurt, an arrow sticking from his side. She had to get to him. “Run!” he barked at her. “Leave!” “Griff—” What happened next defied her ability to imagine. One instant he stood there fully clothed, blood spreading into the down jacket, and the next everything he wore disintegrated. Not just fell apart, but burned. It was as if whatever he did required so much energy that the heat involved reduced jacket and jeans, even his boots, to powdery cinders that blew apart and flew away on the wind. He stood poised a heartbeat longer, the dangerous, savage 83
Aileen Harkwood incarnation of St. Sebastian, with an arrow piercing his side, and then— He leapt. That was the only way she could describe the transformation. Griff leapt into his wolf, taking on the thick, black pelt and form of a massive predator, larger than anything that existed in any nature video she’d ever seen. One powerful stride took him bounding over her head. The arrow’s shaft turned to ash as he flew above and the bolt’s tip dropped to the snow like a cooling meteorite. Watching his shift provoked an unexpected reaction in Luka. Part of her, so firmly ingrained it felt akin to breathing, ached to do the same, to take on fur and claw and race after him at his side, prepared to meet whatever danger he met together. She turned automatically to follow him. He was her alpha, she must stand with him, be a part of this. No, his voice ordered in her head. His great black head, golden eyes filled with the wolf’s bloodlust, looked back at her. “Run!” Griff said, the last sound that came from him, and barely human, every fiber of the wolf’s being now concentrated on its target. Luka hesitated. She couldn’t let him take on the man with the crossbow alone. I can handle this, he told her. Run! A bee sting of sound passed her ear. She felt the bullet’s heat miss her by the width of the hairs standing up on the back of her neck. Crack! The high-powered rifle’s retort disturbed the frigid silence a split second later. Someone else had spotted them. Silas. Silas was shooting at her. Anxiety seized her, or more precisely, something wild inside her grabbed hold of her and shook her. Go! it said. Now! She felt Griff push at her with his mind as well, flooding her with a dark, desperate emotion she knew any reasonable person would feel in this 84
Wolf’s Den situation. Fear. Utter terror. Run! he shouted a final time. Luka ran. She plunged into a thicket of saplings to the side of the deer trail they’d been following. Hundreds of them speared up out of the snow, reaching just above her head. Fleeing through them was like running through a field of frozen switches, each with the potential to whip and sting, raising welts on bare skin, while the thickest of the saplings jabbed and threatened to impale her. The thicket climbed the ridge rather than descending into the gap. Worse, when only a few feet in, the impending blizzard struck. Winds wailed over the ridge, shrieking like a sisterhood of banshees, carrying with it a wall of airborne snow. Luka couldn’t keep her eyes open, so much of it was driven into her eyes. Her hands and arms lost the fight to shield her sight and protect her body from the whipping and splintering trunks. She hadn’t made it halfway through the claustrophobic stand of young trees before she became completely disoriented. She thrashed and struggled, her palms scored again and again by the wood snapping in subzero temperatures. After several minutes, when she couldn’t find her way out, her flight turned to blind panic. From a distance came sounds of a snarling battle interrupted by more rifle shots, all of it barely audible over the roar of her own blood in her ears. She thought she heard a final choked cry, but couldn’t tell if it came from man or beast. Go back! What are you doing? Another new and mysterious part of her, one she could only think of as her “wolf” cried out with the need to protect Griff, just as he meant to do for her. Why aren’t you helping him? Are you going to let him die? Too many conflicting emotions fought inside 85
Aileen Harkwood Luka. Nerve-wracking worry for Griff was offset by her own sense of self-preservation. Hadn’t she been looking for an opportunity to escape? She didn’t really think she’d passively submit to the death sentence meted out by the mysterious Kith council, did she? Griff had told her to run, so she ran. Luka burst from the heavy copse of saplings, where violent winds slammed into her with the force of a bone-chilling hurricane. It made no difference that it was snow rather than rain that pelted her. Her overheated skin melted it, and in seconds, sent rivulets of icy water under her collar and down inside her clothing, leaving her drenched and shivering. She looked around her but could see nothing but the grey madness that night made of a blizzard. What should she do? Where would she find safety? Part of the problem was the inability to decide or even think clearly. She felt more like a set of disjointed pieces that wouldn’t come together, than she did any one of the parts of her she might claim. She could be Anya. She knew what Anya would think was the sensible choice right now. The safety of the city. Anya would understand that finding the road was her smartest option. Silas and his men couldn’t be the only ones using it. Eventually someone would come along whom she could wave down and beg for a ride. She might also be Isabel, in all likelihood was Isabel. Isabel wasn’t able to shift, she already knew that, but she was supposedly Kith. Isabel, as Kith, would want the heights, be frantic to get across the bridge. With a price on her head, she wouldn’t follow the trail home, but instead seek out a different territory to inhabit, far enough away from Griff and his pack that they would never find her. Those heightened senses Luka had woken with belonged to her, the wolf hidden inside Isabel. Or did they? More and more, with every yard she pushed herself through the blizzard, the wolf 86
Wolf’s Den became a greater part of Luka. Luka began to think of herself not as Anya or Isabel, but simply as wolf. Let me save you, the wolf said to her. It paced inside her, wanting out. It howled for freedom from Silas and death and fate. I know where we need to go. I want to go. So she let it. She gave herself to the wolf, handed over her survival to its primitive instincts. Though the blizzard intensified, winds and snow battering at her more fiercely by the minute, Luka found herself better able to cope as long as she gave the wolf free rein. The wolf had no trouble finding its bearings in the storm. It knew unerringly which way was Kith, and in which direction she would find the road and possibly rescue. It understood how to turn the wind to its advantage, instead of using up all of its strength battling it. It found the sheltered runs of trees and cliff, knew how to forge a half-frozen stream without risking death on the slippery rocks. Far off, it scented the noxious odor that was Silas, and knew he too, ran through the snow. It caught a whiff of snowmobile exhaust and gun oil and blood, and it ignored all of this. The men and their weapons and their pursuit weren’t important. Gradually their spoor on the wind died out and faded away. All that remained was wolf and snow and wind. She ran the way she’d done the night before when fleeing the burning cabin. Free, unthinking, letting nature have her. She forgot who she might be and became who she was. She hurried with great anticipation toward a specific destination. Eventually, hours later, the blizzard winds died, the snow stopped and the clouds, empty at last, drifted away, leaving behind a midnight blue sky and mounds of snow, sparkling in the moonlight. She didn’t notice its beauty. Instead, she wove through the trees and over the snow so fast that the scenery around her began to blur. Her legs bunched and leapt and danced, clearing every obstacle. When 87
Aileen Harkwood her arms, pumping effortlessly at her side, lifted in front of her eyes, she saw that they looked as white as the snow. She kept running, but frowned at that, wondering why they would appear to be covered in— Fur? Luka hesitated, the supernatural grace that had filled her these last hours deserting her in an instant. She tripped in mid-stride, limbs flailing. As her body flew through the air, a different vision of white fur and torn flesh assailed her, memory cutting into her like a knife… “Griffin!” Anya cried. “Help me!” She didn’t understand what was happening to her. Staring in disbelief at the black-haired woman with the wolflike eyes and sinuous curves standing in front of her, Anya felt the woman’s hatred of her, her jealousy. She’d said her name was Isabel, that she was Griff’s mate. Anya felt Isabel’s song reach deep inside her, and her flesh came alive. Her bones twisted and broke and reformed. Her muscles contorted and tried to crawl to new positions beneath her skin. Something vicious ripped at her chest from the inside, fighting to get out. Anya doubled over, collapsed to the floor, eviscerated by the struggles of the untamed thing that was not fully a part of her, yet wanted so desperately to live. “Griffin!” She looked to where he’d been standing, but instead saw a black wolf larger than any myth. It paced up and down next to her as if it were trapped in a cage. It bared its fangs at the black-haired woman and growled, snapping its jaws, and yet it did not attack either her or Anya. Stop! A voice commanded. It sounded like Griff, but it came from the wolf. Stop the song! Pull it back into yourself. Do it, Isabel! Isabel ignored him and squatted in front of Anya’s writhing body. She reached out and ran a finger softly along Anya’s forearm. As if the finger 88
Wolf’s Den were a surgeon’s scalpel, her skin sliced open, and a wolf’s white paw, birthed in blood with black claws extended, attempted to rip itself free, emerge. Anya screamed. Anya! the black wolf cried, and when she looked at him, she no longer saw the furred creature, but a man, Griffin. I love you, Wolf Man, she thought. He jerked slightly in reaction, as if he could hear that thought, and it startled him. If so, her inner words caused him pain, something she didn’t want for him. A second later he paved over the sadness with a brave smile. It was his own gift of love to her. “Hear me—” He knelt beside her and whispered urgently. “Hear me and live. You are my mate. Yours are the hands that hold my heart. Yours is the voice that binds my soul…” Anya tried to meet his gaze. She knew she was dying, and she wanted his face to be the last thing she saw, but Isabel’s power controlled her completely. Griffin gently touched Anya’s cheek. Griff’s words caressed her. “You and I are joined forever, to roam the forests as one. You cannot go to the next life without me.” Anya whimpered, unable to break away from her killer’s gaze. The woman’s song forced obedience. Isabel rose to her feet and stood over her triumphantly. As the last phrase of magic left her lips, she grinned. No! I’m not going to let you have him, Anya thought. She struck out blindly at Isabel, her good hand and fingers digging into the woman’s leg. For a split second, she, Isabel, and Griff were connected. She saw Isabel’s smile falter. The woman’s face registered confusion, then abruptly, pain, even as Anya’s own torment faded. Fine convulsions rocked the woman’s body. Isabel began to choke, tried to talk, but instead dropped silently to her knees. She 89
Aileen Harkwood glared at Anya, then her eyes rolled back in her head. Anya, who expected to experience death, watched it instead. Isabel had left her body. Then she felt a sharp tug deep inside. The creature that Isabel had tried to wake, the wolf, refused to die. Its spirit tore free of her ruined body, taking Anya with it as it lunged toward the shelter kneeling in front of it. Freedom, the wolf howled triumphantly. And life! Anya thought. Life with Griff. An instant later, Anya no longer lay suffering on the floor, but was on her knees, facing the mangled body of a petite blond woman, who lay dying. Griff wept and stroked the woman’s hair, calling to her, pleading for her to come back to him. Instead, the petite woman grabbed Griff and uttered something in a language she’d heard before but didn’t understand. From the hateful look on the woman’s face and the intensely wounded expression on Griff’s face, Anya knew what was said had to have been the cruelest manner of insult. Griff, don’t listen, she wanted to say. I’m here. I’m over here. Instead, darkness bubbled over her and she sagged backward to the floor, forgetting everything, most of all the pain. **** Griff discovered Luka naked, laying face down in a drift, only a few hundred yards from the den where they’d spent the previous night. In wolf form, he nudged her with his nose, relieved to find her merely stunned, not ice cold as she’d been when he’d located her the night before. What had happened to her clothes? Sometimes human victims of hypothermia mistakenly believed they were hot and pulled off their clothing, but he knew that Luka was no such victim. The fine trickle of blood at her forehead suggested she’d fallen and hit her head. Her heartbeat was strong, though he 90
Wolf’s Den sensed an intense aura of disorientation surrounding her. He prayed her wound was not severe. She moaned and uttered a small, wounded sound that made him want to shift right there and take her in his arms, soothing away the hurt. He was amazed and humbled to find that she’d run not toward the city, nor escaped into distant Kith territories as he would expect from Isabel, but had come here to a wolf’s den, their den. He had no doubt that fear had driven her deep into the blizzard, but instinct had pulled her back to the last place they’d shared. It was the exact thing a Kith’s mate would have done. Griff had to get her up and moving again toward shelter. He nudged her harder this time, and she rolled over onto her back on her own, revealing a nude, lush body that instinctually responded to his nearness. A dreamy expression slowly animated her face. Was that happiness? “Wolf Man,” she whispered, smiling. “You’re here.” Griff went still. I love you, Wolf Man. It was what Anya had said to him before he made the oath, binding them together as mates. Nor had she said it aloud for Isabel to hear. She’d spoken that endearment to him mind-to-mind only. “What was that, anyway?” Luka whispered. “That thing she called you just before she died?” Luka may have been near delirium, but Griff knew to what she referred. He was embarrassed to repeat the dying curse, yet did so now. “She called me a cowardly fuck,” he said. “More or less.” Her lashes, sprinkled with snow crystals, blinked open wide. “Oh!” Luka said. “Was that it? I knew it was bad, but I couldn’t understand because she was speaking Gaelic.” 91
Aileen Harkwood Anya’s last words were in Gaelic? A gutter curse? Griff was so fluent in both languages that he could shift both speaking and hearing in either without realizing it. Anya, on the other hand, had never known Gaelic, so how was it that she had cursed him in a language only he and Isabel would know? Reverently, he used a paw to touch the brow of the woman laying before him, brushing away the snow matting the hair beside her face. He sent her a tentative question. Anya? Yes? Anya? He couldn’t believe it. It was her. Really Anya. His mate wasn’t dead. Say it again, she asked him. I like the way your voice sounds in my mind. Anya! At once, the wolf inside him want to leap, to frolic the way a pup would, in pure exhilaration. The man, however, knew there was danger still. She might not be freezing at this very moment, but she soon would be if he didn’t get her to the den. Her body temperature was cooling, and he noticed a slight tremor begin in the hand that reached out to him, and then fell back to the snow. Her eyelids slipped closed and her face turned away, dropping into an unnatural sleep. No, Anya. You can’t sleep here. Can, too. I’m doing it now. Get up! He bit her hand, not hard enough to draw blood, but not gently either. Her eyes shot open and she sat up. “Griff?” He nodded his head. She smiled, a wide joyful expression that tore at his heart because of the deathly paleness of her skin. 92
Wolf’s Den It was too much like the last moments with Anya, when blood loss and trauma drained her expression of its natural, sparkling light. The smile faded, and she sagged back asleep. No! he said and this time bit her breast. No need to get kinky. Her eyes didn’t open. Come on, Anya! Get up for me. Walk for me. Come home with me. Would love to— And then she was out for good. He shouted and growled and nudged and grabbed her wrist between his huge jaws and tugged, but nothing roused her. He had no choice. He had to let the wolf go and summon the man. He only hoped that once he did he’d have enough left to get them both to safety. He’d spent most of the night battling the enemy, killing when he had no choice, though Silas had eluded him; spent precious energy healing the wound in his side and two more bullets he’d received to his flank; and finally ran flat out through the storm to find her. He’d have to find the strength, even if all he had left was sheer will. His mate’s life depended on it.
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Chapter Fourteen They woke in a naked tangle on the fragrant mosses and pine needles of the wolf’s den, their bodies wrapped around each other for warmth like a pair of innocent pups. Griff, who habitually slept on his stomach found he was pressed face down into something soft and warm, but fleshy. Anya came awake with the top of one of Griff’s feet pushed up against her mouth and nose like a gag. Their eyes flickered open as one. They each drew in a deep breath and separately made a decision. Griff gave the firm ass he’d used during the night as a pillow a long, slow lick. Anya bit his little toe. “Hey!” Griff said, as they rolled apart. “That’s what you get for stuffing it up my nose.” “Did not,” he said. “Perhaps you were too busy with your face stuffed in my ass, as well,” she said with an impish grin. They lay on their sides now, though they remained with their feet near the other’s head. Griff propped his head in his hand and admired the view. Anya did the same. He was magnificent, every inch the sex demon she remembered from the time they’d first made love on the chaise lounge. Reaching them through the passage to the den, the morning sun highlighted every taut sinew, highlighted the heavy mane of black that grazed his shoulders. He didn’t have to move so much as a muscle and he got her hot, wanting to kiss and lick and draw her nails down those perfectly toned abs, scarred as they were with the stories of his life’s battles. Her gaze 94
Wolf’s Den followed the black arrow of furlike hair pointing downward toward the main attraction. He was so big and thick and erect now that the thought of his full length pushing into her, filling her, expanding who she was and what she could become with his child growing inside her, forced an unintended sound from between her lips. “Did you just whine?” he asked. “Did not.” “You did.” She welcomed the dampness that appeared suddenly between her legs like a wild spring erupting unexpectedly from the rich earth. Instead of feeling embarrassment that her wolf could smell her own heat, she reveled in it, instinctively squirming in delight and arching her back as if the sex between them had already begun. She reached her fingers between her legs. “Hmm, guess I’m not really needed here,” he said. She attacked him. And he, her. That’s the only word she could think of to describe their sensuous combat, a frenzy of mating energies consuming the passion that beaded on skin tasting of want, and want, and so much hope that this thing was right. They fought for dominance and the right to pleasure each other, Anya cuffing his hands over his head while he allowed her to kiss him mercilessly, tongues fencing and parrying with each other as she thrust hers between his lips and then pulled back, parting her own for his return challenge. Delicious, delicious, delicious, the words swept through her and him, neither of them knowing who had thought them. He smelled and felt like her territory, just as she knew she was his. She soaked up the scents that rode his skin from last night’s run through the blizzard and the trees. Blood from his skirmishes with the enemy lingered in his aura and made her want to howl in pride. 95
Aileen Harkwood She opened her mouth, afraid she might do just that when Griff surprised her. How did it happen? He appeared not to have even touched her, but suddenly she was beneath him. She offered only mock struggle as he made his claim on her absolute. He punished her for having dared to take command from him, his fingers expertly teasing and pinching and bringing her nipples to sensitive peaks. He nuzzled and laved his way up the slender column of her throat, her wolf shivering in ecstasy with each torturous stroke. Just before he reached her chin, his teeth dug gently into the vulnerable pulse point where jaw met throat. Such a bite would have delivered the kill in a true battle between wolves and she bucked under him, into him, feeling the entrance to her sex glance off his ready cock. She took his wondrously engorged length in her own hands. “Please,” she moaned. “Hurry.” “Not yet,” he said. “Not till you beg harder than that.” Tears of impatience welled in her eyes. Why wasn’t he already inside her? How could he not be pumping his life into her yet? Now, more than at any other time since waking with amnesia in the cabin, she understood how fragile and tentative fate was. If circumstances had been altered by even the slightest amount, they might not be here, reunited as mates. She might never have her beloved Wolf Man here with her, trying his damnedest and failing to make her obey. They might never have had this chance to love again. Griff went dead still atop her, his ravenous pursuit of her brought to a ragged halt. Alarmed, she met his gaze. Their breaths mingled in the chilled air of the den, hot yet pulling away, disengaging. She didn’t have to read his mind. One look into his hurt, conflicted eyes told her everything. Even now, the man within the wolf resisted the body she wore. 96
Wolf’s Den Anya knew what he saw as he studied her. A woman taller than Anya should be, with dark rather than blond hair, more voluptuous and sinfully constructed than she had once been, a shape created for one thing and one thing only, avaricious sex. She shook her head. “No. I won’t let you quit. I won’t let her do this to us.” She slid her hand between their overheated bodies and dipped into her damp curls below, stripping the moisture from them. Raising her fingers to her mouth she glossed her lips with the wetness on their tips. “I’m Anya,” she said. “Anya and no one else. Taste me.” His wolfen eyes took on a fire she couldn’t interpret. He stared at her for so long, with such intensity that she felt fear prick at her heart. Was he going to turn on her? Did he doubt her even now? Was that death she scented in the den’s shadowed corners? “I’ll do more than taste,” he growled. He crushed his mouth to hers, and sucked at her upper, then lower lip, taking every last bit of wet she’d used to paint them, spreading the taste of her over his tongue. That one simple act forced her past the edge of human endurance. Her moist core drowned in sensations she knew to be impossible. It was the wolf in her, and in him. Being Kith was like experiencing every sensation twice. Too much. It was too hot to live through, as he went down on her, licking and thrusting his tongue in and out with a rhythm he would not let her control. She came in an inferno of pleasure. “I can’t,” she cried. “I can’t take it any longer.” She couldn’t wait for the waves to dissipate. “Beg,” he said. “Tell me what you want.” But he already knew what she wanted. Their wolves knew each of them knew so well that the words were only spoken in complete desperation. 97
Aileen Harkwood “It’s not enough. I need you. I want you,” she said. “I have to have you inside. Now.” Tortured by desire, she cried out when his lips abandoned her, cried out again when he entered her. Her body opened to him. He cupped her firm buttocks in his hands and plunged himself deeper. They used each other shamelessly, selflessly, reaching for the breathless heights until they had no choice but to leap off the peak together into a free fall of delight. He held her, never letting her go, as they came down softly, slowly, her every nerve tingling in the aftermath of release. “You are such a big, bad wolf,” she said, listening to his heart race and knowing her own raced with it.
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Wolf’s Den
Chapter Fifteen “I know you’re in there, slut,” Silas’s voice called to them from outside the den. “You and that mongrel wolf.” Griff woke, bounding into a crouched position even as he opened his eyes and cursed himself for not detecting their enemy’s approach. How had the man managed to find them? Yes, they’d left tracks, but only at the end of their flight, once the storm had cleared and they were miles away from the bridge. Blizzard snows should have obscured their tracks during the first few hours that they’d each fled in different directions. Griff could not believe their bad fortune. Silas’s superior tracking skills rivaled even the Kith. He glanced at Anya, who had woken and come to her feet as quickly as he. He heard the low growl of distaste in her throat as her wolf detected Silas’s offensive scent. As sexy as Isabel’s body was, he missed the shape and feel of the Anya with whom he’d fallen in love. It would take getting used to this new body that Isabel had discarded and Anya’s spirit now inhabited. “What if we pretend we’re not in here?” she suggested. “Maybe he’ll get tired of waiting.” “I’m not going away,” Silas shouted, as if reading her thoughts. “Come out before I throw in a grenade to blast you out.” Grenade? “He’s a conspiracy freak,” Anya said. “He has an entire arsenal.” Christ, Griff thought. What now? Should he change to wolf right here? Charge 99
Aileen Harkwood from the den and rip out this guy’s throat? As much as he would have loved to do just that, the amount of energy he’d used up in the last day left him in doubt of his ability to shift and have enough strength left to challenge a man as well armed as Silas. Anya was right. Silas wasn’t bluffing. He heard the man’s finger slide into the grenade’s ring, preparing to pull the pin. Again, their hand was being forced. “I’m going out,” he said. “No,” Anya said. “I have to. Stay here.” He started toward the passage, then turned abruptly and pulled her into his arms. He kissed her as he’d wished he’d been able to do when she’d lay dying from the bloodsong. A lifetime of passion was in that kiss. “No matter what you hear, don’t leave the den.” “I’m going with you,” she said. “No!” His wolf rose in him. Alpha. Leader. Not to be denied. It was a measure of her courage that she didn’t shrink back from it, but she nodded, allowing him to exit the den. Outside, the wind howled and bit savagely into his exposed skin. Griff stood, deliberately stepped away from the entrance to deflect Silas’s interest in it and faced the man. “You!” Silas said, surprised to find man not wolf. He spat at Griff’s feet. Griff caught the stench of sour breath coming from several yards off. Alcohol permeated their sweat. He may not see the other men, but he knew they were there, five of them. Griff was surrounded, outnumbered. He couldn’t prevent the tide of hopelessness that washed over him. He was going to die, and after him, Anya. His only hope lay in speed. Would his reflexes be fast enough to save them both? Silas pulled the pin. 100
Wolf’s Den “You’re going to kill me? An unarmed man?” “Hell, yes,” Silas said, “but not just you.” He lobbed the grenade toward the den. Griff gathered all his strength and sprang into the air. He didn’t dare take on the wolf. A wolf couldn’t catch the grenade. A wolf couldn’t tuck and roll then come up to hurl the primed weapon into the distance. A second later, the grenade blew, cleaving a massive boulder in two. One of Silas’s men uttered a high-pitched scream as he was hit by rocky shrapnel, but Griff didn’t pause. He heard a tiny click from Silas’s direction, raised his head, and stared down the barrel of the man’s high-powered rifle. This is it, he thought. The end. Without a prayer of evading the bullet, he nevertheless pushed himself to his feet to meet the challenge. Fur a dazzling white, the wolf appeared to materialize out of the blinding snow itself. It was Anya! Transformed into the lupine shape Isabel had never been able to take and wearing the pelt of the mythic white Kith. She lunged for the arm holding the firearm, knocking it aside. In saving him, though, she jostled Silas’s trigger finger, and the rifle went off. The white wolf yelped. “Anya!” Griff shouted. She tumbled heavily to the ground, where she lay unmoving. Blood rapidly seeped into the snow. With a snarl of pure rage, Griff attacked Silas. He tore the rifle away before the man could take proper aim at him, and flung it to the side, where the gun butt shattered against a tree’s trunk. Gunfire erupted, more bullets zinging into the snow around him, one grazing his arm. He didn’t care. As Silas whipped out a deer knife and sliced upward with it toward Griff’s gut, Griff swung and connected with his enemy’s jaw. Silas’s head snapped around, 101
Aileen Harkwood the knife spun away, and the man’s body hurtled backward, buried itself so deeply in the snow Griff had to punch his arms into the drift to find him. He gripped the now senseless man by the collar, and pulled back his fist for another blow, when he heard the shout in his head. Brother! Stop! Fergus? Griff lifted his eyes from his prey. Huge black wolves ringed the clearing, shielding it protectively. At the center stood a single wolf, large and powerful. Fergus? His brother had heard his call and brought the pack to their rescue. Griff met the wolf’s gaze. They’re gone, brother. Fled. Except for him, the wolf nodded at Silas, we’re alone. Fergus stood guard over a delicate-looking body huddled and bleeding in the snow. The wolf’s head lowered toward her. See to your mate. It took a moment for reality to penetrate Griff’s bloodlust. Anya! He let go of Silas’s comatose body. “Oh, God,” he said, rushing forward and skidding to his knees in the snow at her side. She was no longer the white wolf. Unable to hold the form, she’d reverted to her human shape when injured. Calm yourself, Fergus said. The wound is not that bad. Griff reached for her, pulling her gently face up and clearing the snow from her hair. He stopped in the act of brushing his fingers across her brow, stunned by what he saw. She no longer wore Isabel’s body, but her rightful one, his beloved silvery moon puppy. What had caused this miraculous transformation? Could it be? Was the myth true? Was she one of the lost Kith, gifted with powerful 102
Wolf’s Den magic? We. Her voice caressed his mind. We have powerful magic. I can feel it. Don’t you remember what you told me? That once bonded with her destined mate, a white wolf would be able to overcome all adversity to remain with him? And that not even death could undo the powerful magic such a pairing possessed? “Luka?” he said aloud, sounding as if he refused to believe. Anya gazed up into her mate’s loving eyes. She felt different somehow, lighter yet stronger, like her old self, yet more. A lock of blond hair dusted with snow fell in front of her eyes. Griff’s fingers gently lifted it from her face, smoothing it to the side. Pain had returned. Her leg, she thought, the bullet she’d taken for him. Yet the unpleasant ache was a far off thing. All she cared about were the strong arms holding her tight. She smiled at him, managing no more than a whisper. “Is that my big, bad wolf?” “It is,” he said, as he bent to capture her lips. And always will be, came the words that bound themselves to her soul.
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About the Author Aileen Harkwood lives in the southern Rockies with her family and their overly enthusiastic, fetchaddicted chocolate Labrador retriever. She designs handmade silver jewelry, collects sock monkeys, and puts green chile on just about everything.
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