Lesson learned, Tess. Some of us truly are different.
He kept hold of Gwen by digging his fingers into the scruff of her neck fur, careful not to let his claws do any real damage. After her initial reluctance, Gwen allowed him to lead her away from the Owenses’ front yard.
Jonas had no idea what his sister might have been thinking by coming here. Lycans of her caliber had thought-blocking techniques probably unknown to every other Were, and that was damnably inconvenient.
On some level, he realized that Gwen had been as surprised as he had been by coming face-to-face with Tess. One close look at the hunter and Gwen had made sounds he’d only recently heard her make—sounds shockingly similar to the groans she’d uttered during the difficulty of her recovery from the injuries she had accrued on the night of her attack.
When standing eye-to-eye, she and Tess both had been privy to a sudden wave of insight that had quelled their urge to fight, at least for the time being. Jonas had no idea what that might have been but was thankful for the respite.
Show-and-tell time was over. Introductions between these two had been made. Tess didn’t know that the white wolf was a Were in wolf form, or that she was his sister. Full-wolf shape-shifts, so rare these days, would be new to Tess, since they were virtually unheard of outside of a sanctioned few elders and the families that lived with these rare beings.
If Tess setting eyes on Gwen wasn’t bad enough, the Owens woman had seen him shape-shift twice in a single night and might be wondering about that as well.
He wanted to know why Gwen had come here and if it could have been nothing more than a desire to meet the neighbor.
Perhaps Gwen had scented the hunter in the same way he had, and her instincts for survival had taken over. Maybe the strange DNA in Gwen’s makeup retained memories of hunters from times in the past.
Those thoughts were legitimate ones. Nevertheless, Jonas had a hunch the reason for Gwen’s visit could be blamed on neither of those things. Warning flags in his mind were waving. Gwen wasn’t struggling half as hard against his hold as he thought she might. He hadn’t even broken a sweat.
“Your big brother is keeping watch, Gwen,” he silently messaged his sister, pulling her along without pausing to address her second act of rebellion as a real issue. Just because he couldn’t hear his sister’s thoughts didn’t mean she couldn’t access his.
“Possibly you need to learn to use more control, hun.”
Jonas let her go in a spot near the rocky overlook and placed his considerable Were bulk between Gwen and the path behind them, daring her to try to get past him.
Gwen waited without moving for a minute or two before turning to focus on that path in a way that made Jonas’s neck chill.
Tess hadn’t been content to let the two Weres go. He should have known the white wolf would pique her interest and get her hunter blood pumping. Could he blame her? In Tess’s place, he probably would have done the same thing by following them. She was coming now.
Unfortunately, there was more at stake here than Tess Owens hoping to do her job. And he was caught between two females on opposite ends of the DNA spectrum that had gotten a good whiff of each other. Two females with the power to mess things up before the real mess began.
Christ, he could feel that other thing he had feared getting closer. The thing he dreaded most. The air was thicker, wetter. He didn’t want to lose Gwen. Besides his own feelings, the future of his species might hang on her survival.
In Jonas’s mind, the woodsy fragrance of the wolf hunter’s cottage was suddenly blotted out by the odor of impending doom. He now had Tess and Death to worry about, and it seemed that his worst nightmare was about to come true.
“Run,” he sent to Gwen, giving her a gentle shove.
For once, his sister did as she was told. She took off, heading west like a bullet shot from a rifle, leaving him standing on the rocks with his claws raised.
* * *
To Tess, this felt wrong—not only for the fact that she had let her family down, but because of the entire night and the way things had gone.
She had never seen a wolf like the one the Lycan had tamed into submission, and that brought the tally to two firsts in one night. It had been two wolves against one hunter in her front yard, and yet the handsome Were hadn’t allowed the white wolf to take her on when that would have served him better.
Uttering a string of curses and oaths, Tess again sprinted through the trees and brush. There was still time to put things to rights, she told herself...at least there would have been time for that if she hadn’t become so interested in this Lycan and what he was up to by showing her a sensitive side.
Not only had he not gone after her tonight, he had kept the white wolf from doing the same. Why?
What was his connection to that white wolf? Had his hesitancy to fight been due to his desire to see that real wolf unharmed?
She wasn’t dressed for this. Her feet hurt like hell and there was a good possibility she wasn’t thinking straight. The only weapon she had was the blade. One damn blade against that Lycan’s cunning and mounds of muscle. She was going after a werewolf in an outfit that amounted to little more than sleepy-time underwear.
What a pretty picture that presented.
But it was okay, Tess supposed, since it wasn’t in the Lycan’s favor to let her catch up with him. Additionally, he had no reason to want to see what she’d do next since he had gotten the better of her twice already without lifting a claw.
The differences between this Were and other werewolves she had dealt with were major and lent an air of fantasy to the craziness of this night.
If she could only get him out of her mind...
If only her wits would return and warn her that a strange attraction to this guy was surely going to be her downfall...
But she was fighting those what-ifs and in need of other answers. Tess wanted to stop the madness that had been caused by meeting this guy, no matter how interested she was in his behavior. She didn’t have to admit to anyone, including herself, that she was curious about him for more reasons than his actions alone.
That face.
The sculpted physique.
His deep voice.
It was strictly forbidden and an unforgiveable sin for wolf hunters to cozy up to their prey. They were two different species. Leniency showed weakness. If word about her inability to do her job were to spread, other monsters would arrive.
Still, deep down in Tess’s mind lay another reason for her interest in this guy that scared her more than anything else.
Having been tight up against him had caused her well-tuned willpower to backfire. In man form, he was mesmerizing. In the other shape, he was forbidding, but with an intelligent gleam in his eyes.
She wasn’t caving on the job. She just wasn’t sure what had happened tonight.
“There is something about you...” she said aloud. “And I will probably regret finding out about whatever that actually is.”
Against all inner warnings, though, Tess didn’t turn back. Sensing a change in the atmosphere, as if the moonlight had somehow suddenly grown brighter, denser, she slowed, then stopped to look up at the rocky ledge above her with her blade ready and her heart in her throat.
He was there. Contrary to everything she had just thought about the situation, he stood in the open—this tall, muscled, wickedly formidable