Weremones (2 page)

Oh god
. She remembered. The wolves. Coyotes. Matthew in the park.

Diana tried to climb to all fours, to warn the man. She had to get him to shut off the psychic and emotional connection between them. She was drowning.

A desperate wheeze escaped her. She swooned, giddy on exhaustion and overload. Her brain felt fried. A circuit board hit by lightning.

The man she’d mistaken for a monster reached down with one big hand and hauled her to her feet. The turmoil still churned inside him, but at a distance. As if one of them had finally put up a mental shield.

She had a glimpse of high cheekbones and moonlight hair as he scooped her high into his arms. The wide chiseled planes of his chest were hot against her skin. A distant part of her brain marveled at the ease that he held her. The rest of her wanted to pass out.

Wolves. She had to tell him about the wolves.

“Well? Explain. And it had better be good.” His gravel toned voice brooked no disobedience.

“Wolves.” She croaked into his chest. “Run. Get away.”

The stupid man just stood still, holding her. A distant part of her mind screamed at him.
Run! It’s not safe!

Diana struggled to get down, to warn him. She was too weak to do more than wiggle.

The arms clenched around her, protective and immovable. She tried again to warn him but he shifted and pressed her face into his chest. The strong hand held her still.

Her mind ceased being buffeted by his confusing emotions. His amazing raw psychic energy was finally leashed and locked safely away under his control.

Diana inhaled the scent of man and forest. Her female instincts labeled him as the strong protector type. Her hands fisted against the crisp hair of his bare chest.

The steady beat of his heart drummed in her ears, lulling her. Exhaustion cast a haze on her senses, pulling her down toward blissful unconsciousness. She fought, knowing that if she lost, they would die.

“There were coyotes, Adam.” A growly voice explained. “We took care of them. We brought her to you for safekeeping, Adam. I swear.”

With her face pressed into the man’s chest, she couldn’t see. But she
felt
only the empathic presences of the man and the surrounding wolves. Surely the wolves weren’t the ones talking? She was tired and mentally drained enough to believe. There was a familiarity to the voice that she couldn’t place.

The edges of her awareness blurred.

“Damn it, Bradley. This is not acceptable behavior.”

“But smell her. We couldn’t let them have a psychic.”

The man growled his displeasure, eliciting low canine whimpers from the wolves.

The leaves rustled. Diana wished she could see. She squirmed. The arms tightened to keep her still.

“No! Don’t touch her.” The man’s sharp rebuke brought whimpers from the creatures. The emotion tugged at her, and her overloaded senses, but seemed to barely mollify the man. “All of you, Change and head home. You’ve done enough tonight.”

The man’s grip didn’t lessen as she tried again to twist around. She managed a glimpse of several animal-men crouching at the man’s feet.

Werewolves,
her mind whispered. Not real wolves. They weren’t animals. That was why she could feel their emotions.

A black haze crowded her vision. Then the blanket of darkness enveloped Diana’s senses.

Adam Weis waved his ride off and circled the psychic female’s small blue car.

He’d been too concerned last night about her health to worry about transportation, or what she might think waking up in his bed this morning. His pack had brought him a psychic female in need of protection. Her health and safety had been priority, and would continue to be now that he knew of her existence.

Damn werecoyotes. He really needed to do something about the other supernatural predators in his territory. He wasn’t too worried about the werecoyotes or others of their ilk, just the inconvenience their presence caused. Most weres were disorganized and loyal only to themselves.

Pack Canis everywhere complained that you never knew what stupid thing a were would do next. No wonder it was policy to run the other supernaturals out of your territory as soon as possible.

Lately he didn’t trust for his life not to go
fubar
all of a sudden. Weres and psychics were a temptation for fate to mess with him again. And kids, don’t forget them and how they screwed with your personal life. His life was a chaotic mess.

Hell, yesterday morning he had promised that he’d oversee the clean-up of which of his boys were the culprits responsible for papering the middle school gymnasium bleachers with the words
Go Team!
The coach didn’t appreciate real team loyalty when he saw it. Oh, well.

Adam sighed. Leaning against the car, he played one handed key toss. Being the boss had plenty of advantages. Calling the shots appealed to the dominant wolf in him.

Adam truly liked working with his hands. The carpenter’s life called to both sides of his nature.

Lobos Luna Construction had a reputation for good, fast work. On this beautiful Saturday morning, they’d been hard at work so that the first house in the subdivision he was building would be on schedule. He’d promised those folks they could move in the first week of July, and by God they would.

With a little hustling, and leaving his foreman Mack Spencer in charge, Adam had slipped away to retrieve the female’s car.

Not everything about being the boss was daisy sweet. Not that he usually minded.

Too much, that is.

Though today, Adam would cheerfully have strangled the idiot at the builder’s supply. He’d never seen the like. Every two-by-four was warped, twisted, and full of knots the size of his fist. No exaggeration, the lumber had been that bad.

The delivery was dropped off after everyone had gone for the day. Thank God Mack had inspected the load first thing this morning. Had it been used, Adam would have rework instead, on top of dead time with men on pay. It would have been a hell of a mess.

Adam was later than he’d wanted to be getting the lady’s car. There was no telling what was going on at the house in his absence. Last night, the boys had scared the wits out of Diana Ridley while rescuing her.

She’d seen and heard enough to think them all monster movie werewolves. Adam only hoped she blamed the fur-fest she’d seen last night on exhaustion and bad dreams.

Maybe he could convince her it had all been a hallucination.

He wrestled with the seat adjustment on Diana Ridley’s car, trying to fit his sixfoot-

four-inch frame into a space normally occupied by a petite, short-legged female. Not that he’d noticed her legs, or how her soft curves felt pressed close in his arms either.

Adam’s pack consisted of five underage pups. No fighters. No wardens to stand with him against a threat. He didn’t count the Mack, no matter how good the human was.

He wanted Mack tucked away safe, but that wouldn’t happen in a million years. The exsoldier was too good at finding his own trouble.

In the confines of the car, Adam inhaled the woman’s scent as he cranked and pulled out. A peculiar growl/whine slipped out of him. Her everyday use of it marked the vehicle as hers.

She smelled delicious. Woman/cookie/citrus was Diana Ridley, a tasty morsel that roused hungers in both the man and the wolf. ... No hint of the magical flavor psychics gave off when using their gifts lingered.

Apparently, he’d inherited his sire’s human fetish, even if he wasn’t in the market for procreation. Not a bad thing. At the end of the run, humans and shapeshifters shared the same DNA. Besides, humans had to be added in every couple generations for his line to stay fertile.

Halfway across town, his cell phone rang, pulling Adam from his musing. He glanced at the ID and pressed the button.

“Yeah?”

“Forget the lady’s car, Adam. You better get back to the job site.”

“Jesus, Mack. It’s been what? Fifteen minutes?”

“Uh-huh. Just long enough for the crap to hit our doorstep. Hold up a sec.” After a muffled bump, the line went silent. Mack had covered the receiver with one hand. Adam made an illegal u-turn and headed back across town.

“Adam? You still there?”

“Yeah. What’s going on?”

“Sorry, that was the guy from Animal Control. We found a dead wolf in the dumpster.”

A knot of apprehension tightened Adam’s stomach. He’d had a few run-ins with animal control back in the Tarrant pack. Things were always touchy dealing with people who risked their lives handling wild and dangerous animals. People who occasionally ran into a changed wolven and captured them, thinking of keeping the human population safe from animal predators.

If they only knew.

The knot in Adam’s stomach turned into a smoking lava rock as Mack continued.

“Animal Control is hauling it out now. I’m going to stall him as long as I can. But you’d better hurry if you want to take a look at it.”

Damn, damn, damn.

Adam made a quick call to the house, checking heads as much as telling the boys to keep the woman there. His stomach eased while Mark rattled in his ear. There was nothing to eat in the house and the kid wanted this
awesome cool
skateboard with red and acid green flames for his birthday. Neither pronouncement was news to Adam. The boys ate everything they could pour ketchup on and the description of the skateboard was burned into Adam’s memory from repetition.

Gee.
Sarcasm laced Adam’s thoughts.
I wonder what I’ll get Mark for his birthday.

———

The world shifted. The gentle bounce of the mattress, the soft cocoon of blankets reassured Diana. Dreams and fantasies held no sway over the waking of day. With her eyes still closed, she drifted in a half asleep stage. The presence of another person near to her comforted her.

The dream had been awful. A lot of running and monsters trying to eat her.

No. Wolves. There’d been wolves and coyotes, but the monster had saved her. A monster that turned into a sexy hunk.

Yes, it had been a very bad dream. If she didn’t do something about it now, she would be feeling everyone else’s moods all day long. She’d wind up holed up in her bedroom with a migraine with a hot compress on her forehead, wrestling the child-proof cap off of a bottle of useless pain reliever.

As a natural empath, her first twenty-two years had been sheer hell, living a life bombarded by what others felt. Richard Ridley, her ex-husband had called Diana crazy.

The truth was, her powers scared him. The divorce, emotionally devastating as it was, turned out to be Diana’s salvation. When Karen’s gifts manifested, Diana made sure her daughter had all the understanding and security she needed to develop.

This morning Diana’s control over her own gifts was shaky. There was no one like her that she knew, no one to help her understand her abilities. She practiced a little yoga for control, to understand the energies that powered her psychic empathy. She had learned to build walls around herself, emotional and metaphysical.

The nightmare still felt so real. Her mental image of a fence and locked gate crumbled, leaving her mind open.

Diana felt drained, as if her energy was spread too thin, pulled outside her body over a distance. She sought her center, a nice seascape of peace and tranquility, but found a forest instead. A forest inhabited by wolves.

Her son, she assumed, settled on the bed and broke her scattered, sleep deprived, concentration with his insecurity. He
should
feel sorry.

If Matthew had needed a ride so badly last night, then he should have been at the Park entrance like he’d said he would. Sometimes he could be as thoughtless as his father. Diana pushed away the uncharitable thought. Matthew wasn’t his father.

It was the dream.
Was
it a dream? Diana swallowed.

No, it was a dream. Otherwise …

Keep a low profile. You don’t want the monsters to find you.
Diana brushed off the stray admonition, obviously the result of too many internet chats with her favorite oddball computer whiz, Jax. She was going to have to get taller, less paranoid friends.

So close, his emotions resonated within her exhausted psyche, keeping her from sleep. She huffed and gave in to the inevitable. Digging under the comforter, Diana gave the lump behind her a pat and a light shove. He shifted, arm going over her legs. She wanted an apology, not this drawn out prelude to a drama.

“Matthew.”

Not Matthew. The teen sitting next to her was not her son. And she
definitely
was not in her bedroom.

What exactly
had
happened last night?

Diana’s heart thumped hard. She glanced around the room, checked her state of dress. Sudden fear dumped a jolt of adrenaline through her veins.

Her clean hand found her own dirty tee shirt. The underwire of her bra poked reassuringly into a breast. Her shorts were in a twisted wedgie.

Assured that she was relatively safe and unmolested, Diana forced herself to calm down. She focused on her visitor. Younger than her son, the boy was dressed in a ragged, oversize pair of jeans and an equally disreputable tee shirt that should have been thrown out by its first owner.

Familiar chocolate brown eyes watched her. The boy’s prominent cheekbones and chin were all angles under the shaggy mess of rich, dark brown hair. The promise of a well-built man was there, needing only more weight and age to fulfill what nature had begun.

“Brandon Starr?”

He flushed and drew his knees up to his chin, wrapping his arms protectively around them. The boy’s insecurity and underlying fear was a raucous noise inside her.

This was familiar too.

Instinctively, she wanted to cuddle him and make it better. She pushed down the urge to mother everyone. Her own kids were nearly grown. Every day she was able to reclaim a little more time for herself. She didn’t need to add someone else’s to her list.

She was almost home free from the awesome responsibility of parenting.

Brandon and his twin brother Bradley were from the pre-adolescent gang her daughter used to drag home for dinner. Over the years her, Karen had brought every kind of stray imaginable, human and animal, for Diana to mother. She’d been Room Mother, Club Den Mother, and neighborhood sitter.