As soon as they sat down, Maya prompted, “So you heard those wolf howls last night, too?” She watched his face for any indication that he’d not only heard them, but he knew what kind of wolves they came from.
She saw nothing but some wryness there.
“Yes, I heard them. There really are a lot of wolves in this area. A good thing for WHaM, I guess.”
WHaM and not werewolf hunters. She supposed that was an indication that he knew nothing. “Yes,” she said enthusiastically. “I’m really delighted.” She paused. She wasn’t sure what she thought about shifters, but she actually was delighted about real wolves. And surely the wolves near Fritts Corner weren’t all shifters…right? “Aren’t you?”
“Well…it’s a good sign that the wildlife protection around here is working.”
She wondered at his waffling. “You didn’t go out and try to find any wolves, did you?”
“Heck, no,” he said immediately. He smiled right into her eyes. “I listened to you. Wildlife is wild, right? I don’t want to go find it. I didn’t want to go and get attacked like that Morton did.”
“That’s good.”
“You didn’t go try to find them, either, did you?” he asked, the expression on his face now anxious.
“No,” she lied. If he wasn’t out on the hillside, he wouldn’t know the truth about what she’d done, where she’d been.
What she’d seen.
“But do you think it’s even safe to be in this town with all the wolves we’ve been hearing and all?”
“I think so,” she said. “As long as no one is confronting them.” She assumed the same rules would apply to shapeshifters.
At least she hoped to find out in a little while, when she got to talk to Ryan privately.
“Do you know of any other dangerous forms of wildlife that are close by?” he asked, still appearing worried. “And would WHaM try to protect them?”
“I’m only aware of the newest wolves, and I haven’t yet conducted any kind of survey, as I’d like to. But I need to be careful like everyone else, no matter what I’d like to accomplish for WHaM.”
“Okay,” he said, still sounding worried. “We all have to be careful.”
“Exactly. And now, I’m afraid, I’d better get moving. I’ve got some WHaM stuff going on soon.”
And more.
*
It was eleven thirty. She’d ended her coffee with Trev when she’d said she was busy, then Maya had come to the park as Ryan and she agreed.
Though she had kind of liked the distraction of sounding Trev out about his apparently minimal knowledge, what he had heard and assumed, it was time. She wanted to talk to Ryan.
There, in the distance, apparently holding a remote bench for them near where the hillside forest began, sat Piers with Rocky sitting at his feet.
Where was Ryan? Piers had refused to answer any of her questions before and she didn’t expect more from him now.
But Ryan had promised they would talk.
She strode over a gravel path along the rolling lawn till she reached that bench, not far from her favorite spot here, the podium.
She was glad she wasn’t scheduled to give another talk now. What would she say? That she was having hallucinations about werewolves?
That she couldn’t get the view of one of them, especially before he had shifted, out of her mind?
Or what the sight, and memory, of that naked body was doing to her psyche?
She’d reached the bench. Rocky stood up and wagged his tail.
The dog looked so much like Ryan appeared when he was in his wolf form.
Undoubtedly by design. Ryan might have chosen his twin to be his pet, although she figured there was a more strategic reason for it, whatever it was.
Patting Rocky on the head, Maya said, “Hi, Piers. How’s your day going?” What she wanted to demand was where Ryan was, and whether he’d sent his friend here to try to divert Maya and her questions.
“Fine.” But the stocky guy appeared uneasy. Even so he said, “In case you’re wondering, Ryan’s on his way.”
“Yeah, I was wondering.” She paused to sit down, and he joined her on the bench, still holding Rocky’s leash. “I don’t suppose you have anything to tell me today that you didn’t last night.”
“No, although I think Ryan will answer at least some of your questions.”
“He’d better.” Maya scowled, then asked, “And you? You’re friends, so I’ve been wondering if you have the ability to—what’s that called? Shapeshift?”
“That’s the right name but, no, I’m not a shifter.”
“How about Rocky? He looks like Ryan when…when he’s—”
“Oh, there he is.” The expression on Piers’s round face suddenly looked relieved. Maya turned to look in the direction he was facing and saw Ryan striding across the lawn toward them.
Good. Piers was off the hook to talk to her, at least for now.
And, hopefully, she’d get her answers.
She tried to settle down better on the bench, relax so she would appear more in control. She did have some control over the situation, after all. Whatever a shifter was or wasn’t, she doubted Ryan would want word to get out about his strange ability.
She could make things difficult for him if she chose—like revealing the truth, as she’d considered, then cast aside, while talking with Trev.
But she also realized Ryan could make things difficult for her. How could she effectively represent her organization and support the existence of wolves if people thought she was insane? Not that she intended to go public. Ryan would undoubtedly deny what she saw, maybe tell the world she was nuts—
Well, she needed to see how things went here, while at the same time thinking about how to protect her reputation and her work with WHaM.
“Hi,” Ryan said with a huge smile on his face as he reached them. He looked so ordinary—well, if one considered a guy as sexy and gorgeous as him ordinary. “Sorry I’m a little late. Interesting morning.” That comment was leveled at Piers, not her.
She noted in her mind that she needed to find out what that was about. But not right away.
“That’s fine,” she said. “But now’s the time for truth. What did I see last night?”
She noted that, before Ryan sat down, both he and Piers scanned the area where they were as if checking to see if anyone else was around.
There weren’t any kids running around or playing ball as there usually were on weekends. A few people in the distance walked their dogs or stared at their cell phones or both, but no one was nearby.
No excuses for Ryan not to talk—unless he believed someone was aiming some kind of super recording device toward them.
Not likely.
“You saw what you saw,” he finally said. Great. What was that supposed to tell her? But he continued, “Things are a little muddled regarding my purpose being here, although that appears to be improving. Because of your background and support of wildlife, I’d like to tell you all and hope to soon. But for now…well, you saw me last night and I do owe you an explanation. Yes, some of the old myths that people look at as sci-fi in movies and all—well, they’re true. Or at least there are such things as shapeshifters. And I’m one of them.”
“Wow.” Maya didn’t mean to act all awed and amazed, but one word, wow, probably expressed best how she felt.
Of course she’d had hours to think about it and hadn’t concluded that she’d been drugged or turned into a nutcase or anything like that, but still…
“Wow,” she repeated. “I want to learn all about it. Were you born that way? And the myth says werewolves shift from people form into wolf form under a full moon—unlike last night. Is any of the mythology real? And—I’d better shut up. I don’t want to just keep asking questions and not let you answer anything.”
He laughed, and she was amazed when he reached over and took her hand and held it on his leg as he looked straight into her eyes.
His deep brown eye
s looked so amused, so intense, so sexy. She couldn’t help smiling—and trying to hide the shiver that rushed through her body.
How could she feel so turned on by this man who wasn’t exactly a man?
“Look, the main reason I wanted to meet you here was so I could tell you what I’m able—although there are reasons I can’t tell you everything, at least not right now. But I’ll tell you about me, and a bit about shifters in general, and why I’m here, okay?”
“Great,” she said, then added, “Oh, and one more thing before you start. I should have known—kind of. Not that I’d have believed it. But I looked you up on the internet. Didn’t find anything specifically about you, but I did learn something interesting.”
“What’s that?” Ryan asked.
“That blaidd is the Welsh word for wolf.”
Chapter 16
Of course he had to be judicious in what he said, but Ryan didn’t hide his pride in who he was as he talked to Maya.
She sat beside him on the bench. Close beside him, which he liked a lot. Her hands were in her lap, and her attention clearly was on him.
Piers and Rocky were on his other side, so he couldn’t observe his aide’s expression, which was a shame. Piers, as a nonshifting member of Alpha Force, had nevertheless been given the standard instructions of what to reveal to whom, and when. Ryan had no intention of overstepping his boundaries here—not till he had received at least Drew’s okay, and perhaps other commanding officers’, which he intended to seek considering Maya’s background and dedication to wolves. But not yet.
He watched her face, though—lovely, with lips slightly pursed as if she was ready to say something yet held back. Her hazel eyes were huge and appeared skeptical yet fascinated. Or was he simply reading what he wanted to there?
He wanted Maya to believe and accept him and…well, like him.
Maybe more, no matter how inappropriate that might be.
He’d started way back, about where legends of shapeshifters originated in ancient times because there really were such beings. “But except for families and some rare and remote communities, they were disjointed, no matter where they existed in the world. At least that’s how our legends go, since such isolated individuals didn’t share a lot, mostly because they couldn’t. And they needed to stay quiet about it since superstitious and fearful humans killed any shifters they came to know about. Plus, shifters not only become wolves, but other animals, too—lynxes, hawks and more, which remains the same today. But you’re right about the somewhat ironic meaning of my name. Someone way back in the family must have chosen it.”
He went on to talk about the first shifters in the United States, arriving also in small groups during the days of early settlers and finding areas to settle, often where wild creatures of the same kind they changed into lived to make it easier to hide in plain sight.
Today, he told her, there were enclaves of shifters all over the country, all over the world, but they mostly kept to themselves without even letting others know they existed or where they lived.
Mostly.
He felt Piers move behind him on the bench and realized his aide was getting a bit concerned about how much Ryan intended to tell Maya.
He needn’t have. Ryan was about done with his talk—and he hadn’t even hinted at the existence of Alpha Force.
But he hadn’t counted on the intelligence of Maya, who deemed herself a statistician and more, to attempt to push him into a further discussion.
“So how do shifters shift?” she asked. “I guess the old legends are wrong about there having to be a full moon.”
Ryan hesitated. She had seen him shifted, so this question was logical. He considered how to respond, but he had to be careful. Maya was too smart just to buy into some stupid explanation.
“The old legends were spot-on during their times,” he finally said, looking beyond Maya, not wanting to meet her eyes as he continued to ponder the best way to handle this. “Shifters had no control over when they would shift, and it always happened during a full moon.” He didn’t bother to mention that they had no human cognition then, either.
Only shifters with access to the Alpha Force elixir or some other kind of chemical modification could choose, at least to some extent, when to change—and be able to think like their human counterpart then, too.
“But now?” Maya pushed.
“Oh, there’ve been experiments over the years and a few shifters—not all of them—have been able to work things out to have a little more control.”
“How?” she insisted. “I assume you’re one of those with control. And I saw that Piers took some kind of bottle from your hands and shone a light on you when you started to change.”
Of course she had noticed. She was too intelligent not to equate what she had seen with what he had done. What could he tell her now?
The barest minimum.
“That’s right. I’m among the lucky few with access to a formulated drink that gives us some control.”
“That’s how you did it last night. Was it the same under the full moon the other night?”
He wanted to grab this woman and shut her up—by kissing those full lips beneath her light, furrowed, puzzled brows.
He also had an urge to tell her the truth, but he couldn’t. Not yet at least.
“It was similar,” he said. “Because I like the degree of control it provides, I take one of those drinks then, too.”
“And the light is supposed to resemble the full moon?”
Damn, but she was intuitive. And if he didn’t watch out, she’d ask about the origin of the drink he took, and why Piers, a nonshifter, helped him, and more that he couldn’t respond to.
“Kind of. Now, I’ve pretty much told you what I can. Would you like to join us? I’d like to go get a cup of coffee.”
“So werewolves drink coffee like anyone else when they’re not shifted. And you seem to eat pretty standard stuff, too. But why can’t you tell me anything else?”
Piers was suddenly standing beside them. “Hey, guys, my coffee addiction’s calling. Let’s go find the nearest coffeehouse and get a quick cup, okay?”
Maya looked toward Ryan and laughed. “Whatever is going on, I think you have your buddy Piers well educated in when to intrude to protect you. That tells me something, although I don’t know what. But you can be sure, Mr. Ryan Blaiddinger—” she stressed the “blaidd” part “—that I won’t rest until I know it all.”
Which was exactly as he’d feared—but expected.
“Then you won’t rest for a long time,” he countered, but he smiled at her, and she smiled back.
“Oh, we’ll see about that. We’ll talk again, very soon, here or someplace else. I don’t mind us being away from everyone else, but I intend to hear everything from you. Count on it.”
Which meant he needed to talk to Drew and others within Alpha Force today. He’d already intended to, since he also wanted the okay to reveal the covert unit’s existence to the Sharans after getting their promise of secrecy.
Mostly because he wanted to start recruiting Pete.
“Okay,” Maya said, standing to face Piers. “I assume you know what’s going on even if you can’t change into a wolf. But I also assume you’re not about to answer all my questions that Ryan hasn’t.”
“You assume right,” Piers said, nodding and grinning.
“How about you?” Maya bent down to look right into Rocky’s face, but the dog just leaned forward and licked her cheek. “Sweet, but not what I was after. Okay, guess I won’t get it all today.” She turned to face Ryan, who’d also stood up. “But I will get it one of these days. And you can be sure I appreciate the bit that you did tell me.”
She looked ready to lean forward as Rocky had done, and Ryan assumed it wouldn’t be to lick his cheek. He just smiled and said, “I like your challenge, Maya. And just to be clear, I intend to keep as many secrets as I want. Got it?”
“Just wait and see,” she said, standing with her han
ds on her hips as if challenging him even more.
*
This was amazing!
Well, the explanation wasn’t as amazing as what she had seen, Maya thought as she strode alongside Ryan beneath the sunshine—no full moon now—back through the park toward the street. They talked about the town again, how they had each decided to come here to check out the wolves, what the weather was like, what other parts of Washington State they had each visited, all kinds of neutral stuff.
But all the while, Maya’s mind was churning.
As she’d told him, she wanted to know more. A lot more than she’d even suggested to that man. That shifter.
How did it feel to be a human one moment and a wolf the next? What did he do as a wolf—the same thing as real wolves did as far as hunting and prowling or whatever?
Was it possible for a person who wasn’t a shifter to become one? If so, how?
And…well, she probably shouldn’t even be thinking of this, but if they happened to have sex what would it be like? Not that she’d want to get that near him while he was in wolf form. But in his current, all-man form, would it be different from sex with other men?
She believed it would be, no matter what. This part man, part wolf, was one very sexy human male, and she’d seen the sexiest parts of him. Been briefly in his arms and kissed him.
Oh, yeah, what would it be like? And could she get pregnant by him? She certainly wouldn’t want to, but if she happened to, what would their offspring be like—her, or him?
This man, or whatever he was, was making her nuts!
She nearly stumbled on the uneven path along the lawn, and, as if she’d planned it that way, Ryan reached over to steady her and held on.
They followed Piers and Rocky, so there was no embarrassment involved in her reaching over to clutch Ryan’s hand as he still held her arm. They walked that way for a while, until they reached the sidewalk at the edge of the park. The street nearby wasn’t crowded, but cars passed by frequently. Maya quickly released Ryan, and he did the same with her.
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