BITE THE BULLET - Excerpt

Northwest wilderness along the Canadian border…

A howl tried to climb up her throat but she swallowed it down.  Repressing the inevitable made her lungs feel like they were about to burst.  Her human side refused to give the wolf free reign.  Not like this.  Not while her mind stole impressions of old buffalo trails from the landscape. 

Now, a deep knowledge of where ancient caribou might have once roamed pierced her brain, instead of the rescue and recovery mission at hand.  Large herds trudging across wasteland vistas…  She was on the move.  Another howl crept up her throat.  Again, she fought with everything in her to contain it.  It was a matter of principle, a matter of pride.

Sasha licked her lips, trying to find the Lieutenant Sasha Trudeau that she’d been before the full moon, before the heat.  With Max Hunter on her flank the lines between her wolf and human selves became more blurred.  They had to find Fisher and Woods, the last two guys on her ambushed squad.  Familiars.  She hated the term and preferred to call them friends.

Sweat slicked her body beneath volumes of clothes.  The frigid night air felt good against her face.  Hunter had told her what to expect; so had his grandfather, Silver Hawk.  But that was just it—there was no understanding this unless one experienced it.  They’d said that, too.  Yet, they were males.  How could they even attempt to describe this?  What they’d conveyed was only second-hand knowledge.  The insanity that came with this defied definition.

Besides, the moon was a gorgeous, radiating disk above her, impossible to escape.  Sasha stopped running for a moment

and squeezed her eyes shut, panting.  The sensation of an abrupt wolf-change so near the surface of her skin strangled her reason.  Suddenly the backpack she carried felt too heavy; it had become an onerous appendage just like her suffocating parker, thermals, boots, and jeans.  Layers of fabric restricted her being and made her want to scream with frustration.  Labored breathing filled her ears.  It was hers.  Scents from the pristine environment stabbed into her sinuses and caused her to take in gulps of air through her mouth.

“Sasha… baby, just let her go,” Hunter said in a sensual murmur as he loped to her side.

“No!” she shouted, hugging herself and bending over to pant harder.

“It’s natural, a part of—”

Her low, warning growl stopped his words.  “I want to be in control of me!”  Tears stung her eyes but she refused to let them to fall.  “Can’t you understand that?  I’m a goddamned soldier!”

Hunter backed away from her with a nod and leaned against a tree, cloaking his form in the shadow of it.  He’d instinctively done so as if he could tell that his mere presence was making her testy, and she appreciated his innate understanding that it had. 

Sasha glimpsed where he’d been standing and then released a hard breath of relief that she could no longer see him.  It was difficult enough catching his wondrous, earthy male scent when the winds suddenly shifted or hearing his easy footfalls in the snow that made shivers dance up her spine.  Seeing his handsome, six foot five, muscular body peel out of the shadows had literally sent an irrational jolt through her system. 

There was something about the way his long, jet black ponytail had come loose on the run to spill onyx velvet over his thick shoulders… but that was nothing compared to the expression on his rugged face or the lingering question that burned deep within his intense, amber-rimmed irises.  When he’d absently licked his lush bottom lip just before shadow-blending, she’d almost gone to him.  But no.  She would remain in control, would remain on-mission.  Shadow wolf or not, she had a job to do.

What she needed was distance and time to pull herself together.  Slowly straightening, she lifted her chin and kept her eyes on the horizon, giving him her back.  She refused to even look in the direction of where he’d been.  What would be the point?  It didn’t take rocket science to know that he was staring at her.  She could almost feel his hot gaze penetrating her back.   He’d been looking at her like that all night.

Regardless, she was a military-trained, Special Ops, fighting machine, Sasha reminded herself as she began to pace.  Squad leader of the Paranormal Containment Unit—P.C.U.’s top gun.  The only genetic mistake that had made it out of the moonlight madness alive.  Two of her men were still moving under radar behind Shadow Wolf territory lines, and she had to bring them in.  The United Council of Entities was having an international meeting in New Orleans during the rare blue moon right after Mardis Gras, and every supernatural species would be in attendance—she had to prepare, be sharp, and gather intel.  Demon-infected werewolf virus was still on the black market.  And now that she’d learned how to spot other wolves, plus the Fae, mythics, phantoms, and other supernaturals, somebody would talk.

Damn the moon and any genetic defect she owned!  Despite the pressures of being what amounted to a double agent, the wolf was controllable, the clan elder had said!  Mind over matter.  That was the only way her kind had remained concealed for centuries.  They were different than the outlawed species of demon-infected werewolves that they hunted, a breed abomination that fed on human flesh and had no choice but to follow the phases of the moon.  The transformation-burn would pass.

Sasha yanked back her hood and raked her fingers through her hair, noting with dismay that it had thickened on the run.  She closed her eyes and turned her face up to the luminous disk in the sky and shuddered. 

“It’s different when you’re in heat, baby,” a very deep voice murmured from the shadows.

“What would you know about it?  Screw you!” she shouted, whirling on the sound of Hunter’s voice as it began to circle her.

“Definitely an option I wish you’d consider.”