Wolf Dreams

Wolf Dreams

Karen Whiddon

MILLS & BOON

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Copyright

Endpages

Chapter One

“She’s a what?” Lazlo Brennan stared at his fellow detectives. He’d expected a bit of good-natured ribbing on his first day of the job, but this?

“Erika Cenov is a psychic,” Detective Rok Skerkis repeated. “Believe me, I’m telling you the truth.”

Suppressing a sigh, Lazlo glanced at the perfectly serious expressions on the faces of the three men with whom he was sharing a cup of bad coffee in the police department break room.

“Why do you say she’s a psychic?” he asked warily. None of the detectives were shape-shifters or Pack, so he supposed this was their idea of ribbing the new guy. Any minute now, they’d throw out the punch line and have a good laugh at his expense.

Instead, the other men started talking about Erika’s dreams—premonitions of death—and a curse.

This last part was what caused him to finally shake his head. “That’s ridiculous. I dated her in high school. She wasn’t a psychic then, or cursed.”

“You’ve been gone ten years,” Rok pointed out. “She came into her powers when she turned twenty-one.”

Seven years ago. Swallowing a gulp of bitter brew, Lazlo grimaced. He started to wonder if the punch line he was expecting wasn’t going to materialize. “And you know this how?”

“She told us,” another detective, James or Jimmy something, chimed in. “She’s helped us find several missing persons. Unfortunately, they were deceased by the time we located them, but still…”

“Deceased?” Placing his chipped cup on the table, Lazlo scratched his head, uncomfortable now. This had gone too far, even if he had known them all since high school. “Come on, guys. Enough’s enough.”

Rok narrowed his eyes. “We aren’t messing with you. Erika dreams and people die. At first we thought she might be a serial killer or something, but we checked her out.”

“She has the second sight,” another officer put in.

After a decade in New York, he’d forgotten how superstitious the old country could be. Like neighboring Croatia, Teslinko might be a modernized country, but the old ways lingered. Which was why those who were Pack members, like him, had to be very careful not to shape-shift where humans might see. The last time that had happened, several hundred years in the past, the townspeople had panicked. Amid cries of “Werewolves!” they’d armed themselves with pitchforks and tried to burn the shifters out. Fire was one of only two things that could kill a full-blooded shifter, so several Pack members had perished.

Since then, the Pack took stringent measures to ensure humans had no idea shape-shifters lived in their midst. These days, while some shifters mated with humans, resulting in half-shifter offspring known as Halflings, Lazlo’s family did not. They were proud of their pure family line, dating back centuries. His father had often declared that no human would ever learn about shifters from a Brennan.

Considering what Lazlo knew of the supernatural, he considered it ironic that the humans believed in Erika Cenov’s purported abilities and he didn’t. Maybe because he’d grown up with her. The down-to-earth girl he’d spent all of his childhood with was about as far from a clairvoyant as one could get. She’d been serious, even in high school, grounded in her studies and her love of nature. Psychic mumbo-jumbo hadn’t even been a blip on her radar.

When his desk phone rang, Lazlo sat up straight. Finally, his first call as a Teslinko Police Department detective.

Answering, he listened carefully before placing the phone back in its cradle. A missing child. He swore.

“Yeah,” Rok said softly. He stood directly in front of Lazlo’s desk. “I just got the same call. The captain wants us to go to the parents’ house. Someone broke in through the window in the middle of the night and stole the kid. We’ve got to find her.”

The dreams had always been the same. Blood and death and destruction, with little variance. Until now. Erika Cenov moved restlessly, trying to force herself to wake, to open her eyes and break the spell.

At last, she bolted upright, her breathing harsh and heavy. Death dreams, though blessedly rare, always felt identical. Though her grandmother had called this a gift, Erika bore it as a curse, this ability to see someone else’s death. She felt guilty, as if she were to blame. Would the faceless victims have died if she hadn’t dreamed it?

But tonight’s dream had been crazy. She’d seen her old boyfriend, the one who’d gotten away with her heart. Lazlo Brennan. He’d moved from Teslinko to New York right after graduation. And now it appeared his life would come to an end, here in Teslinko. A violent, horrible end. And soon.

Heart pounding, she tried to make sense of her vision. As usual, there’d been blood and terror and…death. Lazlo had been shot, which was not all that remarkable—she’d seen that happen to others in her dreams before.

But a few things had been different from her previous dreams. For the first time, she’d been a bystander in her own dream. And she’d been the cause of Lazlo’s demise. Which didn’t make sense. She hadn’t seen him in a decade. Lazlo was thousands of miles away, on another continent.

And another difference—there’d been other people in her vision. The dreams usually starred only the person whose life was about to end. This time she’d seen a man abducting a child. And more. Wild animals. A pack of them. Wolves.

Oh, but the final variance…

Feeling sick, she shook her head. Throwing back the thin cotton sheet, she got up. The cool ceramic tile beneath her bare feet grounded and calmed her somewhat, but her heart still raced.

Though her visions were never wrong, this dream had to be a fluke. Lazlo’s presence didn’t add up. And then there was the sheer weirdness of what she’d seen. Even for someone like her, used to crazy dreams and visions, it was beyond belief. Because not only had she caused the death of a man she’d once thought she’d love forever, but she’d watched him become a wolf.

Proof positive that this particular dream was wrong, she thought, trying to force herself not to trust her own visions, which up till now had been surefire. For once, what she’d seen would not come true.

A werewolf. Right. Death dreams and curses were bad enough. Considering the possibility that werewolves might exist? If she let herself believe in something like that, she might as well admit herself to the hospital for psychiatric evaluation. Lazlo had always been a bit more reckless than the other boys, but a streak of wildness didn’t mean he was a…freak.

The instant she thought the word, she chided herself. After all, many people here in town had called her the same or worse, just because of a little psychic ability. She’d learned the hard way never to judge others.

Sniffing, she headed toward the shower, wondering what quirk of her mind had made her think of Lazlo Brennan. The last time she’d seen him, they’d been eighteen and high-school sweethearts, in love. Then he’d left her and Teslinko for the greener shores of America without even saying goodbye. He’d broken her heart.

As she was eating breakfast, her phone rang. It was the Teslinko police chief, asking for her help. A child had gone missing; they suspected the four-year-old girl had been kidnapped. And they needed Erika’s help to find her.

Erika’s stomach clenched. Of course. Her dreams never lied. Though this time, more than any other, she’d have given anything to be wrong.

“Let’s go,” Lazlo said to his partner, his adrenaline already shifting into high gear as he headed for the door of the squad room. The heartbreaking—and crucial—task of talking to the parents of a victim was one peace officers dreaded. Most often, things were exactly as they seemed, with the parents frantic for the return of their child.

Sometimes though, it was worse. Lazlo had worked one case where the father had turned out to be the monster who’d tortured and killed his son. Lazlo never wanted to work another like that.

Catching up to him, Rok pointed out his unmarked department vehicle. “You should know that they’ve called in Erika Cenov to help.”

Climbing into the car and starting to drive, Lazlo glanced at Rok in disbelief. “Are you serious?”

“Yes. I wasn’t making that stuff up. Your old girlfriend is a psychic. The captain said she already had a dream. Maybe she can find little Katya Holson.”

Lazlo let the remark about Erika being a psychic slide and concentrated on the child. Katya Holson. Age four.

Numerous members of the Teslinko police department were already at work at the Holsons’. Yellow crime scene tape blocked off one side of the square clapboard house.

A uniformed officer met them as they got out of the car. “Mr. and Mrs. Holson are waiting inside. Erika Cenov is with them.”

Rok shot Lazlo an I told you so look and strode ahead. Lazlo followed, a bit more slowly.

Erika. He’d never been able to exorcise her from his heart.

He’d loved her once, with a passion so all-consuming it had terrified an eighteen-year-old still trying to come to terms with the fact that his girlfriend—and the woman his wolf had once foolishly considered his mate—was human rather than Pack.

Something about Erika’s aura was different enough that when they’d first started dating he’d harbored the hope she might be a Halfling. But he’d soon learned her difference had nothing to do with any shifter blood—in hindsight, perhaps it had to do with her unexplored psychic potential, assuming he believed in that. Whatever the reason for her aura, Erika was human.

When he’d realized that fact, Lazlo had kept it a secret, knowing his family’s prejudice against non-shifters would mean an end to his relationship with Erika if they found out she was human. But his father had ultimately discovered the truth. He’d gone ballistic.

While numerous shifters married humans, his father had forbidden it. Right before Lazlo’s graduation, the head of the Brennan household had extracted a promise from his only son. Unwilling to disappoint the man who’d raised him as a single parent, Lazlo had given his word. To uphold the honor of his family, he would only marry a full-blood shifter. He would not be the one to dilute their long, unbroken line.

Which meant, of course, that he could not have Erika. Unable to say goodbye to her, he’d simply left, going as far away as he could.

He’d often wondered what had become of her, but he hadn’t planned on running into her in the middle of a crime scene. Or that she would be the police department’s official…psychic.

Assuming he believed in such things—and as a shape-shifter he knew anything was possible—would Erika’s new abilities mean she’d be able to see into the deepest part of him and know the secret he’d kept from her all these years? Would she be horrified? He told himself it didn’t matter; his vow had ensured there could never be anything between them.

No matter what his wolf wanted.

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