Free Seal Wolf Hunting (9781402293832) by Terry Spear

shook her head as she led him into a clearing and pointed to a group of huckleberry bushes with clusters of black berries that looked like blueberries hanging off the branches among the bright green leaves.
    He started picking the berries but paused when she didn’t say anything further. He glanced at her. “What?”
    She shrugged. “I…lost something in the lake. Way out past the dock in the deeper water. Without scuba gear, I couldn’t reach it even if I could see where it went.”
    â€œWhat was it?”
    â€œA gold necklace.”
    He glanced at her bare neck. He hadn’t realized she wasn’t wearing the gold chain that held a hand-carved turquoise hawk. Except for when she ran as a wolf, she never removed it. “The one with your animal guide?” he asked, verifying it was the same one he was thinking about, since he hadn’t seen her in the last two years.
    â€œYes.”
    The hawk was her spirit guide. She was the intuitive one, victorious, which he attributed to her having saved her grandma’s life when the wolves attacked and decimated their pack. Lori was the messenger, the healer of the group, the guardian. He swore she could remember anything that had happened over the years much better than he could, so the hawk suited her. She was usually the one to convey messages from Emma and Catherine to Allan and Paul when they were off with the SEAL team. He suspected that was why Catherine had wanted Lori to tell him and Allan about the auction.
    He continued to pick berries while she also was filling her bucket.
    As to Paul’s animal guide? Lori swore his was the cougar, which meant Paul was a born leader—loyal, courageous, willing to take responsibility when things went bad, and always had the foresight to get them out of messes before they got into them. The notion that a big cat served as his animal guide, one that normally would love to kill him if they met in the woods, didn’t seem quite right. Though he’d had a couple of encounters with cougars that could have killed him and didn’t. Paul had to admit he had led the others of his pack out of several troubling situations over the years, even when he was still young. He just seemed to have the natural instinct to perceive danger and steer the remaining pack members in the right direction.
    Though he still thought Lori had said his guide was the cougar because she wanted him to take charge of the pack, even when they were small. He thought she’d used that as a way to try to heal him when he had lost his parents. But how could he have taken charge of the pack when he’d been so young? Certainly the grown women hadn’t needed him to provide leadership. And not even Lori or Rose had needed it for many years.
    Lori moved to a bush farther away, picking huckleberries and dropping them into her bucket as he pondered how she could have lost the necklace, as much as she treasured it.
    â€œSo the chain broke?”
    â€œNo.” She moved even farther away from him although there were still plenty of berries on that bush. Wolves were wary creatures. And actions like that got their notice.
    He started to pull off berries from the bush she’d just left and smelled the anxious scent she’d left behind. That didn’t bode well. “You were swimming when it happened?” He couldn’t fathom how the necklace could have floated off her head if the chain hadn’t broken.
    Wolves normally didn’t wear jewelry of any kind because it was problematic if they had to shift outside rather than at home, where their valuables would remain more secure. But the necklace was special to her.
    She cast him an annoyed look. “Yes. If you can find it, I’d be grateful. But I’ll understand if you can’t.”
    She picked more berries, but he was studying her now, noticing her irritated expression and the way she was no longer pulling the berries off leisurely but