Sondrae Bennett - Arctic Winds

Jason paused in the entrance of the pack’s local diner as a tantalizing scent hit him. Although completely foreign, it held a familiarity that compelled him closer.

Smells like home . Jason shook his head. He had no idea where that thought came from. The scent evoked no memories of his childhood home or his current house on the outskirts of town.

Whatever it was, it was doing strange things to his wolf. The sudden urge to shift and start chasing his tail almost overwhelmed him. Better yet, the tail of that woman in the corner booth. Taking a deep breath, he confirmed the strange and delicious smell came from the petite blonde huddling into her sweater. She was definitely a shifter but that was about all he could figure out. She wasn’t any type of shifter he’d dealt with before. Without question Jason would have remembered a scent like hers.

Spotting Martha, a waitress at the diner and a respected elder in the pack, he made his way to the counter.

“Who’s that?” he asked, inclining his head toward the woman.

“Dunno. Came in a few minutes ago and ordered. I was about to phone your office but you saved me a call by coming in. Doesn’t seem dangerous but she’s definitely not local.” As leader, or Premier, of the Alpine Woods pack, Jason was called upon whenever something out of the ordinary occurred.

“Not dangerous at all. Still, I’m having trouble placing her. She doesn’t smell like anything I’ve dealt with before.” They both looked as the woman sneezed into her napkin three times. Who would’ve thought anyone could look attractive while sneezing? “Maybe some kind of cougar?” he guessed.

“That bitty thing? Housecat maybe, cougar no way. Besides, whatever she is, she’s canine, not feline,” Martha murmured, moving away toward some customers.

Jason looked at the woman in the booth again. Martha was right. Whatever she was, she was definitely canine. Her mannerisms reminded him of the fox shifters he dealt with on occasion, but Jason was positive that couldn’t be right. He knew the local foxes and none of them would come into his town without a courtesy phone call first. Besides, the woman’s coloring was not the brassy reds and oranges prominent in fox breeds.

Jason stood and moved next to the woman’s booth, watching her gaping stare slowly travel up his frame. Her eyes grew wider as her gaze raked over him. Jason was large, even for a wolf, and obviously his size intimidated the small shifter.

Though his animal form came from his mother, Jason’s human form came from his father, who was built like a linebacker despite being full human. His father had been shocked after his mother had shown him her animal form, but instead of being freaked out, he eventually came to think of it as amazing. “Why would I want normal when I can have remarkable!” his father had said throughout Jason’s childhood.

His father was thrilled to be mated to a wolf and loved Jason’s mother more each and every day, although he had been disappointed he himself could never be more than human. Contrary to popular belief, a shifter’s bite didn’t “transform” a human.

Lately, whenever Jason visited his parents, he felt a keen sense of longing. He wanted love like theirs someday. When he walked into his empty house after work, he thought about what it would be like to come home to a hot meal and a warm body. At the end of the day, he wanted to share his hopes and dreams with someone. He felt ready to build a home, but as yet hadn’t found anyone he could imagine building that home with. Maybe it was his father’s words echoing in his head, but he didn’t want normal...he wanted remarkable.

He’d dated his share of women, but none he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. Hell, he could barely stand to spend an entire night with them and usually found himself leaving early the next morning. Being the leader of the pack, he never wanted for female companionship, but lately it just wasn’t enough.

“Can I help you?” The woman’s hesitant voice interrupted Jason’s daydreaming, drawing his mind back to the present.

“I’m wondering the same thing.” He slid into the opposite side of the booth, never taking his eyes off the woman driving him crazy with her delectable scent. “What brings a woman like yourself to my town?”

“Your town?”

“That’s right.” Leaning forward over the table, he pierced her with his gaze. “My town.”

She ran her small tongue lightly over her plump lower lip and nibbled absently on the corner of her mouth. Jason’s desire spiked as he watched. When was the last time something so simple made him so horny?

Her eyes got impossibly wider after she delicately sniffed at the air. She started shaking and held a hand out in front of her as if fending off an attack.

“Please don’t. I…I’m sorry. Please,” the woman whispered desperately.

Oh my God! It’s a shifter town! I’ll be lucky if I get out alive. Samantha couldn’t believe she’d made such a huge mistake. Her mind screamed at her to get out quickly.

Stumbling into the diner, she had thought of only one thing. Food. Although running out of money fast, she wasn’t feeling well enough to hunt up meals today. She had decided to splurge and drove into this small town looking for sustenance. But she had no desire to take her life into her hands by trespassing on pack territory.

This damn head cold. Normally she would have smelled the warning signs long before reaching the border of their town, but her nose had been clogged for days. She hadn’t even thought about it as she drove up.

Back in Alaska, where she grew up, shifter communities were interspersed everywhere and God help anyone who ventured into one. The bears would rip intruders in half and send them back to their skulk in pieces before asking questions. And her people were no less fierce. They didn’t have the strength of the bears, but they were crafty and knew how to take down a trespasser before they even got close to the burrows. The moose and wolves were equally defensive. No community let strangers live long enough to explain.

She had managed to get as far as the diner. Maybe she could quietly leave the town and they wouldn’t harm her. Or maybe they were just trying to figure out where to send the remains.

“I’ll leave. Right now, and you’ll never see me again.”

Anger filled the man’s gaze.

Oh God, she wasn’t going to make it out of here. “Please, I’ll go,” Samantha said as everything went hazy around the edges of her vision. No, not here… was her last thought before the world went black.

Jason jumped forward and caught the woman as she collapsed. He easily lifted her and kicked out a chair at the table to the right of the booth, sitting as he examined the beauty he held. She was obviously starving, and felt as if she barely weighed one hundred pounds. She also seemed to be running a slight fever. Why was she frightened upon discovering this was a shifter town? If she was ill, she should’ve been happy to find a town with a doctor used to dealing with her kind.

“Is she all right?” Martha asked, coming to stand beside him. A couple of the diners stood to help but he waved them back to their seats.

“I think she just needs some food and rest, but she should see a doctor as well. Call Eddie and ask if he’ll come over.” Eddie Pritchard was the town physician and, although not shifter himself, was used to taking care of those who were. Unlike most shifter communities, the full humans in Alpine Woods were considered pack. They attended pack meetings and events along with the wolf shifters.