The white wolf’s muzzle lifted as it sniffed the air. Tess couldn’t see its eyes or determine the animal’s actual size. After seeing the animal’s head, she guessed this visitor was a lot larger than any other wolf she’d seen in the wild. Twice as big, maybe more.
“This place is protected from the likes of you,” Tess said, moving toward the gate that would seal her off from immediate harm.
Her knife dangled from her hand.
“Try it, wolf. Take me on and see what kind of skills I have developed to ward off claws.”
Her dare was punctuated by a rustling sound in the brush. Tess couldn’t look there. Dividing her attention could amount to suicide.
Her heart could not have pounded harder. The fingers holding her knife were turning white due to the tightness of her grip on the hilt.
Damn it... There was another visitor. His approach hit her hard. Coming up against this particular presence was like running into a familiar wall.
“Tess,” the Were said, as if they were friends.
She refused to look for the speaker, already knowing who it was. No one else said her name like that, in the tone of a caress.
“Is that wolf with you?” she demanded with her gaze fixed on the white wolf.
“This wasn’t planned,” the Lycan said. “I’m sorry you were disturbed.”
Tess rallied. “This is the second time you’ve come here and gotten too close to where you aren’t welcome.”
The white wolf growled in response to Tess’s clipped tone. Tess raised the hand holding the knife.
“It’s all right,” the strange Were said in a placating whisper that reached Tess from a short distance. “I’ll take her home.”
Her?
Hell, Tess didn’t want to know what a werewolf might do with a female animal like this one. She was sorry she had believed this guy to be truthful and handsome. His looks might have been exceptional, but werewolves were still monsters in disguise. Being handsome and convincing didn’t mean he was exempt from her reaching current goals.
“We’ll go,” he said with the adamancy of a promise. “Turn your back, Tess, and we will be gone.”
“What sort of an idiot do you take me for?” Tess returned.
“She won’t hurt you. I won’t let her.”
“Do you have a leash? The beast keeps a beast for a pet?”
The white wolf growled again, forcing more of Tess’s attention there.
“She doesn’t like trouble,” the Lycan said.
“Then why is she here?”
“She sensed trouble and came to investigate.”
“Then she knows about me?” Tess asked.
“Yes, in theory.”
Tess turned toward the direction his voice had hailed from. “Because you told her, and she understands English?”
The problematic Lycan didn’t take on that question.
Catching a hint of movement in the brush, Tess backed again toward the gate with the knife raised and ready. Her sworn enemy didn’t make an appearance, and it looked like he wasn’t going to.
She heard him speak in soft tones to someone else. He had to be addressing the white wolf. But that wolf didn’t budge.
“Perhaps you’ve lost some of your power of persuasion,” Tess suggested nervously.
There was a lull before he spoke again.
“She believes trouble is near,” he said.
“I’ll second that,” Tess muttered.
“Maybe you can tell her it’s okay,” he suggested.
Unbelievable...
“Am I to invite her in and offer tea and cookies, too?” Tess fired back.
“I’m pretty sure that won’t be necessary. However, if you want her to go, you’ll need to let her see that there’s no cause for concern.”
“Because there isn’t?”
“Not from us. Not from me. Not from her. Not tonight.”
Tess thought back to their earlier encounter. “Is this wolf part of the reason you let me go without a fight? She is one of the things you’re protecting?”
It seemed that no replies to those questions were forthcoming, so she tried again. “Do you hold yourself up as some kind of wolf warden?”
“No,” he replied. “Nothing like that.”
The white muzzle shifted slightly before one silvery leg appeared. Slowly, that wolf left the shadows, and the sight of this animal robbed Tess of more breath.
The largest real wolf Tess had ever seen moved toward her with a growl rolling in its throat.
Jonas lunged forward just as Gwen glided through full moonlight to reach Tess. He barked a command that Gwen ignored. His sister was interested in Tess. Whether that reason was a bad one that involved seriously twisted intentions, Jonas couldn’t tell.
He reached Tess seconds before Gwen did. Gwen butted her head against his thighs as if she would go right through him, but Jonas held steady and barked a stream of protests in return.
The moon was overhead, and he was standing beneath it. His claws popped before he had time to stop them. Neck muscles began to spasm. “No, Gwen,” he said with the last vestiges of a voice everyone here would understand. “Not today.”
He could see that Tess was both fearful and annoyed by his interference. Jonas sensed the silver blade she held without having to see it, remembering the way it had burned into his flesh. That knife would hurt Gwen when she had already suffered enough. He had to keep Tess from using it.
Tess’s hands were like fire on his back when she tried to push him away. Gwen growled again, letting him know that she also wanted him to move. Maybe this is the fight Tess had anticipated tonight...not with a rogue werewolf, but something more. Something priceless to the Were world. His sister.
He could not let that fight happen.
When Gwen hurled herself at him, he caught her by the fur on the back of her neck. Tugging hard, he maneuvered his sister to the side as his Were genes, triggered by the light, fully kicked in.
He heard Tess’s surprised intake of breath as he tightened his grip on Gwen’s fur and spun the white wolf around. Tess sprang forward with her knife in her hand. Gwen panted and growled, showing treacherously sharp teeth as she struggled to get free. But he was far stronger than either of these characters. He proved it now by lifting Gwen’s front paws off the ground until his sister and Tess Owens stood eye-to-eye with a distance of only six inches between them.
Tess froze. Gwen stopped growling. It was a scene straight out of a horror movie and yet as the hunter and the very special white wolf eyed each other, Gwen began to whimper. Hearing that, Tess, who seemed to be equally as stunned, lowered her blade.
Jonas hoped that Tess had seen something human in Gwen’s eyes that wasn’t obvious in the form his sister was able to take. He hoped his sister would accept the temporary truce of Tess’s lowered blade and take the opportunity to disappear.
He could have cut