A Wolf of Her Own (3 page)

He wasn’t her wolf friend though. Her friend had abandoned her when she was eight, without good-byes, never returning.

This man didn’t even look like her wolf friend—what she remembered of him anyway after such a long time. He hadn’t had such incredible hair for one; his had been dark brown and neatly cut. This man’s hair was a fashionably unkempt mop that cascaded around his face, falling to his eyes, the colour a beautiful dark auburn that shone in spectacular red when sun lit it at the right angle. He regarded her from beneath the fringe like he doubted everything she said but was willing to take advantage of her nonetheless, making him look rather cynical.

His features emphasised his anger. Everything looked as if drawn on with a knife: sharp cheekbones and well-defined jawline, narrow and straight nose, and brows a clear-cut dark line over light blue eyes. They were intense, the mind behind them alert as he studied her in return.

"Have you watched your fill?" A sneer twisted his lips and his eyes remained cold.

Gemma gritted her teeth to stop her Rider from lashing out. Then she swept her eyes down the length of him to show that he had no effect on her. He was tall and leanly built, but tight muscles prevented his narrow torso and long legs from looking rangy. There was violent strength to him that stemmed from more than mere arrogance. It was confidence in his ability to push that body to the limit and beyond that she found curiously attractive. An unexpected reaction, for she didn’t like violence—and an unwanted reaction too. He could be the killer, the violent air a residue of, or cause for, his deed.

Faded jeans hung loosely from his narrow hips and his old hiking boots were covered in mud and dead leaves. He wore only a t-shirt though the weather was cold, revealing tight sinewy muscles of his arms. He was definitely strong enough to kill a sheep, even in this form.

Slowly, she returned her gaze to his eyes and nodded. "Now I have. Can we go?"

He unlocked the gate, came through it and locked it again behind him. The clan took their security seriously still. The worst times, the Sentient War, had been over before her birth, but Tom, who was a century older, had told her stories. It had been absolutely necessary to keep constant vigilance on their farm too, but they weren’t concerned with the security anymore.

The worst threat had come from within.

"Come on, wolf. Hurry up." She sounded harsher than she intended, the memory of her mother more raw today than it had been in ages.

He frowned. "I don’t appreciate being called a wolf."

As someone who didn’t want to be called a vampire—hadn’t wanted to be one—she could sympathise. But she wasn’t about to ask his name. She needed to think of him as the enemy, the killer. Names would alter that. "Yes, yes. But the trace grows cold."

That got him moving. "I’m driving."

"In your dreams. This is my vehicle and I know the route."

He wouldn’t budge. "I saw how you drive. I’d like to get there alive, thank you very much."

"What, is the widdle wolfie afvaid?" Taunting him wasn’t wise, but the words simply spilled out.

He didn’t rise to her mocking. "Absolutely terrified."

"I promise I’ll be gentle." And she took the front seat.

He sat behind her, wrapped his arms around her, and pressed his torso against her back. His body heat penetrated layers of clothing and mud as his long legs followed the lines of her thighs intimately, deliberately trying to push her off balance.

So the wolf isn’t above petty retaliation
.

Whatever his intentions, the effect was countered by his Might energy, a cocoon around him that extended to her as well. His closeness should have been arousing, another onslaught on her equilibrium, but his energy was—soothing.

Baffled, she opened the gas a little too forcefully and the four-wheeler shot forward. His hold tightened instantly, but he didn’t tell her to take it easy.

"You smell of pig."

"Well, if you didn’t lean so close, you wouldn’t have to smell it." She hadn’t cared about her appearance, but now she was acutely aware of it.

"If you didn’t drive like a maniac, I wouldn’t have to lean so close."

The urge to drive even faster was strong, but she slowed down, to show him—and to make him back off too. But he eased his hold only slightly.

She tried to ignore him the best she could. The uneven terrain made driving difficult even without distractions, and she needed her superhuman strength to keep the four-wheeler upright. She usually resented her vampire side, but it had its uses. Had her father still been alive, she wouldn’t have admitted it to him though. She had not chosen this for herself, he had chosen for her. The ability to keep a vehicle upright—and to show off to a wolf—wasn’t enough to counter the lifetime struggle with violent urges that her father had doomed her into.

Hitting a bump on the field, the vehicle jumped, causing the man behind her to tighten his hold again. "You know, I’m the best tracker of my clan," he stated, speaking by her ear even though vampire hearing was good enough for her to hear him over the engine. "I can easily track even older traces. Provided I reach them alive."

He wants the tracks to grow cold. Drive faster
.

The Rider. The manifestation of her second nature had been quiet during the whole ordeal, a mercy. She had enough trouble controlling it as it was without it actively taking part.

And control it she must, if she didn’t want to end up like her mother.

She had managed to keep it reined during the 105 years since her
promise
had been
fulfilled
. Her Rider hadn’t got out once. It had earned her the respect of the cunning, violent entity, but it came with a price. She had to maintain constant control of her emotions, unable to feel fully; and she had to restrict the use of her vampire abilities. It would be only too easy for the Rider to free itself when she gave it permission to stretch its claws. She only used what she couldn’t survive without, her shields and her ability to
charm
humans into doing what she willed—an illegal activity, but necessary if vampires wanted to feed.

She ignored the Rider, like she often did, too used to the female voice inside her head to pay attention to it. And she didn’t speed up.

They reached a gate and she slowed to a crawl, preparing to stop to open it, but her passenger had already jumped off and opened it before she could. She drove through, nodding her thanks. On the other side, she paused long enough for him to close the gate again and hop back on.

He didn’t press against her anymore and the small distance between them made her feel cold. Made her feel ignored. She almost leaned backwards to gap it and only caught herself at the last moment.

Ah, that’s why you want to drive slowly, to feel up the wolf
, the Rider mocked her.

Shut up
.

They cleared another gate to the meadow and the crime scene. She drove across the wet pasture right to the grove and killed the engine. They dismounted. "It’s in there."

He headed into the woods, not waiting for her. She hurried to follow him, but he halted her. "I’m going alone."

"So you can cover up the evidence? Absolutely not!"

His explosion was instantaneous. "I fucking told you we didn’t do this! Maybe it was Mrs Byrd again."

Her knees buckled in shock. He knew about that? He made to steady her, but she shook his arm off and pulled herself together. "My mother is dead."

His fury calmed as fast as it had risen. Regret and compassion took its place, strong and genuine. Shifters had the luxury to feel and express their emotions how they willed, the lucky bastards, whereas she could barely breathe trying to control her upset.

"Look, you stink to high heaven. I can’t smell anything but you. Just stay here."

She had got used to the smell of herself, but he had a point so she conceded without a word. She leaned against the four-wheeler and watched him enter the woods, her arms folded over her chest in a petulant gesture, to all appearances prepared to wait for him.

The moment he was out of sight, she checked the wind. Then she circled the grove until she could enter it downwind. She didn’t want to distract him with her smell, in case he was telling the truth, but she wasn’t leaving him unsupervised either. In case he wasn’t.

She wasn’t exactly light on her feet as she made her way through the grove. She had never had a reason to learn a silent approach—unlike the master tracker who had barely made a sound when he disappeared into the woods. But she tried her best.

She was successful too. He didn’t react when she reached the carnage from the opposite side, even though she was almost in his line of sight. She crouched, partially hiding behind a tree to watch him.

He was standing by the carnage, staring at it in disbelief and anger. His wolf aura was out and she studied it, fascinated like always by the visible expression of shifters’ second nature. It was how she had met her wolf friend too. She hadn’t been able to see the auras, her
promise
not yet
fulfilled
, but Tom had told her about wolf-shifters in the neighbourhood. Infinitely curious, she had sneaked into the Greenwood manor grounds to watch them, only to be caught by a soldier guarding the wall. But instead of getting angry with her, he had shifted for her and then played fetch like he had been her dog.

Her friend’s wolf had resembled a natural wolf in colour, black and grey, though he had been sturdier than a natural wolf. Most shifter animals were like that—this man’s wolf was too, though it was otherwise lean like him. It had feline grace in his structure, like that of a leopard maybe, and its reddish fur more resembled fox than wolf.

The aura stretched out of his host’s chest, its front paws pushing against the man’s lower abdomen as if for a better purchase, which was silly, since the aura was translucent and went through all obstacles. Not its host’s body though, apparently. Its ears were up alertly and it was scenting the air.

A gust of wind brought the stench of the carnage to Gemma’s nose—blood, intestines and excrement—easily overriding the smell of pig clinging to her. Her Rider found the concoction enticing, but it was all she could do not to gag. She closed her nose and mouth with her hand and turned her face away from the wind.

When she was able to turn her attention back to the tracker, he had rounded the carnage and was now studying the ground. He followed something he saw there for a few steps and then crouched for a closer look. He kept repeating the same, going deeper into the woods, away from her.

He straightened and Gemma prepared to follow him. But he didn’t move. To her astonishment, he peeled off his t-shirt in one swift pull, revealing a nicely-muscled wide back that narrowed sharply to his buttocks. Before she had recovered from the sudden appearance of his beautiful back, he had hung the tee on a nearby tree branch and proceeded to kick off his boots and jeans.

He dropped the jeans down to his ankles and stepped out of them, offering her an excellent view of his bare buttocks and legs. Loosely as the jeans had hung on him, she had expected his legs to be skinny, but far from it. Well-formed with incredibly tight, long muscles, they were like sculptures. And his buttocks…

She had never had such an urge before to press her hands on a man’s buttocks, cup the pert pillows and squeeze.

Turn around
.

But he didn’t. He hung the jeans on the same branch as the shirt and then kneeled gracefully on the forest floor. A heartbeat later, his wolf aura began to grow. Still translucent, it covered his body and beyond, looking impossibly large for a wolf. Faster than she could discern, it began to solidify, taking over the human form. It didn’t look like it hurt; the two simply switched places and the man disappeared.

A wolf stood where the man had been, a red beast larger than a natural wolf, but utterly graceful. He turned his head where Gemma was hiding, indicating he had known she was there all along, and snarled a warning. Then he took off in the opposite direction, leaving her to stare after him.

The wolf wanted to growl at the vampire for disobeying them, but settled for a snarl. She stayed put, so they were satisfied she wouldn’t follow them. They didn’t have time for her anyway; they had killers to track.

The carnage excited them, unlike in human form, the scents mouth-watering. But it made their host angry, and the human side ruled over them even in this form, so they couldn’t feast. They moved away from the dead sheep to get a better scent of the tracks they had found.

Strange pack!

They growled, the sound deep, almost inaudible.

Let’s go
.

The scent trail was weak, the wet ground diluting it more. But they weren’t only a wolf, they were two-natured, and their human half was able to point at signs the wolf would have missed: a paw print here, a broken twig there, the scent stronger in those places.

Over the stone fence with a graceful leap and through some more woods. A field that wasn’t terribly wet so the scent was stronger. Across a lane.

No, not across it.

The scent trail disappeared, but they wouldn’t give up. They walked up and down the dirt lane for many heartbeats, sniffing, looking for clues. And they found the trail again. On the lane, until it left it again.

Through another small patch of woods, thin, an easy trail. It ended at a smaller lane almost forgotten. The smell was more human than wolf now, the prints different. They had shifted.

It didn’t matter. They could track anything. But then a pungent smell of petrol and metal made them sneeze. A car.

Kieran shifted back to human to take a look around, unheeding of his nakedness. It took him a while to get his bearings, but he knew every inch within miles from the clan’s estate, so he soon recognised the place—for what good it did. The old lane led to larger roads at both ends, a shortcut through private land that should only be known to the clan. From those larger roads, his prey had access everywhere.

Fuck.

All was not lost though. He had a detailed scent of the strange shifters his wolf had given him, and he studied it in his mind. It was familiar. Not his clan, that was self-evident, but it didn’t belong to any clan in or around London either. But try as he might, he couldn’t place the scent.