In an isolated area of northern Manitoba lives an unusual breed of wolf. They are the Shumani, the wolves who walk as men. But the longer they go without contact with humans, the more they regress into wild wolves.
Larak and his den-brother Kam watched helplessly as the Shumani dwelling in the hills above Wolf Creek were taken over by Hunt, a vicious black wolf who will do anything to retain control of the pack. Now, with the arrival of the only human they've seen since cubhood, Larak and Kam vow to end Hunt's domination.
Sarah Hartwell, domestic disaster and wolf aficonado, has left her fiance to spend eight months studying the wolves. Little does she know she will become a pawn in the battle for control of the Shumani -- a pawn Hunt is determined to remove from the game.
Can Larak and Kam convince her to give up a safe, secure life among her own kind for one of danger, passion, and the call of the wild?
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Reviews
4 1/2 cherries! "Taking the standard wolf-shifter story and turning it into something entirely her own, Sierra Dafoe presents you with an intriguing tale of two brothers and one woman, each searching for something and finding it with each other." -- Whipped Cream Reviews
Call of the Wild
M/F/M erotic menage
Publisher: Changeling
Format: eBook
Length: Novella
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Excerpt
At last Sarah sat back, rolling her shoulders and kneading her neck to try to work the cramps out of her muscles. God, she was tired! But when she looked at the wolf, she felt a small, warm glow of satisfaction.
Three hours, it had taken her. Three hours of careful concentration; cleaning out the wound, stitching the ragged flesh back together, splinting the leg and wrapping it to give the fractured bone a chance to set.
So maybe she burned water. And shirts. And dinners. But she could do this, God damn it. And well, too.
For the first time in months, she actually felt good about herself.
Carefully rewinding the surgical thread, she put it back into the medi-kit, then wrapped the empty syringes in a scrap of cloth and shoved them deep into a pocket of the canvas bag. The instruments she'd used -- the needle and clamps and scissors -- she dumped into a pot to boil. Bleary-eyed, she levered herself to her feet and stood, swaying slightly, looking down at the wolf sprawled on the cot, excitement blooming in her heart.
They'd come back. They really had come back.
Sarah smiled sleepily, remembering the fat little pups who'd spilled out of the den, yapping and tumbling on the broad granite ledge looking out toward the lake. Maybe this wolf had been one of those pups, four years ago. There was no way of knowing.
Sighing in weariness, she knelt to light the woodstove. Her knees popped as she straightened. With one last glance at the wolf, she lifted her bucket from its hook by the door and stepped outside.
Only then did she remember the strange man she'd seen, his tangled hair falling around those eerie yellow eyes. Sarah hesitated. Her hatchet was still where she'd dropped it in the glade, some two hundred yards from the camp. Never mind -- she still had her knife. And whoever he was, he was long gone by now.
Still, she couldn't help thinking about him as she strode down to the lake, the waning moon hanging low over the peaks behind her. It had been higher earlier, bright and silver, shading the planes and angles of his body with luminous light. For a moment she'd simply stared, feeling a ridiculous wave of sensual hunger -- even with the wolf screaming in agony behind her, still she'd felt that.
God, Sar, one lousy lover and you turn into a nymphomaniac. Disgusted with herself, she squatted down by the water's edge, careful not to disturb the bottom as she filled the bucket.
But she wasn't one -- she knew that. So okay, maybe John hadn't been exactly everything she'd hoped for in a lover, but she'd been perfectly willing to live with it, if only...
If only he'd been willing to live with her faults, too. Her faults, and her fascination with wolves.
But John sure never had a body like that, she mused, sitting back on her heels to gaze out over the lake. It was a landscape done in monochrome -- the blackness of the water, the sparkling diamonds of moonlight, the shadowy bulk of the mountains beyond... She was only half-seeing it, she realized, her inner eye still dwelling on moonlit curves of muscle, the dark patch of hair at the man's groin...
Oh, stop it, Sarah! Impatiently, she turned away from the lake, the bucket banging against her thigh as she started back to the cabin.
It made no sense -- what was a naked man doing running around northern Manitoba? She'd dismissed her first thought, that he'd been a member of some native tribe. His tangled hair, tumbling down well past his shoulders, had been a deep, tawny amber, two shades darker than his eyes...
Sarah shivered, not with fear, but with an echo of the hunger which had pierced her when those eyes had met hers. The same, sudden fire beat through her groin, awakening an ache deeper than anything she'd ever felt. Her knees actually buckled as she stopped still, remembering... and cold water sloshed over her thigh from the bucket, propelling her back into motion.
Who in hell was he? What had he been doing here?
And why did she feel this inane sense of disappointment at the thought of never seeing him again?
