“And the kiss?”
“I told you—it wasn’t working. We mate for life, Debbie. One partner for life. Some of us have marriage licenses to prove to the human world we’re together with regard to property ownership and for the children’s sakes. If something untoward happened to the parents, the pack would raise the pups. You understand we’re all in this together? We take care of each other’s kids. Love them like our own. It’s just part of our wolf nature. Our wolf half dictates we stay with one partner until death. Some take a new mate after that. Some never do. We do take mating seriously.”
“Mating.”
“It means courtship between our kind and then consummating the relationship. Once that’s done, there’s no annulment. No divorce. Normally, our instincts drive us to find the perfect mate. So once we find the mate we want to be with for life, we’re good after that.”
“So you’re saying we’re already mated?” Debbie asked, sounding and looking mortified.
“No. You weren’t one of us before—a lupus garou, a wolf shifter. That part of us compels us to find a mate and to stay with him or her for life.”
“Okay, so let me get this straight. Since you can’t mate with humans, it’s perfectly fine to fool around with them whenever you want? But you could never make a commitment?”
“Right. Although we don’t ‘fool around’ as much as we want. We’re not dogs.”
“Dogs originated from wolves,” she said.
“There’s a big difference between dogs and wolves. Dogs don’t mate for life. They…cat around. Wolves stick with their mate and they help to raise the pups. All of the pack does.”
“Except when it comes to one of you taking up with a human,” she reminded him.
He let out his breath. “All right. I see I’m not going to win this debate. Suffice it to say we aren’t mated. Yet. And it’s your choice. No one would ever force you to mate someone against your will.”
“That’s a cheerful thought. Okay, so when can I be on my own again?”
This was the part he really didn’t want to have to explain. “Maybe a year, maybe more. It depends on how long it takes you to get your shifting under control and other things.”
“Holy cow. No way.” She paced around the room. “And what other things?”
“For some, it’s not easy becoming one of us, personality-wise. Specifically, if the newly turned wolf is wolfishly aggressive and gets himself into trouble over it.”
“Because newly turned wolves in jail during the full moon could cause real problems, I gather.”
“Exactly.”
“So you haven’t found the wolf of your dreams and that’s why you’re not mated already?” She lifted a brow.
He nodded.
Then she frowned at him. “But I wouldn’t have been the right one for you, since I was human.”
“I agree. But at least for me, the mating instinct cut through the division between our species. Anyway, for the most part, you won’t see a lot of differences in the way you are as opposed to the way you were before.”
“Right.” She stiffened in his arms and pulled away, turning the burner to medium heat to cook the sausages. “Being a wolf all night is no big deal.”
“Well, sure, that is a big deal. And that’s the part that will be the greatest issue to handle. You won’t have a lot of control over when you shift, particularly around the phase of the full moon. It will get better over the years, but I won’t pretend it won’t be troublesome in the beginning.”
With fork in hand, she turned to stare at Allan. “What do you mean by particularly around the full moon? Don’t tell me we can turn anytime during the month. The werewolf stories all say when the full moon is out, they have no control over it. Nothing about any other time of the month. I figured they had been based on all of you.”
“That’s fiction. There’s only one wolf I know of who writes werewolf stories, though she changes them up a bit. For the most part, she shows them for what they truly are.”
“Who?”
“Julia Wildthorn. She’s now mated to a Highland wolf. I only know about her because my sister and Lori are avid fans of hers. I think any wolf is, because they know she’s one of them.”
“They have them in the Highlands too?” Debbie took a deep breath. “I’ll have to look her up. Maybe I can learn something about all of this.”
“Her stories are fiction too. They’re all about hot and sexy wolves in romance novels, so you can’t put a whole lot of stock in them.”
She considered his abs and her mouth curved up a little bit. He probably should have worn a robe.
“I guess I should have dressed for breakfast.”
“You were worried about me. And for your information, if God forbid I turn into a wolf and have to pee, you better not put a collar on me. I don’t plan to run anywhere.” She glanced down at Allan’s boxers. “I don’t usually serve breakfast to half-naked men, but since I was sleeping naked with you this morning, it’s a little too late to worry about such things.”
“You were wearing a wolf coat. That doesn’t count as being naked.” He wondered what she would have done if she had woken up as a human, nestled against him and wearing nary a strip of clothes.
“Says you.”
He stared at her for a moment, then slugged down his coffee and offered to refill their mugs. “Where the hell was I when all this happened?” How the hell had he slept through that?
“Don’t worry. It won’t happen again.”
Well, that was a crying shame. He swore if she ever joined him in bed like that again as a wolf, he was staying awake the whole night. Not that he could do anything more than tuck her under the covers and fold her in his arms. But naked when she was now one of them? Hot damn, yeah.
Getting his mind back on the business of teaching her about their kind, he said, “Wolves that have genes going back several generations can shift at will, even during the new moon. That means several generations were pure lupus garous, no human mix. If a wolf has a parent that had been turned and one that was born a lupus garou, the wolf offspring won’t change during the new moon, whether he or she wants to or not. Well, any new wolf, like yourself, won’t either.”
“Great. So only during the phase of the new moon do I get to pretend I’m human and won’t have to worry about shifting at the wrong time, like in front of the world.”
“Right. That means a week of no difficulty at all. As we get closer to the full moon, the pull to be a wolf is stronger, and it’s strongest the night of the full moon.”
“Great.” She scrambled the eggs in the frying pan. “And there’s no cure for it.”
He sighed. “We don’t have a virus or an infection. And we’re not cursed. You’re one of us until the end. The good news is you’ll be able to smell, hear, and see better anytime, not just when you’re in your wolf form.”
“That could help with investigations if I was able to conduct them any longer,” she said dryly.
“We can do night dives. During the week of the new moon, no trouble at all. We can check areas out at night otherwise. As a wolf, you’ll be able to see better at night.” He glanced at the kitchen light and realized it wasn’t on. And it was still dark at this hour.
Her gaze followed his. “I guess that saves on electricity.”
“Some. We still turn on the lights when it’s pitch-black out.”
“I’m not done being angry about this. I should have had some say.” She served up the sausages and eggs.
He hurried to set the table. “And what would you have said? It was too late to ask. You were in bad shape.”
“Dead or near death, you mean? What if I hadn’t seen Tara shift? Or thought it was just my imagination?”
“Like you said, you were doing poorly. No way would you have been making eggs and sausage this morning. You could have had
serious and permanent heart damage after what you went through. Health-wise, you might never have been the same.”
“Like no longer being as physically active?”
“Right. As a wolf last night, you were raring to go. If you had been strictly human, you would have had months of recuperation and rehabilitation.”
They sat down to eat and she let out her breath. “Okay, I get it. But I still don’t have to like this wolf part of me.” She picked up her fork and pointed it at him. “I’m not dating you or any other wolf.”
“You can’t go out with humans.”
“Just for sex? No commitment?” She snorted.
“All right, you’ve got me there. But only once you’ve been a wolf for several months and only during the new moon.”
“Like that would ever happen now. What a disaster. Not that sex with a human is high on my list of priorities.” Then she looked up from her dish and asked, “Is Rowdy one of you?”
“No.”
“I thought maybe because of all his talk about werewolves, he might be one.”
“If you notice, we don’t talk about werewolves in general unless drawn into a discussion about them.”
“True. So how can you tell if he’s one or not?”
“We would smell the wolf on him.”
Her mouth gaped a little, and then she nodded. “Okay. Getting used to all of this.” Then she poked at her eggs. “What if I was injured and ended up in a real hospital?”
“The clinic is like a real hospital, scaled down in size.”
“Right. But you know what I mean. If a real—if a human doctor had to take my blood, wouldn’t that show that I was a…well, mix of wolf and human?”
“No. Our entire system is either wolf or human, not a mix of the two. So if someone draws your blood as a wolf, they’ll be looking at pure wolf DNA.”
“So when Rowdy said he asked to check Sarah for wolf DNA, they wouldn’t have found any.” She relaxed a little, and he was glad some of his answers seemed to put her at ease.
“Correct.”
Then she stiffened again and frowned at him. “Did Rose have her babies as…babies or wolf pups?”
Allan smiled a little. “Frankly, I wasn’t in the birthing room at the time. You’d have to ask her.”
Debbie’s eyes widened. “She might have had them as pups?”
“Only if she’d shifted into a wolf first,” he hurried to say. This was going to be so much harder to explain than he ever thought possible.
“Oh.”
Again, the tension slipped from her expression, and he thought she might be okay with that.
“We need to learn who the shooter was who nearly killed me. And who nearly murdered Tara,” Debbie finally said.
Allan didn’t say anything, just watched her, wondering if she knew what she was saying. Someone who got rid of the werewolf kind had to be good in her world, because he and his kind were all mad wolves—according to Debbie.
She finally made an annoyed face at him, wrinkling her nose, and said, “All right. Yes, I can see what you’re thinking. I would now praise the man for what he did because I’d realize he wasn’t a nutcase after all. But I can see your point. Tara’s done nothing wrong, has she? She hasn’t killed any people and that’s why he’s after her, right?”
“As a wolf, have you killed any people lately?”
Debbie frowned at him. “Of course not.”
“Do you have any urge to kill humans? Or anyone else, other than me?”
She closed her gaping mouth, her eyes tearing up, and her cheeks coloring a little with embarrassment. “No.”
He felt bad, but he had to break through all this crap she’d learned over the years about evil werewolves in fiction. “Well, there you go. You’re as wild as they get because you haven’t learned how to control your more primal wolf instincts, and you didn’t want to kill anyone. For the most part.”
“You have me all locked up in the cabin. What if I felt differently once you set me free?” She glanced out the window at the vista. Before he could respond, she added, “By the way, it’s beautiful up here, like being on top of the world with a view of the lake and mountains. I really do love it here. Just not the confinement.”
“I really appreciate the cabin and its location when I return home from missions. Lots of solitude and wildlife. Nature at its finest. Plus, I can run when I want without having trouble with neighbors or others catching sight of me. As to the confinement, it wouldn’t be safe running off on your own. Not when you don’t have control over the shifting. If you were on your own, what do you think would happen? You couldn’t even go out to get groceries without worrying you were going to shift. You’d have no one to run errands for you until you can get this under control.”
“I don’t plan on running. I’m not stupid.”
“No, you’re not. But you did try to at your place.”
“That was different. I thought you were going to bite me.”
He smiled.
“You know what I mean. That you were going to turn me into one of your own kind. But then I took a bath and shifted. At that point, I knew I really had no choice.”
“As to your point about killing someone, your human personality dictates what your wolf half does. Some of our wolf half is instinctual: protective of pack mates or others, being wary and curious, but our human half still dictates much of what we do.”
She sighed. “Okay, no, I didn’t feel like going out on a hunt and eating rabbits, deer, or any men last night. Not even you. I was just…angry when I jumped at you, all snarly and growly, and I’m really sorry. What did you expect? I’m normally not like that.”
“I know you aren’t. You were just upset about everything that had happened to you and acting on instinct. If you’d really wanted to bite me, you would have. Even though you might think I was keeping you from hurting me, you were a lot stronger than that. You were holding back.”
“I was exhausted.”
“Even an exhausted wolf could have injured me in a major way. Granted, some wolves are nasty. It’s the human half that makes them so. Just like humans are good and bad. So sometimes we have to eliminate them. We can’t go to jail so we take care of our own kind.”
Her mouth was gaping again. Allan supposed it was a lot to take in at once. He needed to shut up and let her eat, and they could talk about nicer things for a change.
“So…you don’t want to date me,” he said.
She started to eat her breakfast and drank some of her coffee. “You know how I said I wasn’t exactly a morning person?”
“Okay, so you don’t want to discuss this first thing in the morning.”
“Allan, no, there’s no way I’m dating you.”
“But you would have until this happened, right?”
She finished up her food and took her plate to the kitchen.
He scarfed the rest of his breakfast down. “Okay, no dating.” But she was living with him, and that was even better. Dating was overrated.
“You don’t mean it,” she said, cleaning up, but he took the pan she was going to wash away from her. She smiled at him, just a little. “Don’t think washing the pots and pans is going to change my mind.”
“Hadn’t even considered it.” She would learn that he was always like that with the dishes. When his mother or sister cooked, he always did the dishes, his thanks for someone else cooking. But if Debbie thought he was trying to win her favor, then he was all for it.
Chapter 17
Debbie was certain the wolf standing next to her, scrubbing away at the scrambled eggs left on the frying pan, had every intention of dating her. He just thought he was going to give her time to get used to the idea. She had news for him. She was never mating any wolf. Ever. Mating for life? No way.
Her neat, orderly little life had been shot to hell
when she turned into a werewolf. What did he call them? Lupus garous? Fancy name for a horror-flick creature.
No, she hadn’t come to grips with being a werewolf. And no, she didn’t think she ever could. The whole notion was so unreal. She kept thinking she’d wake up and the nightmare would end. But this was it. Her real life now.
She didn’t see herself as the beautiful wolf he probably saw, but as a scary, snarling, growling, furry, biting predator.
She glanced at him. They didn’t do it wolf style, did they? Ewww.
“What?” he said, not even looking up at her as he finished washing the frying pan. “Don’t hesitate to ask whatever’s on your mind. You need to know everything, but there will be things you’ll think of that I won’t. You can ask any of us anything you’d like.”
“Do you…have sex as wolves?” She figured he’d either laugh at her or say yes, and she didn’t know which would be worse.
“No. At least no one I know does. Humans get a lot more enjoyment out of the act. For wolves, there’s a courtship phase and they are protective of each other, but it’s just not the same with them when it comes to mating. It has more to do with the procreation of the species. They’re innately wired that way, and only the alpha pair will have pups. That’s to ensure the whole wolf pack has enough to eat and the rest of the wolves help to take care of the pups. Too many pups and yearlings would spell disaster for the whole pack. As humans, we have the human perspective. We have a mix of alphas and betas in a pack. Most of us end up pairing up with a mate and mating for life. We have our own kids, but all the pack members are eager to look after them.”
“How will I know who is in the pack?”
“We’ll provide you with a list. Also, when you meet them, you’ll now be able to smell their wolf scent and know they’re one of us. Of course, if you worked with wolves at a wolf center, you could smell like one, but it wouldn’t mean that you were one. Out here, yeah.”
Then she thought of the earlier rescue they’d made and how she had thought Allan’s request so odd, and now she wondered…
She frowned at him. “When we rescued Franny and her baby, you told me to cancel the one ambulance and call for another. I couldn’t understand because it could have meant precious minutes were wasted. Then they took her to the clinic where Tara and I were seen. Don’t tell me that she and her baby are werewolves?”