Wolf Born. Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

that. But two such extremes are destined never to meet, if in fact they could exist at all,” her father said.

      His reply came with a sting. An unspoken message resided in what her father had said a message so terrible it couldn’t be spoken. A dark secret?

      Extremes, he said.

       Two such extremes are never destined to meet. If they could exist at all.

      Her father had just called her a freak, without coming right out with the word.

      He had uttered this remark as if he’d been near wit’s end and it had merely slipped out. Whatever he held inside didn’t want to see the light of day; a secret that if spoken, might come to pass all the quicker.

      But she couldn’t accept that, and needed to have things in the open. Her father was keeping something important from her. And even though knowing he thought his daughter a freak hurt like a knife to the chest, she had to stand her ground. What other option was there?

      “Not good enough,” she said. “Nothing you’ve said is good enough to change my mind about this Were.”

      You aren’t the only one with secrets, she wanted to shout.

       Separating me from the wulf upstairs will do no good, because against all odds, he and I have already bonded. And bonds between Lycans are unbreakable, except by death.

      She had another secret. Her insides ached with longing for the Were upstairs. Her womb thrummed for the golden-fleshed man who had shed his clothes in the moonlight. She hungered for his gaze, and for what hung, hard and swollen, between his powerful thighs.

      Instincts trumped innocence here, and she wasn’t to have that? Wasn’t to see him again?

      “I know better than to argue with you,” she said.

      Indeed, nothing would influence her father once his mind had been made up. Still, she was responsible for the Were’s injuries, at least in part. If she had gotten to him sooner, fought harder, not stopped to listen to the calls in the night, he might have been spared some of his wounds.

      She looked past her father. The Were upstairs was stirring. She felt this, and her fingers twitched in reaction. Her inner defiance against her father’s restraints rose again.

      There was more truth she had to hide from her father. Another secret pain that she didn’t understand. When she had issued the howl in the park that had brought help, something had happened to her. It was as if restraining straps had been unbuckled, setting part of her free that she’d had no idea existed. Wild. Complicated. New.

      God, there was more, yet. The worst part.

      In hearing her cry, the fanged monsters attacking her had stopped their attack. After that cry, they had transferred all their attention to the brown Were, leaving her alone, leaving her standing there, unheeded, untouched, while her golden-skinned, brown-furred male, heavily outnumbered, was ripped to shreds.

      After her call, the fanged creatures had bypassed her as if she no longer existed; as if she had suddenly become invisible to them, and no longer mattered.

       I’m not quite right inside. But how do I tell you the extent of this, Father? Your wizened eyes, gazing at me, suggest that you might know the reason for this, and possibly even why those bloodsuckers had left me alone. Freak, is what you were thinking. Not the time for reasons, you said.

      Everyone, it suddenly seemed to Rosalind, had secrets. But so many secrets made the world a much darker, more unbearable place. She was going to get some answers. Now.

      * * *

      Colton wasn’t sure if he had died. His first thought was that he must have.

      The last thing he remembered was that his heartbeat had slowed to near nothing when the last wave of fangs hit him. He recalled shutting his eyes when the pain had become too great and his limbs had stopped working.

      Soon after that, he had fallen into a dark tunnel, listening to the sounds of a continued battle all around him without being able to participate.

      As he lay where he was now, wherever that might be—heaven or hell, maybe—his thoughts kept returning to that brave Were who had come to his aid, and was little more than another smudge of darkness in his mind. He had, for the briefest seconds of time before his fall, imagined that other Were to be female. Maybe her lips had touched his, he thought, or else he had been dreaming.

      Female werewolves were nearly as able as males, and he had sensed one in that park, earlier. But the werewolf fighting beside him had torn through the vampires like a creature hell-bent on utter destruction. That dark-coated werewolf, merely a blur in the night, had been nothing less than a total fighting machine.

      Had he died out there? Was he in shock? There seemed to be a disconnect between his mind and his limbs. It didn’t hurt him to think, and his thoughts kept returning to the same questions. If he had died, had the other Were who’d helped him died, as well? Had she whispered something to him out there as his eyes had closed? More important, had those fanged vipers who had stolen the life from his family been defeated?

      Colton’s pulse gave a sudden kick. He groped for the reason for this sudden alertness.

      There was no sense of anything waiting to take him over. No overriding awareness of angels or demons surrounded him. The blanks in his mind were holes occupied by swirling drifts of a silver-gray mist. In that mist, he thought he saw Death’s outline hovering. He was almost sure he heard Death’s call.

      The cop side of him wanted to fill the holes in his reasoning so he could understand his current state. Cops were trained to fill in gaps and connect the dots. But he just didn’t seem able to do that.

      Pertinent lapses in memory could be his mind’s way of reaching for a temporary peace after encountering the rabid side of chaos, he reasoned. Those lapses could just as easily mean that consciousness continued for a time after the body formerly housing it had succumbed to its final loss of breath.

      But he hadn’t lost his breath.

      He was breathing now.

      Colton suddenly sensed something else. He reached out to this new presence with his senses.

      “Hey.”

      The voice cut through the swirl of gray. He classified the sound as a word. Beyond it lay a familiar fragrance that was nothing at all like the stench of vampires.

      Flowers. Musk and flowers.

      Not hell, then.

      “Can you open your eyes?” the soft voice asked.

      It was an odd request, he thought, since he’d been sure his eyes were already open.

      “Can you see me?”

      This was said in the slightly husky tone of a female’s whisper.

      Turning his head took effort.

      “I’m not supposed to be here, but I had to see you,” she said. “My father will take me away tomorrow.”

      Father? Some feeling came, centered in Colton’s chest. He knew that particular word because he had a father.

      Sharp pain struck without warning, as though an arrow had pierced him. It was the arrow of past tense. He’d had a father. But not anymore.

      “Can you talk? Will you make the effort to speak to me?” the female asked, her breathy voice bringing with it another hint of the taste of a floral bouquet. Roses. Bloodred roses, rich in color and sprinkled with dew.

      No. Not dew. These roses were covered in fur.

      Black fur.

      Memory zigzagged. Colton wanted to slap his head to make things work more smoothly, but couldn’t move his arm.

      A Were with a black pelt? Had he seen that out there?