Frostbitten Read online

  The wind shifted and I caught a whiff of Reese, his scent heavy with fear. It wasn't me he should be afraid of, though, but his old traveling buddies.

  Liam and Ramon had killed three humans in South Carolina and set up Reese to take the fall. Now they were hoping to find and kill him before I got his side of the story.

  How was I so sure of this?

  Because they'd done it before. Five years ago they'd befriended a twenty-three-year-old immigrant werewolf named Yuli Etxeberria. When evidence of man-killing pointed to Etxeberria, Clay had wanted to swoop in and grab him. I'd held back. I'd been suspicious, but not suspicious enough. Liam killed Etxeberria and mailed us his hand, as if expecting a commendation for taking care of this "man-eater."

  That wouldn't happen this time. I strode down the grassy strip between the building and the parking lot, as if I was scanning that lot, giving Reese the perfect ambush target.

  When I reached the recessed doorway, I dove. Reese's shadow passed over me, pouncing and catching only air. I leapt up, grabbed the back of his jacket and threw him onto the grass.

  He landed with a thud. He tried to roll out of it and bounce up swinging, but a twenty-year-old with a werewolf's strength and agility is like a twenty-year-old behind the wheel of a Lamborghini--all that power but not enough experience using it--and he fumbled the bounce back to his feet.

  I tossed him face-first onto the grass again. This time he stayed where he landed.

  "Where did we leave off?" I said. "Right. Liam and Ramon and their plot to end your existence."

  "Kill me?" He slowly rose. "Why would they--?"

  He charged, hoping to catch me off guard. I stepped aside and he smacked into the wall, then wheeled fast and came at me again. Again, I stepped aside, this time grabbing him and pitching him through the air.

  As he hit the ground, he let out a stream of profanity.

  I shook my head. "If I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn't be throwing you on the grass, would I?"

  "Right, you're here to help me, after getting tipped off that I'm a man-eater. Do you really expect me to--"

  He tried the dash-in-midsentence trick again, making a break for the alley. I tore after him. As I caught the back of his jacket, he spun and hit me with an upper cut that sent me sailing off my feet.

  I kept my grip on his coat, and we both went down. I tried to scramble up, but he pinned me. It was then that his wolf brain kicked in. His pupils dilated, his breathing quickened, his erection pressed into my thigh, his wolf side telling him this wasn't a fight--it was foreplay, and damn, I smelled good.

  He froze as the still-human part of his brain warned him that what the wolf wanted was a very bad idea. But his nostrils still flared, drinking in my scent.

  I knew which side would win, and that's when things always got ugly.

  So while he fought his inner battle, I heaved him off me.

  "That's why I don't do hand-to-hand combat with mutts," I said.

  He nodded as he got to his feet, rubbing his face briskly with his sleeve, gaze down, cheeks flaming. He pinched his nose and shook his head, trying to clear my scent.

  It took a smart kid to back off that fast. And Reese was smart--that was the problem. If he'd been a dumb lunk who'd keep trying to hump my leg, then he'd have believed me when I said I was here to rescue him. Instead, he saw all the ways it could be a trick.

  "Liam and Ramon are after you," I said. "You haven't noticed because they aren't nearly as good at tracking as I am. Give them a few weeks to catch up and--"

  He charged, switching to the dash-while-your-opponent-is-in-midspeech tactic. Again, I sidestepped. Only this time, he hooked the back of my knee. I stumbled, but came up swinging. Unfortunately, he was already ten feet away, running for the road.

  I took off after him.

  FLIGHT

  I LOST HIM. The condensed version is that Reese Williams possessed an admirable blend of intelligence and humility, and I was accustomed to dealing with mutts who'd sooner cut off their balls than run from a woman.

  Reese did exactly what I'd have done if pursued through a city core by a more experienced werewolf. He ran for the nearest populated place--a busy restaurant. While I waited at the back door, he must have darted out the front and swiped someone's cab. By the time I realized he was gone, it was too late to follow.

  Now, an hour later, I was in a cab of my own, getting out at the Pittsburgh International Airport.

  What led me here wasn't good old-fashioned legwork. Ever since the werewolves rejoined the supernatural council, our mutt tracking has gone high tech. We now have Paige Winterbourne, genius computer hacker, at our disposal.

  We knew Reese had been using stolen credit cards, alternating between at least three. Paige had identified two and was tracking transactions.

  I didn't even get a chance to tell her I'd lost him before she was calling to say he'd used a credit card at the airport. As for where he was going, that proved more problematic. Paige had access to all the major airline computers, but this was a small one she hadn't ever needed to crack. So I was back to leg and nose work.

  "You're booked on a flight to Miami," Jeremy said as I got out of the cab, cell phone to my ear. "That will get you through security. But from the sounds of it, you've delivered your message. If he's refusing to listen, I'm not sure what you plan to do about that."

  "I want to tell him what happened to Yuli Etxeberria. If that doesn't work, I'll hog-tie him and haul his ass someplace safe until he smartens up."

  Silence as I walked through the doors. It lasted so long that with anyone else I'd have wondered if the line disconnected.

  "You don't need to keep chasing him, Elena."

  "Just one more day. The kids are okay, aren't they?"

  "Yes, they're fine. Clay called an hour ago. His last meeting was canceled, so he can help with Reese."

  "Great. He can catch up with me tomorrow, after he stops in there and sees the kids."

  "While I'm sure he'd love to see them, right now he wants to get to you. As soon as you figure out where you're going, he'll meet up with you."

  I didn't argue. It'd been two weeks since I'd seen Clay--longer than we'd been apart in years. I was so accustomed to having him around that for two weeks I'd been unbalanced and off-kilter. And when it came to hunting Reese without my partner, I'd definitely been off my game.

  "Etxeberria wasn't your fault, Elena," Jeremy said.

  Ah, right to the crux of the matter, as usual.

  "One more day," I said. "Just give me--"

  "I'll give you all the time you need. You know that. Then once you're done, take an extra night with Clay before you come back."

  WE HADN'T INTENDED to be apart so long. For Clay, even separate day trips were too much. That's the wolf in him, wanting his mate nearby at all times. Most werewolves inherit the genes and don't transform until their late teens, but Clay was bitten as a child, and that makes him more wolf than human.

  Our separation had begun with a work trip for me that lasted longer than expected. In the meantime, Clay had left for Atlanta. I was supposed to stop overnight at home, then follow. Only that night, our darling three-year-old twins thought I'd gone out back for a "walk in the forest" and decided to follow... by jumping out a second-floor window.

  While adult werewolves have superhuman strength and reflexes, and could easily make that leap, we don't get those secondary powers until puberty. As for whether those rules apply to the offspring of two werewolves, let's just say we're starting to think they don't. The kids escaped with minor injuries: a twisted ankle for Logan and a sprained wrist for Kate, which meant no Atlanta trip for me.

  Thus the two-week separation, now thankfully almost at an end.

  SOME AIRPORTS ARE perfect for losing a tail. Take Minneapolis. With its endless corridors of shops and restaurants it rivals the nearby Mall of America as a hellhole for the directionally challenged. Pittsburgh was not one of those airports.

  By the time I entered the term
inal, Reese had checked in and headed for his gate, but there wasn't far for him to go. I picked up my ticket and got my boarding pass. Two sets of escalators deposited travelers in a tiny presecurity square, bounded by a few shops. Reese's trail headed straight for the security checkpoint.

  Once I was inside and off yet another escalator, it got trickier. I was in a rotunda of shops and restaurants with four arms leading to boarding gates. Still, the tidy layout meant there were a limited number of places for him to go. Even if I couldn't find his trail, I just needed to check all four halls and--

  "Paging Chris Parker. Chris Parker, please report to gate C56."

  I smiled. Parker was one of the aliases Reese was using.

  When I got to the gate, though, the waiting area was empty, the plane already loaded. Reese was at the counter, showing his boarding pass and ID to the attendant. She was taking a good look at them, and he was struggling to stay calm, shifting and glancing around.

  I shouldered my way through a throng checking the departure screens, then broke into a fast walk. The attendant was saying something to Reese. Questioning his fake ID? It looked a little off, didn't it? Better hold him for another minute, get someone to come and check it...

  With a smile, she handed back his ID and boarding pass. Reese started down the long hall to his plane. I picked up my pace, but by the time I neared the desk, he was gone.

  Gone where?

  I glanced at the screen behind the attendant. It seemed to be stuck on the flight number and departure time, so I asked where the plane was headed.

  "Anchorage." She blinded me with a smile. "Anchorage, Alaska."

  MULTITASKING

  "SO I'VE HIT the end of the line," I said to Jeremy as I settled into a seat. "As badly as I want to warn this kid, I'm not flying to Alaska. Hopefully, Liam and Ramon feel the same way."

  "I'm sure they will."

  I expected to hear his usual deep timbre of reassurance. Instead, his words carried a note of hesitation.

  "You think they'll track him to Alaska?" I asked.

  "No, I'm quite certain they won't. However, a trip to Anchorage might not be a bad idea, if you and Clay are up to it."

  "Whatever you need. What's up in Alas--?" I stopped. "Those reports of wolf kills, right?"

  One of my Pack responsibilities was tracking potential werewolf activity. Jeremy monitored newspapers and I took the Internet. This case had shown up in both.

  Two men had presumably been killed by wolves outside Anchorage. That was newsworthy because, despite their reputation as dangerous beasts, wolves don't kill people. In North America there have been no documented cases of healthy wild wolves killing humans in the last hundred years. So when it seemed to happen, people got nervous. And we got really nervous because the one thing far more common than wolf attacks was werewolf attacks.

  Two reports weren't enough for the Pack to investigate. And there were other recent reports of equally rare wolf activity--wolves attacking dogs and people spotting wolves near the city. If the wolves near Anchorage were getting bolder, then it stood to reason they might actually be responsible for these deaths.

  But if I had another reason to go to Alaska...

  "I can check it out while I hunt down Reese," I said.

  "I'll reroute Clay there." A pause. "There's something else, too. Dennis was supposed to call me last week. He wanted to discuss something that seemed important."

  "And he didn't?"

  "No, and he's not returning my calls either."

  Dennis Stillwell and his son, Joey, were former Pack werewolves who'd left for western Canada when Jeremy and his father's battle for Alphahood had turned ugly. They'd later moved to Alaska. That was thirty years ago, before I joined the Pack, but Jeremy and Dennis had kept in touch, and this silence probably bothered Jeremy more than the wolf kills.

  "I'm off to Alaska, then," I said. "Should I call Clay and let him know?"

  "I'll do that, and I'll book you a flight. You get something to eat. Try to relax."

  UNFORTUNATELY, THERE WASN'T a lot of demand for travel from Pittsburgh to Anchorage, and the flight Reese had taken was the only direct one for the next twenty-four hours. So I was transferring in Phoenix.

  The flight and the brief layover gave me time to think--too much time. In the last week, I'd been hit with two things that I really wanted to talk to Clay about. Things that weren't suitable for a phone conversation. Things that preyed on my mind every time I slowed down long enough to relax, which was likely another reason I kept chasing Reese when common sense told me to give up.

  The first thing... well, that worried me, but it didn't have the same effect as the second. The second was the kicker, the one that had me avoiding quiet moments like this. It happened the day before I started chasing Reese. After the kids went to bed, Jeremy and I had been in the study, relaxing in front of the fire. He'd been reading a novel; I'd been reading my mail, which tended to pile up, untouched, for days.

  Had I known who sent the letter, I'd have pitched it into the fire unread. But it had gone through my alma mater, so it had arrived in a University of Toronto envelope. I hadn't noticed the second envelope inside, distractedly ripping through both.

  It was a letter from one of the men who'd fostered me as a child. I don't call him my foster father. That would give him a place in my life he didn't deserve.

  I'd gone through a lot of homes after my parents died. I think when potential mothers saw me--the quiet girl with big, haunted eyes--they saw not a temporary placement, but a child they could rescue and make their own, and when I didn't open up to them, when I didn't become the perfect, sweet daughter they wanted, they gave me back.

  Being blond and blue-eyed meant I also attracted attention of a less altruistic kind from a few foster "fathers" and "brothers." Most times it was no more than a peek in the bathroom or a hand that lingered too long on my leg. But sometimes it was worse, especially from the man who sent me the letter.

  In it, he said he was going through therapy now for his problem. He was sorry for what he'd done to me and his therapist thought that as part of the healing process, he should let me know. Apologize and ask forgiveness.

  I'd gotten up from the couch, walked to the fireplace and dropped the letter in. Jeremy had looked up from his book with a soft "Elena?" but I'd strode from the room before he could ask anything.

  I wish I could say that was that. God, I wish I could say it. But it wasn't, and the one person I could have talked to wasn't there, so the letter--every damned word of it--festered in my brain. Before I read it, I'd been off-kilter with Clay gone. Afterward, I seemed to stumble half blind through my days, ferociously fixated on whatever goal I was pursuing, be it making breakfast for the kids or chasing Reese, not daring to rest, knowing rest only brought back memories and fears and rage I thought long since vanquished.

  Not vanquished, it seems. Just shoved into willful forgetfulness. And now it was back, and I couldn't forget, no matter how hard I tried.

  I was just settling into the second plane, about to turn off my cell phone when it rang.

  "Morning, darling," came a familiar southern drawl.

  I straightened. "Hey, you. I hear we're going to Alaska."

  "We are. Looking forward to it?"

  "I'm not arguing the order, that's for sure. Now we just need to get the business part of the trip out of the way, so we can take advantage of the locale. Miles and miles of unexplored wilderness. It'll definitely make up for two weeks of short, crappy runs alone."

  "So that's what you want me back for? A running partner?"

  "Of course. What else?"

  "I can think of a few things." Clay's drawl turned to a low growl that set me shivering. "If you can work it into your busy run schedule."

  "I'm sure I can. Before the runs. After the runs. Any other time we get a spare minute..."

  He laughed. "You do miss me."

  "I do."

  A moment of silence. "Just a sec. I think we had a bad connection.
I could have sworn you admitted--"

  "I miss you. Horribly. I can't wait to see you."

  "They're serving the booze already, aren't they?"

  "Ha-ha. Keep that up and I'll never say it again."

  "The question is whether you'd say it if I was there."

  "No, because if you were here, I'd be in your lap, wondering how we could slip into the bathroom."

  "Tease," he growled.

  My head shot up. I could have sworn I heard that growl... and not just through my phone. I scoured the aisle, but there were only a few passengers still boarding, none of them Clay. Still, I scanned the first-class section. No familiar blond curls peeked over any of the seats.

  "Elena?"

  "Sorry." I pushed back the stab of disappointment. "So when does your flight get in?"

  "Around eight."

  "I'll wait at the terminal for you, then."

  The attendants started making the preflight rounds. We said good-bye and I turned off my phone. As I settled into my seat, I fought off that lingering disappointment. It'd been so good to hear his voice that I'd even felt that slow wave of calm that comes whenever he enters a room, a deep instinct telling me I could relax now, that my mate was close.

  As I tucked my bag under the seat, I caught that feeling again and picked up a scent as familiar as my own. I twisted to see Clay looming over the back of my seat.

  "Can't fool you, can I?" he said.

  I grabbed him by the shirtfront, nearly yanking him over the seat as I pulled him into a kiss.

  "I definitely need to go away more often," he said as I let him go.

  "Absolutely not, unless it's a trip for two."

  "Agreed."

  He came around and took the seat beside mine. I should have wondered when Jeremy insisted on booking my flight, then said he could only get me into first class. Clay hates coach--can't stand being that close to strangers.

  "I believe I heard something about sitting on my lap--" he began.

  I shot onto it and was kissing him before he finished the sentence. His eyes widened before he recovered enough to kiss me back.

  To say I'm not one for public displays of affection is an understatement. But over the years I've come to care less about what strangers think, and Clay has made equal strides to care more... or at least learned to act as if he does. So I sat in his lap and kissed him, and he didn't snarl at the woman across the aisle when she started harrumphing and glowering, and all was good.