WithHerCraving (6 page)

If Jarvis weren’t just as bewildered by this whole thing, he
might have actually found it comical to see his precious female so speechless
and stunned she couldn’t finish her own sentence.

“I mean, of course, and thank you. Your den is very nice.”
Her words were stiff.

They were probably forced out of her mouth just as his had
been. Jarvis decided it was a good thing the human female couldn’t smell
Katrin’s disgust when she followed Heather upstairs.

Jarvis was left alone on the back patio with a cold bottle
of beer while McAllister went to change out of the human uniform, or so the
male told him. The Cariboo had a very impressive den. The rolling hills and
thick patches of trees were not only an incredible view but made Jarvis ache
for a good, hard run. After a night in Katrin’s arms at the motel, then a
morning from hell—listening to McAllister inform the human cops he would take
care of the two of them—then being driven to this den, Jarvis had earned a run.
Not to mention Katrin’s public announcement that they were mated.

Jarvis hadn’t had a moment alone with Katrin since she’d
howled about being mated. During their ride out here she had sat silent in the
backseat, staring out the window, her emotions once again nestled behind her
thick wall of security.

According to their laws and traditions, fucking constituted
being mated. There were some who interpreted the ancient laws to mean a male and
female had to fuck in their fur and their flesh to truly be mated. But howling
about the mating out loud, with one or more witnesses present to smell the
truth of it, would bond them together for the rest of their lives. Werewolves
didn’t get divorced.

It dawned on him that Katrin hadn’t smelled of a lie when
she’d announced their mating, but she hadn’t smelled happy either. Jarvis
enjoyed Katrin. He had wanted her the moment he’d first seen her. She’d
intrigued him further during those nights she’d watched in the window as he
changed for his nightly run. Her fiery nature, her unique coloring, her
willingness to take on anyone who got in her way—everything about her appealed
to him.

Staring at his tranquil surroundings didn’t help soothe the
turmoil growing inside him. Jarvis wanted Katrin with him. He easily lay claim
on her. But mating—that was serious business. Very serious. Did he want her
running by his side for the rest of his life?

“Ready for another?” McAllister interrupted his thoughts
when he came out on to the terrace with two more beers.

Jarvis glanced down at his beer, realizing he’d barely taken
a drink. “I’m good,” he said, then chugged the cold brew. On second thought,
he’d earned at least a few beers.

When he looked away from the surroundings he wasn’t truly
able to appreciate, the frustration mounting inside him seemed to dissipate.
Maybe he did want Katrin by his side always.

McAllister, who now wore jeans and a t-shirt, put the
unopened bottle of beer on a small table between two patio chairs, and opened
the other bottle with his teeth. He spit the crumpled lid onto the table.

“Your female isn’t a Cariboo.”

Jarvis was still wound too tight. He forced himself to shift
gears, get mating with Katrin out of his head. Which proved almost impossible
to do. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he asked.

“Toubec had me research her den shortly after she arrived at
his ranch. Apparently she killed a male while on a run on his land.”

“While on a run?” Jarvis shook his head, remembering that
night and talking to his littermate about it when he’d first left his den to
join the other werewolves. “Wait a minute. No one died. The male was hauled
off—injured but definitely not dead.”

“He died,” McAllister said flatly. “You know about it?”

“I saw it happen,” Jarvis growled.

“Interesting.” McAllister nodded once then took a long, slow
drink of his beer. “Anyway, after she killed the male, he wanted to know more
about her. There were a few other incidents too, all minor, but combined they
piqued Rock and Simone’s interest in Katrin Keller.”

“What other incidences? Trust me, Katrin is Cariboo. I’ve
known her over a week.”

“Not a long time to decide on a mating.”

“True.” Jarvis didn’t elaborate. Instead, he tilted his
bottle and downed half the beer. He would hear this werewolf out, his curiosity
and desire to learn more about Katrin strong enough to remain silent.

McAllister possibly smelled the truth of the matter. He
continued talking without demanding more information on this mating Katrin had
howled about.

“The other incidences weren’t as big a deal, as I said,”
McAllister continued. “Some dishes breaking, locks on doors jamming, and she
sent another one of the males there flying over a fence when he tried sniffing
around too close.”

Jarvis didn’t try hiding his grin. His pride smelled strong.

McAllister grinned as well. “I take it she hasn’t sent you
flying.”

“Umm…no.”

“I guess that makes you lucky.” McAllister downed the rest
of his beer and placed the empty bottle on the small table. “Katrin Keller and
her littermates, Leisa and Magda, ran here to Prince George from the mountains
after humans burned their den. Both their sire and mother were killed in the
fire.”

The explanation hit Jarvis hard. No wonder his fiery little
female was so hard to read. She’d been through one of the worst experiences,
losing her parents, and probably very recently. Suddenly he wanted to push past
McAllister and race up the stairs. He wanted her hot little body snuggled
against his. He wanted to fuck her until her pain was gone forever.

No matter what he did, Jarvis wouldn’t be able to remove
pain cutting that deeply. He understood and knew that pain very well. But
letting her know he would be there, would run by her side and never leave her
as her littermates had, would be something.

“Where are her littermates?” he asked.

“Rock and Simone Toubec never met them. Katrin told them she
was the only survivor of her litter. I don’t know yet why she lied about her
littermates leaving her at Toubec’s.”

Let the werewolf play investigative cop on another Cariboo.
Jarvis simply stared him in the eye, willing to hear the rest of what he knew
about Katrin.

“Why do you say she isn’t Cariboo?”

“The Keller den was buried high up in the mountains. I’m
rather amazed humans found them at all. But there was a reason they were such a
secluded den. Her litter wasn’t even part of a pack. Katrin’s sire was a Malta
werewolf.”

“A Malta werewolf?” Jarvis shook his head. “The only
remaining Malta werewolves are all reduced to a pack in the Colorado Rocky
Mountains. You know that as well as I do. The howlings were quite clear. There
aren’t any of that breed around here.”

“True. I don’t know why her sire wasn’t sniffed out and
forced into that pack. He apparently kept his litter well hidden high up in the
mountains. I’ve heard howlings of rogue Malta werewolves from time to time.
None of them have ever run into Prince George though. I would know if they
had,” McAllister said fiercely.

Jarvis probably knew what any werewolf knew about the
dangerous and unstable breed of werewolf. The Malta werewolves had lived in
Malta until one of their pack leaders decided he tamper with the elements. He
sniffed out a way to bend them, control them to his own benefit. Fire, water,
earth and air—the Malta pack leader manipulated them to his own will. Then he
taught his pack how to do it. But that wasn’t enough for this deranged pack
leader. He took this knowledge into a laboratory and began messing with his
pack until he’d altered them somehow. Altered them in a way so that each time a
mated couple had a litter, their cubs were born with the ability to alter what
should have been sniffed out naturally. The natives of Malta, along with
leaders worldwide, including WA, Werewolf Affairs, which was part of the
American government, decided this pack had become too dangerous and burned them
out. It was the only time in history werewolves had decided to destroy another
pack.

“I think I would know if Katrin weren’t a Cariboo.” Jarvis
shook his head. Just the implication pissed him off and he didn’t mind smelling
that way. “You’re wrong, McAllister. Katrin isn’t a Malta werewolf.”

“Her mother was Cariboo and her sire a Malta werewolf. Ask
her. If she denies anything I’ve told you, let me know.”

Jarvis smelled the truth of it now. He and Katrin hadn’t
been brought to McAllister’s den because Katrin had announced a mating. They
were here because McAllister believed her a Malta werewolf. What did the
Cariboo cop plan on doing with his little red Cariboo female?

Katrin glanced around the spacious bedroom the human had
shown her to upstairs. The female’s scent was curious. She wasn’t nervous
around Katrin. Heather smelled relaxed, content and even happy.

“You two should be comfortable here. Take advantage of
anything. Our den is your den,” she said, smiling.

Katrin stared at her. “I don’t want your den.”

Heather’s smile didn’t fade. “It’s a take on a human
expression.
Mi casa es su casa
. It’s Spanish for my home is your home. I
guess something is lost in the translation.” She shook her head, still
grinning. “But anyway, the bathroom is at the end of the hall. There are fresh
towels in the linen closet just outside the bathroom. Marc called before
bringing you two out and suggested you might not have eaten yet today. I’ll
have steaks ready in no time.”

“You honor me by welcoming me into your den,” Katrin said
seriously.

Heather waved off the formal praise. Then instead of leaving
Katrin alone, which she desperately wanted, the human walked around the room.
She stared out the window for a minute with her back to Katrin. Not knowing
what to do to get rid of the human female, Katrin stood planted where she was
and watched her.

Finally Heather left the window and sat on the edge of the
bed. Fucking tail. Katrin really didn’t want to have female talk with a human.

“I understand your plight.”

“You understand my plight?”

The human nodded.

“How could you understand anything about me?”

“Werewolves don’t corner the market on pain and suffering.
It happens to all of us, unfortunately.”

“I’m sure,” Katrin said drily.

“I lost my mother when I was eleven. Marc said when he met
me, my emotions were stuffed so deep inside me it made me stink.” She laughed
after insulting herself.

Katrin didn’t understand why any werewolf would mate with a
human. They were a disgusting race. Heather still smelled. Marc McAllister was
a good-looking male, and with a fair amount of power and a nice den. He would
be a catch for any female.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Katrin said.

Heather squinted in Katrin’s direction. Her scent matched
her expression, perplexed.

“You lost your family too,” Heather pressed.

“My litter.”

“I’m sorry. You lost your litter.” Heather sighed. “I’m just
trying to say we have something in common.”

“Comparing the loss of members we were related to doesn’t
seem good grounds in establishing a connection between the two of us.”

When Heather laughed she didn’t smell the least bit humored
by what Katrin just said. “You’re right. It doesn’t.”

Since Heather sat on the bed, and although the room was
spacious, there wasn’t anywhere else to sit. Katrin remained standing just
inside the doorway. There was a closet with sliding, folding doors partially
closed and concealing anything that was in there. There were two windows, one
facing the north and one the west. With the sun probably not quite over the den
at that moment, not a lot of sunshine came in through either window. Small
matching wooden nightstands were on either side of the bed. Identical lamps
were on each nightstand. There were corded, oblong carpets, one on each side of
the bed. A dresser was alongside the wall next to her. There was nothing on it.
Katrin didn’t notice anything on the walls.

Other than the multitude of old emotions coming from
Heather, with new ones stacking in on top of them, the bedroom had no other
smells. Katrin guessed that she and Jarvis weren’t putting anyone out of a bed
by staying here. In spite of the human’s determination to howl about matters
best left alone, Katrin was raised better than to be rude to her hostess. She
wasn’t sure, though, if humans qualified as someone her good breeding applied
to or not.

The faintly sour odor of her awkwardness was almost too much
to handle. Katrin was torn between simply leaving her alone in the room and
sniffing out Jarvis, or asking the human to leave so Katrin could air out the
room.

“I guess I just wanted to say I’m sorry you lost your
litter,” Heather finally said, after the moment of silence had stretched
between them. “I know how unbearable the pain is.” Heather stood and looked
around the room as if searching for something. “I hope you find this room
comfortable,” she said in a softer tone.

The female was searching for things to say. For some reason
the human wasn’t leaving Katrin alone. She was mated to a werewolf so it
couldn’t be her lack of trust in Katrin.

“Do you know who killed your mother?” Katrin decided to ask.

Heather quit looking around the room and focused on Katrin.
“No one killed her. Nor did anyone tell me how sick she was. I thought my mom
would live forever. But when I was in the fifth grade she died. I think I’ve
blocked most of it out of my head. All I remember is she went to the hospital
one night and never came home. I refused to care about anything after that.”

When she smiled her entire face lit up and suddenly she
jumped from smelling sad to happy. “Until I met Marc. Those were some crazy
times when he and I first started dating,” she mused, now glowing. “Remind me
to tell you sometime how he hauled me out of a coffee shop where I was with my
friends.”

“I expected my sire and mother to run for many more years as
well,” Katrin blurted out, although she didn’t know why she shared the most
painful part of her past with a human female. “Until humans burnt them to their
death in our den.”

Heather stared at Katrin only a brief moment before her
scent changed. Just the slightest spiciness but enough to reveal her anger. “I
didn’t kill your parents, Katrin. Please don’t hate me because other humans
ruined your family—I mean litter. I would never do something like that.”

Katrin sighed and stared out the window facing west. The
McAllister den was on beautiful land. “I believe you. You mated with a
werewolf.” Her comment, which she forced out and at the same time tried for a
calming breath, had her immediately thinking about being mated to Jarvis. Would
he ever talk to her again? He hadn’t said a word in the police cruiser. Nor had
his scent helped reveal his emotions.

“And I haven’t regretted it for a minute.” Heather smelled
happy again. When she continued talking, something changed in her scent. “Marc
wanted me to talk to you about your sire, and the fact that he was a Malta
werewolf. I don’t know a lot about that breed but apparently your behavior at
the Toubec ranch raised curiosity that the mixture of Cariboo and Malta are a
bad mix.” Heather clasped and unclasped her hands on her lap. She chewed her
lower lip before looking at Katrin. All anger was gone, but the female still
held on to salty nervousness. “I’m sure your mate will be up soon. Your mate
and mine are downstairs discussing this now.”

“Discussing it. Discussing what?” Katrin demanded.

Heather stood, taking her time and never taking her
attention from Katrin. “Marc has already told me.” Her tone turned as cool and
unfriendly as her scent. “You hate humans. I get that. But that doesn’t give
you the right to almost kill someone. Then there were the other things you did
at the Toubecs’.”

Katrin stared at her, stupefied. “Doesn’t give me the right?
What are you talking about? All I’ve ever done is defend myself. You’re the one
who doesn’t have the right to stand there and accuse me of things when you
don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Heather stood, hesitated a moment, then walked toward
Katrin. She was one hell of a brave female. Katrin barely managed to control
the change as fury mounted inside her. Tiny hairs tickled the back of her neck
and down her spine. Being human might not have allowed her to smell Katrin’s
outrage over the accusations just thrown at her, but Heather was smart enough
to see it in Katrin’s face. Instead of being nervous, as she should have been
facing a pissed-off werewolf, her expression turned determined.

She glared at Katrin. “I don’t need to hear your defense,”
she said, her tone low. “Whether you’re fucked up because of what happened to
your family or because of your breeding isn’t for me to decide. All I know is
you’re staying here until they decide what to do about it. This is a nice room.
Make yourself comfortable.”

Heather slipped past Katrin and closed the door after
leaving the room. Katrin was too stunned to move. McAllister had found out
about her litter. Even as anger coursed through her, enough clarity remained
for Katrin to smell the big picture. She was half Malta werewolf. McAllister
was the law. He would kill her. Panic shivered through her and she was unable
to suppress it. Her stomach jolted, fear and anger peaking along with an
immediate urge to run.

Katrin heard a click. Her wits returned and she spun around.
Nausea rose inside her but she managed to suppress it even as her mind began
spinning with possible outcomes to her secret being discovered.

“Fucking tail, crap,” she spit out, shaking in spite of her
efforts to regain control of her senses. “No, no,” she mumbled, willing it all
not to be true.

Then staring at the door, she lunged, grabbing the doorknob.
But she knew the truth before turning it. The human bitch had locked her in the
bedroom. If she broke down the door all she would be doing was running toward
the werewolf who planned on killing her, probably as soon as the pack leader
showed up.

Katrin growled before she roared. Her fingernails and teeth
grew as her heart began pounding too hard in her chest. She fisted her hands,
staring at the door. It would take nothing to plow right through it. That
Cariboo cop hadn’t brought them out here to be hospitable. He’d brought them
out to his den to imprison her. But at the moment it was just the four of them
in the country, in his den. Maybe killing him would give her time to escape.

What was she thinking?

She needed to think her way out of this—and without killing
the pack leader’s bulldog. If that was in fact the real reason the male wore
that human uniform.

After pacing the length of the room once, she wasn’t able to
take the confines of four walls anymore. Instantly the bedroom was too small.
She was claustrophobic and she was pissed as hell. The Cariboo cop had sniffed
her out, learned about her litter. He and the Toubecs had determined her
unstable and now she was trapped in this human-smelling cage. How dare they
condemn her like this!

“Oh my fucking tail,” she whispered, stopping in mid-pace as
a thought hit her.

Were they hunting down her littermates?
Were Leisa and
Magda in danger?

Katrin pressed her hands on the cold windowpane and looked
at the yard below. She tested the lock. The window slid open easily.

Why hadn’t they secured the windows? Or had they thought she
might leap through panes of glass to escape and there was an ounce of
compassion in that human-loving cop?

Katrin didn’t take time to think about it. She was out the
window, gauging the distance of her jump before forming any type of plan other
than escaping and saving herself and her litter. If they knew she was half
Malta werewolf, they’d brought her here, locked her in this den, for one
reason. Once that pack leader arrived he would howl for her death.

“I’m sorry, Jarvis,” she whispered, and jumped.

The change hit her with violent speed. Her clothes ripped
off her body as four legs, not two, braced for impact with the ground.

Katrin fought to regain her bearings after smacking hard on
the ground from the two-story fall. She had a possible sprain, maybe even a
fracture in her right hind leg, but it didn’t slow her down. She was already in
a terrible predicament and taking time to inspect her leg would only make it
worse.

McAllister and the Toubecs condemned her dead sire without
ever knowing him. He had been one hell of a good werewolf, a saint, a powerful,
proud male who had fought tooth and claw her entire life to make sure she and
her littermates had wanted for nothing. She would never forget the smell of the
explosives used, thrown through the windows of their den that had ignited it in
flames and killed her sire and mama. The sound of their den blowing up would
haunt her dreams forever.

She and her littermates had gone down the mountain to take
some of their fresh kill to an older couple who lived alone. They might not
have been part of an official pack, but the dens on the mountain had taken care
of each other when times howled for it. It had been her sire who had first
smelled the sickness in that particular den and had encouraged the other dens
on the mountain to assist the older couple when possible.

Her sire and mama had hunted all night and had fallen asleep
after she and her littermates ran down the mountain with the fresh kill. Magda,
Leisa and Katrin had returned to find their den in flames. The fire had been so
hot there was nothing they could do to put it out.

Other dens had been destroyed as well, some with their
entire litters asleep inside. Since most werewolves ran at night and slept into
the day, it had been a blessing Katrin and her littermates weren’t also killed.
Their sire had saved their lives by waking them and insisting they take the
meat down the mountain.

This was the male the werewolves in Prince George believed
had given her bad blood.

Katrin put all the muscle she had into running. The
McAllister den was already on the outskirts of Prince George and she skirted
the edge of the city, her only focus running south. Magda and Leisa had mentioned
a sanctuary run by owls in Washington State, outside of Seattle. From there,
they had howled about traveling in their human form to a pack in Minnesota. It
was all the information Katrin had. She hadn’t heard from her littermates since
they’d left her in Prince George. Hopefully these owls would harbor her without
flapping their wings about it. It wasn’t much of a plan but on a moment’s
notice, it was all she had.