Unable to sleep, Clara quietly slipped on her boots, then rummaged through her bag until she found her camera and pulled it out. Camera in hand, she grabbed a flashlight and a small tripod, then headed outside. She set everything down on the ground and stretched, smelling the crisp, pine-filled air. She loved it out here.
She set up her tripod, set her camera on it, and angled it at the sky. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well take some pictures of the stars with the pines reaching up to touch them.
Then she heard the sound of a small dog whimpering. Thinking a puppy had found its way to their campsite, she grabbed her flashlight and turned it toward the woods. Maybe it had smelled the hot dogs they’d cooked over the campfire earlier. They had seen other canoeists and hikers with dogs, so maybe someone was camping nearby.
Clara didn’t see anything at first, just the glow of the moon and the stars scattered across the darkness in a beautiful, sparkling array. Then she heard movement in the brush, and she shined the flashlight on the bushes. A fluffy, white puppy with huge feet stared back at her. She loved animals and knew how to interact with them so she didn’t scare them off so watched him while he observed her.
“What are you doing out here?” she whispered to him. They couldn’t leave a puppy in the wilderness to fend for itself. He looked about five or six months old, so not old enough to take care of himself.
He finally approached the campfire and smelled the ashes where the juices from the hot dogs had dripped into the fire.
“You look like you could use a little meat on your bones.” Clara walked over to the tree where they’d secured their food up high to keep it away from bears and other wild animals. She pulled down one of the secure bags and rifled through it for a package of beef jerky, keeping an eye on the young dog the whole time. He seemed so well behaved, sitting like an obedience-trained pup, though he wore no collar. But it made her think he’d gone exploring and the smell of food had brought him here.
She held out a piece of beef jerky to him, though in retrospect, she realized she should have tossed it to him no matter how well behaved he seemed. She hadn’t thought she’d have any trouble with him. She was wrong. He was so hungry that he grabbed the jerky, biting her fingers. He only cut the skin a bit, making her bleed, but he could have injured her badly. She cried out, and he stared at her for a moment. Then, as if he knew he was a bad dog, he tore off into the woods, the beef jerky firmly secured between his jaws, and was gone.
Furious with herself for not being more careful, Clara still felt bad about the puppy, knowing he was hungry. She had to put the food away and take care of her injury. Trying not to hurt her bitten hand, though any movement was painful, she tied the food bag high up in the tree again. She considered leaving more beef jerky out for him, but it might attract bears.
Then she wondered if maybe the puppy was what had been following them all along and that’s why she kept feeling like they were being watched. With flashlight in hand, she tried to locate the puppy, but she couldn’t find any sign of him. She didn’t want to travel too far from camp either. She could just imagine losing her way on top of being bitten!
Her hand was throbbing like crazy, and she finally gave up the search. After returning to the tent, she found the first aid kit and camp lantern and carried them outside so she didn’t disturb Eleanor and Melanie, who were still curled up in their bags sleeping soundly. Clara assumed the puppy would return for more beef jerky if he got hungry. They could work on locating his owners if they could coax him to come with them.
By the light of the lantern and her flashlight propped up against the log she was sitting on, she poured antiseptic on the wounds. The stinging and burning was like a million jellyfish tentacles ripping through her nerve endings, and she clenched her teeth to avoid crying out. The notion that being in the woods like this could increase her chances of the wound becoming infected made her curse her foolhardiness all over again. Then she had an awful thought… What if the puppy was carrying rabies?
Hoping she hadn’t made the worst mistake of her life, Clara bandaged her fingers and turned off the lantern. She made two trips to carry everything she’d brought out back to the tent. Making sure everything was secure so no one would trip over it if someone got up before she did, she returned to her sleeping bag and zipped it up to her chin. Her injured fingers throbbed like hell. Now she really couldn’t sleep.
A couple of hours later, she suddenly felt her muscles twitching and her whole body heating—like she was running a fever. Damn it! She was so hot that she wanted to yank off her clothes.
She fought the urge to strip naked, but she was burning up and feeling so weird that she finally unzipped her sleeping bag and started to strip off her sweats and socks, as if her brain was telling her she needed to cool down before the fever consumed her.
For an instant, everything seemed to blur, and she realized she could see some light in the tent, when before she couldn’t without her flashlight. Was the sun already rising? Great, and she hadn’t had any sleep. Yet she was no longer hot.
She meant to reach for her flashlight, but what she saw made her want to scream out in terror. But the sound wouldn’t come at all. She couldn’t grab her flashlight. Her arm had turned into a white dog’s leg. Ohmigod, she was hallucinating!
She ran out of the tent and stood by the fire ring. Looking down at herself in the full moonlight, all she saw was one big, white dog with a fluffy white tail. What. The. Hell.
Yet, despite the fact that the experience felt real, she knew she had to be hallucinating. She smelled the sharpness of the fragrances: the pines and firs, the scent of the river nearby, the strong aroma of food—their food. She could smell the ashes in the fire ring, the drippings of the fish they’d cooked for lunch, and the hot dogs and marshmallows too.
The sounds were startling: the movement of the leaves and swaying pine branches; the hooting of the owl, which seemed clearer, closer; the running of the river over stones, the water dipping and rising again as if she could “see” the movement.
When she reached the river, wanting to take a drink—which, in her right mind, she would never have done without purifying the water first—she saw the most beautiful white wolf drinking at the edge on the opposite bank.
Her jaw dropped. Wolf, not dog.
Which immediately made her think of the white puppy. And the howl she had heard.
She frowned. How could the puppy have gotten across the river if it had been with this wolf? And what in the world were Arctic wolves doing in Minnesota? They didn’t have them here, did they?
The wolf rose to its full height, and she didn’t think it was a female. Not as big as he was. Beautiful, white fur all fluffed out like he’d had a shampoo and a blow-dry treatment.
She realized he was looking at her. Staring like she was staring at him. This could be a really bad thing. If this was real.
She tore off and heard him howl, the most beautiful howl she’d ever heard. More wolves howled in response from farther away, and she figured a whole pack of them would race after her next.
The next thing she remembered was climbing into her sleeping bag and she was out like the proverbial light.
* * *
When Clara woke in her sleeping bag the next morning, she recalled the most bizarre dream she’d ever experienced. Her fingers felt fine. Had she even been bitten? Had the wolf pup even come into camp last night? Or had she imagined the whole thing? Why hadn’t she taken a picture of the pup? She’d never managed to take a picture of the stars either.
She glanced at her sweats lying next to the sleeping bag, realizing she really had stripped naked. Her hand was still bandaged, which proved she had been bitten. Yet her fingers didn’t hurt. Not even a tiny bit.
Everyone had already gotten up and was making breakfast—oatmeal and coffee. She could smell the meal as if she was sitting fireside. She could hear the crackling of the burning firewood and her friends commenting that they’d never seen her sleep so long
in the morning, although they were talking softly so they wouldn’t disturb her sleep.
She pulled off the bandages, intending to show her friends what had happened to her last night, to explain why she’d been sleeping like the dead after the wild hallucinations she’d had. But her hand didn’t have a mark on it. That was way too weird.
She could understand being so hot last night in the sleeping bag that she’d taken off her sweats, but bandaging her hand over an imaginary bite wound? She still recalled how painful it had been when she’d poured the antiseptic over the injuries.
If nothing more, she had one hell of a tale to tell everyone over breakfast. She tied her hair back in a ponytail like she always did before she hiked, thinking she needed to cut it shorter so it wasn’t always whipping around in her face. Then she quickly dressed. When she left the tent to join her friends at the campfire, she knew they’d give her grief for being the last one up.
Mainly since she usually gave them grief because she always started the fire in the morning and always told them they waited until they smelled the coffee before they rolled out of their sleeping bags. She couldn’t believe she’d slept in either.
“Here’s Sleeping Beauty,” Fisher said. “You always beat us out here, so what happened? I was expecting my cocoa latte, but all I woke to were cold ashes.”
“Well, I had one crazy night.” Clara got her coffee, sat down on a log next to the fire, and told them what had happened to her: the puppy bite, dreaming she’d shifted, seeing a white wolf across the river.
Everyone was smiling at her.
“I tripped over her sweats this morning, so she was naked in her sleeping bag last night,” Eleanor said.
The guys smiled, and Clara felt her cheeks flush with heat. She hadn’t meant to tell anyone she really had stripped naked.
Then Fisher very seriously said, “Hell, Clara, they were werewolves, and now you’re one.”
“So you shifted and it knocked the mahogany coloring out of your hair?” Eleanor asked. “I didn’t even know you were a true redhead until now.”
Melanie nodded. “I love your natural color.”
Thinking her friends were teasing her, Clara untied her hair and looked at the silky strands in the early-morning light. The vibrant cinnamon color of her natural hair was back. Her jaw hung agape.
“I thought the coloring you used was hair dye,” Eleanor said. “That it couldn’t be washed out. You had to grow your hair out or color it with something else. When in the world did you change it?”
Eleanor was correct. Clara had dyed her hair a darker color—brown with a hint of red—to add drama to her hair. Were her eyebrows also the lighter red again? She couldn’t believe it, yet she had the proof right between her fingers.
* * *
After a day of hiking and pitching tents for the camp before dusk, they prepared dinner, but the topic of conversation returned to the werewolf business.
“We really should post guards to watch Clara’s behavior,” Fisher joked.
She snorted.
“If she’s running around naked at night, I volunteer for first watch,” Charles said and winked at her.
“Very funny.” Tonight, Clara was sleeping normally and would be the first one up, just like usual. She looked up at the moon, and it was as full and bright as last night.
Everyone was talking about their walk and canoe trip tomorrow, but Clara couldn’t shake the feeling that what she had done last night—all of it—had been real.
They all finally went to bed, and thank God, she drifted off right away. Until she felt the urge to pull off her sweats. And lost the battle. She was running as a white wolf…again.
Terrified, she realized the truth. She wasn’t dreaming. She wasn’t hallucinating. Fisher was right, even though he’d only been joking.
The wolf puppy that had bitten her hadn’t been a full-blooded wolf at all. He’d been a werewolf.
And her life was spinning out of control.
Chapter 1
Nearly Christmas, two years later
Owen Nottingham, Arctic wolf and private investigator, had made daily treks into the wilderness ever since he’d seen the white wolf across the river. He knew she had to be an Arctic lupus garou just like him. But the fact she was running with humans had to mean she had lots more control over her shifting or she couldn’t be with them on a long-term hiking and canoeing trip. Maybe she’d been born as a lupus garou. Maybe her wolf roots went so far back that she was a royal and completely in control of her shifting at all times.
One thing was for certain—she wasn’t one of the Arctic wolves who had changed him and his friends. He would never forget that day five years ago when he and his PI partner David Davis were hunting for bear in Maine, never having come close to finding one in the five years they’d been trying. They’d spotted a bear, and the hunt was on. Never in a million years would he or David have thought his good friend would end up having a heart attack.
Nor that the Arctic wolves the guide had on the hunt weren’t all wolf and that they were all from the same lupus garou pack. Neither the guide nor Owen could do anything to save David’s life way out in the woods. Owen had been willing to pay any price to save his friend. Whatever it cost. He’d envisioned the guide calling in a helicopter and air evacuating David to a hospital.
Owen had to admit that he’d agreed to it. Anything. Like making a pact with a devil wolf. The wolves wouldn’t have bitten them if he hadn’t asked for the guide’s help. Owen hadn’t known what was going on at the time. Only that the wolves had bitten both of them—David, to give him their enhanced healing abilities to repair his heart, and Owen, because he couldn’t witness what they were without paying the consequences. Which meant becoming one of them or dying.
After that, the pack took them in. They had to because David and Owen had no control over the shifting, but they were captives just the same, until one of the pack members had helped them to escape. So Owen knew all of the members of that pack. Those were the only Arctic wolves he’d ever met, beyond his own small pack.
More than anything in the world, he wanted to find her. Wanted to get to know her. Locating her could mean finding a mate for either him or one of his bachelor male partners in the PI agency. He still envisioned her standing near the river’s edge—half hidden in the brush, watching him, wide-eyed—and wondered where the hell she’d come from. He knew she’d been a she because she was smaller than the males. She had to be a shifter. Arctic wolves didn’t live in this part of the country.
Still, he’d tried to locate her after that, to no avail. She and her friends had taken a canoe trip after a few days, and he never knew what had become of her. He wasn’t even sure which of the women she’d been.
He was afraid he’d be looking for her until he was old and gray and might never see her again.
Owen opened up the new PI office that morning in White River Falls, Minnesota, the Christmas wreath jingling on the door. He was eager to make a go of a brick-and-mortar business again after seven years of working online, unable to set up a real office.
None of the other investigators believed they’d get a call first thing that morning, so they were coming in a little later. He finished hanging his sign on his door and stringing more Christmas lights on the miniature tree in his office. The whole pack—three bachelor males, and one couple and their two sons and a daughter—had decorated the seven-foot tree in the lobby so it looked cheery and welcoming sitting next to one of the front windows.
When Owen had settled down at his desk with a cup of coffee and a Christmas tree–decorated donut, he began checking his emails. He had only read one when he got the call that would be the first job they received at the office. He was enthusiastic about solving the missing person’s case promptly, hoping for their first good review.
* * *
Ever since that day in the woods, Clara Hart had been a very different person, her whole world turned inside out. Her friends were no longer her friends, and h
er adoptive parents had disowned her. She’d changed her name to her pseudonym, Candice Mayfair. She’d moved from the suburbs of Houston to the wilderness in South Dakota. It was beautiful, perfect for her to run free and be herself. Or rather—her other self. The wolf part of her that howled to be free, especially during the occurrence of the full moon. But at other times too, except during the new moon. She’d finally realized this by keeping a calendar of the moon phases at hand at all times to document the trouble she was having with fighting the urge to shift. She’d also purchased dozens of books about werewolves that definitely were not written by real werewolves.
She finished hanging her Christmas wreath on the door, placed a Christmas throw rug she had hooked on the kitchen floor, and added a few more nutcrackers on the mantel. She’d set up her Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving as she’d always done. At least that was something that hadn’t changed. Though last Thanksgiving, she’d had to wait until she turned back into her human form to finish decorating.
After two years, she had finally come to grips with what she was. That she wasn’t going to suddenly be her normal self again. She’d sometimes dreamed she was, but then she’d get the urge to shift and that shattered the illusion.
She suspected everyone she’d known thought she’d gotten into drugs or alcohol, because she’d disappeared from their lives. At first, she’d given excuses for why she couldn’t see them. But then she realized she had to isolate herself from anyone she’d known in the past. They didn’t understand what was wrong with her. And she couldn’t explain.
Drinking didn’t stop her from shifting either. She’d learned that the hard way. Being tipsy just made it harder to remove her clothes and shift, which meant she was caught in her clothes as a wolf for several hours one night, thankfully in her own home. So, no more drinking to try to control the shift. She’d also had the uncontrollable urge to howl sometimes when she ran as a wolf, and she was certain that would be a disaster. What if a wolf pack responded? She could be in real trouble.