Jonas’s mind, the woodsy fragrance of the wolf hunter’s cottage was suddenly blotted out by the odor of impending doom. He now had Tess and Death to worry about, and it seemed that his worst nightmare was about to come true.
“Run,” he sent to Gwen, giving her a gentle shove.
For once, his sister did as she was told. She took off, heading west like a bullet shot from a rifle, leaving him standing on the rocks with his claws raised.
* * *
To Tess, this felt wrong—not only for the fact that she had let her family down, but because of the entire night and the way things had gone.
She had never seen a wolf like the one the Lycan had tamed into submission, and that brought the tally to two firsts in one night. It had been two wolves against one hunter in her front yard, and yet the handsome Were hadn’t allowed the white wolf to take her on when that would have served him better.
Uttering a string of curses and oaths, Tess again sprinted through the trees and brush. There was still time to put things to rights, she told herself...at least there would have been time for that if she hadn’t become so interested in this Lycan and what he was up to by showing her a sensitive side.
Not only had he not gone after her tonight, he had kept the white wolf from doing the same. Why?
What was his connection to that white wolf? Had his hesitancy to fight been due to his desire to see that real wolf unharmed?
She wasn’t dressed for this. Her feet hurt like hell and there was a good possibility she wasn’t thinking straight. The only weapon she had was the blade. One damn blade against that Lycan’s cunning and mounds of muscle. She was going after a werewolf in an outfit that amounted to little more than sleepy-time underwear.
What a pretty picture that presented.
But it was okay, Tess supposed, since it wasn’t in the Lycan’s favor to let her catch up with him. Additionally, he had no reason to want to see what she’d do next since he had gotten the better of her twice already without lifting a claw.
The differences between this Were and other werewolves she had dealt with were major and lent an air of fantasy to the craziness of this night.
If she could only get him out of her mind...
If only her wits would return and warn her that a strange attraction to this guy was surely going to be her downfall...
But she was fighting those what-ifs and in need of other answers. Tess wanted to stop the madness that had been caused by meeting this guy, no matter how interested she was in his behavior. She didn’t have to admit to anyone, including herself, that she was curious about him for more reasons than his actions alone.
That face.
The sculpted physique.
His deep voice.
It was strictly forbidden and an unforgiveable sin for wolf hunters to cozy up to their prey. They were two different species. Leniency showed weakness. If word about her inability to do her job were to spread, other monsters would arrive.
Still, deep down in Tess’s mind lay another reason for her interest in this guy that scared her more than anything else.
Having been tight up against him had caused her well-tuned willpower to backfire. In man form, he was mesmerizing. In the other shape, he was forbidding, but with an intelligent gleam in his eyes.
She wasn’t caving on the job. She just wasn’t sure what had happened tonight.
“There is something about you...” she said aloud. “And I will probably regret finding out about whatever that actually is.”
Against all inner warnings, though, Tess didn’t turn back. Sensing a change in the atmosphere, as if the moonlight had somehow suddenly grown brighter, denser, she slowed, then stopped to look up at the rocky ledge above her with her blade ready and her heart in her throat.
He was there. Contrary to everything she had just thought about the situation, he stood in the open—this tall, muscled, wickedly formidable and one hundred percent Lycan werewolf. He seemed larger than life and looked to have been carved from the surrounding stones.
Even in this setting where animals prowled, this guy with his bronze skin and light brown hair stood out as another kind of being entirely. Her new nemesis was a crazy anomaly within his species. Something new and exciting.
Maybe that’s why her heart was beating so rapidly she could barely draw a breath. Maybe it was also the realization that running wasn’t what had winded her. She was breathless because she found this Lycan so fascinating.
He had seen her. The growl he issued was soft, low, and did things to her that Tess refused to acknowledge. She didn’t speak, didn’t reply. Couldn’t do either of those things.
Though he was motionless, the werewolf wasn’t at ease. Tess sensed the tension flowing through him, and like an airborne contagion, that tension quickly transferred to her.
He was looking at her, not as if she might be his plaything, but as though he wanted to say something to her that his shape-shift had prevented him from saying several minutes ago.
Having witnessed his ability to manipulate his shifts so quickly, Tess observed him carefully, fully on guard. When she could draw a full breath, she said, “I don’t think I like whatever kind of game it is that we’re playing.”
He sank to a crouch. In other werewolves, this would have meant he was ready to spring. This guy didn’t translate that kind of intention to her. It was as if he didn’t want to appear too large or menacing.
He was still bare from the waist up and wearing faded jeans. The guy was a magnificent example of this species, and only by looking at him through narrowed eyes did Tess see the more wolfish parts. The harder she tried to zero in on those things—the extra layer of muscle and the claws—the less she saw. The wolf aura surrounding him hinted at the term werewolf, rather than anything pertaining to the purely physical aspects of his countenance.
Tess had seen him run. She didn’t take her eyes from him now. Man and wolf were such an unlikely combination, who else but the few people in the know would have believed anything like this possible?
She showed him the blade. “This is all I have at the moment. Will you challenge?”
When their gazes connected, heat streaked through Tess that was akin to having gotten too close to the sun. Her pulse thundered in her neck, pounding out beat after merciless beat that lifted the skin beneath her ears.
Her interest in him would be her death.
“So tell me,” she said, pitching her voice low to hide any telltale signs of quavering. “Is the neat trick of attracting the hunters who are hunting you some special kind of power you possess?”
The beast perched on the rocks above her couldn’t answer that question unless he used more of his magic Lycan voodoo to transform himself into a more vocal version of the one he presented to her at the moment. It was entirely possible that he wouldn’t change back, so that he could avoid answering her altogether.
His tension had become like a separate
