Mate of the Wolf

by Karen Whiddon

  Allie flew into the older woman’s arms. They hugged tightly before Mrs. Ralston stepped back and wiped at her eyes. “They’re going to keep her overnight, but they think she’s going to make it. She had some kind of allergic reaction to this last round of chemo. You can see her, but she’s sleeping.”

  Allie smiled, brushing away any lingering tears. “I’ll just look in on her for a moment.”

  She turned to Kane, surprising herself by leaning in and giving him a firm kiss on his lips. “I shouldn’t be long. Do you mind waiting for me?”

  As she’d suspected he would, he told her, “Of course not.” But she couldn’t help but notice the way he glanced at the wall clock after he answered, as though he were on a timetable. It bothered her more than it should have. After all, though they clicked so well that being with him felt perfect, they barely knew each other.

  Shrugging off that thought, Allie followed Mrs. Ralston back to the ICU. Since only one visitor was allowed at a time, Allie entered her friend’s room alone.

  Surprisingly, Em was awake. She patted the chair next to her bed and demanded Allie tell her all the details of her date, leaving nothing out.

  Stunned, Allie realized she really didn’t want to. The rapidly developing thing with Kane was one of a kind, special. She wanted to hold it to her heart, take it out only when she was alone, and not examine it too closely. Things this wonderful and beautiful were often fragile, and she was afraid it might break.

  “I don’t think there’s time,” Allie stammered, aware of the ICU nurse standing guard at the nurses’ station across the hall.

  “Of course there is. I almost died,” Em said. “If anyone can make demands, I can. Now spill. Don’t leave anything out.”

  “He’s waiting for me out there. We—”

  “Surely he won’t mind waiting a little bit longer.” Em smiled expectantly.

  Feeling strangely reluctant, Allie sat down and began talking.

  Chapter Seven

  Watching the hands on the wall clock inch towards four o’clock, then four-thirty, Kane began to pace. Soon he’d have no choice but to leave Allie here, though he hated to do so without at least telling her the truth. He’d finally realized he had to; his rapidly developing feelings for this woman were so strong, he knew she needed to know before they made love.

  But did he have time? Again, he glanced at the clock.

  Already he seriously doubted he could make it to Malcolm’s before the sun rose. If he waited too much longer, he might as well go stand in the parking lot and wait to be turned into a smoldering pile of ash.

  Four thirty-five, four forty. At four forty-five, heart heavy, he gave up and turned to go.

  “Kane!” Allie’s voice sent a stab of pure joy through him. He spun around, waiting as she rushed across the waiting room and flew into his arms.

  Like a damn sentimental greeting-card commercial, he caught her, glad and relieved and amazingly comforted the instant he touched her. This further cemented his growing wonder at the possibility of what he’d found. She was special, so of course she could make everything all right.

  But could she stop the sun from rising?

  “What time does the sun come up here?” he asked, trying to keep the urgency from his voice and failing.

  “In June? I don’t know. Five thirty, six? I’m not sure.” She gave him a puzzled look. “Why?”

  “I’m allergic.”

  “What?” Her well-shaped brows rose.

  He took a deep breath. Though he hated to, maybe it was time to tell her the truth. He’d hoped she’d get the hint and finally figure things out, but people only saw what they wanted to see. She wanted to believe he was human, so she did. The possibility of him being vampire had probably never occurred to her. After all, he’d been in this town two days and had yet to meet a vampire other than Malcolm. Even if Anniversary had been teaming with the undead, most shifters avoided them like the plague. Vampires were probably completely outside her experience, which would explain why she hadn’t realized he was one. He wondered if Allie had ever even seen a vampire before.

  Oddly, in his crazed state of mind, he would actually be pleased to be her first.

  He hated her to find out so abruptly. If he had a choice, he’d break the news to her carefully, when she was less emotional. But it was nearly five a.m. The urgency of his situation left him no choice. He’d spent last night at Malcolm’s. No way he could make it there before sunrise. He had to tell her now. And quickly.

  “Do you mind if we go back to your place?” He’d tell her there. When her eyes widened, he gave her his most reassuring smile. “No, not to resume where we left off. I’m really tired. I find myself in urgent need of rest.”

  Maybe it was his proper manner of speaking, or the clipped tone to his voice, but she relaxed and nodded. “Of course. I could use a nap myself.”

  Once the sun came up, he’d be dead to the world. He wouldn’t exactly call that a nap. But beggars couldn’t be choosers, so he smiled and nodded.

  “Let’s go.” Gallantly, he held out his arm. At least he’d be with her when he woke. How she’d feel about him then might be another story.

  On the short drive back, she told him all about Emily’s illness and financial troubles. Emily was her best friend, and Allie had dedicated herself to helping her beat her cancer.

  He found he admired her even more. Lust and admiration was a dangerous combination. Throw in the fact that he also thoroughly liked her, and he knew he was in trouble indeed. As a matter of fact, though the possibility was so remote he should be staked for even thinking it, he had begun to suspect she might be the one he’d been searching for all these centuries. Vampires had a word for that, but he didn’t want to jinx it by even thinking the word.

  Once they were back at her house, under pretense of wanting a tour of the place, he scoped out nooks and crannies. Her bedroom had floor-to-ceiling windows on either side of the bed, so that was out. Even with the heavy thermal drapes closed, he couldn’t take the chance that she might open them once she woke. The slightest bit of sunlight on his skin and he would be toast.

  Her large, walk-in closet would be his best bet. The windowless room was large enough for him to stretch out on the floor, even with the five shoe racks that lined the walls. He didn’t bother to speculate why she had so many—one thing he’d managed to learn over the centuries was that one must never come between a woman and her shoes.

  She saw him looking at her footwear collection and laughed.

  Now. He had to tell her now. Already he could feel the pull of slumber tugging at him. Though he wasn’t sure of the exact time, he had to say the words quickly. Once the sun started on its journey up the horizon, he’d be dead to the world.

  She turned to leave the bedroom, making some comment about getting them both a glass of iced tea. He opened his mouth to tell her to wait, but a wave of dizziness hit him hard.

  Crumpling to his knees in the closet, he held out his hand, trying to croak out a few words, anything, enough to let her know the truth before he passed out.

  As she vanished around the corner, still chattering, black spots danced in his vision. He struggled to stay conscious, managing to call her name, praying she would hear.

  Allie chattered the entire way to her kitchen, loving the comforting sense of domesticity she felt. Even now, after the stress of Em’s close call, just being around Kane sent yet another buzz of desire humming in her blood. She’d begun to realize he was different, and the very real possibility of what they could be to each other had her dizzy, so dizzy she couldn’t think straight. But she’d have to tell him she was a shape-shifter, and ideally she should do it before they made love. If he wanted her, he’d have to know the truth about what she was and what she could become. If he wanted her, he’d have to see her change.

  Inside, her wolf wanted to change now. Since changing was often sexual with her kind, Allie couldn’t help but wonder how their lovemaking would affect her need to change
. Once she and Kane did the deed, she felt certain she’d be sated, exhausted, in a good way. So she needed to change first, to show him her wolf. She could only hope it wouldn’t scare him away, because she so badly wanted to make love with him.

  Which they would, sooner or later. For now, they’d climb into her big bed together, slide beneath the cool, cotton sheets and spoon. Maybe they’d even drift off and doze awhile, but sooner or later one of them—probably her—would wake, stretch languidly, and begin touching the other.

  She could picture herself, half awake, more than half aroused, with the prime male specimen of Kane stretched out beside her. Just thinking about what she’d do to him made her insides heat.

  Realizing she was now fully aroused, she wondered exactly how exhausted Kane actually was. If she judged from her past experience with men, he wouldn’t be too tired for what she had in mind as a prelude to sleep. Of course, she’d never been with a human before, and they might be different, but somehow she doubted that.

  Speaking of humans, she had to figure out why Kane had no scent. Something she’d heard, or read, nagged at her, but she couldn’t remember what. It lurked in the back of her mind as she poured them each a glass of iced tea.

  Concentrating on trying to remember, she bumped the second glass with her elbow. It crashed to the ceramic tile floor, shattering. Without thinking, she bent down and reached for it, slicing open her palm. Instantly, blood welled.

  “Kane, would you get me a—” Turning, she saw that she was alone. Odd. She could have sworn he’d been right behind her. “Kane?”

  “Allie.” His voice, sounding faint.

  Cut forgotten, she dripped blood as she rushed back to her bedroom. She hurried over to her closet and saw him crumpled in a heap on her floor. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

  When he looked up at her, fear warring with disorientation in his beautiful eyes, she felt a stab of terror. “Kane?”

  But he was staring at her hand. Slowly she lifted it, noticing how his gaze tracked the movement.

  “Are those fangs?” Backing slowly away, she stared at his mouth with both apprehension and fascination. “Are you a—?”

  Self-preservation instinct took over, and she dropped to the carpet, bloody hand forgotten. The change began instantly, tearing her clothes as it rippled through her. Her bones lengthened, her skin grew fur, and as her eyes changed and her snout lengthened, she peered at him through the sparkling swirls of color that heralded the change.

  Wolf now, her small wound instantly healed, she eyed him, uncomfortably aware that now neither of them had any secrets left.

  “I’m sorry,” he spoke fast, stumbling over the words in his mumbling haste. “Waited too long. Sun’s rising. No choice but to sleep. Allie, I knew you were a shifter. I should have told you sooner. I’m a vampire.”

  Then, as she stared at him from her lupine perspective, trying to digest his words, he fell backwards, completely gone.

  Gone. As in dead to the world. Literally.

  Shocked, Allie changed back to human and hurried over to him. Naked, she dropped to the ground beside him, cradling his head in her hands. Even now, she couldn’t keep from touching him. Smoothing the hair from his brow, she arranged him so he could lay more comfortably.

  Oh. My. Dog. Kane Webster, the man she’d thought all along might be The One, wasn’t a human. He was a vampire.

  Of course. That completely explained his lack of scent. Du-uh.

  Backing carefully from the closet, she tried to form a rational thought. What was she going to do now? Vampire and Pack unions, while not strictly forbidden, were frowned upon.

  How her friends would laugh if they knew. After years of bitterly complaining about settling for the wrong person, only her mother might understand. Allison Berg, despite all her careful plans and romantic dreams, had fallen for a blood-sucking, eternally living member of the undead. A vampire.

  Fallen for, past tense. Because in the instant he’d gone unconscious, she realized what she hadn’t wanted to admit to herself all along.

  She loved him. Kane Webster was her mate.

  Chapter Eight

  Kane came instantly awake, wondering if he’d find Allie nearby, clutching a cross. Or worse, a stake. Although the vampire/shape-shifter truce still held, there were those who found getting past the old prejudices difficult. He knew quite a few himself, centuries-old bloodsuckers who viewed the Pack as nothing more than a council of crazy, half-wild dogs. That might have been the case centuries ago, when they’d roamed the wild forest of Europe as werewolves, but personally he thought that these days the Pack had become more organized than the Vampire Council. Of course, he’d stopped dealing with them back in the mid-eighteen-hundreds. Too much bickering for him.

  Yet his little Allie had thought he meant to hurt her. She’d become wolf in self-defense, believing he meant to attack her. How could she think such a thing? As if he could hurt the one who was becoming more important to him than—He cut off the thought, aware of a sharp pain in his chest, in the area where his heart used to be. He had to find Allie, find her and explain.

  They could work this out. They had to.

  He sat up, worried when he saw no sign of her anywhere. Rising, he padded from the closet. Her unmade bed looked untouched, unslept-in.

  A quick tour of her house proved she had gone. Where?

  On his way through the living room, he noticed her answering machine light flashing. The digital read out showed one message, but when he pressed play, the machine played two more.

  All of them were from women who were apparently Allie’s friends. Every single one of them had called to excitedly tell Allie about a strange man in town, a bounty hunter named Terry Holt who was offering fifty thousand dollars for a man named Kane Webster. Unfortunately, Terry was someone Kane knew all too well, though the last time he’d seen the man, Kane had gone by a different name and lived in Europe.

  Terry wasn’t a bounty hunter. He was a vampire hunter—one of the most successful, if one judged success by the number of kills. He’d been after Kane for a long, long time by human years. Worse, his father had been after Kane, and his father’s father before him. Terry Holt came from a long, long line of vampire hunters dedicated to eradicating vampires from the face of the earth

  Terry was determined to succeed where his forefathers had failed. And apparently, despite Kane’s best attempts to stay below the radar, Terry had finally learned about Kane’s move to America and his name change.

  Terry wanted Kane dead. And he’d stop at nothing to achieve that goal.

  Despite her shock at learning Kane’s true nature, Allie had managed to get about five hours of sleep before the calls started coming in. Though she hadn’t answered the phone, she’d woken up enough to hear the messages.

  First Michelle, then Nikki, then Jen called to tell Allie the gossip around town. Every one of them knew about Em’s desperate need for money. And because everyone knew everything in a small town like Anniversary, every one of them had heard about Allie meeting up with a stranger the previous night. Because of Jen, they also were aware that she’d stood up her blind date. All of her friends wanted to know if the man she’d hooked up with was the one this bounty hunter sought.

  They seemed to have whole-heartedly bought this Terry Holt’s story. But Allie, though not well rested, had slept enough to have her wits about her. Knowing what she now knew, she understood the truth. Terry Holt was not a bounty hunter, oh no. He was a vampire hunter.

  And he wanted to kill Kane.

  What she didn’t understand was why he’d tracked Kane here, to her little town in the middle of nowhere. If Kane truly was in the recording industry, as he claimed, his name would be fairly well-known. So why hadn’t the bounty hunter gone to L.A. rather than Anniversary, Texas?

  Intrigued and with nothing better to do until Kane woke, she went to hear Terry Holt talk. From Jen’s message she’d learned that he had a town hall meeting scheduled for that afternoon a
t one. What she’d heard had shocked her—the man actually offered to pay fifty thousand dollars to anyone who could give him Kane Webster’s location. Then he’d passed out flyers showing an enlarged photograph of Kane with the caption WANTED MAN. Terry claimed Kane was wanted in his native England, where he’d operated under an entirely different name, for crimes too heinous to mention. Terry had been looking for this criminal for a long, long time. He’d finally tracked him to America, and this time would pay well to ensure Kane didn’t slip through his fingers.

  Allie knew better. The Pack was hunted, too. She’d been around the man—excuse her, vampire—enough to sense that whatever else he might be, Kane wasn’t a criminal. But the sum of money Terry offered as a reward definitely gave her pause. Fifty thousand dollars would go a long way toward helping Em pay her medical bills.

  Allie considered Emily her sister. In the horrible years following her parents’ divorce, when her father had turned to alcohol and her mother had abandoned her, Emily’s family had become Allie’s, saving her sanity and her spirit. She loved them more than her own mother, who salvaged her conscience with monthly phone calls.

  In Allie’s mind, there was no question of what she had to do.

  Chapter Nine

  Though Kane’s first instinct was to flee—to climb into his souped-up sports car and drive fast and furious across the country—he wasn’t willing to leave Allie. At least not without an explanation. And if he were completely honest with himself, he didn’t know if he could leave her. Just thinking about doing that made his chest hurt even more.