by Ranae Rose
He at least had the grace to look mildly ashamed. “I didn’t mean to.” One corner of his mouth quirked in a near-smile. “You make me a little crazy, Mandy. You make me do things I normally wouldn’t.”
“Oh, so you don’t usually do this with every confused tourist-woman who comes to your door?” She smiled back teasingly.
“No,” he said, his expression sheer seriousness now. “I reckon I’ve managed to scare off all of ‘em but you, and pretty women like yourself never come up here alone anyway.” He grinned. “You’re a bit of an oddball.”
“Ha ha,” she said austerely, thinking of the way she’d sprouted fur, a tail and fangs. “That assertion would make a good candidate for understatement of the year.”
He seemed to understand. “Well, at least you’re not alone.” He raised one hand in a sweeping gesture, indicating his grinning face and naked body.
She frowned. No, she wasn’t alone, but up until today, he had been. “How come you’re living up here all by yourself, Jack? Aren’t there others like us?”
His playful smile disappeared. “There are shifters all over the world, but no others in these mountains. Not wolves, anyway.”
“Did there used to be?”
Jack nodded slowly. “My family has lived in these mountains for generations. In fact, my grandfather built this cabin. At one time, we were a pretty large pack. There used to be a lot of wolves in these mountains – four separate packs in the Tennessee Smokies. Ours was known as the Half Moon Pack.”
“What happened?”
“Tourists happened.” His mouth twisted in a wry grimace. “Did you know that the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the country?”
“Is it really?” She hadn’t known that, but it wasn’t very difficult to believe. Nearby tourist towns like Pigeon Forge were full of attractions and constantly packed with visitors. She’d purposely selected a secluded vacation cabin, but once one got off the mountain, all the hustle and bustle wasn’t far away.
Jack nodded. “Yep. And that’s what started the trouble for us here. The only wild canines in this region are coyotes and foxes – or at least, that’s the official statement. There are no wolves in this part of the country anymore, aside from shifters, so you can imagine the potential ruckus that could occur if tourists started catchin’ sight of huge wolves roamin’ around the Smokies.”
“Or naked men,” Mandy added, using the mention as an excuse to check out Jack’s own very bare body.
He nodded. “Or that. And so, the range started to seem pretty crowded for four decent-sized packs. The smallest was the first to go. They flat out left, knowing they couldn’t contend with the three larger packs. Went out west somewhere to find a new place to settle.”
“What about the others?”
Jack grimaced. “There was a lot of fighting, a lot of territorial disputes. Things got pretty ugly, and one pack was hunted to near extinction. Only women and children were left, and most of them went away, though some did choose to join one of the remaining packs.”
“And the last two?”
“My pack was one of the last two. Of course, this all happened long before I was born, but long story short, there were years of ugly fights, and the other pack dwindled. There were deaths, though some members got out while they could, and a few even gave up and joined the Half Moon Pack. Then just the Half Moons were left, kings and queens of the mountains.”
“But now it’s just you?”
Jack nodded. “By the time I came around, the pack was pretty small. Decades had passed since the only other pack in the Smokies had been destroyed, which left my family without another pack to seek mates from. So mates were hard to come by, which meant that there weren’t many babies being born into our family. Some of the Half Moons mated into other packs faraway, and some just left, hoping to find someone somewhere. Others gave up on trying to find a shifter mate and married humans.” He smiled wryly. “I have an aunt whose husband has no idea that she’s a shifter.”
“What about your parents?”
“My parents passed away years ago in an accident. Eventually it was down to just me and a couple of my cousins, and then they packed up and left for Alaska.” He frowned. “Last I heard from them, they were doing just fine out there on the tundra.”
“Why didn’t you leave?”
Jack’s mouth twisted stubbornly, his jaw jutting out. “An alpha doesn’t leave his pack.”
Alpha. Well, now that he said it, she could believe it. She studied his strong jaw, remembering how good he was at tilting it arrogantly, as he had when she’d first arrived on his property, lost. “Even if his pack leaves him?”
Jack nodded. “Even then. It’s not like I could join another pack. My father was an alpha, and his father before him, and so on and so on, back through the generations. When you’re born an alpha, you either live as an alpha or a loner. There’s no in between.”
“Jack.” She reached out and touched him, laying her unhurt hand inside his. The idea of him living his days out alone on the mountain, longing for a family that had crumbled around him, was unexpectedly agonizing. He was too young for such a depressing existence – not that she would have wished it on a person of any age. “It must be awfully lonely out here. How do you stand it?”
He shrugged. “I guess a part of me has been hoping all this time that some of my family – maybe my cousins – would come back, and that they might even bring fresh blood to build up the pack again.”
“What about you? Did you ever think you might find a mate?”
He shrugged again. “You spend enough time out here by yourself in the mountains and sometimes you start to think you might never see another person again, let alone be lucky enough to run into a pretty female shifter.” His eyes bored into hers as he said it, and Mandy felt alarmingly as if she were melting under his gaze.
Maybe she shouldn’t have asked. Clearing her throat, she searched her mind for something to say to dispel the tension that was mounting between them. When he looked at her that way, she felt like all her bones had disappeared. If he didn’t stop, she wasn’t going to be able to get up off the bed.
The sound of busting glass cut through the silence, startling them both. Mandy rolled reflexively, shielding her face from a shower of glass shards that had constituted the windowpane just a moment ago. “Jack!” She bumped her hand on the edge of the bed and pain caused her throat to tighten as nausea threatened to overcome her.
He’d tried to roll too, but it was obvious that the motion hurt him. Fresh blood streamed from his side, and a stray bit of glass had cut his cheek. “Change!” he growled, clasping her unhurt hand tightly within his own. “Then follow me.”
The next thing she knew, a clawed paw was resting on top of her hand, and she was staring into the eyes of a wolf. A whine of despair began in her throat, but it was the only thing remotely canine about her. “I don’t know how to change,” she said, choking on the last word. Something had been thrown through the window and it was emitting billowing clouds of smoke. Teargas, she realized as her eyes stung and moistened.
Jack was already up, but he wasn’t leaving her. He stood on the mattress, gazing down at her imploringly, an urgent bark escaping his fanged mouth.
She wanted to shift into her wolf form – needed to. Was the desire enough? Jack had made it sound like it should be. Her natural reflex was to close her eyes, but she kept them open, tearing up against the gas as she squinted into Jack’s golden ones, thinking desperately that she wanted to be like him.
It worked. She was so surprised that she barked in exultation. She paid for it when she swallowed a mouthful of teargas and promptly began to heave and cough. Jack pressed his muzzle briefly against hers and turned, bounding toward the bedroom door, which he nosed open as if out of habit. Mandy flew after him, stifling the whimpers that threatened to escape her as she ran on her broken paw, eyes streaming as suffocating gas and fresh pain assaulted her.
&n
bsp; She followed him out of the cabin, squinting through teary eyes at his blurred form. She could hardly see, but her sharpened senses of smell and hearing nearly made up for that fact. She inhaled his scent – it was the same as when he was human – and stayed close to his flank.
They were not unpursued. Bullets flew at them, and the sound was explosive to Mandy’s sensitive canine ears. She winced with each shot, as much at the volume as out of fear of being hit. She was probably damaging her broken foot more with each step, but anything was better than being shot, or seeing Jack take another bullet. With that horrifying vision in mind, she ran like the wind, keeping pace with Jack. He leapt over logs – stumbling occasionally – and ducked under low branches as he wove among the trees, winding in a seemingly random pattern that nearly made Mandy dizzy.
What seemed like an eternity passed before they stopped, and when they did she tumbled into him, sprawling across the forest floor.
It took him too long to get to his feet. Mandy eyed his blood-soaked side with horror. His pelt was thick, and to be that saturated he had to have bled substantially. And he’d already lost so much blood… Knowing that their attacker was probably hot on their trail, she bit back a howl of anguish as Jack stumbled through the underbrush, panting. To her surprise, he disappeared into what looked like a solid rock.
She hurried to the area where he’d gone, limping. Her foot felt like it was full of the jagged smithereens of glass Jack’s bedroom window had been reduced to. Just when she was thinking she was crazy and that she’d imagined Jack walking into the rock, she found the entrance he’d gone through. It was obscured by shadow and foliage, impossible to see until one was right up on it. She dove inside hastily.
The space she found herself in was roomier than she’d imagined; a surprisingly large hollow carved into the earth. There was enough room for both her and Jack. In the enclosed den, his scent quickly filled the air, sparking a flare of warmth in her middle. It was soon doused by fear as she scented the sharp, coppery odor of blood. She extended her muzzle toward the incongruous mixture of pine, musk and blood scents, reaching for Jack. When her nose touched him, it met smooth skin, not thick fur. He was human again.
It was too dark for her to see much detail inside the den, but she longed to touch him, not with a cold nose, but warm hands. An irresistible urge to wrap her arms around him seized her, and the next moment, she was doing just that. She breathed a thoroughly human sigh of relief. “Jack,” she barely dared to whisper. She knew she should be silent, but saying his name brought her a strange sense of comfort, and she needed to know what kind of condition he was in. “How bad is it?”
Chapter 6
“Pretty bad, I reckon.” His voice was rougher and shakier than she’d ever heard it. “We’ll have to lie low in here ‘till nighttime.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, still speaking in hushed tones. “If we hadn’t made love we might not have been in the cabin when the hunter came, and this might not have happened.” At the memory of their tryst, dual waves of arousal and guilt assaulted her. Maybe her desire for Jack had overpowered her better judgment.
“Don’t be sorry,” he growled. “I told you makin’ love to you would be worth some suffering, and I stand by that statement.”
She eased the embrace she’d wrapped him in, realizing it was probably hurting him.
“No,” he said, catching one of her wrists and holding her palm against his chest. “If we’ve gotta lie here naked together in the dark where I can’t see you, I at least want to feel you touch me.”
She didn’t argue. She’d do anything to keep him calm so he didn’t aggravate his injury further, and even this simple contact with him helped to calm her nerves. What was it about him? Even shot and bleeding, he made her feel secure. She bit down on her inner lip as she thought about the men she’d dated – none too seriously – back in Nashville. She couldn’t say the same about any of them. After being raised by a single mother and never knowing her father, she hadn’t been overeager to place her unreserved confidence in a man – instead, she preferred to get to know someone over time. But she trusted Jack, inexplicably, to her core. The irony struck her in the form of nervous laughter.
“Good Lord Mandy,” Jack grunted. “If you know somethin’ so funny, tell me. I could use a little humor right now.”
“It’s nothing like that,” she said, tracing the smooth line of his collar bone and then resting her palm on his chest again. “I was just thinking that I might be a little crazy.”
“What, vacation not exactly going as planned?” he asked knowingly.
“Not at all.” She’d meant to sound lighthearted – in a good mood, to distract him from his pain – but it didn’t work. A man had never been a part of her plans for her week in the Smoky Mountains, let alone a werewolf, and she’d certainly never imagined the situation she found herself in now.
“Well I’m sorry about the hunter,” Jack said. “Seems like you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But another part of me thinks…well, maybe you were in the right place at the right time. I hate to imagine lyin’ here like this without you. I’m glad I finally found you.”
His seemingly heartfelt confession stirred contradicting feelings of tenderness and alarm in Mandy. “Found – you’ve been looking for me?”
“Not really looking so much as hoping. Hoping for a mate, though I admit, I didn’t think I’d ever really find one.”
“A mate?” Mandy’s mouth went dry.
“Well yeah,” Jack said, as if the idea were the most natural thing in the world. He picked her hand up off his chest and held it in his own, stroking her palm with his calloused fingertips. “Mandy?”
“Yeah?” she barely managed to squeak out. What was he going to do next – propose? She stifled another bout of borderline-hysterical laughter.
“I’m tired. I’m gonna go to sleep for a little while.”
She clenched back, gripping his hand tightly. “Oh my God, Jack – you’re not dying, are you?” The thought of losing him was as heart-wrenching as the thought of being hunted alone by the nameless gunman was terrifying. She was seized by a crushing feeling of helplessness. What the hell could she do about it if he was? They were trapped here, and she didn’t know anything about treating gunshot wounds.
“No, I promise you I’m not. Just wake me if you hear anything, all right?”
“You broke your last promise.”
“Well, I’ll keep this one, and if I don’t, you can kill me.”
“That’s not funny.”
“I’ll be fine.” Within moments his breathing settled into the steady rhythm of slumber.
He had to be exhausted – her own heart was still racing. She uncurled her hand from his and laid her palm on his chest. If he was going to sleep, she was at least going to monitor his breathing and his heartbeat. If they slowed she’d do her best to wake him and do whatever she could – whatever that was. She knelt silently beside him, thinking about what he’d said as his heart beat against her touch.
His mate. Why did he think that was what she was? Yes, they’d had sex – incredible sex – and yes, she was apparently a werewolf, as insane as that still seemed. But that didn’t mean that they were meant to be together forever. Heck, she hadn’t even been thinking long term when she’d straddled and rode him. She’d been living one-hundred percent in the moment, already seduced and readied by her vivid dreams. Turning him down would have been like a starving person refusing a juicy steak. She sighed, contemplating for the first time how her recently discovered nature would shape her future.
What would she do when the week was over and she had to head back to Nashville? Could she suppress her transformations, never going wolf again? The thought sent an unexpected pang of melancholy through her heart. What was it that Jack had said – that she’d feel like a caged animal if she returned to the city? What if he was right? What if the life she’d worked so hard to build was ruined?
He’d be waiting for her. The
truth struck her, along with a hint of worry. What if she wouldn’t be able to function like her old self anymore? It seemed that Jack would be willing to share his life with her here, but could she stomach that sort of existence? She expected to feel horrified by the idea of living out her days in the mountains with Jack, but when she really thought about it, she didn’t. But that didn’t mean that she was ready to declare herself his mate. For God’s sake, she’d only known him for a day. She just hadn’t had the heart to dispute his assumption when he was hurt so badly, and then he’d fallen asleep.
What did being a werewolf’s mate mean, anyway? She didn’t know anything about being a wolf – a shifter, as Jack called it. Apparently, her father had been one, and he certainly hadn’t stayed with her mother for life. He’d left during Mandy’s early infancy, and she’d seen neither hide nor hair of him since. He didn’t even write or call – she’d grown up without contact with him, often wondering what it would be like to have a father. Had her mother known what he was, and if so, could that be why they’d broken off their relationship?
Jack had said he had an aunt whose husband didn’t know she was a shifter. How could anyone stand hiding such an immense secret? Just the idea of it was soul-crushing. Maybe that was why her father had left her mother. Or maybe he had told her, and her mother hadn’t been able to handle it… There were too many possibilities. Thinking about them made Mandy’s head hurt. If only she had her cellphone and a signal, she could call her mother. She groaned as she imagined trying to broach the subject. ‘Hey mom – did my father ever sprout fangs and a tail?’ And if her mother didn’t know what her father had been, how would Mandy tell her what she was? Sadness invaded her heart. It seemed the only person she could confide in was Jack.
