Once Upon a Wolf Read online

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Epilogue

  More from Rhys Ford

  About the Author

  By Rhys Ford

  Visit Dreamspinner Press

  Copyright

  Once Upon a Wolf

  By Rhys Ford

  Gibson Keller’s days are fairly routine: wake up early, get some work done, drink lots of coffee, and take care of Ellis, his older brother, stuck in wolf form after coming home from the war. It’s a simple life made up of long runs on two legs—or four—and quiet evenings…. Until Ellis chases a handsome man off a cliff and into the frozen waters beside their cabin, changing Gibson’s life forever.

  For Zach Thomas, buying an old B&B is a new start. Leaving behind his city life, he longs to find peace and quiet, and hiking the trails behind his property seems safe enough—right up to the moment an enormous black wolf chases him into a lake, nearly drowning him. Discovering werewolves are real astounds him, but not as much as the man who rescues him from the icy water, then walks into Zach’s heart as if he owns it.

  Loving a werewolf—loving Gibson with all his secrets—has its challenges, but Zach believes their love is worth fighting for, especially since his heart knows the big bad wolf is really a prince in disguise.

  To Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Teri Garr, Cloris Leachman, Peter Boyle, and the incomparable Madeline Kahn. Thanks for all the laughs and the damned Pavlovian response my brain pipes up with every time I hear the word werewolf.

  This is also dedicated to Andrea Canada, who has always challenged me to write a shifter story, and Michelle Mary Taylor, who digs through my words looking for whatever gold she might find. Here you go. Here’s your wolves.

  Acknowledgments

  TO THE glorious Five—Jenn, Lea, Penn, and Tamm. Because we have the best hair colors and, well, most of us agree ketchup is not a good substitute for diced tomatoes.

  And so much love to my other sisters who make me laugh, shake my head, and chuckle—Ree, Lisa Ren, and Mary.

  Thanks will always go to Dreamspinner—Elizabeth, Lynn, Grace and her team, Naomi, and everyone else who works hard to present the world our best.

  And a huge shout-out to all of the things that go bump in the night, you’re all adorable. Be sure to turn off the lights when you go back to hiding under the bed.

  One

  HIS LIFE wasn’t supposed to end like this.

  Not now. Not like this. Not when he’d just snatched it back from the doldrums.

  Not when he’d just shocked himself back to life.

  The winter air clutched at Zach’s lungs, plunging its icy fingers down his parched, tight throat to hook its claws into his heaving chest. His breath came out in short bursts, misty clouds of panic and fear hitting the frosty air. The green dank scent of the lake seeped into the hills near Big Bear, something Zach thought he would eventually get used to, but with the enormous shadow hunting him through the tightly packed trees, it didn’t seem likely now. There was no safety. He had no idea where he was. Plunging through the thick snow seemed like a lark a mere half an hour ago, a new experience for a city-born-and-bred boy.

  The light shifted in quickly, and his walk turned deadly. In an instant, the shadows turned blue and the pale-barked trees became stygian harbingers, the ice-gilded canopy darkening when the sun disappeared from the sky, drenching him in a muddy gray light. He’d heard a clap of thunder, a rolling pound of bone-shaking rattles striking the surrounding mountains, and he’d turned back from his ramble only to discover the path he’d taken—a clearly defined cut-through on his newly purchased property—had disappeared as neatly as the trail of crumbs left by fairy-tale children.

  A bit of wind carried a tickle of uneasiness, primordial whispers ghosting over Zach’s spine and grabbing at the base of his neck. He’d dismissed the rumbling growl as soon as he’d heard it, shoving it past the realm of what-ifs into the more probable echo of a thunder roll in the far-off distance.

  That’s when he saw the large silhouette of a wolf behind a stand of trees. Or at least he thought it was a wolf. Growing up in Marin County didn’t give him a lot of experience, but really, what else could it be? Even with the creature’s features were lost in the darkness, its yellow eyes were fiery bursts of rage glowing through the shadows. It was enormous—far larger than he imagined a wolf could ever get—and its silent vigilance on the rise above him grabbed every thread of terror in him, corroding his reason. He’d known better. Or least he should’ve known better, but his feet and his brain had their own conversation, one he was not a part of.

  There was something sharply bitter about fear. How it spread through a man’s mind, an oily coat drowning out all thought. He couldn’t breathe before he took the first step away from the shadow lurking over him, and by the time he found himself in a full sprint, Zach knew he’d already signed his death warrant. The crunch of leaves and twigs behind him was barely audible beneath his own agonized, tortured breaths, but it was loud enough for Zach to know the wolf was in pursuit.

  The animal should have caught him by now. He’d been at a hard run for about five minutes, or least that’s how long it felt. Time slipped away from him all too often. Recovering from the accident blurred his life into a series of paper cups of medication, excruciating tests, and long empty bouts of weeping he never seemed able to control. The doctors all told him it was normal to find himself sitting up in the hospital bed, tightened with pain and fighting waves of emotion he couldn’t control. The months of physical therapy brought him back up to the fitness he’d enjoyed before the stolen armored truck slammed into his Audi and his world was filled with flashing lights and screaming sirens, but the tiny Swedish woman who’d struggled with him to re-achieve his mobility could never have imagined he’d run into a mountain of fur and teeth.

  Some part of his brain still tried to work out how large the creature was. It was odd how the mind worked when all thought should have been on how to avoid death. A blanket of pine needles proved to be his downfall. His right foot hit the slippery mass, a silken tug on his balance. The downhill slope only hastened his fall. Zach was on his ass before he could blink, tumbling down the rock-strewn hill.

  Trees rushed past him, hard lines against the softer weald, and what little reason he had left told Zach to grab anything he could. His hands closed in on a large log resting against a boulder, but the fallen branch wasn’t anchored to anything and it crumbled in his grasp, the debris slapping at his face. He choked on the spray of dust and leaves, careening out of control.

  Stars filled his vision, his forehead throbbing fiercely, and Zach realized, with the taste of blood in his mouth, he’d struck a tree. It was too hard to breathe, and the world was going by him in a rush. Snow crept in everywhere, his shirt, into his mouth, and the cold dug into his torn-up hands.

  He saw the rock, a fallen moon lodged into the shoreline, but the angle of the hill was too steep and he couldn’t stop. God, he couldn’t stop. And still behind him there was the shadow, slavering and now on silent paws, but it danced in and out of his line of sight, keeping pace with his descent. Zach tried to angle his legs, to do anything to prevent himself from hitting a piece of the Earth’s bones, but no amount of gyrations helped. Much like the flight the wolf triggered in his mind, the rock filling his sight prepared him for pain, his brain calling up every single frazzled nerve and torn muscle he’d lived through months before.

  If he saw stars for the tree, he unspooled the Milky Way when he st
ruck the boulder. The pain was immense. Flashes of crackling red through his already abused muscles, and bones he had knitted together so carefully before strained under the hit. There wasn’t any time to scream. Zach was choking on his own tongue when he struck the lake. He hadn’t realized he was so close to the shore, so very close, and glancing off the boulder, his body twisted around and he skidded into the water.

  For a brief moment, the unbearable cold felt good. He was hot with pain, and the frosted-over water quenched the embers set alight under his skin. But the relief was over in a flash, and then agony overwhelmed him. His muscles seizing, Zach struggled to find solid ground beneath him, stretching for the shore in the hopes of grabbing something he could pull on, but his trembling hands found nothing.

  The cold was swallowing him whole, a ravenous snake consuming him as prey. A darkness as thick as the menacing shadow in the trees began to take him, and as the not-quite-frozen lake stole the life from his body, he saw the wolf mount the boulder, throw its head back, and cast out an eerie, haunting cry.

  “ELLIS, I swear to God if he dies on us, I’m going to skin you and use your pelt for a rug.” Gibson got no response from the massive black wolf curled up near the roaring fireplace, but he wasn’t really expecting one. “I’ve always wanted one, and yours will do just fine.”

  Still, it would’ve been nice if he had gotten even an ear flick from the snoozing creature.

  He’d heard Ellis’s howl, a timbre of panic and worry woven into rolling bass tones, and took off running. There’d been a brief moment when Gibson considered changing, shedding his human form to wrap his father’s blood and fur around him, but there were hunters sometimes in the woods, and he couldn’t risk being shot, not when Ellis needed him. The ground was treacherous beneath his feet, and he’d forgotten to put on shoes—he always fucking forgot to put on shoes—so running through the undergrowth with its uneven terrain and patchy snowbanks was slow going compared to the miles he could eat up as a wolf.

  Discovering Ellis at the shoreline attempting to drag the sudden dead weight of an unconscious man from the iced-over waters was not how Gibson wanted to start his day, but judging by the blue tint spreading over the man’s pale face and cold-reddened hands, his morning had gone a whole hell of a lot worse.

  “You didn’t have to chase him through the trees, asshole,” Gibson remarked as he stepped over Ellis’s massive hindquarters to get to the cabin’s galley kitchen. “I don’t care if he was on our property. People aren’t playthings, remember?”

  A blaze of yellow through Ellis’s nearly shut eyes assured Gibson he’d been heard, but the ensuing sniff and the brief puff of rancid gas the wolf let go to ghost over the kitchen was pretty much Ellis’s way of telling him to fuck off. Gibson nudged Ellis with his foot as he walked by, carrying another load of dryer-warmed towels to lay over the man’s torso and legs.

  Winter struck hard before they’d made it back to the cabin, snow obscuring the path ahead of them. Ellis’s enormous bulk warmed Gibson’s legs, and the wolf guided them along, keeping his pace slow so Gibson could keep up. Burdened with the unconscious man’s weight slung over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, he couldn’t outrun the storm. Not by a long shot. He’d wanted Ellis to run ahead, to go through the front door he’d left open, and get warm by the fire, but there was no way he’d be able to make it back to the cabin without the wolf’s assistance.

  Gibson’s human form was a curse at times, more controlled by instinct and dulled senses than when the wolf rode him. His mind knew with a simple push of his will against the thin skin over his bones and muscles he could change his world, brighten the scents in the air and on the ground, and peel back the obscuring film his body wrapped around everything. Holding an attractive man in his arms was frustrating and maddening… arousing primal instincts in Gibson. The small flutter in the man’s heartbeat resonating through his body and the flicker of an unsteady pulse on the man’s throat reassured Gibson the man was alive, but the elements had taken their toll.

  He had to get the man inside, someplace safe and warm, even though it meant opening up his very closed-in world, an existence where he’d shoved everyone out except for his brother.

  Now he was stuck with a rangy, long-legged man with the face of a battered angel and a mouthwatering body mottled by bruises and scars.

  Soon after he’d closed the front door against the storm, Gibson laid the shivering man on the long side of the cabin’s sectional and stripped off the man’s sodden clothes. The fabric was rigid with ice shards, and the flannel shirt tore when Gibson attempted to unbutton it. His jeans, stiff and unyielding, raked long red welts over the man’s lightly furred thighs and calves, the seams of the denim a sharp abrasion that couldn’t be avoided. Gibson thought he was handling his arousal well, but it hit him hard when he stripped off the man’s soaked-through boxer briefs, an incongruous black pair dotted with tiny rainbow-maned unicorns, and he took a moment to inhale a long, shuddering breath.

  He’d put the flash of desire down to the fact that he hadn’t had another man in his life for years, and he couldn’t recall the last time he’d had anything other than his own hand wrapped around his cock. Or at least he would have, if Ellis wasn’t laughing at him with a big wolf smile.

  Ellis’s prey—barring the bruises and scars—looked as if he had been created to scratch every single one of Gibson’s itches. There was something about a lean man, sleek with honed muscles and a stretch of long limbs, that made his belly tighten with anticipation. He wasn’t beautiful. Not the kind of pretty face that sold edgy clothes or fast tech, the man Ellis dragged out of the lake wore a bit of life on his features, the barest hint of crow’s feet at the edges of his long-lashed eyes, and at some point, ran into something a little bit harder than his nose, leaving a tiny bump on the bridge. Even with his body warming up, he was still a bit gray, the pallor of the man in recovery. Several of the extensive scars along his legs, knees, and back were a rosy pink, agitated beneath the surface of the skin. They weren’t new, but they were new enough to still be angry.

  Or maybe it was just the man who wore them that was angry. His fists were tight, clenched in and held against his sides, as if Gibson caught him in midbattle. But then knowing Ellis as well as he did—or as well as anyone could know Ellis—he might have been. The black wolf only had a sense of humor around Gibson. The rest of the time, he was somber and distracted, sometimes spoiling for a fight—a fight neither Ellis nor Gibson could afford.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you went out and hunted him for me,” Gibson said. The man moaned, shifting on the cushions, and Gibson realized he hadn’t really been around another human being to talk to, other than Old Walter at the convenience store down the hill. “Ellis, did you really have to drive him into the lake?”

  Once again, he didn’t get an answer.

  “Okay, let’s get you warm,” Gibson said as he piled the warm towels and a couple of quilts over the man’s naked body. “Your skin is pinking up a bit. That’s a good sign, or at least I hope it is. Anything I’ve learned is because I’ve had to do research for a damned book. Not sure that’s going to help us.”

  Power was definitely out, and his phone signal was weak, not that it was ever strong to begin with. Making another attempt at contacting emergency services only led to another bout of frustration. The connection crackled and snapped, and the landline was no better. Outside, the storm howled, and Gibson did a mental calculation of the supplies he had in the larder and freezer. It was going to be a gamble on the frozen foods, and he would have to watch the temperature to determine if it was safer to move everything outside and let the elements keep it solid or run the small generator he had on hand for dire emergencies.

  “The next time we decide to get a cabin in the woods, El, it’s going to have to be on the grid a little bit firmer than this one is—preferably someplace I could use a microwave and hairdryer at the same time without worrying if I’m going to blow the place up
.”

  Rocking back on his heels, Gibson knew that all he could do was wait, but it didn’t make the situation any easier. The man was breathing, his pulse was strong, yet the bump on his head was worrisome. If he didn’t regain consciousness soon, Gibson was going to have to make some hard decisions. The storm’s fury wouldn’t let them get to the road, and even if he could, there wasn’t any guarantee it was passable.

  “Closest thing to us is that B&B. That’s a good hard mile or so, don’t you think? Nothing else on the other side of us for a long time. Wallet gave us a name, but his license says he’s from the city.” He glanced at Ellis, worrying at his lower lip as he thought. “The old inn is probably where this guy came from. They’re closer to the main road. More than likely they’ll have power unless a line snapped. At the very least, maybe a house phone that works. If he doesn’t start to rouse soon, I’m going to try to make it across to the old house and see if there is anybody there who can help. I’m going to have to leave him with you, Ellis.”

  He tried to ignore the concern in the wolf’s furrowed expression, but it was too distinct, too troublesome to dismiss.

  Snow clung to the windows, scalloped white drapery leaving bits of frost to lace its edges. Thunder rolled over them, the dark shattered by shards of lightning, bleaching the outside for a brief moment. The single-room cabin shook, and from his spot in front of the fire, Ellis began to whine.

  “Come here,” Gibson called out to the wolf as he perched on the edge of the sectional’s short arm. “El, come on.”

  Ellis got up, painfully slow, and his spine twisted, curling his large body around. The whites of his eyes were showing, and with another crash of thunder, he began to pant and pace. Snagging the wolf’s rough coat, Gibson dragged the recalcitrant Ellis toward him. His teeth were bared, lips curled back to show the gleaming white razors he used more to smile than to threaten, but there was a real danger now.