Bella tossed a pink sweatshirt into the bag. “You be careful, honey. The victims are all redheads in their twenties. And the last was killed not far from here.”
“Don’t worry, Chrissie. I’ve got a gun for protection.” Well, two: one at her cabin, and one at home, but who was counting? Silver bullets, too; Bella had them made for Volan. It wasn’t the lupus garou way, but she had no other way to fight him. She would never be his.
“A ... a gun? Do you know how to shoot it?” Yep, she’d learned how to shoot a gun a good century and a half ago, ever since the early days when she had lived in the wilderness, trying to survive in the lands west of Colorado.
“Yeah, don’t worry. Give your kids hugs for me, will you? Tell Mary I want to see the painting she did for art class, and tell Jimmy that I want to see his science project when I return.”
Chrissie sighed. “I’ll tell them. You be careful up there all by yourself. That is, if you’re going all by yourself.”
Always checking. Chrissie was looking for husband number two, and she assumed Bella rendezvoused with some mountain man every time she returned to her cabin.
“See you Monday.”
“Be careful, Bella. You never know where that maniac will end up.”
“I’ll be cautious. Got to go.”
Bella hung up the phone and zipped her suitcase. Before it turned dark she had every intention of searching the woods for further clues concerning the red lupus garou—not a wild dog, a mixed wolf-dog breed, or as some thought, a pit bull that some bastard had trained to kill his victims—that might be killing the women.
Why had she caught the scent of red lupus garou in the area near her cabin now, when the woods had been free of their kind for the last three years? She envisioned a lone female wouldn’t stand a chance at remaining that way. Her stomach curdled with the idea that she’d have to give up her cabin and find a new place to run. Just one more concern to add to her growing list of worries.
Later that day, when Bella arrived at her cabin, the waning moon called to her though it was still fairly light out. She tilted her nose up to the breeze, standing on the porch of her cedar home in the woods, the building now a faded gray. It served as her hideaway on the weekends when she lived on the wild side, away from the hustle and bustle of the city of Portland. She would be the right age to be Volan’s mate, if he ever found her. Smiling at how clever she had been to avoid him, the smile faded as a coyote howled. She wasn’t meant to be a rogue wolf, living alone without a pack. Some were naturally geared that way. Not her.
More than that, Devlyn still held her heart hostage, damn him. She could still feel the way his strong fingers had gripped her shoulders with possessiveness, smell his feral craving to have her, feel his heart thundering when he crushed her against him. Why couldn’t he have run with her?
She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts of the one who’d possessed her soul since the beginning.
It wasn’t that she didn’t care for the gray wolf pack, the lupus garou family who had taken her in. It was the unfathomable notion that she’d have been Volan’s mate that fired her soul to the depths of hell. Stronger than the rest, he wasn’t brighter, nor caring in the least bit. Just a bully, such as in ancient times when the strongest men ruled. Why couldn’t she find a mate who would treat her as ... as ... an equal?
Somewhere, such a male had to exist.
Taking a deep breath, she pulled off her sweater, turtleneck, denims, and hiking boots, and dropped them on a porch chair. Standing naked, she shivered, then breathed in the heavenly scent of pine needles, the smell once again triggering the memory of Devlyn kissing her. No man since had kissed her like he had.
She gritted her teeth and swallowed hard. He stirred primal longings in her too strong to quench. The desire to feel him deep inside her, filling her with his seed, producing their offspring, their family—sharing a lifetime commitment as mates forever—overwhelmed her. But he wasn’t the leader of the pack. Even if she wanted Devlyn for her mate, she didn’t think he’d ever be strong enough to have her. Yet, she couldn’t help but keep in touch with Argos, the old former leader of the pack. Knowing Devlyn was alive and well...
She growled with exasperation. For now she had to hunt like a wolf, and in the interim, search for a different prey—the feral predator that stalked human redheaded females and murdered them like a rabid wolf.
Stretching again, her lean body began to take the form of the wolf. The painless transformation always occurred quickly and filled her with a sense of urgency—to hunt, to run wild among the other creatures of the forest.
A thick cinnamon-red pelt covered her skin as her nose elongated into a snout, and her teeth grew ready for the hunt. She straightened her back, howled with the change, then dropped to her paws. Her nails extended into sharp claws, itching to dig into the pine needle cushioned earth.
Though she preferred venison to rabbit, she hunted the latter. Killing deer out of season constituted a crime. If anyone found the leftovers of such a kill, an investigation would follow. Soon word would spread that a wolf was killing deer in the area. A wolf that might next go after ranchers’ sheep or cattle, or household pets, or children. A wolf thought to be extinct in these parts.
Leaping off the porch, her long legs carried her with graceful bounds through the wilderness. She traveled through several hundreds of acres before spying another cabin—quiet, vacated. Since it was winter and no longer hunting season, except for the end of dusky Canadian goose season, she shouldn’t glimpse another human being.
She thought she caught a whiff of something familiar. Pausing, she sniffed the air, and recognized the distinctive smell of lupus garou—red lupus garou.
Loping toward the origin of the scent, she darted past pines and firs, ducked beneath low-hanging branches, jumped a moss-covered log in her path ... then halted.
A patch of red fur clung to the bark of an oak. Definitely red wolf; and because none existed here, it had to be a red lupus garou’s.
She contemplated returning to her human form and taking the evidence back to her cabin, but she was miles from there, and as cold as it was, her human counterpart probably wouldn’t make it.
The breeze shifted. She smelled the red’s scent stronger now. He’d just urinated somewhere nearby, marking his territory. She hesitated. If he were looking for a mate, she’d be a prime target; and if he were an alpha male, she wouldn’t be strong enough to fight him if he decided to force a mating.
Leaves rustled. A twig snapped underfoot a short distance away. A chill raced all the way down her spine to the tip of her taut tail. An eerie feeling she was being watched froze her in place.
What if he was the killer? What if he was hunting her now? But what if she could lure him into the open, play his game, and turn him over to whatever pack happened to live in the area? Even if he were a loner, the pack in the territory would condemn him to die. Killing humans put every lupus garou at risk. Keeping their secret hidden was the only way for them to survive.
Then again, he might just be a pack member hunting for fresh meat—enjoying the freedom of the change like she was—who had come across her, a loner lupus garou violating the pack’s territory. Unless ... unless their reds had a shortage of females like the Colorado grays did, and...