Wolf in Sheep's Clothing_BBW Paranormal Wolf Shifter Romance

by Lauren Esker

  His blue eyes, a sun-faded twin of her own, widened somewhat. "Help you what? With Mom and Dad? Or ... I don't know what you're asking, sis."

  "With all of it. It's just so huge—I mean, it's only been a couple of weeks since I graduated from college with no idea where I was going to move to or what I was going to do with my life, and now suddenly I—"

  She broke off as a strange feeling shot through her, cold as an icicle. At first she thought she was coming down with something, or was going to be sick. But it wasn't located in her stomach, and it didn't feel like a fever.

  Damon!

  Julie sprang to her feet, only vaguely aware as she dropped her cocoa cup and it smashed on the kitchen floor, sending cocoa and china fragments everywhere.

  "Julie?" Terry jumped to his feet, too, wild-eyed with alarm. "What is it? What's wrong?"

  "Damon," she gasped. It felt like a panic attack, this sense of impending doom so powerful she could hardly breathe. Except it wasn't for herself. "Damon's in trouble!"

  Terry frowned. "How do you know?"

  "I—I don't know! I just know that he is!" She shifted without even meaning to, and suddenly was four-footed, standing in the mess of her spilled cocoa.

  Damon had gone to his parents'. He was probably still there. She galloped down the hall, her little sheep hooves clattering on the farmhouse's old floorboards. Skidding to a halt on the polished floor of the entryway, she almost ran into the door.

  "Julie! Wait!" Terry chased her down the hall and caught up, panting. "You know, I should lock this door and carry you up to your room, for your own good."

  Julie kicked him in the shin. Her hoof was very sharp, and he hopped on one leg while she tried to open the door with her teeth. Shifting back would make it easier to open the door, but she was afraid that if she did, Terry would make good on his threat to carry her upstairs. At least in this form, she could outrun him.

  "I didn't say I was going to." Terry pushed her face away from the doorknob and grasped it himself. "Look, there's one condition and only one condition under which I will let you go running off into the night looking for your missing werewolf boyfriend, and that's if you let me come with you."

  Julie bleated angrily and hoped he could properly read the meaning: Sure, I don't care. Do whatever you like.

  There was a thump upstairs in their parents' bedroom. Light streamed down the stairs. They were running out of time. Terry might not be willing to lock her up, but her parents certainly would.

  "I hope I don't regret this," Terry muttered. He opened the door.

  The smell and sound of rain swept into the hallway. Julie didn't hesitate. She dashed out into the storm. Rain struck her, obscuring her vision and soaking her to the skin.

  Hoofbeats pounded behind her, and Terry appeared out of the rain at a gallop. His adult shifted form was a large, powerful Corsican ram, with great curling horns.

  With Julie in the lead, the Capshaw brother and sister pounded into the edge of the woods. Wet foliage lashed at Julie's face, and the weight of her wet wool seemed to drag her down like carrying a great burden on her back. When she was younger, she'd run gleefully through the forest, winter or summer. It had been fun. Now, fear hammered at her with every beat of her hooves.

  Which way? But she didn't have to wonder. Damon was the north of her compass needle, and as long as she didn't think about it too hard, she knew exactly which way to go. She slalomed around inconvenient trees, leaped over fences that had the temerity to get in her way.

  The only thing that made her falter was a wild howling that went up from the woods around them. It seemed omnidirectional, echoing back and forth, as if it came from everywhere and nowhere.

  Terry body-checked her. She'd almost forgotten he was there; now they both went down in a flail of flying hooves. Terry shifted back to his human form and held onto her, gripping her by two fistfuls of wet wool and pinning her with his weight. "Julie, shift back! I can't talk to you like this. Julie, shift, now!"

  She shifted, and suddenly was on her elbows in the mud. Both she and Terry were utterly sodden in the downpour. "Terry, let go! I have to find Damon."

  "Listen! Don't you hear that?"

  She heard it. Oh, she heard it. The mournful, eerie howling of wolves on the hunt—it was impossible to tell where it came from, impossible to tell how close it was. Every instinct screamed at her to run.

  "The werewolf pack is hunting!" Terry shouted at her. His face was a white blur in the near-darkness, his hair plastered down with water. "I don't know exactly where we are, but we're somewhere on the edge of the Wolfe land. Don't you remember what they said they'd do if they caught us here again?"

  "But—Damon," she protested, fighting Terry's grip on her. "It's him they're hunting, Terry, don't you see? We have to help him!"

  "How do you know?" Terry demanded furiously. "How could you possibly know? You just up and ran out of the kitchen like the hounds of Hell were on your heels. What made you do that? Where are you going?"

  She searched his face desperately. He looked frightened, but not angry. She hadn't meant to keep it a secret; there just hadn't seemed to be a right time to say anything. "There's something I haven't told you."

  "Oh God, what now?"

  "You know those old stories about mate bonding, and how it makes you like ... like one person, like you know what the other person is thinking and feeling?"

  Terry shook his head, wet hair lashing. "That's a myth. It's a story. It doesn't really happen."

  "It happened to me." His grasp on her arms had become lax; now it was her turn to seize him, willing him to understand. "I know Damon is in trouble because I feel it, and I know where he is because I ... I just do. I can't explain it. But every minute we're talking, the pack gets closer to him."

  "And to us. You might be willing to be torn apart with your true love, but I have every intention of keeping us both alive. All three of us, I guess." The frown line appeared between his blond brows again. "Julie, if you can find him, does that also mean he can find you?"

  "I guess so. Terry, really—"

  "No, listen. Can you get him to go where you want him to? Like, call him?"

  "I don't know," she said. "I can try. Do you have a plan?"

  "Not really, but I think compared to being torn apart by wolves in the forest, meeting them on the road with a truck is probably a better idea, don't you?"

  "Oh!" she said. "Yes! I'll find Damon, you get the truck—"

  He hauled her to her feet with a firm grip around her wrist. "No, we get the truck, and you make Damon come where we are."

  "I'm not sure if it works that way," she protested, as he pulled her into a stumbling run through the dripping woods. "Terry, let go, we'll be faster on four feet than two."

  "If I let go of you, will you come with me rather than running off?"

  "Yes," she said, "but you'd better keep up with me."

  He let go; she shifted, and sprang forward, stretching out to run. Sheep were not exactly distance runners, but she'd never let herself go like this before. A racehorse could hardly have kept up with her. Although Terry was bigger, she outdistanced him easily, clearing the forest and sailing over the fence that bounded the Capshaw fields.

  Hold on for us, Damon, she begged, trying to send all the reassurance and encouragement that she could through their link. Meet us on the road! Please hold on!

  The nearest vehicle to their current location was the beat-up old van that the Capshaws used to carry produce to market, parked as usual at the edge of the fields. Julie skidded to a stop next to it, churning up mud with her hooves, and shifted back. The spare key was tucked in its usual place behind the license plate. She scrambled inside and revved the motor to life as Terry, panting and dripping, climbed into the passenger seat.

  "I'll drive," he said. "You concentrate on summoning your boyfriend."

  She relinquished the driver's seat and crawled over. "Hurry!"

  "Seat belts first."

  "Oh, my God
." She yanked the belt out of its housing so hard it locked up, and had to force herself to relax and pull it out the right way. "Go, go!"

  Terry pulled off the rutted, muddy farm road onto the main highway, turning toward the Wolfe farm. "This way, I'm guessing?"

  "Yes." She cranked down her window. Rain blew in, along with the howling of wolves. So far, Damon had managed to elude them—he must have, because she would have known if they'd caught him. She hoped. "Drive faster!"

  "It won't help anyone if we slide into the ditch." Still, he took a corner at a speed that was just barely this side of sane. "Are you calling him?"

  "I'm trying." She clutched the top edge of the door in a white-knuckled grip and leaned out the window. Rain beat against her face. Damon, Damon, I'm here. Safety is here. Damon, come to me, please—I'll help you, just please come—

  She glimpsed a flash of dark fur in the van's headlights, just as Terry gasped, "Jesus!" and jerked the steering wheel. The van skidded sideways and, for a terrifying weightless instant, almost left the road. They spun around in a full one-eighty turn and came to a halt facing back the way they'd come.

  "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Terry gasped. He peeled his fingers slowly off the steering wheel. A ghost of a grin crossed his pale face. "Aren't you glad I made you wear a seat belt?"

  "Jerk," she muttered, fumbling with the belt release. "Where did he go?" But then she caught sight of a dark lump of fur in the middle of the road, barely visible at the edge of the headlights. "Terry, no, you hit him!"

  "No, I didn't, we would have felt—Julie, wait for me—"

  She hardly felt her feet hit the pavement before she was running, plunging across the distance between them. Damon was a sodden hump of fur on the edge of the darkness. Julie fell to her knees beside him, and clutched at his fur, trying to spread him out so she could see what was wrong, and where. "Damon, Damon, please do something, please say something. Damon!"

  She was frozen, for an instant, in a split second that somehow expanded into all of eternity before Damon stirred against her hand. The black-furred wolf lifted his head just enough to let it drop into her lap.

  "Oh, Damon," she breathed, cradling his head. "Damon, we've got you."

  The headlights moved, light washing over them, and the van screeched to a stop beside them in a small wash of rainwater. Terry jumped down and ran around to open the back doors. "Hey, wolfpack on the way, let's move!"

  He helped her pick up Damon's limp body. Water mixed with blood dripped off his fur as they carried him between them to the open van doors. Julie crawled inside and, carefully as possibly, they laid him on the floor, among empty potato baskets and crumpled sacks.

  "I'll ride back here with him," Julie said.

  Terry looked like he wanted to argue, but then shook his head. "Okay. Hang on. Could be a rough ride."

  The doors slammed, shutting out the all-too-close howling of the wolfpack. The only light was what could filter into the back of the van through the rain-streaked windshield; she couldn't see more of Damon than a black mass of fur. She had no idea where he was hurt, or how badly. She stroked his wet ears, and felt him panting against her leg.

  The driver's door slammed, and Julie braced a hand against the side of the van as they lurched into motion.

  "Whoa!" Terry said, and the van skidded sideways. A stack of plastic crates fell over with a crash, and a stray potato rolled into Julie's leg. "Sorry!" he called into the back.

  "What happened?" Julie called back.

  "Wolf. Almost hit it. Wow." Terry craned sideways, looking in his rear-view mirror. "There's two or three of them back there, sniffing around, looking for him."

  "Do you think they got a good look at us?" The van wasn't marked with the farm's logo, so in the dark, it should look just like any other mud-splattered van. She hoped.

  "Dunno. I think, just in case, I'm not going back to the farm. Is that okay?"

  "I guess we don't have a choice."

  She moved Damon's head aside carefully and got up on her knees so she could reach the burlap sacks. They made a crude bed for an injured person ... wolf ... wolf-person, but it was better than Damon lying on the bare floor of the van, having even more of the heat of his body leeched out. Julie arranged him on the makeshift pallet and covered him with some more sacks before gathering his head back into her lap.

  For a little while after that, they rode in silence. Terry turned up the heat, enough that Julie could feel it blasting through the vents even in the back, stirring her wet hair.

  "Where are you going?" she asked when she couldn't take it anymore. They could have been anywhere. She had nothing to judge by, just the swaying of the van and the occasional flicker of a streetlight or someone's porch light through the front windows. Damon's ribs rose and fell under her hand in shallow, pained panting.

  "Hospital," Terry said over his shoulder.

  "What? No! You can't!"

  "Hospitals are where people go when they're hurt, Julie!"

  "It's also the first place they'll look for him. If his pack is trying to kill him, we have to hide him."

  Terry heaved a sigh. "Well, how's he doing back there?"

  "I don't know. I still can't tell where he's hurt." She ran her fingers through Damon's thick, damp fur. It was starting to dry, standing up in spikes. Shifters are tough, she reminded herself. We heal faster than normal humans. It didn't help. "How close are we to the farm?"

  "We're clear on the other side of town now." Terry made a "hmmm" noise. "Not too far from Grandma MacReary's place, though. It might be even better, because if you're right, they'll be sniffing all over back home."

  "We're not going to lead an angry wolfpack to Grandma's farm, are we?"

  Terry laughed. "You think Grandma can't handle a few wolves? She'd probably be happy to have a chance to try out her new rifle."

  This got a little laugh out of Julie, too. "I guess you're right."

  They drove on for another few minutes through the rainy night, until Terry braked and slowed for a turn. The road got rough under the van's tires. Damon whimpered softly, and Julie soothed him by stroking his fur. The old van's suspension creaked as it rocked and swayed over deeply worn ruts, and then it stopped. Terry killed the engine.

  "Don't get out yet," he said. His door opened and closed.

  Julie sat alone in the van. Rain drummed on the roof. She couldn't hear Terry moving around outside, and she jumped when the back doors were unlatched and swung open. It was only her brother, rain misting down lightly around him.

  "I wanted to check and make sure we weren't being followed."

  "No sign of anyone?"

  He shook his head. "Look, let's not try to carry him to the house like we did before. I'll go see if there's something we can use for a stretcher. Maybe we can avoid waking up Grandma—"

  "I think that ship has sailed," Julie said. She pointed toward the farmhouse, where a light had come on in the window.

  "Ears like a bat shifter," Terry muttered. "I'm gonna go explain the situation. You want to come?"

  She shook her head. "I'll stay here with Damon."

  "Okay. I'll try not to be too long."

  He squished off through the puddles. Julie craned her neck, watching him. As he climbed the stairs to the front porch, the porch light came on and the door opened. She couldn't seen Grandma clearly from here; she could, however, see the rifle cradled in the old woman's arms.

  Julie grinned. Grandma was never going to change.

  "I hope you like her," she murmured to Damon. "I think she'll like you, once she gets to know you." I hope. This was going to be a short visit if that turned out not to be the case.

  Terry gestured toward the van. There was a short, intense exchange; then both of them disappeared into the house.

  Julie waited, rocking Damon gently. Then two figures, one with a flashlight, appeared around the corner of the house, dragging or pushing something. Her heart lurched, but it only took a moment to recognize Grandma and Terry. Grandma
was carrying a flashlight and the rifle, and Terry was pushing ... a wheelbarrow?

  They bumped up to the open doors of the van. "Hello, Julie dear," Grandma said, her face creasing in a smile.

  "Hello, Grandma," Julie said automatically. "What are you doing with—Oh, no. I can't put Damon in a wheelbarrow."

  "It'll be more comfortable for him than being carried. Look." Terry whisked off the black plastic garbage bag over the top of the wheelbarrow, revealing a thick blanket tucked into it. "Look, we made him a nice dog bed and everything."

  Julie glared at him.

  "It'll be better than carrying him," Terry said hastily. "For him, I mean. Come on, the blanket's getting wet."

  Not seeing much choice, Julie helped them move Damon. He didn't fit easily, with one long leg and his tail dangling over the side, and he was as limp as a dead wolf. Only his breathing and the reassuring sense of his presence at the back of her mind let her know that he still lived.

  Terry had another blanket, rolled up under one arm, to cover him with, and then they set out for the house. Terry and Julie labored through the mud, pushing the wheelbarrow and trying not to jolt over too many bumps. Grandma led the way, shining the flashlight to illuminate their path and watching the woods vigilantly.

  "I'm not sure if the rifle is really necessary, Grandma," Julie panted, trying to work the wheelbarrow past some sort of mud-covered obstacle it had gotten hung up on.

  "With wolves on the hunt, dear, I wouldn't go anywhere without it."

  The howling was still audible from time to time through the rain, an eerie distant song that Julie would have found beautiful under other circumstances. Even now, though it raised the hairs on her arms, she took a strange kind of comfort from it. If the wolves were howling over there, then at least she knew they weren't here.

  Grandma didn't take them to the front door; instead she led them around the side of the house. The kitchen door, unlike the front door, had no steps to navigate with the wheelbarrow, just a flagged doorstep that led directly to the cracked linoleum of the old kitchen floor.

  Under the bright lights of the kitchen, Damon looked even worse than Julie had feared. His fur was matted, his eyes closed. He really did look dead. She laid her hand against his neck so she could feel the warmth of the skin under the fur. "Where can we take him?" she asked.