Linda Thomas-Sundstrom - Wolf Born

In addition to that, he might know the cop who had been shot.

Shit. He visualized the scene. There would be officers, CSI techs and television crews all over the place, knocking on doors.

And a she-wulf appeared now?

Really bad timing. Effing bad.

Worse yet, his beast had already driven him to take a step toward the female’s invitation, stretching at its leash.

Colton hauled himself back with difficulty and a barked chastisement. Can’t have this. Get a freaking grip. There’s too much at stake.

Good advice in the best of times, but the beast’s needs were elemental and approaching the point of no return. It was hungry to bury its cock in that female’s damp, furry, feminine folds, and angered by the restraint.

He had to get away, though leaving this spot would be one of the hardest things he had ever done. He had to ignore this she-wulf, knowing the odds of ever finding another one.

Resolutely, regretfully, he echoed the she-wulf’s call with a low-pitched howl that could have been translated as: You have no idea how sorry I am for having to go. Though it actually meant so very much more than that, and perhaps even the extinction of his family’s line.

Stepping out from under the trees, and filled with regret, Colton took off. Alone. Into the night. Toward the scent of a downed cop’s blood in the distance.

Chapter 2

Rosalind Kirk dropped to her haunches and slammed a furred-up fist into the ground to keep herself from following the Were in the park, whose scent was new, feral and overtly masculine.

Her hackles rose with a mixture of curiosity and anger.

That wulf had ignored her invitation.

She stared at the way he cut a smooth swath through the trees, running faster than anything she had ever seen. He was a big werewolf, tall and powerfully built. His brown pelt blended with the shadows. Highlighted by moonlight, it appeared that he wore clothes.

Strange.

Although anger flared over his rude rejection of her call, Rosalind’s heart raced as she watched him run. She felt the rhythm of the movement of the brown Were’s legs in her muscles, and heard the harshness of his breathing echo inside her chest. All this made her feel disturbed in a way she’d never experienced before.

Her fur ruffled.

Her chin lifted.

Finding a male of her species hadn’t been the reason she had slipped her father’s net when he wasn’t looking, but suddenly seemed like a bonus.

She’d been homesick for her bayou property, where she could run unhindered. Here in Miami, where her father had accepted an invitation to visit the Landaus—an ancient Lycan line as old as her own—she had been quarantined on the estate’s grounds. Her father had forbidden her to go past the expansive property’s stone walls.

Right. Like she’d listen to that, or be chained to a ridiculous confinement, however lovingly the directive had been issued by a father who said he had her best interests in mind.

Like she had ever met his expectations.

I’m a woman now.

Even her father, an elegant, intelligent Lycan, had no idea how elevated her metabolism became on a night like this one.

Sure, it was dangerous being out here in wulf form. There were plenty of risks in ignoring the rules and restrictions. It was equally dangerous to expose herself to a member of another pack without being properly introduced. Yet her boundless need for freedom resonated in every bone and cell in her body. The moon’s influence blasted through her like some kind of invisible ray, dispersing her humanness almost completely.

She had too much pent-up energy, and her search for freedom had been interrupted before she’d used it up. Her focus had been riveted to a big brown werewolf sprinting in the opposite direction who hadn’t paid any attention to her at all.

Didn’t you hear me, Were?

Shaking her head without taking her eyes off him, she leaned forward, into his scent. A series of disgruntled growls rumbled in her chest, registering her displeasure. Maybe Miami Weres held contempt for those outside of their packs, and that’s why he had turned from her.

His loss. She was lithe, smart, fast and strong—a worthy mate for a purebred male. In spite of that, she had been shielded from all eligible partners and kept from pursuing any outside company at all, leaving her to wonder what everyone had been waiting for.

She was sick of the tight ring of supervision surrounding her, and ready for her first close-up with a prime example of her species.

Like you, pretty, brown-pelted wulf.

Wasn’t finding a mate what she was eventually supposed to do?

Had the brown Were considered her unworthy, when the whispers behind her back at the Landaus’ place had described her as special?

Special...

The dreaded Blackout phase wired into her family’s line had come upon her at thirteen, instead of the usual age of twenty-one. Surviving her body’s internal rewiring at so young an age had caused her to acquire a stellar repertoire of abilities.

Special...

At fifteen, she outdistanced her father in races. By sixteen, she could painlessly shape-shift in seconds whenever she chose to, with or without the moon. Even her father couldn’t do that.

Tonight, at the matronly age of twenty, eight-foot-tall stone walls hadn’t stood a chance of containing her. One agile leap was all it took to escape the Landaus’ boundaries.

Piece of cake.

In her defense, she hadn’t planned on being outside those walls for very long. Merely one good sprint to calm her had been the justification...

Until she felt the ongoing song of this male’s Lycan blood as if that song had been written for her. Until she had sensed him in the shadows as clearly as if he’d stood five feet away.

Even now, his earthy, alluring scent pulled her like some sort of unavoidable undertow.

Unsure of what to do next, because she actually was socially inept, and had been more or less a prisoner in her own home all of her life, Rosalind didn’t completely understand the feelings of wanting to catch up with the brown wulf in spite of his rebuff.

Seconds ticked past as she stood there, longing to give chase. Her legs trembled with the desire to move. Her dark muzzle quirked at the thought of werewolves having one-night stands in public spaces, and how that would go down.

So, which way to go? Back to her father, or after the rude brown Were?

With a glance over her shoulder toward the Landaus’ walled border in the distance, Rosalind straightened to her full five-foot-five-inch height. Her black pelt—thick, rich, shining like polished obsidian in the moonlight—reflected the bright look of rebelliousness in her amber-green eyes as she made her decision.

* * *

As Colton had feared, the five-hundred block of Baker Street crawled with people. Too many people gumming up a crime scene always made a bad situation worse.

He hit the side of a building hard with his left shoulder to shock his wulf side back to reality. Closing his eyes, blowing out a breath, he willed his beast into the background and corralled it with a word of promise. Later.

The reversal of his shift was equally as hard on his body, but one hell of a lot quicker. Everything rearranged with a soft snapping of ligament and bone. On human legs, Colton cut a path through the hordes of neighbors out in full force behind fluttering expanses of yellow crime tape. But after those few moments of letting the beast out, the sensory bombardment of being near to all these human bodies weighed him down. Fresh from his run, his thermostat had yet to settle. He was damp with perspiration and needed about ten more deep breaths in a quiet place where he could fully recover before showing himself—a luxury he didn’t have.