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The werewolf’s breath was hot against my forehead, his teeth inches away from the soft spot beneath my chin. No wonder I shifted into fox form, depending on animal instinct to wriggle free before I could be eaten alive.
But the wolf was having none of it. He grabbed my newly materialized ruff and shook me so severely my teeth clattered together. And even after I was suitably chastised, the male continued standing stiff-legged atop my crumpled body while a deep growl rumbled up out of his massively broad chest.
Which is about the time I realized this wasn’t my sword-wielding opponent. This was Gunner, turned guardian while letting our true quarry escape behind his back. I’d always known alpha werewolves were idiots, but I hadn’t expected behavior as ass-backwardly overprotective as this.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t shift forms in order to berate him. Not when the reservoir of magic within my belly had gone quiescent with exhaustion, refusing to even create a minor electrical shock to tingle against Gunner’s skin. Without Mama’s star ball to strengthen me, I apparently had far less stamina than I was accustomed to possessing.
So I lay there panting, unable to so much as twitch without provoking another growl from the alpha straddling my body. Meanwhile, the anonymous being who had paid for my sister’s kidnapping after killing two innocent humans disappeared without a trace.
We might have remained stuck in that stalemate all night, too, had a trickle of smoke not emerged from the changing room at the end of the hall. The candle, I thought at first, shoulders relaxing back down away from around my ears.
But the stench flowing over us was too foul to have emerged from one small chunk of wax and cotton. Meanwhile, beneath the smoke, I caught the unmistakable scent of gasoline, suggesting our enemy had left us with a parting gift far more serious than one overturned candlestick.
Gunner must have smelled it too because his eyes widened, his signature scent of unyielding granite giving way to the more malleable aroma of ozone and dew. Then my captor became my herder. Nudging me erect then chivvying my footsteps, he pushed me down the hall then out onto the stage proper. And when I veered toward my favorite leather jacket, he hip-bumped me away before literally pushing me out through the unboarded window he’d recently used to enter the building.
In the semi-fresh air of the outdoors, my companion finally managed to shift while I merely dragged my feet a few inches further from the theater that I suspected would soon go up in flames. There was no sign of the conflagration on the exterior just yet, but the building was so very old and built almost entirely out of wood....
“There’s a fire,” Gunner growled into his cell phone just as the first brilliant streak of orange rose into the barely lit neighborhood. “The theater. Find a burner phone then call 911.”
So it was his pack he’d contacted rather than the fire department. “Clever wolf,” I mumbled, realizing only after I’d spoken that, of course, I was in vulpine form. So the words came out as a thready whine rather than as understandable human communication.
Gunner didn’t look down, but his hand dropped onto my forehead even as his scent hardened further in reaction to whatever his pack mate was relaying over the phone. “The whole apartment?” He paused, listened to something I should have been able to hear in my fox form but couldn’t quite manage to focus upon while my body was melting into the watery slush beneath my feet. “And the Ebay account was wiped also?”
Wait, they were talking about my apartment and Kira’s Ebay account. Did that mean the last possible trail leading to our serial killer had iced over during the night?
Forcing myself erect with an effort, I realized only after raising a hand to my aching head that I was standing on two human feet rather than on four furry ones. No wonder I was shivering, the effort of the shift creating a watery haze that obstructed my view.
Those weren’t tears, I told myself. Not over a rented space that had formed the bare minimum shelter necessary to keep body and soul together rather than representing any sort of home.
By the time I’d blinked the obstruction out of my eyes, Gunner was already slipping into his clothes and turning off his phone. “Here,” my companion told me, pulling Allen’s sweatshirt over my head far more gently than I’d thought him capable of before thrusting the matching sweatpants and Kira’s shoes into my arms. “We need to make tracks.”
So we ran away from the flaming theater together. Fled toward a shiny SUV that promised to carry us to a tremendous mansion nothing like the rat-infested apartment I was used to...and all I really noticed along the way was the fact that the vehicle’s heated seats eased a tiny bit of the chill away from my frozen heart.
It would have taken a full-fledged sauna to heat me through at that moment though. And I reached into my mind, hoping for a proverb—any proverb—instead of the terrible silence that resolutely filled my brain like a thick blanket of snow. “I think I made a terrible mistake,” I murmured, only realizing I’d spoken aloud when Gunner glanced toward me, cocking his head in question.
“Your sister’s safe,” he offered when my flood of self-recrimination became dammed into silence by the dryness of my throat.
“For now,” I countered, voice croaking as I forced further explanation out through parched lips. “But I just gave a serial killer power over my mother’s star ball. And if I lose custody of Kira....”
Then a water bottle was being inserted between my trembling fingers, a large hand guiding mine up to tilt the much-needed moisture into my mouth. “You’re among wolves now,” Gunner promised, the words far less ominous than they would have been one week prior. “Our pack will solve this together.”
And even though I’d been trained since birth to catch sight of a werewolf then run in the opposite direction as quickly and stealthily as possible, I believed the words of the alpha beside me. Sank back against the buttery leather seat and relaxed into acceptance.
I was no longer alone. Together, Gunner and I would figure this out.
***
DID YOU ENJOY Wolf’s Bane? If so, you won't want to miss Mai's second run-in with the stealer of her mother's star ball in Shadow Wolf (a sneak preview of which begins on the very next page).
Or why not take a quick side trip and learn more about kitsunes, how Gunner came to terms with Mai's identity, and what Kira thought of moving in with werewolves in the Moon Marked bonus pack, free to newsletter subscribers? To sweeten the pot, I’ll throw in two additional werewolf novels so you don’t have to come up for air for days.
Thanks for reading! You are why I write.