Wolf Slayer. Linda Thomas-Sundstrom

of threat.

      Since she had detected nothing in the periphery, she had no idea what that might be. Nor could she imagine what could be more dangerous to her, more lethal, than a Lycan with a jump on the human hunting him.

      He ran like the wind, covering ground as if he actually was a wolf with four legs, instead of two. Tess knew she couldn’t catch up. Nevertheless, she wasn’t ready to give up. Not after the strange encounter with this Were that had set the hunter’s rulebook on its ass.

      The werewolf had let her go. Not only that, he had tried to reason with her. He had issued a warning, presumably in an attempt to save her some future grief over whatever that other thing out there turned out to be.

      His thought had been to help. What kind of werewolf wanted to protect the hunters who came after them? This one had told her he wasn’t one of the bad guys, but again, weren’t they all bad? Every last one of them? Weren’t they, by definition, monsters, or was there something she didn’t know, proving that her education was indeed sorely lacking, as this wolf had warned?

      No time to ponder that...

      She was geared up and anxious to find out what had made that wolf turn his back to her and what had made him turn the tip of the damn knife in his direction. She could have used that knife. If she had, this would have been over. Instead, she was charging after the Were as if she was part of his tag team, bringing up the rear.

      Confusion didn’t begin to describe what she felt. Tess couldn’t shake off the memory of the moment she had looked into his eyes, and the feelings that came with that connection. Absurd feelings. Impossible feelings about wayward longings that had made her pulse thunder.

      To say she was interested in this guy would have been an understatement when what she actually felt was something else entirely.

      “You have to know that I’ll keep coming,” she said as she ran, needing to get those words out and into the open, hoping they might somehow reinforce her need to believe them when she now had doubts.

      When a new thought touched her mind—one that wasn’t of her making—Tess nearly tripped over her own feet.

      “Please go home, Tess. Do as I ask. Trust me just this once.”

      It was him. His thought. She recognized the tone, if not the voice. The damn Were was speaking to her telepathically.

      “Ridiculous,” she muttered. “Can’t do that.”

      Weres could only link minds telepathically with other Weres, so the stories went. Still, other than the werewolves themselves, no one could possibly know that for sure.

      The wind seemed to come alive with this guy’s next utterance.

      “Now isn’t the time. We will meet again, I promise.”

      Speaking with a tight jaw, Tess shouted, “No way, Lycan. This is my turf!”

      But suddenly, unbelievably and as if another creature had simply dropped from the sky, Tess saw two forms running near the base of the hillside. One of them she recognized, having been close to the big Were. The other animal was a real wolf, on all fours, with fur that glowed silver-white in the moonlight as it streaked through the woods at the Lycan’s side.

      There had been no warning for her of another wolf in the area, Were or otherwise. She didn’t smell that other wolf now.

      What the hell was going on?

      Mesmerized by the sight of the pair running in the field, Tess pulled up...and stared.

      * * *

      The sadness Jonas had seen in Tess’s blue eyes had moved him. Being a werewolf meant keeping company with his own kind mostly, so what about her life? Tess’s life?

      Was culling werewolves her only form of excitement? He supposed that doing her job might make up for whatever else she lacked in terms of family and friends sometimes.

      Looking into her eyes had left him with a flood of strange sensations. Staring into her eyes had created ribbons of light in the dark recesses of his soul. He had connected to Tess on a level new to him and somehow had been able to tap into her emotions. The depth of that connection, as well as the speed with which it had occurred, was disturbing.

      Were to Were was how those rapidly formed internal bonds usually happened. Imprinting was the term used for the union of two souls, a state that only happened between Were couples destined to be mated for life. This sudden bond with Tess felt like a similar version of that, though he hadn’t experienced it for himself before. And she wasn’t a Were, so this had to be something else.

      He couldn’t dwell on that now. His attention was needed elsewhere. He was needed elsewhere.

      Gwen hadn’t listened to his instructions. In a rare out-in-the-open appearance, she was beside him—this unusual creature in his life who was so special.

      Tess would have been even more surprised if she knew that his sister was a Lycan throwback to the earliest form of the werewolf species.

      Gwendolyn Dale was a carrier of the original form of Lycan DNA—the only Were he knew of these days who was able to transform into a full wolf, and with no hint of wolf scent. A pure white wolf. Gwen’s presence on this earth made the necessity for secret-keeping all the more imperative.

      And she had followed him.

      He ran through the shadows of the trees in human shape for several more minutes with Gwen on all fours, dancing at his heels, before the moonlight performed its neat trick of setting his inner wolf free. Yet Jonas’s stomach stayed tight. He had been unprepared for Gwen’s latest streak of rebelliousness.

      His sister had possibly just blown their cover, placing them in as much danger here as they had been in Florida. She had left the cabin and shown herself to anyone who might have been looking. If Tess had seen her, there would be a hefty price to pay. If Death’s minion had been here, the final fight for Gwen’s soul would soon be upon them.

      They ran in silence, covering ground on legs burning with energy. Gwen’s white coat took on a silvery sheen in the moonlight. Few Weres had white hair or fur. Colorlessness would come from having survived heinous wounds, the way his sister had survived hers. Ghost wolves, these wounded warriors were called. Only one wolf remotely connected to the Miami pack had become a ghost, and that was another cop named Colton Killion.

      Within their pack, his sister was to be revered. The unique blood in Gwen’s veins that allowed her to possess these special traits and the ability to avoid detection was going to be cherished. If passed along, the special ancestral particles in her bloodstream could reinvigorate the entire Lycan species.

      No pressure there.

      So he had to take extra care now to keep her safe and away from Tess Owens, who brandished silver-tipped weapons instead of claws. Blue-eyed Tess, who shouldered so much sadness.

      One thing was for sure. Their circumstances had just gotten a hell of a lot more complicated. And if that wasn’t enough, there was the rather startling fact that he couldn’t wait to meet Tess again. The sooner, the better.

      * * *

      Tess swore out loud.

      Unbelievably, she had let those wolves go. Now, she promised herself this was only a temporary setback. The werewolf wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. He had told her that, though his explanation for why he was here had been missing a few details. Like all of them.

      This guy had even seemed reasonable.

      Could that be right? Possible?

      The fact that she had chosen to believe him might have made her an idiot and a shameful member of her clan.

      Another hiccup in a night full of them was that this Were actually ran with real wolves. Rare ones with white pelts. Maybe there was a connection between pure-blooded Lycans and the wolves their species had sprang from. Lycans, who were the equivalent of werewolf royalty, had lineages that went way back.

      This