As the latest in a long line of female Alphas, Merrilee Delemont lives by the code be strong always. While she will never forsake her duty to her pack, she sometimes longs for a mate to share her life with. At least she’s found someone to share her bed: Beck Villanova, leader of the neighboring wolf pack.

Their red-hot attraction and struggle for dominance leads to wild sex, but any chance of a real relationship goes up in smoke. Until phae invaders threaten the peace of their remote valley, forcing Merrille and Beck to finally decide which is more important: vying for power, or a passionate partnership that could change their lives forever.

Mated by Moonlight

Jessa Slade

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Copyright

Chapter 1

So, an Alpha female wereling walks into a bar, and...

The rest of the joke was on Beck Villanova as his good sense evaporated like dry ice at the sight of the pocket-size beauty stalking toward him. Waves of lustrous sable hair brushed her shoulders when she twisted her curvy hips to angle between the close-packed tables. A whisper of night wind from her entrance carried her scent to him: rich, warm and spicy as an amber incense stick, smoldering.

Thankfully, the massive pine bar stood between them, or he might’ve gone right to her. His uncle who’d carved the soft wood himself more than fifty years ago to honor the trees felled to make way for the Sun-Down Tavern would no doubt have had a better joke about mighty wood.

Distracted by the insistent thump of his cock against the fly of his jeans, Beck half turned toward the taps and gave himself a quick adjustment. The brush of his hand made him groan as his erection surged higher.

He sent a sidelong glance across the busy tavern. Damn, but Merrilee was in fine form tonight.

Though he’d tried not to listen, he’d heard she was out of town last week, and judging by the sleek way she was pulled together, she’d just gotten back. Life in the Eastern Oregon mountains even in early summer tended toward flannel and denim, so her sleeveless Chinese blouse and ankle-length skirt with its slit-up-to-there ventilation looked wildly out of place.

And wildly sexy. Emphasis on the wild.

She paused to chat up a table of grizzled old-timers. Mad Dog Valley wasn’t big, so everyone knew everyone except for the tourists who came through to take advantage of the pretty vistas and outdoor activities. She smiled at Orson, ringleader of the gray-hairs, and continued her progress across the bar.

The click of her high heels tripped up Beck’s spine like teasing fingertips. Only a woman with wereling grace could walk the gravel parking lot in heels that high without breaking stride or her ankle. He found his hand on the bar rag making restless circles on the pristine pine, but all he felt under his fingers was the lush, heavy weight of her dark hair as he angled her mouth toward his aching flesh.

He swallowed hard and averted his gaze. If she glimpsed his inappropriate thoughts, she’d be on him in a heartbeat.

Not that he’d mind.

He jerked his eyes back up. Damn it, he was Alpha here, in his own territory and in his own bar. She wasn’t going to make him look away with merely a twitch of her mesmerizing ass.

He wanted to stick his head under the ice-cold flow of the taps. Or maybe he just needed to put the dispenser down his pants.

Instead, he turned to the back bar to grab a wine bottle. An up-and-coming Columbia Gorge vintage he wouldn’t have known to stock, except he’d heard Merrilee’s design company was masterminding the vineyard’s ad campaign.

“Oh, God, Beck, no more wine.” Her throaty voice wrapped around him like cool night fog. “Give me one of your homebrews.”

He veered his hand toward a pint glass. She’d made it clear enough last time, two Alphas should consider themselves lucky not to tear each others’ throats out, so he kept his tone pleasantly neutral. “How was your flight back?”

“Came in over Hell’s Canyon just as the sun was setting with a full moon chasing my tail.” She slid onto a stool and watched with avid hunger as he poured in two slow stages to give her the dense, creamy head of a good stout.

Moving closer to the bar to hide his erection, he slid the glass gently toward her, relieved his hand didn’t shake. That comment about chasing her tail...

She met his gaze—her blue eyes piercing his soul like the sight of a perfect, cloudless sky—and saluted him with the glass before she tipped his brew to her lips.

He took the unguarded moment to study the exposed column of her neck between the three undone buttons of her collar. His heartbeat stuttered and reset itself in time with the barely visible throb of her pulse.

When she finally put the glass down, half the beer was gone and most of his composure. Friend zone, he reminded himself sternly. Only a little more dangerous than a demilitarized zone.

She licked a spot of foam from her upper lip. “Ah. Now I’m great.”

“Tough week at the office?”

“You have no idea.” She leaned down—giving him a glimpse between those three loosened buttons to the shadow between her breasts—to pull off her shoes. “Why didn’t I pick a job like bartending that would keep me barefoot at home?” She set the piercing heels on the stool next to her.

Good thing the stools were hardwood. Just like the rest of him. Which didn’t stop her comment from poking him a bit. So he was a homebody, so what? He’d done his adventuring and hadn’t found what he was looking for out there. “I guess that’s what you get for running such a successful business.”

She grimaced and took another drink. “Telecommuting sounds good, but the big clients always want to meet in person.” She wet her lips again. None of the natural redness left her mouth.

Beck refused to look away, much as he imagined some New York exec had glimpsed her photo on her company’s “about” page and demanded a face-to-face.

Her pack, which claimed the upper end of the valley, was full of creative types. Her Beta, Keisha, took nature photos for all the best magazines. Even in black-and-white, Keisha had captured a hint of Merrilee’s Alpha presence: strong, focused and always in command. Seeing her in living, breathing color with those blue eyes and red lips, any man would want to capture more.

Not that an Alpha would ever allow such liberties.

Merrilee kept one hand on her beer as she swiveled the stool to half face the room, the chatting of the patrons a contented murmur in the background. “And how is the Beck pack?”

The small town—home to his pack as well as a mix of unaffiliated werelings and unsuspecting humans—nestled about two-thirds of the way up Mad Dog Valley. Merrilee’s great-grandmother had claimed the lake in the hills above to the wilderness beyond. Female Alphas—unusual among wolf-kind—had held the land ever since, even when Beck’s great-granduncle’s bigger pack had claimed the town and the lower valley and spread out onto the ranchlands below.

“Been quiet,” Beck said. “No more wanderers.”

“Speaking of.” She took another drink and glanced at him. “I’m sure you’re wondering what happened to that loner who drifted through last month.”

He shrugged. “We followed him to the edge of our territory and then I called you. I’m sure you took care of it.”

Even though he’d longed to continue the hunt onto her lands. He had met her in his human shape while she had already been in her verita luna her Second Truth. When he pointed to where the prints crossed the invisible line between them, she had blinked at him—her blue eyes paler and more piercing in wereling form—then lowered her nose to the scent and trotted off.

Stopping himself from chasing after her that night had taken all of his considerable strength. Since then, he’d been working out.

A lot.

She quirked her lips, as if she knew what he was thinking. “His tracks headed upcountry, out into the wilderness. I have Peter and a couple others patrolling that border. If he crosses back, I’m sure you’ll hear all about it.” She tilted her head toward the tavern patrons.

He found a grin at her disgruntled tone. “Small towns are the best, aren’t they?”

She looked at him through her lashes. “Unless you want to keep something quiet.”

His smile slipped. Maybe he was getting tired of secrets.

She finished her beer with another swipe of her red lips and grabbed her shoes. “Thanks for the drink. I’ll see you later.”

She didn’t make it a question and certainly didn’t wait for his answer, just sauntered out with those high heels slung over her shoulder. He stared toward the door for a long moment, even after it closed, before he reached for her bottle, aligning his fingers with the empty places her grip had left in the condensation.

By the time he closed the till—after finally booting Orson and his cohorts into the night at the end of one of their impromptu barbershop quartet sessions—and hauled the trash out back, the moon was directly overhead.

In the silvery light, the parking lot looked like a sea of ice, and a shiver raised the hair at his nape. He walked the bar’s perimeter once, running his hand over the seat of his Harley as he passed.

Since the Sun-Down was situated at one end of the main street, he looked straight up the dark asphalt to the slumbering town, all in classic-movie grays. From the alleys branching out to various backyards, Orson’s tenor warbled “Bright Was the Night” and his quartet answered from their own stoops. When their doors closed, the street was quiet.

Behind the tavern, a line of trees marched up to the ridgeline like a finger pointing to the forested mountains. The moonlight turned the pine needles to pewter, leaving the shadows underneath more mysterious in comparison.

Feeling the subtle prickle of a watchful gaze sweep over his skin, Beck faced the darkness. “I know you’re out there.”

The darkness held its breath, but it had been a long night—a long time—and frustration grated on him like the parking lot gravel.

“Quit hiding, little girl.” He knew that would work.

From the pitch-black under the pines glided a lean shape that did not give up its sable darkness despite stepping into the moonlight.

At a distance, the shape screamed wolf. Sometimes outsiders literally screamed wolf. But the faint glimmer of the verita luna lingering around her was a clue to anyone who knew to look that this was no ordinary canid.

She chuffed at him, a reprimand for the little girl remark.

He was in no mood to be scolded. “You forgot to pay for the beer.”

Quick as a thought, she dodged at him. Her shining teeth caught his pant leg and tugged him off balance before she jumped away.

He staggered and almost went down. “What, you left without a word, and now you want to play? You can’t have it both ways.”

She growled. Werelings in the verita luna were always more volatile, their human-style principles and filters stripped away.

He knew his complaint was stupid—werelings lived two ways every day—but the sight of her all dolled up had reminded him of the distance between them. And how easily she always walked away, whether in high heels or barefoot. “Go home. I’m done with your games.”

She stared at him. The moonlight couldn’t catch her plush, dark fur but it glimmered in her pale eyes.

“Shoo,” he said.

She charged.

He was hampered by the towering bulk of his human body while she was smooth and quick in her four-pawed drive. Her teeth caught his jeans again, higher on his thigh this time, too close for comfort. Denim ripped with a sound like laughter, and a gust of cool night air wafted across his privates before she danced back.

“Dammit, Mer!”

She darted forward again, but this time he was ready. As she came at him, he juked and caught her by her scruff and the thick base of her tail. She was a bit of a thing, especially for wolf-kind, and he was big for any man. He hefted her weight easily.

She yelped as her paws left the ground, but mercilessly, he tossed her into the stock tank he kept filled for the ranchers and pleasure riders who stopped for drinks.

The splash was mighty, but not nearly as impressive as the snarling.

He stood with his hands on his hips. Oh shucks, he had infuriated the beast.

She launched out of the tank with her back paws braced on the steel rim. He had just enough time to admire the wild ice shine in her eyes before she hit him square in the chest.

He went over backward like an axed pine tree, one arm curling protectively around her wet fur. Gah, his stupid body wouldn’t let her fall even though she was the one at fault.

He lay in the gravel, staring up at the moon, while she scrambled to her feet, her front paws braced on either side of him. She shook, sending a cloud of damp diamonds in all directions. The scent of her—pine duff and warm spices and secret shadow places—made his breath catch.

That and her back paw in his crotch.

He sat up to heave her off his chest. “Forget it, Merrilee. I’m not interested—”

She snagged the hem of his T-shirt in her teeth and sprang over him, skimming the fabric inside out over his head.

He swiped at her, but she was off and running, his shirt between her teeth and her tail between her legs.

Which was a load of horseshit. She wasn’t afraid of him or anybody. But she should be. That was his favorite shirt.

Chapter 2

She ran. It felt good to run with her kill in her teeth and the bright moon on her back. And Beck was behind her, which made running even better.

Weaving between the blackjack pines, she chanced a glance back. He would need a moment to recover from the unsettling transformation of the verita luna, when the beast was dominant, but she knew he was fast—There! That brindled flash between the trees was Beck’s rich brown hair streaked with sun-bleached locks and a bit of gray at the temples from being so damned honorable.

She thrashed her head from side to side, slinging the T-shirt through the pine needles. He called the shirt a classic. Most of the band members featured on the front had died of overdoses decades ago.

Which was still more recent than the decade Beck occupied in his head.

She had sensed his irritation when she talked about her job. In his 1950s mind, he probably believed she should stay home. Probably thought she should turn over her pack lands to him. With a belly roll while she was at it.

Although sometimes it might be nice to share the burden...

No. Her pack expected more from her.

A hundred years ago, her ancestress had defied wolf-kind patriarchy to kill the abusive Alpha who had battered the pack and founded a place for werelings with their own unique ways. But championing such a sanctuary required a leader tough enough to hold hidebound traditions at bay while still holding the pack together, a precarious balance upon which rested their independence. To each female Alpha since came the same warning: Be strong always.

She thrashed the T-shirt again as if it had questioned her vow.

From behind her, a low, deep roll like thunder vibrated in her bones. For half a heartbeat, she wondered if Beck’s inner beast still had the upper hand. Or paw, as it were. But it was rare that the verita luna, the Second Truth, completely eclipsed the more human aspect. Werelings spent most of their childhoods in their upright forms, learning the intricacies of the human world and human control, before puberty made the shift—and the passions of the beast—inevitable.

Of all werelings to succumb to the il-luna, it would not be Beck Villanova. From his strictly traditional upbringing, right down to a stint in the army, he was the perfectly controlled Alpha. She’d had to practically bite him to get him to shift. She shook her head at her own flight of nerves. Beck would never let his beastly side rule unopposed.

Although sometimes she fantasized about the possibility.

The whiff of his manly sweat was ripe in her nostrils from the T-shirt he’d worked in all night. The bite of whiskey and the smoky scent of bacon were heady enough, but the hints of leather, musk and books also made her senses whirl.

Books? Had he been out running even once in the time she’d been in New York? No wonder he was so slow—

With a roar, a large shape dropped to the path in front of her. She tried to dodge, but he clamped his teeth on the T-shirt. Since she refused to let go, her momentum whipped her around. Her paws left the ground and she was airborne. Which reminded her, she owed him for dunk-tanking her.

When she opened her jaws, she went flying. She landed in a poof of pine needles and lay still. Wait for it...

Beck’s presence loomed in her awareness, though her eyes were closed. Wait for it...

He whined softly, even more softly than the whisper of worn cotton as he dropped the T-shirt.

Instantly, she scrabbled up, seized the T-shirt and fled.

Through the trees—weaving, dodging, their twinned shadows dark as ravens skimming across the earth, silvery under the moon—up to the ridgeline, higher yet to where the trees thinned and the moonlight thickened and the town was just an old campfire of cool, yellowing embers below them.

In a small clearing, lush with early-summer grasses, she slowed. She expected him to pounce, but instead he kept pace just behind.

She trotted in a circle to face him, finally letting the prize fall between them.

Beck was magnificent, even for wolf-kind. He sacrificed none of his immense size to the change. If anything, his heavy ruff and luxurious tail tipped with silver made him seem even larger in the verita luna.

His eyes were the same molten gold though. Not exactly the same, of course. A wereling’s eyes always seemed brighter, as if some tarnish of the human flesh was scoured away in the Second Truth. Despite the flattening effects of the moonlight, the gold gleamed at her with a purity that made her shuffle her paws uncomfortably in the long grass.

She didn’t want to stare into his eyes. She hadn’t lured him all the way out here to deal in truths—first, second or any other number.

She tilted back her head to stare up at the moon and breathed out a long sigh as she shifted. Her bones ached and her skin felt seared by terrible sunburn as she made the change. She reared up onto her back legs—no, her only pair of legs now as she shifted back to her human flesh—so she could stand over him.

But when her vision cleared, Beck was standing too, big and naked.

Shocked, she took a faltering step back. Not because he was naked—she’d stolen his T-shirt, after all—but that he had shifted so close to her. The verita luna was a dangerous moment: when a wereling was vulnerable and exposed, the beast might attack, unconstrained by any even vaguely human command.

Again, she fleetingly wondered about his discipline. She swept him with a glance, wincing as she always did at the sight of the brutal swirl of scars and burns that wrapped the lower half of his torso. If he hadn’t had a wereling’s vigor, the IED would have meant his death, not merely his discharge. But except for that reminder of his time in the army, he seemed to be in satisfactory—okay, exemplary—shape. Certainly he would not have been able to achieve his present upright...um, very upright...state if he’d passed into il-luna.

He stood balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, as if he thought she might run again and he’d have to keep chasing her in this form.

His other balls were hard and tight, she could see from here. They knew she was done running.

She took a step toward him, the grass caressing her bare ankles, and he eased back to his heels.

“So you’re ready to be caught.” His tone was calm enough she wasn’t sure if he meant it as a question or an idle comment.

Or a warning.

She paused. “Consider it payment for the beer.”

“I said I was done playing.”

She lifted her chin, letting the night breeze finger the locks of hair around her face and tighten her nipples into almost painful peaks. Showing him what he was missing. “Since when do you give up so easily?”

“Since I realized you’re never going to let me farther in.”

Skimming her hands down her hips, she framed the tidy triangle of dark hair, resting her thumbs on the points of her hips. She bit back a triumphant smile as his gold eyes brightened, following the gesture. “This has always been far enough for you, hasn’t it?”

Slowly, as if with great difficulty, he lifted his gaze. “When I first got back from overseas, yes. Not anymore.”

A draught of doubt, colder than the night wind, iced her skin. Well, she’d gotten what she wanted from him anyway: some good beer, an itch scratched, a few insights into how a powerful male Alpha handled his pack.

“Fine.” She spun on her heel.

And finally he pounced.

With one hand, much stronger than the breeze and almost as hot as the slumbering sun, he swept the hair from the back of her neck. He leaned down to bite her nape as his free hand came around her to cup her breast. He rolled the peak between his thumb and finger, drawing a moan from her trapped halfway between a sigh and a howl.

“Ah, hell, babe, you run and I can’t stop myself from chasing.” His murmur against her skin was cool on her dampened flesh as he kissed a line across her carotid, raising a shiver from her.

“Chase?” Ignoring the endearment—she wasn’t that much younger than he was—she tilted her head to give him more access to her throat. “I had to practically drag you out here by the scruff of your neck.”

“By the neck of my shirt.”

“Your scruffy shirt.”

“It’s a classic.”

She groaned again, not in pleasure this time. “We should’ve stayed in the verita luna so I wouldn’t have to hear this again.”

“Let’s,” he quickly agreed.

But she turned in his arms, deliberately brushing her belly across his rampant cock. They’d never come together under the moon in wereling form. It was...too animalistic.

Too true, a voice in her head accused.

She ignored the voice by taking Beck in her hand. He bucked, golden eyes widening at her aggression.

It always shocked him when she took the initiative so quickly. Which was why they could never be truly together.

She was Alpha. He was Alpha. Worse than fire and water, they were fire and fire, which was great for the sex, but would burn their respective worlds to the ground.

She pulled herself up to her tiptoes and still had to drag him down to her kiss with one hand fisted in his unruly curls. What was a thick ruff in his wereling form was almost as wild now and a perfect hand hold. Their tongues tangled, and the flames in her imagination licked higher with each kiss deep as the night sky.

He growled into her mouth. “You taste like my brew. Like me.”

She growled back, wordlessly, a caution at his presumption. Then she stroked him, a deft circling of his cock and a delicate caress of his tight sac that brought him to his knees.

For a moment, she admired him there, with his shaggy head at her navel. He tongued her, dipping his fingers into his mouth before brushing over her slit. With a gasp, she followed him down. Dominance was all well and good, but it had been a long week in New York.

He tried to spread the T-shirt behind her, but she rolled him so that he was underneath her and sat up straddling his thighs. Okay, so maybe dominance was good.

His cock surged between them, a pearl of fluid glinting in the moonlight. She took him in her hand and gave him another stroke. He bowed his hips up, lifting her easily, the long muscles of his thighs flexing under her. To stop herself from falling, she flattened her other hand across his broad chest, sifting her fingers through the patch of fur that was only a reminder of his wereling self. Under the scars, his abs tightened as his breath caught, and he stared up at her with darkening eyes.

“What do you want?” she murmured, one word for each stroke.

“You.”

He always made it sound so simple. Alarmingly so.

This once, she wanted it to be that. “Then have me.”

When he rolled her, somehow he managed to center her perfectly—terrifyingly perfectly—right on the T-shirt to protect her from the prickling grass. He loomed above her, silhouetted against the bright moon for a moment before he dipped his head to kiss her.

“You make this so hard,” he said.

“I make you hard.”

“That too.”

“Now.” She raised her hips toward his.

“No.” He kissed his way down her throat, as leisurely as the moon tracking across the sky to the swell of her breast. She clutched at him impatiently and he chuckled. “You’re not in the city anymore. You’re on country time now. We do things the old-fashioned way.”

“Damn the old ways,” she muttered.

He chuckled again, his breath gusting over the nipple he’d toyed with earlier. He tilted his head and flicked his tongue across the swell. With a moan of frustration, she used her hands to plump her breasts and flicked her own fingers over the aching tips. Deep in her belly, she felt the answering pull and an echoing well of moisture at her core.

His growl was lower this time as he finally sucked her hard, pulling her flesh into his wide mouth, tonguing her nipple against the roof of his mouth. Later she’d want to be eaten by the big bad wolf, but for now...

She abandoned her teasing self-play and squared herself under him. “I’m only going to ask once.”

He drove into her.

Big as he was, all over, she took him, thrusting up to meet him with another moan, this time of delight.

He slicked himself deep into her and withdrew and thrust again before her cry faded. He set the pace like a midnight run, relentless and unfaltering. She knew he could go forever.

No, she didn’t want to think of forever, just of right now.

She clutched at his wide shoulders, digging her fingers into the hard mounds of pure muscle. She’d seen him sling full kegs of beer like they were nothing more than empty aluminum cans. He slung unruly drunks—and uppity wolf-kind—with the same power. But of course, that’s how an Alpha handled everything: easily.

Even her.

The thought was infuriating, and she met his thrusts with her own. His eyes widened and he anchored one hand under her hips to control the moment.

She’d have none of that. She slipped her hand past his to cup his sac and pull down hard, to pleasure him, to warn him. He bucked once, breaking the stride, and she laughed.

He tilted her hips just a little deeper to touch her core, and then she wasn’t laughing anymore.

With every stroke, he pushed her higher, making her muscles clench throughout her body, even her heart pounding, pounding. Her skin tingled like the coming of the verita luna, but it wasn’t that—she was just coming. The moon seemed to shatter, but that was just the stars behind her closed eyelids as she climaxed in a rush.

He threw back his head and roared, the triumph of an apex predator that silenced the night, and then he too came.

She clenched around his pulsing shaft as he spent himself. Of course he would roar before he came; just announcing to the world that he’d made her come first. She drummed her fingers on his biceps as he held himself above her, stiffly trembling in the aftermath.

She realized her impatient drumming had turned to petting, her fingertips playing over the tight ridges of musculature. He had very nice, strong arms.

The better to hold her with...

She wriggled up, and he grunted as his cock popped free with a wet sound. When she scooted out from under him, he collapsed. His arms—his very nice, strong arms—splayed out to either side.

“I’m getting too old for this shit,” he muttered into the grass.

She stood and gave herself a little shake. “You’ve always been an old soul.”

He angled his face to stare at her, so she tilted one hip toward him and reached up to fluff her hair, knowing it would do nice things for her figure.

He grunted again and turned his face the other way. “You don’t mean that kindly.”

She scowled at him, thinking she should shift just so she could bite him on his moon-white ass. He had a very nice, strong ass...

Of course, she could bite him there with her current teeth, but somehow that seemed a little too forward.

“You don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” she reminded him.

“Babe, once I’m inside you, nothing could stop me.”

Heat touched her cheeks, and she was glad of the bleaching moonlight. “I meant, you didn’t have to come running with me if you really didn’t want to.” She cursed the note of wistfulness—not quite a whine—that crept into her voice.

“Of course I had to. That lone wolf is still out here somewhere.”

She let her hand drift down from her hair. “That’s why you followed me? Because you thought I couldn’t take care of myself?”

He turned his head to face her again, his golden eyes shadowed and wary. “That wasn’t the only reason, obviously.” He pushed himself upright, one leg bent under him as if ready to ward off an attack.

He was arrogant, but he wasn’t stupid.

She forced herself to exhale slowly, as if she could force out the scent of him lingering in her chest. If the stock tank had been nearby, she might have voluntarily jumped in to wash herself clean.

She shifted, letting the verita luna cover her bare skin. When her momentary blindness cleared, Beck was standing, watching her, the wariness still in his eyes. He did not shift, wisely, since in her present state she might have struck.

Instead, she ran.

Chapter 3

Beck watched her flee. Although she would no doubt object to the word flee. Her tail was flagged high with fury. But he’d only spoken the truth.

He just couldn’t seem to keep his mouth closed—not any more than he could keep his jeans buttoned—around Merrilee Delemont.

Trudging back down the mountain with his damp T-shirt in his hand, he listened for the soft thud of paws in the forest around him. But he heard nothing beyond the usual night rustlings. She had probably continued up the mountain. Her pack’s small village of log cabins, A-frame cottages, and a tiny restaurant with incongruously fine dining was clustered near a picturesque high lake that was a popular destination for hikers, anglers, photographers and horseback riders up for a daytrip from town. There were no formal guest accommodations, of course; Merrilee didn’t encourage sleepovers.

He made a low noise in the back of his throat, his indignation keeping him warm despite the cool night breeze.

At the line of trees behind the bar, he paused in the shadows to make sure no one was hanging around—he was still naked since he had no interest in donning the muddy, spit-slimed shirt—and he finally heard an out-of-place noise back near the Dumpster and his Harley where he’d shifted.

If Merrilee was messing with his favorite pair of comfortable, old, button-fly jeans...

He raced toward the disturbance, thinking only as he rounded the corner that Merrilee on the prowl never made noise unless she wanted to be heard.

And he came face to—face to eyeball?—with a keg-sized, three-legged spider thing perched on the Dumpster. Like no shifting creature he’d ever seen before, its body was roughly oblong and dotted with long, stiff hairs. One of its skinny, barbed legs was thrust through a limp cabbage he’d thrown out.

The impaled cabbage looked far too much like a head. Creepy.

Almost as creepy as the single palm-width eyeball atop its body. The sclera glistened white as a broken bone in the moonlight.

He skidded to a halt, nonplussed. The spider thing, disturbed from its snacking, flung the cabbage at him.

He dodged easily, glad Merrilee had gotten his blood pumping earlier, and the old produce flapped past. The spider thing scuttled off the Dumpster, its hard-tipped claws clattering loudly in the still night. It sprang away, tipping over the Harley.

Okay, now he was creeped out and pissed. And a little worried. The Fat Boy was a big machine, and the spider thing had dumped it like it was some girl-friendly crotch rocket.

The creature scrambled toward the street, Beck in pursuit.

Creepy things were not allowed to creep around his territory.

So late at night, the town was quiet, slumbering, only a few porch lights still glowing. Good thing. He didn’t want the unsuspecting human population to see this obviously unnatural thing.

Plus, he wished he’d stopped to put on his pants.

The spider ran straight down the middle of the road. For a three-legged thing, it was fast, preternaturally so.

But then, so was he. He realized, when it rotated as it ran to eyeball him again and then put on a fresh burst of speed, that it was at least semi-sentient.

He’d lose the creature if he shifted. In the blurred time he needed to cross into the verita luna, it could dart any direction and be gone. But he wasn’t sure he could keep up.

He needed to hasten the shift and hold his focus for those crucial moments. He just needed a concentration point... He thought of Merrilee, stumbling unaware upon this creature as she sneaked back to steal his jeans.

Between one footfall and the next, he shifted.

The pain and dazzle of the verita luna almost made him stumble. Only blind stubbornness kept him on the pavement.

As his vision cleared, sure enough, the spider thing was veering toward an alley.

Beck lunged, right behind it, with all four paws digging into the gravel.

The thing squealed, a shrill and livid sound, like sheet metal tearing. From the next alley over, a dog barked.

Obviously, the creature had thought it could escape when he shifted. Despite his insta-fur coat, he felt chilled. It knew what he was. Worse, it had thought it knew a wereling’s weakness during the change.

It scuttled for a wooden fence, vaulting with blurred speed over the edge.

Beck launched himself behind it and managed to catch its trailing third claw in his teeth.

The thing slashed backward at him with another leg, but that left only one leg for it to catch itself.

They fell and rolled across the backyard in a flurry of fur and slashing barbed legs. In a noisy clatter, they bashed through a set of folding chairs and a grill. The puff of charcoal ash made Beck’s nose itch with a terrible sneeze, but he held on grimly.

The backyard deck light flashed on, halogen bright.

“What the h—?” The last word was lost in a rising bellow.

Beck dug his feet into the lawn, struggling to hold back the squealing spider that nevertheless managed to drag his two-twenty weight several yards.

Until the grizzly—clad in shreds of striped pajamas—reared up and came smashing down with both front feet, monstrous claws curving wickedly.

The spider made one urk sound and greenish goo sprayed from the eyeball.

Beck leapt back, pawing at his muzzle to get rid of the foul taste.

When he looked around, Orson, the barbershop bear, had shifted back and stood in the remnants of his nightclothes with a pair of grill tongs hefted like a spear over his gray head. He plunged the tongs into the splattered spider, pinning it to the earth.

A spiral of oily smoke twisted up from the creature.

This time, Beck sneezed.

Orson planted his hands on his scrawny hips. “Well, hell. Look what the dog dragged in.”

* * *

By the time Orson had gone inside to fetch a robe and an extra pair of pajama bottoms, Beck had shifted and was rinsing out his mouth from the garden hose.

“Imp tastes like ass,” the old man said.

“More like acid,” Beck corrected as he took the offered cotton pants.

The pants were far too small since they fit Orson in his human incarnation, not his verita luna shape. Where the old man packed away all the pounds he added to his grizzly form was one of the mysteries discussed at length—in the proper company—over beers at the bar. Most of the townsfolk werelings had decided he kept it in his voice.

But Beck was relieved there was still considerable strength in the old man. And he was glad enough for the pants too.

Avoiding the squirts of green goo, Beck approached the thing impaled on the lawn. “What is an imp?”

“Phae.” Orson spat the word as if he too tasted the fetid, greasy char.

Beck frowned. “We haven’t had trouble with their kind in...” He shook his head. “Since before my time.”

Orson huffed out a breath. “Not before mine. I was a boy last time I saw one. Cocky bastard, walking through town just as dusk settled, all wrapped up in his glamour. Lying through those smiling teeth. Probably fanged, though no one could see.”

Pursing his lips, Beck decided not to remind Orson that they had fangs of their own. Though he’d never dealt with phae himself, he knew all the old stories. Werelings had always hated the phae. Phae glamour was an affront to the verita luna, where the shape was the truth.

Not that it was always a truth they could share.

But werelings had not abandoned the sunlit world as the phae had. They’d kept to themselves, kept quiet, and kept their ways while the phae had skulked away, driven by changes in a world to which they would not—or could not—adapt.

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