by Debra Dunbar
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Winter Fae
Debra Dunbar
Copyright © 2017 by Debra Dunbar
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Also by Debra Dunbar
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1
Dustin glided the plane onto the lake with practiced ease. It had been a long day: an early pickup in Ketchikan for Brent’s second, then to Juneau to drop her off. Then off for another grab-and-go from Skagway to Anchorage, then this last flight. It would probably be close to sunset by the time he was back at the compound, grilling up that steak with a cold beer in hand, but so be it. These days he spent more time in the air than he did on solid ground, especially now that his Alpha, Jake, had arranged for contract charter service to both the Juneau and the Denali packs. Not that Dustin minded. He loved to fly, and it felt good that his services were bringing such money into the pack accounts. They all did their part, but feeling valued sent a warm glow to his chest.
He nudged the plane up to the dock, shutting down the propellers and jumping out to pull it close enough for his passengers to easily hop off.
“Thanks Dustin. Appreciate it.” Mark climbed out of the plane. Dustin grabbed the werewolf’s bag, then extended a hand to his companion. She took it with a smile, stepping carefully onto the dock.
“Thanks Dustin.”
“Anytime.” He touched his hand to his forehead and nodded, watching the pair of them holding hands as they headed off toward a cabin in the distance. This was the third time this week he’d shuttled members of the Denali pack to and from the coastal cities. Their members were spread out all over the interior and eastern section of Alaska, and his services meant these trips took them hours as opposed to an entire day or more had they traveled by car.
This was his last charter and he wouldn’t have another until late tomorrow afternoon when he was supposed to pick up a pack member from north of Anchorage and shuttle her back to the compound. He could finally go back home, and after his steak and beer, socialize with his pack members, maybe shoot some pool with the guys. Although any plans he made needed to be flexible in case a call came in. He’d drop everything and go, because that was his job. That’s what a good pack member did in support of the group. And it’s not like he would have ever done otherwise when Jake sent him on a job. No one said no to Jake. Even if Dustin didn’t have the utmost respect for his Alpha, he would never have done anything to cause that ice-blue glint in the shifter’s eyes.
Once Brenda and Mark were safely to their house, Dustin turned back to the plane, untying the rope and hopping aboard. In seconds he had the engines fired up and was backing away from the dock, calculating the distance for his take-off. There was some bad weather moving inland, and as much as he wanted to take a scenic detour, he’d need to get back. Once in the air he radioed in, giving his course and ETA, then signing off and flying low by sight. This part of Alaska was very different than the Swift River Pack’s territory near Anchorage, or even the Juneau Pack’s down south. The Denali Pack claimed the section of Alaska that was the most sparsely populated and dominated by the huge national park. The mountains and higher altitude through the territory meant there were still patches of snow on the ground even in early August. Today, fog shrouded the highest mountain peaks, the occasional black rock a stark contrast to the patches of grass and snow at the lower levels. Alpine forests dotted the harsh landscape, and thin ribbons of rivers twined through the steep canyons. Dustin swooped down, tracing the winding blue of the water before swinging west to cut across the lower corner of Denali. He’d flown this route weekly for the last two months and the beauty of the landscape never failed to awe him.
If he hadn’t been flying so low, he’d never have seen the wreck.
Out here there were few roads, and most of them ended up covered with ice or snow for half of the year. In the winter people used snowmobiles, or heavy trucks equipped with chains and plows, but in the summertime, it was four-wheelers, and the chains came off the trucks. This narrow dirt road was barely more than a deer track, surrounded for nearly fifty miles on each side by snow and rock interspersed with the occasional pine. If the humans had a sat phone, they might be able to get someone out to rescue them in a few hours. If they didn’t, then they were out of luck.
As Dustin closed in he realized it was a truck, on its side. There was a figure lying on the ground near the wreck and another person frantically waving. An injury, serious if the guy had been thrown from the truck as it appeared. He hesitated, knowing his next actions would mean the difference between life or death for that guy.
He could call it in, but it would take a few hours to mobilize and get a chopper here from Fairbanks. That person on the ground didn’t seem to be moving. Dustin hesitated. Call it in and keep flying, hoping the guy made it in time, or land and fly the man in himself, saving an hour or two in getting him medical attention.
So much for that steak and beer.
There was no lake nearby to land on. His seaplane had floats since it was July and most of his charters involved a water landing. Dustin eyed the patchy snow, hoping it was deep enough, then banked around. Just before he began his approach, he radioed in, unsurprised to hear the static in response. Stupid weather. He’d try the satellite phone once he landed, thankful Jake had insisted each guide and pilot that went out carry one. After what had happened with Leon and the Juneau Alpha’s mate two months ago, safety was of the utmost importance. Dustin shivered with the memory of how at least one grizzly shifter in Kenai had lost his life to hunters armed with special bullets. Leon still bore the scars and was lucky to have lived. And so was Brent, the Juneau Pack Alpha.
Nothing had happened for a few months and they’d begun to think themselves safe again, when there was another incident in Ketchikan where the magically tainted bullet had driven a grizzly rogue. According to Sabrina, the Juneau Pack second, the guy who’d shot him hadn’t even been a hunter, but a scientist doing fungal studies. Anyone could be packing these bullets. The shifters in Alaska had always lived openly with the humans. It wasn’t a secret what he was. Any human he met could have decided that as a werewolf, Dustin needed to die. And unlike a few years ago, they’d now be able to secure the means to easily accomplish that.
He eyed the two humans on the grou
nd as he made his approach. Every shifter in the state had been warned about the presence of hunters targeting their kind. It was one of the reasons demands for their plane services had tripled. Until they were sure all the hunters had been eradicated, no one wanted to be caught out in the open unprepared. But he couldn’t deny someone emergency medical attention out of fear that they might harbor ulterior motives. He couldn’t ignore a human in need because there was a remote chance they might try to kill him.
Dustin set the plane down, plumes of snow and chunks of dirt and rock flying up on either side of the floats. He winced, knowing the take-off was going to be brutal, and that he’d damaged his pontoons. It would all come out of the pack funds as everything did, but Marcia, the pack accountant was going to chew him out for this one.
The propellers were still spinning down when he grabbed the first aid kit and the satellite phone and hopped from the plane. The man from the wreck was waving at him, and as Dustin grew near, he realized the man was holding a rifle.
It made him pause. How sad was it that he was suddenly suspicious of any human hunter he met out in the wilderness, that his worry for a person who might have suffered devastating injuries faded when he feared the guy on the ground might decide to point that rifle at him? It shouldn’t matter that the guy was human or that he had a gun like ninety-nine percent of humans and shifters in Alaska. Until a month ago, it wouldn’t have. He would have run to the aid of a human just as he would for another shifter regardless of whether they were armed.
Times had changed. And even though this man was hopping up and down with impatience as he waited for Dustin, he still felt the tension tightening his muscles, preparing for him to haul ass if needed.
“Do you need an emergency transport?” Dustin shouted.
The man pointed to the figure on the ground and shouted something else, turning and running to his injured buddy. Dustin ran as well, fearing the worst. He wasn’t a doctor, and beyond basic first aid there might be nothing he could do for this man except watch him die.
He drew near and that’s when Dustin realized that the truck rolled on its side looked like it had been gently laid over rather than flipped. And the person on the ground wasn’t a person after all, it was a dummy.
He froze, dropping the medical kit and yanking the pistol he’d started carrying from his hip holster. Before he could flip the safety, the man lifted the rifle in his hand. Dustin heard the gunshot echo off the mountains, felt the bullet rip through his chest.
The pistol fell from hands that suddenly weren’t hands, the satellite radio also dropping into the snow. His back curled then arched, bones snapping and reforming, joints twisting, muscles tearing and reshaping. The pain was incredible and Dustin felt himself fading, his vision narrowing to a field of white. Fur burst from his skin and a shift that should have taken him fifteen to twenty minutes was complete in seconds, leaving him panting and in pain on the ground.
Red splashed across the patchy bits of snow. His chest was burning from a bullet wound that should have already begun to clot and knit together. He wasn’t healing. This guy was a hunter. And just like Leon and Brent, Dustin had been shot. Only in his case there was no gutsy female surgeon with a rifle to save him. There was no one here to save him.
He heard a triumphant whoop, heard the sound of another human. Had the other one been hiding in the truck? He hadn’t smelled them. Actually, he hadn’t smelled any of them. And they were both approaching with rifles, chatting between them as if they’d just brought down a ten-point buck.
Get up. Get up. Blood sprayed onto the snow with each breath, but something deep inside Dustin made him compartmentalize the pain and pull together the strength to rise. He nearly passed out from the effort. The men shouted, jumping back and scurrying to raise their rifles.
Run.
The wolf that had always seemed to be just another facet of Dustin’s being suddenly ripped free of his psyche. The world spun around him, bile rising in his throat, his lungs burning with pain and bubbling with blood, but miraculously he ran. There was the sound of gunfire, bullets whistling by him, one slamming into his hip. The pain screamed through him, but there was someone else in charge, someone who didn’t feel the pain, someone who wanted to live at all costs.
As if he were a disembodied spirit watching himself, he saw four paws tearing through the snow and patchy turf, skirting brush as he ran. Dustin felt himself climb the edge of a canyon, leap over rocks, and race toward a tree line.
He was heading toward a plateau, a thick forest of oaks and maples that had suddenly appeared in front of him like an illusion, like a fabled Shangri-La.
Every breath burned, every muscle screamed. The trees blurred before him, but still Dustin’s wolf ran, swerving around trees in a desperate attempt to put as much distance between himself and the assailants as possible. But even as detached as he felt from the animal operating his physical form, Dustin knew his wolf was nearing the end of his sprint. Adrenaline was burning out, and the pain and blood loss was too much. The world narrowed to black for a few seconds and when Dustin finally floated once more to awareness, his wolf-self was again integrated with his mind and soul. He was bleeding. He was in agonizing pain. And he was staggering in a wide circle around an enormous hawthorn tree.
Why was a forest of hawthorns, oaks, and maples here? Why was this huge deciduous tree in the middle of an alpine environment? And it looked like it had been here for centuries, crashing up through the canopy with thick leaves and sturdy gray trunks. How had he never seen these trees when he’d flown over? How could he have missed this huge forest, and this weird, gigantic hawthorn?
Dustin staggered to the side, leaning against the rough, thorny bark, then slid down to his belly, nose in the trail of blood he’d made around the tree. So tired. So much pain. He was going to die. And oddly enough the only regret he felt was that he hadn’t had that steak and beer he’d been thinking about all day. His pack would eventually find him. They’d find his body and give him a burial, mourn him. There was some solace in that.
At least the hunters wouldn’t get him. At least he wouldn’t be a pelt on someone’s floor or a mounted head on their wall. And of all the places to die, this stately, powerful hawthorn, so out of place in the high altitudes of a mountain range, was better than most. Looking up at the chartreuse leaves, so brilliant that their green was nearly gold, he felt at peace. He felt like somehow he’d found home.
And just as he felt himself drift into darkness, he heard his wolf pull together enough strength to voice a mournful cry.
Chapter 2
Gwylla froze. Someone was at her heart-tree. Someone was circling it three times, marking it with the power of their blood.
And then out of the deep forest she’d created to hide herself from the world, from everyone, from him, she heard the cry. It was a knife to her heart, a sound that brought tears to her eyes. An animal was mortally wounded. An animal needed her. And unlike all the weird, stupid creatures this side of the gates, this animal had the sense to lay down its blood around her heart-tree, to phrase its need in a way that she could never refuse.
She darted from her domicile, not needing a coat or scarf, her breath frosting intricate patterns of ice into the air as she ran across the top of the snow. Her feet left no trace, her body was one with the wind, a part of the crisp purity that was her sanctuary.
A gasp burst from her when she saw him, sticky and still in the snow. His lips were curled back, his teeth bared in a grimace of pain. Thick crimson circled her beloved hawthorn, footsteps blurring the red to pink in some places. She would have thought the animal dead had she not detected the faint thread of his heartbeat desperately pounding in a chest that was more blood than lung.
It was a wolf. Or maybe a coyote. Or maybe a dog. It was so hard to tell the difference here between the various breeds and species and whether one was domesticated or not. Out here in her little oasis, there would be few domestic animals. He was certainty large enough to be a
wolf, from what little knowledge of this world she had, but some dogs here were large as well.
He was smoky gray and black with adorable white paws. And it was definitely a he from what was clearly visible between his sprawled legs.
She fell to her knees beside the animal, cradling his head in her hands. Humming, she rocked back and forth and sent healing energy into the wounds. What she saw of his injuries with her second sight shocked her. He’d been shot twice, and the bullets were coated with a foul magic that was rotting the flesh around it, tearing the spirit from his body. If he hadn’t been so strong, his soul so determined to survive, he would have died before she’d arrived.
Her fingers probed the bullet holes, seizing each projectile and easing them from his flesh. The touch of the metal burned her fingers, the thick blood coating them the only thing that saved her from blistering and scarring. She gagged as she pulled them out, tempted to throw them away. But she didn’t want to sully her beloved forest with their foul presence, and she needed to save them, to study them.
She needed to save them because she recognized this magic. And as horrible as it felt in her fingers, the guilt she felt was worse. This was her fault. This poor animal was near death because of her.
“Don’t give up, beautiful boy. I have you. I heard your call, and I received your plea. I won’t let you die. I accept responsibility for your life and spirit, and bind you to me in promise so that you may live.”
Eyes flickered open. She caught her breath, expecting them to be dark brown or golden, but instead they were as verdant green as the leaves that formed the canopy above them. Then as quickly as they opened, the animal’s eyes shut and he let out a low whine.
