First Moon

Chapter One

Audrey

Audrey looked at all the blood spattering the driveway and tried to act like it was no big deal. No one else appeared green around the gills. She’d be damned if she was going to be the first person to puke her guts out at the crime scene. The police already made fun of the park rangers as it was.

Greenies they called them. Or treehuggers, if the cops were in a particularly bad mood.

Miss Levine? Sheriff Martin strode towards her, his uniform flexing over his powerful thighs. He had enough muscle to give him a natural swagger and the handsome looks that made women’s nether regions quiver at just the sight of him.

Audrey worked hard not to succumb. Sure, boyfriend pickings were slim out in rural Michigan, but she wasn’t his type, would never be his type. He liked tiny girls with giant fake boobs. Audrey had great boobs, thanks to very generous genetics. The problem? Her genes had been over generous every place else, too. So, she tried not to get caught up in lusting after the sheriff. It was never going to happen. Not unless she lost a gazillion pounds and magically became a size zero, while somehow maintaining her rack in the process.

Frankly, she liked ice cream way too much to even attempt that kind of weight loss.

The sheriff stood in front of her, his pecs impressive even through the khaki polyester of his uniform. Audrey caught herself staring at his chest and quickly looked away.

Thanks for coming out. His voice was a rough rumble, deep and masculine. The perfect voice to go with the perfect body.

I came as soon as I got your call. Is Bob, she stared helplessly at the blood again, really dead?

I’m afraid so. The sheriff looked grim. Some wild animal mauled him. He held up a plastic bag containing a cell phone. Red smeared the plastic. You were his last call.

Audrey swallowed hard. She’d wondered why they’d called her to the scene, and now it was starting to make sense. Bob told me he found something. He swore it was legit and wanted me to look at it.

Bob also thought there were aliens in Roswell, mermaids in the ocean, mind control drugs in the food supply, and that all politicians were corporate shills. Well, she had to concede maybe that last one had some truth to it.

Did he say what it was? The sheriff looked at her, his dark gaze curious.

Her eyes darted from side-to-side, taking in all the details of her surroundings. Deputies were unrolling crime scene tape, blocking off Bob’s front yard. Police and ambulance lights blinked red and blue. Then she caught sight of the front door and gasped. Deep, jagged marks had been carved into the old wood as if something had tried to claw its way inside. Something big by the looks of it.

The sheriff followed the direction of her gaze and cleared his throat. That’s one of the reasons we called you. We were hoping you could tell us what animal did that. His previous question was forgotten for the moment.

I-I don’t know, she whispered, putting a hand to her mouth. Northern Michigan had wolves, coyotes and black bears, but the spread of the claw marks on the door far exceeded that of any native predators. She held up her hand, splaying the fingers and calculated the claws that had tried to break into Bob’s house were triple the span of hers.

Preternaturally big.

Too big to be real.

Could Bob’s death have been staged?

The thought startled her. The old man had been the resident crackpot ever since she’d started working at the national park along the shores of Lake Michigan. He often showed up at her office yammering on about aliens in the sand dunes and shoving blurry pictures at her as proof. Never mind her job was wildlife management and rehabilitation, not legends and myths.

The sheriff watched her carefully. We thought maybe it could’ve been a bear.

Audrey considered the idea and then dismissed it with a shake of her head. No, bears around here are smaller than that. I think... she trailed off, uncertain as to whether or not she should speak her mind.

What? the sheriff prompted; his eyes dark as coal.

She took a deep breath. I think you should consider if there was a human behind it, hoping to make it look like an animal attack. I don’t know of any animal out here that big. It could be a set up, a false trail.

Sheriff Martin wrote something down in the black notebook he’d been cradling in his palm. I’ll make a note of it. He looked at her, his gaze as piercing as a hawk searching for prey. Did you know Bob well?

Audrey shook her head, the movement causing a strand of hair to slip free of her ponytail. Not really. He would come into the ranger station periodically talking about aliens or Sasquatch. She fiddled with her hair, tucking it behind her ear and hoping it would stay in place. Her strawberry blonde locks were notoriously difficult to contain. Naturally, they would act up in front of a hunkalicious police officer. So much for looking professional.

The sheriff’s lips twitched. Whether at the thought of Bob’s conspiracy theories or Audrey’s wayward hair, she couldn’t tell.

Regaining his composure, he said, Did he ever find any?

No, not as far as I know. She kept her head still, willing her hair to freeze too. One of her ex-boyfriends once told she looked messy and dowdy when her hair was out of control. The comment had left her paranoid.

The sheriff circled back around in his questioning. When you talked to him on the phone, did he say what he’d found this time?

They both glanced at the woods ringing Bob’s slumped, gray cottage. Was anything out there? Had one of Bob’s monsters come to life?

He said he caught a werewolf. She lowered her voice on that last word.

The sheriff rolled his eyes, but dutifully recorded her response in his notebook. Catching sight of the bandage on her forearm, he asked, What happened there?

She covered the bandage with her hand. I had a run-in with a wolf. The wolf won.

Tell me about it. It was a command, not a friendly request.

Audrey frowned, finding his interest in her injury odd. I was working on some habitat restoration and the wolf came from behind. He was huge and aggressive. She trembled to think of what would’ve happened if she’d been alone. The Sheriff would probably be out searching for her chewed up body instead of dealing with poor old Bob. Thankfully, my partner was with me and scared him off by firing his gun, but not before he took a chunk out of me. Since I’ve had all my shots... She gave a nervous laugh at the joke, but cut it short when the sheriff didn’t seem amused.

She cleared her throat. I only got a few stitches at the clinic in Glen Vine. Her job required her to be inoculated against rabies, which meant she didn’t have to do the full series of shots. The park station kept the booster on hand for just such an occasion; one quick needle jab and she’d been done.

When was this? The sheriff gave her a sharp look.

She blinked, stunned to realize he was suspicious. He didn’t seriously think she had murdered old Bob, did he? Sure, she was a big girl, but not big enough to take on Bob. The man had been well over six-feet tall with muscles hardened from all the hiking he did searching for evidence to support his latest whackadoo theory. Yesterday. I filled out a workman’s comp report and my partner witnessed the attack. She drew herself up to her full height and jutted her chin out, daring him to accuse her of murder.

Sheriff, bellowed a loud voice from inside Bob’s house. Get in here. You gotta see this.

Excuse me, Miss Levine. I’ll be right back. The sheriff strode off with a curt nod. Apparently, he wasn’t suspicious enough of her to stick around.

Audrey wrapped her arms around herself. Day was passing into dusk now and a pre-autumnal chill filled the air. August this far north meant the heat of summer during the day and the crisp cold of fall at night.

The idea of being outside after dark made her nervous. Normally, the biggest nighttime menaces were mosquitoes. Locals joked they were Michigan’s state bird; big and bloodthirsty enough to carry off babies. Now she wondered what else might be out there lurking in the shadows.

She shivered. Poor Bob. He’d been crazy, but he hadn’t deserved to die.

The sheriff appeared in the doorway. Miss Levine, would you come inside please? He waved her forward. I think we found something.

Audrey hesitated a second and then trudged into the house where the Sheriff led her through a dingy living room filled with old, sagging furniture and a pile of cryptozoology books on a battered coffee table. From there, they passed into a grimy kitchen with a sink full of dirty dishes, and out to the garage where the smell of feces and urine hit her nose.

She scanned the room for the source and found a large cage to the right. Inside laid a wolf, beautiful despite the filth he was trapped in. She guessed it was a he based on his size; females of most species always ran smaller than the males, and this wolf was not small. The wolf’s dark fur looked lush as black velvet. The animal looked at her with keen intelligence in his sky-blue eyes and whined softly.

Oh wow, she breathed. He was...she cast about for the right word and settled on majestic. She’d never seen a wolf like this. The blue eyes alone made him unique.

What is it? asked the sheriff, pen poised on his note pad, ready to write down anything she said.

This is not a wolf species I know. Northern Michigan had gray wolves, not midnight black ones. He was huge too, easily big as a Great Dane, but with a deeper chest. Bob had really found something this time. Not a werewolf, but something just as special.

Sheriff Martin nodded as he wrote on his pad. Is this the wolf that attacked you by chance?

Audrey shook her head. No. While the wolf that had bitten her had also been larger than normal, it had white fur that marked it as a probable albino. She frowned. What were two strange wolves doing up in the sand dunes of Michigan?

Should we put him down? asked one of the deputies, his hand going to his gun.

I’ll defer to the park system on that one, deputy. The sheriff nodded to Audrey. Miss Levine?

Audrey’s breath hitched at the idea of killing such a beautiful animal, but she couldn’t deny that the wolf probably should be put down. A large gash ran along his shoulder. It appeared to be healing, but the angry red color at the wound’s center meant he probably needed antibiotics. It wasn’t a fatal injury, but the state of Michigan didn’t rehabilitate wolves. Not anymore.

The wolf had come off the endangered species list a few years ago and now the state had so many wolves, the laws allowed them to be hunted.  No one wanted a mega pack like the one that hounded a Russian village a few years ago. Three hundred hungry wolves circling small Michigan towns would be a disaster.

She sighed and debated what to do. The caged wolf looked at her unblinking, as if trying to speak with his eyes. She imagined the message would be ‘save me.’ He would be easy prey in the wild, too weak to fend for himself with a festering wound. Putting him down would be a mercy.

At the same time, he was no ordinary wolf. In light of the wolf that’d attacked her earlier, she wanted to take this one back to the ranger station and see if she could figure out why these strange wolves were in the area. Then she could decide his fate properly. Maybe she could even take care of his wound so that he might one day be released in the wild again.

I’ll take him, she said with a firm nod. Her mind was made up. She would save this wolf and set him free.

***

Tao

Tao worked hard to look like a dumb animal as his fate was discussed amongst the authorities. Inwardly, he cursed the injury that kept him from shifting back into human form. Nick had caught him by surprise, the bastard. Worse, their fight had landed Tao in a crude pit trap and his current home, a large metal cage. Now his wound was healing slow enough to get him into serious trouble.

Nick might just kill him yet.

He could only hope the pretty girl who had come in with the sheriff would buy him some time. If he died, she would suffer too.

He’d smelled Nick’s essence in her skin even before he laid eyes on her. Judging from the bandage on her arm, he’d bitten her. If Tao didn’t get out of his current mess, there would be no one to stand between her and Nick come the full moon.

His nose also caught something else, a sweet scent that made him wanton bury his muzzle in the girl’s lap. It carried the flavor of strawberries mixed with the dryness of sand and the aroma of summer heat on sun kissed skin. He sniffed, savoring the smell, and a little tingle went through him as she filled his senses.

Tao’s eyes narrowed and he studied her through the bars on his cage. Anyone who hit his nose like that bore a closer look. She was tall with a softly rounded shape. Her drab uniform was ugly, but did a nice job of outlining her natural curves. Her light hair kept falling loose from its ponytail and she swept it out of her eyes with the faintest expression of frustration on her heart-shaped face. Humans wouldn’t have caught it, but Tao didn’t miss the emotional nuance.

As they spoke, his ears swiveled to home in on her voice. She spoke in a pleasant alto, the tone low and husky. When she looked at him, her eyes widened in awe and he could hear her pulse quicken, even from across the garage.

Tao found himself preening under her gaze, doing his best to attract her attention. He wanted her to like him, to let him get close so he could fill his lungs with her scent. She smelled so good.

It worried him how much he wanted her. His mother—may the moon shine bright on her soul—always used to say, Trouble starts with a smell. He’d found this to be particularly true when it came to women.

You’re not here to find a mate, Tao, he growled at himself. Don’t forget what happened the last time. His heart gave a little lurch. Love hadn’t been very kind to him lately. Sometimes he wondered if he would ever find a mate. His pack didn’t consider him to be prime mate material.

And this woman who smelled so good wasn’t even pack or a natural werewolf. She was wolf made. Worse, she’d been made by his pack’s number one enemy. Not exactly mating material, either.

Unfortunately, his nose begged to differ. As sensitive as the organ was, though, it had no common sense. It kept filling his head with bad ideas. Things like romance and wild lovemaking under a full moon. He wondered what it would be like to peel off her drab uniform and run his tongue over her generous body, to hear her scream as he took her. He almost groaned, but caught himself and quickly swallowed the sound.

Quit acting like a pup who’s smelled his first woman in heat.

The deputy offering to kill him brought a much needed dose of reality, enough to keep Tao’s nose in check. Barely. His focus returned to his present predicament, and with rising apprehension, he watched the deputy finger his gun.

Tao whined softly and blinked at the woman. She was the only person in the room who wasn’t a police officer. More importantly, she didn’t have a gun she was itching to shoot.

When she said, I’ll take him, joy leapt in Tao’s heart. His nose quivered and he gave a soft yip of excitement. No one noticed, which was a small blessing. There was nothing worse than a grown wolf acting like a lovesick puppy.

Down boy, Tao reprimanded himself. Remember the mission. I’m here to protect the pack, not roll in the hay.

His nose twitched as if to say, ‘We’ll see about that.’

Chapter Two

Audrey

Two deputies loaded the wolf’s cage into the back of Audrey’s blue Ford pick-up. As she pulled out of Bob’s driveway, she called the ranger station on her cell phone.

Josie answered with a bright, Hello. Michigan State Park Ranger Station. She’d just started working as a ranger a few months ago and found everything new and exciting. Some of the crew found her annoying as a result, but Audrey liked the reminder that she had a pretty cool job.

As she spoke, she navigated the smooth but winding roads of northern Michigan. Hey, Josie. It’s me, Audrey. I’ve got a wolf I’m bringing in.

Oh, no can do, Josie said. Jonathon put a black bear in the big kennel. Someone was taking pot shots at her. We just got her out of surgery.

Aw, nuts. Audrey smacked her steering wheel. Her office had limited space for animals, and with the one kennel big enough for the wolf being claimed by the bear, she was out of luck. She’d also been counting on the other rangers to help her lift the cage out of her truck. I guess I’ll take him home then for the night.

You don’t want to put him down? Josie asked, curious. It was common for the park service to terminate captured wolves because they were vector animals for rabies.