Half Wolf

“What if...” Her voice faltered, so Kaitlin started again. “What if they hurt you?”

He shook his head. “Not going to happen. Not here, like this. We’re fairly fluent in vampire, and these young fledglings have picked up a predictable pattern.”

Kaitlin recalled the brute strength of the beast that had trapped her and how she had assumed she would never breathe again. But if darkness was minutes away and Michael’s pack would be going after vampires, where did that leave her?

“What do I do?” she asked.

“Go back to your place and wait this out. I was hoping they wouldn’t come back so soon. It’s unusual they would risk it. I didn’t mean for you to go through this again. I’ll send someone home with you to—”

“Babysit me? Hold my hand? I don’t need that.”

Michael held her to the wall with only one hand on her shoulder. Their hips weren’t touching. She couldn’t feel his breath on her face as he said, “Then it’s a good thing you have no say in the matter.”

As if their sprint had finally caught up with her need for oxygen, Kaitlin said breathlessly, “Who made you king?”

“Not king. Alpha,” he said with a split-second grin that made the rest of the world, as well as thoughts about the monsters occupying space in it, momentarily melt away.

“And as such, you’re my responsibility,” he added.

Michael’s tenseness had returned, which meant that the time for conversation had to be scheduled for a future date. Right on cue with the final nod of his head, the guests he must have been anticipating got nearer, as did nightfall.

Growls rolled from Michael’s throat that would have scared the living daylights out of anyone who heard them, and nearly shattered Kaitlin’s reach for recovery.

“They’re coming,” he said. “Lesson one, Kaitlin. Close your eyes and breathe. Inhale and tell me what you find in the wind.”

Kaitlin did as she was told. She breathed the night in, coughed, breathed again. Heavy pressure on her nerve endings made her eyes fly open. “Is that the vampires?”

“It’s the pack,” Michael said. “Some of it, anyway.”

The scent accompanying the pressure she perceived was hard to define and meant more werewolves were coming. Her body responded quickly to this news. Heat closed around her as if a warm breeze had blown in.

Michael said, “Time to go.” Then Rena, accompanied by two large men that weren’t quite as gorgeous as Michael, but a close second and third, turned the corner of the building...with their eyes trained on her.

Chapter 7

Michael welcomed the members of his pack with genuine gladness.

Cade, with the Danish-born Were’s usual levity, called out, “Not exactly the time to get close and personal, boss,” noting how close Michael was to Kaitlin.

Rena said, “Two suckers have slunk out of their hidey-holes and are heading for the school.”

Kaitlin muttered, “No.”

Michael gestured to Cade. “Watch her.”

“And miss all the fun?” Cade said, already heading for the new hybrid in their midst. “I assume this is Kaitlin.”

Michael nodded. “No time for introductions. Obviously those fanged freaks don’t care about anything but finding dinner, and are way too hungry these days.”

“Have you ever known them to actually think?” Devlin, their Irish Were, contributed.

“Kaitlin has an apartment,” Michael said to Cade. “Can you take her there and wait for us?”

“No problem,” Cade returned. “But you owe me.”

Michael noted the panic coursing through Kaitlin’s body. That panic shuddered within her each time she took a breath.

“A promise is a promise,” he said to her. “You can trust Cade to keep the monsters away if any more of them show up while the rest of us deal with the two fledglings on our radar.”

Kaitlin was as white as a sheet. He didn’t want to leave her, but couldn’t send the others to fight in his place. He had told Kaitlin to meet him out here without considering that the vampire attack on her life might have signaled something far worse, like an invasion of the fanged freaks. Before things turned uglier, he’d have to contend with the problem, though tearing himself away from Kaitlin was going to be harder than he could have imagined.

There was no time to whisper assurances to her, touch her or explain why he wanted to do those things.

“Go with Cade, Kate,” he said to her. “Trust us.”

His heart was pounding twice as fast as usual, announcing his wolf’s imminent appearance. Vamp scent was prodding him to act.

The members of his pack all knew what special things he could do with or without a full moon’s assistance, and yet Michael had always been uncomfortable shifting back and forth when the rest of his pack had to wait for that one special night per month.

Already, his claws were extending in honor of dealing with old enemies whose presence was a blight on Otherness. His claws were long, curved and lethal. Back when he was a kid, the claws had taken a while to get used to. He had scratched himself more times than he could count. Now, the razor-sharp tips were stained with black vampire blood.

He hid the claws behind his back, out of Kaitlin’s sight, because she was scared enough already and possibly on the verge of being frozen in place.

“Go now,” he said, locking eyes with her large grays. “There’s no time to waste.”

His Lycan power of persuasion helped to make sure she obeyed. They were still connected. His thoughts would become hers if he willed it.

Kaitlin faced Cade, who was three heads taller than she was and twice as broad. Michael understood that she wanted to see the kind of monster that had attacked her so she could truly believe that kind of evil actually existed. But the word danger didn’t even begin to describe a situation where his pack had to worry about Kaitlin and fight the vamps at the same time.

Kaitlin didn’t glance back as she left him. Her spine was rigid and she held her head high. He trusted Cade. Cade was the best of his pack and strong enough to fight his way through a crowd if he had to.

The sandy-haired Dane followed his Alpha’s directives without question. Cade had been right, though, to want to question Michael’s plan. They were peacekeepers, not babysitters, and the big Were’s incredible reflexes would be sorely missed if push came to shove with fledgling bloodsuckers on a bender.

Michael swore beneath his breath for having to make that choice.

“I’ll second that unspoken filthy oath you just thought up and raise you one,” Rena said, observing him thoughtfully.

Michael tossed her a look.

“Raise you one what?” Devlin asked, glancing after Cade and Kaitlin. “By the way, you do realize that girl is...”

“Is what?” Rena snapped.

“Fragrant,” Devlin concluded.

“She’s going to be one of us,” Rena said.

“Is she, now?” Devlin grinned at Michael.

Vampire presence made the air harder to breathe even for a Were whose system churned oxygen like a well-oiled machine. Michael’s wolf pressed against his insides with a desire to be freed. His body wanted to turn itself inside-out and become the thing he harbored.

“Party time,” he said as night finally darkened the air, rallying the two Weres. “Under no circumstances can those vampires be allowed to reach the campus.”

“Like you have to tell us that,” Rena muttered as they all moved toward the spreading blackness that heralded the approach of the undead.

There was no mistaking the stench in the air. The two vampires heading their way moved in unison from shadow to shadow. Although they were youthful in appearance, these vamps were terribly fast, their whereabouts difficult to pinpoint until they passed through a glittering shaft of early moonlight. Then, as if they’d been trapped by a searchlight, both bloodsuckers paused to hiss their displeasure over having any type of light touch their colorless skin.

The moon belonged to the wolves, while vampires were true children of the night—the darker the night, the better. Though Michael didn’t know for sure, he supposed that like bats—which were credited as the vamps’ distant relatives—bloodsuckers didn’t have proper-functioning eyes in bright light, which was why vampires sought out dark spaces and burrowed underground in the daylight hours. The darkness was where nightmare belonged.

The moonlight made these two vamps angry and twice as dangerous. Neither had been undead for long, since both retained some pre-death musculature. Their clothes were in relatively good shape, if the bloodstains were overlooked. However, no one on earth could have believed these creeps were living, breathing humans after a first quick look. No way in hell.

“Ugly bastards,” he heard Rena mutter.

One of those bastards heard her and slipped away from the pool of light. Devlin moved after that slinking shadow, leaving tree cover to follow his pasty-skinned prey.

The vamp in the light made a strange keening sound that Michael was afraid might be some sort of signal.

“You’re heading the wrong way,” he said to it. “This area is protected.”

The vamp swelled as if it had swallowed enough air to double its size, though breathing wasn’t its forte. It bared its nasty fangs.

“Saw that trick in a circus once,” Rena said, unimpressed.

Her remark broke the standoff. The fledgling moved toward Rena without changing its expression, perhaps incorrectly concluding that a female would be the weaker opposing link. At the same time, Devlin gave a shout as the vampire they had lost sight of came rushing at them from the right, with Devlin close on its heels.

Michael had already torn off his shirt to soak up the moonlight. Calling upon the innate strength and reflexes of his Lycan heritage, he had one vampire by the throat before Rena had moved.

There was no time to strip. Michael kicked off his shoes and listened to his worn jeans tear at the seams. Before his next big breath, his continuing morph gave him teeth and jaws to match the claws he had already been wielding.

Loud cracking sounds accompanied the realignment of his shoulders. His spine snapped straight with a shock to the bones. Seconds later, his legs jumped on the bandwagon.

As Rena reached for the vampire in his grip, Michael butted her away, allowing his wolf the room necessary to deal with a creature that had died once already and now needed a reminder that dead was dead.

He howled as he completed his shift. After hitting the ground on his paws, Michael bounded back up to lunge for the vampire’s neck. Grabbing hold there with his sharp canine teeth, he shook the bloodsucker so forcefully, the creature shrieked.

Rena wasn’t to be left out of this party. She came hurtling back, aiming for the monster’s chest with a short, sharp-tipped wooden stake. Putting all her muscle behind the strike, she hit the place in the vamp’s chest where a man’s heart should have been, and drove the stake deep.

That was all it took to send one unholy bloodsucker back to wherever it went in the hereafter. The creature exploded into a funnel of swirling gray ash.

“Dust to dust,” Rena said. “One down.”

“Make that two,” Devlin announced with a fierce guttural growl as a second explosion came from the area between the trees.

Michael knew they had lucked out with this batch of fledglings.

Silence returned quickly, and as though nothing had happened to disturb it...which was exactly the way Michael had wanted things to turn out. Until, with his extraordinary connection to Kaitlin, he perceived the trouble she was in and whirled on all fours.

* * *

The guy beside her was blond, built like a brick house and looked capable enough to handle most of the things life might throw his way. Her new guardian, Cade, was the epitome of a modern-day Viking. Attractive. Make that a real heartthrob. And also a werewolf.

Cade’s green eyes, similar in color to both Michael’s and Rena’s, stared straight ahead, never once veering from the path he led her down. He was concentrating on their surroundings. Kaitlin sensed his reluctance to break their silence.

“Is something there?” she asked.

He held up a hand and shook his head, gestures indicating that speaking wouldn’t be a good idea at the moment. There had to be more company up ahead. Dread began to blossom inside Kaitlin over what that company might be.

With a firm hand on her shoulder, Cade urged her to pause. They stood side by side for a minute, listening, waiting. Then Cade stepped in front of her, acting as a protective shield against whatever was going to show up. Because something was.

Kaitlin couldn’t see anything past Cade’s powerful shoulders and didn’t need to. Her neck stung with pain that was like having to suffer through her terrible ordeal all over again. In this case, her wound had become a built-in vamp-o-meter.

Cade spoke to whatever hid in the darkness that lay beyond the meager glow of the closest light pole. “This place isn’t for you. Come to think of it, I don’t know anywhere that is.”

Sounds reminiscent of radio static caused the back of Kaitlin’s neck to chill. She froze. Cade tensed.

“I’m sorry.” Cade spoke to one particular spot as if he saw something there. “Was that your reply? Maybe fangs hinder speech?”

“Now isn’t the time to taunt them.” Kaitlin hated every heart-stopping second of this confrontation and formulated a plan to move to another city if she got out of this with her life and limbs intact. She would take her family with her.

Not sure if she could handle another vampire sighting, she made a pact with herself to finish her thesis elsewhere. To hell with it. To hell with Michael, werewolves and...

“Vampires,” Michael said, finishing her internal remark as he, Rena and the other Were in the pack approached.

Kaitlin spun to look at them with her heart hammering. Cade remained motionless enough to have been turned to stone, his laser-like gaze hovering on that spot in the distance.

“Didn’t trust me?” he said to Michael over his shoulder.

“Finished early,” Michael returned. “Nothing else to do, so we thought we’d join you.”

“Everyone likes company,” Cade said.

Kaitlin’s attention was on Michael. In human form and completely naked, he was breathtaking. His tarnished bronze skin glowed with a hint of perspiration. He looked like a shaft of moonlight carved into solid form. Without clothes, he seemed not quite as human, and twice as formidable. When confronted with all that pulsing, molded muscle, even she wanted to get out of his way.

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