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  “Deedee,” said Cole, “tell us where Piper is. Tell us now.”

  “No,” she said. “I took her someplace safe.”

  “She wasn’t gone that long,” said Dana to Cole. “Piper has to be close by. We can find her. Maybe we can track her.”

  “You leave that innocent child alone,” screamed Deedee. “The two of you will destroy her.”

  “She’s our daughter,” said Cole, “and you don’t have any right—”

  “I want both of you out,” interrupted Deedee. “I want you gone. I can’t look at you.”

  “Fine,” said Cole. “Then tell us where Piper is.”

  Deedee yanked her phone out of her pocket, and she began dialing. Her eyes were wide.

  “What are you doing?” said Dana.

  Deedee put the phone to her ear. “Oh, hello. I’m just calling to report the fact that I know where your fugitives are…. That’s right. Cole Randall and Dana Gray.” She started rattling off the address of Cole’s house.

  Cole yanked the phone away from her. “You called the SF? You hate the SF.”

  “I hate you more,” said Deedee. “And besides, without Enoch, the SF isn’t going anywhere, so you’ve ruined all of that too. You know no one else can organize this the way Enoch did. Maybe you could have, but you chose to betray us. And I hope the SF hunts you down. I hope you two are miserable for the rest of your lives.”

  “Deedee, please,” said Dana. “Tell me where my baby girl is.”

  Deedee laughed. “You better get out of here. They’re coming for you. The SF will be here before you know it.”

  Dana started to sob.

  Cole put his arm around her. “Come on, let’s go.”

  She looked up at him. He was covered in blood too. They did look like monsters. If Piper saw them this way, what would she think?

  “We’re going to find her again,” said Cole. “We will.”

  EPILOGUE

  It took months to find Piper.

  Months of near misses with the SF, which wasn’t about to let them go. They were still public enemy number one, their faces plastered all over the news and the Internet. Though the SF had been dealt a crushing blow by the actions of Enoch and his followers, the SF was still a powerful force. In fact, it seemed as if Margaret Patton had a personal vendetta against the two of them. Since Patton was running the SF these days, it meant there was nowhere to hide.

  Nearly anytime they went anywhere public, they were recognized. The SF was after them almost right away. Gas station clerks knew who they were. Waitresses did. Cashiers did too.

  They scrambled. They stole. They ran.

  They spent weeks in wolf form, where they were safe, moving through the woods together, hunting and sleeping. It was only during those times that Dana felt truly at peace. Being the wolf was a sweet relief from the rest of her life. Wearing the wolf skin, she felt as if she’d found her place in the world.

  Everything was simpler and easier. Nothing but hunting, running, and howling at the moon.

  When she and Cole were wolves, she felt closer to him as well. They couldn’t speak to each other, but the longer that they stayed in animal form, the more she felt that they were communing somehow, almost merging. She didn’t need to speak with him, because she could sense what he needed and wanted.

  They mated again.

  They never talked about doing it, not when they were back in their human forms. When it happened, it seemed right and natural, the way things were meant to be. And it only served to strengthen their connection, to make Cole’s thoughts and desires so close to hers as to be her own. Cole was the other part of her, her partner and her ally.

  When they were in wolf form, they didn’t bother to have sex. It wasn’t necessary, and they didn’t feel the urge for it. Unlike natural wolves, werewolves didn’t go into heat, so all of their sexual appetites were relegated to their human form. With the exception of initial mating, of course, which established the bond between alphas.

  But in human form, they sometimes made love—if only to feel the closeness of each other. Shifting back to human form always made Dana feel strangely disconnected to Cole, like she had lost some vital part of herself, and the only way to feel vaguely whole was to couple with him.

  Whenever they did, things were different. Their love-making was sweet and soft, like a rolling meadow in springtime, green hills lapping up to cup their bodies and enfold them in perfection.

  At first, they attempted to find Piper through Enoch’s network of wolves. But without Enoch, the wolves had scattered. They weren’t working together anymore, and they had very little connection with each other.

  She and Cole even managed to find one of Enoch’s camps at one point. Angela was there, and so were a few of the other men. They lurked in the shadows, still in their fur and claws, not approaching, just listening. They learned that the women that Enoch had kept captive from the SF had been set free, that Angela had moved on to a relationship with another of Enoch’s men, and that none of them were in contact with Deedee. In fact, Angela seemed to blame her sister for Enoch’s death, since Deedee had brought Enoch to Cole. Because of that fact, none of them would have any idea where Piper was.

  Eventually, they stopped trying to follow human leads.

  Because, as their wolf bond grew, so did their sense of Piper. They were alphas, and she was their pup, their pack. They both could feel her, and the longer they stayed in wolf form, the stronger that feeling got.

  Finally, it was that strong sense that led them to her.

  They found her in a tall and stately house on wide and expansive grounds. They watched the little girl play on a swing set in the back yard, screaming in laughter as a woman pushed her higher and higher into the air.

  They crept closer to the house in the night, stepping through the darkness on their paws, crouched close together and moving as one.

  They peered in the windows, honed their sensitive ears to listen.

  They heard Piper playing. They heard her singing. They heard the deep rumble of a man’s voice as he read stories to Piper before bed. They heard the voice of a woman whispering to Piper that she was blessed to have her, that she loved her, and that she never wanted to let her go.

  Dana thought they both made the decision at the same moment, but she shifted back into human form anyway to talk to him.

  The two of them crouched naked in the woods. Even now, when they shifted back, it sometimes felt strange to stand upright. If they could help it, they stayed low to the ground. It was safer that way. It was more… right that way.

  “We shouldn’t take her,” Dana murmured.

  “No,” said Cole. “I don’t think we should.”

  “We still don’t have anyplace for her. Not anyplace safe,” she said.

  Cole looked back at the lights of the house. “She can’t shift. If she could shift, we could take her. We could protect her then.”

  They were quiet.

  “It’s my fault,” said Cole.

  “What?” she said. “No. It’s the way it has to be.”

  “No, I’ve taken everything from you,” he said. “I’ve taken your work, your home, your daughter, your husband. You can’t have any of that back anymore.”

  She remembered that long ago, in some other time, when the human form felt more real to her, she’d cared about those things. Now, even thinking about them made her feel uncomfortable. She couldn’t imagine being human all the time, the confinement of clothes, the harsh agony of so many emotions. No, she far preferred to be a wolf, where everything was simple bliss.

  She crawled forward and rubbed her face into his shoulder.

  He sighed, nipping at her neck.

  It was better here, them touching. As humans, touching seemed to be the only way they could be close. But even so, it was nothing like the closeness they shared when they were wolves.

  “I want her to be safe and happy,” said Dana. “She is. I can’t give her that. Not now.”

  His
voice was low and deep. “Don’t you blame me for that?”

  “What’s the point of blame?” she asked. “We are what we are, Cole. You showed me my wolf. You showed me my true self.”

  “We are wolves, aren’t we?” he breathed.

  “Yes,” she said. “We are.”

  * * *

  They stayed close to Piper’s home. The tall and stately house sat just on the edge of the woods, and the woods were teaming with prey and the shelter of trees. It seemed as good a place as any to settle. They woke to hunt, and then they crouched in the woods, waiting for a glimpse of the small child.

  They spent hours watching her careen through the back yard. They listened to her babble and sing.

  Seasons passed.

  One autumn, they found Piper playing by herself in the woods, speaking in a tiny little girl voice to the fallen orange leaves. She saw them coming for her, but she wasn’t the least bit afraid.

  They circled her, staring at her, this human-child they had made in another life.

  It had been a long time since they’d shifted into human form. They barely remembered it. Sometimes they even doubted they ever were human. But they knew that Piper was important, that she anchored them to the human world, and they stayed close to her.

  The little girl reached out to run her hands through their fur, laughing.

  They nuzzled and licked her, tickled her tummy, and wrestled with her small form while the gold and red leaves swirled around them.

  It wasn’t the last time that they got that close. She began to come looking for them, and she would wander in the woods, calling for her wolves. When they came, she would sink her tiny hands into their pelts, wrap a small arm around both of their necks and hug them close.

  The wolves loved that feeling, and they loved the small girl.

  But as time passed, sometimes they struggled to remember why. They knew they were tied to the girl, that they had a bond drawing all three of them together. But none of it made sense. How could they be bonded to a human? They were wolves.

  Occasionally, they had hazy and imprecise memories of their own human lives, but their wolf minds could hardly make sense of them, and they dismissed them without too much thought. Their world was one of survival, of each other, of bounding through the foliage, taking down deer and rabbits, tasting blood and flesh, curling close to sleep.

  They chose to focus on the brightness of the present, not the dimness of the past.

  And they began to wander father and farther away from the stately house, from the little girl who was growing and maturing.

  Sometimes, they didn’t even think of her.

  They hunted deep in the woods, running far from the house and the girl.

  Sometimes, they were gone for days.

  And then it was weeks.

  And then months.

  But there was still a bond between them and the girl, and the bond always brought them back. They were tied to the girl by the strings of the pack—though they couldn’t understand it anymore—and this girl belonged to them.

  One day, when they were out on one of their excursions, far from the house and from the little girl who had grown so much in the ensuing years, the tie they felt to her snapped.

  The wolves didn’t understand it. They panicked, because they thought that the little girl had been hurt or killed. They raced back to the stately house.

  When they arrived, the little girl was fine, however. She was playing in the back yard with her dolls.

  If the wolves had still been human, perhaps they would have reasoned that the little girl had been given another alpha werewolf. That was why the bonds had been broken and why the girl was unharmed.

  But the wolves didn’t think that way anymore. The wolves didn’t think at all. They reacted and they survived. And since there was no danger, they didn’t have any reason to concern themselves with it.

  When they left the stately house again to hunt, there was nothing calling them back, and so they never returned. They wandered into the wilderness, chasing their prey, chasing the moon.

  All of it was gone now. The girl, the house, their human forms, their human names, their old life. It had recessed into the wolves’ brains, disappearing as if it had never existed.

  They still hunted and ran under the moon.

  They still traveled together.

  They were still so close that they were essentially the same mind.

  And the loss of all of the memory, the humanity, it didn’t trouble them.

  They were wolves.

  They were wild.

  And it was bliss.

  If you’d like to find out what happens to Cole and Dana’s daughter, Piper, keep your eyes peeled for her book:

  Under a Raging Moon

  Look for it in May 2014, or…

  Visit my website to join my email list, and get notified the minute it’s available.

  vjchambers.com

  More fiction by V. J. Chambers on Smashwords!

  (follow the link and scroll down for a complete list of titles.)

  So now what?

  Like your torrid professor-student affairs with a side of gothic magic?

  Try Crimson.

  Keep reading for a sneak peak.

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  CRIMSON SNEAK PEAK

  Teagan

  I’d been having the dream about the dark man since I was thirteen. It was always the same. I was in the woods in the darkness. The moon was bloated in the sky, full and bright.

  I was lying on a raised dais, tall trees surrounding me.

  And the dark man was... on top of me.

  We were doing it. Getting it on. Having sex.

  I called him the dark man because he was wearing a dark hooded robe that hid his face.

  But right at the end of the dream, he would lean down and our lips would meet.

  And I’d see his face.

  I’d reach up and push back his hood. I’d gasp.

  He was beautiful. He had light blue eyes the color of a summer sky. His hair was sandy and cropped short. His jaw was firm and strong. His nose was straight. I would put my fingers on his lips, and he would kiss them.

  And something would stir inside me. Pleasure and desire and emotion. It would build, like a gathering storm.

  Then I would wake up.

  Like I did that morning, feeling as frustrated as I always did. It wasn’t just that I was so obviously about to have an orgasm in the dream, and that I’d woken up before it happened, it was that I’d felt so connected to the dark man in that moment. I was half in love in him, and he wasn’t even real. I didn’t like leaving him behind.

  But it was morning. The sun was pounding through the window in my bedroom, illuminating the dust on all my antique furniture. My aunts, my mother, and I all lived in the old Moss mansion, which was the only thing of value my family owned anymore. Generations ago, the Moss family had been rich.

  But that was before the Evil Ones started stealing our power.

  If you listened to my aunts. And they were crazy.

  Not as crazy as my mother, of course. My mother was the real deal. Schizophrenia. She saw things that weren’t there and had paranoid delusions about people trying to capture her.

  It wasn’t exactly the easiest place to live. And I had been trapped here for all of my twenty-one years.

  Until today.

  Today. Crap. I was supposed to wake up early today to get ready for the car Thornfield College was sending for me. I twisted in bed, looking at my clock.

  That late?

  I threw myself out of bed. I was never going to get ready in time.

  * * *

  Carter

  I dum
ped several heaping spoonfuls of coffee grounds into the coffee maker in the faculty room in the theater department. Usually, I came in hours later than this, and by then, someone else had started the coffee. Not today.

  “You’re up early, Carter,” said a voice behind me.

  I turned. “Oh, good morning, Marcus.” It was Marcus Bancroft. He was the head of the department. We were also both members of Scales and Fangs, the secret society on campus. We’d been members as students, but Scales and Fangs membership was a lifetime deal. The benefits continued until death, as did the responsibilities. “Just had some stuff to get together today, that’s all.”

  He smirked. “Wouldn’t have anything to do with a certain scholarship student that’s showing up today, would it?”

  I went back to the coffee, so that he didn’t see my expression tighten. Was Marcus jealous or something? Even he must see that he was too old to perform the ritual himself. I’d worked hard to prove myself worthy of this honor. Well, I’d lied, cheated, and stepped on people. Same difference. I earned it. “Oh, does she arrive today?”

  He laughed. “As if you aren’t aware.”

  I slammed the coffee maker shut. “I haven’t seen her since the auditions. She did a very good job. Quite talented, actually. I didn’t have to work that hard to make sure the others on the committee agreed to give her the scholarship.”

  Marcus settled at the round table in the center of the room. “How long do you think the coffee will take?”

  I crossed to the sink, filling the pot with water. He was planning on staying then. Wonderful. “Not long.”

  “You haven’t made it too weak, I hope.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You know me better than that.”

  He rummaged through his briefcase, coming out with his laptop. Opening it, he said, “Well, you’re playing it cool, Carter, but I can tell you’re excited.”

  I gritted my teeth. “I’m an instrument of the society, sir. I do as they will me to.”