Wolf Slayer

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  She had heard him, but maybe his sister wasn’t quite ready to do as he asked, since she fit better like this in the chair by the fire. Giving Gwen any kind of comfort now, with the dark entity so close, was worth a few more moments of risk.

  Just not too many of those moments.

  * * *

  What had Jonas meant about the silver?

  That question plagued Tess all the way home, but it had to stand in line with all the others.

  If she could have found another werewolf on the prowl tonight, some of her useless, wayward energy could have been used up. As it was, her body had become a nagging, treacherous backstabber, compelling her to turn back and sample more of what Jonas had to offer. He was so damn good at screwing, and she was a sucker for the high.

  Still, what they had done hadn’t fit the term screwing. There was more to what their bodies had expected from that session on the hood of her car. Jonas had called it mating. He had used the word imprinting. But Jonas was nuts, and told her she was a wolf. The only word to describe her now was idiot, and Tess was fully prepared to own it.

  As she drove, Tess searched the dark, looking for a blacker piece of night that might hide a lurker. That thing was after the girl Jonas kept hidden away, and no one would have wanted it to find her.

  That girl was...unusual. Meeting her produced pangs of jealousy that were as outrageous as they were unwarranted. Jonas wouldn’t have touched that girl. She knew this. So had he been hired to hide her, or were those two related?

  Those blue eyes might point to the latter idea. Nevertheless, lots of people had blue eyes. So did she.

  Her cabin seemed forlorn when compared to the one Jonas had filled with a comforting fire. And yet there was nothing comforting about the vibes that girl had given out. There was something disturbing about her, something Tess couldn’t pinpoint. Those eyes still seemed familiar. The way the girl had dropped to one knee was familiar.

  If only she could think straight.

  If she could go back there and demand answers, she would have felt better...until Tess remembered what Jonas had told her.

  “Wolf? In your dreams,” she muttered as she got out of the Jeep. She felt compelled to add, “There will be silver waiting for you if you show up here again without an invitation.”

  But her body wasn’t one with her on that threat. She was throbbing in all the wrong places when danger was all around them...and there was nothing she could do about that.

  She had made a stand and had to stick by it.

  Getting out of the Jeep was tough. Her stomach was tight. Her legs felt weak. And there was that leftover emptiness, still demanding to be satisfied.

  “I’ll deal,” she said with determination. “I will get over it.”

  She had been well used tonight, and mating like that, with a male like Jonas, required the one kind of stamina she didn’t have in her repertoire. A warm bath to ease the aches and a cup of her mother’s special tea would be a good start to a full recovery. She would sleep tonight. The silver infusion was already wearing off, burned away by all the chasing and...mating.

  Putting Jonas out of her mind was going to be a harder chore if he could break in whenever he wanted to. The echo of his last words were with her still.

  It’s the silver, and how you’ve been using it. That has to be the key.

  Key to what?

  “Don’t go there, Tess,” she said aloud to set the remark in stone. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Getting Jonas’s scent off her was what mattered.

  Catching up on sleep mattered.

  She was not going to be tainted by the words of a werewolf, a Lycan, hoping to turn her head with nonsense.

  Looking at the floor by the front door and the drop of blood she hadn’t stopped to clean up earlier, Tess’s vow crumbled.

  “So where is the white wolf, Jonas?” she asked, hopefully keeping that question from the airwaves connecting her to the Lycan who believed she had to be like him in order to explain what had transpired between them tonight.

  Tess stared at the floor. Thoughts nagged. Chills cascaded down her back.

  Suddenly, strange feelings of having just put two and two together arrived with the force of a physical blow. The girl at Jonas’s cabin had looked at her with the same expression of need that his pet had exhibited on the floor in this hallway.

  “No.” Tess shook her head to negate the absurdity of the thought. However—and hell—if a Lycan was hiding both a girl and a white wolf, what if those two things were one and the same?

  “No. Can’t be true.”

  The girl didn’t smell like a wolf, but she had been naked, with pale skin and hair. That girl had the look of someone who was ill and in need of warmth. Could a Lycan change into a four-legged animal? Jonas hadn’t, and besides, she had never heard of such a thing.

  The thought persisted.

  Was there a chance the girl in Jonas’s cabin had done that—changed into a four-legged wolf with no Were scent attached to the transition? Had that girl sustained injuries tonight after attacking a dark evil entity in the mist?

  Tess sat down on the nearest chair, stunned by the revelation.

  “You bastard,” she sent to Jonas.

  Chapter 25

  Jonas’s body was throbbing with need for Tess, and the reason for that had been made clear.

  He’d have to use more caution now. The plan to get away was a good one. Still, an imprinted pair couldn’t be separated for long. Any prolonged distance would tear a mated pair apart both mentally and physically. The only way to cheat that kind of pairing would be if one half of the imprinted pair died, and he wasn’t going to allow anything to happen to Tess.

  She had been...

  Tess had been sheer bliss tonight, both beside him in the fight with that damn dark entity and beneath him on the hood of that car. Her body was as warm and pliant as the leather clothes she wore. Her mind was another matter.

  He looked at Gwen, who was standing near the fire covered in the blanket he had tossed her. His sister had to know what he and Tess had done.

  “Yes. Okay. The mighty hunter next door is one of us,” he said to his sister.

  Gwen was looking at him the way she always did—expressionless face, wide eyes. Jonas now realized he had begun to see a pattern there, however slight, that provided hints of what his sister might be thinking. As he had already surmised, he wasn’t the only one in this family who was seriously attracted to Tess.

  “I’m afraid she will now know about you after this,” he continued. “Tess is smart and savvy. The problem is that I just don’t know what she will do with the information. And anyway, that dark thing hovering around here is too close for comfort. We will have to go.”

  Jonas heard the ache of regret in his voice. Leaving Tess was going to be one hell of a cross to bear.

  Gwen’s gaze moved to the window, which was his sister’s way of asking a question without having to use her voice.

  “I didn’t tell you about that dark thing on our trail. I didn’t want you to worry about anything other than the road to a full recovery.”

  Her gaze slid back to him.

  “I won’t tell you more about that now, other than to say that leaving would be in our best interest and as soon as possible. Tonight, if you’re well enough to manage it. I’ll start packing up while you rest. It won’t take long. We didn’t bring much.”

  Gwen shook her head, a response that came as another surprise.

  “We can’t stay. Not now,” Jonas explained.

  In his heart, though, he already knew that the dark thing out there would find them wherever they went and that leaving here would only prolong the next meeting, as well as the one after that.

  He also realized that Gwen hadn’t recovered enough in her human form to be able to constantly travel from place to
place without spending most of her time as a wolf. It was tough to hide a white wolf, as they had recently found out. And Gwen’s behavior was still unpredictable.

  “We can come back here later,” he said, meaning that. For him, there would be no other option. He’d have to be with Tess again no matter what Tess’s thoughts about it were.

  “Bastard.”

  The word Tess sent arrived to punctuate his last thought. Jonas whipped around to hide his expression from his sister. He had been right. Tess now knew that Gwen was the white wolf and he couldn’t wait around to see what she planned to do about it.

  Man, he hated that. He felt the loss deeply, and already.

  He found a much bigger problem when he turned back to find Gwen on the floor, gasping for breath. No curse he had ever heard was sufficient to describe the pain that struck him as he rushed to gather his sister in his arms.

  “Gwen? Hun?” His voice was hoarse with worry. “Can you open your eyes? Slow your breathing the way we’ve been taught to do? Gwen, can you hear me? Don’t panic. There’s no need to be afraid.”

  That was a lie, of course. The dark thing might not have been able to find Gwen in the wolf’s outline, but it was here nonetheless. This could be what Gwen was sensing and the reason for this latest panic attack.

  “Breathe,” Jonas directed, thinking he’d never get used to seeing his sister affected like this, gladdened by the fact that he and others in the strong Miami pack had caught the bastards that had hurt her so gravely.

  Hell, compared to what Gwen had faced, Tess didn’t know what a real bastard looked like.

  As Gwen’s shaking began to calm, Jonas revisited his vow to do anything to keep his sister safe, even if that meant tearing himself away from Tess for as long as was physically possible so that he and Gwen could hit the road.

  He studied Gwen’s face as she drew in a few deep breaths, heartened when her white lashes fluttered. In a minor mind disturbance that called for his attention, he heard Tess ask a question. “Why have you ruined everything?”

  Hearing her voice brought back each blissful moment he had shared with her when they had made love...though making love didn’t accurately describe the way they had gone at each other in his front yard. Hearing her voice in his mind, without having her beside him, was making him hard all over again.

  He had it bad for this wolf hunter.

  “The truth is the truth,” Jonas sent back to her. “There is no getting around it. You might never have found out what you are, but that doesn’t change the facts.”

  Gwen’s lashes fluttered again. Her shaking had ceased. The lines on her young forehead had smoothed out.

  “I need you out of my head, wolf,” Tess sent.

  “Won’t happen, Tess.”

  “Make it happen.”

  “Disconnecting with you is beyond my abilities. We have mated. For me, that’s a strong, enduring link.”

  Gwen’s eyes opened, blinked slowly, remained open.

  “What does silver have to do with anything?” Tess asked.

  “Now isn’t the time to explain, Tess.”

  “You’re with the girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “That girl is the wolf.”

  “I will protect her with my life, whatever she might or might not be. The question I now have is whether I will have to protect her from you.”

  Gwen was looking at him in a way that made Jonas believe she could hear the silent conversation taking place between him and his lover. He didn’t really care about that if hearing Tess’s thoughts was the trick that had eased Gwen’s tremors.

  “Why is that dark creep after her?” Tess sent.

  “It’s not the time for discussions like that,” Jonas replied.

  “You will go? Leave here?”

  “I think we have to.”

  “I won’t hurt her. Would never hurt her. I wanted to tell you that,” Tess sent.

  Jonas closed his eyes. When he reopened them, it was to find Gwen smiling.

  * * *

  Tess stopped herself from thinking about Jonas and the wolf girl by telling herself that her sanity depended on her taking a break.

  Jonas was going to leave here, leave her.

  All around her and in each direction Tess looked, there were signs of the parents that had taught her to hate his breed. Her father’s chair was by a fireplace where no cozy fire burned. Her mother’s dishes lined the shelves, and her mother’s favorite tea mug was in Tess’s hand.

  Those were the parents she had loved. This was the family she had given everything else up to emulate, including the hopes of having her own family someday. And her life had been a lie? That’s what Jonas was suggesting?

  Somehow, according to Jonas, she had become one of the creatures whose numbers she had been trained to cull. He had good reason to wonder about that, she had to admit. How else could she speak across channels only open to his species? There was no other way to explain the sound she had made while in the throes of ecstasy in Jonas’s arms.

  She had growled. And that wasn’t all. A new kind of wildness had been born when Jonas’s erection had been buried inside her. It was as if Jonas’s skillful penetration of her body had shaken loose some new part of her, and that thing had clawed its way to her throat. She felt that wildness now, more distantly, but still there. The feeling was of having swallowed something alive that now wanted out.

  There. Inside her. A fistful of foreign sensations roused by Jonas’s touch. His goddamn werewolf Lycan touch.

  Tess found herself at the medicine cabinet without actually knowing how she got there. She had replaced her mother’s mug with the bottle of liquefied silver, and as she held the bottle, Jonas’s words regarding the silver and how she’d been using it rang over and over in her mind.

  Tess fingered the bottle, trying to recall the first time the contents of this particular bottle and others like it had been used to shore up her energy levels. She struggled to recall if she had seen either of her parents dip into this cabinet for themselves and couldn’t picture it.

  Werewolves were allergic to silver and various other metals. That was one of the first rules she had learned. There was enough silver in this cabinet to take down an entire pack of werewolves. Ten packs. So if Jonas’s beliefs were founded in fact and she harbored latent Were tendencies, the injections she had endured would have killed her long ago.

  Yet here she was.

  “Explain that, wolf,” she whispered. “And go to hell for making me think for one second that you could be right.”

  Nevertheless, she wasn’t quite right inside. Not after being with Jonas. She hadn’t been on track since meeting him. Part of her gravitated to him easily. Part of her wanted another session with Jonas’s physical talent and sexual prowess. He alone had made her feel like she could be someone else. Like she might actually be someone else, other than the woman she had grown up believing herself to be.

  Would that be such a bad thing?

  Hell, yes.

  She thought hard, digging up another possible explanation for the way she was feeling. Maybe being intimate with a Were meant that Were virus had been passed to her as a type of transmittable contagion. Maybe Jonas had put it there with each pulse and thrust he had made into her open-legged, willing body and sealed it inside her with an orgasm that had rocked her world and everything in it.

  She’d damn him to hell if that turned out to be true. She would hunt him down and show no mercy.

  Or else, damn it, maybe a growl was just a growl and nothing more...and she was being played.

  Tess put the bottle back on the shelf and closed the cabinet. If it was all a game with Jonas and she was imagining things, he’d take those games with him when he left.

  In the hallway, Tess paused to look into the mirror. Due to the darkness of the hallway, all she saw was her out
line. But it was her outline, and familiar.

  “Bastard,” she muttered for the tenth time. Because the only real way to find out if Jonas had spoken the truth was to wait for the next full moon, ditch the silver infusion and see what happened. And there were a lot of nights to get through between now and then.

  * * *

  Gwen wasn’t happy with his decision to pack up and leave, and neither was Jonas. He had to constantly remind himself that a sprint to Tess’s house would be a bad idea and that he couldn’t leave Gwen alone.

  His sister hadn’t gotten up off the floor. She sat cross-legged on the rug with her back to the fire. Her eyes tracked his moves. She was better now. Gwen’s latest panic attack was over. It had taken a toll, though. A light film of sweat dampened the pale hair at her temples.

  He looked at her over his shoulder. “If we stay, there’s no way to determine the outcome. We can’t really be sure how strong that creature is. You do see that?”

  Gwen would go after Death’s dark emissary again if it showed up here, and he couldn’t stand the thought. Besides being necessary to him, his sister was necessary to every other wolf on the planet. Jonas didn’t see how he could go on if he couldn’t live up to his vow to protect his sister.

  However, running from place to place and dragging Gwen along wasn’t good for his sister either. It would have been better if he had been able to keep her in Miami without bringing attention to her and how special she was, and that hadn’t been possible.

  If they stayed, he might lose Gwen. If he ran, he’d lose Tess. The only way to reason that kind of dilemma out was to simply realize that the world was screwed up sometimes.

  On the periphery of his mind, he felt Tess thinking about him. It made him want her all the more. Everybody needed answers. He wasn’t the only one with gaps to fill. But the fact staring him in the face was that he wasn’t the only one here with a desire to be near Tess.

  “Gwen,” he said, turning slowly. “Let’s get you dressed. We’re going to pay a call on our neighbor.”

  Gwen was way ahead of him, which confirmed more of his guesses about her. She was already heading for her room to make herself more presentable to the only wolf hunter in this part of the state...meaning that Gwen might stay in human form for a while longer. Plus, Jonas couldn’t contain his own enthusiasm over the thought of seeing his lover again so soon.