The Howling

by Erin McCarthy

  He ran hard, as fast as his four legs would carry him, into the thick lustrous forest behind Scarborough’s house. Once under the cover of the trees, he dodged and weaved, sailing over fallen limbs and hurtling himself through brush. The crisp air felt good on his hot fur and the night around him whistled with an autumn wind and hummed with the presence of insects and nocturnal creatures.

  Such as the wolf.

  He heard the high keening howl immediately to his right and he drew up short, not wanting an encounter.

  But it was too late. He smelled the scent of the other werewolf, and he knew it was doing the same. Before he could make the decision to retreat or confront, there was a werewolf with mottled gray-and-white fur in front of him.

  Nick. His cousin, younger than him by two years.

  Their eyes locked, and Sebastian bared his teeth, ready to battle.

  Yet Nick did the unthinkable and shifted back to man, the expression on his face, as he crouched naked, incredulous. “Sebastian?” he murmured. “You’re alive?”

  It was that incredulity and the trust it took for Nick to risk being human with Sebastian still as wolf, that led him to make his own shift.

  “Obviously, yes, I’m alive. No thanks to you or any of the James clan.”

  While Sebastian was wary, Nick was jubilant. A grin split his face. “Man, I’m so glad to see you!” He clapped Sebastian on the shoulder. “I thought for sure you were a goner, but no worse for the wear, huh?”

  Actually, he felt like a pickup truck with three hundred thousand miles on it, but there was no point in going into all of that. “Yeah, I’m alright. So when you run to Scar and tell him I’m back in town, you make sure he understands I know who put the knife in my shoulder.”

  Nick’s smile fell off his face. “About that . . . we didn’t know. The rest of us had no idea that’s what Scar was planning, I swear to you. I never would have agreed to that kind of bullshit.”

  Sebastian wanted to believe him. Nick had always been a happy-go-lucky guy and a fairly docile werewolf. He was a follower, not a leader, and had no head for elaborate political scheming. Much like Sebastian had been. “You’re trying to tell me that none of the four of you in the pack knew Scar was going to kill me?”

  “Hell, no, we didn’t know that. We’ve always known Scar was ambitious, but in human form. I never thought that he took the clan so serious. I never thought we were anything more than six guys who got extremely hairy and grew an overbite once a month. A family quirk, nothing more.”

  Studying Nick, Sebastian turned his words around in his head. Damn, he did want to believe him, but he didn’t know who to trust anymore.

  “And by the way, can I just point out that this is more than a little awkward standing here bareassed in the woods with you? I hope we don’t run into any campers . . . that’s how rumors get started. And that could seriously affect my ability to pick up women.”

  The way Nick was looking around them uneasily made Sebastian laugh, no easy feat these days. “I probably shouldn’t hang around too long anyway.”

  “Scar’s out of town.”

  “I know.” Sebastian felt his face fix into a hard frown, the way it always did when he thought about his brother now. “Why’d he do it? He could have talked to me about taking over the pack, he didn’t have to kill me.” He had turned that one around and around and while he thought he understood that Scar was motivated by power and control, it still seemed excessive to Sebastian.

  But then again, he wasn’t entirely lacking in human emotion.

  “Because if you believe the legends, even if you had given the pack leadership over to Scar, you still had Liv.”

  “The sole survivor of the French clan of werewolves.” Sebastian ran his hand through his hair.

  “Mated to her, it doubles his power.”

  Which was why Sebastian had never married Liv. He wanted no part of anything that smacked of ulterior motives when it came to her. He had loved her for her, not for what she could bring him.

  “Liv has no idea who and what she is.”

  Nick nodded. “Just so you know, she’s started shifting at the full moon. But Scar says she doesn’t have any memory of it.”

  Sebastian’s eyebrows shot up. “Liv is shifting? But she never did before.”

  “Extreme emotion triggers the first shift, you know that. It started almost immediately after you disappeared.”

  Yeah, he did know emotion could initiate the change. At sixteen, Sebastian and Scarborough had both shifted for the first time after their parents died in a car accident. Scar had internalized enough of his anger that he had learned to shift at will almost immediately, a dark talent Sebastian now possessed himself.

  Sorrow for the pain Liv had suffered enveloped him. “What does Liv think happened to me?”

  Nick cleared his throat like he was uncomfortable, but he didn’t evade the question or Sebastian’s stare. “He told Liv that you disappeared without a trace, no sign of foul play. She thinks you walked out on her and emptied her bank account right before you did.”

  “What?” Sebastian felt the anger rising inside of him, from his gut, feathering out to all his limbs in a hot rush. His hands twitched. “You’re telling me she thinks I stole her money and skipped out?”

  Nick shot him a look of sympathy. “She had no reason to think otherwise, especially since you would never marry her. I thought about telling her the truth, but why would she believe my crazy-ass story over Scar’s? His was a hell of a lot more believable, and the money being gone just cemented what he told her. And then he would have just killed me too and he’d still be with Liv, so there was no point. But it was rough on her, Sebastian. . . . I’ve never seen her look like that. For weeks she was just . . .” He cleared his throat. “Anyway. I’m glad you’re back, man. Your brother is a little out of control.”

  Sebastian couldn’t believe it. No wonder Liv was living with Scarborough. The guy had attempted to kill Sebastian in cold blood, then had lied to Liv about it, claiming he had walked out on her without a backward glance, with all her cash. Then clearly Scarborough had been there as a shoulder to cry on.

  The fucking bastard. It was so devious and cold and calculating.

  It made Sebastian want to throw back his head and howl in disgust and frustration.

  It made him want to go back and make love to Liv again, with more tenderness, with the truth between them.

  And it made him want to rip his brother apart, piece by miserable piece.

  “Oh, don’t worry,” he told Nick. “I have plans for Scarborough.”

  The alarm shattered Liv’s sleep and had her reaching over to smack the quiet button on her cell phone to stop the squawking. Peeling her eyes open, she swallowed, her mouth dry, and clutched the sheet a little closer to her. She was freezing. She shouldn’t have left the windows open, it was too late in the year for that. Plus she realized that somehow her nightshirt had worked its way all the way up to her neck so the majority of her body was exposed, nothing but the thin sheet covering her.

  The dream came back to her then.

  The bride, morphing into a wolf, then the bride’s room morphing to her room, then the wolf in her room morphing into Sebastian.

  It had been intense and so very real, like all the bride dreams were. Yet in this one, Sebastian had been there and he had touched and licked her, brought her to orgasm, and buried his erection in her.

  Her cheeks heated and her inner thighs throbbed at the memory. It had felt so good, so powerful, so satisfying.

  Clearly her body was hinting to her that she needed release. She refused to admit that it meant she missed Sebastian. She couldn’t possibly still crave a man who had done what he had to her.

  But there was no denying what the Sebastian in her dream had said when he was thrusting in her. He had demanded she tell him that Scarborough couldn’t make her feel that way, and she had admitted it. It didn’t take a psychologist or a professional dream interpreter to figure out what t
hat meant.

  She couldn’t bring herself to make love to Scarborough, and that was a serious problem.

  It meant she needed to be slapped for still wanting the touch of Sebastian when it was his brother who had treated her with kindness and respect.

  Yanking her nightshirt back into place, she tried to ignore the tightening of her nipples and the tingle between her thighs at the lingering memory of the dream.

  Maybe she should do dream analysis. The wolves were a curious repetitive theme of the last few months, one she really didn’t understand. And not just wolves—these were werewolves, shape-shifting humans.

  Liv forced herself out of bed. She didn’t want to be late for class. She only had half a semester to go until she had her degree, then she could finally have a decent-paying job to both support herself and replace some of the money she had lost. The money Sebastian had stolen.

  Maybe she should start taking a sleeping aid. Something to knock her out so that she didn’t dream for a few nights. Because dreams weren’t reality and she needed to put aside the false sense that Sebastian had come back to her, had touched her like he still loved her.

  As she padded across the floor to the bathroom, Liv suddenly froze. It wasn’t possible. It was just a dream....

  Yet she lifted her nightshirt, and in the early morning light streaming from the open windows, saw the distinct and telltale sign of semen trickling down her inner thigh.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Liv spent the day in an anxious fog, worrying about her sanity. She sat through her classes, the professors’ words white noise humming in the background of her rapid and frightened thoughts.

  There had been semen on her leg. There was nothing else that it could have been.

  So how did it get there? She had thought she was dreaming that she had made love to her ex-boyfriend, who was missing. She supposed it was possible that he could have returned, but it wasn’t possible that he could have changed from a wolf to a naked man in front of her eyes.

  Maybe she had still been dreaming at that point, but afterwards . . . maybe that had been real?

  But he hadn’t been there when she woke up.

  And she didn’t know what was real anymore.

  Just that as she sat through endless lecture after lecture on hard chair after hard chair, she was in fact post-sex sore between her legs, a maddening reminder that something had happened, though she wasn’t sure what.

  Mary Fran called her as she was driving home, grateful it wasn’t her day for clinicals. In no way should she be responsible for the care of patients when she was feeling as anxious as she was. Gripping the wheel tightly with her left hand, she answered the phone with her right.

  “Hey, want to meet me for a drink? It’s Friday night, and I for one am thrilled. My classes were endless this week.”

  Liv blinked hard in the dark, her headlights splayed out over a black road that seemed to be undulating in front of her. She normally loved fall, but it got dark early now and she was suddenly having trouble focusing on the road. “I can’t. I’m not feeling good.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, what’s wrong?”

  “I think . . . I think I’m having a panic attack.”

  “What! Where are you?”

  “Driving home.”

  “Pull over. Put your head between your legs.”

  Hearing Mary Fran take charge, not freaking out or judging her, somehow calmed her down. “No, it’s okay, I’m pulling in Scarborough’s driveway. I’ll be fine. I just need to lie down.”

  There was a gigantic pause, where they both knew what Mary Fran was dying to say.

  Cancel the wedding.

  Liv knew she had to. Something was not right in her head, in her heart. She had to at least postpone it until she got a grip.

  “I will,” she told her friend.

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “I know what you were thinking. Don’t worry. As soon as Scarborough gets back, I’ll talk to him.”

  “I think that’s a good idea.”

  “Yeah.” Liv swallowed the bile that was crawling up her throat as she hit the door opener and pulled into the garage.

  “Are you home yet?”

  “Yeah. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Call me if you want to chat. I’ll be around.”

  “Thanks.”

  When she went in the house, Liv stood in the middle of its quiet elegance, a house she had wanted to make her home. But it wasn’t her home. There was still no real place for Liv to call her own. No home, no family, no happiness.

  After three glasses of wine, she fell into a restless sleep in bed in front of the TV, wearing a soft T-shirt and PJ pants. When she saw the bride in her dreams, she almost sighed at the inevitability of her presence.

  But the bride only briefly appeared before the scene shifted to the woods. Sebastian and Scarborough and their cousins were drinking beers and fishing on the edge of the river. The serenity of the scene, the good-natured joking dissolved almost immediately. There was a sharp movement, Scar over Sebastian, a knife in his shoulder, a shove into the river—the cousins shouting and waving arms and a general hysteria.

  While Scarborough stood calm on the riverbank, his face a cool mask of satisfaction as he leaned down and wiped the blood off the blade in the grass.

  The bride shifted back to human, and suddenly, Liv realized she was in the woods herself, in the body of a wolf.

  Sebastian had been prepared for Liv to shift on the full moon a week later given what Nick had told him, but he hadn’t really expected she would shift earlier. Yet he still found himself poised outside Scar’s house in human form, watching, waiting. He told himself it was to ensure her safety, and that was true, but it was also the undeniable urge to be near her. He was here as a man so that he wouldn’t smell her, so that he could resist the urge to enter the room and touch her the way he had the night before.

  Now that he knew the whole truth, he was torn over how to handle it. He needed to deal with his brother, and he would as soon as Scar came back to Wisconsin. That wasn’t worrying him. What was causing him to pace the edge of the woods behind the house as he watched the bedroom window was how to explain everything to Liv. She deserved to know the full truth, but he wasn’t sure how to deliver that, knowing that her trust had been compromised.

  He didn’t know how to convince her that what they had shared was real, and that he wanted nothing more than to be with her.

  Forever.

  As her husband.

  Preoccupied with his thoughts, he was unprepared for Liv to leap out of the open window and race down the stairs, so fast she actually stumbled on the bottom few steps before recovering her balance.

  She was in wolf form.

  Sebastian stared, astonished. She was beautiful. Petite and long-legged, her fur a soft auburn, snout small and delicate. It was exactly what he would have imagined she would look like, and the wolf in him growled low in his throat in appreciation.

  This was his mate.

  He knew that as both man and wolf.

  Her hesitation as she moved across the grass gave him a clear view of her crystalline green eyes, and he sensed the uncertainty, the anxiety there. After shedding his clothes, he shifted, his plan to follow her.

  But she had heard his movement and from ten feet away, paused in her intention to enter the woods, staring at him, and snarling a warning.

  It was fear, not menace he heard and he stood still, hoping she would take off running.

  She did, and he followed, allowing distance between them so she wouldn’t feel threatened, but wanting to make sure she was safe. Only she realized he was in pursuit and she ran faster, forcing him to keep pace. Her maneuvers became a clear effort to confuse him, as she dodged in multiple directions, leaping over logs, her behavior frantic and frightened.

  Sebastian wasn’t about to let her out of his sight though, whether he was scaring her or not. Liv didn’t even remember her nights in wolf form, and he couldn’t ha
ve her out there alone. Eventually she would get tired from her efforts and either return to the safety of the house or approach him.

  Finally, after an extended chase that had them circling back around closer to the house, she drew up short, panting, and turned to confront him. Her teeth snapped and she growled in warning.

  Clearly she didn’t understand who he was. Or hell, maybe she did, given what Scarborough had told her.

  He remained loose, nonthreatening, even resting on his haunches to show her he had no interest in fighting.

  She eyed him for a second, wary, then she launched herself at him, baring her teeth. Sebastian stood his ground. He wasn’t going to leave, but neither was he going to fight back if she chose to attack him. This was Liv, and he would defend himself only as necessary, but he wouldn’t harm her. In a wild lunge, she snapped at his neck. He dodged her, but she managed to clip his shoulder, digging into the flesh beneath the fur.

  The pain was minimal, but an involuntary growl came out on instinct.

  Liv yelped, backed up, and shifted.

  Astonished, Sebastian realized she had frightened herself right back into human form, and she was crumpled on a pile of leaves, naked, eyes glassy and confused.

  She spotted him and opened her mouth to scream.

  Sebastian shifted too, and the scream he expected never arrived. Her eyes widened in astonishment and she lifted her head slightly for a better view.

  “I’m dreaming again,” she murmured. “Dreaming, nothing more. Crazy, crazy dreaming.”

  “You’re not dreaming. This is real,” he told her, moving carefully toward her, wanting to offer some kind of comfort. “It’s okay.”

  “It can’t be real. You were a werewolf a second ago. I think I was a werewolf . . . none of that makes any sense. Those things aren’t real.”

  “Do you feel awake?” he asked her, squatting down to the ground so he wasn’t towering over her.

  She hesitated, but then she nodded as she sat up. “I feel awake. I’m cold and damp and my nose is running. It feels sharp, like reality. But it can’t be. I’m naked in the woods with you. This can’t be real.”