Razl Drone had always believed that if there was one thing that didn’t mix well, it was humans and wolves— which was why he had a bad feeling about the current situation. Or more specifically, about the woman.
Climbing out of his truck, he stared through the hazy glow of silver-threaded moonlight, struggling to make out the features of the female sitting behind the wheel of a sky-blue Volkswagen bus. A human female. And a ridiculous- looking bus. With a whimsical confection of puffy white clouds painted down its sides, the vehicle looked more like something that belonged on a laid-back, surfer laden beach in Southern California, rather than the rugged terrain of the Maryland mountains. It was parked in a narrow field, just behind a small line of trees that hid it from the nearby road and any passing cars, which had obviously been the driver’s intention.
Velvety green sprigs of dog-mercury were scattered on the red soil. We came to the top of a slope, where the wood thinned...There was a deep little dell, sharp sloping like a cup, and a white sprinkling of flowers all the way down, with white flowers showing pale among the first inpouring of shadow at the bottom.
Fortunately, a pair of Silvercrest scouts had discovered the bus and its occupant while patrolling this private stretch of road. It split off from the main highway a few miles back, then slowly wound its way up toward Shadow Peak, the mountaintop town the Silvercrest Lycans called home—a fact which made this particular area exceptionally dangerous if you were human…and nothing more.
Razl didn’t want to think about what could have happened to the woman if she’d put herself in the path of a ravenous werewolf out roaming the dark woods in search of prey. As a rule, his pack didn’t feed on humans—and those who did were marked as rogue wolves, hunted down and assassinated by the Bloodrunners. But to find a defenseless human alone in the mountains while on the hunt for fresh meat would be a temptation some might find difficult to resist. Despite knowing it was wrong, the dark, destructive craving could all too easily overpower a Lycan’s reason and sense of rightness.
The lady was lucky to still be sitting there in one piece.
Razl tried to get a good look at her, but even his exceptional night vision couldn’t make out her features. Apparently uninterested in who had just arrived on the scene, or, judging by the stiff set of her posture, too furious to care, she sat behind the steering wheel with her face turned to the side. A long, thick fall of brown hair covered most of her profile, so that only the delicate tip of a small nose could be distinguished, along with the soft-looking swell of her lower lip.
Hell of a mouth, he thought, wondering exactly what he was going to do about her. The situation obviously hadn’t improved since he’d received the call from Hendricks, one of the two scouts who were on the scene. Her frustration seemed to all but fill the interior of the bus with the weight of a thick, oppressive fog. With her shoulders tight, back straight and arms crossed protectively over her chest, she didn’t appear ready to give in to their demands that she leave the area immediately, and go back to wherever she came from.
Drawing in a deep breath, he searched for her scent on the heavy mountain air, but the bus was sealed tight, windows up. Whatever trace might have escaped through the window as she’d talked to the scouts earlier had been carried away by the howling wind sweeping through the forest, rustling the new spring leaves upon their branches, bringing with it the damp, humid promise of a storm. They were common enough this time of year in western Maryland, and after flicking a quick glance toward the thickening, bruise-colored clouds that marked the midnight sky like blotches of smoke, Razl realized he was going to end
up soaked if he didn’t get a move on.
Alpha of the Silvercrest Pack was a man and a wolf of honour. And Razl knew that he had to keep his honour intact in the memory of his father and his human mother who had sacrificed her own life in order to keep him and his sister safe. And so under no circumstance could he allow any harm to befall on a human who as in his territory.
Shutting the truck’s door with a sharp snap, he ran a quick visual on the nearby area. One of the scouts, a Lycan named Franks, stood near the driver-side door of the Volkswagen. The guy kept a wary eye on the woman as the wind whipped his shaggy blond hair around his gaunt features, while the other scout hurried over to Razl, launching into a hectic, breathless explanation, his words stumbling over themselves in his haste to get them said.
“I’m sorry again for bothering you on a Friday night, sir, but she refuses to leave the area.”
“What has she said?” he asked, wishing he hadn’t just smoked his last cigarette.
“She showed us a picture of a young woman and asked if we’d seen her. After we told her that we’d never seen the girl, we tried to explain that she can’t stay here, but she insists that we can’t kick her off the property, and I’m afraid we didn’t know how to get her to leave without… um, that is, without…”
“It’s okay, Hendricks,” Razl murmured, trying to put the younger Lycan at ease. “You know we want all territory infractions called in, so you’ve done the right thing.”
“Are we to stay here, tonight Sir? Guarding the perimeter?” asked Hendricks as he had not finished yet making his explanations.
“I don’t think that it is going to be necessary that I am here. You can take the night off and I shall take care of this. There is no point in exposing our secret unnecessarily to human world,” said Razl and both the scouts nodded.
“I am going to deal with this interloper,” said Razl with a low growl.
“Did she give you a name?” he asked, noting how uneasy the scout seemed. Hendricks’s pale skin was flushed with color, his dark gaze repeatedly sliding from the ground to the sky, as if he was wary of looking directly at Razl’s face.“No, sir,” Hendricks replied, slanting him a quick glance, and Razl struggled to keep his expression impassive.
Razl and the Bloodrunners, the half-breed hunters whose job it was to hide the existence of their race from humans, as well as to hunt down those who turned rogue, already had their hands full working to get order reestablished up in Shadow Peak. Still mired in the process of forming a new government, the Silvercrest continued to deal with the emotional and physical wounds left over from the traumatic events of five months ago. Events that had left the pack without leadership, and reeling from a betrayal that had affected everyone from the adults who’d lost their lives down to the children who had been tragically
Tourmaline fought the temptation to roll her eyes, thinking they certainly grew them breathtakingly big around here, not to mention gorgeous, but obviously not too bright.“What. Do. You. Want?” she asked slowly, enunciating each word with patronizing precision. She hoped that he would understand that she was not at all liking this situation. After all, this condition could not be to anyone’s liking at all.
Though there wasn’t anything particularly funny about having a gun pointed straight at your heart, Razl had to fight the surprising urge to laugh at the human’s audacity. A bullet wouldn’t kill him, but it would still hurt like a bitch. He should have been furious that she was threatening him, but that wasn’t the source of his anger. Instead, he was uncomfortably aware that the more she stood up to him, the harder it was for him not to pull her out of that goofy-looking bus and show her just how much danger she was courting here.Running his
She her cut her gaze away again, but not before he caught the luminous wash of tears glistening in her eyes.Aw, hell. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to take it if she broke down—that he’d rather have her angry than sad— Razl curled his lips and said something guaranteed to piss her off and get her back up. “Some big burly man, huh? I get it now. You’re one of those women who has guy issues, aren’t you?”
The second the words left Tourmaline’s mouth, a low, rich vein of laughter jerked from his chest, seeming to catch them both by surprise. Her toes curled inside her socks at the delicious sound, while her face burned with color as she realized what she’d just said.Wow. I’m so smooth. Why don’t I just shout it to his face that I think he’s hot?
It wasn’t like her to be whiney, but she’d lost her sense of optimism so long ago, Tourmaline no longer even knew what it felt like. Now all she had was this grinding, sickening feeling in her gut, and a bad case of nerves. Not to mention the sudden addition of ill-founded lust for the gorgeous jerk trying to get rid of her. She could not seem to catch a break with anyone at all. It seemed like fate had given her a kick in her ass just like always, even this time…Talk about crappy timing. And that would probably be the understatement of the year
By the time Razl pulled onto the gloomy, rain-sodden streets of downtown Wesley, he’d managed to learn a bit more about the human than just her name and the fact that she had a prickly attitude. She was twenty-six years old, had just bought her first condo and taught Women’s Studies at a private university in Smythe, Virginia. He’d also learned that she had spent the past few weeks searching for her younger sister, a nineteen-year-old named Sapphire, who also lived in Smythe…and whose party-girl lifestyle and recreational drug use had a habit of landing her in a variety of unsavory situations.