Sherry stared at the wolf, his teeth bared, the stick pointed at him. She knew it was a foolish gesture on her part. That weapon was hardly going to keep the large animal from charging at her, but she had to do something to protect herself. His brown eyes locked on hers, his teeth were huge and white in his snout, and she jabbed toward him with the stick in warning. She fully expected him to charge, but he didn’t. To her great surprise, he backed up, as if considering what to do next. For just a second, Sherry felt like she had a chance to survive this encounter. What a great story that would be for the grandchildren.

Sherry wasn’t sure what to do next, either. Trapped on that thin trail, she cursed herself for running into the woods, not sure what instinct had sent her into the underbrush instead of running down the road. Worse yet, without a flashlight since she’d foolishly thrown it at the animal.

Now what? Sherry felt the electricity in the air around her, surprised at the intensity of the tingling that set her nerve endings on fire. Glancing up, she saw the clouds scurrying across the sky, covering the moon and stars and obliterating almost all light. She narrowed her eyes, trying to see the wolf’s shape in the total darkness. She still held the stick pointed in its direction, and she was certain it would leap at any second.

But nothing happened. Her breathing became rapid with fear, and her knees and arms trembled as she sought to remain calm in the face of this threat to her person.

Then, out of nowhere, the sky erupted into a thunderstorm of such intensity that, before she could react, Sherry felt the thin trail giving way. Reacting by instinct, she leapt to the side as the dirt under her feet began to crumble, but she was too late. She clawed nothing but air as her body fell into nothingness.

She crashed on rocks and trees and felt herself falling, end over end, down the side of the hill she’d been poised so precariously on. Her body crashed into another rock, head whipping back and cracking onto a thick tree. Still she continued to tumble down, rocks and dirt falling with her. Unable to grab onto anything to slow the fall, she cried out as she slammed into another rock hard enough that she blacked out.

So this is how it ends, she thought before darkness took her, on the side of a hill in a place I never heard of before, with a wolf the only witness to my end.

* * *

Shit! Rusty shouted, his voice a howl of displeasure as he followed the woman over the edge of the trail and down the hill.

There was an eerie stillness as he followed her smell until he found her, bleeding from a deep head wound, at the bottom of the hill.

He whined and whimpered as he nuzzled her, trying to see if she still breathed. He was reassured she was still alive when she stirred slightly at the touch of his cold nose on her cheek.

Alive.

Breathing.

Now what? He couldn’t run for help. Leaving her here would mean she would be without protection, and if the rain kept up with the intensity it was falling right now, she would drown. She’d slid under a pile of logs and old trees that had followed her down the side of the hill to land piled up at the bottom with her in the middle of the tangle of logs and dirt.

He tried to pull her from under the logs by grabbing the collar of her sweatshirt in his teeth and tugging her out, but all that did, now that the ground was so damp, was cause the logs to shift, burying her deeper underneath them. Already the water was beginning to fill the trench. He let her go, careful to ensure her head was protected from the rainwater that crept closer to her body.

He would have to transform into his human form, but he had no clothes nearby. If she woke . . . well, that might be hard to explain.

For a few precious seconds, he considered his options. One, stay and continue, in his wolf form, to try to free her, dragging her out of harm’s way until he could get to a stash of his clothes and return to “find” her and bring her to safety. Or two, transform and then bring her to safety without a stitch of clothes on and hope she didn’t wake.

Whimpering at the cold water that crept up his paws to his knees, he realized there was nothing else he could do.

His decision made, Rusty closed his eyes. Forcing the change too quickly was always more painful than letting it happen naturally. Praying to the moon goddess, he felt the familiar surge of pain and tingling take over his body. He groaned as his body lost its protective coating of fur and the cold air rushed over his skin, searing him with icy pellets of rain and sleet as the storm slammed into him.

He stood, stretched, and cried in his humanness at the loss of his furred body. Looking through the rivulets of rain that ran down his face and body, he stared at the woman at his feet. She was still unconscious, and the water now reached up to her waist. The rain pelted down as he worked to shift her from her prison, the water now climbing with icy fingers up her body to cover her up to her armpits.

He realized he had only minutes before the water would cover her completely, and he worked feverishly to free her, finally breathing a sigh of relief when, with a loud sucking noise, the trees released her form to his grip.

Groaning, he pulled her, his muscles aching and sore from his efforts to free her, stretched to their limits. He lifted her from the mud and pulled her to his chest where her head landed with a soft thump. He breathed in the scents of earth, dead leaves, jasmine, and the humanness of her.

That was what undid him. Her humanness overwhelmed him, and for an instant, he just wanted to hold her, his body protecting her from the worst of the rain as he pulled her away from the place that had almost become her tomb. As he crab-crawled with her up the hill, away from the encroaching water, he dug his heels in and held her to him tightly. Breathing heavily, he calmed his body, adrenaline from the near disaster and rescue making him weak at the knees. He needed to rest for a minute before continuing the climb to the top of the hill. Along the way, he found her purse, which he slipped around his neck to ensure it wouldn’t be lost again. He imagined, like most women, she’d be devastated if it’d been lost.

He held her close, her form stretched down the length of his body. Holding her this way, he hoped to give her some of his body warmth and stop her from shaking. At least, that was the reason he used to convince himself that his contact with her held some necessity, and he wasn’t just doing it because he liked the feel of her against his naked skin. Rusty concentrated to his slow his breathing and his racing heart that seemed to speed up with her proximity. Just when he thought he had his body under control, she did the worst possible thing she could do.

She opened her eyes.

She stared at him in confusion, her hand traveling up his bare chest to rest near his pounding heart, and he felt an unfamiliar shiver of pleasure at her touch. For just a second, he wanted to lay her down and take her in the woods, just like this, in an animal way he’d never wanted a woman before. It took all his strength not to follow thought with deed.

Unfocused, pain evident in their depths, her eyes met his gaze, and she whispered a soft, “Are you an angel?” before closing them again. She moaned, whether in pain or not he wasn’t sure, as he picked her up and carried her up the hill and back onto the trail.

An angel? Well, I suppose there are worse things she could have called me, Rusty thought as he quickly traveled toward his hidden clothes.