Page 20 of What a Wolf Wants
“Noah Westmoreland? He and I broke up about a month before I moved out here.” Then she changed the subject. “Do you think you’ll miss your job? The excitement? Taking down the bad guys? Making it safer for the innocents?”
“Maybe to some extent. But it’s time for me to start a new phase of my life. I needed to retire before I started just shooting these guys and asking questions later. They’re bad news and rarely give up without them shooting at us. We located three hundred weapons in one guy’s house.”
“Who would need that many weapons for any reason?”
“Exactly.”
“What did you like about your old job?”
“I liked helping victims, getting the bad guys behind bars, and providing some closure to families. Though in my own experience, you never really find closure.”
“I imagine so.”
Then he finally pulled into her driveway, and they gotout of the car and went inside the house. “Back to Renault… Would he have sent you the flowers?”
“Maybe. He was always nice to me when he came to see Noah so they could get together to shoot pool or something. Noah didn’t seem to notice or care.”
“Noah would have noticed,” Ethan assured her. As wolves, they smelled the interest people had in each other and if Renault was showing Charlene that he liked her, he was smelling like it too.
“You’re probably right.” She locked her door and unlocked the wolf door. “Feel free to take any of the rooms to shift in.”
He began stripping right then and there. He was a wolf after all, and he was interested in Charlene. He wasn’t shy about stripping and shifting in front of any wolves and he wanted her to know that.
She gave him a crooked little smile and then stripped off her clothes nearby, laying them on a chair, then shifting into her beautiful red-wolf form. Since she had done that earlier and bitten him, he already knew what she looked like as a wolf. For shifters, it was just as important to like the appearance of their wild animal form as it was to like their human physique.
Then he shifted into his wolf, and she smiled. It appeared he’d passed the test. She poked her head out the door to the back patio, making sure the coast was clear, and then pushed the rest of the way through. She waited for him to follow her out of the house, and then she preceded him into the woods.
***
Douglas fir and hemlock trees filled the forest, making a canopy that was catching a light rain. Charlene had smelled rain in the air, and now a misty fog covered the ground. Sword ferns, vine maple, and wild rhododendrons covered the forest floor. It was perfect for wolves to disappear into the vegetation if anyone was on a nearby hiking trail. But this late at night, no one was out there anyway. They listened for sounds of anyone, just in case. Frogs were croaking, bugs singing to each other, the waves coming in, splashing against the rocks down below, an owl hooting in a tree off in the distance and another returning the conversation, but the place was devoid of any human dialogue.
She was glad that they could run as wolves like this without fear of being shot at. Dinner had been grand, and she was so glad that Ethan and she had connected in this way. She knew if he was still working for the DEA in Portland, they would have had the obstacle of living too far away from each other. But here? Who knew?
Her undercoat of fur was keeping her dry, in addition to the canopy overhead, but she was surprised to see it raining. She hadn’t thought they would get any for another couple of days. The fog rising from the ground really made it seem like a mystical, fairy woodland, something from out of the medieval past. Running as wolves made her feel more connected to the land and that past.
Ethan was following her from a short distance behind, marking this ashisterritory all over the place. She wanted to laugh if she could have. She knew it was an instinctual part of their wolf behavior, but she wouldn’t give into it whileshe was running with another wolf. When she was out here alone, sure, to let other animals know that a wolf was on the prowl.
She smelled the ocean, the rain, the scent of Douglas firs, and a bunny rabbit that had scurried off through the brush in a hurry. She spied a red deer farther away in the woods, and when it saw her coming, it bounded away. Glancing back to see if Ethan had seen it, she realized he was no longer behind her. Then she heard movement coming through the underbrush to her left, and for a moment she was afraid it was a wild boar. She turned to see Ethan and she smiled and shook her head. He nuzzled her face in greeting, a few tendrils of black coastal huckleberry and red huckleberry threaded through his fur. She thought it was too funny.
When he shifted, they wouldn’t need to pull the thorny plants off him. They would just drop all over her floor. That gave her an idea. Maybe she and he could pick berries sometime and make jam together. That would be awesome, if he was willing to do that. Tart Oregon grapes were out here too but they wouldn’t be ripe until the fall, and they could make that into jam later on. The more she did with him, the more she saw other possibilities.
They heard a coyote howl and others followed suit. She hadn’t planned to howl, but she figured now was the time to show she had a wolf pack out here. Two wolves made up a pack, though she’d never thought she would be thinking she would be part of a wolf pack that would include the wolf she had bitten!
She howled then and Ethan quickly joined her in herwolf’s serenade. She thought they sounded beautiful together. She licked his face, and he nuzzled her neck, then licked her face too. Then together as one, they howled, sending their wolves’ verse dancing through the forest, the coyotes now silent.Good.Hopefully they had chased them away.
Then she and Ethan turned around and headed back to the house. What a delightful night to run as wolves…and with a companion? Even better. Especially when she heard the coyotes howling. She suspected it might be a good idea if the two of them ran together anytime they wanted to take a run on the wild side and not on their own.
They made a dash for the patio that was covered, protecting them from the downpour, now that the trees didn’t provide them with cover. Then she went through the wolf door first and Ethan followed her.
She shifted and got them some bath towels because although their bodies were dry, their legs and faces weren’t. “Did you have fun running through the berry bushes?”
He chuckled as he dried off and then began pulling on his boxer briefs. “I thought I smelled a coyote or heard one so I headed in his direction to chase him off. The next thing I knew, I was in a thicket of thorny huckleberry shrubs.” He picked up the thorns, stems, and berries he had dropped on the floor when he shifted, since the plants didn’t have his fur to hold onto any longer. He found her trash can in the kitchen and threw everything out but the berries. He set those on the counter.
“If you would like, we could pick berries sometime and make jam out of them.”
“I was hoping you would say that.”
She laughed. “Right.”
