Page 2 of Kin of the Wolf

I let out a lupine sigh of dissatisfaction, certain that I needed to stay and guard the case. I doubted my cousins had gone far. If we left, they would pounce on the prize.

Though it was difficult, since I hadn’t run through the wilds or known the pleasure of a hunt, I willed the wolf magic to leave my body, for the moon’s call to go unheeded tonight. Later, I promised myself as the change came over me, I would go hunt.

Soon, I knelt on hands and knees in the needles, my flesh naked and furless, and the nippy early-December air made me shiver. My human knowledge and memories returned to me as I rose, and I remembered the importance of the case, that a vision had told me it could help my pack—maybe even werewolves everywhere—if I could figure out its secrets. I also remembered that my clothes dangled from a nearby branch.

Still in his wolf form, Duncan sat on his haunches, watching me with a cocked head. No doubt, he wanted to know why we hadn’t gone off to hunt.

“You can go,” I told him as I dressed and put on an oven mitt from my kitchen. With my hand somewhat insulated, I plucked up the case. I could still feel the sizzle of magic, but it was duller through the padding. “Go off and have a good hunt. And thanks for coming out to check on me.”

I looked from Duncan to the trees, able to see in the distance the sprawling apartment complex where I lived and was the property manager. Since surviving our confrontation with thelastpeople who’d tried to steal the case, Duncan had been staying in his van in the parking lot. Tonight, his nearness had been a good thing.

“I need to put this someplace safe,” I added, holding up the case.

Despite being in wolf form, Duncan probably understood me, but he didn’t head off to hunt. When I walked toward my apartment, he padded along at my side.

“You’re a good…” I groped for the right word. We hadn’t had sex and weren’t mates, and he’d originally been an enemy, working for my ex-husband to steal the very case I held. I didn’t consider him that anymore, but whatwashe to me? A friend? An ally? A future mate? “Wolf,” I finished when he looked curiously at me.

Duncan brushed against my side, and I rested a hand on his furred back. It was late enough that none of the tenants were walking their dogs on the grounds, and the lights in most windows were out. I didn’t worry too much about being spotted, but I did keep to the trails at the back of the property, avoiding the well-lit areas and the open lawn. I didn’t need anyone linking me to the wolves who’d attacked and killed intruders on the property a couple of weeks earlier. If my employers found out that Iwas awerewolf, whether I’d been a staunch defender of the complex or not, I would be out of a job. After more than twenty years here, I didn’t know what else I would do if they fired me.

Duncan padded along at my side as we approached my apartment. His earlier playfulness had faded, and he looked back into the woods before gazing solemnly at me.

“You think I’m in trouble, don’t you?”

He would have gone off to hunt if he hadn’t.

His gaze remained solemn.

Yes.

2

The next morning,when I wandered out of my bedroom in my robe, I had coffee on my mind, but I spotted a very naked Duncan Calderwood sprawled on my couch and stopped to stare. The night before, I hadn’t exactlyinvitedhim in, but when I’d opened the door, he’d padded inside and lain on the floor, as if to say he would guard the threshold while I slept. With my cousins lurking in the area, possibly plotting ways to attack me and steal the case, I hadn’t objected, but he’d been a wolf when I went to bed.

Now, he lay on his back with his arm flung over his eyes and his entire nude body on display.

Though he was a few years older than me—fifty, he’d admitted once—he was as fit as a twenty-year-old pro athlete. The appeal of his muscled form made my gaze linger, despite a notion that I ought to respect his modesty—not that I’d noticed he had any—and drape a blanket over him. Instead, I eyed his powerful frame and the scars the years had left on him, including shackle-like bands around his wrists, and wondered how the night might have ended if we had gone off to hunt together. When our lupine magicwaned, we might have ended up in a bed of ferns, enjoying each other’s company.

Duncan must have woken and sensed me near because he lowered his arm and looked at me.

The heat of embarrassment flushed my cheeks as I jerked my gaze from his chest—and possibly lower parts.

A smug smile stretched his face. Yes, he’d caught me looking.

“You got fur all over my couch,” I blurted, the first thing that came to mind, born out of a silly need to deny that I’d been admiring him. Andwantinghim. He was already full of himself. He didn’t need to know those things.

“Did I?” Duncan rolled onto his shoulder, giving me the view of the butt side, and perused the cushions. He plucked a gray strand of wolf fur out of a crack. It wasn’t the only one. “Maybe I should have strewn paper towels over the cushions.” He’d done that before when I’d warned him not to get blood on the couch. “That would have been hard to do with only paws and teeth though.”

I propped a fist on my hip. “I thought you were going to sleep on the floor.”

“There was a draft.”

“A draft? Wolves in the wild curl up in balls and sleep under mounds of snow.”

“Snow is insulating. Those fake wood planks shoot icicles straight through your pelt and into your flanks.”

“You must be insufficiently furred if yourflanksfeel the chill from the floor.”

Duncan flopped onto his back again and gazed at me with a lot of fondness considering I was insulting him. And was he checking me out?

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