Silver Moon (A Women of Wolf's Point Novel) by Catherine Lundoff Page B

and humans. Downtown was all too audible, though, so she walked away from it, hoping to find some peace in the fields and woods outside of town. Finally, the pull was too strong and she settled into a sedate jog past the houses and the parked cars.
    As she reached the edge of town, she began to feel the moon stirring in her blood, calling up last night’s wildness once more. What the hell? She was outside the limit of the ordinance and she’d turned last night. Shouldn’t this be over with for this month? Was she getting bonus wolf points or something?
    Glancing down, she could see that her hands didn’t look right. Suppressing a wail of horror, she dove into the woods, scrambling around until she found a dark spot surrounded by bushes. There she fought her transformation until it was obvious that she was losing. Even then, she forced herself to undress and remembered to turn her phone off.
    Then she reluctantly surrendered to the moon and the wild magic inside her. Once she changed, she ran all out, a lone wolf, freed from her Pack and charging through the woods until the trees blurred before her. Her path took her up the nearest mountain, farther from people and closer to the moon. For a time, she thought about nothing but the night, reveling in her speed and strength.
    She was miles outside of Mountainview when she heard the sounds for the first time. Her wolf senses didn’t recognize them at first but she moved toward them anyway, curiosity winning over caution. The Becca part of her brain woke up a bit as she got closer to whatever it was and tried to slow her wolf body down. Human fears warred with wolf curiosity until all of her attention was focused on the noises filtering through the woods.
    Slowly, she recognized it as the voice of a small boy. There was another human with him, an adult male from his scent. But the cub— child , she managed to remind herself—sounded scared. Even so, there was nothing she could do except make it worse, given what she looked like now. Becca tried to turn her wolf self away to run up the mountain, far from the campsite. It wouldn’t help the boy’s terrors to meet a real monster.
    Unbidden, a memory of the poster at the diner came back to her. Was this the same boy? She could remember his photo, back in the human portions of her memory. He was sniffling now, small sobs drifting out of the bushes and trees that still separated them. Whoever he was, he was terrified and hurting.
    She couldn’t just turn away. Literally. It was if she was frozen to the spot, all her instincts warring with each other until she wanted to bang her head against a tree. She wanted to help, if she could, but this was more than that. This felt more like a compulsion, a spell she couldn’t ignore. The feeling escalated until she finally did what that insistent pull demanded and followed the sounds and scents.
    Instinctively, she dropped into a hunting crouch and eased her way into the bushes, sliding slowly and carefully through them. The boy was silent now but she could still smell his fear. The wrongness she smelled on the man at his side made her lips lift back in a snarl. She slipped like a shadow through the trees until she could see them.
    The man had hidden them under a lean-to of branches. There was no fire or other sign to mark their hiding place. It was easy to see how he’d avoided the human searchers for two days. The boy gave a small cry that was suddenly silenced and wolf-Becca growled, the sound far louder than she had intended. It was loud enough to bring the man out to look around. He hesitated, then picked up his gun and took a few steps into the woods.
    Becca’s woods. She rustled the bushes as she backed further into the darkness, drawing the man from the clearing. Away from the moonlight, back into the darkness where he wouldn’t be able to see her, where she was protected. He stepped forward once, then again.
    She leapt, taking him off guard and knocking him down. He flailed