Книга - The Black Wolf

The Black Wolf
Linda Thomas-Sundstrom


He’s a werewolf. She’s so much more…Raised in seclusion, Cara Kirk-Killion knows that she will never find the man who haunts her dreams until she ventures out into the world. But it’s Were-cop Rafe Laundau’s job to protect this shape-shifter from her own naveté. Yet he needs her as much as she needs him – to help his pack rid Miami of a vampire horde, and to satisfy a desire he’s never felt before.







He’s a werewolf...

...She’s so much more

Raised in seclusion, Cara Kirk-Killion knows that she will never find the man who haunts her dreams until she ventures out into the world. But it’s Were cop Rafe Laundau’s job to protect this shape-shifter from her own naïveté. Yet he needs her as much as she needs him—to help his pack rid Miami of a vampire horde, and to satisfy a desire he’s never felt before.


LINDA THOMAS-SUNDSTROM writes contemporary and paranormal romance novels for Mills & Boon. A teacher by day and a writer by night, Linda lives in the West, juggling teaching, writing, family and caring for a big stretch of land. She swears she has a resident muse who sings so loudly, she often wears earplugs in order to get anything else done. But she has big plans to eventually get to all those ideas. Visit Linda at www.lindathomas-sundstrom.com (http://www.lindathomas-sundstrom.com) or on Facebook.


Also by Linda Thomas-Sundstrom (#uc8b0bae9-19a2-5db3-aa99-effb666ce0d1)

Red Wolf

Wolf Trap

Golden Vampire

Guardian of the Night

Immortal Obsession

Wolf Born

Wolf Hunter

Seduced by the Moon

Immortal Redeemed

Half Wolf

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


The Black Wolf

Linda Thomas-Sundstrom






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


ISBN: 978-1-474-08210-5

THE BLACK WOLF

© 2018 Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


To my family, those here and those gone, who

always believed I had a story to tell.


Contents

Cover (#ud451debd-e022-5295-9969-814b21ae26d0)

Back Cover Text (#u33b2b595-6584-526f-b7dd-f1c0e4d124a9)

About the Author (#u2f4852db-13e3-5c20-ae0c-5107493690b3)

Booklist (#uf3e47009-97f5-59e7-9fd3-1e9280f00ab0)

Title Page (#uc3b03031-1a88-52ad-b269-aa7cd12e42f5)

Copyright (#ubc26ac1f-c84d-5f40-9c53-76580992de58)

Dedication (#u4f75596b-11e2-57fe-ab61-408238e10221)

Chapter 1 (#u6283d0f2-d9bb-5ba1-bcb4-228dec280816)

Chapter 2 (#u16b0e0cb-f235-58fb-ad45-de2e10ac2d45)

Chapter 3 (#u011a57b5-bb19-538d-8dd0-9648f1773def)

Chapter 4 (#u06c535fa-a578-50cd-8106-162446c3bd0c)

Chapter 5 (#u475508f2-68ab-5987-96bb-109c70b44cc0)

Chapter 6 (#u77f16e21-6822-5bef-974e-97a27acfd10c)

Chapter 7 (#uec979325-b96b-5b2f-afda-8e61b772b44c)

Chapter 8 (#u17826b16-30e1-513e-b6b0-68cba656e040)

Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)


Chapter 1 (#uc8b0bae9-19a2-5db3-aa99-effb666ce0d1)

Hot Miami nights in September were the bane of tourists and locals alike...but they suited Rafe Landau just fine.

Werewolves seldom reacted to heat the same way humans did. With body temperatures so elevated most of the time, a few degrees one way or the other didn’t matter. And humidity was Rafe’s friend. Sultry nights like this one were perfect for keeping criminals inside in front of their air conditioners. Or so he hoped. A detective’s job didn’t involve much downtime in a city this big. Having a night off from the usual chaos was a blessing.

Rafe sipped his soft drink on the narrow balcony of his semi-affordable oceanfront apartment, where the crash of waves almost completely masked the more invasive city sounds. Behind him, the blonde he planned to share a couple of hours on a mattress with shuffled toward him on bare feet.

“Got anything to drink in your bachelor pad besides sodas?”

Her voice was grittier than her looks. Rafe liked his temporary bed partners natural, without medically enhanced curves, dyed hair or overdone makeup. His preferences could have been a throwback to the times when wolves ran naked in the wild and nature ruled, but the fact was that he liked to see, taste and feel the women he dated with nothing artificial in his way.

Tonight’s date had already discarded most of her clothes; she was down to flimsy green lingerie that looked good on her. Her shoulder-length hair was tousled, her lips pouty. And her current state of undress made her invitation perfectly clear.

“Cupboard by the sink,” Rafe said, directing her to the stash of wine people had given him on various occasions, which he never drank. Other than a few swigs of beer on social occasions, the acuteness of his Were sense of taste and smell made alcohol off-limits.

“Wine?” she called out from the small kitchen, and followed that up with, “Warm wine?”

“I wasn’t expecting company” was Rafe’s standard reply in situations like this. He liked his women to feel special. This one was extraordinarily beautiful and probably damn good in bed, but she wasn’t the first he had invited home this month.

He supposed that he had been compensating for the painful memories, finding comfort in random companionship.

He had started feeling sorry for every woman who had caught his eye lately, believing him to be trustworthy because of his detective status and hoping that he might be available. The main thing he needed from a human female partner, however, was something none of them had been able to provide. Not that any of them could help being human. Although he could pass among them most of the time, he wasn’t really like them, and he had a secret to guard.

The fact that he was one of more than two dozen werewolves in a tightly knit Miami pack wasn’t exactly something he could be open about, and it kept him from any real connection.

He glanced over his shoulder. Hell, he was fairly sure he remembered this woman’s name. Brenda? Brandi? Something starting with a B.

Maybe he was wrong about the B. Randi? Candy?

He might call her again sometime when he was lonely, even though they had nothing in common, really. It was dangerous for Weres to fraternize for too long or become regularly intimate with a species outside their own.

But available she-wolves were a rarity in Miami and tricky to be around due to that little phenomenon known as imprinting. A lingering meeting of the eyes, Were-to-Were, or one outstanding sexual climax between them, and a werewolf was as good as engaged.

“Do you want some?” his date asked, clinking glasses on the counter.

“No,” Rafe said. “You go ahead.”

A breeze had come off the ocean to ruffle his hair—hair that was too long for a cop and too short for Rafe’s taste. It was a good wind. Felt nice.

He closed his eyes.

The scent of lilac perfume preceded his date onto the balcony. “Nice view,” she observed.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I’m damn lucky to have it.”

He took in the long lines of towering hotels perched along the beach. Lights glistened on the water. Colorful umbrellas dotted the scene during the day. His place was the only remaining small, privately owned building among those multistoried stucco behemoths. A holdout. His refuge. The manager liked having a cop around.

“How much is the rent?” his companion asked, making conversation, interrupting Rafe’s communion with the darkness and the breeze. At this point in the evening he should have been paying more attention to the green lingerie, but he frowned.

Some little thing nagged at his consciousness, served to him on that wind. A new scent arrived that was hard to define with Brandi so close. It wasn’t salty ocean waves or the usual array of smells wafting in from the restaurants down the street. This was something else.

What?

Rafe’s pulse accelerated slightly as he caught and held a breath, searching for a way to reconcile the new scent with the sudden burning sensation at the back of his throat. He set down his drink and peered at the ocean, hoping to attach a name to what he couldn’t quite capture, though his unusual talent for identifying and categorizing problems was what had made him the youngest decorated detective in the Miami PD.

Not perfume, he decided. The incoming scent wasn’t floral. It couldn’t be the warning signal of a wolfed-up Were, since the moon wasn’t full tonight, and anyway, he was intimately familiar with the scents of his kind.

The way his body had automatically tensed suggested he would have to find a polite way to send the woman beside him on her way and find the source of the mysterious smell that had taken precedence over her lilac perfume. There was the slightest suggestion of danger in the other scent, and his innate sense of justice demanded he focus on tracking it down.

Mysterious scents were almost never good. More often than not, they were attached to trouble. Still, he actually would be sorry to see Brandi go when the night had been so promising. What male, human or Were, wanted to pass up such an opportunity?

He just had a bad feeling about what might be out there...and he couldn’t let it go.

* * *

Cara Kirk-Killion stared out the window of the black SUV, feeling anxious and trapped. She didn’t often leave her family’s secluded estate. She liked the freedom of open spaces, wind, trees and being alone to commune with those things...and all of that was about to end for a while. The SUV had already entered the city, which meant that she had less than ten minutes of freedom left.

She hated the promise she had made to her father to behave. It was time, he had said, for her to see more of the world...in moderation, and in carefully controlled circumstances. It wouldn’t do to turn her loose in Miami without strict supervision, she had heard the Elders say, and she understood the need for such precautions. So she was to see more of the world under the protection of one of the largest and strongest werewolf packs in Miami. Her father’s people...though they weren’t really people. They howled each time a full moon came around.

Every instinct at the moment, however, told Cara to run in the opposite direction. Seeing more of the world wasn’t necessary when deep down inside her so many worlds already existed. She hadn’t actually begun to believe she might be a freak until a week ago, when some Were Elders showed up and the plan to take her away became a reality.

That’s when the dreams began. And the lectures.

Cities were dangerous places, her father had warned, which was likely the reason her parents had hidden her and themselves in the country. Cara also got the impression that the Kirk-Killions wouldn’t have fit in anywhere else. Her family was different, and Cara hadn’t needed anyone to point that out.

Colton Killion’s body was covered with scars that no one ever spoke about, probably because his Were blood should have healed them. Her father’s hair was as white as his skin. He liked to roam in his wolfed-up shape and seldom came into the house. A pure white wolf. Lean. Strong. Fierce. Ghostly.

Her mother was neither human nor entirely wolf. Though she had been born a pure-blooded Lycan, it turned out that Rosalind Kirk also shared her blood and DNA with other types of beings. Her mother’s hair was sometimes as black as the night and at other times white. Her features had a tendency to rearrange on occasion, and her deceptively delicate body reeked of old power.

Her mother liked to disappear for hours and shape-shift when the moon was full so that she could run with the white wolf she had lived with for years. The eerie sounds Cara’s mother often made—not howls or growls, but something much more powerful—had echoed through Cara’s mind from the time she was born.

It hadn’t taken Cara long to realize that she also possessed some of her mother’s special traits, and that the Kirk-Killions might seem scary to the humans beyond their gates. Because of all that, her parents weren’t accompanying her to Miami. There were two strangers in the front seat of the SUV, and they refused to meet her inquisitive gaze.

Werewolves. Both of them. Half-breeds, in that unlike her, they had been human once. Cara smelled the old bites that had sealed their fates and inducted them into the moon’s cult a long time ago. They’d probably been warned about her being a freak of nature, and it crossed her mind that maybe she should give them a demonstration. Show her fangs. Bring out her wolf. Give them a thrill and make them turn back so that she could again plead her case for staying home.

She wasn’t actually going to do any of that. At eighteen years old, she was no longer a child. She could remain calm and follow the plan that had been made for her. She would try to behave, if only because her dreams had also pointed her this way...to Miami and what she might find there. Whom she might find there. The male who had been haunting her dreams lately and had contributed to her current state of restlessness. The guy who had destroyed whatever kind of peace she had been able to find with her unusual little family for the past few weeks.

If she happened to find the guy, she would make him pay for bothering her and piquing her interest. Then she’d go home dream-free.

The city’s glittering lights surrounded the car, but Cara stared at the back of the seat in front of her. Through the open window she caught a whiff of a salty scent that could only have been the ocean she had heard so much about. It was a lovely scent, unique, and served to scramble her sense of duty.

Suddenly, behaving herself and allowing these guards to take her someplace she didn’t really want to go just didn’t suit her at all.

So when the car slowed for the next red traffic light, Cara opened the door.


Chapter 2 (#uc8b0bae9-19a2-5db3-aa99-effb666ce0d1)

Standing on the sidewalk, Rafe stared at the darkest stretch of beach with his senses wide-open. The wind had changed, taking the mysterious scent with it. He listened to the waves and muted music from one of the hotels. There were no police sirens tonight, and for the moment, no noisy tourists. It was just him and the beach.

Nevertheless, his pulse continued to race as if he was about to discover something. He hoped whatever that was justified his reluctantly giving Brandi the heave-ho. She hadn’t gone without a pouty fuss.

Rafe buttoned his shirt and tucked it into his jeans. He scanned the beach, looking pretty much like anyone else who might be out for a nighttime stroll, except for the badge pinned to his belt. He hadn’t taken the time to put on his shoes.

A half-moon overhead made the wave foam look silver and the sand appear as soft as velvet. Yet all was not so calm beneath the surface. The farther he had walked from those glittering hotel lights, the more his senses nagged about something being different tonight, something he had to pay attention to. If the strange scent had reached him on his balcony, its source couldn’t be far off.

When his cell phone buzzed with a text message, Rafe cursed the interruption. Still, the number that came up on his screen was an important one. This would have taken precedence over a call from his department anytime. It was his father asking him to come home. Judge Landau seldom made such a request.

“Okay,” Rafe muttered without immediately texting back. His attention was fixed on the water, where a solitary figure had emerged from the waves.

A woman.

She stood near the sand with the water swirling at her feet. He was pretty sure she was naked. Although the idea that occurred to him was insane, Rafe ran a hand over his eyes, imagining that he could be looking at a mermaid.

Of course, there was nothing strange about someone taking a nighttime swim, so he should just turn around and head home. But the feeling of stumbling onto the mystery that had called him here had gotten stronger, along with that unidentified scent.

Using the special abilities that allowed all Weres to see in the dark with more precision than their human counterparts, Rafe stared hard at the woman near the shore, even though his mind issued a warning about infringing upon her privacy.

The moonlight shone on the water behind her, presenting him with her slim silhouette. Her legs were slender. Long wet hair cascaded over bare shoulders.

Though Rafe couldn’t see the woman’s face in the dark, even with his considerable Were talents, he knew she was looking straight at him with the same kind of scrutiny. The intensity of her attention was electric.

“You all right?” he called out. “Are you alone? The tides can be quite treacherous for anyone swimming solo.”

The mermaid offered no response.

“Well, I’ll leave you to it, then,” Rafe said. “Sorry if I interrupted whatever you were doing.”

Maybe she thought he was some kind of pervert for staring at her. Could he blame her? On the other hand, if she did turn out to be a mermaid...

He shook his head sharply, clearing away that ridiculous notion. Again, though, he got the funny feeling this woman was connected to what brought him out here tonight in the first place. Since there was no one else around, he had to consider that she could very well be ground zero for the sensations running through him.

He didn’t see a towel or a pile of clothes that might belong to her on the sand. She made no move to turn away or cover her bareness with her arms. Being naked all alone was one thing. Being naked on a public beach was another.

“Do you need something to wear? Maybe someone took your clothes while you enjoyed your swim?” he asked.

The woman didn’t speak. Her earthy, not quite identifiable exotic scent floated around her like a cloud.

“You can have this.” Rafe removed his shirt and held it out to her, then shook it as an enticement for her to take his offering.

“Fine.” He lowered his arm when she made no move toward him. “But you really can’t walk around like that. Not here.”

“Why?”

Her question rendered him speechless for a few beats. She had a deep, throaty voice unlike any he had heard lately. Sort of a whisper. Almost a purr. It moved the wolf buried deep inside him with the kind of physical response usually reserved for a full moon.

Rafe shook that off, too. “You might scare the tourists,” he managed to say. “Or receive a proposition or two that you find offensive.”

When the woman shook her head, her waist-length wet hair swirled. Though he wanted to see more of her, Rafe figured she already thought he was a perv.

“There are no strings attached. The shirt is a gift.”

“I don’t know you,” she said.

The sexiness of her tone produced a strange fluttering sensation in his chest, which Rafe also found absurd given the circumstances. Hell, he wasn’t going to arrest her for indecent exposure, because he was the only one out here at the moment, and honestly, what he could see of her was quite decent. What he had to do was to go away and leave her alone.

And yet her rapt attention kicked his pulse upward another notch, and the air between them seemed to be charged with ions like those preceding an oncoming storm system.

There was danger here, his instincts warned. He had to tread lightly if he hoped to understand what that danger was.

“I’m with the police,” he said to explain his continued presence.

“And you’re a werewolf,” she returned with way too much insight and confidence.

Rafe was stunned. “Werewolf, is it?”

She spoke again. “I’ve heard that Weres around here have to try to fit in. You look human.”

“Why would you think I’m anything other than human?” he asked.

“Practice.”

After waiting a few more heartbeats, Rafe said warily, “If I’m a werewolf, what does that make you for recognizing me as such?”

“I guess I’m harder to define.”

“Maybe you can try.”

“I’ve been cautioned not to do that,” she said.

“Who cautioned you?”

“One of you.”

“A werewolf, you mean, or a cop?” Rafe pressed.

Although a cloud passed over the moon, bringing a brief, temporary dullness to the night, Rafe saw her nod her head.

She said, “The ghost warned me.”

Another spike of surprise struck Rafe. Though he didn’t have the specific details about this woman, her reply made who this had to be extremely clear to him. The scent that had drawn him here and the prickly premonitions about the possibility of danger finally came to a head. Mystery solved. One part of it, anyway.

“You are Killion’s daughter,” he said.

This was the female his pack was expecting. She was supposed to be an extremely rare kind of shape-shifter hybrid. Hell, maybe she could have been a mermaid.

“Yes,” she said.

“What are you doing here, and without your companions?”

Rafe connected this shapely vision in front of him with the text message he’d received from his father moments before. Cara Kirk-Killion must have escaped from her transport and her guards. His pack would be looking for her.

“Those guys were responsible for your safe passage to the estate,” he continued.

“I don’t need guards. Maybe you’ve heard why?”

She didn’t give him time to reply. With a quick turn on her long legs, the female that everyone in their pack had been warned to avoid at all costs until proper introductions had been made...just walked back into the sea.

Leaving Rafe to stare after her.

* * *

Cara didn’t stop to consider the possibility that the Were on the beach would follow her until she felt the pressure of a hand on her arm.

The touch came as a shock. No one had dared to touch her in the past for fear of what kind of shape she would end up in and how far into their souls she could see. One touch was all it took for her to adapt her form to the shape of whatever kind of being had reached out. Sometimes all it took for her to shift her shape was closeness, eye contact or a connecting thought.

Once she had melded to their shape, she could read them easily and see into their souls. She could at times predict their futures and understand their needs.

This Were had broken with tradition. Possibly he didn’t know better than to get too close to a member of the Kirk-Killion clan. Yet if he knew about her guards and the estate, he had to belong to the Landau pack and be privy to their secrets.

“It isn’t safe out here,” he warned, letting his hand drop.

“It’s never safe,” Cara replied, longing to get back to the silence and buoyancy of deep water, dreading having to go to the Landau place, where more Weres like this one awaited her arrival and she would be fenced in.

“I mean that if you’re as special as everyone seems to believe you are, you’d be a hot commodity around here and possibly hunted for your many talents,” the Were said. “It’s not safe to be on your own in a strange city.”

Cara still felt the burning sensation of his hand as if his fingerprints had been stamped on her skin. Did he also feel the heat? Had the call already gone out about the necessity of finding her?

More time was what she needed. Time to herself. Time with the water, which had been lacking at her family’s inland estate. Time to experience a few more precious moments without the shackles of Were society.

“I’ll take you there,” the Were beside her said, skipping over all of the things they hadn’t yet mentioned about why she was in Miami and how she had gotten away from the guards. “To the house,” he added.

She had escaped one net only to be ensnared by another. The big Were next to her, with his moon-streaked brown hair, lean, muscular build, chiseled features and light eyes, looked capable enough of handling any surprises that were in store.

Because he was in human shape tonight, Cara maintained her human countenance. She also kept her voice. However, she sensed the wolf curled up inside this guy as if it were her own and knew that it was strong, like hers. Being near him messed with her delicate equilibrium. She was drawn to him without knowing why.

He looked at his hand suddenly, as if he also felt the burn caused by one brief, simple touch. Then he glanced back up at her.

“I don’t like being caged,” Cara said, watching him closely, observing how he fisted his hand and the way the wind played with strands of his hair. He was as good-looking as her father, with prominent cheekbones and wide-set eyes. He was tall, with broad shoulders and moonlight-dappled golden skin. All of those things reinforced the Were’s wolfish nature, and yet he wasn’t a full-blooded member of the species. Human blood also ran in his veins; she perceived the slightest hint of an altered fragrance. One of his parents had, at one time or another, been human.

“That’s what you believe will happen when you accept our hospitality?” he asked. “You’d be caged?”

His voice disturbed her with its low, cautious, controlled quality. The Were’s earthy, masculine vibe caused another new ruffle in her widening awareness of the world outside her family’s gates. This was her first time meeting a male Were who looked as if he might not be too much older than herself.

“Why else would my parents shun this place and everyone in it, if not that for the fact that they no longer fit in?” Cara replied.

“From the stories I’ve heard, your parents withdrew from the rest of the pack because it was in their own best interest.”

Yes. She knew that. But it was only a small part of why the Kirk-Killions had withdrawn. And she didn’t owe this Were any explanations.

“I need time to get myself together,” she said. “It’s not easy for me to come out of the seclusion I’m used to.”

To her surprise, her companion seemed to get that. After a brief silence, he nodded and said, “I’ll wait for you on the beach.”

Cara didn’t know what to make of that. He was going to leave her alone for a while?

“What if I swim away?” she asked.

“Then you will be someone else’s problem.”

He didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Cara heard how his pulse pounded with the effort it took for him to let her have her way. She had no doubt that he would come after her if she tried to leave the area, and that shaking off this guy might be a difficult task. The strength of his inner wolf and all those rippling muscles made him a worthy opponent.

“Who are you?” she asked, more intrigued about him than she wanted to be.

“Name’s Landau. Rafe Landau. And I can assure you that though my family’s estate has walls, those walls are there only to keep trespassers out.”

Landau...

The Miami pack was both run and protected by his family.

She didn’t really believe in coincidences, and yet what were the odds she would run into a Were of this caliber so soon after ditching the guards his family had sent to bring her there?

“Can you promise me that’s the truth? I won’t be a prisoner behind those walls?” she asked.

“I can.”

The handsome Were allowed one little thought to slip past his mental defenses, and Cara caught hold of it easily. Neither fear nor anger ruled Rafe Landau’s thoughts. He wasn’t afraid of her at all. When she saw the image he held in his mind, she smiled.

“I could be one, you know,” she said. “If there were such creatures.”

He was staring at her openly. His heart continued to pound.

“Who knows?” she added. “Since you’re granting my wish by letting me explore the sea, maybe your wish will come true.”

“What wish?” he asked, frowning.

Cara’s answer was meant as a subtle warning of her power. This Were might be strong, but he wasn’t truly in control now that a werewolf-vampire-banshee hybrid like Cara Kirk-Killion was in Miami.

“About mermaids,” she said as she dived beneath the next incoming wave.


Chapter 3 (#uc8b0bae9-19a2-5db3-aa99-effb666ce0d1)

“Well, this is going to be a challenge,” Rafe muttered as Cara Kirk-Killion disappeared from sight. He feared that the word challenge didn’t begin to cover things.

She was swimming away, and he wanted to go after her. What if she decided not to return? Would he let her go? Let her become somebody else’s business, as he’d said?

Not likely.

He found himself much too interested and curious about her. And besides, his family was responsible for her safety.

Rafe ignored the tug of the outgoing tide on his legs. He needed more time to think. If Cara was anything like her parents, he could sympathize with her reluctance to meet the pack that had helped her family out of a jam so long ago.

Rosalind and Colton had departed from Miami soon after a battle with a particularly nasty nest of vampires that had almost killed Cara’s father. Colton Killion had been so severely injured that he had ended up a rare ghost wolf—the name Weres had for survivors of such heinous, life-threatening attacks.

Given Colton Killion’s state of health and his appearance after the attack, the wolf’s desire to go into seclusion was understandable. But in addition, from the stories Rafe had heard, Colton’s mate had turned out to be something even rarer than he was, making it even more necessary to retreat from the city. Now, Killion’s sole offspring was here, and heaven only knew what traits she possessed.

Rafe walked farther up the beach and turned without taking his eyes off the ocean. Cara hadn’t seemed dangerous, but what did he know? Wasn’t it a fact that looks could be deceiving?

He clutched his phone. The next step was to call and check in with his father, who would probably send a car to fetch her. But he didn’t do so. Not yet. Rafe empathized with her plight. Cara had to know how different she was and that his pack would be wary.

Still, whatever other forms she could take, Cara was a wolf. Both of her parents had been full-blooded Lycans before the events that had changed them, and Lycans carried the purest blood in the Were world. His hand felt hot. His insides were feverish. It was likely that his wolf was reacting to that part of Cara. Was his desire to see her again due to obligation and the threat of danger in his own backyard, or did it have to do with meeting a new kind of being that he wanted to understand?

Maybe she’d ditch him and appear somewhere else. If she did, where would she go?

“I won’t call them,” he said as if she still stood beside him. Then he sent that same message silently through the telepathic channels all Weres used to communicate.

“But I won’t go away,” he warned out loud.

The return of the fluttery sensation in his chest made Rafe stand up straighter. It was as though Cara Kirk-Killion had heard his little speech and had placed her own silent comment inside his chest instead of his mind. She knew he was there, all right, and that he would be here when she decided to be reasonable. She was also letting him in on some of the special things she could do.

The only question now was how long she might make him wait for another chance to see her, and if she already knew that was what he wanted most.

* * *

The Were wasn’t going away. Cara sensed his determination to corral the guest who was MIA and fulfill his obligation to the pack. She also sensed that he was genuinely interested in her for reasons of his own. This Were male had a different agenda. He seemed to be as curious about her as she was about him.

She rode the crest of another wave, feeling extraordinarily light, but guilt over the promise to behave that she’d made to her father left her nauseous. Her family never broke their promises. Would she be the first to do so? If the Landaus’ walls didn’t keep her in line, her family’s reputation for integrity would.

As the wave that brought her back to shore receded, Cara stood up. Taking a few steps forward to avoid the drag of the tide, she said to the Were on the beach, “You are persistent.”

“Persistence is my middle name,” he returned. “I’ve been told it’s a virtue.”

Cara didn’t wipe the water from her face, liking the coolness it provided. “You’ll take me to your pack yourself? You aren’t afraid of being alone with a member of my clan?”

“Should I be afraid?”

“Not tonight.”

“Then yes, I’ll drive you to the compound, if that’s all right with you,” he said.

“Do I have a choice in the matter?”

“I suppose you can do whatever the hell you want, though the invitation to be our guest stands,” he replied.

She watched the tall Were brush sand from the hem of his jeans. In the moonlight, his bare shoulders appeared to be perfectly sculpted. She allowed her gaze to linger there.

“One thing, though,” he said, glancing up. He held out his hand, offering her the damp shirt he had removed before wading into the water after her. “Nakedness won’t do if we meet anyone else on the way to the car. This is the best I can come up with unless you remember where you left your own clothes.”

Cara glanced up the beach. “I came from that way.”

He nodded. “Maybe you can wear the shirt until we find your stuff.”

If she followed his suggestion, she would have to take the shirt from his hand...the same hand that had touched her and given her the first real thrill she could remember. She wasn’t sure she wanted another one. She was fiercely aware of his body, and the fire in his eyes held her strangely captive.

She took another step, then paused. The Were’s scent saturated the shirt he held out to her, overwhelming her senses.

Seeming to understand her reticence, he closed the distance and stopped an arm’s length away from her with the shirt dangling from his fingers. It was a dare. A challenge. She took the shirt and held her breath as she slipped it on. The musky fragrance embedded in the fabric surrounded her body like a cloud until she could barely smell anything else.

“Better,” the Were said. “Now let’s get the rest of you covered up, shall we?”

Cara only then dared to take a deep breath.

“You have to understand that my family is personally responsible for your safety while you’re in Miami,” he said. “That was the pact we made, and pacts must be honored. I’m guessing there would be hell to pay if we don’t keep you in our sights.”

The shirt was soft, well-worn, and the same color blue as Rafe Landau’s eyes. Cara liked those details, and she liked looking at Rafe. He was a fine male of the Were species, she supposed. But the way she felt around him was disturbing.

“What if I asked you to postpone the inevitable for a while longer?” she asked.

He said, “I thought you already did.”

“Your pack thinks I’m a freak.”

“Then you can prove them wrong.”

“How do you know I’d be able to do that?”

“Call it a hunch,” he replied.

Cara blinked slowly. Like her, Rafe was quick to make judgments. But that didn’t mean he was right.

“It’s just a feeling I have,” he explained.

“You don’t know me.”

He shrugged those fascinating bare shoulders. “We can walk along the shore to get your clothes. I like the sand. Moonlight makes it sparkle.”

Cara expected him to say more. He had to have questions.

“Maybe we can come back here sometime after you settle in,” he said. “Would you like that, Cara?”

Hearing a stranger say her name gave her a jolt of pleasure that she tried to ignore. She wasn’t experienced in the nuances of male-female relationships, though she wanted to learn. And she could do worse than having this handsome, understanding Were as a teacher.

Rafe Landau didn’t know her, though. Not really. Not at all.

So what would he think when he found out her secrets?

* * *

The time it took for them to reach the spot where Cara had left her clothes was too short for Rafe’s liking.

With Cara dressed only in his shirt, which hung a little below her hips, the whole situation felt too intimate. They weren’t lovers out here to enjoy the moonlight. He had become her guard—and her jailer, to hear her tell it. Still, having this rare and beautiful creature beside him made Rafe feel oddly content.

He had to wonder about the hidden dangers Cara represented. Her father had achieved legendary status among those of Rafe’s pack. Her mother was only mentioned now and then in whispers. What kind of life could Cara possibly have had with a family like that?

“Are you much like your mother?” he asked, undeterred by the probable insensitivity of the question.

“Yes,” she replied.

“Are you afraid of being like her?”

She glanced at him as they walked. “Sometimes.”

“Would your family have sent you here if they had suspected trouble for you among us?”

She shook her head. “Only at home can I truly be free.”

Rafe said, “I believe... I hope...you’ll find that doesn’t have to be the case, and that you’ll make friends here.”

The desire to see her face up close and in better light had become an urgent necessity. Rafe wanted to get to know every line and curve of her body. Cara might be dangerous, but she looked so fragile and delicious in his shirt.

Maybe fragile wasn’t the right word.

If Cara was anything like her mother, formidable was more like it. Rumor had it that Rosalind Kirk could shape-shift into many different forms any time she wanted to and that few enemies could stand against her. Nevertheless, if Cara was like her mother, and not entirely wolf, why did his wolf recognize hers? And why didn’t he sense any animosity in her?

“I won’t be here long. Surely you know that I can’t live among you,” she said, acknowledging his thoughts as if he had shared them with her.

“How do you know you can’t be happy here?” he asked. “At least you can give us a try.”

She gave the ocean a long look and said, “I have promised to try.”

Cara’s feet seemed to skim the sand. She was incredibly beautiful. Stunningly so. Yet there was no mistaking the powerful aura that surrounded Cara like her own personal fog. Rafe could only imagine how she might use that power if she wanted to.

Despite that, it took all of his willpower to keep his hands to himself. He wanted badly to console Cara, to reassure her that her visit would go well. He knew he was lying to himself about the possibility that she wouldn’t want to leave when the time came. For the moment, he tried to stick to the story that they could be friends, though that too was revealed as a falsehood each time Cara leaned into the wind and his shirt clung to the outlines of her sleek, wet body.

When she stopped, he stopped with her. She turned to face him, and his pulse sped up. Moonlight hugged her face, showing Rafe all the details he had been hoping to see. He held his breath.

She had high cheekbones and a wide brow. Though she was lean, her full lips lent her a softness that was lacking in her attitude. Her neck was long and graceful, her skin a smooth, unblemished ivory. Large eyes, framed by dark lashes, dominated her other features. Those eyes were a bright Lycan green.

She took a step, bringing her close enough for Rafe to feel her breath on his face. She said suddenly, in a hoarse, velvety whisper, “It’s you, isn’t it?”

Then she waited in silence as if daring Rafe to find meaning in those words.


Chapter 4 (#uc8b0bae9-19a2-5db3-aa99-effb666ce0d1)

She knew she had surprised Rafe. There was no way he could even begin to comprehend her remark. But this had to be the Were who had haunted her dreams. Why else had they met like this—him, out of all of the other wolves the Landaus could have sent to find her?

Was there such a thing as coincidence, after all, or had there been some other hand at work here?

Cara had anticipated this meeting with her dream man and had vowed to pay him back for the sleepless nights. Now she wanted this moment to go on, and for time to stop with the two of them right here, near the water.

Eventually, she broke the silence. “Six days. I’ll stay here for six days and then I’ll go home.”

He said, “Are you worried about the moon being full right after that?”

Cara didn’t have to look up at the sky to know the exact position of the moon, and that it was half-full tonight. The pull of the moon on her system was a constant reminder of what it could do, and what she could become. She also felt the movement of the tides and the rhythm of the blood in her arteries.

She felt Rafe’s attention on her as if it was another touch.

“It wouldn’t be wise to stay any longer,” she said.

“What would happen if you did?”

He wore a serious expression that made his eyes gleam as he waited for her to explain herself.

“Unwanted guests might arrive,” she replied.

“We’ve had quite a few unwelcome visitors in the past and know what to do with them,” he told her. “Have no doubts about that.”

“These uninvited guests wouldn’t be any of your concern and are merely another part of my existence.”

“Are you talking about vampires and what happened to your parents here?”

“Among other things.”

He leaned toward her. “What would other creatures want if they did come?”

“The same thing you want,” she replied soberly.

“And that is?”

“Me.”

Her answer didn’t seem to surprise him. He didn’t feign ignorance or pretend to misunderstand her meaning. But he took in a breath and held it before speaking again.

“It’s natural, I suppose, that I’m interested in you. Wolf-to-wolf attraction has a heady allure, and being at the beach doesn’t help any, because moonlight on the water is romantic. Then there’s the fact that you’re exceptionally beautiful and half-naked. All of that can mess with a guy’s head. I’ll admit that it’s messing with mine.”

Ribbons of pleasure wound through Cara with an exotic flutter. No one had ever told her she was beautiful. She hadn’t really been sure how others perceived her looks. She’d never understood why other creatures wanted a piece of her, except for the vampires. Her mother had warned her about that. Having a Banshee’s spirit nestled inside her would allow her to lead bloodsuckers to their next meal by pointing out human weaknesses. If caught by them, she’d become a vampire’s dinner bell.

The heat caused by Rafe’s remarks left Cara uncertain about what might happen next, and what she should do. Her legs felt weak, and that was a first. Her stomach twisted as if the thing she housed had come alive. Rafe had an almost mystical allure for someone who had gone without companionship for most of her life.

They had reached the place where she had discarded her clothes, but he hadn’t noticed. Hadn’t he said he liked her half-naked?

“You haven’t seen a naked woman before?” she asked, noting how he stared at her as she started to take off his shirt.

“I’ve seen a few,” he replied. “But none quite like you.”

A shiver moved through her as she brought her head up and whirled around. A new feeling had invaded her senses, and it didn’t register as anything remotely like pleasure. It was an announcement that they had company. The kind she had warned Rafe about. Trouble was coming, and the wolf beside her was about to find out what her world could be like.

* * *

Rafe spun around, his senses on high alert. Cara was already on the move.

He caught up with her in four long strides as his cop reflexes kicked in and he stepped in front of Cara to block her way while he searched the beach and the sidewalk. She placed both of her hands on the center of his back and applied pressure to move him out of the way.

“Wait,” he said to her. “Just wait.”

He didn’t have his gun. Hell, he wasn’t wearing shoes. The shove Cara gave him sent him forward a few inches, but he rallied. Determined to do his job and protect her, Rafe hit a number on his cell phone to call his father and said to Cara, “What’s out here that I can’t see?”

“Fangs,” she replied.

“Fangs, as in vampires?” Could that be right? Had vampires found Cara already? How was that possible?

“One of them,” she said.

“Close by?”

“Very close.”

“How can I find it?” Rafe asked.

“Smell.”

He was supposed to smell a damn vampire when his lungs were filled with Cara’s rich scent?

“Describe the smell, Cara.”

“Dark earth, dirt and other things more difficult to define unless you’ve met with vampires before. They’re masters at masking those smells, which makes them hard to find if you were to go looking.”

“Can we get to the street, or another block down the beach?” Rafe asked.

When she didn’t answer him, he took her silence for a bad sign. Keeping his eyes trained for any movement in the distance, Rafe automatically reached for Cara’s hand. The surge of electricity that hit him when their skin met was a shock. But he couldn’t let it distract him from getting Cara out of there. Even if she had faced these creatures before, he had to guard her with his life. Or try to.

“Follow me,” he instructed, lacing her fingers with his and absorbing charge after charge of electricity that felt like nothing he had ever experienced.

Adrenaline took over. Cara didn’t protest when he pulled her forward. “Warn me if I’m heading for trouble,” he said.

She tugged at him hard enough to stop him after a few steps. Frustrated by this, Rafe turned to face her.

“It’s you,” she repeated, but with a different emphasis this time.

Her face came close to his. As she met his eyes, her wet hair brushed against his bare arms, causing alternating heat and chills. Cara, the hybrid shifter he was trying to protect, could adopt a vampire’s form if one were to appear on the beach, but the need to get her to safety was strong enough for him to override his fear of that happening.

“What is it, Cara?” he asked.

Her next words shook him up more than touching her had.

“You smell like them,” she said.

“What are you talking about?”

Cara didn’t honor him with a reply. She turned toward the dark remains of a hotel under renovation, taking him with her. That’s when Rafe saw what had attracted her attention. Someone was standing on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. Someone Rafe thought he knew.

“No way,” he muttered in surprise. But in the time between that remark and his next breath, the figure materialized beside them...and Rafe hadn’t seen anyone move.

Perfume. He smelled perfume, and it was familiar. Also familiar was the tangle of blond hair and the green shirt that did little to hide an exquisite body.

Holy hell...it was Brandi. She was a goddamn vampire?

Shock kept him from moving as fast as he should have. His date from earlier that night was there beside him, hissing through a pair of lethal-looking fangs as she went for his throat.

In a flash of speed that rivaled the creature in front of him, Cara had Brandi’s hair in her fists. God, it really was Brandi...or whatever the hell Brandi really was.

“My problem. Not yours,” Cara said to him over her shoulder.

“The hell you say,” Rafe snapped.

Cara was already liquefying. That was the only way to describe what happened. Her body just seemed to melt into a kind of being that was Cara, and yet different, as the fight began in earnest without him.

* * *

Cara snapped at the vampire with a fresh set of fangs that made the creature in her grip hesitate for a few seconds too long. Uncertainty flashed in its red-rimmed eyes as Cara’s hold on its hair tightened.

She felt the vampire’s hunger and the incessant throb of its need to feed. Hunger was everything. Starvation meant oblivion. Vampires killed in order to feel alive—otherwise they were merely animated corpses without any real direction. This one was old, and masterful in its ability to disguise itself, at least on the surface. Once the fangs came out, its human semblance began to decay.

Cara’s fangs, on the other hand, brought on a hunger of another kind—a defensive desire to rid the world of the monsters she was cursed to emulate.

The Landau wolf joined in the fight. Using his weight to press Cara aside, he struggled to get one of the vampire’s arms behind its back. The harsh sound of a bone breaking was alarmingly loud as the vampire’s arm shattered near the shoulder. Louder still was Rafe Landau’s startled intake of breath.

Fangs brushed her arm, ripping her sleeve, leaving a long trail of flapping fabric. Cara maneuvered her way between Rafe and the snarling bloodsucker with her own fangs exposed and her hands moving almost subliminally fast.

Rafe, who was incredibly strong and used to fighting, by the looks of things, wasn’t to be left out of this fray. He also wasn’t going to allow a female to help him do his job, no matter who or what that female was. With great force, he leaned his shoulder into the vampire, and it teetered. The bloodsucker hissed again through its treacherous fangs and spit out his name.

Hearing that made Rafe Landau hesitate. Cara pushed past him. Even a few seconds of hesitation when facing the walking undead meant certain death, and this abomination whose distant relatives had helped to make Cara like them in so many ways wasn’t going to win tonight. She hated vampires. She hated when they came to find her, sensing kinship. She hated every time her fangs dropped and she became like them.

Foul black blood spurted from the vampire’s shoulder when Cara’s fangs found purchase. The blood was evidence of the creature’s recent meal. There would have been none otherwise, only a spill of dark gray ash, the same ash vampires dissolved into after being dealt a death blow by a worthy opponent.

“Let me have her...have it,” Rafe directed. But this was Cara’s own personal war.

Cara dug into the bloodsucker’s flesh with her fangs. At the same time, Rafe landed a right-handed punch to the vamp’s shoulder, and the fanged parasite shrieked, probably not from pain, but from anger. It lost hold of its feminine disguise as it rallied, and the undead creature whose looks previously could have fooled most humans became the bony, skeletal, red-eyed abomination it really was.

Cara felt no kinship with this vampire and refused to acknowledge being like it. This was one of the many monsters that ruled her nightmares. Vampires were the enemy, though this one had likely believed at first that Cara Kirk-Killion, with her pale skin and fangs, might help take Rafe down. But vampires like this one had nearly killed her father. To most of the world, her father had died.

Colton Killion’s DNA had been compromised by too much vampire saliva and too damn many bites, and he’d become a legendary white ghost wolf one fateful night here in this city, an albino whose skin and hair would have stood out anywhere as being freakish.

The same thing was not going to happen to Rafe. Not tonight.

Though this bloodsucker was fast, Cara moved faster. She possessed a secret weapon that hadn’t yet been revealed. Her heritage. All of it.

She snapped her fangs in the creature’s face and made it look at her...made it look into her eyes. A far older spirit than this vampire was beginning to show itself. This was death calling. True and final death. The Banshee inside her had awakened.

The shriek that came from the vampire’s open mouth when it realized its fate dictated what would happen. One second passed, then two more, and Cara, with her dark spirit’s extra push of power, punched through the vampire’s bony concave chest with both hands. Gripping hard, she squeezed the blackened heart that had not beat in centuries until the useless thing crumbled.

“Don’t breathe,” Cara shouted to Rafe, who was beside her and struggling to get his hands on the foul creature. Seconds later, the bloodsucker exploded like a bomb had gone off, and its lifeless body disintegrated into a flurry of foul-smelling ash.


Chapter 5 (#uc8b0bae9-19a2-5db3-aa99-effb666ce0d1)

A dark, sticky rain was falling. But it wasn’t rain, really, and nothing that resembled water.

Rafe let out the breath he had been holding and stared at the spot where the vampire had been standing. He was afraid to look at Cara in vampire mode. Shock over witnessing what had happened here made his stomach turn. This was something he would never forget, though the whole event had happened so fast, he hardly believed it had happened at all.

Finally, he did look at Cara. He had to see her to try to make sense of it all. She hadn’t just exposed a gleaming set of fangs—she’d exposed one of her secrets. And even with her fangs, pale skin and flat black gaze, she had the ability to mesmerize.

Many features remained of the Cara he had met earlier tonight, only slightly rearranged. She had sharper cheekbones with gaunt hollows beneath. Dark crescents underscored her eyes, contrasting with the whiteness of her skin. The only color she possessed was in the tiny drops of blood speckling her lips, which were half-closed over a daunting pair of unnatural teeth.

The rumors were true. Cara had transformed into this new version in less time than it had taken for him to catch his breath. Rafe found himself equally fascinated and repelled by her new look and by what he had seen Cara do to the vampire. No stranger to violence himself, he sympathized with Cara, and how her life probably consisted of one fight after another. He wondered if she would ever be able to find the kind of peace she might crave.

Hell, he was speechless, and therefore couldn’t ask her how a shape-shift like hers was possible, or what it felt like. Plus, it wasn’t his place to ask her tough questions or make her feel any more ill at ease than she already did.

Cara Kirk-Killion, in whatever incarnation, had just possibly saved his sorry ass from a date with a vampire. He couldn’t believe it Using fangs had likely been Brandi’s intention all along. The skimpy lingerie had been camouflage. Lilac perfume had masked the unfamiliar scent. They probably never would have made it as far as the bed.

Cara had freed him from having to deal with his first vampire—a bloodsucking parasite so like a human, he had fallen for its charade. What about the curvaceous body Brandi had sported, and the silky tousled hair? Would he have discovered the truth if he’d gotten close enough to the creature to discover that her chest contained no heartbeat?

And what about Cara? Did her vampire form come with a vampire’s thirst? If she had those kinds of urges, she was controlling them well. She stood three feet from him with her hands at her sides, radiating no perceptible aura of danger, though for a few seconds back there, he’d had doubts. His ears still rang with the sound of her fangs gnashing.

“Can you change back?” he asked, slightly out of breath from the recent adrenaline surge. “Will the vamp characteristics fade away on their own?”

Maybe those weren’t the questions Cara had been anticipating, but they were the only ones she was going to get from him at the moment. Her eyes were trained on him. She said nothing in reply as he led her down the sidewalk.

In the glare of his building’s exterior security lights, Rafe glanced away from her lingering gaze long enough to note the rips in the shirt he had loaned her and the blood soaking it in several spots. She didn’t seem to notice any of that.

“We’ll need to see to those scratches,” he continued, stepping aside so that Cara could precede him to his apartment. “We can make a quick stop at my place if you’re up for that,” he added. “I have a first-aid kit.”

When she shook her head, Rafe paused, then rallied enough of his wits to say, “Thank you, Cara.”

Her red-rimmed eyes, still dilated by an interior darkness, met his. The tips of her extremely white fangs seem to glow against the color of her blood-flecked lips.

“That’s what you meant when you said ‘it’s you,’ right? You smelled that vampire on me?” With the adrenaline still flowing, he kept up the nervous chatter. “Now that I think about it, I invited that thing inside. What kind of a fool does that make me?”

Cara finally spoke. “I told you they are deceptive in their disguises. Like we are.”

Like we are...

She meant werewolves masquerading as humans.

As Rafe watched, Cara’s face began to shift back, resuming the beautiful human features Rafe had first seen on the beach. The hollows in her cheeks disappeared, and some color returned.

He couldn’t have explained what the process actually was or how it worked. When the redness around her eyes faded, Rafe wondered whether the face she now showed him was what Cara actually looked like, or if its beauty was another kind of stunt for suckers like him to fall for.

In the light from the building, Cara was even more beautiful than she had been in the moonlight. Could he trust his eyes?

Werewolves didn’t shape-shift easily. Transformations were always painful. Some Weres shifted faster than others, with full-blooded Lycans being masters of the pain game. Cara’s switch to vampire mode and back had been different. It was silent, fluid, as if she had merely coaxed another shape into existence.

She continued to observe him with a keenness that made his inner wolf anxious. Just another shape-shift in my repertoire of them, her expression suggested. Nothing special.

Hell, did she even know what special was?

“Can you control when you become like them?” he asked, unabashedly curious. “Do you make it happen?”

“It just is,” she replied.

Though the fangs were gone, flecks of blood still dappled her mouth. Rafe tried not to look.

“There’s no control button or on-off switch?” he pressed.

She shook her head.

“Can you do that with any supernatural creature, Cara? Look like anything that comes your way?”

“For the most part.”

“Christ,” Rafe muttered. “I see why you’d rather not be in an unfamiliar place when the moon is full. What could your werewolf side possibly be like when coupled with so many other talents?”

“My wolf side isn’t much like yours,” she said and left it at that.

The weird thing was how much Rafe desired to get closer to Cara in spite of the warning flags his mind was waving. He should have felt sorry for her and her burden, yet she seemed to be up to the task handed to her, if tonight was any indication. Though her family and background were intimidating, part of him needed to see past all that and find the real Cara. He tried to guess whether anyone had ever seen the real thing.

Telling her he’d like to help in any way he could seemed ludicrous, given the fact that she had just killed a vampire with relative ease. Still, when he gestured again for Cara to precede him to the stairs, she obliged docilely, as if she trusted him and they were fast friends.

As they began to move, the soft growl of a well-tuned engine broke the silence. Rafe had almost forgotten about the emergency call he’d made to his father before the vampire attack and had mixed feelings now about how quickly the call had been answered. He would lose one-on-one face time with Cara. There would be less of a chance to get to understand her.

Cara was listening to the same sound. When she turned to him, her eyes were again the color of polished emeralds, flashing with curiosity as she wiped the flecks of blood from her lips with the back of one hand.

“I’m sorry,” Rafe said as the musky scent of approaching Weres became more pronounced. “We’ve got company, but it’s all right this time.”

Almost immediately, he caught sight of his silver-haired father and Cameron Mitchell, another large Were Rafe knew very well, who was a senior detective on the Miami force. They were heading their way.

“I’ll go up and get more clothes for you,” Rafe said to Cara. “We never found yours, and the picture you present in my shirt is...”

Cara tilted her head to one side, waiting for him to finish. He didn’t. Couldn’t. This hybrid Were was sexy, lithe, strong and more than a little bit scary.

Yep, he was a fool, all right, for sliding into sympathy with her so effortlessly. Telling Cara he was attracted to her, scary bits and all, wasn’t going to help their situation and would confuse them both. But that was exactly what Rafe was thinking when he’d only known her for, what? About an hour? As she had said, he didn’t really know her at all.

“Rafe?”

His father’s deep voice was only a sampling of the kind of power Dylan Landau possessed. Cara looked at the alpha coming their way with a flicker of interest. Before stopping to think, Rafe reached out to offer her his support with a light touch on her arm.

Fire erupted inside him as her eyes met his. More flames licked at his throat, bringing on a whole new level of heat. There was no way to acknowledge the suddenness of these feelings, their origin and what they might mean.

“Cara. Are you all right?” his father asked, slowing as he reached them.

When she remained silent, Rafe didn’t answer for her. He was struggling to control his own feelings. Cara had told him she needed time to adapt and get her bearings, and time was exactly what he needed, too, because his heart seemed to stop each time their eyes met. The reaction was not only absurd, it was irresponsible.

“Come with us,” his father said, gesturing with a wave of his hand toward the car parked a short distance away. “And welcome to Miami.”

Rafe’s father hadn’t gotten to be a respected judge without having serious social skills. The alpha’s tone was calm and free of any hint of chastisement over her earlier escape. There was no anxiousness in his bearing. There usually wasn’t.

Between his father and Cameron Mitchell, Cara was in good hands. Rafe should have been relieved to let her go.

Yet he didn’t feel relieved. Far from it. He felt as if he wasn’t going to allow them to take her.

Cara slowly turned toward the two men without visibly revealing the concern Rafe knew she felt. On the inside, Cara was on fire, just like he was. They shared the flames that had been kindled between them tonight. He should have feared that, or at least been wary of the speed with which this had happened.

Ignoring the others, Cara said to him, “That vampire wasn’t after me. It wasn’t waiting for me out here tonight.”

Rafe gave her a questioning glance.

“It was here for you,” she said.

Cara was probably right, Rafe realized. Having missed her earlier opportunity, Brandi had been waiting for another shot at draining him dry, whether or not he had company.

But there was a slight problem with that, if the stories were true about werewolf blood being a turn-off to vampires. He chose not to point that out for the time being. Brandi had been trying hard to seduce him. If it wasn’t dinner that wily creature had wanted, what had she been after in her attempt to take him down?

* * *

Cara wasn’t in a position to protest the presence of the two new Weres, so she tucked those arguments away. She didn’t like this interruption of her time alone with Rafe Landau. In less than an hour, she had become comfortable with him. Now, with the other Weres present, she again felt tense.

The stab of regret she felt when Rafe dropped his hand and spoke to the others was a new kind of pain. She didn’t like pain. A fresh round of defiance rose inside her over the idea of being separated from him.

“What vampire are we talking about?” the silver-haired Were asked nonchalantly.

His scent was similar to Rafe’s. The older wolf was notably alpha, and had to be Rafe’s relative. Father? He was tall and handsome. His long hair was tied behind his neck, and he had a younger Were’s build that made him appear half the age he’d have to be if Rafe was his son.

Rafe answered the Elder Were’s question. “We had an argument with a vampire a few minutes ago.”

Cara observed how the alpha moved with the same kind of grace Rafe possessed. However, she could tell the older Were was a pure-blooded Lycan and wore his power like an emblem of high birth and rank.

“Cara, this is my father, Dylan Landau, host for the duration of your stay,” Rafe said, interrupting his father’s line of questioning. “And this is Cameron Mitchell, a good friend of ours.”

“Please forgive the lack of introductions,” the alpha said with a polite dip of his head. “We were very worried, and happy to find you in good hands.”

The alpha took in the scene through pale eyes, missing nothing, assessing the situation without comment. When his gaze landed on the tears in her sleeve, Dylan Landau said, “Not a heated argument, I hope, with that vampire?”

“Nothing too bad,” Rafe lied.

The alpha nodded. “I knew your father and your mother, and I’m glad they agreed to let you visit. I’m sorry you didn’t have such a warm welcome, Cara, and would like to make that up to you. Would you come with us to see where you’ll be staying?”

Cara didn’t look at Rafe. She could have been wrong about the tension that seemed to be building up in him. She knew he wanted her to comply, to reach a safer place than this one. He had worried about her from the start.

Even more interesting was the fact that Rafe’s father didn’t appear to be too concerned about their encounter with a bloodsucker. Every Were here should have known this was worthy of further investigation.

Unfamiliar sensations continued to flood Cara’s system when she stole a closer look at Rafe. The flares of heat were new and something she didn’t fully understand.

As if he had the ability to read minds, Dylan Landau addressed her last thought. “Rafe, why don’t you ride along with us? Maybe you can loan our guest some clothes until we get her home.”

Rafe’s father didn’t ask how she had lost her clothes in the first place, and Cara felt herself warming to his social skills.

It looked like there was going to be a benign ending to this eventful evening, although she’d now witnessed for herself the vampire presence in Miami and how far this city’s bloodsuckers had evolved. The appearance of the one she’d met tonight, along with the fact that it had purposefully lain in wait for Rafe, was highly unusual. Vampires tended to act on instinct when finding their next meal, and didn’t usually set traps to ensnare their victims. Yet it seemed to her that this one had.

“Male or female vamp?” Rafe’s father casually asked.

“Female,” Rafe said.

The alpha asked Cara the question directly. “New or old?”

“Not too ancient,” Cara replied. “But talented.”

Dylan Landau nodded. “Well, it will be a relatively short ride to our home. It won’t take long. We aren’t going far.”

Unlike with his father, Cara could read Rafe’s emotions as easily as she had read the tides. Rafe wanted her to go along with the plan his father had laid out, and at the same time, he was sorry she had to.

Cameron waved a hand toward what Cara supposed had to be the waiting car. She looked to Rafe, whose nod indicated it was all right for her to follow.

She was trapped. There was nowhere for her to run, and she couldn’t rely on the ocean to take her away.

“I’ll be right behind you,” Rafe said. “I’ll just get those pants. I hope you like jeans.”

Cara followed the two Weres from the beach without argument, already counting the minutes until Rafe would again be at her side. She continued to watch Dylan Landau closely, gauging his strengths, needing to ask the alpha what he knew about her parents, while knowing she’d have to behave and honor his wishes if she were to piece together the puzzle of what had happened to them here nineteen years ago.

Had her mother and father been cast out of this pack for being different, or for being dangerous? What had made them outcasts? Who had been alpha of the Landau pack back then?

Her parents had never spoken to her about these things. Questions about the past were taboo. Getting answers was part of the reason she had gone along with the plan for her to visit Miami. It was the reason she was going with these Weres to the car. Still, there was another path to explore here in Miami as well. The path revealed by her dreams...and the wolf that had haunted them.

Right here, tonight, whether it had been coincidence or the fates had played a hand, that wolf dream was no longer just in her imagination. The wolf had come to life, and his name was Rafe Landau.

They were in some way connected. Even in the reality of the moment, Rafe Landau was haunting her. His looks, his presence and strength, all pointed to something she had yet to grasp. If events were lining up and falling into place, did that mean she was on the path to get everything she wanted?

The questions she needed to have answered were the reason she had helped Rafe fight off the undead attacker, and was wearing his clothes. Her curiosity had prevented her from making Rafe pay for appearing in her dreams and disturbing her sleep. It suddenly seemed to Cara that Rafe, for good or ill, was going to be the key to what lay ahead. He was the central clue in the mystery of her existence that she had to unravel.

Do you know this, Rafe?

She didn’t send that question to him over Were channels because the answer would have been about what lay ahead. If she stayed.


Chapter 6 (#uc8b0bae9-19a2-5db3-aa99-effb666ce0d1)

The Mercedes sedan seemed crowded to Rafe as Cameron pulled away from the apartment building. Cara didn’t look at him from her side of the back seat. She had withdrawn. He couldn’t read her.

They traveled in silence. The car’s interior temperature felt cool, and the leather seat was luxuriously soft. For once, Rafe was relieved to leave the beach. Thoughts of his close call with the vampire nagged at him. He hoped this wasn’t a prediction of what the future might bring.

Several things continued to bother him, but the image of Cara with fangs was foremost in his mind. He would have preferred that others in his pack not be exposed to the kinds of things Cara could do. Freak was the word she had used to describe herself, and actually, was that so far off?

Then there was the attack itself. Why had the vampire gone after a werewolf when a human tourist would have been much tastier fare?

Rafe kept those thoughts locked away as buildings and lights shot past the window. At this hour, people crowded the streets in search of food and entertainment. Six police cruisers crept by, keeping up a show of law-enforcement presence.

By comparison, the estates on the far side of the city were quiet, secluded and seemingly a world away from the neon and the noise. His family’s property was one of the largest in the area. Its three landscaped acres were entirely surrounded by an eight-foot stone wall that was monitored by the pack, and there was a small manned guardhouse at the front gate. A well-respected federal judge lived there. Wolves lived there. The Landau house was a place of secrets.

Rafe stole a glance at Cara as they neared the front gate, thinking she had to feel the heat of his attention even though she didn’t turn her head. Or was he just making that up?

He sighed and rubbed his temples, not sure what to expect when they arrived. Who would be among the welcoming committee? He assumed that most of the pack would have been kept from meeting Cara, at least for tonight.

“Here we are,” his father announced as the surroundings grew darker and the long stretch of gray stone came into view. Cara had told Rafe she feared being trapped behind those walls. He’d have given a lot to know what she was thinking now.

The car stopped in front of the ornate iron gate and was quickly waved through by a familiar guard when it opened. As the Mercedes cruised down the driveway, his father turned in his seat.

“It’s past dinnertime, but you can have whatever you like as soon as you’re settled in. You must be famished,” he said.

Rafe could almost hear Cara silently say, What I’d like is to go home. To her credit, she didn’t voice that response.

“Not many of us will be here tonight,” Rafe’s father continued. “We thought you might prefer some time to get to know the place before we introduce you. Is that all right with you, Cara?”

Cara was looking at his father. She barely nodded her head. He knew this was the moment she had been dreading, probably since the plan for her to come to Miami had first been hatched. On the surface she looked calm enough, but small quakes rocked the seat he shared with her, and every one of them was like a stab to his heart.

“Cara,” he said, needing to speak, hoping to ease her trepidation. “Look. See up there?” He pointed at the brick house that rose two and a half stories above a meandering lawn. “Top floor? Can you see it?”

Her eyes glided that way.

“Your mother stayed in a room there. Your father, too. Maybe you’d like to have that same room while you’re here?”

He had snagged her interest. The air in the car became charged.

“I’m sure that can be arranged,” he said.

“It can,” his father agreed.

She was tuning in now and sending Rafe messages over silent Were channels. “Will I be a prisoner?” And “Will you be here?”

“No. Not a prisoner. I’ve told you that. And yes, I’ll stay if that’s what you want,” he messaged back over airwaves his father would also be privy to, as well as every other Were within a short distance if they weren’t careful with their transmissions. He’d have to warn Cara to erect her own inner walls.

Here, in this pack, where so many secrets had to be kept, unspoken messages were the normal mode of communication. That didn’t necessarily ensure privacy but there were ways to get around being overheard at times.

“After what happened tonight with that vampire, it might be best if you stayed away from the walls for a day or two, Cara. Just to be safe,” his father suggested.

The next shudder that rolled through Cara felt to Rafe as if it had been his own. The word trapped echoed in his mind like a shout. When the car stopped in front of the columned southern portico and Cameron opened the door for her, Cara got out. As Rafe’s mother emerged from the house, Cara paused. But she didn’t have to be worried.

Dana Delmonico Landau had turned casual into an art form. That showed now in her outfit, a faded pair of jeans and white T-shirt. His mother had never been a fan of anything fancy. She had been a good detective for years and had risen through the ranks to become a captain in the Miami PD. She had only recently retired and therefore had too much energy in need of release.

His mother had been born human. She had also been here when Rosalind Kirk and Colton Killion had briefly been in residence. From the stories of that time, he knew his mother, along with his father, had helped Cara’s parents in the final showdown with the vampires, after which both of Cara’s parents had disappeared.

Did Cara know anything about that, or about the part his pack had played in those last days? If she housed spirits similar to her mother’s, would being in this house seem like déjà vu?

“Cara.” His mother had stopped on the bottom porch step. “I’m Dana, and I’m glad you made it here. Would you like to come in, or would you prefer to take a look at the grounds first? Please understand that we’re not as grand as this place would make us seem, and we’re happy to have you join us here.”

Cara didn’t speak, but Rafe noticed that her eyes gravitated toward his mother’s.

“Rafe,” his mother said, turning to him, “why don’t you show Cara around while we find her something to eat? Let her catch her breath before joining us inside.”

Rafe looked to his father, who nodded in spite of his earlier warning to remain clear of the walls for the time being. Both of them knew the importance of that warning, and also that Rafe would take it seriously.

“Cara, what do you say to a little more fresh air?” Rafe asked. “Just to get the feel of the place.”

She nodded. And as though she was merely any invited guest instead of the daughter of two Were legends and potentially as dangerous as both of them, everyone else went into the house, leaving Cara and him in the driveway, alone.

* * *

She had never seen a house as large as the one in front of her. Actually, Cara had never seen any house besides the small one she had grown up in. Nevertheless, she sensed a certain familiarity with the Landau mansion that didn’t make it seem as foreign as she had expected. There were plenty of ghosts here, something she was intimately familiar with.

“How long?” she finally said to Rafe, looking up at the house. “How long were they here?”

The fact that he was keeping up fairly well with her line of thinking was reflected in his reply. “Your father was treated here after being gravely injured. My grandmother took care of him and helped him to heal. Your mother was also a guest at the time and helped keep watch over him. This was before your parents had bonded.”

“My mother was a guest?”

“She was here with her father. Your grandfather. It was also Rosalind’s first time away from her home, and she skipped the warnings about remaining inside, and breached the wall. She must have found your father in the park, in a fight with the fanged hordes. It was her call that brought other Weres to your father’s aid before it was too late.”

Cara eyed the wall in the distance and the trees topping it. “That park?”

“The same one,” Rafe said.

“So close?”

“The vampires had infiltrated a section of the park that’s still some distance away.” Rafe was eyeing her intently. “Does being near to it disturb you?”

Cara shook her head.

“No one mentioned those things to you?” he asked.

“My parents don’t speak about the past,” she replied.

“Not even to explain why things are the way they are?”

She turned to look at Rafe. Getting to the heart of her parents’ past had been a burning desire for as long as she could remember, and Rafe was telling her things she had long waited to hear, but how much of what he knew was the truth, and how much of it was either hearsay or exaggeration?

Rafe probably hadn’t been born when her father and mother had been here, and neither had she. To Rafe, the past was just tales. To her, the real story of what had happened and who she was had become the main puzzle of her life.

“Vampires,” she said. “Vampires made my father a ghost.”

“It took a hell of a lot of them to do so, I’ve heard,” Rafe agreed. “Colton was one of the strongest Lycans around in those days, and also a damn good cop.”

“Cop?” Cara echoed.

He nodded. “Your father was a cop, like my mother. They protected Miami’s population from bad things that dwelled both in and out of the shadows.”

“Until those shadows gained strength,” Cara noted.

When Rafe smiled, she was taken aback. There was no humor in anything that had been said, yet his smile was spontaneous and sat as easily with Rafe as his wolfishness.

He said, “We’ve both sprung from some pretty good genes. My mother was a badass, too, I hear. She’s actually pretty formidable even now.”

His smile dissolved into a more serious expression. “How did you know that vampire would be after me? I’m asking you because I’m wondering if maybe you purposefully gave me a trail to follow that took me away from her tonight. Could that be right, Cara? You lured me out of my apartment in time to prevent those fangs from reaching my neck?”

When she broke eye contact, Rafe seemed to read into it. “Well, then I doubly owe you, don’t I.” he said. “And I’m not going to ask how you managed it, because whatever you did worked.”

She let that go. Had to. Rafe was looking at her differently now—more warily. Her earlier show of tricks might have scared him. Either that, or he was perplexed by what seemed to be an overly complex plan.

She could read in his expression that he had more to say on the subject. Instead, he changed tack. “We can walk in the grass. In the evening, and this far inland, it’s the coolest place around.”

“Where are the others? Your packmates?” she asked, wanting more of her parents’ story but not ready to ask. What Rafe had already told her was food for thought, and better than any dinner the Landaus could have served up. Her parents had both stayed here, in this house, and some of these Weres had fought beside them.

“The others will be waiting to be called,” he said.

“Will they come tonight?”

“A few of them, especially because of the vamp sighting. They’ll keep a close watch on the park. You won’t have to meet more of them until tomorrow.”

So, she had been wrong about being a freak show for this pack. There was no crowd. She wasn’t going to be the main event for tonight. Rafe’s immediate family members and the Were who had accompanied the alpha were the only wolves present at the moment. She could breathe easier, and almost relax.

Maybe not too much relaxation, though. Because there was a new scent in the air, and a sense that someone on the other side of the wall was silently calling her name.


Chapter 7 (#uc8b0bae9-19a2-5db3-aa99-effb666ce0d1)

A chill reached Rafe as he watched Cara turn toward the section of stone wall not far from where they stood in a way that made it obvious she sensed something he didn’t.

After years of having to protect herself, Cara was probably a master of the art of self-preservation. He’d hate for it to be another bloodsucker out there, though. His grandfather’s pack had culled vampire-nest numbers years ago. As far as he knew, there hadn’t been a vamp sighting near here since he was a kid.

Rafe maintained his neutral expression while keeping a cautious eye on Cara. The electrical current she radiated eased after he took a few deep breaths, testing the air the way most Weres did when their inner fur was ruffled by a disturbance. Her frozen stance had produced waves of anxiety in Rafe that made his muscles twitch.

Reluctantly, he tore his focus from her to check out the wall. Cara took a step toward it. Though it was only one small step, Rafe sensed that she wasn’t going to be chained by any rules governing her confinement, even if they were for her protection. Actually, he couldn’t imagine who might stop her. The memory of Cara Kirk-Killion in action tonight wasn’t going to fade any time soon.

Ebony lashes fluttered over her eyes. Strands of midnight-hued hair, still damp from her swim, looked like streaks of ink against her ivory neck and the shoulders of the borrowed shirt, which was too large and made her look waifish. In his jeans, Cara seemed even more like a kid playing dress-up.

“What is it?” His voice was low and steady.

“No one is watching us now?” she asked, her gaze intent on the wall.

“I wouldn’t say that—” He didn’t get to finish. Cara was already heading for the barrier at a sprint. She was more like a streak of lightning than anyone moving on two legs.

Rafe swore out loud. Then he gave chase, hoping to God that he could catch up with Cara before anything else did.

He didn’t see her top the wall and didn’t stop to analyze his actions in following her. There were eyes on them from the windows in the house and also from somewhere else nearby. He and Cara hadn’t truly been on their own, and she must have known this.

He breathed a sigh of relief with the knowledge that backup would be right behind him if it was needed. Uttering oaths beneath his breath and pushing the limits his patience, he followed her into the park.

She was fast. Cara ran like she was on all fours, much like their ancient wolf ancestors. He had never seen anyone go from zero to thirty in just a few seconds on foot. But he was also no slouch when it came to running. Pack training readied all Weres for speed a few nights each month after the sun went down. Plus, he spent a lot of time sprinting after bad guys in the day job.

In his favor there was the fact that he knew every corner of the park that lay beyond his family’s property. Most of the officers in law enforcement did, because the western section had a notorious reputation as a gathering place for gangs and criminals. There would be a cop or two on duty out here tonight, keeping watch for illegal activity. There would also be a party of Weres scouting around. It was unfortunate that a place so haunted by an unsavory past was connected to the estates beyond its borders, but that was part of city life.

He ran without breathing hard or breaking a sweat. Cara, just ahead of him, had slowed to a jog. She darted from tree to tree like a bloodhound on the scent, and he still had no idea what she was after.

Damn it...why didn’t he know what she was doing? He was supposed to be a good detective.

After nearly tripping over something on the ground, Rafe slowed. Cara had removed the jeans, possibly in order to get around more freely...which meant that she was again half-naked. He was an idiot for allowing her the freedom to get away like this.

He was also an idiot for harboring thoughts of what he’d like to do with all that ivory bareness of hers if the situation were different. And, well...even if it wasn’t.

* * *

The disturbing scent Cara had noticed was strongest near the trees. The humid air had filled with whispers.

Night had a strange feel to it here, too. The darkness was thicker, denser, as if unseen things took up space in the shadows. The pressure in her ears was a warning. Strange odors left a tang on her tongue. Her pulse thundered, though she saw nothing.

She slammed to a stop beneath an old tree, where her search turned up no one. Ready to shout a warning to some unseen foe, Cara waited a few more seconds to gather what information she could find.

The bark of the tree she stood beside shimmered like gold in the moonlight. Leaves shuddered and fell at her feet, as if the season were changing. There was movement. Rustling.

Cara glanced up.

Her equilibrium wavered. She gave a soft roar of protest. Clinging to the tree’s branches was a kind of darkness she hadn’t seen before. The treetop had become like a black hole in the atmosphere that was filled with chatter.

She swayed, unsteady on her feet, finally realizing what this was. What it had to be. Vampires were here. Lots of them. The damn bloodsuckers had called to her in a way only they could.

That realization caused the night to blur. Bloodsuckers unlike any she had seen before began to drop to the ground, one after the other. Five. Ten. More kept coming. Too many to count. The sheer number of them took the air from Cara’s lungs. For the first time in her life, she felt afraid.

They moved like a monstrous incoming tide of malevolence—a wave of dark disjointed bodies with shockingly gaunt white features and skeletal frames. Things out of nightmares. Throwbacks to ancient times when vampires were nothing more than the walking dead. Their black eyes sank into dark sockets. Mouths were open and hissing, exposing lethally sharp yellow fangs.

An odd sensation of déjà vu hit Cara and rooted her to the spot. Sickness roiled in her stomach as nasty odors churned up unpleasant things inside her. She was going to be surrounded and vastly outnumbered. She’d be dead if she didn’t act fast.

Fear of what she was seeing caused her wolf’s energy to blaze. She didn’t want to become like these monsters and had to do something to stave off a transformation she refused to accept. But could she manage to trick the traits built into her system by avoiding the rules?

Yes...

Like a caged animal finally freed, Cara let a rush of energy take her over. That energy flowed through her like a river of fire, burning everything in its wake. A new, crazed kind of power fueled her fury. Fangs filled her mouth before disappearing again.

“Not like you...” she whispered.

As she raised her hands to fight, Cara felt the sharp pop of claws springing through her fingertips. She called her wolf to the surface and made it obey. The wolf barreled upward and through her with the force of a runaway train.

Her spine cracked. Muscles seized and began to lengthen as she took her first swipe at the darkness gathered around her with preternaturally curved claws that would be a match for any oncoming pair of fangs. The shift was painful because it went against her nature—she had chosen her wolf, instead of becoming like the fanged parasites breathing down her neck. Cara had never attempted this before, and she had to bravely hold on.

Breathing became difficult. Her discomfort turned white-hot. Cara rode out the pain until her body finally accepted the shape that ruled most of her genetics. Werewolf. She-wolf. Not just any Were, either, but one with the ancient European designation of wulf that denoted the early masters of the breed who were powerful shamans.

This is who I am. What I am.

The urge to fight roared through her. The need to kill the creatures that had nearly killed her father here a long time ago became too difficult to ignore. She was strong, fast and fierce. Her wolf shared its soul with the spirit of a Banshee, just like her mother, and that spirit told her she was not going to die tonight.

All she had to do was kill every last bloodsucking fiend surrounding her.

Her blood sang with that goal until her head felt light. But her plan encountered a hitch. The vampires dropping from the trees didn’t come after her. Every one of them suddenly moved en masse in the opposite direction, as though they had been drawn elsewhere by something more appetizing. As though they hadn’t seen her at all.

There was someone in the distance. Cara turned her head, and the sickness inside her tripled. Rafe?

A ripple of horror accompanied the idea that Rafe had followed her, though she should have known he would. Rafe was a protector. He watched over her. As strong as he was, however, Rafe would be vulnerable without a full moon overhead to shift him. Against so many abominations, he’d have little chance of surviving an attack.

She ran, plowing through the haze of vamps, wielding her claws like the weapons they were originally intended to be, slashing at everything in her way and swallowing growls of anger and the sudden fear of losing what she had only recently found. Rafe Landau.

Her claws went through vamp bodies as if they were composed of air instead of strings of decaying flesh and bone. Although the vampires shrieked with terrible, unnatural voices, none of them noticed her. Not one of them fell.

The shock of her inability to stop them tripped her up. Cara stared at the dark moving tide with wide wolfish eyes, seeing clearly, shocked by the sight in front of her and how she wasn’t able to do anything about it.

Then her system was jolted with a new awareness. The gaunt creatures were attacking a fully wolfed-up werewolf, brown-furred and massive in size. Not Rafe. Someone else.

The werewolf fought the oncoming horde like a pro, swinging his arms, using his legs, snapping his jaws. He fought hard, though he had to realize all that energy was useless against so many sharp teeth.

Cara couldn’t stand to watch. She started again toward the rapidly tiring werewolf in the center of the fray and heard a voice in the distance say, “I’m here.”

Or...had she uttered those words?

She flew to the middle of the fight, whirled, lashed out and made no headway. The big brown Were, now tiring, didn’t once look her way. He looked past her at something she would have had to turn around to see.

Another sound broke through the grunts and growls she and the brown werewolf were making. At first, Cara thought it was a howl of distress or a warning call going up about the fight taking place. But that wasn’t it. She recognized what it was. She had heard this sound before.

The shrieking noise seemed to split the darkness into multiple shadows. The power in it sucked the fight out of Cara. She stilled, frozen in place as the scene continued to unfold in front of her.

Helpless to do anything but observe, Cara witnessed the downfall of the beautiful brown wolf as it forfeited its life. Fighting on wouldn’t have helped the Were, she realized, because this scene wasn’t actually taking place in her current reality.

The brown wolf wasn’t here. There were no vampires. What she was seeing was an image projected on the spot where this battle had happened in the past.

Cold gripped her. Energy that had been white-hot now turned icy. She panted with the effort to understand what was being shown to her as her limbs trembled and spasms threatened to drive her to her knees.

The Banshee spirit inside her hadn’t predicted death here. The shriek had been a Banshee’s cry, yes, but her Banshee hadn’t made that sound. Someone else had used the Banshee’s voice, but in a different way—maybe not to predict this brown werewolf’s death, but to save his life.

And that just wasn’t the way things worked.

Banshee spirits predicted death, and this one hadn’t. There were no other dark, death-bringing spirits in the area, except the one sharing space in Cara’s soul. And yet she had heard that wail.

She stared hard at the scene that she now knew to be unfolding in a different time. Her claws had been useless against the monsters because they were ghosts, like the rest of the images she had been shown. She was experiencing a memory, a projection, an imprint of what had happened in the past, in this spot. And that meant the sound she had heard had to have been made by her mother...long ago.

Others were coming, rushing toward the fight in this alternate reality. She watched with fascination as several Weres flooded the area. They had come to the brown wolf’s rescue nearly too late, drawn by the Banshee’s wail.

Once the Were pack took up the fight, it became even more fierce and bloody. But Cara couldn’t be a participant, since this was a dream. She had seen this battle, had lived it, had experienced the horror of an event that took place long ago...all through her mother’s eyes. Rosalind Kirk had been here then and had made the call that had ultimately saved Colton Killion from death.

The park had shown her another piece of the puzzle. What had happened here all those years ago had been so awful that it still resonated in this space.

Witnessing the attack that had made her father what he was today made Cara’s knees buckle. Colton Killion. Ghost wolf. Outcast. Survivor.

But how could he possibly have survived this?

She closed her eyes to shut out the rest of the fight her parents had endured. It was a gruesome thing that made that sickness inside her grow.

Releasing the breath she had been holding, unable to fight the wobble in her limbs, Cara slipped toward the ground without hitting the grass...saved from falling by the strong grip of two powerful hands that had come out of nowhere.


Chapter 8 (#uc8b0bae9-19a2-5db3-aa99-effb666ce0d1)

What the hell just happened?

The question echoed inside Rafe’s head as he reached Cara in time to catch her. She was breathless and wolfed up. He had no idea why her heart was racing so fast. There was nothing out here to see. He and Cara were the only two Weres in the area. And yet she, who was supposedly the strongest of them all, had folded up as if life had suddenly become too much for her to bear.

He held a werewolf in his arms. Cara had shifted without the moon to guide her, and without other external stimulus. There were no furred-up werewolves present to initiate such a change. She had taken werewolf form as quickly as she had adopted the vamp semblance earlier. He’d have believed this was also impossible if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.

She was also incredibly beautiful, and he shouldn’t have noticed. In a shape that was more familiar to him than that of a vampire, Cara looked both feminine and feral. Yet she didn’t exactly look like any werewolf he had known. She retained more of her human features than was normal for Weres. Same light eyes. Same dark, silky hair. There was no hugely elongated face or altered body shape. Upon closer inspection, it was easy for him to see the female he had met on the beach.

She was taller, thinner, stringier. She had more angles. Sharp bones jutted under her skin, and there were shadows beneath her eyes. Ten curved claws edged her fingertips. Her spine, through the shirt she still wore, felt to him like a string of pearls.

Maybe she had gotten stuck in a partial shape-shift. It was possible her shift hadn’t been completed before he’d found her, and because he looked human, her changes had hit a pause button. Whatever the cause of the way she looked at the moment, Cara’s uniqueness fell way beyond the scope of his experience.

Rafe sank to his knees, holding her. Cara’s eyes were closed. Her face was chalky and pale. He wiped away the tears that glistened on her cheeks and listened to the growls rumbling in her throat. She’d had a shock of some kind that he hadn’t been able to share. His eyes had been on her and not their surroundings. Whatever had shocked Cara into her current behavior had been the impetus for this latest version of herself. So, what the hell was it?

“What did this to you, Cara?”

His only concern now was to make sure she was all right. While he wanted to point out the consequences of breaking rules put in place to prevent incidents like this, Rafe didn’t speak of those things. He didn’t take the time to search the area again in case he had missed something. All he could do was comfort Cara and encourage her to shift back to the shape that best resembled his in case anyone from the pack came looking for them—which would be any minute now.

“Change back,” he whispered, his face close to hers as he pressed dark, silky tresses away from her cheeks. “Do it now, Cara. Do it for me.”

She shuddered once before he heard the soft sucking sounds of her body realigning that meant her wolf was in retreat. Jutting angles melted back into curves as her tautness eased. Her face blurred back into full human mode, though it remained as white as a sheet. The last to go were her claws.

With them together like this, the moment felt exotic. He was holding a she-wolf in his arms, one he was attracted to in spite of all the warnings and inexplicable phenomena he’d witnessed tonight.

His inner wolf gave a roar that shook Rafe up. He swallowed back an inappropriate human-voiced growl. Were to Were, wolf to wolf was how attraction among his kind worked.

Cara was again only half-dressed in the torn shirt he had loaned her. Her lean legs were bare. Broken buttons on the shirt exposed far too much neck and the graceful sweep of her collarbone for him not to notice.

The scene was as rich as it was surreal. His wolf, tucked deep inside him where it belonged, continued to respond. Pressure built up in his chest, and these feelings weren’t supposed to happen. Shouldn’t happen. He and Cara were sampling a forbidden closeness that would get them into trouble with their respective families if they found out. Killion’s daughter was off-limits. Her presence in Miami was merely temporary.

So why was it happening?

Why was Cara here, uncomfortably out of her element? Who in their right mind had forced Cara to visit a world she knew so little of?

When her eyes fluttered open, Rafe felt immense relief. “You’re okay, I think,” he said. “Am I right?”

Chances were that she couldn’t talk yet. Maybe she didn’t want to. The air around them vibrated with questions he needed to ask her.

“We have to get back to the house, Cara. This is far too dangerous. I’m not sure what just happened, but I’m guessing it wasn’t normal, even for you. There are tears in your eyes. You’re shaking. Please tell me you’re all right.”

She reached up to encircle his shoulders with her arms, in what amounted to the first show of vulnerability he had seen in the short time he’d known her. The slide of her palms across the back of his T-shirt felt extremely sensual and gratifying, though he knew better than to classify it that way.

Her face was so close to his, he had to look into her eyes. The hardest part of this whole ordeal was the effort it took him to keep from kissing her...because that would have been a really stupid thing to do under these circumstances.

As he fought that internal tug-of-war, Cara drew back suddenly, possibly only then realizing the position she was in. She pushed him away and scrambled to her feet. Looking down at him, she said in a quavering tone, “Don’t tell them about this.”

Rafe got to his feet. “Tell them what?”

“Swear,” she said.

Didn’t she know it was too late to hide her show of rebelliousness? As of a few seconds ago, they already had company. Of course she would have noted that, so what, exactly, was she asking of him?

“They know you’re out here. It wouldn’t be wise to forget that you are a special guest,” he said. “I have already mentioned our responsibilities regarding your safety. You do understand that going against what’s asked of you doesn’t win you any points?”

“It was something I had to do,” Cara said.

“And it was terribly dangerous.”

“Dangerous for my father. Not for me.”

Her remark dropped a big black net over the conversation, stifling anything Rafe could think of to say. He didn’t know what to make of her words as he ventured a glance over his shoulder at the park.

“This is where it happened,” she explained. Her shaking hadn’t eased, and not much of her color had returned. “This is where my father nearly lost his life.”

Rafe’s gaze drifted back to her. “How do you know?”

“My mother told me.”

“When?”

“Minutes ago.”

Rafe rubbed his forehead, trying hard to follow what she was saying. “You didn’t have a cell phone. No place to hide one. How could she tell you that?”

“She called me to this place in another way.”

Could he believe her? Rafe wasn’t sure. There were so many odd and questionable things about Cara Kirk-Killion, he didn’t know where to begin to catch a glimpse of the full picture.

She was a complex creature and way out of his league, but did that lessen his desire to kiss her?

No.

He was hot, energized and on edge. He also knew exactly how far he had to move to again enfold her in his arms. His attention kept returning to her face and the sensual mouth that had trembled with vulnerability a moment ago. Though no trace was left of the tears he had wiped from her cheek, those tears had been there for a reason. When she had first opened her eyes, they’d contained a silent plea for support.

So...no. The desire to hold Cara and kiss away whatever had shaken her was strong, even though part of her allure could be a trick. She could have been using her wiles to attract him.

Yet what she had gone through had seemed real to her. He had seen that in her eyes.

Confusion over this dilemma drove him to silence. Cara moved first. She pointed a slender finger at the darkness they both had the ability to see into.

“This is the place,” she repeated. “I now know why my father became what he is. I saw how it happened. I experienced that fight with the vampires as if I also took part in it. But I wasn’t there when he was. I didn’t run to help the brown Were fight off so many fangs. It was my mother who did that. She moved in to help. I saw all of this through her eyes.”

“Because she called you here,” Rafe said with a skepticism he couldn’t hide.

Cara shook her head. “This place called to me with her voice. Violent acts leave residue on a place. This was a memory for me to access because I have that brown Were’s blood in my veins. My father’s blood. After the attack, my mother’s spirit became tied to those vampires, not out of any choice she made, but because she was born special in ways that left her open to roaming demons.”

Weird as it might have been, Rafe was starting to believe her. As a cop he sometimes experienced sensations tied to past events at certain locations. At least, he imagined he could. To see those past events firsthand was an entirely different matter, and a level of awareness well beyond his capabilities. However, who was to say that Cara didn’t have those kinds of talents, and that she spoke the truth?

Meanwhile, they were taking too much time outside the wall. He wasn’t exactly sure how many minutes had actually gone by, but it had been long enough for the pack to find them. Others were close now, and closing in. The night had become pressurized due to his packmates’ imminent arrival.





Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Получить полную версию книги.


Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/linda-thomas-sundstrom/the-black-wolf/) на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.