A Highland Werewolf Wedding - By Terry Spear Page 0,26
in wolf fur, kneading the ground with his paws and stretching his legs before he raced to join her. Watching her explore the castle ruins and seeing her enthusiasm about running as a wolf made him feel a surge of lightheartedness, something he hadn’t felt since Calla decided to mate with Baird McKinley a month earlier.
Sure, he had to see if his car was anywhere about. But with helping to run Argent Castle and the pack, he hadn’t taken much time for himself of late. If his clan could only see him now. Though he was always kidded for being the most easygoing of the brothers, this was something entirely new for him—putting aside a crisis to enjoy the company of a she-wolf, forgetting duty or the pack for the moment.
He quickly joined her on the tower stairs. When she unexpectedly licked his face in greeting, he cast her a wolfish grin.
She had to know her actions were considered part of the courtship phase between wolves. Werewolves might not date, but they definitely courted in their own way. He was all too ready to go along with it.
She ran up the rest of the stairs, wagging her tail and stopping to sniff at a corner of the tower and then on the step before her while he nearly rammed his nose up her butt because of her sudden stops and starts.
He could have laughed at the way she was so delighted to cast off her human form and play in her wolf one.
Probably some of her enthusiasm was due to the long flight, confinement on the airplane, the drive here from Edinburgh, and now her first chance to really stretch her legs, like a wild wolf released from a cage.
After circling around the tower room, she wrinkled her nose at a hole in the floor where men would have urinated when they were on guard duty. Then she stood on her hind legs to look out a perfectly round window at the water, where whitecaps frothed over the tops of moss-covered boulders. She smelled the wind for the longest time, breathing in the scents, filling her lungs, letting out the air, and doing it again. While he was smelling her. The way she was so ecstatic, excited, loving it.
She dropped to her paws, whipped around, and licked his cheek again. Before he could lick her back, she raced down the circular stairs until she reached the bottom as he flew down the steps after her.
She circumnavigated the inner courtyard, her thick fur coat protecting her from the chilly light rain. She poked her nose at the water-filled well, which had large, leafy plants floating on the surface as the rain splattered into the well. Then she dashed into the cellar, smelled the ovens where bread used to bake, the storage area where meat and grain had been stored, and then ran up the stairs to the baron and baroness’s chambers, where the roof was long gone. She sniffed around, then headed back out again. Exploring the chapel in the same excited way, she smelled the scents that had collected over the years, none of which humans who were purely humans could detect.
Staying close, he took delight in seeing her joy. He realized then how easily Elaine had made him forget his mission, his anger at the McKinleys and the Kilpatricks, showing him how important life’s little pleasures were.
She headed for the tunnel that led out of the inner bailey and raced down the one hundred and fifty stairs cut into the cliff like she was possessed. She was sure-footed despite her rushing because of the fur on her pads, just like when he could run on ice without slipping. He had to laugh deep inside as he easily kept up with her. He trailed just behind her, watching the upper stairs that led down, then looking up to the castle tunnel, to ensure that no one was coming or might see them.
No one was out in this weather.
Then she leaped the short distance to the beach and ran to the water’s edge, snapping at the churned-up surf smashing against boulders. Whitecaps danced across small waves, as the wind blew his and Elaine’s fur. The water was too stirred up for boats to be out in this weather.
She glanced out across the loch, then loped along the edge of the water, looking all along the beach and up at the cliffs.
The rain hadn’t started pouring again, though as dark as the