Wolf trap, p.8
Wolf Trap, page 8
“I’m not running,” I agreed. “Although I would like to know what I meant when I called you a killer.”
“My job title.” His voice rasped harsher while his gray eyes slid across my cheekbones like the memory of a touch. “Executioner. I deal with problems that threaten werewolf society. I kill when necessary to achieve that end.”
I didn’t let the word kill rattle me. Instead, I stuck to the point. “And which problem are you dealing with today?”
“Loose ends. Benito…” Drake closed his eyes. “You won’t remember.”
“Actually, the phone reminded me. Benito is Rosa’s grandnephew, killed by a boy whose grandfather was a monster. My notes suggested the issue has been resolved.”
“Handy tool.”
“I think so. But you said there were loose ends.”
“Not many. One. His mother. Her pack.”
“You think Gabi is a werewolf?” I hadn’t gotten that impression from across the room, but I also hadn’t looked closely at the grouchy cutting-board hoarder. And the house had been so full of food scents that I might have missed the subtleties of a single wolf.
In front of me, Drake nodded. “Shifter blood carries down through the female line.”
“Always?”
“Always.”
“And this matters because?”
His voice deepened, darkened. “Packs often choose to take offense at the death of wolves they never wanted, especially if it gives them an excuse to trespass in the territory of a clan weakened by a leader’s death. Benito wasn’t a member of the O’Connell pack, which means someone else may come sniffing around today while the local wolves are hashing out their line of succession. That could turn internal battle into wider warfare. I intend to shut any invasion down before it has time to start.”
For a man of few words, Drake seemed awfully willing to answer my questions. So I opened my mouth with four more queries on the tip of my tongue, only to be interrupted by the door swinging wide behind me. Gabi walked out so swathed in perfume there was no way to tell if she was a wolf, human, or something else entirely.
I smiled even though my nostrils itched at the explosion of aroma. Good. Drake would have to stick around to figure the conundrum out.
I’d promised to use good manners to keep Gabi safe, but Drake’s vehicle surrounded me like a straitjacket. Fur, fur, fur. Flee, flee, flee.
And, yes he’d situated me catty-corner from the driver’s seat, as far away as I could get and still be along for the ride. But instinct was instinct. Despite what my phone told me, despite the evidence of Drake’s words and my eyes, it was hard not to leap out of the moving vehicle when enfolded in the stark reality of alpha fur.
Plus—I scraped the stain on the seat beside me with a fingernail then brought the evidence up to my nose—it didn’t help that the car contained traces of recently dried blood.
Since I was afraid to open my mouth for fear I’d start hyperventilating, the self-proclaimed killer was forced to take the lead on the good manners front. “I’m sorry for the loss of your son.”
Drake’s voice carried from the front, his intonation more like a rusty saw blade than ever, scraping, scraping, scraping against my eardrums. As if he’d felt my breath speed up, all four windows rolled down in perfect synchrony. Cold morning air slapping my cheeks while at the same time lessening the urge for flight sufficiently that I could once again pay attention to the front-seat conversation.
A conversation that wasn’t going well. I could see why Rosa had wanted Gabi out of her kitchen when the woman replied to Drake’s platitude with anger.
“I have six human sons. Benito wasn’t one. He was a monster. I’m glad he’s dead.”
After that, she offered nothing more than directions until we pulled up in a church’s parking lot. Across a browning expanse of headstone-peppered grass, one man shoveled dirt out of a grave while a dozen others stood by waiting. The spade changed hands while Gai rounded the car and opened the back door to gather up her tupperware.
“You’re like Benito,” she told Drake as he reached over his own seat back to help her. “I can see it in your eyes.” She paused a moment, then bit out words as sharp as any knife cut. “You’re not welcome here.”
Then she walked away and left us, me and an alpha werewolf who managed to look at the same time like a kicked and very puzzled dog.
Chapter 17
Without a wall of tupperware lengthening the short expanse of car between us, Drake’s gray eyes bored into me and made the car feel even more confining than it had while in motion. I barely managed to keep my actions smooth as I exited the vehicle into un-fur-scented air.
Instead of obeying the instinct telling me to run from the alpha werewolf, however, I planted my feet and observed, “That went well.”
Drake ignored my patter while taking a long step away from both the car and me. Apparently I hadn’t been as subtle as I’d thought about my urge to flee.
Well, if I hadn’t been subtle, I might as well address the elephant in the room. “Yes,” I told him, “every instinct warns that you’re a very large predator with razor sharp teeth and an inconsistent temper. However, you are also the only person present who knows what my memory has seen fit to lose its grip on. I don’t want you to back off. I want you to talk.”
The faintest hint of smile lines formed at the corners of his eyes. “The puzzle effect does prevent you from running some days.”
“Some days? How often have we had this conversation?”
Drake shrugged, his wide shoulders lifting that form-fitting suit jacket up then down as gracefully as if he was loping along in lupine form. “This conversation? Once. Every day with you is unique.”
“Every day with me. So we’ve spent many together?”
And, okay, yes, so I’ll admit that Kami’s words were running through my mind as I asked that question. You know you’re married, right? And no, it’s not to him.
But my marital status wasn’t the important point at the moment. The important point was why I lost my memory daily and how I might manage to get it back.
Which was precisely the issue Drake addressed. “I met you five months ago,” he rasped. “You emerged from a pit beneath a bar two hundred miles south of here, naked and with no memory of your past.”
“I’d been caged there?” I frowned, expecting fear to gust through me. But none did. This story Drake was telling might as well have been about someone else.
“No.” He shook his head. “As best anyone can tell, you were dead then you weren’t.”
“Dead?”
“A fox skull had been cemented into the crawl space. Strangely good luck affected the town over the course of decades. A woman’s voice was transmitted via radio waves. All could be traced back to you.”
Decades. My breath caught, Okaasan’s face rising clear as the sun above foggy memory. Had I been gone so long my mother was no longer living?
I swallowed, staying focused with an effort. “You make me sound like a ghost.”
“You might have been.”
“So you don’t know why I lose my memory or where I came from originally?”
“No. I don’t even know if Tru is your real name. You never respond to it when you first wake up.”
His voice had grown raspier with each terse sentence, as if even a single minute of speech had rubbed his throat raw. Still, he offered a final sum up after a pause for consideration. “That’s everything I know.”
His physical pain at such extended speech appeared real, but I couldn’t let the subject drop. “If that’s all you know, what do you guess?”
This time, Drake shook his head. “Guesses don’t help you.”
Which meant I needed to return to the scene of my emergence and see what sort of evidence was still present five months later. I needed to draw on the thread of my past to figure out where my mother might be and what Kami might represent to me. A daughter, perhaps, instead of a sister if I really had been a ghost for decades before springing back to life?
But I’d do none of that at this moment. Rosa was the one who’d folded me into her family in the here and now and I’d promised to keep her niece out of trouble this morning. A glance toward the gravediggers suggested Gabi hadn’t rubbed anyone’s fur the wrong way in the five minutes we’d been separated, but I had no belief that calm would be long-lasting. So I’d stay in her vicinity for the foreseeable future and then…
…and then I’d find out if Okaasan was still alive.
Drake’s piercing gaze drew me back to the present as abruptly as if he’d slapped or kissed me. The intensity of his gray eyes surpassed the brilliant autumn sunlight while the scent of fur tried to squeeze my airway shut.
Push and pull. Fear and attraction. It was enough to win out over the puzzle of my past and the urge to return to Okaasan.
Plus, troublesome instinct was something I could deal with while keeping one eye on Gabi. “I want,” I told the man who killed for a living, “to see you in the skin of your wolf.”
Drake refused at first but I insisted so adamantly that he finally stepped toward me and pressed his car keys into my hand. His skin on my skin sent tremors through my entire body, some pleasant, some far less pleasant. I barely understood what he was saying until he’d backed off past arm’s length.
“I’ll shift at the edge of the trees,” he rasped, and I got the distinct impression he was repeating something he’d said while I was too lost in fear to hear him. “If you need to flee, take the car. Remember you have a phone now and can call Rosa. She’ll give you directions anywhere you want to go.”
I had no intention of fleeing, but Drake seemed to require an answer. So I nodded and watched him stride away toward the woodland that cupped the northern end of the parking lot. His body in motion was even more beautiful than it had been at rest, the slide of fabric across muscle tantalizing while at the same time warning:
Wolf, wolf, wolf. Run, run, run.
I clenched my fist around the hard-edged keys I’d been given and forced myself to stand my ground. Then Drake was gone, choosing privacy behind a tree trunk to slip out of his clothing.
An appropriate gesture for a gentleman. But, despite everything, I was no lady. My imagination filled with images that might or might not match reality. Muscular back bared to the sky. Capable hands flexing as they clenched into paws. A tail lengthening out of perfectly formed buttocks. Ears. Teeth. Fangs. Claws…
It was my own fault for imagining nakedness from someone other than my husband. But I couldn’t turn off the faucet of imagination even after titillation morphed into stark terror. All I could do was grab onto the door handle, forcing myself to stay rather than flee.
Drake might have a wolf inside him, but he’d proven himself to be both kind and dependable. I repeated the admonition over and over. Called out examples: not just his seclusion while undressing but the way he’d let me take the lead all morning. Rolling down the windows when my fear became apparent. Stepping away from me when even five feet of open air proved insufficient personal space.
Still, when a wolf stalked out from between gnarled trees, bile climbed up my throat. His eyes on me were cold and hard. Like an ice cube dropped down the back of a shirt much thinner and more revealing than the dress currently buttoned up to my chin.
The fragment of sense memory dragged me out of terror. What had I been wearing in that past situation? Why did I feel so much more comfortable in clothing that didn’t match the styles around me now?
I clung hard to the puzzle until the rough edges of terror rounded into smoother stones of fear tamped down by rationality. Only then did I open the car door I was clinging to and get in.
A whine emerged from the edge of the forest. The thinnest thread of disappointment that proved Drake might be aware of parts of my past but he didn’t know me as well as he thought he did.
Because I wasn’t sliding into the driver’s seat. Instead, I returned to the cushion still warm from my own body heat, closing the door and turning my back for some semblance of privacy. I was bound and determined to ignore instinct, so I only quailed for a moment against the taboo of public nudity before loosening my clothes enough so they wouldn’t hamper a furry, vulpine body.
Then, tossing the keys I wouldn’t need into the front seat, I tugged at the magic my phone had informed me was inherent in my being. Whiskers sprouted from formerly smooth cheeks. Lengthening ears intensified a nearby mouse scratch into a symphony.
And, finally, leaping through the open window into the outdoors again, I ran toward the instinctive terror I’d chosen to vanquish.
I ran toward an alpha werewolf.
Chapter 18
He stood his ground as I approached. Huge in comparison to me in fox form, his scent of alpha musk so strong that I sneezed against it. His dark eyes caught the glint of the sun and seemed, for one split second, to glow red.
And still I advanced. Walked on pins and needles of Wrong way! Flee! Until the warmth of his body seeped through his fur and into my fur. His muscles formed hard ridges beneath the short hairs of his extremities and my own muscles tightened in reaction. All he’d have to do was lunge, stretch wide his jaws, take my entire head into his mouth…
He did none of that. Just sat there, tail stone still among the fallen leaves, only his ears swiveling as I forced myself into motion again, working my way around him.
Yes, this wolf was huge. Yes, the teeth hidden within that massive muzzle could make short work of my much smaller body.
And memory tickled at the inside of my throat like the aftereffects of eating pineapple, the faintest allergic reaction trying and failing to cut off my wind. Another alpha wolf, somewhere, sometime, had harmed me. Not just harmed me but…killed me?
No name rose up to match the realization, no face or identifying feature either. Just teeth-clenching fear and the instinct to run, run, run.
But Drake wasn’t that wolf and he wasn’t threatening anything. No matter what my racing heart tried to tell me, Drake was the same being who had made an effort to expose his dark side in the face of my memory loss. Who had, it seemed, spent the night on a cold street corner to watch over me or Rosa’s family or both of us. Who was carefully motionless now despite, I suspected, thinking this effort of mine would fail to bear sweet fruit.
He might not believe I could overcome my past, but I was determined. Swallowing down the harsh taste of terror, I stalked the rest of the way around him, instinct placing each foot on a patch of hard earth so even a mouse wouldn’t have heard me coming. Only once I faced the massive wolf head on again did I stiffly lower my upper body over my paws, raise my rump into the air, and force my tail to stream out rather than tuck protectively.
Finally, I danced in the erratic circle every canine knows is an invitation to play.
Drake didn’t believe me at first. A questioning whine rose above the crunch of leaves and the trill of bird song. He had no intention of spooking me.
So I spun in closer, nipping at his ankle just hard enough so he could feel my needle-sharp teeth indenting his skin. Ankle-biter. That was me. Just a mini pooch trying to talk this big, scary werewolf into proving to my body that a racing heartbeat was a symptom of excitement rather than dread.
At last, he rose to all four paws and my muscles struggled to freeze me into immobility. But I didn’t let them. Instead, I threaded myself through the newly opened tunnel between forepaws and hindpaws. Ignoring the danger this wolf represented, I leapt over his back and landed once again in the rump-up posture of an instigator. I opened my mouth and gave one short yip…
And when he took a step toward me, I sprinted away. Looked back over my shoulder with tongue lolling, forcing a grin that would reassure him I was running but wasn’t running.
That was all it took. Finally, Drake forgot himself and pursued. And in that instant, with two hundred pounds of wolf flesh barreling toward me, the pounding of blood in my ears was nothing other than terror.
Darkness. Candles. A large male hand angling a hollowed-out needle toward my inner thigh…
Then the flash of the past was gone. Drake reached me and paced me. Longer legs shortened their stride to match shorter legs. The warmth of his body and my body met in the middle and we were running together, across fallen leaves so brilliantly red and yellow that we might as well have romped our way into an Impressionist painting.
This wasn’t fear. This was joy. Drake was wolf and I was fox and our differences didn’t matter. What mattered was the way our feet struck the ground in perfect synchrony. The way I ran up the ramp created by a fallen tree caught in the crook of another while he stayed on the ground beneath me. Higher and higher and higher I rose, then I was leaping down, depending on the organic give of Drake’s back to provide a soft landing. And he was chuffing out silent laughter that vibrated through my paw pads like the bone-deep thrum of a waterfall.
Later, out of breath, we paused and noticed stick-tights dotting our fur, snagged off dying plants we’d passed through. I bared my teeth and picked a dozen needle-thin seeds off the longer hairs of his cheeks and he returned the favor. Then, listening to Gabi grouse at the gravediggers about how they were doing it wrong, how the sides of the hole weren’t straight, I fell asleep while an alpha werewolf’s tongue smoothed down my fur, cleaning away any remnants of debris too small to have been picked clean during his previous ministrations.
And when I woke, his breath was even. Wolf head had fallen onto dinner-plate paws and I was curled around that jaw I’d been so afraid of. My poof of a tail covered both his eyes and mine to turn daylight into naptime.
It wasn’t just the two of us there either, as I noted when I twitched my tail aside. A third being had snuggled down between us, a tiny fluffball that smelled like itself but also like alpha werewolf and pocket lint.
Had Drake been hiding a kitten inside his coat? No wonder he’d guided our run into a circle around the clothes he’d left carefully folded on the forest floor. No wonder a deeper instinct than the one that spurred terror had told me Drake was a protector at heart.
