Legend of the White Wolf (11 page)

   Situated at the massive oak dining room table that overlooked the sitting area in the great room, Kintail lifted another spoonful of hot and spicy chili to his lips. Feisty, that's the way to describe the woman named Faith O'Malley. But seeing her in her low cut bra and bikini panties before she entered the hot tub, gave way to more erotic fantasies. He hadn't liked the way Cameron was kissing her in the tub and Kintail had the notion of biting her instead of Cameron, get it over with, change her, and see what transpired, but she had to call out to Cameron about the snowmobiles. Kintail hadn't predicted the guy would race around the building as if the world was on fire and get in Kintail's way.

   Served him right to get bitten first. Still, Kintail couldn't quit thinking about the woman. She might be trouble, but she was damned intriguing. And here she'd only just met Cameron, but instead of screaming for help after Kintail had bitten him, she'd slugged Kintail in the hip with a shovel to save the guy.

   Kintail hadn't expected that. The bruise would heal up soon, so no big deal. But he liked her character, protective, loyal in the face of danger, striking in the flesh. An alpha female.

   He finished the bowl of chili and motioned to Trevor to get him some more.

   "Well?" Lila snarled.

   He knew she wanted him to kill the woman. Competition. Good competition, too. Faith was the first woman he thought might have enough gumption to fight Lila and win. Not that he wanted Lila hurt, but he needed a mate, damn it. And she wasn't cooperating one iota.

   Trevor set a fresh bowl of chili before him, his gaze shifting to Lila.

   "She's intriguing," Kintail said, knowing his words would antagonize Lila. They had sort of a love/hate relationship, and he supposed some day he'd have to take her for his mate. Unless he could find someone else he truly cared for, if he couldn't break the impenetrable barrier Lila had erected around her heart. Miss O'Malley was growing more interesting all the time even though he'd never considered changing a human to suit his purpose. Those born as
lupus garous
already knew the role they had to play in their society. Much easier to deal with. Normally.

   "Intriguing, my ass. She's real trouble. And why did you just bite Cameron and then let him go? I saw the way you looked at that woman and didn't attack her when you easily could have. No damned shovel would have stopped you. Particularly when some weak human woman was wielding it. One lunge and she would have dropped the shovel and fallen flat on her backside. Then we could have been done with her."

   Even though Lila sounded tough, he noted a hint of insecurity in her voice, which couldn't help but trigger his interest in her again. He liked her better when she let her vulnerability slip, and suspected she could be right for him if she ever let go of her past hurt.

   He thought again about the way Faith clobbered him with that shovel and it wasn't in the least bit done meekly. She let the whole force of her slight body go with the flow. Of course if he'd seen it coming, he would have nimbly dodged the blow, and at most the shovel would have only glanced off him. Next time, he'd be more prepared for the woman's tactics so the outcome would be much more agreeable.

   "When have I killed a man for the sake of killing him?" Kintail asked, fingering a slice of buttered French bread. "Even with the intent of keeping our people's secret safe?" He took a bite of the crunchy bread, then scooped up another spoonful of chili.

   "I'm sure you used to."

   "A long time ago. Before there were that many people. When we had to. Not now. What do you think would happen if someone found his body and thought one of our wolves killed him? With DNA testing of hairs and saliva left at the crime scene, they could pin it on an Arctic wolf. And who else has Arctic wolves in the region but us? Is that what you want?"

   Lila rolled her eyes. "I just wondered if you'd decided to let Cameron join our little merry gang of wolves."

   An alpha male? Not on Kintail's life. But he'd draw Cameron into the wilderness where human traffic rarely went, somewhere no one would ever discover his body, and fight him wolf to wolf. Much more sport that way.

   But what he couldn't comprehend was the restless ness stirring deep inside him. He'd never felt that way before. On cases he was close to solving, he might not be able to sleep, his mind working overtime in solving the puzzle. But this was something more primal, more physical. He was torn between staying with Faith and enjoying her comforting heat, the sound of her steady heartbeat, and her subtle fragrance—and squelching the craving to ditch his clothes no matter how cold it was and run through the snow.

   Trying not to disturb Faith, Cameron slipped out from under her, making sure his sleeping bag still covered her, and then he left the bed. He was surprised to experience no dizziness or fever from the wolf's bite. He stretched out his arm, but no matter how he moved it, the ache was completely gone.

   After pulling the towel off his arm, he examined where the wolf had bitten him. Except for faded bite marks, dried blood, and light bruising, he was nearly as good as new, although it had seemed so much worse when he was first bitten.

   He went to the door and opened it, stared out at the moonlight reflecting off the snow, the clouds having moved away, the storm spent and gone, leaving moun tains of snow in its wake. It looked as though the day was already upon them instead of the dead of night. Mystical, magical, even romantic, if Faith had been awake and here to share it with him.

   But the moon compelled him to do what no sane man would ever have done. He couldn't repress the urge he had to—well, he wasn't sure what he wanted to do. Leave. Maybe. But it wasn't exactly that either. Despite not being able to see the actual moon, he could feel its presence. Like the moon's gravitational pull on the tides, he felt an odd connection. A seduction, a caress of wills, his against the moon's.
Come to me, and I'll make your
dreams come true. Fight me and you'll suffer.

   He was going mad.

   Without another second's hesitation, he stripped out of his jeans and boxers, and stood watching the tree limbs stirring in the breeze. The bitter cold surrounding him shook him to the marrow of his bones, but then dissi pated when a strange warmth quickly worked its way through every fiber of his being, his muscles twisting, bones reshaping, all painless, effortless, exhilarating.

   He stood on four pads, a thick, double white coat covering his skin, making him impervious to the cold. He stared at his large front paws, black wicked-looking claws touching the wooden floor. He sniffed at his fur, which smelled of spicy aftershave.

   The moon again called to him, the branches of the trees waving at him, beckoning him to join them. Without another thought, he lowered his forequarters, keeping his hindquarters straight and did a slight bow, then raced out the door, bounding over the piles of snow left by the storm and took off through the woods.

   Cameron raced through the forest, brushing against the snow-covered branches of towering spruces, shaking loose torrents of snowfall. The snow falling down on him didn't touch his skin though. A thick coat of fur kept the snow from melting, and he felt toasty warm. He expected the snow and cold to chill his "bare" feet, but it didn't bother his paws, maybe, he thought, because of the fur between the pads.

   He ran on the tip of his toes, which seemed weird, but it lengthened his stride, and he covered more ground that way. Whenever he began to slip on an icy patch, he instinctively spread out his pads, increasing the surface area that he stepped on, the additional friction preventing him from taking a spill.

   A fresh coat of snow, looked to have been a foot or more, covered everything, but he found that he didn't sink into the fluffy white stuff as he would if he was running as a human. The freedom this gave was exhilarating as he raced through the trees, only stopping momentarily to smell a whiff of a rabbit or bird and fresh clean air.

   When he came across a fallen tree angled toward the sky, propped against another tree, he would have had to climb slowly over it in his clunky human form, but instead, he leapt, his feet sprawled, gripping the trunk with ease, propelling him over the top. And then he was down again, running on his tippy toes.

   He'd run for miles, although it hadn't seemed like any time at all, when he heard the sound of voices. Curious by nature, but even more so now, Cameron headed toward them.

   "Hell, she was interested," a male voice said, and instantly Cameron recognized it as the guy who'd joined them in the hot tub. Chris, the redhead with the unruly hair.

   "Interested in Bigfoot. Sure. But she might not be interested in what we've found. And besides, the fewer who know what we're doing, the better," said Matt, the guy with the cold, calculating voice.

   Then a woman spoke up. Mary, it sounded like. "Chris doesn't
just
want her to be on the team. He's looking for something a little hotter than that, Matt, I suspect."

   "Her father was writing a research paper about Bigfoot. When we got separated, I swear he saw something like we have since then. Hell, I'm sure she already knows all about them. That's why she questioned us more about what we knew. She wanted in." Chris sounded annoyed with his companions, ready to take them on.

   "Says you," Matt countered. "We can't just trust anyone, especially when it's your dick talking for you."

   Cameron drew closer to the mammoth-sized tent in the small clearing. A stovepipe vented smoke out the top of the tent, while lanterns inside shown through the orange tent fabric, silhouetting four figures sitting inside. Were they talking about Faith? About her father? According to the police, her father was conducting a sociology study. About Bigfoot? Cameron would never have guessed. Was that why Faith hadn't wanted to talk about it? But if he could discuss it with these men, maybe he could find out what they knew. Then, perhaps Faith would have some of the answers she was seeking. But then again, maybe they were talking about someone else, not Faith at all.

   He moved in even closer, wanting to clear his throat to warn them he was here, before he intruded or startled them too much. But all that came out was an alien huffing sound.

   "What the hell was that?" Chris said, as all of them began to stand.

   "I've got my gun," Matt said, and that's all it took.

HAVING BEEN SHOT ONCE IN THE LINE OF DUTY WHEN HE WAS on the police force, Cameron didn't need to be reminded how much that hurt, nor did he want to be injured way out here in the middle of nowhere, if Matt or his buddies decided to shoot him.

   Cameron whipped around and headed away from the tent the way he had come, following his trail back through the woods, surprised to find his footpads had left a scent for him to track.

   Chris exclaimed, "Shit, it was one of them! One of the wolves. Look at all the damned tracks! Break up camp before they come back for us. Hurry!"

   The panicked group hurried to strike camp, but Cameron kept running, following his tracks, keeping his paws in his original footsteps so that he could make better time. The tracks looked huge in the snow, like his paws were much larger than they were. Which probably contributed to tales of wolves that existed as gigantic beasts.

   He raced on and on, realizing now he'd traveled a distance much greater than he'd first suspected, yet he felt free and wild, not tired and cold as he might have imagined.

   After a good long while, he smelled smoke from a wood-burning stove and knew he was getting closer to the cabin resort, when he nearly plowed into a wolf. He stopped on the proverbial dime and stared at the wolf, russet in color, his brown eyes shining in the dark, his expression surprised more than anything. As much as Cameron himself was surprised.

   He expected a confrontation, but the red wolf just studied him with interest, sniffed the air, and remained standing in place, not moving an inch in any direction, his ears alert, twitching back and forth. His posture seemed relaxed though, unlike Cameron's. His was stiff, apprehensive, unsure of what would happen next.

   He sensed the wolf was an alpha, holding his tail straight out behind him, not tucked, his head held high, not bowed. Cameron was standing in the same manner, waiting to see what the other wolf would do first. He couldn't get over the fact a red wolf would be in the area. Gray maybe, living somewhere in the wilderness. The white wolves, Kintail's, absolutely. But not a red wolf, that he thought was extinct in most areas.

   Then the sound of snowmobiles zooming off through the woods from miles away, caught their attention. Chris and his buddies, Cameron suspected. He twisted his head around to look in that direction. When the snowmobiles headed farther away and weren't driving in his direction, he turned back to observe the red wolf, but he was gone, vanished, like a flake of snow against a snowbank.

   Cameron looked around, didn't see any sign of the wolf, sampled the air but couldn't get a whiff of him the way the breeze was blowing. He thought about Faith, about the bed, about snuggling, and felt the adrenaline rush begin to drain off, then loped toward the cabin resort.