ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS LATER—AGING ONE YEAR for
every thirty that passed once a lupus garou reached puberty—Bella was the
equivalent of a human twenty-one-year-old. She longed more than ever to have
Devlyn for her mate, wishing she hadn’t had to hide from the pack all these
years. The burning desire for him flooded her veins whenever she came into the
wolf’s heat. Her body craved his touch, but her mind had given up hoping to
ever have him for her own. If she could find a strong, agreeable human mate, she
could change him into a lupus garou, and he would keep her safe from Volan.
She shook her head, trying to rid herself of the image of the brutish fiend,
and continued to pack her overnight bag. Any man would be better than he—a
good mate who would help her establish her own pack.
She turned to look at Devlyn’s photo sitting on the bedside table, the most
recent one that Argos, the old, retired pack leader, had sent her. Taking a deep
breath, she threw another pair of jeans into her bag, determined to get her mind
off Devlyn.
Knowing she couldn’t put off mating much longer, she realized that one’s
second choice far outweighed living alone; even the sound of a dog’s howl on
the night’s breeze triggered the gnawing craving to be with a pack.
She stalked into her office and left an email message for Argos, a routine
she’d adopted because he insisted she keep him posted whenever she went into
the woods. As a loner, she’d have no backup. Off to the cabin for the weekend
again, Argos. Give the pack my love, in secret. Yours always, love, Bella
She didn’t have to tell him to keep her correspondence a secret; he knew. what would happen if Volan learned where she was….
Turning off her computer, she picked up her phone and called her next-door
neighbor—a woman who had partially eased Bella’s loneliness after losing her
twin sister in a fire so many years ago. “Chrissie, I’m going to my cabin for the
weekend again. Can you keep an eye on my place?”
“Sure thing, Bella. Pick up your mail on Saturday, too, if you’d like. And I’ll
water your greenhouse plants. Hey, I don’t want to hold you up, but did you hear
about the latest killing?”
“Yeah, the police have got to catch the bastard soon.”
That was one of the reasons she was going to her cabin, to get away, to
consider the facts of the murders, to search for clues in the woods. He had to be
from Portland or the surrounding area, since it was there he’d killed all the
women. And he had to take a jaunt in a forest from time to time. The call of the
wild was too strong in them. She hadn’t expected to smell red lupus garou in the
place where she ran, as far away as it was from the city. For three years she
hadn’t smelled a hint of them. Not until last weekend. Was one of them the
killer? She had to know.
Bella tossed a pink sweatshirt into the bag.
“You be careful, honey. The victims are all redheads in their twenties. And
the last was killed not far from here.”
“Don’t worry, Chrissie. I’ve got a gun for protection.” Well, two: one at her
cabin, and one at home, but who was counting? Silver bullets, too; Bella had
them made for Volan. It wasn’t the lupus garou way, but she had no other way
to fight him. She would never be his.
“A…a gun? Do you know how to shoot it?”
Yep, she’d learned how to shoot a gun a good century and a half ago, ever
since the early days when she had lived in the wilderness, trying to survive in the
lands west of Colorado.
“Yeah, don’t worry. Give your kids hugs for me, will you? Tell Mary I want
to see the painting she did for art class, and tell Jimmy that I want to see his
science project when I return.”
Chrissie sighed. “I’ll tell them. You be careful up there all by yourself. That
is, if you’re going all by yourself.”
Always checking. Chrissie was looking for husband number two, and she
assumed Bella rendezvoused with some mountain man every time she returned. to her cabin.
“See you Monday.”
“Be careful, Bella. You never know where that maniac will end up.”
“I’ll be cautious. Got to go.”
Bella hung up the phone and zipped her suitcase. Before it turned dark she
had every intention of searching the woods for further clues concerning the red
lupus garou—not a wild dog, a mixed wolf-dog breed, or as some thought, a pit
bull that some bastard had trained to kill his victims—that might be killing the