"Oh my God!" she breathed. Did that wolf kill a park ranger? And if so, how on earth did it managed to fasten that chest strap?
Then she almost jumped out of her skin when she saw the wolf's broad chest move in a breath.
Not dead!
Her brief moment of relief turned to consternation. It might not be dead yet, but between that leg and being shot, it was really badly hurt.
Hating to see any animal suffer, even a predator who had been threatening her goats and Alfred, she raised the rifle to her shoulder and gathered her resolve to put it out of its misery.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered, as she stepped back took aim.
This time, at close range, she couldn't miss. It would be a clean death.
An odd ripple passed over the fallen wolf, traveling from nose to trail. In the ripple's wake, the thick gray, tan, and white coat began to thin and vanish.
Then things got really weird.
Michelle stood frozen as the wolf's body convulsed and…rearranged itself.
What the hell is going on?
She'd never seen any animal do anything like this.
Across from her, her two dogs stood staring, hackles raised, at the wolf…thing…writhing on the grass. They were growling in tandem, a low continuous sound, but neither of them moved a step closer to it.
Should I shoot it? Michelle's heart was pounding an urgent drumbeat that echoed in her ears.
But something stayed her hand. She couldn't bring herself to do it.
Within moments, all signs of the wolf had vanished completely, transformed somehow into a tall, muscular, completely naked man of about her own age.
He lay sprawled on the grass, his left thigh torn open with a deep, bleeding wound, and his short golden hair matted with more blood from a long gash across his skull.
Michelle gaped at him. She couldn't believe her eyes. Oh God. I shot someone.
But it was a wolf!
Am I going crazy? That was a wolf. I know I saw a wolf!
And it hadn't just been her. Cookie, Biscuit, and Alfred had all reacted the same way as they did when a coyote or fox showed up to eye the goats and their kids.
The two dogs circled the fallen man warily, looking confused.
He moved, shifting uncomfortably as the too-tight straps of the day pack creaked, and began to claw blindly at the constrictions.
That broke the icy shell of panic immobilizing Michelle. Still clutching her rifle in one hand, she rushed to him and knelt at his side and released the day pack's buckles.
His bare skin was clammy and cold under her fingers, and his complexion looked gray under his tan, like that of someone going into shock.
He was most definitely real. Not some crazy hallucination, like the wolf just now.
"Hey," she said, and her voice came out sounding as shaky as she felt.
The man opened his eyes. A hot shock ran through her as their eyes met. The wolf's bright gold had vanished, replaced by dark blue fringed with thick honey-colored lashes, but his gaze was every bit as intense.
"Hi," he whispered, a bare thread of sound. "I messed up. Sorry."
A person. Oh God, I shot a person! Michelle wanted to throw up. How did this happen?
She shoved her hand in her pocket and grabbed her phone, hoping against hope that she'd get a signal out here.
Nope.
"I'm taking you back to my place, and then I'll call for help. I'll get you to a hospital," she promised, though she wasn't sure how to transport a badly injured, full-grown man down a mountainside all by herself.
The man's lids flickered, "No hospitals, please," he begged in a whisper. His eyes rolled back in his head and he lost consciousness.
Michelle sat back on her heels. The hell he doesn't need a hospital!
That thought was followed immediately by: What if he's a werewolf?
No such thing as werewolves. You've been watching too many movies, chica. She shook her head. Shock and stress were making it difficult to think clearly. But werewolves weren't real. They couldn't be real.
Am I going crazy? she wondered. Did I accidentally eat something that's giving me hallucinations?
Her gaze returned to the wounded man lying unconscious at her feet. He had the body of a fitness model, his chest, forearms, and legs generously furred with honey-colored hair.
But if I'm hallucinating, then what the hell is he doing out here in the middle of the forest, stark naked?
Michelle took a deep shaking breath and focused on the crisis at hand. Oh my God. I shot him. What if he dies before I can get him help?
That thought snapped her out of her shocked paralysis.
She gave him a quick once-over, drawing on her first aid training to assess his condition.
He was breathing normally, and his pulse beat steadily under the fingers she pressed into the side of his neck.
His leg was in bad shape, with flecks of bark and broken conifer needles embedded in the deep, ragged hole. It looked like he'd been stabbed with a tree branch, which only added to the general mystery of the situation.
The wound was bleeding, but only sluggishly.
She couldn't help noticing the thick, long cock that lay flaccid against the long, muscled length of his inner thigh.
With an effort, she turned her attention to his head injury. A long, bleeding furrow raked across the top of his scalp. She parted the long strands of hairs, stiffened with drying blood, and saw that it looked like a superficial wound, messy but not fatal.
It seemed that her bullet had only grazed him.
Thank God.
Sickness churned through her belly as she realized how close she'd come to putting a bullet through his skull.
"Who the hell are you?" she murmured.
Alfred came to stand next to her, craning his long neck to examine the unconscious man.
She peeled off her light but extremely warm wool flannel shirt, woven from her first year's shearing of alpaca wool, and draped it over the man.
Then she turned her attention to his day pack. It was surprisingly heavy, and when she emptied its contents onto the flattened grass, she understood why.
Puzzled, she studied the collection of clothes and other items. A tightly rolled bright yellow shirt prodded her memories. She knew that she should recognize it as important.
She unrolled a dark blue t-shirt, and a black leather wallet tucked into it fell to the grass.
She stared incredulously at the logo printed over the t-shirt's back. It was a mountain peak surrounded with a pair of stylized wings. Big white letters printed above and below the logo said, "Rocky Mountain Smokejumpers."
She turned the shirt over and saw a small US Forest Service shield logo printed over the left breast.
Oh God. He's a firefighter. One of those crazy guys who jump from airplanes.
That explained what he was doing lying injured so far from town and the highway. It didn't shed any light on why he was stark naked, without a parachute in sight. Or why she had seen him transform from wolf to man just now.
I definitely hallucinated that part.
She flipped open the wallet and examined its contents. A handful of bills, mostly twenties and fives, a government credit card, a credit/debit card issued by Colorado Credit Union, and a government photo ID that identified her mystery man as Carl Jensen of Palmer, Alaska.
The sick feeling returned as Michelle rolled up the t-shirt around the wallet and replaced everything in the day pack.
What have I done? How can I explain that I accidentally shot a smokejumper because I mistook him for a wolf?
They'll think I'm crazy…or lying like crazy to save myself from going to prison.
Now she wanted to throw up. Her head throbbed in time with her heartbeat, and her face heated.
Not only had she shot an innocent man—and thank the Blessed Virgin Mother I didn't kill him!—but she might end up in prison and lose everything she had worked so hard for.
But it was a mistake! An hone
st mistake!
Never mind that, she told herself. I can worry about that after I've figured out how to get him back to the house and I've called for help.
And that brought her to her next challenge. Should I leave him here and go get Beto and the Kubota?
The little RTV was the most practical choice for the rough terrain. Her brother could help her lift the injured man into the back, and she could surround him with plenty of blankets to cushion him from the jouncing.
She hated to just leave him alone, though. She eyed Alfred, remembering that his cousins, the llamas, were often used as pack animals.
But alpacas were considerably smaller and lighter than llamas, and even if she could get him to cooperate as a beast of burden, she didn't think that he could safely carry more than fifty or sixty pounds.
She sighed and called Cookie and Biscuit over.
"Stay. Guard," she ordered.
Cookie, the more dominant of her two dogs, gave the unconscious man—Carl Jensen, Michelle reminded herself—a suspicious sniff, followed by a resentful look in Michelle's direction.
"Guard," she repeated.
Cookie shot her another look, as if protesting the order, but obeyed, flopping down next to the mystery man. Biscuit, Cookie's brother and ever the faithful follower, curled up on Jensen's other side.
A distant rumble of thunder caught her attention. She looked up at the sky again and saw that more thunderheads were massing over the mountains. She had perhaps an hour before the storm rolled over her ranch.
"Of all the things I thought I'd be doing today," she muttered, as she prepared to hike downhill at double-speed, "dealing with a naked mystery man wasn't even on the list."
Chapter 4
The Wolf in Her Bed
By degrees, Carl became aware that he was indoors, lying on a bed. And that somewhere along the line, he had shifted back to human shape.
His head throbbed with a steady drumbeat of pain that echoed through his skull, and something was keeping time using a red-hot poker on his left leg.
Not ready to open his eyes and face the painful light, he drew in a cautious breath, analyzing the scents that surrounded him. Even in human shape, his sense of smell was many times keener than an Ordinary's, though not nearly as keen as when he was in his wolf shape.
The strongest scent was some kind of laundry detergent or fabric softener. He wrinkled his nose. Because of his hypersensitive sense of smell, he tended to use unscented products whenever possible. The same was true of all the other shifters he knew.
The artificial perfumes in this place nearly masked the sweeter, muskier scent of a healthy, fertile woman.
That scent was beginning to fade, which indicated that she hadn't been here for at least three hours. A flash of memory provided an impression of long dark hair and beautiful brown eyes looking down at him.
He also smelled the fresh scent of two dogs, a male and a female, mingled with older scents of cooked food and a popular brand of shampoo.
Underlying everything were the faint but pervasive scents of goats and llamas.
Where the hell am I?
He forced his eyes open. As he had already guessed, he was in a bedroom, a light quilt drawn over him. The mattress beneath him was firm but comfortable, and his aching head rested on a pillow.
Someone had drawn the curtain, and the room was mercifully dim.
Okay, time to see how badly I'm messed up.
Carl reached up and gingerly ran his fingers over his head, searching for the source of his headache. His hair was stiff and matted under his questing fingertips, and a long, scabbed scrape ran across his scalp.
When Carl lowered his hand and squinted at his fingers, he saw that they were covered with dark flakes of dried blood. Well, scalp wounds always bled like a son of a bitch, but he didn't think his skull was cracked.
Cue joke about Swedes and hard heads, he thought wryly.
He wasn't bleeding now, which meant that he'd been out cold for a while. That worried him.
What the hell happened to my helmet? His memories were disturbingly fuzzy as he tried to figure out how he had gotten here.
He remembered the fire call, suiting up, jumping out of the airplane. Things were jumbled after that.
There had been a tree. He was 99% sure about that part.
At that recollection, he lifted the quilt and looked down for the second source of his pain. He was naked, but someone had done a professional-looking job of bandaging his left leg. Wide strips of gauze wound around his thigh, holding a thick gauze pad against the place where he remembered seeing an ugly wound.
He sighed in relief. Despite being in a whole hell of lot of pain, he didn't think he was critically injured. But the sight of the bandage tied around his leg stirred up a fresh worry.
Okay. I was in wolf shape. Someone found me and bandaged me up when I reverted back to man-shape. But when did I shift back? And did anyone see me do it?
The various shapeshifter lineages didn't agree on much, and each of them did things their own way, according to their own customs and traditions. But if there was one universal rule, it was: Don't let Ordinaries find out about shifters unless you're damned sure you can trust them.
Even then, things could still go horribly wrong, as history had proved all too often.
Hell, his own pack had been outed as werewolves and driven out of their territory in Sweden just before World War One. They had eventually found refuge and a new home territory in the new American territory of Alaska. As a kid, Carl had heard the story of the pack's exile too many times to count, mostly during the holidays, when the current pack gathered at his parents' ranch to gorge on good food and go on a communal elk hunt.
His great-grandfather had always finished the story with "…and that's why you can never trust Ordinaries."
For his part, Carl didn't bear any grudges against Ordinaries. He figured that they were pretty much the same as shifters…95% of them were decent people who tried to do the right thing even if that "right thing," was something he didn't necessarily agree with, and 5% were dangerous assholes who didn't play by the rules of decent conduct.
For shifters, it was better to be safe than sorry when it came to revealing the secret of their dual spirits. Operating on a "need to know" basis, Carl hadn't yet met an Ordinary who needed to know about shifters.
When he'd been hired on as a rookie with the Rocky Mountain Smokejumpers, the team's two Ordinary members, base manager Pete Brinkley and pilot Darren Shelby, already knew about shifters.
They had been clued in as trustworthy Ordinaries who needed to know the truth about their jumpers. So far, they had both proven themselves worthy of the trust placed in them, and Carl hoped that things would continue that way.
But now, a potentially dangerous new variable had entered the equation.
"Shit," Carl said out loud.
He wished he could remember how much he might have inadvertently revealed to whoever had patched him up and brought him here. It was hard to think around the pain and the dragging fatigue that always accompanied his body's accelerated healing efforts.
At his exclamation, two large dogs who had been lying on the other side of the room sprang to their feet, staring at him in canine challenge.
Both of them looked like some kind of shepherd mix, long and lean with long-muzzled tan faces and bellies, black ears, and dark backs.
The bitch, who was clearly the dominant one of the pair, growled a warning at him, hackles bristling and lips wrinkling back from her teeth even as the sharp scent of her fear filled the bedroom. The male at her side showed his teeth as well.
Carl narrowed his gaze and let his wolf rise just enough to tingle his skin with the warning of an impending shape change, change his scent, and tint his eyes with wolf gold.
Then he growled back. Go away, little dogs. Leave me alone. I'm bigger and meaner than you are. Don't try my patience.
The bluff worked. The dogs gave startled yips as their courage broke.
They turned and fled through the half-open bedroom door.
Carl sank back onto the deliciously soft pillow and closed his eyes. A thought niggled at him…there was something he needed to do, but the need for sleep was overwhelming.
I'll get up in just a moment…
It felt like only a few moments later when Carl started awake, but the bedroom was dim now, and the air was heavy with moisture.
Hard Landing Page 4
