Free Moonlit Embrace by Lyn Brittan

herself, if they’d all just go away. Shock started its slow evaporation and fear, true fear, took its place.
    Tony shouted above her as doors opened and closed. “Officer, please! Over here!”
    Beyond the tangy scent of the blood that turned her red skirt, brown, she caught a whiff of something neither human, nor wolf. The owner of that scent, one of the responding police officers, picked her up in muscled arms and carried her away. What was this creature?
    “I’ll rush her to the trauma center,” the thing carrying her called back to the rest.
    “No!” She fought and scratched, desperate for a way to escape. The one thing more terrifying than dying, was human knowledge of their kind. She refused to become someone’s experiment.
    The creature, however, didn’t let go.
    “Easy, love. Let me get you to the car. You can heal yourself there.” The officer looked down and puckered his lips at her gasp. His irises lengthened and stretched until they were as thin as a razor’s edge. “You must know that I’m too handsome to be human.”
    She gave what she hoped passed for a smile, but the pain left her crying out. The plain-clothed officer dropped her in the backseat of his cruiser and took off, pealing through town.
    Johanna gave in to the pain and screamed then. Healing wasn’t cute or quick. Each second lasted an eternity. Each second, a lifetime of agony.
    The officer pushed through the crowded streets, until he reached the relative safety of the highway. Even then he didn’t slow. His eyes flickered back to her in the rearview mirror. “How you doing back there?”
    “Home. I want to go home.” She called out the address and soon he carried her up the stairs to her apartment. She wanted to ask his name, but her stomach rolled and she threw up on him instead. There was too much pain to be horrified or embarrassed.
    The cop shrugged out of his shirt and laid her down on the couch. He disappeared for a moment, but came back with a cup of water in one hand and the kitchen trashcan in the other. “So I came here to protect you and, well, our secret. The bonus was that I’d be your hero and you’d let me take you out sometime. Don’t look outraged. I can smell the dude here. It’s cool. Drink up and give me his number.”
    The water spilled, her rattled hands unable to keep it steady. The officer reached for a tissue to dab it up, then took her hand and wiped it dry. “Relax.”
    “Thank you.”
    “You’re welcome. Got a sister?”
    “Worst cop ever.”
    He leaned over the sofa and smirked. “Also known as Jack Wu. You’ll be fine. You’re tough. I can’t help but notice that you’ve stopped healing. Can’t do that, pretty girl. Push through the pain.”
    “My phone? Dial Baron. I need him.”
    “Only if you promise to keep going.”
    The hurting took over, but Jack held her hand and whispered silken words into her ear. She bit her lips until they bled and yet she kept up the healing process. Stopping was not an option. Not with Jack’s knuckles raking up and down her arm, encouraging her to press on.
    She had no idea how long he held her like that, but all of a sudden Jack jerked away and jumped off the couch. “I smell something big and crazy coming up. Here’s my card. You’ll be in pain for a while longer, but we need to get our stories straight. For now, I’ll say that I released you into the care of a certain doctor. One of ours.” He took another two steps away from her. “Incoming.”
    She hadn’t known how scared and shaken she was until Baron’s voice called out to her through the door. So consumed with her healing, she hadn’t scented him, or Kate, fast on his heels.
    She lost it. Wyatt’s red and swollen eyes proved her complete undoing. She cried because she was scared. She cried because it hurt. She cried because, well hell, he cried.
    Baron cupped her face in his hands, holding her like fragile and priceless glass. “You’re never going back there. Do you understand