by T. S. Ryder
She had her dragon, she had her birthright and was ready to face the future.
*****
THE END
Shades of Werewolf
Description
A curvy Wolf on the run PLUS a hot Werebear taking her captive PLUS a dangerous enemy on their heels!
Between taking care of her twelve younger siblings and always making sure the household is clean and orderly, Mary Locke has never had a moment to herself.
She has always felt like an outsider, even in her own family. In a community of Wolf Shifters where lean muscle is the epitome of beauty and worth, Mary's curvaceous frame only highlights that she doesn't fit in. Then one day, she does the most daring thing she could do–she runs away…
… straight into Andre. He is a Bear shifter, a traditional enemy of the Wolves. Andre once had a wife and daughter, but when cruel hunters killed them, the best part of him went with them. Since that day, he has had one focus in his mind; to find and kill the hunters that killed his wife and daughter.
But when the Wolf finds herself falling for the Bear, can her lonely soul heal his angry heart?
Chapter One
Clusters of snowflakes grouped together, forming large chunks of what looked like cotton candy falling from the sky. The steady thwack, thwack of the windshield wipers kept pace with Mary Locke's heart as she drove along the deserted highway. Her hands clenched around the steering wheel, and she shivered, even though the heat was turned on full blast.
Her inner Wolf leaped with joy for the snow, but she reined it in. She had to get away as fast as she could. She couldn't stop and play.
The money her father had given her for groceries and to refill the car with gas before she had left the farm that morning sat folded in a Ziploc bag on the passenger seat. It would be enough to get her to the nearest airport, and she had already booked her ticket from a library computer using the credit card she paid the family bills with.
Was this the right thing to do? Mary swallowed hard, glancing at the clock. It had been two hours since she had left home. She still had half an hour before she was meant to get home. The farm was forty minutes from the nearest town, and shopping for thirteen children and her parents always took a long time. Plus her father had given her permission to spend some time reading in the library. By the time they came to look for her, she would be long gone.
Mary's hands tightened, her knuckles turning white. How could she do this? Just abandon her family like this? What will they do without me?
At twenty-four years old, Mary was the oldest of thirteen children. With the youngest just a year old, it was up to her to do the laundry, make meals, buy groceries, help the younger ones with their homework, and nurse her mother in her ill health. Would all this responsibility fall on sixteen-year-old Julia now? The older boys all worked with their father, taking care of the livestock, mending fences, fixing tractors and various other activities on the farm. They didn't have time for women's work!
No, Mary told herself. You are not going back. There's no place for you there.
That is what her mother had told her two months ago when Mary had finally bolstered her courage enough to ask if her father could talk to David Monroe's father about David courting her. David was a nice young man. He had always been kind to her.
"Nobody wants a lazy girl for a wife," Mary muttered under her breath, remembering her mother's words. "There is no place for you there."
She didn't think she was lazy, but when she was twelve, she topped off her height at five-foot-seven. The rest of her didn't get the memo. Now amply sized, when the others in the Wolf community saw her, compared with her lean and muscle brothers and sisters, they shook their heads and told her that if she would do a little more during the day, she would thin out that waist.
Tears blurred Mary's eyes. When do I have time to do anything else? Even now, escaping from the home she didn't belong to, she wanted to scream it out loud. She didn't know where she would go from here, but even the unknown was better than what she was leaving behind!
As she raised a hand to wipe the tears from her eyes, she felt the car lurch to the side. A gasp tore from her lips, and she instinctively began pumping the brakes, as her father had taught her. Her heart pounded in her ears, and the car skidded across the road. She stopped with a sudden jolt, the seatbelt digging into her neck as it stopped her from being flung out the window.
Mary took a moment to calm her racing heart. She had slid off the road into a drift, but nothing hurt, and she hadn't hit any trees, she could make it out.
The engine spluttered and died.
"No." Her fingers trembled as she turned the key. Not even a faint whirring. "No!"
What now? What were her choices? I could freeze to death trying to get to the next town. She couldn't remember how far it was. Or I could go back.
She was not going to go back.
Determined, Mary climbed into the back seat for the old blanket that was always in the car for just this type of emergency. Winter in the Rocky Mountains was hazardous, even more so in an old car like this one.
She quickly folded tied the edges together, sticking her bag of money into it before taking off her clothes and also putting them in the blanket bundle. She shivered as the cold penetrated into her, but tied the bundle tightly around herself, looping it over one shoulder and under the next so that it pressed against her chest.
A blast of wind made goose bumps spring out on her arms as she stepped from the car. Mary called to the Wolf in her bones, and it happily consumed her.
She began trotting, her ears constantly rotating for the sound of oncoming vehicles. Her breath came in bursts as she inhaled and exhaled the fresh, clean air, feeling more alert than she had for a long time. It had been too long since she'd allowed her Wolf to have its freedom other than on the full moon when she didn't have a choice in the matter. With a yip she burst into a run, her fur smooth and glistening against her round, plump sides. Running with her Wolf truly was the best feeling in the world.
She saw the bear just in time to avoid it as it burst onto the road. A huge, dark-brown grizzly, it stopped the instant it saw her. Massive muscles rippled under its fur. A fresh scar ran jagged down the side of its face, black against pale skin, curved like a bass clef.
And then it came for her.
Mary's heart skipped a beat as adrenaline surged through her. She bolted at once; ears flattened against her skull; tail lowered to streamline herself the best she could. The bear's grunts and heavy footfalls chased after her.
She dashed into the pine forest. The snowdrifts nearly buried her, but she plowed ahead. The imagined feeling of teeth tearing into her urged her to go even faster. Her heart hammered so hard she thought it would explode.
By the time she realized that the bear had given up the chase, the heavy snow had thickened. She shivered, settling beneath a tree, eyes darting through the shadows. There was nothing there. Her fur was still on edge, and she licked in back down to calm herself.
No harm done, she told herself. It was just an old, dumb grizzly bear.
Still, she didn't know how far she was from the road, and with the snow coming down, she was going to lose her way if she didn't hurry back to it. Trying to put the bear from her mind, she headed back down the path she came though she jumped at every moving shadow. The snow seemed to muffle everything. If she was home, she would be cooking supper by now. Four-year-old Simon would be underfoot, trying to steal an early mouthful.
Were they out looking for her by now? Or was Father keeping an eye on the road while he did chores, counting the stripes his belt would put on her backside? Was Julia keeping the house in order, or had Conrad Milton, the skinny little half-human from two farms down, come to take her for a walk around the pond? Was Mother calling for her while the baby cried with a soiled diaper?
Mary's legs burned with the effort of pushing through the drifts and she sat a moment, shivering as the snow melted and trickled into her fur. Wide green eyes darted fr
om side to side, looking for a place where she could take shelter for the night. She did not want to repress her Wolf so she could use her hands to build herself a snow hut.
The sound of an engine close by made her ears spring up. Her whole body tensed as she got back to her feet, rotating her ears to find which way it was coming from. There! She loped towards the noise, deviating from the path she had taken when she ran from the bear.
After only a few meters, she stumbled out of the trees and onto a road. Frozen gravel bit into her paws from under a layer of packed snow. Her head swiveled, and she made out a dim light from her left. Quickly she suppressed her Wolf, forelegs transforming into arms, chest rising, spine straightening.
The cold wind was like a punch to the stomach. Mary's hands shivered as she dug her dress from her sack and yanked it on. It was half-frozen, and her teeth began chattering.
A giant white truck came into view. Mary moved off the dirt road but waved her arms to get the driver's attention. "Stop!"
The truck slowed to a stop. Mary yanked the door open. A rush of warm air washed over her face, making her sigh in relief.
"Get in," a deep, male voice said. "You look half frozen to death!"
Mary gratefully climbed into the truck. The warmth felt so good it hurt, and her shivering increased. "Thank you," she chattered. "I got lost. Can you take me to the city? I have a flight to catch."
"No. Avalanche closed the roads." The man grunted, turning the heat up.
Mary's heart sank. Now there was nothing to do but go home. But when she turned and got her first look at the man, her words died in her throat.
The first thing she noticed was that he was insanely beautiful. Liquid black eyes stared out of a tanned face that belonged on the cover of a magazine. He had high cheekbones, and a wide, full mouth. Dark brown hair was pulled back into a bun at his crown, and with his neatly trimmed beard, he looked like he should be wielding a war hammer and commanding lightning.
"My name is Andre," he said, unsmiling. "Andre Mitchel."
"Mary Locke," she whispered back.
It wasn't his beauty that caught her voice in her throat. It was the scar on his cheek, black against his skin, curved into the shape of a bass clef.
Chapter Two
He kept the light in the cab on so he could see every move she made. So far she hadn't done much besides buckling her seatbelt and rubbing her arms. Her long green eyes kept darting over to him, a sure sign of unease.
Mary Locke, Paul Locke's daughter. He'd seen her before, though she didn't know it.
He watched her from the corner of his eyes. Her long, black hair was tugged back into a tight braid, and she toyed with the end of it, curling and uncurling the loose bit around her finger over and over again.
"So what were you doing out there in the snow, anyway?" Was she hunting? He'd never seen the girls hunt, let alone on their own.
She rubbed her arms. "My grandmother is sick. I have to go take care of her. My flight is tomorrow, so…"
A sick grandmother? Andre almost winced. The family was the most important thing in the world to him. Or at least, it was once. But who knew if the girl was telling the truth? She looked to be about four years younger than him; in her mid-twenties, then. If he knew Paul Locke and his 'community', she was probably running from her overbearing husband before she could give birth to her fourth or fifth child.
"How much longer?" she asked.
"We're almost there."
The mid-calf dress she wore was soaked through. It clung to her voluptuous body, showing off each curve. Her cute button nose wrinkled as she sneezed, and she covered her little rosebud mouth with a long, slender hand. Smooth, unblemished skin the shade of alabaster flushed with the cold.
He never thought that a stinking werewolf could be so beautiful.
***
She was sure he was watching her, even though every time she glanced at him, his eyes were on the road before them.
By the time they stopped, so had her chattering teeth. Her dress was still soaked through, and shivers ran down her spine, but she was beginning to warm. The snow was coming down so thick that Mary could hardly make out the building that the truck's headlights shone on. It seemed to be a log cabin of some sort.
"Where are we?" she asked and hoped he'd think the tremble in her voice was because of the cold.
"It's my cabin." He turned, and his black eyes bored into hers. "You're from around here. You didn't know about me and this?"
"I don't get out of the house much," she said honestly.
Andre grunted and got out of the truck. If she knew how to hotwire vehicles, she'd have been tempted to stay where she was. But if he knew that she knew he was the Bear, or if he wanted to kill her, wouldn't he have done so already? Wouldn't she already be lying dead in the ditch?
He wasn't going to hurt her. She knew that deep inside of herself, but there was a niggling voice at the back of her head that told her to be afraid.
There was bad blood between Bears and Wolves. Mary didn't know when or how it started, but she had heard stories of how Bears were monsters from the time she was a small child. Her mother's grandfather had been murdered by one on the journey from Russia to the Americas. Both her father's parents were killed by Bears. And Andre had just attacked her for no apparent reason, other than she was a Wolf himself.
Well, she couldn't stay in the truck. And somehow she knew she would be perfectly safe as she followed him through the darkness.
The cabin was small, cozy even. It was lit by an open fire, nestled in a brick mantle on the wall opposite the door. A small alcove was nearby, holding a pile of dry wood. Andre bent over it, adding some logs and stirring the coals with a poker. Two doors led off the main room, one to a bathroom, the other to a bedroom.
Other than that, the cabin was total chaos. Clothes were tossed everywhere, over the single table and three chairs, on the floor. Mary's hand flew to her nose as she saw piles of molding food. A pile of dirty dishes sat in the sink.
"I wasn't expecting company," Andre grunted, eyeing her.
"It's, um—"
Mary's jaw dropped when he shrugged off his thick winter jacket. He wore no shirt (probably because they were all dirty on the floor). Smooth, taut skin stretched over large muscles. His arms were even bigger than hers! A six-pack of hard abs pressed against his abdomen and the 'V' of his waist disappeared into tattered jeans, which were slung low on his hips. Mary found herself wondering how low the 'V' actually went. Her face grew hot, and she turned away.
Andre grabbed a stained shirt off the floor and slipped it on over his head. He looped his thumbs in his belt and cocked his head to one side as he studied her.
Mary cleared her throat. "Do you think the snow will clear up enough to get to the city tomorrow in time for my flight?"
"Avalanche. It'll take some time to clean that up."
Oh. Right. Maybe she could make it if she tried to get there on foot… but she had no idea where she was. Besides, her legs and arms already hurt from the exertion earlier. She could, at least, spend the night. No harm would come of that, would it?
If I had more time to embrace my Wolf, I'd be a lot stronger.
Resentment flared in her, making her temporarily forget her situation. How dare her father and mother put so much responsibility on her that she worked from dawn until dusk? She was always the first one awake in the morning, starting the fire and making breakfast for the boys when they got up for chores. If she wasn't cooking, she was cleaning, being interrupted every few minutes by the younger children having troubles with their schoolwork or fighting with each other.
She missed helping to feed and milk the animals like she did when she was small. At least, then she was able to get out of the house other than to go to town and buy groceries! Even during the Full Moon Run every month, she had to stay home with the babies, helping ease their pains from their first involuntary transformations.
Andre kicked around some clothing on the floor and pi
cked up a green T-shirt and sweatpants. "Here, these should be clean."
Mary's nose wrinkled as she accepted the clothing. Andre was still staring at her with those beautiful black eyes, and she met his gaze. "Thank you. But isn't there any way that I can get to the city? I really need to get to my grandmother."
"No way in this snow tonight." He gestured at a window. It was too dark outside to see what was happening out there, but clusters of snow were being blown against the panes with distinctive prickling noises, like saran wrap slowly falling apart. "It'll be blizzard conditions in no time. You should have looked at the weather before you bought your flight."
"I suppose." Mary hugged the clothes to her chest as she moved to the window, staring at the whiteness outside in despair. If she hadn't gone with Andre, she'd still be out in that and about to freeze.
Andre cleared his throat, moving past her to the door that led to the bedroom. He gestured in awkwardly. "There are plenty of blankets on the bed, nice and warm."
The bedroom was slightly neater than the main room. There were still clothes all over the floor, but no dirty dishes or rotten food, and the blankets on the bed were pulled tight and wrinkle-free. It looked like it hadn't been slept in for days. Mary laid the T-shirt and sweats over the footboard, an elaborately carved piece of wood. Cherry, she thought. Maybe apple.
"Where will you sleep?" she asked, glancing at him. It was cooler in the bedroom than the main room. Would she be warm enough? Maybe if she had a warm body beside her that she could snuggle close to… Her face flamed.
Stop it! What was wrong with her?
"I usually sleep on the floor near the fire anyway," he said. "Sleep well. We'll figure out what to do with you in the morning."
After he had closed the door, Mary searched the walls for a light switch. She couldn't find one. Her wet clothes were seeping the heat from her body, and she changed into the borrowed clothing. They were tight on her rump and breasts, and the shirt smelled slightly of sweat and animals, but the outfit was dry and warm, and that was what counted.
