The Black Wolf

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  Or so she told herself.

  Beyond that, she had no idea what might come next. She had expected that this closeness would make her feel better, but she actually felt worse. Rafe Landau was pure electricity, and he was sending her bottled-up energy into overdrive. Scrambled images flashed in her mind like small bombs going off, all of them connected to the emotions she held in check. Vampires were cold. Werewolves were warm. Rafe Landau was volcanic.

  The world around her dimmed as the sensations she was experiencing took over. Air shivered. The ground moved. This one little meeting of their mouths sent Cara’s stomach into free fall and numbed every warning message her nervous system kicked up.

  She had dared to get close to a being that was most like her in terms of species, and they were connecting. Here, so far from her home, she had seen her father mauled by bloodsuckers, and she had found comfort after that vision where it was least expected...in the arms of one of the Landaus, who were gatekeepers to a past she desperately needed to find.

  For another second or two—mere blips in the scale of time—when Rafe’s lips parted and his emotion caught up with the surprise, the kiss became a real one. As his breath became her breath and his hands slid around her waist, Cara imagined that she also might have become nothing more than an image projected onto this place—someone both experiencing this closeness firsthand and observing it from afar.

  His heat was her heat. Rafe’s breath was sweet and his mouth was sublime. His body felt extremely masculine and toned, and that new awareness seemed to cue something in her body that had been dormant.

  More changes were growing inside her, rising to engulf her, and all of them were centered in her chest. Her heart beat furiously and in time with Rafe’s. His strength became hers as if transferred by the meeting of their lips. Their bodies were trysting on a physical level, and she didn’t know how to deal.

  In the periphery of Cara’s awareness, sounds rang out that she couldn’t concentrate on or identify. Rafe’s mouth was everything and her sole focus. He was the epicenter for needs she had never before accessed.

  His thoughts whirled like cyclones in her mind as their connection continued to deepen. When their tongues tentatively touched, more inner fires sprang up to engulf her. He silently repeated her name, moving his lips over hers. It was like a song that got progressively louder. Like a tune she had heard somewhere in the past.

  She was listening to the call of the wild. The sound of one wolf attending to another in a time of need. Male to female. Were to Were...except that her world had spun her beyond all that and into a category all of its own.

  “Cara, I’m here.”

  She couldn’t take any more input. Circuits were frying and their mouths were sealed together in a way that neither of them had the power to disconnect. Half-hearted phrases she had once used for her dream man, such as Make him pay were something she no longer wanted. Not now. Not yet. Maybe never.

  The outside world finally intervened, interrupting these moments of sensual chaos. Voices other than her and Rafe’s inner messages to each other became too prominent to ignore, and her companion’s lips left hers. Rafe’s blue eyes bored into hers as if he had also been drowning in emotion and regretted coming up for air.

  “Rafe,” someone called out. “This is folly. Come home now.”

  Her wits returned too slowly to have aided her if this were an enemy. Cara shook her head hard and broke eye contact with Rafe. She turned her head to refocus, feeling as if she were tipping off balance until her attention landed on the silver-haired alpha of the pack, and recent events quickly filled her mind.

  This kiss had been a distraction meant to cover up a rebellious act and had turned into something more.

  Beside her, Rafe called out, “She’s okay. We’re okay. We just took a little detour.”

  There was a sharpness to his voice that made Cara’s nerves buzz. Surely Rafe’s father had heard that edge? Still, Rafe hadn’t lied about the detour. So would there be repercussions for ignoring his father’s suggestions and for kissing the freak he was supposed to have been protecting?

  Back in action and mentally armed, Cara sensed a new disturbance that might have explained the seriousness of Dylan Landau’s tone. There were other Weres here, and they were easy to locate by scent, but there was an alternate presence not quite so easy to assess. A presence that wasn’t willing to be detected.

  Not a vampire.

  Not a werewolf like Rafe or his father.

  Cara now regretted being the cause of this latest round of troubles for Rafe and his family. But she knew for a fact that more trouble was on its way.

  * * *

  His father had sent up a silent warning that Rafe barely heard over the words of Cara’s messaged apology.

  “I didn’t mean to bring this down on you, but it was an inevitable consequence of my coming here.”

  Bring what down on them? Danger? Lust?

  Rafe took a sideways step, holding up a hand to signal Cara to wait while two members of his pack glided in behind his father. Danger was a signal that made all werewolves twitchy. These Weres were on high alert, their muscles corded.

  Rafe looked to Cara for guidance. Who else might be out there in the dark, able to avoid his extraordinary gift of sight? He had become aware of this other presence by reading her mind, though her face showed no hint of anything out of the ordinary.

  His father strode forward like a silver bullet—fast, purposeful, geared up for the task at hand, whatever that might be. “Foreign,” his dad said to the small group that surrounded Cara. With a few sharp gestures, he encouraged everyone to move in the direction of the wall.

  There was no reason to disobey that directive. His father rarely issued commands, so when he did, everyone listened. Nevertheless, Rafe got no real sense of what Cara believed could be out here spying on them. In all the time he had worn a badge, his radar for anomalies had been trained on human criminals and rogue Weres. Tonight, he had added vampires to that list, but he didn’t catch their odor on the sultry incoming breeze.

  They swiftly hustled forward in their small circle, with Cara quiet in the center of this man-wolf show of testosterone. His father had brought the gate guards, two big guys used to tackling problems head-on. Against an invisible foe, however, muscle would be useless. Even so, though Rafe didn’t often regret leaving his gun locked in a safe in his apartment, he regretted it now. If nothing else, he could have waved the weapon around as an added incentive for unseen interlopers to back off.

  They reached the wall in tight formation. Rafe’s father held out his hand to help Cara over, but she shook her head. Finding grooves in the stone with her fingertips, she simply hoisted herself up and over the wall with ease.

  Rafe went next. He was used to climbing this wall, having mastered the skill as a kid. The others followed. Although he’d been afraid that Cara would be long gone when they landed, she was there on the lawn. Quiet and oddly calm, she nodded her thanks to each Were in turn, and then paused to search Rafe’s face.

  “They’re not coming here,” she said. Her voice was steady. “Not tonight.”

  Then she walked toward the house as if nothing had happened. All eyes turned to Rafe for the explanation. Regretfully, he had only one.

  Privacy was the word that came to his mind, and also the worst possible thing he could have said.

  “Sheer lunacy,” Dylan Landau countered, with a hard look at his son.

  Had they seen the kiss? The intimacy he and Cara had shared?

  Cara had asked him not to mention her vision. If he was trustworthy, he’d honor that request and dig deep for another way to smooth over this breach of etiquette with his father. For werewolves, lies were tough to maintain. Weres read Weres. There was no option here but to speak as much of the truth as he could, in spite of what his father and the others might think.

  “I
’m attracted to her.” Rafe shrugged his shoulders.

  “So I see,” his father said. “Does that make you mindless and blind to your responsibilities?”

  “Neither, actually. If I couldn’t handle what might have been out there, Cara certainly could have.”

  His father dismissed the other Weres with a barked thank-you, which meant that Rafe was going to have a one-on-one with the alpha.

  “Seriously?” his father said, turning back. “You’d put Cara at risk after she ignored the rules a second time in a single night?”

  “I had no real choice but to follow her. Should I have let her go out there alone or taken the time to call for help?”

  “Is that what you call protecting her, Rafe? Holding her like that?”

  So, his father had seen the kiss...

  Instead of following up with further objections, though, his father added, “I get it. It was that way for me when I met Dana. I was instantly attracted to her. But your mother, who was forbidden as a mate for me at the time, was human until she had a lesson from the bad wolf that changed her. While Cara is...more.”

  Rafe smiled warily, able to feel the lingering softness of Cara’s mouth. He recalled that Cara had been segregated from others for all of her young life, and that what had happened in the park tonight might have been her first dip into the realm of adult pastimes.

  The thought gave him a few seconds of pleasure before he responded to his father.

  “We haven’t imprinted, so you can skip the birds and the bees lecture. She’s safe. We’re here. End of story,” he said.

  “I hope that’s true, Rafe. I haven’t set eyes on Colton Killion for more years than I can count on both hands. He was a tough bastard before fate rose up to bite him, and I can only imagine what he’s like now. Entrusting his daughter to us was a miracle in itself. How she fares here is up to us.”

  “Maybe,” Rafe countered. “However, it’s not that straightforward. Cara has a mind of her own. She is unlike us, yes, and I’m not convinced that she wants to be like us, or if she even could be if that was the purpose for this visit. Cara is merely tolerating us and is used to having more freedom. Who among us would like to be displaced or caged?”

  “No one is caged. Cara can go home any time she decides to. This is an invitation, not a life sentence. It’s our home, not a prison.”

  “I hope she sees it that way,” Rafe said.

  “Cara will see it like that if she has no reason to believe otherwise.”

  “And if she jumps the wall on occasion in order to assure herself that she’s free?” Rafe asked.

  His father had no answer for that and didn’t try to make one up. Dylan Landau had built his reputation as a lawyer and, eventually, a federal judge on honesty and fairness. He had always played fair with his son, as well as the other Weres in the pack he had inherited from Rafe’s grandfather. No one could say this alpha didn’t try to understand all sides of an argument. And Dylan Landau was still, after all these years, deeply in love with his wife.

  “Kissing her was the only way to stop Cara from whatever she was going to do out there,” Rafe said.

  His father nodded thoughtfully. “Be careful. That’s all I ask.”

  Their little chat had gotten them nowhere, really, and both of them knew it.

  “Dad. Why would a vampire come after one of us if the stories about their appetites are true?” Rafe asked.

  “Like the one you met tonight?”

  Rafe nodded. “What did it have to gain if our blood disgusts them?”

  His father eyed him thoughtfully. “I suppose that it might have been to take you out of the picture.”

  “I wonder what picture that would be?”

  They both looked at the house as if they could still see Cara walking up the steps.

  Rafe spoke first. “Believing that would mean that the vampires somehow knew about my affiliation with this pack, and perhaps even that Cara was coming here.”

  “Yes. And I don’t like the sound of that,” his father said in a sober tone. “Or that fact that vampires have returned and dare to show themselves. It will bear looking into.”

  A heavy silence fell as they contemplated the ramifications of what had been said. Finally, his father smiled and clapped Rafe on the back. “Hungry?” Without waiting for an answer, he led the way to the house. The house that felt different to Rafe now that Cara Kirk-Killion was here, stirring to life so many of its secrets.

  Chapter 10

  Cara stood by a window, fighting the need to go back out there, beyond the wall, to find more of her mother’s memories and the elusive presence that had disturbed her.

  At the moment, there were only three wolves in the house with her. No army. No bolted doors. Rafe and his father were on the lawn by the steps, deep in conversation. Here in a house where privileged werewolves lived and so many others came and went, sensing anything beyond the werewolf presence was impossible. Cara had to shelve her curiosity about that wall and what lay beyond it for the time being and try to get along when small aches plagued her from the way she was clenching her teeth.

  The house was grand in spite of what Rafe’s mother had said, and too large for Cara’s simpler taste. There were rooms and doorways everywhere. The expansive salon she stood in had high ceilings and a polished wood fireplace. Pictures lined the walls. Each piece of furniture looked as though it had been placed with care. This was in direct contrast to her home, which was a sprawling cabin filled with rough-hewn furniture, surrounded by trees and reached by way of a seldom-used dirt road.

  But her mother and father had both been guests here in the past, so Cara didn’t feel completely isolated from them. It was possible that their spirits and memories remained in these hallways, as they had in the park. If that were the case, she would find them.

  “Would you like to see your room before having something to eat?” Rafe’s mother asked from an open doorway.

  “Yes. Thank you,” Cara replied, not used to being civil with strangers, no matter who they were.

  “Hang tight, then. I’ll just be a minute,” Dana Delmonico Landau said before disappearing into the room beyond.

  The offer to stay in the room her mother had used was another example of how these Weres seemed to know a lot about her parents, while she was at a disadvantage, knowing nothing about this pack. Well, almost nothing, Cara silently amended as she ran a fingertip over her lips. Some things about Rafe Landau were clear, and most of that information was as disturbing as everything else.

  Though strong and capable, Rafe had not pressured her to behave. He had gone along with her without complaint when he could have turned things around. Would he honor her request to keep what she had seen in the park to himself, as well as the fact that she could wolf up without the help of a full moon?

  Her treacherous body hadn’t lost the sparks their intimacy had ignited and wanted her to return to Rafe now. Cara crossed her arms over her chest to hide the ongoing thud of each heartbeat as her thoughts stayed on Rafe.

  When he turned and followed his father toward the house, she backed away from the window.

  “Okay,” Dana said from somewhere behind her. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you up. Your things are already in the room, having arrived before you did.”

  This could have been a small dig about Cara’s earlier MIA status, though the tone didn’t seem accusatory.

  “If you’d prefer to have a tray in your room, that can be managed,” Rafe’s mother offered. “Just tell me what you want to do, and what would make you the most comfortable for your first night away from home.”

  “Tray, I think,” Cara said gratefully, and Dana waved her toward the stairs.

  “You knew her?” Cara asked as they climbed higher into the house, thinking more of her family than of food. “You knew Rosalind?”

  “Not really.
I loaned her some clothes once when she needed them,” Dana said.

  Cara wondered if this was another allusion to the fact that she was in a similar circumstance, dressed only in Rafe’s torn shirt.

  “I left my clothes near the ocean,” she said.

  “That’s where you met the vampire?” Dana asked without looking back from the step above.

  “Yes. There.”

  “Sensing vampires is a talent that comes in handy. Things could have been easier around here in the past if more of us had that capability,” her hostess remarked.

  “You’ve fought them before?”

  “Oh, yes. And I’m lucky to be here to say so.”

  They reached a landing on the second floor and kept going to another set of stairs that led to a compact space high above the yard. Cara saw only one door here, which led to a small room. After so many years had passed, the small space somehow still carried a diluted version of Rosalind Kirk’s floral scent.

  Behind Dana’s back, Cara finally smiled.

  “The room hasn’t been used in a while,” Rafe’s mother said. “We haven’t had guests in years.”

  “It’s fine for me.”

  Compact and spare, the room contained only a bed, a dresser and a chair. The ceiling slanted toward a window that someone had already opened to let the night air in. Her bag was on the floor.

  Leaning against the doorjamb, Dana said, “Your mother jumped from that window once. No one knows how she accomplished that without breaking a bone.”

  Cara moved to the window to look out, noting the distance to the yard below.

  “I hope you’ll use the door while you’re here, Cara,” Dana said. She was smiling. “The bathroom is behind the curtain beside the closet.”

  Cara nodded.

  “Now, about dinner,” Dana said. “I’ll get that tray and be back in no time.”

  “Thank you,” Cara replied, though she was tuned in to the view of the yard and picturing her mother leaping three stories to freedom. Why Rosalind had taken such an action was the question that plagued her.