coloring, though he was even thinner than Anna’s wolf form, cadaverously thin. He didn’t smell familiar-nor did he smell of a pack. He smelled as if he denned in Douglas fir, cedar, and granite-as if he’d never been touched by shampoo or soap or any of the accouterments of modern life.
“Who are you?” Charles asked.
“Who are you?” repeated Anna, and the wolf looked at her. Hell afire, so did Charles. When she used it, she could pull in any wolf she wanted almost as effectively as Bran, though he’d have done it by sheer force of personality. Anna made you want to curl up at her feet and bask in her peace.
Charles saw the moment when the wolf realized that there were no humans here to protect at all. He smelled the other wolf’s anger and hatred as it flared, then vanished as it came up against his Anna. Leaving…bewilderment behind.
The wolf ran.
“Are you all right?” asked Charles, ridding himself of his clothes as rapidly as possible. He could have used magic to strip as he usually did, but he didn’t want to risk using it here when he might need it for something more important later. The damned bandage around his ribs was tough, and it hurt when he shredded it with his fingernails as they lengthened. A bit of his snowshoe binding had tangled with a bootlace, so he broke the lace.
“I’m fine.”
“Stay here,” he ordered as he let Brother Wolf flow over him and rob him of speech. He shuddered as the shape brought with it the call of the hunt-and every minute the change took let the other get farther away.
“I’ll be here,” she told him-and, as his wolf shape settled over him and solidified, more words flowed over him. “Don’t hurt him.”
He nodded before he disappeared into the woods. He wasn’t going to have to kill anyone this trip. With Anna’s help, he was going to bring that rogue in to safety.
As soon as he left, Anna found herself shivering as if someone had just removed her coat and left her bare to the ice and snow. She glanced around nervously, wondering why the shadows of the trees seemed suddenly deeper. The firs, which only moments ago had been just trees, now seemed to loom over her in silent menace.
“I’m a monster, damn it,” she said aloud.
As if in answer, the wind died and silence descended; a heavy, blanketing silence that seemed somehow alive, though nothing moved or made a noise. Even the little birds, chickadees and nuthatches, were quiet.
She glared at the trees, and that helped a little. But the feeling that something was watching her kept growing. Her nose told her there was nothing-but it hadn’t told her about the wolf that had knocked her and Charles off their feet, either. Now that the wolf had skedaddled, her alarm system was in full swing.
How useful.
But thinking about the wolf reminded her of that odd feeling she’d had just a few moments ago, as if she could see through the strange werewolf’s skin and into his soul, feel his torment, his need. She’d stretched out her hand and asked him who he was, part of her certain that he would come to her and answer.
When he’d run instead, it had torn her from the strange awareness. She couldn’t put her finger on most of what she’d sensed from the wolf; she felt like a blind man seeing colors for the first time. But she would swear that he’d attacked to protect her-and that he’d done his best not to hurt Charles.
Something watched her. She sniffed, taking in the scent of the air, but smelled only the usual woodland scents.
She walked the perimeter of the clearing, but detected nothing with her eyes, ears, or nose. She walked it again anyway, with the same results. Looking a third time wasn’t going to help matters. She needed to calm down, or she was going to go chasing after Charles in full panic. Yeah, that would impress him a whole lot.
Not that she’d ever done anything that might impress him.
She folded her arms over her stomach, which had started to ache with some emotion she couldn’t name, wouldn’t name. It might have been rage.
For three years she’d endured because, as bad as it was, she needed the pack. They were a visceral requirement her wolf could not do without. So she’d let them rob her of her pride, let Leo take control of her body and pass her around like a whore that he owned.
For a moment, she could smell Justin’s breath in her face, feel his body holding hers down, the ache in her wrists and the pressure on her nose where he’d broken it with a carefully controlled, open-handed blow.
Blood dripped down her lip and down her new coat to splatter in the snow. Startled, she put her hand to her nose, but there was nothing wrong with it, though a moment ago she’d felt it swelling as it had the night Justin hit it.
But the blood was still there.
She bent down and took a handful of snow and pressed it against her nose until it burned uncomfortably. She put her hand to her nose and it came away clean this time, so it wasn’t still bleeding. The question was, why had it started bleeding in the first place? And why had she suddenly started thinking about Justin?
Maybe the nosebleed had something to do with the altitude, she thought. Charles would know. She got clean snow and wiped her face with that, then a scrap of backpack that was nearby. She touched her nose, and her fingers came away clean. Whatever the cause, it had stopped. She scrubbed at the bloodstains on her jacket and succeeded only in smearing the blood around.
With a sigh, she looked for somewhere to put the bloody piece of fabric. She’d taken off her pack when she’d done her earlier reconnoitering. It sat in unharmed glory amidst foil-covered meals scattered in fanciful patterns with bits and pieces of Charles’s backpack.
Typical man, she thought with experimental exasperation, leaving the woman to clean up the mess.
She gathered Charles’s clothes and shook them free of snow. She stuffed them into her pack and then started putting the foil-clad meals on top. With a little organization, she was able to put most of the undamaged food in her backpack, but there was no way she would be able to stuff anything more into it. She gave the remains of Charles’s backpack, sleeping bag, and snowshoes a frustrated look.
It wouldn’t have bothered her so much, except this was a wilderness area and they weren’t supposed to leave anything behind. She looked closely at Charles’s backpack, but it had been ripped to shreds. The gun had taken damage, too. She didn’t know much about rifles, but she suspected that they needed a straight barrel to work right.
She hit the jackpot, though, when one of the pieces of backpack turned out to be the ground cloth they’d slept on last night.
She smelled something as she knelt to spread the tough fabric out. She tried not to react to the scent, collecting all the leftover bits and throwing them in the center of the cloth. Everything except the gun. Even though it was bent, it was still reassuringly solid.
Whoever it was stayed very still, watching her-a human, not a werewolf.
Tied together, the cloth made a tidy bundle that they could carry out. As Anna moved the makeshift pack next to her backpack, she heard her watcher move out of the trees behind her.
'Looks like you had a mess on your hands,” said a friendly voice. “Did you run into a bear?”
She sounded friendly enough. Anna turned to look at the woman who’d come out of the trees after watching her for too long to be entirely trustworthy.
Like Anna, she was wearing snowshoes, but she had ski poles in each of her hands. Deep brown eyes peered out from under her hat, but the rest of her face was covered in a woolen scarf. Underneath her gray hat, dark brown curls fell to her shoulders.
Anna took a deep breath, but all her nose told her was that the woman was human. Would a human’s hearing be poor enough that all the noise of the fight might have been made by a bear rather than a pair of werewolves? Darned if she knew.
“A bear. Yes.” Anna gave her a smile she hoped would cover up the amount of time it had taken her to reply. “Sorry, I’m still a little off. I’m a city girl, and I’m not used to Mother Nature in all her glory. Yes, a bear. We scared it off, then discovered it had one of our-” What would they need so badly that a human man would have to go chasing after a bear? “-small packs. The one with the lighter in it.”
The other woman threw back her head and laughed. “Isn’t that the way it always works? I’m Mary Alvarado. What are you doing out here in the middle of winter if you’re not used to the wild country?”
“I’m Anna…Cornick.” Somehow it seemed right to use Charles’s name. Anna gave Mary Alvarado another wry
