Desert Wolf

by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

  “Yes, this was once your home,” Grant conceded calmly. “And now it is home to a few others who need this place as much as you’re about to.”

  “Nostalgia has no place in dealing with my father’s will,” she countered. “Presently, I can take this town or leave it. What good did it do me, in the end? I loved the place and it was taken away. I had forgotten about it, and yet here I am again, reliving pain that goes way back.”

  “Pain?” he said.

  Paxton hadn’t planned on confessing any of this to anyone. Some things were too private to see the light of day. But now that she had begun, she said, “Everything I loved was here at one time, Wade.”

  The man beside her stopped the truck at the edge of town and let it idle. Turning to her, he spoke slowly in a tender tone incongruous with the situation that was like a brush of silk over her tired, sensitive skin.

  He might have been crazy, but Grant Wade, in that moment, was more gorgeous than anyone else on this planet.

  “There are things in the world that are kept apart from it for a reason, and out of necessity,” he said. “Some of the old barriers between worlds have been broken, and yet as time passes it becomes more and more difficult to maintain the few remaining secrets. Those of us living in this town need a sanctuary just as much as anyone else does. Maybe more. People in this world are not kind or sympathetic to those unlike themselves.”

  “Any minute now, you’ll start making actual sense,” Paxton said, repeating an earlier sentiment.

  Grant hesitated before speaking again, as if trying to think of the right words to say.

  “There are over a dozen beings living in this town at the moment and calling the old ghost town home. More come and go on a regular basis.”

  Paxton wasn’t about to let such a cryptic statement get past her and jumped in. “What do you mean by beings? Are you talking about people? People with problems? People with a past in need of someplace to go? Homeless people who would otherwise live on the streets of the city? Are you saying you don’t want to sell Desperado so that those people won’t be displaced? Oh, and please tell me we aren’t circling back to the werewolf theory.”

  Grant rubbed a crease from his forehead.

  Paxton went on. “Which is it, Grant? Pick an answer for one of the questions I’ve just asked.”

  He ran his right hand over the back of the seat and touched her neck lightly with warm fingers that had pleasured her less than an hour ago. Paxton wasn’t immune to how that touch made her feel. She hadn’t forgotten how much they both had wanted that session in the bunkhouse. It was, however, a pity that Grant couldn’t come through with a viable way to explain any of the strange things that had happened since she stepped off the plane, other than to make up a few fantasies.

  “Here’s what you’re missing and what you think you want to hear,” he said, feathering his fingertips across the bare base of her neck, which, for Paxton, was a toss-up for the second most sensitive place on her body.

  “I’m all ears, Grant.”

  She had to close her eyes. The electrical jolt that hit her each time Grant laid a hand on her threatened to send her right back into his arms. Problems or not, being in the same space with Grant Wade was erotic. Breathing in his scent made her chills scatter.

  His voice broke the spell.

  “The beings living in this town aren’t people in the strictest sense of the word. The beast we’re chasing is a threat to more than just the neighboring cattle, because if Desperado’s neighbors were to catch that beast before we do, this town’s secrets would be out. Desperado would be exposed for what it has become, and would likely be razed to the ground.”

  Paxton looked straight at Grant, expecting the half-truths to become real explanations requiring no stretch of the imagination, and thinking he might need an extra push in that direction.

  “What secrets stand to be exposed?” she asked. “That you’re werewolves and a pack, and that you hide out here to maintain some distance from everyone who isn’t a werewolf?”

  Ignoring those questions, he chose to relay other information she had asked for. “I wasn’t lying, Paxton. Chances are better than good that the animal you encountered tonight is a wolf of some kind.”

  He held up a hand to stop her from interrupting when she was about to do just that. “Not just any wolf. One with the special designation of Lycan,” he said.

  What he said was so absurd, Paxton laughed to offset a sharp stab of panic. Grant’s face, his expression, his eyes, showed no sign that this was a joke, when it had to be. Clearly, he wasn’t going to let up on the werewolf thing.

  “Lycan,” she echoed, not liking the turn this conversation had taken any more than she liked the direction the truck was facing. Grant’s friends were on hand tonight. Maybe insanity was contagious.

  In the silence that followed his little dissertation, Paxton groped for a connection between reality and the extraordinary words Grant had offered her. Werewolf. Lycan. Thinking back, she recalled the loud thump on the roof of the rental car and the dark blur on the hood. She pictured the big scary eyes that had peered at her through the windshield, relived the hallucinatory awareness of feeling a strange presence at the motel. Moments ago, she’d had the same kind of eerie awareness on the road out of Desperado. And then there was the dark blur she’d seen out of the corner of her eye.

  Long tentacles of fright returned. In spite of that, Paxton went over the thoughts again, freeze-framing the moment when she’d thought she heard voices whispering to her in her mind. Grant had mentioned the same thing. He’d told her the beast had spoken, not in person, but in his thoughts.

  “Werewolf,” she repeated, tasting the word, finding it sour and completely unacceptable as an answer to her dilemma. She couldn’t fathom what would make Grant assume she’d believe what he was telling her.

  Was this a ploy to throw her off-balance? Grant trying to gain some advantage in their negotiations over the property her father had left them?

  He’d go so far as to suggest that Desperado was haunted by, not ghosts, but half-man, half-wolf creatures out of legend?

  Quite obvious to her, when Grant spoke again, was the fact that he favored continuing with this game.

  “The beings living in your father’s town are werewolves,” Grant said. “Although tonight you’d never know it, never believe it. They can only shift their shapes to become something else on the night of a full moon.”

  Paxton felt sick, not for the first time since arriving in Arizona. She felt sicker as she stared at the handsome, enigmatic man sitting beside her. It was so blatantly apparent that something was wrong with him mentally, something not so obvious because of his spectacular looks.

  Then again, her mind nagged…

  Hadn’t she imagined subtle changes in Grant in the doorway of the bunkhouse? The longer physical frame and more angular features?

  What about that?

  She said, “I think you might be in need of meds,” in a voice that hardly carried over the sound of the truck’s idling engine.

  Grant shook his head. “There’s more.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “It involves you, Paxton.”

  “You’ve already told me that I’m a werewolf. Could there conceivably be any other incredible information about me to divulge?”

  At this point, there was no laughter in her, regardless of the absurdity of the situation. As she saw it, the immediate problem facing her was how to get out of the truck without Grant chasing her.

  Any way she viewed things, she was trapped. Grant’s captive. One possible direction would be, as she had figured while en route to Desperado, to let Grant go on with this ruse. Pretend to believe him about werewolves until another opportunity came to get away. Could she do that? Make it work and keep a straight face?

  God. If she had been to bed with this man, and had loved it, what did that make her?

  What did it say about her that she had loved everything they had done and h
ad to work hard now to forget the fever caused by Grant’s talented mouth on hers? She had to breathe shallowly to dispel the memory of having his warm breath in her lungs. Crossing her legs wouldn’t have stopped the tingling sensations that came from remembering how his hand had pleasured what lay between them.

  And now he was betraying her trust.

  Grant Wade was showing his true colors.

  He had more to say, and she had no option but to listen.

  “Sometimes, reality is a bitch, Paxton,” he began. “At times, life can read more like science fiction. I get that, because I’m living on the bridge that joins both worlds.”

  “The human world and the world of the werewolf,” she said to clarify his meaning as she moved toward the door to get away from Grant’s touch.

  “Your father left Desperado to me in order to protect the Weres living here and those in need of assistance regarding how to deal with what they’ve become. Desperado is a safe haven for the werewolf species. The only one I know of in the West. Your father knew about us. Leaving Desperado to me was no fluke, and no purposeful slight to you.”

  Paxton met Grant’s eyes. “You said us. So I’m truly a werewolf?”

  “Yes,” he replied.

  “And my father believed this? He might have thought so, too?”

  “Completely, just as you soon will.”

  “Sorry. I’m afraid that would take a miracle,” Paxton said.

  “Then we’ll have to show you one,” Grant returned.

  Defiance took over her ability to speak as calmly as he did about issues so nonsensical. Crossing her arms, Paxton uttered a challenge. “Okay. Go ahead. Show me that miracle.”

  Grant’s focus was intense. His eyes were luminous in the moonlight coming through the window as he pointed at the moon. “Tomorrow, when the moon is full, everyone here will change shape, including you.”

  Paxton shoved aside the return of the chills threatening to bring on more quakes. “I’ve seen the movies. Nevertheless, if what you say is true, and we all require a full moon to do its particular brand of voodoo, why didn’t the thing I saw tonight look like the rest of us do right now?”

  I have you there, Grant Wade. Try to explain that.

  While Paxton waited for him to try, it was easy to note how that line of enquiry bothered Grant. She wondered what kind of sordid, fantastical tale he’d invent next to cover his ass. As her stomach roiled and her hands fisted, she dreaded hearing what he would come up with.

  “Some of us are different,” he finally said.

  “That’s all you’ve got? Really, I expected so much more.”

  “Did you?”

  She glared at him.

  “As far as we can guess, the beast out there can shape-shift without the moon’s help,” Grant said. “Few Weres possess that trick, and that’s what makes this guy so unique.”

  He was looking at her strangely, perhaps beginning to understand that she wasn’t going to fall for any part of his explanation.

  “I understand this is hard to process, and even harder to believe,” he admitted.

  “Next to impossible,” Paxton agreed. “And let me state again for the record that if I was a werewolf, I’d know it.”

  He said, “I might have thought the same thing if my parents hadn’t schooled me about it early on.”

  Grant’s expression hadn’t strayed from being completely serious. “You’d know about your status unless both parents decided not to tell you about it.”

  Opening her mouth to protest, Paxton closed it again when the crazy conversation was interrupted by an eerie sound that echoed through the car. It was a horrible, haunting, gut-wrenching howl, and very much like the sound a goddamn werewolf might make.

  The truck rocked into motion so quickly, Paxton was thrown backward. The only thing she could offer before they had reached the center of Desperado’s main street was one word.

  “Impossible.”

  But there truly was more, as Grant had predicted. None of it good.

  One sideways glance told her that Grant Wade was no longer there. When that distant howl began to fade, Grant had simply melted into someone else.

  Something else.

  The shock of witnessing a real shape-shift tipped Paxton over the edge of reason and into a horror story.

  God help them all…

  Grant Wade had been telling the truth.

  Chapter 20

  It was a hell of a time to prove to Paxton the hard way that he had not been lying. Ready to jump out of her skin before his shift, she was now as white as a sheet.

  And although Grant felt for her about learning of her heritage in this manner, he had other things to worry about—the damn Lycan interloper being foremost on that list.

  That roar hadn’t come from far off, which meant the slippery beast had penetrated Desperado’s perimeter, somehow managing to slither past Ben and two of their best guards, or else finding another route inside. Moreover, it had to have been close to Paxton again, near that downed tree.

  Anger crowded his thoughts.

  His vision darkened.

  The pack was already on the move. No one could afford to ignore that son of a bitch’s challenging howl. By now, every Were here would know this sucker might be related to their species, if not exactly like them.

  His desert pack was made up of strong, confident Weres who would protect their secrets with their lives if they had to. Grant hoped none of them would be pushed that far. This confrontation was going to end up being one lone rogue against another Lycan and fourteen desert Weres used to dealing with half-crazed newcomers. Surely the sucker out there would calculate the odds and either give up or go away.

  Paxton was dead silent as she stared at him, and he had no way to appease her. No voice with which to comfort her. It was sink or swim time for Andrew Hall’s daughter, and not in any way Grant would have planned for her big awakening.

  When they got to Desperado, he jumped from the truck to join the others massing in the street. Everyone was concerned, keyed up and ready to rumble. But as he had explained to Paxton, without the presence of a full moon, his packmates were stuck in human form.

  Although they all possessed superhuman strength, these Weres didn’t have the extra punch of power embedded into Grant’s DNA that allowed the full extent of his abilities to be at his beck and call. Tonight, in a standoff with a creature with similar abilities, he’d have to be the front man. Everyone here was aware of this.

  “Bring it on, you filthy bastard.”

  Shirleen took his place in the truck as the temporary guardian for the female frozen there. Ben, still at the gate, would get the message and respond if he hadn’t heard the cheeky trespasser’s yowl.

  The rest of the pack was scattering to take their places. One or two of them would search along the fence near where he had found Paxton. If the bastard had been there, the atmosphere would still be disturbed in a way that would be easy for other Weres to pick up on. Grant hadn’t had the chance to investigate, since getting Paxton away from danger had been a priority at the time.

  Two or three packmates would position themselves near the end of the main street, while others had designated areas to watch over. Moonlight, though unhelpful to these Weres tonight in other ways, lit the street with an iridescent glow.

  Grant stood in the center of the main street waiting for all hell to break loose, certain it would before long. In the months leading up to now, the rogue hadn’t ventured close enough to breathe down Grant’s neck, but something had changed that.

  He glanced at the truck, refusing to believe the creep they had been chasing could have anything to do with Andrew Hall’s daughter. The theory he’d been hatching seemed to be a wild one, given that Paxton had only arrived that day. Yet the damn beast had tracked her twice after their initial meeting and was hanging around here now. Doing what? Biding his time? Looking for a way to get past the pack?

  “What do you want?” Grant sent, figuring only two things mi
ght send a werewolf into tracking mode in spite of the potential danger involved. Those two things were piqued interest in a potential mate and a desire to challenge the alpha of a pack for that title.

  “Which one of those things are you after?”

  Of course, the answer to that question didn’t really matter. He wasn’t going to allow any other Were with big ideas to get near Paxton. Nor was he about to turn the guardianship of this pack over to a butcher.

  When Paxton left the truck and approached, her closeness wafted over him like a hot August breeze. He had to look at her. Couldn’t help himself. She was so damn beautiful, and so very pale.

  She stopped several feet away, speechless. He wanted more than anything to go to her, hold her, make love to her, chase away the demons he had helped to set in place. A firm hold on his resolve was what it took to keep from doing any of those things.

  He morphed back into a more familiar shape and said in his human voice, “I’m needed elsewhere. I’m sorry.”

  Explaining Paxton’s presence in the street, Shirleen said, “Can’t keep a good woman down, it seems.”

  Grant stifled a human-sized growl. His wolf was still close to the surface, wanting to be freed. His pulse was pounding dangerously, but not because of the rogue he needed to find. With chaos all around, Paxton was the larger draw. She stood motionless. Her tousled hair shone in the moonlight like spun gold. Delicate features were set in a grim expression, but no longer frozen in disbelief.

  He took that for progress.

  As her emotions settled over him, he knew that fear made up only a portion of what Paxton was feeling. Curiosity tangled with other emotions that weren’t so easy to read, and Grant was heartened that one of those elusive emotions wasn’t disgust.

  “It’s true,” she said softly without budging. “All of it.”

  Sink or swim, Grant repeated to himself, raising both hands to display leftover claws that had never looked as lethal as they did right then. Nerves burned across taut interior wires while he awaited Paxton’s reaction to the only part of him at the moment that hinted of wolf.