I cursed myself when the muffled voices inside the cottage come to a sudden stop. I'd been in such a rush to clear the squatters out. I'd forgotten my training.
Sure, my little cottage in the Highlands was the opposite of a Middle Eastern desert.
But I should have approached this mission as if I were still in the top-secret wolf force made up of elite shifters from every NATO country.
If I’d been thinking straight, I would’ve used the forest to cover my advance toward the cottage. Then skulked around the side of the house. And kept underneath the windows to further ensure the enemy wouldn’t see me coming. Not stormed right up to the place because I cheesed off about someone giving my property a squat.
Too late for any of that now, though. The enemy had gone quiet. And, one thing my desert experience gave me other than a general ability to put up with other people's keich? A distrust of sudden silence.
I stopped just short of the cottage's front step and raised my gun into a combat-ready position to consider options. I could back off. Pretend to leave, then return like a trained soldier, this time without giving away my post—
“Dorie, nein, nein! Du musst nicht!” a voice yelled from inside.
That was all the warning I got before the front door burst open, and the enemy came flying at me with something black in its hand.
A handgun?
I almost pulled the trigger before I realized …
Nae, the enemy, wasn't a grown male with a pistol. The opposite in fact.
An adolescent girl, smelling of wolf, charged me with the cottage's iron fire poker raised high like a spear.
What in the devil was going on here? There were no adolescent she-wolves in the Highlands—much less light brown ones. Not unless Iain and Millie’s new bairn had sprouted several inches before deciding to take a squat in my remote mountain cottage.
Didn't matter. Whoever she was, I wasn’t going to hurt the first she-wolf adolescent girl I'd laid eyes on in over ten years.
I threw down my Beretta and only just managed to catch the fire poker in my fist before she stabbed me through the eye.
I thrust back on the heavy iron stick, which sent her tumbling back onto the snow-covered ground.
The poker was older than her and me combined. If she was a human girl without extra wolf strength courtesy of the incoming full moon, it's likely she wouldn’t have even been able to lift it.
Yet, she continued to fight from the ground. Snarling and thrusting up with both her hands fisted around her weaponized stick. As if I weren't ten times her size, and she actually had a chance in Hades of running me through.
“Who the hell are ye?” I demanded, exerting just enough pressure on the poker’s rounded end to keep her pinned to the ground. “And what the hell do you ye think yer doing, squatting in my cottage?”
Instead of answering, the wee she-wolf kicked out at me with her old-fashioned tie-up leather boots.
Boots that turned out to be heavier than they looked when she caught me in the shin. Not going to lie. It smarted more than it should.
Vicious wee thing, wasn't she?
I bared my teeth to growl, “I’m not going to hurt ye. Stop fighting me and explain what yer doing here—”
That was as far as I got before a brown wolf came flying through the air at me, the same as the girl.
But instead of a fire poker, the beast had a gaping maw full of sharp teeth.
What in the …
As it turned out, I wasn’t such a hater of bat-and-ball games after all. I snatched the poker from the girl and swung it at the beast the same as an American baseball player would have.
The wolf flew backward and hit the cottage’s stone outer wall. With such force, I could hear the crack of bone.
Yet, after it slid to the ground, it only let itself recover for a few pants. Before climbing back to its feet with a low-crouching growl.
It was obviously preparing to spring at me again.
I threw down the poker and reached for my gun.
But the girl got in front of me. “No, no! Don’t hurt her. That’s my mother!”
Her mother …
I blinked and suddenly noticed details I hadn’t before.
First of all, the wolf was wearing a long black dress, similar to the one on the little girl. Black—not blue, like all the St. Ailbe she-wolves who’d rocked up to Faoiltiarn a couple of weeks ago. Still, I sensed a connection. Along with a vaguely familiar scent when I sniffed at the air.
Could these two be some kind of kith or kin to our new banrigh?
The wolf sprang at me before I could finish considering that question.
I raised the shotgun again, this time gripping it with both hands around its barrel. No, I wouldn’t shoot a wee she-wolf’s mother. But I would not hesitate to bat her back into the house again if she tried to attack us.
Turned out I needn’t have bothered with the defensive position, though.
The mother she-wolf only made it a few pitiful centimeters of air before she fell back to the ground, whimpering.
With the bottom of her dress hitched up, I saw the reason behind her stunted attack in an instant.
Her leg lay at an unnatural angle behind her, broken and useless.
Had I done that? A flood of guilt assailed me, and more words from that letter Gail wrote before she left echoed in my brain.
You’re not the wolf my parents pledged me to since returning from that desert. You’re angry and violent. Unsuitable to mate, much less parent. The truth is, I’m afraid of you …
On the ground, the mother wolf panted and struggled. Her paws scrabbled at the snow, still trying to rally enough strength to attack me. But in the end, biology won out. The scraping sound of her attempting to stand ceased when she passed out.
“Maem!” The girl wolf ran over and fell to her knees beside her unconscious mother.
Then she stared up at me with tears in her brown eyes.
I braced myself for her recrimination and resolved to take it without defense. I’d done the inexcusable. Hurt this she-wolf’s mother.
But instead of yelling, the girl begged. “Please, please help us. The full moon is coming. And I’m toothless.”
Toothless.
The word hit me with the force of the poker the girl had failed to run through my eye. I’d never heard the term before, but I had a bad feeling it was an exact match for gunfhaclan. Without fangs.
The word we used to describe the rare child who could not turn, even when the full moon rose in the sky.
As it was about to do any moment now.
