Guardian Wolf

chapter 1



Freedom!

Yet potential danger, too. Her control was less this night than most times while shifted.

She reveled in it.

Now, with unleashed pleasure, she ran beneath the full moon in territory unknown and vast. She inhaled unfamiliar, tantalizing scents of the desert, where military aircraft landed in the distance, and buildings filled with people squatted nearby.

Around her were yuccas and cacti and gritty sand beneath her paws. Coolness, because it was night.

All illuminated by the round, gleaming moon.



She had been in this area for hours, alone and out of the way. Pacing in her cherished wildness, yet not going far. It was long into the night now. The risk of being seen by people, even on hospital property, was smaller. She ached to release even more pent-up energy. Her last shift had been more than a week ago.

But she was not here for pleasure.

She had viewed her target before, a special building not far from where she stood. Now she needed to observe it with her heightened senses. Wolfen senses.

She sought out an opening in the fence between the air force base and military hospital. She slipped through to the medical side, careful to test the scents in the air, listen, ensure she remained alone. Her aide, nearby, would not follow.

The texture beneath her paws turned hard, uneven, warm—a paved road. She loped carefully at the edge so as not to be spotted in moonlight, toward the far border of the parking lot.

She stopped abruptly as she neared the building. The scent—another wolf like her?

Or a feral, nonshifting wolf? Perhaps. But why would it contain a hint of something so familiar? So…alluring?



She waited, still testing the air with her keen senses. Listening. Hearing nothing out of the ordinary. Watching the building surrounded by concealing foliage and shadows. No movement anywhere around.

Too uneasy to approach further, she slowly returned toward where she had crossed from one property to the other.

She inched along the fence on the air force–base side, reaching an area in which shrubbery between the sites was thick.

And waited. Soon, a hint of light over the horizon signaled dawn—and the waning of the full moon’s power. Ready? Yes. Pleased? No.

She felt the tugging at her skin, her insides, that warned of her next shift. Her aide would seek her now, to ensure that, while most vulnerable, she was in no danger.

As the pulling and aches increased, she glanced back through the fence.

And saw what she had anticipated, lurking among parked cars in the large hospital parking lot, not far from the now-distant storage building.

A canine form. Another wolf?

Her change took over then, hurting, not unbearably, but inevitably intense.

It would be over soon.





In a short while, Lt. Grace Andreas, M.D., hunched along the edge of the sand on Zimmer Air Force Base near the fence separating it from Charles Carder Medical Center. She had been sent to the renowned military hospital on her latest mission for Alpha Force, the covert special ops force to which she belonged.

Her knees were bent, her back arched, as she inhaled deeply with her human senses.

She was still nude, and the cool breeze tickled her bare skin. Her assigned aide, Sgt. Kristine Norwood, would catch up soon, with her clothing.

But—with special thanks to the elixir developed by Alpha Force—Grace recalled well the near-human sights and sounds and emotions that engulfed her while in wolfen form.

Including the scent she had smelled near the building at the far edge of the medical center property—the site where, she’d been told, the biohazard materials taken from patients were stored temporarily until incinerated. The site where security was heightened and armed guards were always present, at least in the room adjoining the storage area. The site she had needed to check out, even cursorily, upon her arrival, while in both forms. It was the heart of her mission.



A canine had begun prowling there in the parking lot, most likely a wolf. Another shapeshifter? One not part of Alpha Force?

Dawn had now overtaken the area. She carefully edged along the air-base side of the fence, staying in shadows, especially since she remained unclothed. Other Alpha Force members had altered the base’s security cameras in this vicinity. She would not be photographed.

She wanted—no, needed—to see the storage building from this angle, too.

There. Another gap between some of the non-native, well-watered hedge plants—not much, but enough for her to view the hospital property.

The scent she had inhaled before still seemed to fill the air. She was aware of it even in human form, partly thanks to her enhanced senses.

She looked through foliage and fencing, and saw movement on the other side, a distance from where she crouched. Too far for her to be sure, but the glimpse of something—flesh, or perhaps light-colored clothing—from between cars suggested a person, not a wolf.

One who had just shifted, like her, as daybreak arrived?

She couldn’t see the person at all now. But the scent. It had been very like one she had known a long time ago, though never in shifted form. Perhaps its owner had not, in fact, been a shifter.

She must be imagining that scent. But why now?

Why, after all these years, did she believe she inhaled the musky, enticing aroma of the man she might have loved long ago, had he been what she suspected—and honest about it?

The person she had glimpsed so briefly, in the distance, was surely not Simon Parran.



“This wasn’t where we planned to meet,” hissed Sgt. Kristine Norwood. Grace’s aide held a blanket around her while handing her a backpack filled with clothing.

“You’re right,” Grace agreed, observing Kristine’s struggle with Bailey, her dog, who tugged on his leash, straining toward the fence.

“Sit, Bailey,” Kristine ordered. The well-trained shepherd-Doberman mix obeyed, but Grace could see his eagerness to get through the fence. He must have smelled the same scent Grace had, with his permanently enhanced canine senses. Of course her senses were better than most humans’, especially right after a shift. But at the moment Kristine, acting like a mother hen—which was her duty—seemed oblivious.

Kristine was in her late twenties, with short, raven-black hair and a strong yet attractive chin that complemented her no-nonsense attitude. In addition to being a non-commissioned officer in the U.S. Army, she was a nurse.

Most important, like Grace, she was a member of Alpha Force.

Unlike Grace, she wasn’t a shapeshifter. Her mission was to watch Grace’s back, in whatever situation, whatever form, Grace found herself. Like last night, and this morning.

“Sorry.” Grace finished pulling up her jeans. “I sensed something interesting over by the storage building. I’m still not sure what—who—it was.”

Kristine regarded her with piercing brown eyes. “Bailey growled when we were near there a little while ago, but I didn’t see anything. Some guy was wandering around the area earlier, though, after dark. I saw him in the moonlight. I kept Bailey and me way back like you wanted so you could do your special form of recon on the area. Was it the thief?”

“I don’t know,” Grace said slowly. She couldn’t believe she’d sensed who she’d thought she had. She’d never forgotten Simon but, even as often as she still thought of him, he’d never appeared in her imagination that way before.

Only in her dreams.

Somehow, she had to find out more about that wolf. More important, she had to learn who the person was whom she’d seen, and why he’d been so close to the biohazards storage facility. Logic suggested it was the thief.

Were the two beings one and the same? She’d caught only one scent from this distance.

As if hearing her thoughts, Kristine said, “Well, you’d better find out who it is and why he was there—preferably before we call Major Connell.”

Major Drew Connell was Grace’s superior officer in Alpha Force. He would expect them to report in soon about how things were going—especially after last night’s full moon.

“I agree, but it won’t happen immediately.” Grace strode off toward the residential quarters near the entrance to the air force base where Kristine and she, and the other visiting Alpha Force members, were staying while on this mission.

“When do you have to report for duty at the hospital today?” Kristine asked. “Do you have time for a nap?”

She could take the time but didn’t want to. “I’ll just walk Tilly, then shower and change clothes,” she told Kristine. Tilly, a German shepherd mix, was her cover dog—one who resembled her in shifted form. If anyone ever saw Grace while she was wolfen, she could laugh it off, say they’d seen Tilly. She had been left in Grace’s room last night and would need some TLC this morning.

They had reached the boxy, five-story residential building. Other military folks poured out, apparently ready to start the day at the base. Grace and Kristine waited, not wanting to buck the crowd. They received a few curious nods and other greetings, but neither was in uniform and no one saluted them.

Soon, as fewer people were exiting, the two used their key cards and went inside.

“I’ll call you when I’m ready to go to the hospital,” Grace told Kristine, and headed for her apartment.



Grace knew she should be exhausted. Instead, she was full of nervous energy.

Rather than a walk, she took Tilly out for a jog. There was a running track near the front of the base, where most living quarters were located. They were alone at this hour. Fortunately, although the Arizona day promised to be a hot one, the temperature was bearable for exercise.

When they returned to their quarters, Grace fed Tilly and ensured she had sufficient water, then took a shower and dressed. Adrenaline had awakened her enough to face the day.



That, and the intriguing identity of the stranger near the biohazard storage last night. Two beings, a wolf and a man?

And by some odd happenstance, could either have been Simon Parran?

She had seen no indication last night of anyone staking out the storage facility for potential thieves. Unless, of course, that was the intent of the person she had glimpsed so near dawn and so briefly. Or the person Kristine had seen just after sunset. He, at least, couldn’t have been a shifter, since they all changed as the full moon rose in the darkness of night.

A lot to check into.

As promised, she called Kristine. “You awake?”

The sergeant muttered something, then said, “Of course.”

“Take your time. In an hour or so, you can go back to the investigation you started yesterday. I’ll want you to bring Tilly to the hospital for therapy visits this afternoon. Meantime, get some rest.” Kristine wasn’t reporting for nurse duty until tomorrow.

“Yes, ma’am,” her aide said crisply, humor in her tone. “I’ll get an extra forty winks for you, too.”

Smiling, Grace called the medical center–commander’s office. She learned from his secretary that he would squeeze her in first thing that morning.

After donning white hospital scrubs and attractive yet comfortable rubber-soled shoes, she left for the hospital next door. On arrival, she stopped in a doctor’s lounge she’d seen yesterday, grabbed a spare medical jacket from its supply of extras, and pinned onto it the name tag she’d been given.

The medical-center building was vast and smelled of antiseptics overlying odors of wounds and disease. As Grace hurried through the halls, she glanced at the faces of people she passed. She recognized a few she’d met yesterday, but their scents were not the one she had smelled in last night’s moonlight.

In a few minutes, she arrived at the commander’s office.

“Have a seat, Lieutenant.” Colonel Nelson Otis waved in the direction of the chairs facing his gray metal desk, where file folders were stacked in six neat piles. Like Grace, he was both a military officer and a medical doctor.

“Thank you, sir.” Grace sat down.

Colonel Otis was a large man, also dressed in a white lab jacket. His face was round, his gray hair a stubble that started halfway back on his head. He sat behind the desk in his large, military-pristine office, regarding her so intensely over half-glasses that she felt uncomfortable.

But she regarded him right back with an unwavering stare. She had long ago learned to deal with people who attempted to intimidate her for no reason other than to stroke their egos. She had to be careful with her attitude, now that she was in the military, but in most Alpha Force situations, she fortunately did not have to impress the brass to whom she ostensibly reported. Her real commanding officers were on the East Coast, at Ft. Lukman on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

On the other hand, she had to get along with folks on her missions, especially egotistical military sorts. She made herself look away first.

“What did you think of your first day here yesterday, Lieutenant?” the colonel asked. “Did you find out who our thief is?”

She doubted he would be so sarcastic with a man in her position. He of course had no idea of her special abilities, or why she was much better qualified to find the missing hazardous substances than almost any other member of the military.

He certainly didn’t know how she had patrolled the air base and medical center last night.



“Not yet, sir. But I will.”

“Don’t get overconfident,” he snapped. “I’ve had not only local military security but also investigators from the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations check things out, and they found nothing definitive. Because of the sensitive nature of what’s being stolen, and the need for a quick resolution, I asked for additional help—and they had you and your buddies assigned to Zimmer. But none of you seems the kind to figure this out fast. A medical doctor, a flight communications officer and some NCOs—who the hell are you?”

“We’re members of Alpha Force, Colonel.” Grace knew that the pride that came through in her tone would only irritate him more. “I know you’ve been told we’re a covert special ops force, sir.” If he only knew how special…

“But nothing more about you,” he asserted belligerently. He was aware, though, that all Alpha Force members who had been sent for this assignment were women, which undoubtedly factored into his attitude. He seemed all old-school military to her.

“No, sir,” she responded politely. “As I said, our operations are covert. But you can always speak with General Greg Yarrow, who oversees our operations. He’ll vouch for us.”

“I’ve already done that. He’s as closemouthed as you.” The colonel settled back, apparently deciding that confronting her antagonistically wasn’t getting him anywhere. “Okay, tell me about your initial impressions. Did you see anything that might help accomplish your mission as fast as we need it done?”

“Not yet, but I’ll make sure we do our best to bring down the perpetrators as quickly as possible, sir,” she said, purposely obscure.

“I’m sure you will.” The colonel rose, using his bulk to move his chair from beneath his desk. She was clearly about to be dismissed—and was glad. “What’s your next move?”

“I want to retrieve my therapy dog from my assistant and start my visits to the appropriate floors first. Then I’ll check out the infectious diseases wing, start seeing patients soon.”

“Those areas aren’t where you’ll find anything relating to our thefts.” He snapped at her once more, and she swallowed her irritated retort.

“No, sir. But I hope to be of service as a medical doctor, as well as visiting patients with my dog. Both are part of my cover, and as a doctor dealing with infectious diseases I’ll oversee extraction of the kinds of samples from patients that can become biohazards like those that were stolen. I’ll report anything I find of potential interest to you.”



“Yeah, you do that. Meantime, I’ll get you started with your medical duties.” He lifted the receiver on the phone on his desk and pushed a button. “Is he here yet?” he immediately asked whomever answered. “Good. Send him in.” He looked at Grace. “One of our other infectious-disease specialists will take you to that wing and introduce you around, since I assume you didn’t meet anyone there yesterday with all the paperwork you were doing.”

A shudder of warning immediately passed through Grace. It was all she could do to continue just to sit and keep an impassive yet interested expression on her face.

It surely wouldn’t be…

A knock sounded on the closed office door. Whoever was there opened it without waiting for the colonel’s response.

An instant later, a man walked into the room. He was tall, broad-shouldered beneath a white medical jacket similar to Grace’s but much larger. He was great-looking, with longish thick black hair and a sharp facial structure. His straight, dark eyebrows and wide lips underscored his angry-looking scowl as he glanced at her. The look lightened considerably as he turned to the colonel. “Good morning,” he said.



“You ready to show Dr. Andreas around?” Colonel Otis asked.

“Of course.” He turned back toward her. This time, his expression was neutral, but it still sent shivers cascading down Grace’s spine.

It was Simon Parran. He looked even better than he had all those years ago, if that was possible. And she had indeed caught his intriguing masculine scent last night.