All right, she needed to get a grip. Just because things were quiet didn’t mean she should panic. Breaking her leg would be a death sentence. She kicked off her shoes. The logic was sound but the adrenaline coursing through her body told her to screw off and run. A cold sweat broke out over her skin, and a cool wind made her shiver.
She scanned the inside of the building. It didn’t have a roof. A stone altar in the center offered the only shelter. She hurried across to it and laid a hand over the smooth, cool surface. Breathing a sigh of relief, she closed her eyes for a heartbeat. It wasn’t bloodstained. That was a good sign, right?
She crept around to the other side and knelt behind it. Hiding felt right.
Crouched on the cold stone floor, she hugged her knees to her chest. At least the military hadn’t get her machine. A small consolation while squatting in another dimension, all alone like a frightened animal.
The rustle of leaves to her left made her squeak. She clapped her hand over her mouth and peeked around the corner. Something with silver-gray fur crawled under the vines through one of the wall’s many gaps.
Please let that be a big-ass raccoon. She watched as the creature’s dark, wet nose moved in her direction and sniffed. All her muscles seized. She couldn’t move or breathe.
The nose pushed through, followed by a large, wolf-like head. On his stomach, he crept into the building. Her vision tunneled as he rose to his hind legs and kept rising until he towered over her. Long claws protruded from his fingers and toes. Swinging his head, he sniffed the air. Three jagged scars ran over his muzzle. His amber gaze met her stare, and he bared his sharp teeth. As he moved, thick, solid muscles slid under his silver fur.
With a knocking heart, Susan was anchored to the spot. A werewolf. A real, honest-to-God werewolf stood not five feet from her. She hadn’t crossed dimensions. She’d died and gone to hell.
As he stepped toward her, something flipped off in her brain and it stopped functioning. Deductive reasoning vanished like a cheap parlor trick. Sixty thousand years of human instinct buried in her genes kicked in, and Susan scuttled away from the beast until her head hit the stone wall. Ignoring the sharp pain, she grabbed the vines and pulled herself to her feet. All the while she couldn’t stop staring at this magnificent creature made of nightmares. She took a deep breath and let out a scream that rattled her tonsils.
Chapter Two
Once in the faint sunlight within the Temple, Sorin rose on his hind legs and loomed over the cowering female in his feral form. Running as a beast was the fastest and safest way to travel through the forest.
Ever since the Dark Moon Goddess disappeared over one hundred years ago, the Temple resembled a tomb. The solitude appealed to him. It usually helped him think; however something strange disturbed the place today.
Shaking his mane, he tried to settle his crazed fur. He’d been awake all night tending the sick, and he stank of it.
The strange blue light no longer burned in the sky but he’d tracked an odd, delicate smell to this spot. Something different, something he couldn’t place. It smelled female, and she now crouched behind the altar. Screaming.
His ears folded back against his furred head as he continued to bare his canines at the female. Slim and tall, she remained in her civil form. Odd—she should have shifted at his challenge. She wore a well-tailored jacket that fell to her knees. He’d never seen cloth so clean and white. Her doe-brown hair was pinned in a strange manner, twisted behind her head. Inhaling her scent through his mouth, he tried to taste her pack, but couldn’t find anything.
Leaves rustled behind him as Peder, one of his pack’s omegas, crept through the bush and entered the Temple. Sorin shouldn’t have favorites, but if he did, Peder would be one.
The thin, wiry shifter glanced at him and ducked his head when their eyes met. Sorin’s father had been hard on the weaker members of the pack. Five years since the bastard’s death, and still none of them would meet his gaze, even after all the effort to place his omegas at ease.
He normally wouldn’t have dragged an omega from the pack on this type of journey, but he had to leave what healthy hunters remained to guard the den. Peder had to wolf up and take a more dominant role today.
For a little thing, the female sure could make a lot of noise. “Shush, you’ll attract every creature within earshot.” He had to shout so she could hear him as he stepped around the altar.
Her eyes widened to the size of the giant pink blooms adorning the Temple. All the color drained from her face. Flailing her arms around, she tangled them in the thorny vines growing on the walls. “You can speak?”
He winced. Those thorns could poke through the toughest hides but she didn’t seem to notice them piercing her delicate skin. Thin streams of blood trailed over her pale flesh. “By my hairy arse, female, what are you so afraid of?” He reached to untangle her, but she shrank away, deeper into the vines.
Her limbs trembled, and the scent of her fear almost choked him.
His ears shot up. “You’re afraid of me?” He sniffed her again and sneezed at her strange odor. She didn’t carry a shifter’s scent marks and definitely wasn’t a bloodsucker. What kind of female traveled alone?
Shifters stuck together. It was instinct. He couldn’t imagine any of his females leaving pack lands by themselves.
Maybe she was an outcast from her race? Eorthe held many species. The female could have wandered into their forest by accident. Being unmarked meant anyone could claim her, and that always meant trouble: challenges between males, jealousy among the females, dominance ranking shit. His pack had enough problems.
His heavy heart sank. He’d come to the Temple with Peder to gather the blue flowers that grew on these lands to help the Apisi, his small pack. An illness had set its deadly sights on them. Something invisible, something he couldn’t fight with tooth and claw. The fever was burning through his people, who now had no healer as Sorin had buried their pregnant healer just this morning. Before she passed she’d told him to gather more of these flowers to fight the fever since she’d used the last of her stores, and others still fell ill.
Then this stranger had fallen from the blue light in the sky above his head.
“What are you?” the female asked.
He glanced over his shoulder to make sure she was speaking to him. “I—I’m a wolf shifter, alpha of the Apisi.” Taking a slow step forward, he sniffed close to her body. “What in creation are you?” Now that he stood only a few inches from her, he could see her un-callused hands, as if she’d never seen a single day’s hard work. No scars on the exposed skin of her neck and face. Apparently, she’d never fought for dominance either. Even her fine, tailored clothes appeared too rich for the area.
She struggled to free her arms but only made things worse. “What?” Cocking her head to the side, she stared at him. “I’m human.”
“Stay still.” He snapped the order. Sorin released his retractable claws on one hand, sliced the vines, and freed her arms. “I’ve never heard of hu-man. You must live farther south from the vampires.” So he’d been following the scent of a human.
She clutched her neck with shaky hands. “Vampires?” Her gaze never left his claws as he slowly sliced her legs free.
Once done, he gave her space. Her fear scent excited his beast since fright usually accompanied prey. He tapped his foot, his claws clicking against the stone floor. “What are you doing on Temple lands?”
“I’m lost.” The human spoke so softly he had to strain to hear. She kept glancing between him and golden-furred Peder as if waiting for one of them to pounce.
He tried not to stare so hard. Soft creatures didn’t survive in the wild long, and this female was filled with all different kinds of softness. He sighed. “Did you see the blue light?” All he had wanted was a few moments of peace. Instead, he found…her.