North Wolf

by M. A. Everaux

  An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication

  www.ellorascave.com

  North Wolf

  ISBN # 1-4199-0293-8

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  North Wolf Copyright© 2005 M.A. Everaux

  Edited by: Kelli Kwiatkowski.

  Cover art by Carole Carmen.

  Electronic book Publication: August 2005

  This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.

  Warning:

  The following material contains graphic sexual content meant for mature readers. North Wolf has been rated E–rotic by a minimum of three independent reviewers.

  Ellora’s Cave Publishing offers three levels of Romantica™ reading entertainment: S (S-ensuous), E (E-rotic), and X (X-treme).

  S-ensuous love scenes are explicit and leave nothing to the imagination.

  E-rotic love scenes are explicit, leave nothing to the imagination, and are high in volume per the overall word count. In addition, some E-rated titles might contain fantasy material that some readers find objectionable, such as bondage, submission, same sex encounters, forced seductions, and so forth. E-rated titles are the most graphic titles we carry; it is common, for instance, for an author to use words such as “fucking”, “cock”, “pussy”, and such within their work of literature.

  X-treme titles differ from E-rated titles only in plot premise and storyline execution. Unlike E-rated titles, stories designated with the letter X tend to contain controversial subject matter not for the faint of heart.

  North Wolf

  M.A. Everaux

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Formica: The Diller Corporation

  Daisy: Gillette Company

  Chapter One

  Life was a playground, and he’d just been kicked off the swing set. Again. And then just for yucks, it’d given him a good kick in the balls. He was still reeling from that one.

  Christian Tanner smiled slightly at the thought. Ordinarily, he wasn’t one to get so melancholy. Usually, he was the happy type, fun to be around and ready to laugh. The kind of person others wanted to be around. It was in his nature to laugh and be joyful. It was who he was.

  Except in this place, he thought. He’d come to the conclusion that a mental institute of any kind would be enough to make anyone mental. It was the whole purpose of the place. A conspiracy, even. The crazies went to get better, but in such an environment, regaining one’s mental health was impossible. How could someone heal while eating mashed potatoes that tasted like paste? So, it was impossible. The crazies would stay crazy, and the doctors and nurses could dole out sedatives and stool softeners like they were going out of style, all the while fattening up their 401(k) plans.

  And what did that say about the people who were employed in such a place? It was bad enough being committed and having no ability to leave, but to actually come to the place voluntarily, day after day—well, the poor saps had to be as crazy as their patients. He didn’t care how well they were paid. The place was just plain miserable.

  With a detached interest, he watched as one of the patients, a shriveled, gray gentleman with no hair and watery eyes, argued with the baby doll he held in his arms, accusing it of sleeping with his wife and stealing all his money. Christian cocked his head and listened more interestedly as the conversation got more heated, especially the parts about what the wife wouldn’t do with the old man, but had no problem doing with the doll. He hoped to God if he ever got like that, someone would just shoot him and put him out of his misery.

  He’d been lucky when they’d brought him in. The moon had gotten to him, a condition that was his own fault. He hadn’t been changing enough, letting the beast free to roam. He’d get his ass kicked for his carelessness once he returned home. If he ever returned home.

  As soon as they’d pinned him down, the orderlies knocked him out with a heavy-duty sedative. It was the only reason he was able to stave off the change, and even then, there’d been certain changes. It’s just that no one had paid enough attention to notice the extra body hair he’d developed, or the heaviness of his brow and the sudden thickness of his jaw, nose and cheekbones.

  He’d woken up two days later to tales of how he’d convulsed and yelled. But, he comforted himself with the knowledge that he hadn’t been the only one. One urban legend that was true was that the crazies became even crazier during a full moon. The hospital staff had had their hands full with a naked, dancing old woman who insisted she was a mermaid, another man who was talking to the air, screaming that it was trying to kill him, and a multitude of other nuts, all of whom didn’t have a chance in hell of escaping the joint.

  And that was his current status—desperate. He needed a smoke. And he needed to get out before he became as crazy as the psycho who was quietly picking the erasers off all the pencils at the arts table and eating them.

  Spying the head nurse, a rather dour, rat-faced woman with hair pulled back so tight it had to hurt, Christian leapt up and jogged over toward her station. She gave him a look that would have impressed Nurse Ratchet, then returned to giving orders to the doughy woman beside her.

  Christian tapped his fingers against the Formica table top and waited. The nurse kept going on and on about bed pans and laundry collection. Finally, ten minutes later, she turned from the other woman and looked at him directly, her eyes so cold he was surprised his nuts didn’t freeze and fall off on the spot.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I gotta call someone.”

  She lifted a superior brow. “You told Dr. Schneider that you didn’t have any family.”

  “Lady,” he huffed, agitatedly shoving his hair back from his face and pasting a smile on his face, just in case it worked, “The shrink spoke to me while I was still messed up with whatever shit you people gave me. I want my phone call.”

  His eyes were steely and demanding. The nurse stayed cold and collected, but he could smell the small, trace amount of fear that invaded her scent. He felt like howling with victory.

  Slightly jerky, she pointed through the double doors leading to the hallway. “Tell Nurse Miller that I gave you permission to use the phone. But,” she cautioned, recovering enough to hold up a finger, “Be aware that this is your only call this week. If you don’t receive an answer, you’ll just have to wait until next Wednesday.”

  He turned and uttered, “Blow me.” He didn’t care if she heard.

  He pushed through the doors, which revealed a long hallway painted in the most unattractive piss yellow he’d ever seen. There were a few gurneys lying around, and your occasional crazy in a wheelchair, pushing along, but other than that, and the few nurses who kept coming through, it was quiet. The phone was just ten feet from the double doors, and being badly guarded by a woman wearing orthopedic shoes and paging through a fashion magazine. Nurse Miller, he presumed.

  She was a round, plump woman in her early thirties, with thin blonde hair and a pasty complexion. She had that stationary look humans developed after sitting on their asses for too long. It always made him shudder when he saw someone like that. His brain immediately made the connection to plants, and he couldn’t help but put the two together and picture a human with roots, which was just weird.

  She sat at a cheap wooden desk that was little more than a TV tray, just a few feet to t
he left of the payphone, a panic button mounted on the wall directly behind her, as if management was really worried about someone holding the phone hostage. She didn’t move, except to reach her hand into the bag of pretzels that was the only item on the desk. Watching her was a little like watching a lava lamp. Her hand motion was that smooth.

  She didn’t even notice him until he was standing in front of her, and she only took her nose out of the magazine then because he tapped on her desk.

  Her large eyes blinked rapidly as she focused on him. Then her mouth widened in a smile and her pale skin flushed. With shaking hands, she set her magazine down and pushed away the bag of pretzels. “How can I help you?”

  He flashed a smile and leaned his hip against her minuscule desk, but immediately straightened when the particleboard gave a groan. “Nurse Ratchet said I can make a phone call.” She winced at his use of the name, but she didn’t bother to ask him who he meant. It must have been a pretty common name for the bitch.

  Nurse Miller pointed unnecessarily to the phone, her eyes becoming dewy and soft as she gazed up at him. She smiled dreamily, unconsciously sitting straighter in her chair, and then almost fell over as the wheel on the left side lurched, nearly tipping her sideways.

  She caught herself in time, and shifted her weight to the other side, but her flush became tomato red and her voice was a little higher when she mumbled, “Right there.”

  Christian managed to keep any snickering to a minimum, but it was a close call. To make up for being rude, he winked at her before going over to the phone. He was desperate, the idea of staying in the hospital any longer making his skin crawl, but he still managed to keep the few steps to the phone as normal and sedate as possible, and his hand didn’t even shake when he picked up the receiver.

  He dialed the familiar numbers, his heartbeat suddenly increasing with both excitement and worry. Even before Connor took him in, Christian had always known to call him, for any problem, no matter what. But that didn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t going to get his ass kicked for this latest stunt.

  The phone rang on the other end just three times before it was picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “I hope you’re sitting down, man, because I am royally fucked.”

  “Christian, what have you done?” asked Connor, in that always-so-proper British way he had.

  Christian leaned against the wall, relief flooding his system. “Get this—I’m locked up in a loony bin in Iowa. You need to come down here and break me out pronto.” He rolled his eyes to the right to check on the nurse, and awarded himself ten points. She had turned slightly in his direction, and was watching him cautiously over the top of her magazine.

  Never one to pass up a chance, Christian smiled at her again. She smiled back but with slightly less wattage, and actually looked a little suspicious, as if she had decided to humor his delusions. Oh well, fuck it.

  Connor’s tone was all business. “Give me your address. Eben is coming down tonight. Don’t worry, he’ll have any documents you need to get out.”

  Christian rattled off the address. On the other end, he could hear Connor scribbling the information down.

  “Hold tight, I’m putting Eben on.”

  Christian switched the phone to his other ear and tapped his foot against the floor. He was usually calm, but being cooped up got to him. Unless there were a couple naked women around.

  Eben came on, his deep voice a pleasant reminder of home. “What happened?”

  Christian closed his eyes, leaned against the cool wall, and told his Alpha what happened, carefully, with no revealing words or phrases for human ears to catch.

  “You were foolish. It’d serve you right if I left you locked up there until the next moon.” There was a pause, and then slightly softer, “Are you all right?”

  “I am now.”

  “I’ll be there in the morning. Connor just got me a flight.”

  Christian sighed. “Thank you.”

  The phone clicked off. Christian hung up on his end and sighed. It was going to be okay. They’d come and get him, and it’d be over. As long as he could survive another night.

  An hour later, he followed the directions of a nurse and entered the bathroom. Feeling jumpy with nerves, he ignored the urinals and instead selected the stall in the corner, shutting the door behind him. And that’s when he saw it, taped up among a hundred or so other drawings, letters and pictures ripped out of magazines, all of them layered onto the door thicker than wallpaper.

  “Fuck!”

  Chapter Two

  Gwen liked to try and look at her stay at the St. Catherine’s Hospital for the Mentally Ill in a philosophical light. She could hate her mother for having her committed, but in all reality it was probably the only reason she was still alive. She definitely would have tried to kill herself again if she was still in a confined space with only her mother’s harping presence. And it wasn’t all bad. She had her own room, complete with storage closet, a small desk to work at, plenty of art supplies and a window. Sure, it had bars on it, but she could overlook them for the most part. She could still see the sun outside, and the snow, and that was the important thing. At least she had a home, of sorts. Look how many people didn’t.

  But she still blamed her mother for lying. She’d claimed it was because Gwen had tried to kill herself. She’d claimed it was because she’d become unresponsive to her surroundings and the people who tried to help her through the death of her father. But Gwen knew better. She’d found the pamphlets from the hospital over a month before she’d cut her wrists. Her mother wanted her committed because Gwen had seen a werewolf.

  In her mind, he was always the same—thick coppery pelt, angry wild eyes, and a threatening mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth. He certainly hadn’t looked like a regular wolf, or at least, not like any wolf she’d seen. Instead, he was more of a man-wolf, as if someone had taken prime examples of both species, thrown them into a bottle and mixed them up, the end result being a weird mutation of the two—a great, hulking brute, armed with sharp claws and obvious intelligence, with the ability to stand on its hind legs but run faster than a rabbit on all four. With that fearsome combination, it would be nearly impossible for anyone to escape.

  It would have been easier if she’d let the image go, like it was the dream her doctors kept trying to convince her it was. Except it wasn’t. Her father had died that night in the accident, and she’d seen it happen. It was something she would always remember. Just as she’d always remember the creature, sitting in the road and eating the dead woman’s body next to him. He’d growled as he went at it, tearing and ripping pieces of flesh from the poor woman who had probably had the misfortune to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was another memory that would never leave Gwen’s head. It was too terrifying and disturbing. She’d closed her eyes through most of it, but the image of the werewolf with his head up, swallowing a large piece of the woman in one gulp, was locked in her brain forever.

  Sighing, Gwen pushed her latest picture aside, feeling the heavy weight of the pill-induced sleep that was dragging at her. She’d slept a lot after the accident, taking comfort in it and the deep numbness that had taken over her body at the time. But she slept even more at the hospital. It had to do with the meds they kept pumping into her. And the food, and the people, and just the place. Since sleeping was what made the time go by the fastest, it was what her body wanted to do, all the time. Generally, she didn’t fight it. But she needed to do one more picture to get the image out of her head, at least for a little while.

  She took the top piece of paper from the pile sitting near the corner of her desk, and selected a piece of charcoal. In broad strokes, she put down the lines that would build the image, added shadows and depth, smudging the lines when needed. She didn’t notice the scars on her wrists, each one running vertically about three inches, and she didn’t notice the sun as it began to fall. Her eyes were locked on the paper, watching as the image came through.

>   She hated the werewolf. He caused the car crash that killed her father and crippled her for months afterward. But she mostly hated him because he was the reason she was in the hospital. Because once she’d seen him, she’d been forced to believe the fairy tales, and it scared her to think there may be others out there.

  The night was passing at a snail’s pace for Christian. He couldn’t sleep with so many people howling and screaming. Not that he wanted to. With escape approaching, the last thing he wanted to do was sleep. He wanted to wait, see the sun as she approached her sister moon, the two kissing just as they changed places and the sun took over.

  He stretched his legs along the decrepit sofa, and tried to forget the fact that it was only just after midnight. He was hanging out in the common room, which was one of the shared rooms between the male and female quarters. The television, though on, was muted. It seemed God hadn’t completely forgotten him after all.

  “Hey, that’s your girl over there.”

  Christian jerked around and stared at where Jones, a schizo mother-killer, pointed. When he saw her, he kind of wished he hadn’t.

  “Seriously, that’s who drew the picture in the stalls?” The picture he now had folded in his pocket. He drew a deep breath and pulled her scent into his lungs. He wanted to cough at first. The poor thing had so many drugs in her system she smelled like a pharmaceutical company. It altered her scent, making it musty and stale, like someone kept her in a box on a shelf somewhere. But underneath all that, was her. It was faint, but there.

  Jones nodded his bald head. “Yup. That’s her. She’s probably the craziest bitch in the place. Get this—” He leaned his thick form forward. His eyes danced with the excitement of passing on a good tale. “She was in a car accident with her old man when she was eighteen. It killed him, left her lame, and through it all, she says it was a monster that caused the whole thing.”