without shifting?
Hiding her clothing in a neat pile inside a hollow at the base of a tree, she was just about to shift when a low growl made the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. Looking up, she encountered the burning, yellow gaze of a feral werewolf.
Using the photograph and information Cal had given him, Nate tracked down the young guy to a house in the town. He followed him as he left his home, and watched as he glanced furtively all around before making his way up to the woods. Nate observed in dismay as darkness fell and the fresh-faced young man shifted by the light of the full moon. The memories came flooding back. He saw the fear and confusion on this guy’s face just before his body altered. His heart ached for the other man. Nate knew exactly what he was thinking. I’m going out of my mind. It was what Nate himself had believed six years ago.
Now, of course, he knew exactly what had been happening to him. Back then, he had been twenty-two-year-old Nathan Jones. Zilar was his mother’s maiden name, and he’d been pushed into using it by his band’s manager, who wanted to go sexier and catchier. A promising music student, months away from graduation, he’d had his life turned upside-down. He’d been scared, lonely and unable to talk to anyone about what was going on inside his head and, even more frighteningly, within his body.
He clearly remembered the werewolf bite that brought about his transformation. It was after a night out with friends. He didn’t have the money for a cab, so he had walked home. Something or someone—he thought at the time it was a wild dog—had jumped out on him from a narrow side street in a quiet part of town. It went for his throat. He thought he was dead for sure, but a group of passersby disturbed the animal and it ran away.
Unconscious, Nate had been rushed to the hospital. He had bite marks to his throat and scratches on his chest and face. The police insisted they were looking for the same attacker who had brutally murdered a number of young men in the same area. He was lucky to be alive, they told him. It was only when the next full moon came around that Nate had known there was something very wrong. Lucky to be alive? He had lived with the irony of those words ever since.
Nate watched now as the werewolf crouched low, stealthily approaching the house through the trees. The backyard bordered the forest, and the businessman who lived here had chosen the location well. Privacy and country living combined to make this the perfect home for a werewolf blending into human society. He could hear the sounds of the party. The young werewolf sniffed the air, and Nate felt a fresh wave of pity wash over him. Acceptance and belonging were part of a wolf’s makeup. Pack instincts. The parts that had been stripped away from this youngster by whoever bit him. This youth was an outcast. No longer human or wolf. He belonged in neither world and would be destined to walk on the darkest edges of both. When the moon was full, his lust for human blood would be out of control, and, out of his mind and out of control, he would satisfy that lust with wild attacks on people, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. Until Nate put an end to his torment. The way I begged Cal to do for me.
And Cal had obliged. Because there was only one thing you could do for a feral werewolf. The final kindness you could do the poor, tormented scrap of humanity left behind after a werewolf attack was to kill it. But there would be no one to step in and rescue this guy the way Nate had been saved. No one was going to start his heart up again once the silver bullet had stopped it beating. Lucky bastard.
All werewolves, whether in the mystical realm of Otherworld, or here in the mortal realm, came under the rule of a single leader. The recent overthrow, and death, of the longstanding Wolf Leader, Anwyl, by his rival, Nevan, didn’t change that. A different face at the top didn’t alter tradition. Nevan was in charge. Just the mention of that name made Nate’s blood run cold, but he forced himself to focus.
The problem for the Wolf Leader was that these feral werewolves—the true werewolves of ancient human legend—were not members of any pack. No group would accept a feral werewolf into its fold. They didn’t obey the rules. They had no idea there were rules. The hierarchy that applied to wolves in the wild was equally important to werewolves. The social structure of an alpha male whose rule was absolute was unchanged. Anyone who was unwilling to accept that dynamic was cast out. Feral werewolves were not welcome in such a well-regulated society. They were the dirty secret of which werewolves didn’t care to speak.
When in the grip of their wolf selves, feral werewolves were governed by uncontrollable rage and hunger for blood. They were driven to kill everyone they encountered, regardless of their human part. Once they returned to their human form, they remembered nothing or very little of what they had done. The condition was transferred through a bite, assuming the bitten person survived the attack the way Nate had done.
Over time, werewolves had mutated, achieving a remarkable feat. They were able to gain control over their bloodlust, although their other lupine instincts remained intact. Gradually, the werewolf world had split into two packs. One dwelt in Otherworld, while the other chose to reside in the mortal realm. With strong leadership, they could have been an imposing force. As it was, they warred among themselves and more closely resembled a pack of rabid dogs.
Although they were becoming rarer, feral werewolves remained a problem. Six years ago, when Nate had been feral, he had been cruelly used as a weapon by Nevan in his attempt to destroy Stella. When Nevan had gotten inside Nate’s head he had urged him to rip out Stella’s heart. That sort of mind control over feral wolves wasn’t used often, but it wasn’t unknown. Often, they ended up in prison cells and mental institutions in the mortal realm, unaware of the terrible deeds they had committed when the moon was full.
That was where Cal, in his role as Otherworld peacekeeper, stepped in. He and Stella couldn’t save all feral werewolves the way they had helped Nate. That would have been an impossible task. The best Cal could hope for was to find a werewolf hunter who would destroy feral werewolves in a way that was as painless and humane as possible.
That was why Nate was here now, lining up this young wolf in his sights, preparing to fire a silver bullet into his heart before finishing him off by decapitating him with a samurai sword.
His finger tightened on the trigger. This part was never easy. There was always a temptation to walk away, to tell himself he’d done his share of these kills. To let someone else take over now. Except, as he’d pointed out to Cal in the early hours of this morning, there was no one else. And he couldn’t stop, even if he wanted to. He owed it to the poor bastards locked in this torment.
Just before Nate could pull the trigger, the werewolf’s lips drew back in a snarl and he crouched low, his eyes fixed on something a few feet away. Nate breathed a soft curse and turned to look at whatever it was that had caught the werewolf’s attention. A dog? Maybe a deer? There was enough light from the full moon through the tree canopy to illuminate the scene. Even so, he thought he must be imagining things. There, standing stock-still like a marble statue, her long, dark hair hanging loose about her shoulders, was the most beautiful young woman he had ever seen. He did a double take. The most beautiful naked woman he had ever seen.
The werewolf sprang, closing the distance between himself and the woman. His eyes glowed toxic yellow, and his huge fangs were bared. Frozen out of her immobility at the sight, the woman stumbled back. With not a second to lose, Nate fired while the werewolf was in midlunge.
The huge beast shuddered as the bullet caught him in the chest. At the same time, the woman lost her balance completely and began to fall backward, her arms flailing wildly as she tried to find something—anything—on to which she could grab hold and save herself. She was unsuccessful. Even across a distance of several feet, Nate heard the sharp crack of her head hitting a rock before the werewolf came crashing down on top of her. Her slender body
