Last Wolf Watching

“Who is willing to watch over the human?”

“I am.” The two roughly spoken words resounded through the clearing with the force of a cannon blast, and Michaela instantly stilled, stiffening against Brody as all eyes turned towards them. “Until this is over,” Brody growled, “the human is mine.”

The unbelievable words echoed through Michaela’s head, the evocative warmth of Brody’s breath against the sensitive shell of her ear enough to make her tremble with something more visceral than shock or fear. She struggled for the source of her reaction – then realised it was hunger, urgent and sweet, spreading hypnotically through her system. A craving that moved like warm, thick honey in her veins, settling deep within her like an intimate, pulsing glow of heat that she wanted to curl around herself. And it centred on the Bloodrunner who held her in his hard-muscled arms, the resonating beat of his heart banging out a powerful rhythm against her back.

Oh God, this can’t be happening.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rhyannon Byrd fell in love with a Brit whose accent was just too sexy to resist. Luckily for her, he turned out to be a keeper, so she married him, and they now have two precocious children, who constantly keep her on her toes. Living in the Southwest, Rhyannon spends her days creating provocative romances with her favourite kinds of hero – intense alpha males who cherish their women. When not writing, she loves to travel, lose herself in books and watch as much football as humanly possible with her loud, fun-loving family. For information on Rhyannon’s books and the latest news, you can visit her website at www.rhyannonbyrd.com.

Last Wolf Watching

RHYANNON BYRD

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Debbie Hopkins Smart, for all the laughter

and the smiles, and for always being there. With lots of love, Rhyannon

Prologue

The Bloodrunner stood on the sidewalk, staring through narrowed eyes at the silent house nestled among a bevy of trees at the end of the picturesque neighborhood street. His mood was dark, edged with impatience, muscles coiled with tension that wound tighter…and tighter with each passing second.

“Just get in, tell her and get the hell out,” he muttered in a husky rasp, the nearly silent words lost in the gusting Maryland breeze, the heavy chill of autumn wrapping its arms around his shoulders like a coldhearted lover.

It was a simple enough plan—and yet, Brody Carter knew there would be nothing simple about it. With any other woman, yes. But not with this one.

Letting out a slow, measured breath, he stepped beneath the ivy-laden trellis sheltering the front porch. The golden glow of an old-fashioned streetlamp softly illuminated the deep shadows of the night, heavy storm clouds smothering the silvery rays of the moon, until only a few, pale streams of ethereal light filtered through. He concentrated on forcing the aggressive blend of rage and hunger that coursed steadily through his blood beneath a cool, untouched surface of indifference, and finally lifted his hand. With a sharp movement, he rapped his knuckles against the front door, his tanned skin dark against the antique white finish of the wood.

With the rational part of his mind, Brody accepted the fact that he’d rather be anywhere in the world than standing there, on Michaela Doucet’s doorstep.

Unfortunately, the dangerous, animal side of his nature had other ideas, relishing the thought of being near the provocative Cajun once again. He’d had his first look at the mysterious human nearly two weeks ago, at the wedding of a fellow Bloodrunner, Mason Dillinger. And though Brody could appreciate physical beauty as much as the next guy, it seemed this woman was almost too beautiful, with that lush body, long black hair that fell in soft curls to the middle of her back, perfect features and dark blue eyes so big a man could get lost in them.

Still, a pretty face he could have forgotten—but it was her scent that wouldn’t leave him in peace.

The autumn winds surged with a vicious fury, bitterly cold in the dead of night—and his nostrils flared as he caught a trace of that warm, peaches-and-cream fragrance that no store-bought product could duplicate. Suddenly, the cool air of indifference he’d struggled to maintain bled away like the last flecks of snow down the sides of a mountain, replaced by a blistering wave of heat. He imagined his features must look twisted with the madness of his emotions, his expression one of equal parts hunger and disgust for his weakness—and knew he’d be lucky if she didn’t run screaming in the other direction the second she set eyes on him.

“Not that I’d blame her,” he grunted under his breath. While his partner Cian was most often described as the pretty boy of their group, Brody figured he was the equivalent of the intimidating guard dog. Big, mean and scary-as-hell were the adjectives most suited to his appearance, and he’d learned to live with them. He’d never wished to be anything different than what he was—he only wished he’d never set eyes on the sexy Cajun with a siren’s smile, who was perfect enough to have any man that she wanted.

Look, there’s no need to make it complicated. Just get in, deliver the news and get the hell away from her before that scent has time to screw with your head.

He rubbed uneasily at the back of his neck, and a scowl twisted the scarred corner of his mouth, while he wondered what was taking her so long to answer the door. A dog barked down the street, and his gaze slid across the row of neighboring houses, his frown deepening with unease. This pristine world of white picket fences and quaint, family homes was as alien to him as any make-believe landscape, making him feel like the horrifying monster trespassing within a storybook fantasyland. The uncomfortable feeling had Brody struggling for calm, and he locked his jaw, just wanting to get back to the peaceful quiet of the forest.

Being in the city always set him on edge. The man in him hated the constant grind of the noise and crowds and irritating stares, preferring the isolation of the mountains where he and the other Bloodrunners lived. The wolf in him found the endless sensory overload a constant source of frustration. It felt constrained, tethered, when all it wanted to do was throw off his human mantle and howl beneath the comforting, seductive pull of the moon. The continual fight against his primal, instinctual urges whenever a hunt took him into civilization made him restless, wearing him thin.

And now he had to deal with Michaela. Not good. Not good at all.

“You’re tempting fate, just like your old man,” he quietly grunted to himself. “The last thing in the world you need is to be close to her.”

As if to confirm what he already knew, his beast lifted its nose to search for a deeper source of that heady, mouthwatering scent that seemed to destroy him a little more with each breath. He wanted to moan, it was so good. Wanted to claw his way into her house, take her beneath his body and pretend that he’d forgotten the reasons why he couldn’t touch her. Claim her. Search out her delicate pulse and bite her. He wanted to sink his fangs into her slender throat, her warm flesh damp and deliciously tender beneath his mouth, and lose himself in the hot, carnal rush of her blood at the same time as he buried himself hard and thick and deep between her silken thighs. His hands fisted at the dizzying thought, muscles locked in a paroxysm of agony, while he choked back a low, rumbling growl of frustration.

He was a Bloodrunner, the offspring of his human mother and Lycan father. A hunter of rogue werewolves. A protector of the Lycan way of life for the Silvercrest pack. But unlike his fellow Runners, Brody knew that in some ways he was more monster than man. He walked a delicate balance between the two opposing worlds, and the woman inside this house upped the stakes to a dangerous, deadly level. For too many months, his beast had been denied the physical pleasures that fed its soul, not unlike the way a wild kill fed his animal appetites. By the time he’d understood the dangerous effects of his self-imposed celibacy—it was too late. He hadn’t dared to seek out a woman, even a Lycan one, because he didn’t trust his human half to be able to master the savage urges of his beast.

Then Michaela Doucet had walked into his life, and Brody discovered what it was like to live in true fear—what it was like to live in hell. Every moment spent in her company took him one step closer to the crumbling edge of his control, until he could all but feel the fires of damnation licking at his skin.

“You need to go home, grab a bottle of Jack and find a way to forget she even exists,” he muttered to himself, squeezing his eyes tight as he lifted his fist and knocked harder, all but shaking the sturdy door within its frame, nearly cracking the wood. The wind grew savage, riffling through his hair, pulling the dark auburn strands across his face until he had to swipe at them with his hand. Drawing in another deep, ragged breath, Brody hammered at the door again…and again, feeling every bit the part of the Big Bad Wolf getting ready to huff, and puff and blow her picture-perfect world to pieces.

Finally, the lock on the front door clicked, the handle turning, and Brody shoved his shaky hands deep in the pockets of his jeans, steeling himself to get what needed to be said over and done with as fast as possible. After all, he’d come tonight to tell the woman who’d become his secret obsession that she’d lost her brother—or rather, the brother she’d always known.

The boy she’d raised was gone. Forever.

“And you get to be the lucky bastard who tells her,” he snarled, the whispered words so guttural, they barely sounded human.

Brody muttered a foul word under his breath, and with the rasping ease of an old, comfortable house, the front door quietly opened…

Chapter 1

Eighteen hours later…

Fear sat on the tip on Michaela Doucet’s tongue, as bitter as an aspirin waiting to be swallowed. It possessed a sharp, acidic flavor that made her mouth water in the way that it does when you’re about to be sick, while her eyes burned with a stinging wash of gathering tears. She willed them back with the sheer stubborn force of her will, reminding herself again and again that Doucets weren’t ones to cower. Raised in the superstition-rich environment of the Louisiana Bayou, she’d grown up on whispered tales of ghosts and goblins, vampires and werewolves.

Yes, she’d always been a believer, even if she’d never seen proof of the paranormal creatures most humans consigned to the realm of fantasy and fiction. But now the veil between the two worlds had been lifted. Two weeks ago, she and her brother Max had learned the truth about the secret that resided in the eastern mountains just a few hours’ drive west of their home in Covington, Maryland. Werewolves did indeed live among us. Some good. Some bad. Some so evil, they were more monsters than men.

And then there were others who were truly heroes. Dark, dangerous and tortured ones, yes—but undoubtedly heroic.

Michaela’s best friend, Torrance Watson, had fallen in love with one such hero: Mason Dillinger, a man who was half human–half Lycan. Mason was one of a select breed of hunters known as Bloodrunners who were committed to hunting down and exterminating the rogue Lycans who’d begun murdering humans. Because of their half-human bloodlines, the Runners lived separately from the Silvercrest werewolf pack they protected, in a place named Bloodrunner Alley.

The Doucets had been under Bloodrunner protection ever since a rogue werewolf had made a move on Torrance’s life. And while Michaela didn’t care for the lack of privacy, Wyatt Pallaton and Carla Reyes—the Bloodrunning team assigned to their protection—had become friends to both her and Max. She had been thankful for their watchful eye, especially for her brother’s sake.

Yes, she could accept the existence of werewolves. She’d even begun to embrace a few of them as part of her family. But tonight, terror consumed her.

Beneath the wraithlike streams of silvery moonlight, the autumn wind whistled past her ears, reminding her of a specter imparting secrets, the cool frost of its voice chilling against her skin. Shivering, she inhaled deeply through her nose, searching for the fresh scents of the surrounding forest, for pinesap and juniper and the moist smell of the soil. Like a frightened child grasping at a frayed security blanket, she needed the familiarity of those things to ground her in a world that had tilted on its axis, knocking her off balance—but all she could find was the acrid stench of aggression. Feral and thick, the heavy scent closed around her like a physical vise, banding her chest, making it difficult to draw enough air into her lungs.

Even as an outsider in this ominous setting, she understood instinctively what the menacing energy permeating the night signified. They were ready—the Silvercrest pack’s anticipation ripe for the ceremony that would soon begin.

Hold it together, she silently scolded. Do not fall apart.

Willing her backbone to keep her upright, Michaela focused on the towering blaze of a roaring bonfire that rose from the far side of the clearing, its orange flames burning with maniacal zeal against the ink-black curtain of night. Not even the stars shone in the eastern sky. Only the moon burned in the stygian darkness of the heavens, its yellowed mass seeming to reflect the fiery glow of the sinister flames.

The mountains were silent but for the low, nearby noises that filled her ears, more animal-like than human. This was Silvercrest pack land, and the werewolves were tired of waiting. Michaela kept her gaze fixed on the fire, aware that many of the Lycans had already shifted into their preternatural shapes, their fur-covered bodies standing like monstrous shadows at the edges of the forest as they waited with restless expectancy.

If not for her friends, she’d have thought she was in hell. But she wasn’t alone, thank God. Mason stood on her left, while Torrance moved in closer to her right side and grabbed her hand, squeezing her icy fingers in support as the wind surged around them, rattling the autumn leaves upon the gnarled branches of the trees, scattering others in the ravaging gusts. It still seemed astonishing that her best friend, who’d always been wary of the supernatural, had married a man who could howl at the moon, but Michaela liked Mason, as well as respected him. And there was no denying that the gorgeous half-breed was head over heels in love with his redheaded wife.

“Everything’s going to be okay,” Torrance murmured, the tone of her voice soothing, as if gentling a cornered animal. “Mason won’t let anything happen to Max, I promise.”

Okay? she thought, blinking rapidly as tears threatened to spill once more from her raw, swollen eyes. How was that even possible? Her nineteen-year-old brother had been attacked by a rogue werewolf—a Lycan who preyed upon humans for food. Max had been bitten in the attack, which meant he was no longer human, but a breed of creature that existed between the two worlds of man and beast, much like the Bloodrunners themselves.

Last night, it had been Carla Reyes’s turn to wait at the hospital while Max worked his shift as a security guard. Michaela had been enjoying a relaxing evening at home after a long day at her store, when Reyes called to let her and Wyatt know that Max had taken his car and disappeared in the middle of making his rounds. Michaela couldn’t think of any possible reason that Max would do such a thing—unless it had something to do with Sophia Dawson. And she’d been right.

Sophia was an eighteen-year-old Lycan who’d discovered the gruesome murder of a human female the week before. She’d spent a few days at their home, before returning to her parents’ house in Shadow Peak, the mountaintop town that was home to the Silvercrest pack. Max and Sophia had become fast friends, despite Michaela’s warnings that her brother should be cautious. Sophia was mixed up with a wild party crowd down in Covington, and the last thing Michaela had wanted was to see her brother become involved in an unhealthy relationship. She didn’t care that Sophia was a werewolf—but she did care that the teenager was heavily involved in the local drug scene.

In fact, she suspected it was Sophia’s troubled lifestyle that had drawn Max to her in the first place. He’d always been a champion of the underdog, willing to take on everyone’s worries as his own. Michaela loved that his heart was so generous, but she’d also worried that it would eventually land him in trouble—which was exactly what had happened.

After Carla’s call, Wyatt had contacted the other Runners and a search of the city had been immediately set into action. Then Brody Carter had arrived on her doorstep with his heartbreaking news.

“Max is still alive,” the Bloodrunner had explained to her and Wyatt in gritty, clipped tones. “Sophia Dawson showed up in Shadow Peak with him about a half hour ago. They’re trying to get the story out of her, but she’s pretty hysterical. Seems she’d called Max from a concert, scared that she and her girlfriends were being followed. Says Max told her he knew Reyes wouldn’t let him into that part of town, so he slipped out a back entrance at the hospital, grabbed his car and met up with them. He talked Sophia into coming back home with him, but before they could make it back to his car, they were attacked. The only thing that saved their lives was an accident that happened up the street. When he heard the approaching sirens, the rogue fled and the girls were able to get Max in his car. Sophia panicked and drove him straight to her parents’ house. They notified the Elders and he was taken into custody.”

Michaela had stood there feeling dead inside, a great roaring wave of pain ripping through her body, while Wyatt had talked with the scowling Runner. Then Brody had left as quickly as he’d come, leaving Wyatt to explain that Max would be kept in a holding cell in Shadow Peak, where he would be watched by guards until his first shift into a werewolf, which usually came the second night after an attack. Once the signs of impending change were noted, a Novitiates ceremony would be called.

Wyatt had driven her up to Bloodrunner Alley, a picturesque glade that sat several miles south of Shadow Peak on the mountain. The Alley held cabins where the Runners lived, and she’d spent the rest of the night with Torrance and Mason.

The wait for nightfall during the long, torturous day had been a living hell—but the call warning them that the ceremony would soon begin had finally come. They’d immediately set off for the clearing, which sat equidistant between Shadow Peak and the Alley.

And now it was time.

The muscles in her throat quivered, and Michaela wondered if she was about to lose the tea Torrance had forced into her before they’d left. The fear threatened to overtake her, too huge and monstrous to evade, swallowing her like Jonah in his story of the whale. The kind of fear that covered your skin after a nightmare, sticky and cold and wet. She knew they could scent it. From the shadowed edges of the clearing, the Lycans’ glowing eyes burned like embers as they watched her through the moonlit darkness.

They’re waiting for you to show your weakness, but right now you have to be strong for Max’s sake.

At the thought of her brother, a devastating sense of helplessness pierced through her, making her flinch—and it was at that moment that Michaela felt his gaze. Her breath caught, and without realizing it, she found herself searching the nightmarish scene for the man, the Bloodrunner, who sparked an uncomfortable awareness in her every time she saw him.

Brody. Her mouth formed the words, though she didn’t make a sound.

He watched her from the corner of his eye, as if he didn’t want her to know. But there was no way she could have missed him. All he had to do was enter a room, and her senses kicked into high alert, her equilibrium taking a spin that left her reeling, same as it had last night. He had the scarred body of a warrior, but in Michaela’s opinion, he was one of the most magnificent men she’d ever known. Not pretty, but so utterly hard and masculine that he all but bled testosterone. Everything about the rugged Bloodrunner screamed dark, intense intrigue, and despite her efforts, she’d been unable to stop thinking about him. The effect was even worse when he was near, like being struck by lightning, her nerves left revving and raw. A total and complete meltdown. Not even Ross Holland had affected her like that—and she’d thought she loved her ex-boyfriend…until the day he’d ripped her heart out.

Hah! Shows how much you know. When it comes to love, you’re as blind as a hawk beneath its hood.

Sad, but true.

Now Ross was nothing more than a first-class pain—and one she couldn’t get rid of. No matter how many different ways she explained it, he could not get it through his head that she never wanted to see him again.

It was strange, but with Brody near, she could barely recall what Ross even looked like. The Runner stood to her left, no more than a yard away from Mason, and her stare snagged on his powerful form, unable to look away. Though his muscular frame had been wrapped in a stylish tuxedo the first time she’d met him at Torrance and Mason’s wedding, tonight he wore his standard dark jeans, black boots and black T-shirt. The soft cotton of the shirt molded itself to the broad width of his shoulders and that beautifully carved chest, his thighs rigid beneath the worn denim of his jeans. His auburn hair burned a deep, dark red before the flames of the fire, lying soft and thick on his shoulders. Against the darkness of his skin, his scars shone like silvery pale rivers of pain, echoing the mysteries of his past as they slashed across his face in three thin diagonal lines.

After the “I can’t get out of here fast enough” way that he’d acted the night before, when he’d brought her and Wyatt the news of what had happened to Max, she hadn’t thought he’d even show for the ceremony. But here he was. His normally brooding expression burned with a cold, calculating fury—a charged energy buzzing around him that suggested the rigid control he always held over himself could crack at any moment. Though the calmest, quietest of the Runners, he struggled to master, even hide, an underlying violence. But it was always there, lying in wait of its escape, and she experienced a flutter of relief in her belly that he was on their side.

Brody Carter was not a man you wanted for an enemy.

She ran her tongue over her bottom lip, aware that it quivered, and found herself fighting a physical urge to move closer to him, wanting to soothe that angry burn of pain he carried inside—when suddenly the restless movements of the pack ceased. Mason lifted his face, sniffing at the cool, brisk air. “The Elders are almost here,” he announced in a quiet rasp.

Across the clearing, the eerie, demonic glow of torches could be seen drawing nearer, and Michaela stared unblinkingly at the shadow-thick edge of the forest.