Desert Wolf. Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

       Copyright

       Chapter 1

      There was no man in the moon.

      Every werewolf knew this.

      The moon was female and a temptress. Her kiss was cool and her love ran hot. For Weres, Madame Moon was everything—lover, mistress, redeemer, betrayer. She bestowed power, strength, enhanced senses, lightning-fast reflexes and pain...terrible racking pain that long ago had turned former Texas Ranger Grant Wade inside out, but seemed normal to him now.

      Tonight, the moon took up a good portion of the wide expanse of the star-filled Arizona sky and called to Grant with a seductive, silvery promise that made his shoulders twitch.

      Only two other things Grant knew of felt anything remotely like this gut reaction: beautiful women and fine, aged whiskey...neither of which were present at the moment.

      “Wait.” Holding back tremors that were bubbling up inside, he addressed the moon. “Not yet. Soon.”

      The night was still warm after that day’s unforgiving desert sun. Shirtless, wearing only jeans and boots, Grant rolled his shoulders to ease the growing aches of his imminent shape-shift. As a pure-blooded Lycan version of the werewolf species, shifting was part of his heritage. He liked it.

      But he needed a little more time before he could do so, and he needed to keep his voice for a while longer. Long enough to corral the trespasser he was hunting out here, a rogue who brought trouble too close to home and was slippery as hell.

      “Where are you?” Grant whispered to his prey. “What are you?”

      The interloper whose arrival he anticipated could be human, though Grant doubted it. As a rule, humans weren’t partial to acts as grisly as this crazy son of a bitch’s grotesque taste for the raw meat of neighboring cattle. Disappearing animals had garnered the attention of angry ranchers with rifles, and those ranchers would be on the prowl tonight to protect their herds.

      No. He suspected it was a half-crazed werewolf doing the damage. And if that scenario turned out to be true, the rogue had to be removed from human radar as quickly as possible. Werewolves had kept their presence and identities safe for over a thousand years and couldn’t afford to blow it all now.

      But damn...

      The whole raw meat thing surrounding the freak he was after was a strange twist on abnormal. No werewolf Grant knew of went after cattle on the hoof. Most Weres, including him, preferred their burgers well done and on a bun.

      These days, most Weres were as civilized as their human counterparts—at least 99 percent of the time. Humans just wouldn’t like the fact that some police officers, nurses and even ER techs could actually be more than they seemed each time a full moon rolled around.

      This trespasser was messing with those secrets. Grant couldn’t afford to let angry ranchers get too close to his place of business. Keeping neighbors out of his hair and away from Desperado was imperative to protect the special beings harbored behind the old ghost town’s shuttered windows.

      Grant raised his head, sniffed the air.

      A bittersweet scent left a tang on his tongue. Moonlight ruled the desert tonight in an almost-full phase. His inner wolf was expanding, waiting in anticipation, as the moon rose above the trees.

      Unlike most Weres, Grant didn’t have to give in to the moon’s mystical allure. He could refuse the call if he chose to. A special gift had been twisted into his heritage, giving him the ability to shift with or without the moon calling the shots, when resistance for many others of his kind was futile.

      “Just a few minutes more,” he mused, almost ready for his transformation. Wolf blood made him faster and more flexible. It also made him lethal.

      The first claw popped out as his fingers uncurled. The rest of them followed in rapid succession, long and razor sharp.

      Pressure inside him was building. Ten seconds was all it would take to complete a full shape-shift. His unique abilities, combined with the purity of his bloodline, made him alpha of his own desert pack. Rattlesnakes and crazed lunatics aside, he was probably the most dangerous creature in the area.

      “As for you,” he said, speaking to the interloper he waited for. “Are you an unlucky bastard who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time? Were you infected by a bite or scratch from a bad wolf and surprised when the next full moon came around? Because it seems no one has taught you how to behave.”

      Even after a bad bite or scratch, Grant knew, if a human being had been a good human before, he or she would be a good Were now. And good guys weren’t cattle rustlers.

      “You would have garnered sympathy if you had come knocking. Now look. The problems you’ve been causing have to be dealt with.” The secrets hidden inside the town called Desperado were at stake and Grant was uncomfortable with how close to Desperado’s gates he was standing. “So, come on. What are you waiting for?”

      He searched the area for a hint of the trespasser and spoke again. “I am leader, watcher, gatekeeper, secret holder, guardian and reluctant ruler of a pack of like-bodied, like-minded Weres. Do you purposefully taunt me?”

      His patience was wearing thin. Grant glanced once more at the moon then did a quick scan of the mountain range, sifting through the night smells in search of anomalies.

      The air was loaded with unique fragrances only found in the West: a combination of sand, brush, overheated rock, animals, cactus and the trees that tenaciously clung to the hillside despite a general lack of water. All those smells fit neatly into his mental data banks.

      Except for one.

      That one stood out like a shout.

      Wrapped in the breeze was the unmistakable odor of blood. There had been another fresh kill, the third in as many passing months. That pissed him off.

      “Damn fool.” His voice rumbled. “Who the hell do you think you are to put all of us in jeopardy? It’s only a matter of time before we find you.”

      The fact that the creature out there had so far eluded capture was also an anomaly with a wolf pack on the prowl. The only question to consider was whether this trespassing idiot would turn out to be adaptable if offered a choice.

      Grant turned upwind. His shoulders twitched again. “If you’re a Were, and in the vicinity, you should be able to pick up my thoughts.” Grant silently sent the message over the telepathic channel most werewolves used to communicate. “Barring that, maybe you can hear my voice.”

      He detected no response at all.

      “Okay. All right.” Grant raised his face to let the moonlight soak in. “It’s time to up the ante.”

      Waves of cold penetrated his bronzed skin and sifted downward, layer by layer, to take control of muscles and nerves. The pain the cold brought was immediate and terrible, but was quickly replaced by a searing heat that would fuel mounds of muscle.

      Grant welcomed the discomfort. He welcomed the wolf. Vestiges of his human shape began to shred as he became one with the song that sang to him now. Wolf music. The call of the wild.

      I am Lycan, alpha and a servant of the moon. Whatever the hell is going on around here needs to be set straight.

      Muscles trembled as they began to expand. Grant’s jeans felt tight. His boots felt cramped and his face stung. With his last speaking breath, he warned, “Time to face the consequences of your actions, whoever you are,” knowing that any rogue wolf with half a brain would run the other way.

      Cheekbones rearranged with a rub of ligaments. Vertebrae crackled with sounds no human would ever want to hear. Rabbits scurried. Coyotes whimpered and tucked their tails as Grant Wade, now half man and half wolf, straightened up in