“Just get out of the car!” she scolded herself, cutting the engine. She turned and fished a lightweight tote bag out of the back seat, stuffing it with a couple changes of clothes, a few snacks, and anything else handy she could find in her back seat.
She put the tote bag inside her parka, high and warm and safe against her chest, then zipped up her coat and pulled on her gloves. After one last deep, fortifying breath, Penny shoved her car door open and launched herself out into the snow.
To Penny’s dismay, the white powder was already close to knee deep in some places. She stuck to the very middle of the road, something of a high ground that had a little less snow, and pushed toward the main building.
Lifting her knees high, she hiked through it, shivering for a minute until warmth built from her exertions. With the warmth came a trickle of sweat on her lower back and chest. Snow quickly melted on her jeans and socks and Converse, weighing her down.
“Fucking snow,” she muttered, the icy air making each breath harsh.
Up ahead, the sun was just starting to set, making Penny glad she’d left the car when she did. She was so wrapped up in her movements that she didn’t see the dark-clad hunter until it was almost too late. Until he was raising his shotgun, Penny in his sights.
BOOM.
It was no warning shot. Penny saw him in time and flung herself to the ground, and the buck shot tore up the bark on a tree only a foot away from where she’d been standing.
“What the hell!” Penny gasped, pushing herself up from the thick snow bank where she’d landed. She only dared to move a few inches, and her vantage was blocked on three sides. What little she could see was all just snow and trees.
Where was the man she’d seen? Who the hell was he? Someone hired to protect the property, maybe? Or the son of the previous owners, standing his ground?
But why would they shoot at her? Penny was obviously alone and unarmed. She might be curvy but she was a small person, no threat to anyone.
She heard a rustle nearby, a tree branch creaking as it bent under someone’s hand. Penny let herself sink back into the snow drift, trembling from fear and the damp chill penetrating her clothes. The snow blanketing her body was melting fast, and in a few minutes she’d be completely soaked.
“Don’t move.” A strange, harsh voice, only a few feet away. “Don’t give yourself away.”
Penny’s breath froze in her throat at the sound of a man’s deep growl. His command hit her hard, unsure as she was about the man’s intentions. Don’t give yourself away? What did that mean?
She heard movement, another soft rustle. Then a man’s shout, much farther away. She couldn’t be sure, but Penny thought there were at least two men in the woods with her. Her brain went into overdrive, trying to understand what the hell was happening.
More shouts, and then another shot.
BOOM.
She heard someone give a grunt of pain, heard what she thought were bits of tree branches hitting the ground. Another shot. BOOM. Another, and another. BOOM. BOOM.
There must be more than one armed man, Penny thought. And the man closest to her, the man who’d ordered her to be still, might have been hit. If he had a weapon, he wasn’t using it.
She might have been crazy, but Penny could swear she’d heard a dog barking and growling close by, and a howl in the distance. Not being able to see was clearly making her hallucinate.
It was then that Penny noticed that she’d stopped shivering. She felt strangely numb and tingly, a little warm in fact. For a second, her suddenly sleepy brain thought that it was the igloo effect, that she’d cocooned herself in the snow and now it was protecting her.
The voice of reason in the back of her mind disagreed. She needed to get up and move before she fell asleep. Only, she was so comfortable…
She heard a soft, chuffing sound. Penny opened her eyes, surprised that they’d been closed. Above her, she saw a glorious black dog. No, not a dog. It was at least four feet tall, its fur sleek and dark against the snow. And its eyes, the brightest spring green… they seemed to glow.
The wolf looked down at her, seeming concerned. It made Penny’s lips twitch, wondering what kind of allegories her snow-drunk brain was making up now. Then she closed her eyes with a sigh, drifting off.
2
Harlan Craig was having a bad day. No, actually a bad week. Or was it a bad year?
What did you call it when you were hauling ass through a thick layer of snow, carrying an unconscious woman, and trying not to get shot? Or shot a second time, to be specific.
The wound on Harlan’s arm was nothing major, but it did hurt like a bitch. Not quite as bad as shifting, all those bones breaking and reforming from human to wolf, but… still.
A thunderous crack rang through the woods, echoing in the freezing air. Harlan slammed his back against a tree, panting for breath and trying to determine the direction of the shooter. 4 o’clock, he was pretty sure.
Harlan closed his eyes for a second, listening intently. Even with his heightened senses, he couldn’t hear anyone moving around. The hunters must be heading away from the main lodge, no doubt fanning out to cover more ground.
Please, please let them be doing that behind Harlan, not ahead where his cabin lay. A single glance down showed that the girl’s lips were white with cold, and there wasn’t a damn thing Harlan could do about it out here in the open. He needed blankets and hot water bottles and… fuck, soup? Thoughts banged around in his brain like panicked, trapped birds, desperate to find somewhere to land.
Harlan waited one more beat before springing forward again. Thankfully, the woods were silent as he sprinted toward his cabin at full speed. In the back of his mind, Harlan couldn’t help but think that his boot camp instructors would be proud. Military drills had prepared him for exactly an event like this, though no one could have foreseen the need for it back here in the States.
On top of the guys in the woods, hunting Harlan and his friends, on top of getting shot, now there was the girl.
Like Harlan’s life wasn’t hard enough.
Like he hadn’t literally been through hell and back fighting in Afghanistan and Syria.
Like he hadn’t then been bitten and turned into a fucking werewolf by one of his best friends. Enslaved to the moon’s whims, at times no longer the master of his own fucking body.
Like he hadn’t consequently been stuck out here with his two nearly-insane best friends, the only other werewolves he knew. With no other company to speak of for a year straight, nothing to do but slowly repair the ski lodge and grounds and try not to fight with Chase and Paxton over who of the three of them was the most at fault for all of it.
Nope. That wasn’t enough. On top of all that, she had to arrive on the scene, fall right into his lap. Sexy little redhead with big blue eyes and heart-stopping freckles, stumbling right into a live firefight between Harlan, Paxton, and the Hunters, almost getting shot.
Getting Harlan shot, actually.
He grimaced at the pain in his shoulder as he shifted the slight woman in his arms. He’d taken a little buck shot and flying bark in the upper arm, some ricochet from a nearby tree. He was bleeding freely now, and the girl’s face was perilously close to getting bloody.
He focused on the pain as he booked it back to his cabin, trusting Pax to draw the Hunters off in a merry chase across the most rugged parts of Winter Pass. It was