Kalen (3 page)

Sighing, Kalen knew what he must do. Since he had been the one to move her and carry her to the van, he must be the one who went back for her. With luck, she would at least recognize him as the man she’d sunk her teeth into.

“Get Alexander to drop you off in a deserted location and go after her. Her instincts will bring her back this way. I’ll leave here and head out to intercept her. Have Alexander give you a pack for your phone and clothes. You’ll need them when you find her.”

He hung up the phone and turned to Bastien. “You can’t afford to go back now. We’re too close to that nut. Keep going and I’ll head back to find her. Between Merrick and me, we should find her fast enough. They couldn’t have gotten far.” He checked his watch and shrugged. “It’s not hard to cover fifty or so miles and like I said, her instincts will lead her back here to her home.”

Bastien agreed with a nod. “Fine. Get yourself a pack and get going.”

“What if she doesn’t believe him?” Carly asked with a wry grin. “It’s not like this is something she’s prepared to take in stride. Remember, to her, this is going to be nothing but some horrible nightmare.” She turned her gaze on Kalen. “I remember how frightening and overwhelming this all is. Be gentle with her.”

Kalen glanced back at the woman who had been human and ignorant of all things paranormal until just a few short weeks ago. “I’ll try.” He got out of the van with his neck pack and frowned when he realized he meant what he said.

Thornton had just turned the poor woman’s life upside down. The least he could do was try to break it to her gently. She wasn’t a human anymore. The sooner she learned to face it, the better.

He watched as the convoy of vans pulled from the motel parking lot, then made his way across the street and into the woods. The woman’s scent was all over him, making his body demand things it shouldn’t. He hadn’t noticed what her delicate fragrance did to him until after he’d put her into the van and she left. It probably had something to do with his wrist. It throbbed for a good hour before his metabolism kicked in and healed the wound.

It was only after his wrist healed that Kalen noticed how being near her tantalizing scent made him feel. It seemed to wrap around his insides and squeeze. His balls ached more every time he drew breath into his lungs. It felt as though someone had put his scrotum in a vise and tightened it down every time he scented or thought about her, which had been nearly every moment since his wrist healed.

“I should have asked one of them to shoot me,” he complained as he started to undress in a small clearing. He folded his clothes into as small a bundle as he could and crammed them into the pack, then fastened it loosely about his neck.

If he had had one of them injure him, just a little, perhaps he would find a way to concentrate on locating the woman for the pack instead of finding her because she gave him a raging hard-on.

“It’s a damned shame when you contemplate having someone shoot you just so you can keep your mind off a woman.” He shook his head and prepared to change into his wolf.

How in the hell would he ever live it down if his brother found out about this? How many times had he ragged on Galen about sniffing after females? And here he was going in search for one who had bitten his wrist, her teeth sinking to the bone. Hell, from what he could see, she wasn’t even nice. He paused with a smile. She might not be nice, but she sure as hell was nice
looking
and she didn’t smell bad either.

Stooping low, he concentrated on the change. His bones popped and snapped as some shrank and others elongated. The short stubble on his chin turned to fur with the longer whiskers of his lupine self. Muscles grew smaller, more compact as he continued to concentrate on his other half until there was nothing left of him, but his wolf.

Kalen stuck his nose in the air and sniffed. He scented nothing yet, but then he hadn’t expected to. Turning East, he headed back toward Michigan and the woman he couldn’t seem to forget no matter how hard he tried.

One thing was certain. As soon as he found the woman, he was showering her smell from his body and taking the first mode of transportation away from her. She was dangerous to his bachelorhood. He could feel it.

Chapter Three

Ally ran through the woods as fast as she could. She stumbled over her feet at first, but as strange as it was, it didn’t take long to get used to running on four legs instead of two. She fought the urge to keep looking back. That was always the first mistake of women in trouble in the movies. They constantly looked back and usually ended up tripping over something in their hurry to escape whatever monster, or villain that chased them.

There was no way
she
would make that mistake. If someone followed her, it was best to keep looking forward while running as fast as she could away from them.

Low tree branches and brush slapped her face and eyes as she ran past. Her lungs ached with exertion and her legs felt like jelly. Still, she knew she must keep moving. There was no doubt in her mind that the others would follow her.

Where she headed was anyone’s guess. Ally hoped it was home. Now that she was an animal, wouldn’t she have an instinct for that sort of thing? Stopping near a stream to catch her breath, she eyed the water wistfully. She may be a dog, but she wasn’t thirsty enough to drink untested water.

Dream or not, reality or not, she had to have her standards. She trotted across the stream and scared a rabbit from its hiding place. The animal couldn’t know she wouldn’t eat it, no matter how hungry she was, or how tempted.

Ally dropped her clothes on top of pine needles and leaves, then plopped down to rest. She knew she couldn’t stay long, but the niggling pain she felt while she ran grew stronger. Her stomach cramped and her paws ached. No matter how badly she needed to run, Ally didn’t think she was going anywhere anytime soon.

If what she suspected was true, she was about to change back into a human and the only thing she had to wear were her practically non-existent panties and her waist length t-shirt. What a day to decide to stop wearing the big, baggy oversized shirts she loved. This was the last time she listened to advice from anyone concerning her wardrobe—that was for sure.

The cramps worsened. Ally curled up into a tight ball and whimpered. The pain of the last change was almost too much for her to bear. What if she fainted this time and lay here on the ground naked? She groaned again as the pain grew more intense. Even her hair follicles hurt.

It didn’t take much longer for Ally to begin to shift shape again. Like before, her jaws popped and cracked as they changed size. Fur that covered her body seemed to disappear back into her skin. Paws became hands as claws changed to fingernails once again.

The animal side of her whined and cried with the agony. When Ally finally regained her human vocal chords, she was unable to keep the scream of pain from bubbling from her lips.

Afraid to move for fear of causing herself more distress, Ally lay on the ground cold and panting for what seemed like hours. As soon as it was possible to breathe without pain, she donned her underwear and the t-shirt that barely covered her midriff and sat down on a nearby log. She tried not to think of how many bugs lived in the rotted wood. She only knew she needed to rest after her ordeal.

Taking a quick look around, Ally realized she had no idea where she was, or where to go. There was no way she could ever walk the several miles back home, even if she knew which direction to go. Dogs had thick pads on their paws.
She
had nothing more than her bare feet.

Ally looked over her shoulder in the direction the animal that somehow seemed a part of her now had headed. Perhaps that was the way home. Still, she wasn’t certain. What if she got even more lost once she abandoned this stream? Should she follow the water?

She bit her lip as she sat thinking. Ally had a feeling that home was just over her right shoulder, but what if she was wrong? Walking through the woods as a dog and striding through them half-naked as a human were two very different things.

“What now?” she asked herself as she rubbed her upper arms. The sun had begun to set and she had no way to keep warm. Ally shivered as the real possibility of freezing to death crossed her mind. If only she would have remained a dog for the night. At least
then
she had had a fur coat.

“Dang it all, Ally.” How many times had her neighbor, Milly told her to look before she leaped? If she’d thought of that, she might have just stayed where she was in the van, instead of running like a scared rabbit.

“You look like a girl who could use some help.”

The sound of the deep voice startled her and Ally turned with her hand to her throat. Two men stood side by side, fishing poles draped over their shoulders. Blond and bucktoothed, they both wore jeans and thick plaid jackets over their t-shirts. They looked like twins, but one was taller and thin. The shorter one was a bit on the stocky side. Along with his fishing pole, the tall man carried what looked like a bait bucket and a cooler. The short one held a string of fish that looked almost good enough to eat raw. Ally shuddered at the thought.

She leaned forward on the log, trying to cover up the fact that she was nearly half-naked and eyed their warm-looking coats.

“Along with some clothes,” the shorter one said with a leer.

For a minute, Ally wanted to bean him on the head for that look. At least she did until he propped his fishing rod against a tree and hung the fish precariously from a broken branch before removing his jacket.

“Here ya go, ma’am.” He handed her his coat, which fell nearly to Ally’s knees when she stood and slipped it on.

“Thank you.” Ally tried not to notice the strong smell of body odor that clung to the jacket. At least she was warmer. Her feet were still bare, but she didn’t expect the men to give up their footwear. Even if they had, it would have been way too big for her anyway.

She inhaled again and fought a grimace. For some reason, it seemed as though all smells were stronger today. It must have something to do with her animal side. She’d given up trying to convince herself that this was some sort of bad dream.
Nightmare is more like it.
Either way, no matter how impossible it was, what had happened to her seemed real—too real to continue to try to pass it off as something in her imagination. Her imagination was
never
that vivid.

“Are ya lost?” The taller one didn’t appear to have all of his sandwiches in his picnic. He was kind of cute in a strange, bucktoothed sort of way.

His brother, on the other hand, knew which way the geese flew and kept looking at her as though she was a piece of meat. She didn’t like it, or him, but she was cold and lost. What choice did she have but to follow them at least long enough to warm up again?

“I’m Billy,” the tall mentally challenged one said, holding out his hand. He nodded toward his companion. “That’s my brother Bobby.”

Ally refrained from touching him. Something about them made her skin crawl, whether it was their strong odor, or the way they looked, she wasn’t certain. All she knew was that she didn’t want to touch either of them and she had to get away from them as fast as she could.

Something also told her if she changed in front of these two, they would kill her, skin her, then stuff her to hang on their wall as a conversation piece.

“My name is Alice,” she lied. The last thing she wanted was for them to know her real name. At least with the
Al
sound at the beginning, she might remember to answer to it. She held the coat out away from her for a minute, hoping some of the smell would waft off it. “And thanks for the use of your coat. It was very kind.”

Bobby shrugged. “‘Taint nothin’ ma’am. I was hot in it anyways.”

“Still…” She smiled in an effort to make it look like she didn’t notice the gawd-awful smell that permeated the thing. “It was kind of you.”

Bobby grabbed his fishing pole and the string of fish and turned to his brother. “Come on, ya nit. We need to get home before dark.”

Ally looked up toward the ever-darkening sky. If they could get home before dark, then it meant that they didn’t live far from here. She had to do something to get away from them. Somehow, some new animal instinct told her that if she stepped one foot inside their home, she would never leave alive.

* * * *

Kalen ran through the woods as fast as he could. He didn’t know why, but something told him the woman was in danger. He knew why they seemed tied together. She’d bitten him. Hard. Her new canines had sunk down to the bone and that small exchange of saliva to bone tied them together.

The only other way to form such a tie was with a mate. He wasn’t ready for that. He had a lot of wild oats left to sow. The last thing he wanted was a woman around mucking things up. Despite what he wanted, they were connected now and there was nothing he could do about it but bitch and…what was the point in that?

He continued to run to the east as fast as he could. The sound of his paws hitting the ground and his claws digging into the earth for traction was the only noise in the quiet of the still forest. Smaller creatures knew there was a predator in their midst and kept to the brush, their little hearts drumming with terror.

The last thing on Kalen’s mind was hunting the small rodents hiding in the brush. The uneasy feeling in his gut had set him on much larger prey. Fear spiraled in his stomach as he felt the woman’s discomfort. Two men approached her. They both scared and repulsed her, yet she felt resigned to following them. He must be close if he could feel her emotions, her repugnance at having to associate with the men she didn’t want to be with.

Kalen slowed his pace to a trot when the roof of a little cabin came into view. A small spiral of smoke rose from the chimney, giving evidence of a fire, long since ignored. He circled the shack, listening for inhabitants. When he heard none, he went back the way he came and shifted into his human form.

If the men didn’t carry guns, there was sure to be one in the cabin. He must intercept them before they could enter the abode. If they did carry guns, he would leave and call the others in. He wasn’t stupid. One shifter against two humans with guns was not good odds.