Moon Called

I didn't realize he was a werewolf at first. My nose isn't at its best when surrounded by axle grease and burnt oil, and it's not like there are a lot of stray werewolves running around. So when a boy made a polite noise near my feet, I thought he was just another customer. He was gaunt and shivering, his clothes ripped and stained with old blood. Under the dirt and sweat was the distinctive musk-and-mint scent of werewolf. “I was wondering if you had some work I could do?” he asked, his voice hesitant. It was against my policy to hire someone off the books, but watching his slow shivers, there was only one answer I could give. I sent him to the shower with a ham sandwich and a promise of a few hours' work. I am a walker, a coyote shapeshifter, and I know better than to get involved with werewolves. Their pack instincts are inconvenient, and the young ones have little control. But he was just a boy, and that roused other, stronger instincts in me.

My neighbor, Adam Hauptman, is the Alpha of the local werewolf pack. He doesn't like having my old single-wide trailer bringing down the property value of his sprawling adobe mansion, and he takes every opportunity to remind me that I am only here on his sufferance. I found my cat, Medea, in a carrier on my porch with a note taped to the top. *PLEASE KEEP YOUR FELINE OFF MY PROPERTY,* it read in heavy block letters. *IF I SEE IT AGAIN, I WILL EAT IT.* The cat smelled of him, which meant he'd spent some time with her on his lap before bringing her over. It was his way of reminding me of the hierarchy, of the power he held. It was also why I couldn't bring the new werewolf, Mac, home with me. A strange wolf in an Alpha's territory without permission is a dead wolf.

Mac came back to the shop the next day, and we fell into a companionable silence working on an old Beetle. I overheard him on the phone, a hushed, desperate conversation. “I don't remember anything after we left the dance,” he said. “I don't know what killed her or why it didn't kill me.” It was the classic, tragic story of a first Change gone wrong. That night, I returned to the garage to retrieve my purse and found him cornered in the parking lot by two men - one human, one a twitchy, moonstruck werewolf. “She kept you here for us,” the human lied, trying to turn Mac against me. “She's one of us, kid.” They wanted him back in their cages, back on their drugs. They said they were trying to find a cure for his “curse.”

I shifted into my coyote form, fast and silent, and launched myself from the roof of a van onto the werewolf's back. My teeth tore into his throat, and blood spurted. It should have been a minor wound for a werewolf, something that would heal in minutes, but he was too caught up in the chase to stop the bleeding. He pursued me through the darkened industrial park, tearing through chain-link fences, until he collapsed in the street and bled out. I had never killed anyone before. The taste of his blood in my mouth made me sick, and I vomited beside his body until there was nothing left.

Mac told me everything then, huddled in the garage beside the dead wolf's half-changed body. He'd been attacked, turned, and then sold by the Chicago Alpha to a group that kept him in a cage, experimenting on him with drugs that shouldn't have worked on a werewolf. When Adam arrived, summoned by my terse phone call, the garage crackled with his power and rage. “You didn't inform me that you had a strange wolf on your doorstep?” he growled. The scent of fresh blood and the presence of a new, untaught wolf pushed Mac over the edge. He became possessive, feral, wrapping himself around my leg and claiming me as his. “Mine,” he growled at Adam. It took a crowbar to his collarbone to break his grip, and only then could Adam assert his dominance and help the boy shift into his wolf form to heal.

The next morning, I woke to a familiar scent on my porch: death. Mac lay there, his body still warm, dumped like a warning. I raced to Adam's house, my rifle in hand, and found a scene of carnage. The living room was destroyed, the front window shattered, and two dead werewolves lay among the wreckage. I found Adam in the dining room, his silver wolf form barely recognizable beneath the blood and gore. He was gutted, a rib bone showing white through a gaping wound. As I stood over his still body, I realized his daughter, Jesse, was gone. I couldn't trust his pack - not knowing if one of them was a traitor - so I loaded Adam's broken body and Mac's corpse into my van and drove through the snow-swept mountains of Montana, heading for the only one who could help: the Marrok, the werewolf who rules all of North America.

It was in the heart of the Marrok's territory, surrounded by the wolves I grew up with, that the truth began to unravel. The man behind the attacks was Gerry Wallace, a wolf from the Marrok's own pack. His father, a gentle veterinarian, was a newly turned wolf who couldn't reconcile his healer's soul with the predator he'd become. Gerry, twisted by a desperate love, believed that only a true battle for survival could force his father to embrace the wolf and save himself. His plan was to make his father believe that Adam had been murdered by the Marrok, forcing a challenge that his father would surely lose - but not before the fight unified his fractured spirit. Adam, Jesse, and Mac were all just pawns in his tragic, misguided scheme.

The final confrontation took place at an abandoned tree farm. Gerry had Adam and Jesse held in a warehouse, guarded by a mix of lone wolves and mercenaries. With the help of David Christiansen, Adam's old army friend who Gerry had foolishly recruited, we staged a rescue. But Gerry had an alliance with a powerful witch, who unleashed a death spell aimed at Adam. I threw myself in its path, the magic searing through me, whispering Adam's name, then my own. It was Samuel, the Marrok's son, who saved me, shattering the spell. In the aftermath, surrounded by a pack of subdued wolves, Adam and Samuel confronted Gerry. With his plan in ruins, he confessed everything before Samuel delivered a swift, merciful death.

In the end, Jesse was safe. Adam, healing and whole, walked me to my door, and under the light of a nearly full moon, kissed me with an intensity that left no doubt about his intentions. But when my door opened, Samuel was standing there, a cup of cocoa in his hand and a challenging smile on his face. He had decided to stay, to leave the Marrok's pack and live as a lone wolf in my territory. One overbearing, hot-tempered Alpha was complicated enough. Two was just asking for trouble.