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She barely breathed as she emailed Ed the story and he read through it. “All right. Top-notch story. Love the angle, Elizabeth. I’ll print it first,” Ed said after a few agonizing minutes on Elizabeth’s end. “I’ll print the other story at the end of the week. Damned glad to have you home. Got to run to a family birthday get-together. I’m surprised you came home so early, though.”
“I missed home,” she said, even though Ed’s mention of attending a family birthday party made her feel isolated and alone. She shrugged the notion off, not wanting to deal with it. Not wanting to think of Tom and his close-knit family. Not wishing to think of how she would have loved to have a family like that growing up. “I’ll see you when I finish my leave.” Even though she’d come home early, she was still using her vacation time, and she would attempt to enjoy it.
“All right. Talk to you later.”
Later that week when her article about the wolves came out, she received an unbelievable number of hateful responses. She hadn’t expected that. She’d only reported what scientists believed.
She was damned tired of burying her feelings. If gray wolves didn’t have a mate and they found one in a coyote, what was the big deal? They were pack animals at heart. They deserved to find mates who would love them back.
But to get death threats?
Five emails, six phone calls. Really? The people who responded to her article in the paper were wolf lovers, maybe even red wolf shifters. They didn’t ID themselves. Of course, she got some irate calls from farmers and ranchers who said any of them—wolves, coyotes, and any mix of the two—should be shot on sight.
How would they feel if shifters felt that way about humans?
The phone rang again, with caller ID showing Caller Unknown. “Hello?”
“How dare you say the red wolves are part coyote,” a man’s voice said, though it was muffled and she couldn’t identify him.
Her half brother Sefton? Uncle Quinton?
“How does it feel to know you’re just like me?” she asked, chills running up her spine at the thought that they had her cell number, if one of them was calling her. Then again, if one of them had answered North’s phone, that’s how he got it.
She didn’t know if the caller was really one of them. If he wasn’t, the man had to have thought she was nuts.
The phone clicked dead and she felt shaky, as if she had just come face to face with her uncle. Goose bumps erupted on her skin.
The phone rang again. Another unknown caller. “Damned stupid article, if you ask me. Are you one of those animal activists? One of those vegetable eaters? Red wolves are beautiful and rare predators, while coyotes are sneaky scavengers. Damn coyotes are not part gray wolf.”
Elizabeth ground her teeth, irritated that people were so hateful about the wolves and coyotes.
The caller hung up the phone. She guessed he didn’t have anything more to say.
Elizabeth thought again about Tom. Every call gave her heart a little start. Every call might be from him.
She hadn’t heard back since she’d phoned him a few days ago. He must have given up on her, which was for the best. So why did she miss him and his pack and Silver Town so much? Despite the misadventure at the ski resort, she loved how the pack members on the slopes had treated her, loved Tom’s bossiness about taking care of her.
She would have given just about anything to eat more of Bertha’s cinnamon rolls while talking to her about gardening. Elizabeth would have shared more with Carol. She wanted to know what had happened to Lelandi while she was with the red pack. She would have loved to go to the grand opening of Silva’s Victorian Tea Shop, and even see Silva and Sam get together as mates. She wanted to learn more about Peter’s brother and if he was causing trouble for the sheriff during his visit.
Most of all, she wanted to see Tom again, feel his touch, experience his kisses, and so much more.
She’d never felt that way about any other wolves she’d met, never had any others act as if they’d already made her part of the family and she’d accepted the role. She had to quit thinking like that.
Uncle Quinton was still in the area. If she returned to Silver Town, he’d try to eliminate her. If she did and his pack leader was agreeable to hearing Elizabeth out, Quinton would be a dead wolf. He couldn’t trust her to leave well enough alone.
When the sun began to set, she ran through Palo Duro Canyon State Park in her furry form. She scattered the two longhorn cattle living there, chased a cottontail rabbit, startled a white-tailed deer, and snagged her fur on the thorny mesquite. She ran and ran, trying to quit thinking about the article and Tom and what had happened to North.
She had nearly reached home when she spied a coyote.
That made her stop dead in her tracks.
Was it a shifter? Or a plain old coyote? Could he be family on her mother’s side? Couldn’t be. They lived in the Oklahoma Panhandle.
The coyote was a bigger male. He watched her, scenting the air to learn anything he could about her and what she felt. In this case, apprehension. Her heart rate had already kicked up a notch.
She didn’t see any others, so he might be a loner.
What if he was a shifter? Maybe he was worried about what she was. He might be wary of her because she smelled like a wolf, too. That usually kept any coyote shifters away from her.
A shot rang out, the bang sending a shriek of panic through her. She dove for the ground and watched to see where the rifle had fired from. The coyote ran off.
She waited for a long time, not moving, hoping that whoever had fired the round had given up trying to shoot the coyotes. If he came for her, thinking she had been shot, she wasn’t sure what she would do. Shift before he could see her, so he’d find an uninjured, naked woman? Then what? She just hoped he’d go off looking to shoot something else, like a rattlesnake—though at this time of year, they’d be curled up in a den.
She thought of shifting and running as a human to her home, but the ground could be hazardous to her bare feet with its cactus, thorny senna, and rocky terrain, and it was only thirty-six degrees out today. Purple and pink stripes streaked across the sky as the sun began to set, but snow clouds quickly amassed.
She took a chance and raced through the juniper and scrub oak. Half an hour later, she plowed through her wolf door out back and entered the safety of the house. She panted, staring at the terra-cotta tile floor, barely feeling relief when someone knocked on the front door. Her heart skipped a beat. Now what?
