Rebecca Royce: Wolf's Valentine

"And Gabriel, Stow, and Lance were attacked on their way into the subway about an hour ago."

Now that was interesting. He felt his eyes turn wolf as he scanned the area around him. Nothing looked threatening. A lot of people walking cautiously up and down Park Avenue, not an easy task considering it was the one street in New York without Walk/Don't Walk signals.

"Are they okay?" He fisted his free hand. Without a second thought he would pursue their attackers.

"Yes, they managed to capture a whole bunch of made-wolves and they're on their way back here. I just wanted to change your objective slightly."

He'd had an objective? He thought it was to seek and catch as many made-wolves as possible and in his case, mate Jana. "What would that be?"

"We need you to stay where you are. You're definitely onto something. Carl Elders has been funding several of the clinics we have identified as sending patients to Kendrick. Follow the money. It can't be a coincidence that so many wolves are prowling around in New York City where Carl is."

Malcolm agreed. With Kendrick in Arizona, someone was feeding the lab-created wolves the drugs they needed to stay alive. He just hadn't figured out how it was getting done yet. "I'll figure out how they're doing it."

"I know you will. Just be diligent and safe."

"Give the pack my regards." He hoped he'd be returning there with his mate, which reminded him that he needed to get changed. Walking briskly, he looked up to see snow flurries starting in the sky.

Snow just wasn't the same here. It never had been. For the last twenty years he'd run one security consulting company or another in a major city somewhere in the United States or Europe. There was never a time he didn't prefer to be home on Westervelt with the small mountain, surrounded by water.

The first attack took him down as he crossed from Park to Eighty-Third Avenue.

Hitting the ground, five wolves bit and growled as they assaulted his human body.

Change .

He didn't need to be told twice as he let his wolf do what his wolf did best and shift into his canine form. What the hell were they doing? It was still light out and it was the middle of New York frickin' City. He waited for the shift to complete, protected for a moment by the warm white light that accompanied the change the Westervelt Wolves went through but the made-wolves did not.

He did a quick glance around, growling as he bared his fangs and arched his back at his five soon-to-be-dead assailants. None of the humans passing them on the street seemed to notice there was a wolf fight going on right in front of them.

Shifting completely, he was still a huge wolf. Mostly black with white spots and a white underbelly none of his current companions would ever see, he was still over five feet tall, much larger than the five who had signed their death warrants when they'd come at him on the street.

He growled and leapt at the first one to his right. It was a small, dirty grey wolf that looked too sick to even be standing let alone attacking him. He grabbed it by the scruff of its neck and threw it in the middle of the street. Whatever protected them from being seen did not stop it from being struck by a yellow cab racing through a light.

The front window of the cab shattered as the car screeched to a stop. Clever manipulation of the other cars prevented a major pile up and Malcolm heard people start to scream and yell. They couldn't see the wolf that lay sprawled out in the middle of the street until it shifted back into its human form. By the angle of its neck, Malcolm knew it was dead.

It wasn't that he didn't care of the loss of life—he never would have attacked them but given that they had just assaulted him, he couldn't feel too sorry about it.

Watch out .

The other four wolves leapt at him all at once. As the first one made contact with his fur, he growled. It was going to be a very long night. One way or another he would be rid of them.

He had stood her up. Jana took a deep breath and tried not to breathe fire. She was a wolf, not a dragon, and if this was going to be one of those powers she picked up over time, as she grew older and more powerful, well the fates could just shove it. Pulling the little black dress she'd put on for the occasion over her head, she slipped on her comfortable red and black flannel pants that really should be pajama pants but that she happily wore out of the house for occasions like these.

She wasn't going to sit around anymore. Throwing on a long grey sweater—she felt no inclination to match her clothes at the moment, besides she could always change upstate—she grabbed her black pea-coat and stomped out of her apartment loudly.

Slamming the door behind her, she waited a beat until she heard the automatic lock latch.

Pressing the down button to call the elevator, she wasn't surprised when it took a few minutes to arrive. It was V-day. Everyone was going out. Just most of them not alone. A full elevator dinged on her floor and she tried not to breathe as she entered. So many bodies stuffed in one spot meant way too much body odor, way too much perfume, and way too much aerosol deodorant for her wolf nose to tolerate.

Forcing her way out of the elevator first when it reached the lobby, she walked out of the lobby of her apartment building smiling at the doorman and putting her head down as she walked out. She hailed a taxi and directed the cabbie to Penn Station.

The taxi took off at top speed and she sighed, promising herself it would be the last time she made that sound. Things had been a lot harder than this. Much much worse, in fact. The first time she'd arrived in Manhattan, fifty dollars in her pocket, wearing clothes that pinched and itched, she barely been able to see or hear anything at all due to sensory overdrive. For two days, she'd sat on the street and tried not to breathe.

It hadn't helped that she'd been rushed from her home in the middle of the night surrounded by mostly young girls and babies. One of just a few unmated grown women; not being mated had always seemed a nightmare. It wasn't easy watching all her friends and family find their soul mates. Deported in the middle of the night while everyone else she loved and knew was butchered by her mate—now that was hell.

What she'd discovered a few weeks later was that she was completely adaptable and more capable then she ever could have imagined. In no way would she fall apart, ever.

Not then. Not now that a human stood her up on Valentine's Day. She had a date with her wolf. Together they would run until they collapsed.

The taxi pulled in front of the train station and she paid the driver as she opened the door to the cab and ran out. If she didn't hurry, she would miss the nine o'clock train to Woodstock. Then it would just be a quick drive later until she was alone on her land where she could run as her wolf. She loved New York City—the anonymity of it and the hustle and bustle—but she'd bought the place upstate so whenever she needed to she could still be the wolf she needed to be.

Running through the terminal, she made the train with a split second to spare and sat down in her seat. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath. Soon she would be where she needed to be and then Monday morning she could pretend the whole thing never happened.

The seat next to her slumped down as someone sat next to her. She took a deep breath preparing to smile and say nothing at all when the scent hit her like a truck slamming into her senses.

Wolf .

Jana's eyes darted open as her heart beat frantically. Sitting next to her, his eyes half open as he stared at her through dark lashes was Malcolm. She gasped. He couldn't be a wolf. She'd sniffed him to her heart's content in the office just that afternoon. She took a deep breath again.