Her ragged sleep interrupted, Carol stared at the white eyelet comforter, canopied bed, and antique dressers filling the guest bedroom at Darien Silver’s home and making her feel like a fairy-tale princess. She snorted. Right, like Rapunzel locked away in the tower. Except that Carol had chin-length hair. She had no long golden tresses to toss out the two-story window, allowing her princely rescuer to climb to her room and take her away from her imprisonment.
She touched the bed beside her where her tabby cat would normally sleep. Poor old Puss. Stuck at the kennel until Carol learned to control this werewolf-shifting business. But for now, her cat was happy, sprawled out on the receptionist’s counter every afternoon greeting customers, even though Carol wanted him home with her. She suspected Darien didn’t worry that her shifting into a wolf would frighten Puss to death as much as he really wasn’t fond of cats.
She sighed. Darien wasn’t just the owner of the silver mine and the leather-goods factory, nor was he just on the school board, the hospital board, and every other board in Silver Town. He ran the place… as a gray lupus garou pack leader, along with his triplet brothers, Jake and Tom.
Lelandi, the red wolf, was his mate. And Carol was now a red like her.
With her skin covered in a light sheen of perspiration, compliments of her continuing night terrors of being attacked and the shifting urge she continued to experience, she rose from the bed and walked toward the room’s sole window. The filmy nightgown she wore caressed her skin with every step, her bare feet pressing silently against the springy golden carpet.
Not believing how upside down her world had become, she touched the place on her throat where five months ago a feral red werewolf had savagely ripped her open, turning her into one of their kind. No scar existed, not even a trace of one. She sighed deeply. She’d known for some time that a wolf would turn her. Damned psychic visions. But she hadn’t seen how or when or what the ramifications would be. Nor had she realized that the change would force her to take a mate sooner rather than later.
Once she’d had the vision of what they truly were before she’d been turned, everyone had scrutinized her—Darien, Lelandi, his brothers. And the rest of the pack. They had watched her and made sure she didn’t slip and spill the guarded secrets of the werewolf kind once they realized she knew what they were because of her psychic visions. They had supervised her, barely ever allowing her out of their sight.
She was still a danger to them. An unknown quantity. A newly turned wolf who could fight the shift, which was an oddity in itself. But something more about her was off. She could see glimpses of the future. And sometimes she could touch an object and gather a psychic impression from it. This bothered them, too. Even Lelandi, who had become like a sister to her, was troubled somewhat by Carol’s paranormal abilities.
She sighed. She would never truly fit in, never belong. Yet for now, she was stuck under Darien’s thumb, living with him, his mate, and his brothers until he could secure a mate for her. Barbaric! But it was the only way to ensure their safety and hers.
Not that she was going along with it.
She pulled aside the heavy, pale-blue velvet drapes and the matching silky sheers, her wolf senses allowing her night vision so that she didn’t have to turn on the lamp. She peered into the forest and actually could see, as if the woods were merely cloaked in shadows. Chilling the air further on this cold night, a stiff breeze tugged the branches, making them dance to its tune.
Then she saw him, the wolf from her visions, stepping lightly out of the woods, watching her, and catching her eye. Her lips parted in surprise, and she took a shuddering breath. Who was he? She still didn’t know all of Darien’s people in their wolf forms. Someone who was guarding the house? Watching that she didn’t leave in a crazy attempt to run away and start her life anew without Darien’s intervention? That would be plain ludicrous. She could never manage on her own, nor did she want to live that way.
Because of the wolf’s posture—his ears perked, his head lifting even higher—he had to be an alpha. It wasn’t one of Darien’s brothers. Someone from another pack then? Someone who wanted to fight Darien for leadership? He’d have to battle Darien’s brothers also. Jake and Tom would never allow some outsider to take over the pack.
The lone wolf’s gaze settled lower, studying the way she was dressed. Could he see well enough from that distance to note that her nipples had grown hard against the silky gown in the chilly air? Observing a wolf and realizing it was probably a werewolf, who would have a man’s desires even in wolf form, seemed surreal.
His gaze returned to hers.
Somehow, she was tied inexplicably to him, although the hazy visions weren’t clear enough to tell her how. She didn’t feel any apprehension, nor fear. He was safe, she thought.
Taking matters in hand, she would find out just who he was and, if she could, why he was here. She yanked the drapes closed, then with as much wolf care as she could manage, she slid a drawer open, hoping not to alert Lelandi, who was sleeping in the master bedroom down the hall.
Carol often got herself into trouble because of everyone’s heightened sense of hearing. She kept thinking they could foresee things as she did. Not at all. They were just very good at eavesdropping to spy on what she was up to. Not in a mean way, of course. But to protect her and themselves.
Intending to find out who the stranger in the wolf coat was, she yanked out a sweater and a pair of jeans and began to dress. If she could get close enough, she would be able to smell and recognize him if she ran into him later in his human form.
She hated how everyone watched her every move. She felt as though she lived in a glass exam room where everything she did or said was monitored. But what was said behind closed doors rattled her even more. She was one of them, but not.
Yet—she tilted her chin up a hair as she left her room and then crept down the stairs with the utmost caution—she wasn’t about to lose the person she had been before the change. She smiled as she got to the bottom of the stairs without signaling Lelandi that she was up after retiring to bed early and was planning an adventure she was certain none of them would approve. Now she only had to cross the living room to the back door and hopefully unlock, open, and close it without drawing attention.
The house was quiet, Lelandi also having retired unusually early to bed. Darien and his brothers were working late at the leather-goods factory as usual, so for once Carol wasn’t being monitored closely. Because she’d been so tired from her nursing shift and unable to sleep when she had the chance, no one expected her to leave her bedroom before daybreak.
Slowly, she twisted the handle on the door to the back patio. Without anyone’s permission or supervision, she’d be free for a few precious minutes and prove she could manage her own life without disastrous consequences.
Disgruntled with himself for slinking through Darien’s forest as a wolf so he could watch the house for any sign of Carol Wood, Chester Ryan McKinley hated his obsession. Even now when his P.I. practice had taken a back burner to his position as mayor and pack leader of Green Valley, he couldn’t give up thinking about Carol, whom he’d met five months earlier while investigating a murder case involving Darien’s pack. Ryan had found a lot of evidence against the murderer, but Carol’s testimony had solicited the confession and the truth of the matter.
Long-legged and stacked, with hair the color of the golden sun and eyes as deep and mysterious as a shadowed blue lake, she had often worn a troubled expression during the investigation. Most likely due to the mess she’d gotten herself into as a human. The fact she’d managed to get herself into such a predicament bothered him more than he liked to consider. As was his rescuing nature, he’d wanted to save her from her plight, ensure she didn’t become one of his kind, and shield her from what they were.