wolf tackled a bunny sending the fluffy furball into shock. I pawed at it, curious, but it remained still, its belly rising and falling rapidly.
Inside, I nudged the wolf forward, relieved when she gave up her quarry and ran. Mental note: be sure not to have an empty stomach on full moon nights.
If I even got another one.
We ran, sniffed and hunted for hours, stopped once in the trees to howl. As the evening waned, the Pack scattered. For a moment, I was confused, but the black wolf with dark eyes woofed, trotting and stopping to look for me. I followed him back to a boulder that looked vaguely familiar. Then I caught a very familiar human scent.
My own.
We were back at the spot where I’d left my clothes. Or what was left of them.
I sniffed, pacing the area for any sign of danger. Finally, my wolf heaved a sigh and collapsed onto the ground. My flesh heated up, and I panted, bracing myself for more horrific pain.
I writhed as my skin swallowed the dark fur, and my bones shifted. But the hurts-worse-than-chewing- off-my-own-legs pain never surfaced. It hurt, for sure, but nothing near as intense as when I contorted into a four-legged nocturnal hunter.
The pre-dawn chill stung my sensitive skin as I shivered and opened my eyes. I couldn’t resist reaching up to touch my face. The snout was definitely gone. I started to let out a sigh of relief when I remembered I was naked.
Covering my breasts with my forearm, I cautiously got to my feet. The world spun for a moment, but I didn’t fall over.
Once my vision cleared, I made a beeline for my clothes. My poor, ripped-up clothes. I held up the circle of elastic that used to be my underwear and sighed before tossing it over my shoulder. Other than what looked like blood stains on the thighs, my jeans appeared to have only sustained minor damage.
Sadly, my bra and tank top weren’t so lucky. What were once hooks at the back of my bra were now pulled out straight, making clasping impossible. Perfect. I threw it behind me with the remnants of my underwear and slipped back into my shredded tank.
Talk about peek-a-boo. Crap.
I tried to cover myself as best I could by tying a couple of strategically placed strips down to the front belt loops of my jeans like homemade suspenders. Classy. Oh well, it would have to do until I got back to my place.
Right now I was too elated to be brought down by fashion. Tonight, I ran in the wilderness as a wolf.
And I lived through it.
So far.
Chapter One
Burning the midnight oil was nothing new for Tegan Ashton, but tonight something sinister lingered in the air.
It pissed her off. The ghosts of the past were uninvited guests in her life.
Regardless, she could almost hear her father’s voice in her head whispering in Welsh Gaelic, “
Tegan’s fingers flew across the keyboard, filling in the databases, entering the codes. Brainless, tedious work, but it paid the bills. Sort of. Her new dojo in Leucadia, just north of San Diego, teetered into the red every month, so she picked up as many Internet data-entry jobs as she could.
Late nights and mainlining caffeine, the glamorous life of a black-belt businesswoman.
Hoping to calm her nerves, she took a long slow sip of her iced tea and pulled up her “favorites” tab on her computer. Although she lived in a beach town, she couldn’t afford the rent on anything with an ocean view. Her compromise was an hourly treat of a five-minute break to watch the moonlight on the ocean, courtesy of the Starlight Beach Inn’s twenty-four hour webcam.
The hotel was just a few miles away from her studio apartment over her dojo, and they kept a floodlight dimly illuminating the shoreline. Once she fired up her iTunes track of ocean waves, it was instant relaxation. In San Diego’s North County, 2:00 a.m. was just about the only time you could stare at the waves on the beach without a bunch of people in the way. Perfect.
She double-clicked the link, grabbed her tea, and leaned back in the chair while the webcam loaded. Now all she needed was the smell of sea air and she’d be good to go. Her shoulders started to relax, and Tegan grinned, taking a swallow of her tea. Anxiety attacks didn’t stand a chance against the calming power of the Pacific Ocean.
The grainy picture came up, and she stretched out her cramped fingers. She frowned and leaned forward in her chair. Someone was on her beach.
A man and a woman. He shoveled sand while his date reclined on the shore. What were they doing building sandcastles at this time of night?
She sighed and set her tea aside. So much for her beach break. Being a Peeping Tom during someone else’s late-night date wasn’t part of her calming respite. Tegan poised the mouse over the
“What the hell?” She rubbed her eyes, leaning closer to the screen.
Goosebumps lined her arms when the first shovel of sand covered the woman. “Holy shit.” She reached for her cordless phone. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“911. How can we help?”
Two more shovels of sand into the hole. “There’s a man burying a woman in the sand outside of the Starlight Beach Inn.”
“I show your location on Pacific Highway.”
Tegan nodded, only half listening. “Yeah, I’m watching him on the hotel’s webcam. Someone needs to help her.”
“Ma’am, you realize you can be held accountable for falsifying calls to 911.”
The man on the beach chose that moment to look over his shoulder, wiping his chin and exposing a bold tattoo on his forearm. She didn’t need a close up to recognize what it said.
Tegan’s heart lurched in her chest. “It’s him.”
She instinctively clicked the “off” button on her phone, her lungs constricting and fingers tingling with the beginnings of an anxiety attack. Painful memories swamped her. Even with the grainy webcam view, she recognized every angle of his face. The same face still haunted her nightmares.
The man who attacked her in Los Angeles, the man the police had failed to catch, had just traveled south into her sleepy beach town. In fact, he was only a few miles away from her bedroom.
…
Tegan left the sheriff’s department exhausted mentally and physically, but there was no way she was going
