There had been a rash of missing people near Clement College lately, and law enforcers were taking stock of those disappearances. Cops were nosing around. This didn’t bode well for the other secretive nonhuman species living alongside the so-called normal folks. Something had to be done about the recent influx of vamps. Fast.
Michael looked down at the woman in his arms.
Her face was oval-shaped and bloodless. She had long hair that was a unique combination of red and brown, and her skin was soft and lightly scented with the fragrance of flowers, despite all the damage the vampire’s fangs had done. Her tears tasted like sunlight.
After all these years, he still would have given anything for someone to have comforted his mother like this as she lay dying, and helped in any way they could.
This little human had sorely needed help.
Replacing the vamp’s saliva with Lycan blood had been of paramount importance in order to save her life. Wolf blood was volcanic, and immensely alive. If she was lucky, that blood might counteract and overpower the other chilling version of poison put into her by those fangs.
With the miraculous healing powers Lycans possessed, if this female survived the night, the gaping edges of her wound would draw together and mending would begin. On the outside, anyway.
Odds were less than fifty-fifty that she’d pull through no matter what he did or how timely his actions were. Yet purebred Lycan blood, strengthened over the centuries, was one of the strongest medicines on the planet, and he had just given her system a jolt.
Blasphemy?
Hell, yes.
As Alpha of his pack, his other pack-mates might argue with what he’d done. Then again, a couple of them had been on the wrong side of a bite or two, so maybe they’d feel sympathetic.
She was light as a feather. Her breath escaped as a sigh through quivering lips, though her eyes remained shut. Michael’s heart thudded with unanticipated empathy as he carefully scrutinized her expressionless face, deciding that she wasn’t beautiful, exactly. Striking was a better word. She was quite striking for a human so near to death.
“Breathe, little one,” he directed, knowing that humans didn’t take well to their DNA being rearranged. Human women were especially vulnerable to the sudden change in their body chemistry.
“There’s a chance, if what I’ve given you takes and you somehow manage your system’s rewiring, that you won’t thank me.”
Although she’d be alive, she might also be angry, and that was a concern. Telling someone about this rescue attempt, or letting the world in on the secretive presence of werewolves, would place his pack in the spotlight. Hunting season would begin again, as it had for so many past centuries after humans got a whiff of werewolf—in spite of how humanlike Lycans were most of the time. In spite of the fact that this city’s friendly local doctors, mailmen and cops might become something else when the moon was full.
There was another potential problem.
By getting too close to the woman in his arms, he could be instigating a bond between them that for Lycans was a greater event than placing a ring on her finger. Imprinting was something he had carefully avoided for all of his adult life. Imprinting with a human…well, that would be bad. Lycans only mated with Lycans. As werewolf royalty, pure Lycan blood was not to be diluted by the weaknesses humans possessed.
Yeah. So…it was too late for regrets. And hindsight was always a bundle of joy.
He had just committed a sin without thinking twice, and now had to deal with the consequences. Something about this female had captured his attention after merely a look, and that just wasn’t usual fare for an Alpha with a badass reputation.
What is it about you, woman?
Michael’s muscles twitched in response to his silent question because even in her rapidly declining state, the woman in his arms was like wolfnip. She was seductive in an ethereal, ultrafeminine way. Her gray eyes, her flowery scent and white face, were lures he hadn’t been able to resist.
In his defense, Michael concluded that a good excuse for his behavior was that she probably wouldn’t have harmed a fly, even if she knew about the existence of werewolves, and that it would be a shame for the world to lose such a small bundle.
“Breathe,” he said to her. “That’s right. Now breathe again.”
It’s a damn shame that if you live and decide to threaten or expose my kind, it will be my job to kill you. Saving your life tonight would have been for nothing.
Her lashes fluttered, which was a good sign. He said to her, “Some of the pain will ease temporarily, though probably not nearly enough.”
He watched her face for another reaction without finding one.
“The pain will return and get worse. I won’t lie about that. You’ll have to hold on, ride this out, if you want to survive. You’ll have to prove yourself stronger than you look.”
The woman’s pale lips, beautifully shaped and so close to his own, were stiff with shock. Her temporary respite from the agony—either of losing her life altogether or losing life as she’d known it—was as fragile as the rest of her. Michael lowered the odds of her ever opening her big gray eyes.
Still, he held her possessively, liking the feel of her body against his despite her chance of surviving. Liking the velvety softness of her hair against his chest, and how her silky legs dangled over his arms.
Seemed even badasses weren’t immune to an attractive woman.
Something inside him stirred when she moaned. His thoughts grew softer. Is someone waiting for you to come home?
No response came from the prize in his arms. She wasn’t yet alive enough to speak. Possibly she didn’t even hear him.
“I don’t know you. Don’t know your name,” he said. “But here we are, about to either become allies or enemies. Provided that you gain back the strength to open your eyes.”
Michael felt his pulse skip again as he carefully observed his unintentional captive. His victim. His new, awkward responsibility. He wondered if maybe it was only the moon causing the hum in his chest.
Glancing up at the sky, where that nearly full moon blazed a luminous silver white, he held off the muscle burn that urged him to shift shape.
“Hold on,” he whispered to the woman nestled in his arms, willing her to hear, commanding the few drops of his blood, now inside her body, to obey their codes and offer assistance.
His voice lowered to a growl as his internal wolfishness finally rushed to meet the moonlight. “Hold tight, little wolf, and pray for a miracle. If we’re very lucky, maybe you’ll actually thank me someday.”
Chapter 2
“Are you awake?”
The voice was close enough to be inside her mind. Kaitlin struggled to place the words, found meaning and instantly, in some distant part of herself, recognized the tone.
“Can you speak?” the man asked.
Don’t move. Don’t you dare move or answer him. He could be anyone. Another wacko. Seriously ill.
This guy had hurt her, too, Kaitlin remembered, after he had actually asked for permission first. That’s what had gone down.
Willing herself to stillness, to silence, while her heartbeat shuddered uncomfortably against her rib cage, Kaitlin desperately wanted to know what was happening. But she was afraid to find out. She was afraid to move.
She was lying down, curled up in a fetal position with her knees almost to her chin, and she hurt everywhere—head, body, skin, and all the way to the roots of her hair. Pain lashed out each time she attempted a shallow breath, that pain just barely tolerable.
The urge came to whimper, shout, cry. But not to die. No matter what, she did not want to die, or be dead already.
“Can you answer me?” he asked.
Above her pounding heart she perceived another beat—slower than her own, steady against her shoulder blades. Puffs of air skittered along her neck, telling her that the guy was very close to her. She nearly cried out against this kind of intrusion as a fresh wave of panic struck.
Fire sang through her skull when she tried to place even that one small thing. Her lungs ached. Her eye sockets throbbed. She welcomed the discomfort because those things had to mean she was alive.
Focus.
The brown surface had white lines that looked like stitching. White thread. She was on a blanket. This was good. She hadn’t been left in the park for early morning foot traffic to find.
More relief and another round of chills accompanied a further perception. She wasn’t cold. She rested on a blanket, and the man who had rescued her was here. She remembered the hardness of his chest in what still seemed like a dream. Though she had stopped shaking, she felt like she might throw up.
“Can you speak?” he asked again.
Was he casually posing a question when she had no idea where she was, who he was or what had happened to her? When she couldn’t have uttered one word if she’d wanted to? Her throat was tight, raw and constricted, because a fiend had chomped on it.
Yes. A fiend. I remember that, too.
Swallowing was a chore. Something tight had been wrapped around her throat, from which a distinctive smell arose.
Gauze?
It was a scent out of childhood memory—of scraped knees and knuckles. In this instance, it was the smell of a treated bandage and implied that not only had she survived, but the man beside her had to be a good guy. Still…hospitals didn’t have brown blankets or intimate sleeping accommodations.
More panic threatened with a dangerous undertow. Why hadn’t she been taken to a hospital?
Kaitlin waited to find out if she was wrong about her rescuer and if this guy might have saved her for nefarious purposes of his own. She’d have to rally somehow. She would have to run.
“You’re in my room,” her companion explained, his voice producing a familiar tingling vibration inside her chest. “I didn’t know where else to take you. Didn’t know where you belonged. In truth, taking you anywhere else might have been bad for both of us.”
His voice had the mesmerizing quality of a dangerous animal temporarily appeased. While the words themselves were gentle, they were underscored by a hint of something scary that chilled Kaitlin to the bone.
She gasped and managed to suck in a lungful of daylight-filled air. Stripes of light filled with dancing dust particles lay across the blanket beside her, she now saw. Sunlight was seeping through curtains or shutters.
She withheld a shout of relief. Daylight would chase the nightmares away; keep the horrors out of reach.
Any time now.
“Hospitals are out of the question,” her host continued. “I’m afraid they don’t deal well with people like us. Their physicians wouldn’t know what to do or what we’d need.”
People like us. Kaitlin hoped to God he meant doctorate students without health insurance. She hoped with all her might this guy would turn out to be from the campus police.
She was twenty-three years old and felt terribly small and inadequate. More than anything, she wanted to hear her parents’ voices. Without the people she loved, sunlight and fresh blankets weren’t completely normal things or as comforting as they could be.
She fought back tears.
Squeaking bedsprings made her heart flutter. Her center of gravity shifted as the man behind her moved on the bed.
“You will heal, though it will take some time. The worst is over, but there will be more trials to come. That can’t be helped. That’s just the way it is.”
“No,” Kaitlin sputtered with a ferocious effort. No more of this.
“Luckily, you rode some of this out while unconscious. Our bodies are quick to repair and you’ll soon find this to be true. Your body is trying to adapt right now.”
Kaitlin moved her lips. “Thank you.”
This had to be the man who had come to her aid in the park, and had put her on a blanket. Whatever else came to pass, she was grateful for that.
“You’re welcome,” he said hesitantly, sounding both relieved and wary.
“Angel,” she managed to get out, her throat throbbing like crazy with each uttered syllable. “You?”
His response came in the form of a deep cascade of laughter that sent more dust motes dancing. “No angel,” he said. “Not by a long shot. I’m Michael. Can you tell me your name?”
“Kaitlin.”
“Right now you’re still very sick, Kaitlin. But it’s a new day and you’re mending.”
Taking a chance, encouraged by his kind words, Kaitlin unfurled her fingers slowly, glad when they soaked in the blanket’s softness.
“Don’t worry about anything right now,” Michael soothed. “Rest. Heal some more. Get used to what’s going on in your body.”
Squeezing her eyes shut, Kaitlin whispered, “Afraid.”
“I know.”
“Home.”
“In a while,” he said.
“Home,” she repeated.
“As soon as you’re feeling better, I’ll take you there.”
His words were immensely reassuring. Why, though, when he could have an agenda of his own?
“Sleep now,” he suggested. “Heal.”
“Heal,” Kaitlin echoed, wondering how she could sleep when she had been mauled by a monster and nearly killed. She would be screaming right now if her throat worked properly, and be running if she had the use of her legs.
“Sleep a while longer,” he directed with a lulling, rolling purr. “You’re safe here. No one will harm you while I stand guard.”
Hell. Did she need guarding? If so, did it mean the monster that had nearly killed her might come after her again? Having sampled a taste, would he seek her out?
The roaring noise in her ears was like distant engines getting progressively closer. She actually felt her brain go dark. And for the second time in Kaitlin Davies’s personal history, she just…slid…away.
*
She ran.
Barefoot. With the night wind on her body and moonlight in her hair. Sucking in air. Devouring the night. Blood pumping wildly in her veins.
Stars were luminous overhead. The night tasted like licorice and smelled like old wood. Running through the dark, inhaling it, Kaitlin felt driven, free, uninhibited and exceptionally fast. She felt joyously different somehow. More alive.
Noises followed her as she moved: a creak of branches, the rustle of leaves. Close behind those things came other sounds, like the racing beats of her heart and the snap of overextended muscle and bone. Each movement she made was a symphony.
Trees were dark shapes she rushed past. She knew them all, could name them and count the animals sheltering beneath. She could see in the dark. Outlines, shapes, were clear and slightly alien.
She wasn’t alone. Someone ran with her, his strides in sync with hers. They moved as a single unit, in silence, with some distance between them.
Her companion called out once with a word Kaitlin didn’t recognize, though she chased the sound of his voice into an open field. And suddenly, Kaitlin no longer felt sure of foot. She stumbled, teetered, struggled with her legs. Faltering, she fell to her hands and knees, sliding several inches, carried forward by momentum.
Strong hands yanked her upright, spun her around and lifted her off the ground as though she were as light as a cloud. Whoever this was carried her into the shadow of nearby tree cover and dropped her onto her feet. Warm hands pressed her to the bark of the closest tree in a hazy repeat of another time and place she couldn’t quite recall.
“Not so fast,” her companion advised.
The body leaning into hers was male, extremely warm and completely naked, though she didn’t glance down to make sure of that. He was tall and light-skinned, with features that gave him a regal air, and rippling abs of steel.
“Take your time,” this naked man advised.
His dark chin-length hair br
ushed her face, sending meaningful vibrations downward and toward a spot between her thighs. Bursts of energy spiraled outward from a spark deep inside her—barely containable energy. Highly unstable stuff.
Kaitlin couldn’t keep her legs still, or her arms. It felt as though her internal engine’s idle had been set too high and she waited nervously at a starting line for the gun to go off.
Did she know this man beside her? Her body did. She had a new and raging hunger for him that added to her shakes. She wanted to crawl under his skin and stay warm. The desire came to nip at his marvelously sculpted chest, half of which was etched with spirals of inky-black tattoos that swirled each time he moved.
Being with this guy felt exquisitely erotic, even though somewhere inside her mind red warning flags were waving with questions about who he really was and what she was doing here.
“Have to move. Have to run,” she said breathlessly.
His piercing green gaze held her captive. “Go ahead. Run,” he said, beaming silent messages Kaitlin swore she understood in some strangely telepathic way. “Stay close to the tree cover tonight. Taking small steps is the way to go.”
The gravelly quality of his voice sent a cascade of thrills through her that set off another adrenaline rush. Her body was responding to this guy’s closeness as though she knew him better than she should and much more than she recalled. Or maybe her anxiousness was translating this dream into some kind of twisted sexual wishful thinking, because she had a nearly overwhelming desire to trace those inky tats with her tongue.
“I’m fast,” she said, exhaling pent-up steam.
“And cocky for a newbie,” he countered. “Hell, you’re only two days old.”
“I merely stumbled.”
“You’ll do so again if you don’t listen. Your muscles have to get with the program.”
Kaitlin glanced around, needing to look anywhere but into the green eyes observing her. “Why are we standing beneath the trees?”
Half Wolf Page 2
