Read Long Shadows: The Lycanthropy Files, Book 2 for Free Online Page A

abilities, in wolf form, they were almost painfully acute. The moonlight through the windows had been beautiful and cool—now it sparkled on the floor and every surface with opalescence that made me want to run and yip and bathe in its light. The forest beyond the windows beckoned with a thousand scents and rustlings and scurryings, each one of which begged to be investigated.
    A light nip to my shoulder brought me back to myself, and I shifted my weight so I stood evenly on all four paws. Leo, a black wolf, sat and looked at me, his tongue lolling in amusement. Joanie, a petite brown wolf who could probably pass for one of the Arkansas red wolves, had nipped me.  
    “You were quivering like you were ready to explode with the sensations of it all,” she said telepathically.
    “It’s different from when we spirit-walk,” I responded. “ I feel heavier but more powerful.”
    “Do you remember anything of the first time? When Iain and I chased after you?”
    “Only that I wanted to get away and be free. And Gabriel…”
    A low growl from Leo halted that line of conversation. Not that I blamed him. Gabriel had tried to claim Joanie first.
    “Moonlight’s wasting, girls,” he said but waited for Joanie to lead us out of the house through a— oh, the shame! —doggie door in the mud room.
    “It was the easiest solution,” Joanie told me once we were through. I heard the wry smile in her voice.
    Once we were fully in the moonlight, the dry brown grass under my paws, I didn’t care that we’d been relegated to the status of mere canis domesticus or whatever the hell regular dogs were. I chased after her, nipping at her flank, and she mock-growled at me. We tumbled and tussled before I drew back.
    “The baby! I’m sorry.”
    “It’s all right,” she reassured me with a canine grin at Leo. “He’s done worse.”
    “And that’s all I need to know.” I trotted to the edge of the woods and smelled pigeons and squirrels and deer and all manner of things that seemed to taunt me. “When do we hunt?” It came out as a vocal whine.
    “When Matthew arrives.” Leo looked around, his ears perked. “He should have been here by now.”
    “Maybe he got delayed by something? Too much traffic on the road, perhaps, or the cubs wanting to come with him?” The image of the playful pups didn’t dispel the concern in Joanie’s mental voice, and I remembered Matthew saying they never hunted alone anymore.
    Leo paced back and forth on the lawn. “He said he’d be on time.”
    A gunshot rang out, and all of us sat up, ears swiveling back and forth.
    “What the hell was that?” I asked. “Okay, I know what it was, but what was it?” Human logical processes weren’t exactly working well, but they knew what I meant.
    “Danger!” Joanie yelled in her mental voice, and we scrambled for the house, but another gunshot and a puff of wet dirt and grass in front of Leo, who had the lead, sent us toward the woods.
    “Son of a fucking bitch!”
    If I hadn’t been so panicked, I would have been shocked by Joanie’s language. She’d promised me she thought in expletives, but I’d heard very few from her.
    “It’s a fine line between thought and speech in this form,” she said. “We have to hide so we can change back.”
    “But we’ll be naked!”
    Leo scoffed. “I’ve got no problem with that.”
    “You wouldn’t.” Joanie didn’t sound amused. “Stop thinking like humans. Get off the path.”
    We did as she said, but we weren’t exactly quiet. There were no more gunshots, so we laid low in a hollow behind a downed tree trunk, panting.
    The breeze came from behind us and didn’t give us any good clues as to what was going on up ahead. I heard Joanie curse mentally again and Leo calming her down, but I’d sensed something that made my knees—all four of them—turn to gelatin: the smell of fuchsia on the breeze.
    “Guys… Guys! We’ve been lured into a trap.”
    “How do you know?” Joanie looked