by Keri Hudson
But the rifle had been rendered useless. He tossed it aside and reached for his Magnum, in a shoulder holster strapped to his frame. Another wolf came at him and he spun to face it. The creature was tentative, clearly knowing the danger of what it was facing but in the full thrush of the attack. It was a slave to its own instincts despite its own doubting intellect. It wanted to kill but did not want to die. Still, a choice had to be made.
Don’t make me do it, Quinton thought, glaring at the wolf, certain the beast could hear and understand him. It was something even normalos, or average humans, could do with their own house pets, after all. Don’t you know me? Don’t you know who and what I am? I own this mountain, this is my territory! You and your kind are here on my sufferance, under my rule!
The wolf growled, head low and haunches up.
You have pups, you have a mate. Go back to them, tell them of your losses, and never encroach upon me again! Consider yourself lucky, and tell the others! I’ll kill you all if I must.
The wolf backed up, a little whimper in its throat as it turned to run away. Quinton surveyed his kills. Wolf meat and hide were worth something, and the caribou stag was long gone, it would have to be. Quinton holstered his handgun and pulled the coil of rope from the back of his belt, to tie the two dead wolves together and drag them back to his house for skinning, butchering, smoking most of the meat, and cooking some for a fresh, hearty meal.
He’d earned it.
Dragging the animals back, Quinton’s mind began to wander, and that was a danger of its own. One of the wolves had died by the blow to the head by the rifle butt, but the other was trailing blood from the rifle shot. That could bring other predators. Quinton knew he could face just about anything on that mountain, but the wolves’ aggressive behavior was still cause for alarm. Other predators were likely to be behaving the same way—dangerous and desperate, and it had to do with more than just Quinton’s presence in the area. He’d been there his whole life, after all.
And it was more than the encroaching shifter apocalypse. Quinton’s father had told him the tale, his mother listening eagerly. She’d been a normalo, a non-shifter, as were most shifter breeders. It was part of keeping the species strong with the human genes. The lupine and ursine genes both were so strong, human spouses were needed to keep the balance, to keep the races alive.
Quinton couldn’t help but think about his own life, solitary as it was. There were women in nearby Anchorage, and they were eager for his attention. Quinton had to ask himself why he hadn’t been more ready to take one into his marital bed, as he’d been ready to visit their beds temporarily. He’d more than enjoyed their hips and thighs, breasts and napes, lips and soft shoulders.
The thoughts and feelings were coming to him more and more. Perhaps it was the isolation of the snowy mountain, perhaps the notorious stretches of daylight and nighttime which were renowned for driving some people insane. But Quinton knew that wasn’t it. His body was speaking to him, his instincts were calling from generations behind and beyond. Quinton was in the prime of his life, among the strongest forces in the area, in the world.
Quinton needed to breed.
And more than just his instinct was his human desire. Quinton craved love—not just the lusty humps he could get from any of the women in Anchorage. None of them understood him or could ever understand him. And he had trouble understanding them.
Anchorage was strewn with odd sorts: drunks, prostitutes, drug dealers, hardened ice truckers, women hardened by the snows and the unending dark and light. But Quinton hadn’t found that one special woman among any of them, and it just didn’t seem like he ever would.
People weren’t migrating to Alaska, and despite the government’s efforts, they never really did. Quinton himself lived in the house his father had built for him and their family, miles out of town. It was an isolated life, and it seemed that it always would be.
But Quinton’s body and mind and history roiled against that dreadful certainty. He was the lone survivor of his family line, and he felt that responsibility pulsing through his veins. There was a shifter apocalypse coming, sooner or later. And that meant that it was necessary for every lupine shifter to be ready to join the fight, or create cubs that would fight when they had to. The ursines, bear shifters, were terrifically strong and vicious, and if they were to prevail in the fight, they would tear a swath across the human race that would destroy it. Quinton knew his place on the front lines of that defense, that battle, even if the normalos had no idea at all.
Quinton knew.
And he knew he had a duty to his race, to all races, and that was to sire the strongest and most gifted cubs possible. And as much as Quinton hated to admit it, no woman in Anchorage was up to the considerable task of maintaining his family line. It took a special woman to sire and raise a shifter cub. She had to have a certain combination of intellect, compassion, personal strength. And while a few of the women in Anchorage had those qualities, they lacked the other crucial quality.
Because Quinton was a man, and he longed for a woman of beauty, a body that was as fit as his own, with not a speck of fat. He needed a woman of some qualities, but he wanted a woman of others, and the idea of her showing up in Anchorage was beyond all likelihood and had proven virtually impossible.
CHAPTER TWO
Quinton skinned and butchered the wolves in front of his isolated mountain cabin home. It was hard work, but work to which Quinton was well accustomed. The meat would be tough and there was very little fat, making it less suitable for stew and better suited to smoke drying. But a nice steak could be cut from the chest, and it grilled up juicy on his outdoor barbeque.
He scraped the skins clean and set the hides out to dry. There was always a danger of bringing in more predators when smoking and grilling meat, and the hides themselves could tantalize a hungry bear.
But there was also the smell of death in the air, and that tended to keep predators away. They understood where danger was for them, they were not foolish or stubborn like so many normalo humans. They were smart enough to know where they weren’t wanted.
There were other considerations. The Earth was changing, Quinton could feel that in his bones and he could see it in the changing face of the world he lived in, his territory. The snows were receding, year after year. The polar bears were becoming much leaner and more aggressive, and it wasn’t to do with the coming shifter apocalypse.
The world was getting warmer. The ice floes were crumbling, melting; the snowy planes were grassy and often bare. The local alphas were getting more desperate for food as fish seemed to migrate, seals with them. Only the orcas seemed to benefit.
The orcas, Quinton thought. Even a flash of that fearsome black and white beast sent a chill up his own spine. He’d seen what they could do up close. When one of those creatures locked down on prey and dragged it into the cold, dark deep, nothing could escape. He wanted to despise them as much as they despised him and his kind. But he couldn’t. Quinton had grown up a child of the wild, a creature who lived in the very crux of nature’s balance in a way that few others did. He was a shifter, able to change his shape and form at will. Not even the orca could do that, though they would certainly trump it if they could.
But they weren’t inherently evil, Quinton knew that, and they were quite necessary to the balance of the oceans, the life flow of the planet. Every creature played its part in the natural cycle, and the orcas were in fact a foe that Quinton could respect. They had intelligence, cunning, power. The orcas lived in pods, had social structure, which was something else Quinton couldn’t help but admire.
His own loneliness encroached without warning or regard. It was too long, too much. Mother Nature was closing in on him from all sides, and Quinton knew that even a creature of his strength and power could not defeat nature itself. Of course, Quinton had no wish to fight those impulses, but rather to surrender to them. But Quinton was no man to take an unwilling woman, and that was an increasing rarity, especially in the mounta
in outside of town. Even behavior in Anchorage itself was deplorable enough. But Quinton wasn’t the only man living in those mountains, and some of them could be murderous and treacherous—one in particular.
Carl Red Fellows could be anywhere in the area, Quinton knew that. A competing hunter and a brutal bastard, Red had taken to hating Quinton as a rival instead of valuing him as an ally. It was a shame for so many reasons, Quinton couldn’t help but think, as men in such similar circumstances would surely benefit from working together.
They were different men. Red would steal all if he could; he was a natural predator. But he had no idea what he was facing in Quinton Williams. If the man’s luck held out, he never would.
The next day, Quinton loaded the skins onto his motor sled to drive them into town. The ruggedness of the landscape receded behind him as his vehicle roared beneath him. Even the snowmobile itself felt wrong, out of place in that ancient and gorgeous place. But there was no getting away from the necessity, from the signs of humanity at every turn.
The normalos, Quinton thought as he rode into Anchorage. They weren’t without their qualities, despite what they were doing to the planet. They shouldn’t be slaughtered and enslaved by the ursine shifters. Even they had their place in the natural order, much as they seemed to deny or ignore it.
And none of them had any clue what they were up against, what they were facing. And it wasn’t just the coming shifter apocalypse. They were diluting their oceans even as they were contaminating them. It would slow the flow of warm water through the oceans, stopping circulation and drastically changing the weather. It was getting warmer as the years went on, but it was about to get colder, a lot colder. And Quinton knew what that meant.
There were ursine shifters in Alaska, as there were all over the world. And they had certain strengths that even a lupine shifter couldn’t match. They were bigger, stronger, even more aggressive. And they could withstand the cold better. Were things to change too much and a new Ice Age begin, Quinton and any other lupine shifter at that latitude could well be frozen to death, tipping the odds in the ursines’ favor, perhaps forever.
The motor sled carried Quinton into Anchorage. In a lot of ways, Anchorage was like any other American city, or a city anywhere in the world. It was crowded with cars and pedestrians, skyscrapers and apartment buildings, public parks and restaurants, bars and stores and government buildings. They were places for people, shelters against the wilderness. It brought a certain melancholy to Quinton every time he went there. It was where people lived simple, happy lives, enjoyed the things that everybody enjoyed: family, friends, memories. But in so many ways it seemed to taunt Quinton, a living and breathing reminder of everything he didn’t have and would probably never have.
But he wasn’t alien to the city, not alien to the race. Shifters were still human in large part, and as far as anyone in Anchorage knew, that was all Quinton Williams was. He was just another hunter, another poor, lost soul trying to survive in the frozen tundra, at least as far as any outsider or normalo would be concerned.
So Quinton drove his motor sled to a parking spot, slung the wolf hides over his shoulder, and walked them into the Gold Dust Saloon, a fairly popular hotel and casino on the edge of town. The place was designed to recall a bygone era, one to two hundred years before, when hearty men and rowdy women were the only spirits bold enough to follow their dreams to the snowy north. The mirrors and beveled glass windows had acid-etched and ornate lettering spelling out the place’s name, brass fixtures hanging from the wood-paneled walls. The bell staff wore old-fashioned, brimless red caps, and the manager wore a peasant skirt and blouse that wouldn’t have been out of place in the previous century, or earlier.
And she wore it well.
“Well, well, as I live and can barely breathe,” Deliah Davenport said, one hand on her cocked hip, graying blonde hair spilling over her aging, pretty face. She glanced at the hides, tied up and slung over Quinton’s shoulder. “Out marauding in the mountains again?”
Quinton shrugged as he set the hides, bound in a roll, onto the registration desk. “Your guests still buying these?”
She looked the hides over. “Sometimes. These two could make a coat! Are you all right?”
Quinton waved her off. “A lot better off than they are.”
“That’s for sure. Get you a drink?”
There was no reason to refuse. She pulled the furs from the desk and dropped them into the small backroom behind it, letting Quinton lead her across the lobby to the hotel bar. Quinton knew the bartender from his rare previous visits, a tall and slender young man with black hair and freckles.
“Walt,” Quinton said.
The young man nodded. “What can I get you, sir?”
“Sir? That was my father’s name.”
They all shared a little chuckle before Deliah said, “Two Moscow mules, Walt.” He nodded and started making the drinks and Deliah returned her attention to Quinton. “So… everything all right?”
Quinton couldn’t even be sure how to ask. He preferred to be alone, finding small talk to be just that… small. His life was too complex to be casual about in chat.
So he answered, “Fine, y’know… fine.”
“Just fine?”
Quinton knew what she was getting at. He liked Deliah and he admired what she’d done, becoming manager of a hotel in town, if not a thriving hotel then at least surviving. And she was suggesting that things for Quinton could be a lot more than fine, and that she might be the one to make them that way.
Quinton wasn’t convinced, and he wasn’t about to be, though he’d never tell her that. He looked around the bar, a few customers coming and going. “Holding the fort?”
“Best I can. Life in the woods?”
“Quiet as usual.”
“Excuse me?” Quinton and Deliah turned to see a striking redhead stepping into the bar, holding a suitcase in one hand, a big purse slung over the opposite shoulder. “I have a reservation?”
Deliah said, “Oh, right, so sorry.” She stepped away from the bar, leaving her Moscow mule behind, cold condensation already collecting on the copper mug. But it was of no interest to Quinton. He was instantly struck by the sight of the woman, easily the most beautiful he’d ever seen. Her long, red hair fell in easy curls, cheekbones rose up under her sterling green eyes, creamy skin lightly freckled, lips a luscious pout. He could only stand dumbstruck to take in her gorgeous body, perfectly proportioned in every way. Deliah walked with her away from the bar, taking Quinton’s attention with them.
“I’m so sorry,” Deliah said.
“Not at all,” the woman replied, not more than thirty years old by Quinton’s estimation. They walked out of the bar and into the lobby toward the registration desk, and Quinton was suddenly not so thirsty.
“No thanks, Walt,” he said, crossing the bar toward the lobby and then toward the registration desk.
CHAPTER THREE
Quinton was already struck by the gorgeous redhead. She had a natural air about her, minimal makeup. She didn’t need it. And even in a bulky coat, he could see that her figure was a specimen of physical perfection. Goosebumps rose up on the backs of his arms, his tongue growing numb in his mouth. But his ears were keen and his interest piqued.
“Jessica Hume,” she said, handing Deliah a credit card, standing with her back to Quinton. He approached slowly, not wanting to be disrespectful or encroach upon a conversation he had no part of. But he felt he had to know more about that gorgeous creature—who she was, why she was in Anchorage, what he could do to help her, impress her, make her fall in love with him.
Stop it, Quinton told himself. There’s no way a woman like that is available. And if she were, why would she give herself to some lonely, isolated caribou hunter? And a shifter at that?
It made things harder, and it had come between him and any chance he’d ever had for love, though he knew it was crucial to his species. His own mother had been a normalo, and it was often the case. Normalo
men had married shifter women and sired successfully. But it would be a rare normalo who would understand him, accept him, agree to sire his cubs. And it was even more complicated than that, because his true nature had to be kept secret, and risking love meant revealing that secret. Were a normalo woman to scoff and run and tell everybody what she knew, it would send him fleeing into the great tundra to live a life nobody would envy.
And if word of his kind became widespread, it could touch off mass hunts, glory-seekers and nationalists turning on one another, everybody suspicious of everybody else. There were shifters everywhere, after all, many living in suburbs with their families or in high-rise apartment buildings in Houston, in Los Angeles, everywhere. Secrecy was key to keeping the balance of the natural world, and romance was a direct threat to that secrecy, and in that way to the whole human race.
But this woman drew him, every instinct alive, nerves and brain crackling with curiosity as he approached. Deliah clicked at a computer keyboard, taking care of her new guest’s registration. She looked up from the monitor, catching a glimpse of Quinton over the new woman’s shoulder. She saw him coming, and Quinton knew by Deliah’s little frown that she could sense Quinton’s excitement, that she could read his mind.
Well, Quinton thought, who wouldn’t be interested? A man would have to be born without eyes, without soul, not to be drawn to her.
But he tried to hide it, remaining calm as he stepped up to the registration desk to stand next to that dazzling beauty.
“Afternoon,” he said, winning a nod and a smile from the woman. “Quinton Williams, welcome to Anchorage.”
“What makes you think I haven’t been here before?”
Quinton wasn’t sure if she was joking, or just telling him politely to get the hell away and leave her alone. Quinton glanced around the hotel. “Unless you live in the hotel. But even if you’ve been here before, you’re, y’know, you’re welcome now.”
