Operation Wolf Rescue Read online

  For a moment, she wasn't sure he’d heard her. Then he stumbled towards the station wagon, hauling himself in. He was big enough to give her a pause even as she slammed the door behind him, and then they were in the darkness, alone with a crate of puppies and the storm.

  “It's fine, they're gone. I scared them off,” he said finally, his voice hoarse, and briefly there was a flash of green, incandescent and glowing, as he turned to face her.

  Must be some reflection from a streetlight , her brain said practically, despite the fact there was no easy source of light nearby. Has to be.

  The rest of her had stopped entirely, staring at the soaked man in a plaid shirt and jeans who crouched in the corner of her station wagon. Her heart beat like a drum, sending a shudder through the rest of her body she couldn't understand. For a single moment, she was possessed by the ridiculous but incredibly strong urge to seize this man by the hair and drag him to her for a kiss.

  “Where in the world have you been?” she asked instead, and the sound of her own voice, longing and excited and so happy, made her shake her head. “Ha, no, sorry-”

  “Mostly in western Colorado,” the man said, his voice hushed. “Helped out with some forestry initiatives while I was in my twenties. I've been on the family ranch for the last ten years or so. And where have you been?”

  Pearl laughed, shaking her head, oddly giddy, glad this man was rolling along with how downright weird she was being.

  “Boulder for a while, and then back here for the last four years. Sorry. The feral dogs spooked me, and –”

  “And the pups. Yeah, I heard.”

  The man turned to the crate of puppies pushed against the front seat. Their ear-piercing yips had died down, and now they crowded to the front of the crate to sniff at the man's fingers.

  “Heya, kids,” he said quietly. “You're all right. You're safe. It's all good.”

  The puppies whimpered at his words, pawing at his fingers, and something about the man's slow and easy motions and the gentleness in his tone made Pearl's heart ache.

  No, do not trust this man because the puppies like them. They're just barely more than a month old, they're brand-new to the world. What do they know?

  They knew they liked the stranger, however, and she sighed.

  “What's your story?” she asked, and he looked over at her. In the dim light, it was hard to get a good look at his face, but there was something intense in it, something that grabbed her attention and refused to let it go. The more she looked at him, the more she wanted to look, and somehow, she knew that the strange, powerful feeling was mutual.

  “Truck broke down on the road. I saw the motel's sign and walked up into a pack of feral dogs. I was hoping to get a room.”

  Pearl winced.

  “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I got the last one.”

  There was a pause where they both considered the situation, and then they both spoke at the same time.

  “So –”

  “Okay –”

  Pearl laughed, because really, this was ridiculous.

  “Okay, let me see your driver's license.”

  The man gave her a confused look, but he produced a battered wallet and handed her his driver's license.

  She looked it over to make sure it was at least not an abject fraud, and then she took a picture with her phone before handing it back.

  “What's that for?” he asked curiously.

  “I'm sending this information back to a friend with information about where I am. If I don't check in tomorrow, this place will be crawling with state troopers who know it's my last known location.”

  That got her a horrified look.

  “Jesus. That's really how you think?”

  “I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts. Better safe than sorry.”

  “God, I'm sorry. That's smart, but I'm so sorry.”

  “Hey, I'm not murdered yet,” Pearl said, feeling unexpectedly cheerful. She also felt like she wanted to get those wet clothes off of the man's body, but she could figure that out later. “And I haven't been eaten by wild dogs. And I have the last hotel room. Want to share?”

  “Yes.”

  It was a single word, but there was no missing out on the man's decisiveness. She grinned, a warmth starting in her chest and radiating all the way out.

  “Good. Now, be cool. We have a crate of illegal puppies to get inside.”

  Chapter Three

  ∞∞∞

  The motel room was surprisingly large with a double bed taking up most of the space, an old-fashioned CRT television on the dresser, and the faint smell of stale air freshener hanging in the air. The carpet was crunchy, the blinds were dusty, and it was still the best thing Cassidy had ever seen after a mad dash down the freeway after the station wagon carrying his nephew. He had nearly run his paws straight to the bone, and that was before the storm and the fight with some feral dog that looked like a cross between a mastiff and a rhinoceros.

  Someone's fighting dogs got lose, need to start looking into that again, he thought, but then his fated mate came out of the bathroom, and nothing else in the world could distract him.

  Fated mate.

  He was forty-one. He had thought it might not happen for him, regardless what his parents and friends and relatives all said. They'd always said there was someone out there for him, and that when he found her, he would know.

  “How will I know?” he had asked once as a kid, and his grandmother had looked surprised. She hadn't had an answer, but then she only ruffled his hair.

  “When you see her, you won't question it,” she said.

  At the time, he’d thought that was no answer at all, but now, looking at the small Asian woman with the fluffy dark hair in damp jeans and sweatshirt, he realized that had been all the answer he needed. The moment he saw her, the moment she slammed the door on the station wagon and looked into his eyes, he had known, and he would never question it again.

  His fated mate was small and curvy. She would fit perfectly in his arms. He itched to hold her, to bring her close to his body and kiss her like the world was new, but as she had so quickly reminded him with her nifty driver's license trick, he was already a strange man who appeared out of a rainstorm while she was on the road and mostly alone. He couldn't imagine how the wolf shifter reveal was going to go, let alone the fated mate thing.

  Hi, I'm a wolf shifter from the friendly pack of wolf shifters about an hour west of here. Oh yeah, there are a lot of shifters around these parts. It's mostly wolves and bears in Colorado, a family of big horn sheep up close to the Wyoming border. No, nothing to do with the moon or silver or anything like that. We just have wolves living inside us, and we can change our forms. Oh, yeah, and you're my fated mate. We don't know if it's biology or fate or some weirdo combination of the two, but we're meant to be together and – and okay, now you're calling the cops. You know, I can't even argue with that.

  He only broke out of his reverie when he realized his fated mate was giving him a quizzical look and waving her hand in his face.

  “Earth to Cassidy, are you all right?”

  “You know my name,” he said, awed. “How did you –”

  “Your driver's license,” she said. “You gave it to me.”

  “I did,” he said, slightly disappointed. “Right.”

  She laughed as if this was a perfectly normal reaction.

  “I'm Pearl,” she said, “and thanks for letting me have the bathroom first to dry off a little.”

  “Oh, no problem.”

  “You can have it now. I'm going to need it all over again after I get back from that little market across the road, but you can probably get a hot shower in, see if you can wring out your things.”

  “You're going to the store?”

  “Yeah. I have an overnight bag in the car, but I didn't anticipate doing an overnight with these little guys. I need food for them and some more puppy pads if I don't want the hotel charging me a very fair arm and a leg for cl
eaning fees. They might even have something for you too.”

  “A T-shirt and some boxers if they have some, thanks. I can pay you back, but you're not going to walk over there?”

  “Sure, why not? You can see them from the main office of the hotel.”

  “The wild dogs. If they come back, you're not safe without a car around you.”

  For a moment, he wondered if they were going to fight about it, but Pearl nodded, chagrined.

  “You're right. You're absolutely right. Okay. I am going to feel so damn dumb driving my car five hundred feet, but I will feel much dumber if I'm eaten by feral dogs.”

  “And you're going to let me walk you to your car.”

  She laughed, the sound low and husky, making his face redden and his heart beat faster.

  “Thought you would just sneak that one in, huh? All right. Come on. The sooner I go, the sooner I can get back.”

  It was a special kind of aching hell to see his fated mate off in her car – what if she never came back? What if she somehow got hurt in those five hundred feet? – but he managed it. Then he went back inside the room, locked the door behind him, and went to the large crate.

  “All right, Cody,” he murmured, sitting on the floor. “Come on, your mom's worried sick.”

  He expected to get his nephew, maybe in human form, but definitely in wolf pup form. Instead he got four puppies that all looked equally wolf-like tumbling into his lap, making sharp squeaky sounds of delight and happiness and curiosity, and he stared down at them for a very long moment.

  Oh no.

  He held up the one with the dark ears, because Aunt Toni had dark ears, but were hers like this? She had a dark cap and this pup only had the ears. He put that one down and picked up the largest of the four, more tawny in color and a bit like his own pelt when he was in wolf form.

  “Cody? Kiddo? Help your Uncle Cass out, all right?”

  The puppies tumbled over him and then decided en masse that the space under the bed was far more interesting than he was, romping over to fit themselves underneath it.

  “Hey, no, come back here. Cody. Cody!”

  He ended up on his stomach, dragging the lamp down from the nightstand to shine some light on the squirming puppies who looked like they were having an amazing time now that they were out of the crate. It would have been cute as hell if he hadn't been so desperate to sort out which one was actually his nephew.

  “Cody? Cody? Come on, kiddo.”

  Even as he spoke, however, he knew he might just have to wait. Children born of shifters couldn't control their shifting until they were four or five. That was why so many of the shifter families lived in isolation, to ensure a sudden loud noise didn't leave a bawling bison calf or bear cub on a playground. A shifter kid could stay in their animal form for hours or days, and there was no telling what might jolt them out of it. Cassidy's mother still talked about the week he spent in his wolf form when he was three, and Marisol had lasted even longer when she was little.

  Jeez, Marisol was right. I really should be spending more time with the family if I can't recognize my own nephew.

  An idea struck, and he pulled his phone out of his back pocket. It was dented with a woefully cracked screen, but it had survived the wet well enough. He pulled up the camera, angling it under the bed. He took a few pictures before he realized that he was just getting a blurry mess each time, and then with a grunt, he started hauling the pups out one after the other to get pictures of them.

  They seemed to think it was an amazing game, pouncing at his hand, mouthing his fingers, but at first he thought he was doing all right. Then about six pictures in, he realized he wasn't sure if he had actually gotten pictures of all four of them or if there was maybe one pup that was just extra eager for a photo op.

  He sighed, sitting up cross-legged, and he sent the pictures to Marisol, along with the message, which one is Cody????

  “She is never going to let me forget this,” he said, tilting his head back against the bed with a groan. “Cody, if you want to help your uncle out by changing back into a kid, now would be a good time.”

  He was sitting still for what felt like the first time in hours, and now he could feel the weariness from the search, the headlong run down the freeway, and then the fight catching up to him with a vengeance. Then, on top of all that, he had found his true mate.

  Her name is Pearl. She's kind, and she's going to be back soon.

  He supposed that every shifter thought about their true mate when they were young, but as he had gotten older, it sort of faded from his mind. He had more or less resigned himself to thinking if it happened, it happened, and if it didn't, he still had amazing family members and pack mates and friends from the shifter and human worlds. He wasn't going to be alone unless he wanted to be, and he was all right with that. Until he locked eyes with Pearl.

  Now the idea of being without her ached, and if he was any less tired, he would probably have been up and pacing, possibly sitting with his nose glued to the single sealed window to see when she got back.

  As it was, however, exhaustion sank into him, and his eyes drifted closed. He told himself he was only resting for a second, but then he was jerking awake, four puppies collapsed over his legs and his mate watching him with an astonishingly soft expression on her face as she placed two full plastic bags on a table.

  “You never even made it to the shower, did you?” she asked softly.

  He looked down at the puppies lolling over his legs, reaching down to ruffle one behind the ears.

  “Guess not.”

  “Well, I'm not too bad, so you go ahead and take the bathroom. And here, it's not much, but it'll let you get your own clothes dry.”

  Cassidy gently dislodged the pups to a chorus of pitiful whines, and stood to take the bag of clothes from Pearl, studying her as he did so. It only occurred to him now how off-putting it might be, getting a direct and unblinking stare from a stranger, but then he realized Pearl was giving one right back, taking him in just the same. Her full lips were slightly pursed, and there was a faint wrinkle between her eyebrows.

  “Hey,” he said quietly. “What's up?”

  “Nothing,” she said, but when he took the plastic bag from her, their hands touched.

  It was like two live wires brushing against each other. You could almost see the spark, and Cassidy's eyes went wide as Pearl gasped out loud.

  “Pearl,” he said, and there was so much wonder in his voice that he knew there was no hiding it. Judging from the way her eyes flew to his, she felt the same way, but then she screwed her eyes tight, pointing towards the bathroom.

  “Shower,” she said. “You should. Right there. Shower.”

  He nodded, and then, because he knew that if he stayed, he really was just going to drop everything in her lap, he retreated to the bathroom.

  Chapter Four

  ∞∞∞

  Pearl didn't quite relax until the water in the bathroom started to run, and then she was aware that there was only a plywood door and a shower curtain between them. It was honestly only so helpful, because the rushing water meant that unless he was very strange indeed, Cassidy was naked in there, and that meant all she had to do was –

  The whining of the four puppies around her feet brought her back to herself, and she sighed.

  “Yes, yes, why am I thinking about how the random man who came out of the rain to rescue me from feral dogs makes me feel instead of catering to what puppies need?”

  She poured some kibble into one of the bowls she had bought and set it down to a chorus of joyous yips. She called in to the rescue to let them know she was absolutely not making it in that night, though she was hoping for tomorrow, and that she was fine. Then she called her cousin Deanna in Boulder.

  “Hey, are you calling to fill me in on why you sent me a scary drifter's driver's license?”

  Pearl laughed, because trust Deanna to cut right to the chase.

  “He's not a scary drifter, his car just broke down
. And I'm doing like all those articles say I should and having safety calls and stuff, and after all the driver's licenses you've sent me before you go on dates, I figured I could send you just one.”

  “Right, right. So he's not a scary drifter, and in fact, he's sort of cute. Good eye, there.”

  He's more than just cute, Pearl didn't say.

  “He helped me get these wolfdog puppies I'm transporting into the hotel room, and so far he's been a perfect gentleman.”

  “Uh-huh. And how many beds are there?”

  “I don't see how that matters,” Pearl said with great dignity, and Deanna hooted in glee.

  “All that, and just one bed!”

  “And four wolf-hybrid puppies we're not supposed to have in here at all. Yes. That sounds very romantic.”

  “Whatever you say. I expect a call no later than nine tomorrow, or I will assume you and your puppies have been kidnapped to some creepy underground bunker or something. Then I'll call the cops, the rangers, and the Mounties, and they will come down on that little motel so hard –”

  “The Mounties are in Canada, and they do not care if I have been kidnapped to a creepy underground bunker. But I promise, no later than nine. I know you have work.”

  “I do. But Pearl, you're really okay?”

  Behind her, the shower shut off, and Pearl had a brief but vivid image of Cassidy toweling off, running the terrycloth over his long, lean form.

  “Very okay,” she said. “So okay.”

  One of the puppies came up and butted his head against her ankle for attention. She was bending over to scratch him behind the ears when the bathroom door opened.

  “So, first I want to say thank you for the boxers and the T-shirt. I'm really impressed you found the boxers, honestly.”

  “Oh, you're welcome. Don't worry about paying me back, they were like ten bucks total.”

  “I'm definitely paying you back, even if I just buy you a really fancy coffee drink when you least expect it.”

  “I do in fact like fancy coffee drinks.”

  “Good. I'll get you something extra fancy. But, while keeping in mind that I'm very grateful, and I would much rather have this than go without or be stuck in my wet flannel, I have to ask –”