The Black Wolf

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  * * *

  Rafe couldn’t wait to see Cara and didn’t appreciate how that thought kept taking precedence over others. He hesitated on the porch as his father went inside before he backtracked to the yard.

  Taking his time, trying to remain calm, Rafe walked to the side of the house. It had only been occupied by his mother and father for the last ten years, though they had visited his grandparents here often before then. He knew which room was Cara’s and that she would be there. That room, high under the eaves, was another part of the Kirk-Killion legend. Out of all rooms in the house, Cara would be the most comfortable there, when everyone else avoided the space.

  He found the window he sought—Cara was framed in it. She hadn’t changed her clothes. The fact that she still wore his shirt gave him unexpected pangs of pleasure. This was a category of female he had never expected to find. Cara was seductive, secretive, part animal and extraordinarily beautiful. He wanted not only to protect her, but to possess her.

  And it was a good thing he hadn’t imparted that piece of information to his father.

  Can’t have her, his mind argued. I know better.

  Nice try, his mind kicked back. But the reminders weren’t working. Rafe had a hard time convincing himself that he didn’t really need to see her again so soon.

  They hadn’t had time to get to know each other. Their conversations had been sparse and their meetings filled with strange activity. Despite all that, Rafe felt as if he knew Cara on a level way beyond normal and that the extremes of their emotional connection bypassed any need for further details.

  This thing between them, whether wrong or right, remained inexplicable. Maybe it was a case of animal magnetism at its best. Surely it was a hell of a lot more than lust at first sight.

  “Are you all right?” he called out to her.

  “She jumped from here,” Cara said.

  “Rosalind? Yes. So the story goes.”

  “Does the story say why she did that?”

  “I don’t suppose anyone would know the reason, except for your mother,” Rafe said.

  “We didn’t sit around telling stories. My parents aren’t legends to me.”

  “How did you pass the time out there?” Rafe knew he was pressing his luck, and he didn’t actually expect Cara to reply. Plus, they were speaking loudly enough for anyone around to hear.

  “We hunted,” she said.

  “For food?”

  “For monsters.”

  Rafe blinked slowly to hide the fact that he should have seen that one coming. “Were there a lot of monsters?”

  “An endless supply,” she replied.

  “Did anyone help?”

  “Now and then, but it was a task for us in the end.”

  When Cara shook her head, her jet-black hair, dry now and sleek, ruffled in the breeze that also moved the curtains beside her. The desire to catch hold of those shiny tendrils drilled at Rafe’s insides and caused him to take a few backward steps.

  He heard another familiar voice through the open window and watched Cara turn her head. She then turned back.

  “Dinner?” he asked.

  After nodding, Cara left the window. Moments later, she was beside him on the lawn.

  Rafe flinched with surprise.

  She maintained a distance of several feet between them this time and seemed to be waiting for him to say something. Rafe rallied with a casual remark. “Maybe you can show me how to do that teleporting trick while you’re here. Other officers on the force would be envious.”

  “It’s a family secret,” she said.

  Rafe thought her tone was light, as if she might be teasing him. The fact that she could dig up some lightness, with everything going on, seemed like a good sign and provided him with more insight into the Cara he wanted to know.

  He willed himself not to look at the bare legs she didn’t seem at all self-conscious about. And that was hard. He was a male, after all, and it was a toss-up where to actually keep his focus, since all parts of the female standing in front of him were worthy of attention. He had to constantly remind himself that she was off-limits and that she would leave soon, in spite of those wicked inner flames and the desire to take her in his arms.

  “Are we alone?” she asked, training her gaze on him. Her big green eyes were alight with excitement.

  “No,” he replied. “I think you know that without me having to tell you.”

  “Can we walk? Will they stop us this time?”

  “That depends on the direction we go.”

  “Near to the wall.”

  “It wouldn’t be a good idea,” Rafe said.

  “Just near to it. Not over it.”

  He waited for Cara to say more.

  “Not over it,” she repeated.

  He nodded. “We can do that.”

  “Go ahead and say what you’re thinking,” she suggested.

  “I might be arrested if I did.”

  The remark appeared to throw her. Dark hair curtained the sides of Cara’s face when she tilted her head questioningly, so that she appeared to have been swathed in reams of black silk.

  “Never mind,” Rafe said. “Let’s walk.”

  “I expected you to ask me to promise to behave myself,” she said. “Why haven’t you?”

  “I don’t recall how many times I broke that kind of promise,” he said. “I’ll just trust you and leave it at that. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  Rafe balled both hands to keep from reaching for her, wishing she had put on a damn pair of pants and that she didn’t look so immensely appealing. Both man and wolf were twitching with appreciation for the opportunity to be with Cara again. After her little excursion to the beach not more than a couple of hours ago, and a little wall-hopping after that, watchful eyes truly would be on them at all times.

  He didn’t like being observed. However, his father’s trust might have slipped somewhat where Rafe’s dealings with Cara were concerned, and with good reason...because as soon as they were out of direct light, and with others watching them or not, he planned on kissing Cara again. Anyone who protested that could go to hell.

  Eyes like green fire met his, as though Cara had read that last thought, as well as the thoughts preceding it. Feeling as though he had been caught in a tractor beam, Rafe had a sudden sensation of falling through space.

  Chapter 11

  Within the chaos taking Cara over, two things stood out. The first was the idea of making it beyond the Landaus’ wall as soon as the chance presented itself. The second was an almost dire need for more intimacy with Rafe. Right then, both desires carried equal weight.

  In the open, with the grass under her feet and Rafe beside her, the hope of running away began to wither. So far, no one had mistreated her or allowed the rumors about her family to dictate the terms of her confinement. All in all, the Landaus had gone out of their way to make her feel welcome and as though she was just another potential packmate.

  Once they got wind of Rafe’s budding feelings for her, however, all that might change. If given a choice, Rafe would have to stand with his pack. It was useless to imagine otherwise, or that she and Rafe could develop a true friendship within these massive stone barriers. She had never had a friend. Had never needed one until now, though already Rafe felt like so much more than that to her.

  With his scent in her lungs and his eyes following each move she made, Cara wished things could have been different. That she hadn’t been born a creature whose segregation was necessary in order to protect outsiders from feeling the wrath of the monsters that regularly appeared at her family’s gates.

  Did friendship involve subjecting each other to danger? What if this thing with Rafe went well past the definition of that term?

  Dealing with isolation was a lesson she had been taught early on, and it made good sen
se in the long run. If Miami’s population knew nothing about the existence of werewolves and vampires, what would they think about demons? What would they think about a creature like her, who was a conglomeration of all those things?

  She was the main attraction for monsters, just as her mother had been. Dark recognized dark, and inheriting the spirit of a Banshee meant she carried death’s breath inside her in spite of the fact that housing this Banshee had been the result of a good deed done by that ancient spirit in her mother’s family’s past.

  Tonight’s vision in the park had shown Cara that her mother had used the dark spirit to save her future mate, in a daring replay of the incident in the dark spirit’s ancient past that had tied the Banshee to Cara’s ancestors. What this also insinuated was that the Banshee’s purpose could somehow be manipulated, and that the spirit could possibly be persuaded to help with a cause that was contrary to a Banshee’s reason for existing. Or else maybe the Banshee now owed Cara’s family for giving it a place to exist.

  The problem was that the black breath, however it had gotten inside her, attracted anomalies of all kinds. Her mother had lived with that same problem for many years before unknowingly passing it to her daughter. Darkness was part of Cara’s birthright. In contrast, everything in Miami was colorful and blindingly bright.

  The only saving grace for her predicament, as far as Cara saw, was having her father’s pure Lycan blood as a stabilizing factor. With the added infusion of his worldly, humanized Lycan DNA, she was able to tolerate having a dark spirit trapped inside her. So far. But she had vowed never to have children of her own for fear of passing that spirit on and gifting a life like hers to anyone else.

  “Do you want to talk?” Rafe asked, walking beside her.

  “I’m not sure what there is to say,” Cara replied.

  “Is talking about yourself prohibited in the grand scheme of things?”

  “My life might read like a nightmare to you.”

  “Sometimes sharing nightmares can dilute them,” he suggested.

  Cara wondered what he’d think if she told him about the dreams she’d had of him before she had met him, and what she had planned to do if she were to meet the male who had given her so many puzzles and helped to lure her from her home. What she hadn’t considered back then was the reason for fate bringing them together, when surely there had to be one.

  “I guess that’s the reason behind me coming here,” she said. “Diluting the nightmares and securing my future.”

  “I’ve thought about that, Cara. What if coming here is some kind of a test?”

  Cara paused to encourage Rafe to explain that remark.

  “You aren’t your mother,” he began. “Maybe the test is to see if all those monsters can track you here or whether you’ve given them the slip.”

  He hesitated thoughtfully before continuing. “It’s also possible that those monsters you’ve met are tied to the energy surrounding your home, and not to you. Could your family be giving you the chance to find out if you can live in the world with the rest of us, instead of being banished from it?”

  Those theories resonated for Cara. They were perfectly viable explanations for the decision her parents had made, though she just couldn’t see how it would all end.

  “Brandi—that’s what the vampire on the beach called herself—wasn’t after you. That’s what you told me,” Rafe went on. “If you’re such a monster magnet, why was I her target? Once she saw you, wouldn’t she have changed her plan?”

  Cara shook her head. “She had your scent already, which means that you were marked. It can be difficult for a bloodsucker to veer off a mark. Next to impossible sometimes.”

  “Even after you appeared and were a much tastier treat?” he asked.

  “That’s the way they operate. If they come for my mother, they have no interest in me until they find out too late that she has given the dark spirit to her daughter. Some remnant of that spirit must still remain either inside or around my mother. Enough of it to temporarily deter the monsters.”

  “Dark spirit?” Rafe asked.

  “Banshee. You do know what that is?”

  He nodded. “But maybe dealing with the vampire on the beach was the first test, according to my theory, and you passed it. The vamp went after me, ignoring you entirely until you made yourself known.”

  He stopped there before saying in a lighter tone, “Hell, Cara. Maybe you’re not so tasty after all. And maybe,” he added slowly and with careful precision, “the true test of your presence here is to see if I’d be the one to bite.”

  Rafe’s hand was on her shoulder. With a gentle tug, he turned her to face him. She didn’t meet his eyes, needing a few seconds to think about what he had said and how to understand his latest remark. She and Rafe were alike in many ways, but not nearly enough alike to keep him from being hurt if his theories were wrong and the bad guys came after her here.

  What she didn’t mention was the idea that the vampire had been after Rafe to get him out of the way, having been alerted to her arrival and the Landaus’ plans to host her as a guest. One Landau down would have meant fewer werewolves to deal with when the bloodsuckers came after her.

  “Well,” Rafe continued, “I guess I could be mistaken about you not being like a magnet, because you’ve been like catnip to me since I first laid eyes on you at the beach. How’s that for a confession? So, I have to wonder if you’re seducing me on purpose, and if so, what that purpose might be.”

  With a nice show of Were speed, he brought her within the circle of his arms. They were hip to hip. Their chests were touching, and their thighs. The intensity of Rafe’s attention was like facing a whole nest of vampires at once and demanded that she look up. Feeling the sensual energy he radiated as her gaze traveled from his neck to the blue gleam of his eyes, Cara realized that Rafe Landau had misjudged things.

  He was the magnet...and she had unknowingly been caught in his force field.

  Unprepared for the cascade of emotions hitting her, Cara let Rafe’s mouth hover inches from hers. She could no longer look at him. She couldn’t breathe when he smelled so fine. She was used to monsters, not strong wolves who teased new emotions from her instead of the usual shape-shifts.

  “You’re being hasty in your conclusions,” she pointed out.

  “I know that. I just thought I’d better get all that out in the open.”

  “Are you always so honest?” she asked.

  “No. Not always.”

  Candor was something Cara understood, though she didn’t know what to do with his. Rafe Landau was a daredevil, and proving that here. He was also a rebel, dodging the limitations that had been imposed on him by his family and his pack. But he didn’t know the full extent of what carrying around a Banshee’s spirit meant, and that through her brief connection to him, she already perceived that death was coming...not for Rafe, but for someone close to this pack that she saw clearly in her mind and had not yet met.

  “I have only an inkling of what you’re capable of,” he said softly in a voice that made Cara’s insides ache with longing for a hazy kind of fulfillment that was still unknown to her. “But this is nice, at least for now, isn’t it?” he asked. “I’m glad you’re here. I hope you’ll stay awhile. More than six days.”

  “I’m trouble, Rafe. More trouble than the politics of this visit are worth.”

  “I’m sorry you think so. Saddened, actually.”

  Cara’s body knew what was coming when her mind hadn’t fully grasped it. Everything he had said was a lead-in to his next move, and as Rafe’s lips brushed hers, she closed her eyes.

  Just this once I’ll allow another round of closeness. And then I’ll put a stop to whatever you’re thinking.

  That plan faded away as the fleeting touch of Rafe’s lips added another layer to the tumultuous emotions already bringing her dangerously close to a precipice. T
hat precipice was the only obstacle standing between her and all hell breaking loose in Miami. It was the dividing line between good and evil, as well as the one thing she had dreaded to encounter all along—a mate.

  She could not think of fitting in when so many Weres could be hurt if she remained. She could not with good conscience do anything that would involve passing this dark spirit on. Therefore, she couldn’t continue to pursue this relationship with Rafe, for whom she had quickly developed her own soft spot.

  This Landau wolf might cause a hitch in her getaway plan and interfere with her ability to focus if things got more serious between them. There would be more danger. More hurt.

  Stop the madness, her mind cautioned.

  Do it now, or all will be lost.

  She had never wished so hard or fervently that she had been born normal as she did right then.

  * * *

  Rafe felt prickling sensations in his muscles as he feathered his lips over Cara’s. The back of his neck chilled in direct contrast to the white-hot currents he encountered each time he got near to her. So, what was this sudden chill all about?

  He was an ass for daring to ignore the warnings his family had issued. In his defense, Cara’s physical strength and the softness of her lips were a tough counter to those inner arguments. The others didn’t know her the way he already liked to imagine he did. He and Cara shared a bond that, though hard to define, very much controlled his actions.

  He couldn’t have stopped what was coming if he had tried.

  Her lips were warm and supple as he increased the pressure of the kiss. Her breath was hot. Cara’s mouth was an inferno. This was no ice queen from the bayou. He was almost completely sure that no frigging Banshee looked at him through those half-closed green eyes.

  And yet the chills persisted.

  He backed off. With a careful finger, he tilted Cara’s chin upward again so that he could see all of her beautiful face in the light from an outdoor lamp. The face he searched was perfectly molded into feminine perfection, and a little too pale. He couldn’t imagine what it must be like to house any spirits other than a wolf.