something special and so much more than the reputation that preceded her.
He just couldn’t put a finger on how he knew this.
As his body shuddered with a mixture of appreciation and wariness for this new opponent, Jonas spoke softly so that Tess wouldn’t be able to hear what he had to say.
“Possibly that’s your greatest asset in dealing with my kind? We tend to underestimate you after a first glance? Pretty girl all alone in the woods?”
Inwardly, he also added, I vow not to become one of the suckers overly intrigued by those things. All I have to do is stay out of your way and hope you can determine friend from foe.
He prayed that Tess Owens might turn out to be an ask-questions-first kind of predator, just like he was. But this wasn’t the time for introductions and more wayward thoughts having to do with Tess’s tight jeans. Any hunter with a rep like hers wouldn’t let a full moon go to waste. Tess Owens would make the most of tonight and come knocking at his door fully armed and ready to rumble.
He had to keep her from doing so.
“I’m not what you think I am, Tess. I’m here, not to mess with you, but to protect a secret of my own. I’m needed. Someone else’s life depends on what happens here and what I do, and you just need to stay out of my way for a while.”
Did she get those confidences sent across the distance separating them? Jonas watched her turn her head as if she might have. He also felt a pull from somewhere behind him, an indication that he had to get back to his temporary home.
Having an Owens next door was one strike against him. The other creature that was looking for him was far worse.
Death was coming and would find him eventually. The black-cloaked, soul-catching bastard was the greater opponent, the mightier threat, and the monster he needed to keep at bay. Besides himself, there was only one member of the Dale family left, and his sister’s life depended on his ability to protect her. That had become his goal in life.
The bad news was the wave of aggression coming from Tess Owens and the silent words he swore he heard slip from her lips.
“It’s a date, wolf. Tonight. Don’t be late.”
At this point, so early in their association, probably nothing he could have said in return would have changed her mind.
Tess paced the room as night began to descend. Wearing leather pants, a black shirt and black boots, she took a quick look in the mirror to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything that might make the difference between life and death when dealing with a werewolf.
She looked good enough, Tess thought, though people in town stared at her for other reasons when they met her. More than one of them had probably wondered where she might have gotten so many of the scars that crisscrossed the side of her face.
“Will he keep our date? What do you think, Tess?” she asked herself as she strode down the hallway of the cozy, eight-room, wood-paneled cabin.
Determined to find out the answer to that question, Tess entered the weapons room and chose a knife with a gleaming silver blade. She slung the bow and quiver of arrows over her shoulder, adjusting easily to the added weight, then rolled her neck to ease the tension building there.
Gloves on, weaponed up, she walked out of the front door. After giving the cabin a last glance, she set her sights on the trees and slipped into the dark.
* * *
“It’s okay.”
Jonas spoke softly to his sister, though he wasn’t sure how much of what he said ever sank in. There hadn’t been a verbal response from her since she had been attacked in a Miami park not too far from where they had lived.
Gwendolyn Dale had grown frail and lethargic on the outside—the parts others saw if they looked. He hoped the darkness he now sensed inside his sister would eventually fade away and be replaced by the happy-go-lucky sister he had always loved.
Sometimes, though, he wasn’t so sure about the darkness’s staying power.
Jonas tended to believe the attack in Miami had left Gwen with a black spot on her soul, and that she had been marked by Death in some way. This had to be the reason there seemed to be a specter on her trail. He thought it likely that his sister wasn’t supposed to have survived that attack, and that she had been slated, fated, or whatever the hell happened in the big cosmic scheme of things, to have died that night in Miami.
In the end though, what did he really know about such things? His entire repertoire of ideas was based on nothing more than conjecture and supposition.
“I have to go out, Gwen. Just for a while.”
Jonas laid a hand on his sister’s shoulder and winced at its thinness.
“I’ll be back soon, so take care while I’m gone and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Gwen would have laughed at the last part of that statement if she had been with him mentally as well as physically. Out of everyone else around them, his younger sister had been the most like him. She had been developing a similar kind of power and strength, even though neither of those things had helped the night she slipped out of the house with her friends without telling anyone and had encountered true darkness.
Gwen had been the only victim left alive out of the four young girls...if the term being alive could describe the state they had found her in. It had taken weeks of seclusion for her to recover enough to move her to this remote location. She hadn’t said a word to anyone since that terrible night.
Gwen was haunted. He knew that. She grew paler day by day and seldom ventured outside. Jonas wanted to believe she understood every word he said now, even as he could see her slipping further and further away.
“Your new companion will be here tomorrow,” he said lightly. “You probably need a female around. I think you’ll like her. She’ll stay for most of the day and go home before sundown. You know why she can’t stay here after dark settles in. That’s my shift. If you like her, we can see about having her spend more time here.”
Gwen’s pale blue eyes stared up at him as if she had heard him this time. She offered nothing in the way of facial expression.
“Right, then,” Jonas said. “I’m off to meet our neighbor. She sent me an invitation.”
In the old days, Gwen would have pleaded to go along. But even before her accident, she hadn’t yet been in full possession of the kind of skills that could have helped against things like experienced wolf hunters. It wouldn’t have been long, though, before his sister would have outshone every other Were in the area.
Gwen was an anomaly within an anomaly. A special being within the Were species. He wasn’t sure if she knew this.
“Wish me luck.” Jonas leaned over to place a kiss on his sister’s forehead and then headed out, knowing his meeting with Tess Owens couldn’t be postponed.
Keeping beneath the shadows of tree cover didn’t isolate him completely from the moon’s effects. Dappled light on his shoulders instigated sparks from nerves that buzzed, snapped and roused the wolf nestled inside him. His claws had appeared. Both shoulders ached. This was all part of the deal when the moon issued a come-hither.
After covering another acre of rocky, forested hillside, he got his first good impression of what was coming his way. Tess’s scent was in the air—that same mixture of smoke and flowers that had led him to her earlier.
The scent grew stronger as he walked. So did the moonlight. Jonas resisted the urge to shape-shift. Tess was here, just ahead, waiting for him. She had met him midway between the two cabins, which probably meant she knew where he was staying.
Tess Owens stood near a large rock pile at the crest of the hill overlooking