The dog just laid on the tarp, his chest heaving, but he was too cold and exhausted to move even his head. Carefully, Weston wrapped the dog in the tarp and then started inching his way back to the shore on his butt, the ice cracking even more.

  “Hurry, Weston!” Gina shouted, though she knew he had to be careful too. She didn’t trust the lake ice to hold the dog’s and her brother’s weight with the way it was breaking up.

  The other men held the rope still so they could pull Weston out in case he fell through. Then there was an even louder cracking sound. Gina’s heart took a dive as the ice broke away and Weston slid into the lake with the dog in his arms.

  “Weston! No!” Gina was pulling at the rope now too and hoping her brother didn’t lose the dog as they tried to extract both of them from the frigid water.

  “Hold on, Weston,” Patterson shouted, pulling on the rope with all his strength. “We’ve got you.”

  “Don’t lose the dog,” Gina said, or all of this would be for nothing.

  They all kept pulling Weston, breaking up the ice more until he came to solid ice and they managed to extract him. Thankfully, Weston was still holding tight to the poor dog. She was so relieved. He loved animals as much as she did, so she hadn’t really thought he’d let go of him if he could help it. The guys hurried to wrap Weston and the dog in the tarp and get them to the shore.

  “We’ve got the fire going. Let’s get the two of them warmed up,” Patterson said.

  To Gina, Patterson looked like a Bigfoot character himself, six seven, black hair and dark-brown eyes, huge feet and giant hands. She’d seen him bathing in the lake on one of these treks in the summer last year, and he was hairy too. She’d always thought if anyone saw him in the woods, they might have thought he was Bigfoot.

  He helped Weston back to camp, and Bromley—who was six feet tall like her brother but blond and blue-eyed, whereas her brother had dark-brown hair and eyes like her—carried the dog to the campsite.

  While the others were taking care of Weston, she tied the end of the rope to a tree on the lake’s shore and then to herself, carefully making her way back out to where she could fetch the water for their supper. At least she didn’t have to go out very far this time because of Weston falling through the ice closer to shore. She finally got the water and headed back in, trying not to break any more of the ice on the way back.

  At their campsite, Bromley and Patterson had helped strip her brother out of his wet things, dressed him in dry clothes, and then wrapped him in an emergency reflective blanket. Weston huddled next to the fire. The dog was lying on the tarp beside him, but he needed one of her blankets. Neither of the other guys was offering theirs. Weston would need all of his own blankets to keep warm after what he’d been through. She secured one of her blankets from her tent, brought it out, and covered the dog with it. He watched her, his beautiful brown eyes appearing grateful, but he was still too weak to even lift his head.

  “We need to return to the vehicles and have Weston and the dog seen to.” She figured the guys wouldn’t want to return home this early, not when they’d only been out here for two days of their five-day trip. But she was concerned about her brother’s health. And the dog’s. “You guys can continue on.”

  “I’ll be fine. We’ve hardly even begun our search for Bigfoot and the werewolves. If I went home and Patterson and Bromley found one of these creatures, I would never forgive myself,” Weston said. “Can you make me your hot chili and some hot cocoa so I’ll warm right up?” But he was shivering hard, and she wanted him warmed up even more before he considered staying that long. “I’ll be fine by morning,” Weston said.

  If not, she was going to insist they go home.

  The dog closed his eyes and appeared to be sleeping. She put some water in a bowl for him for when he had the energy to drink it. She intended to keep him warm in her tent tonight. Pulling the blanket back, she felt around his neck for a collar, but he wasn’t wearing one. He looked up at her, and she swore he smiled.

  As Gina made the cocoa and chili with the water she’d gathered, she wondered if the dog had been off chasing rabbits or something and had gotten lost. Maybe his owner was out here camping somewhere too. She didn’t think he was a wild dog. His coat was nice and shiny, not matted, and he smelled of a nice spicy-smelling shampoo.

  “Not to change the subject, but I still say we ought to check out Maine and see if we can locate the Arctic werewolf our friends said they saw,” Bromley said.

  Weston drank some more of his cocoa. “I checked.”

  “For our missing friend. Not for the werewolf,” Bromley said. “And since that’s the only verified sighting we know about, why not check it out?”

  Verified, as if! Their friends hadn’t taken any pictures of the verified werewolf shifting or anything.

  “And how safe would that be if a werewolf killed two of the men?” Gina asked, not believing it, but if she was going to play along with the story, that was the first thing she thought of. “Besides, the lone werewolf might not have been a loner at all but part of a big pack.”

  “That’s what I keep saying,” Patterson said. “That it’s not just one but a whole pack. Our friends didn’t stand a chance. And neither would Weston if he’d run into them.”

  She shouldn’t have added to the tale, but she couldn’t help herself. “You never know—Sarge might have been bitten and turned into one of their kind.”

  The guys all agreed.

  They ate their chili and drank their hot cocoa. “You did a great job on dinner,” Weston said.

  “Thanks. It was nice and hot for a cold night.” Gina loved how everyone took turns making the meals on these trips. Everyone made great meals.

  When they were ready to retire for the night, she made sure her brother had enough blankets and was sufficiently warm in his sleeping bag in his tent. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “Yeah, Gina, I’m fine.”

  “Thanks for saving the dog.” She gave her brother a hug.

  “I wasn’t going to let him drown.”

  “I know.” But if he couldn’t have held onto him, that would have been another story. “Good night, Weston.”

  “’Night, Sis.”

  Then she left his tent and asked Patterson, “Can you move Shep into my tent and lay him next to my sleeping bag?”

  “Shep?”

  “The dog. I think he’s a German shepherd.”

  Patterson shook his head and lifted the dog, carried him into her tent, and laid him next to her sleeping bag. Then she covered Shep with a new dry blanket. She hoped she didn’t get cold tonight.

  “Thanks, Patterson.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said, leaving her tent.

  Zipping her tent door closed, she realized her hand was stinging where Shep had cut her with his teeth, and she rummaged through her bag to find her liquid skin bandage and applied it. Stinging, ack!

  Then she curled up in her sleeping bag. She was thinking about caring for Shep on their hike and realized they didn’t have any dog food for him, but she had some extra protein bars and beef jerky in case of an emergency that she could feed him. Reaching over to him, she ran her hand over his head. She would take good care of him if they couldn’t find his owner while they were hiking in the woods. Sighing, she hoped he wouldn’t run off either, but if he did, they really couldn’t do anything about it. In the event he might want to run off and join his family, she wasn’t going to put him on a rope leash.

  His ears twitched, and for now, he seemed perfectly content to lie there next to her.

  She sighed. “Thank you for warning me about the ice. You saved my life.” Then she remembered her apartment had just given notice that renters couldn’t have new pets at the complex. People who had rented prior to the policy change could keep their pets there until they moved on. She chewed on her lip. She’d pretend she’d always had him and hope none of her neighbors would tell on her to management.

  Chapter 2

  When Maverick Wilding had gone running as a red wolf with his twin brother, Josh, he had seen the woman trying to fetch water in her water bag for a campfire meal, he suspected, having smelled the smoke from the campfire. It was good that Maverick and his brother had split up to cover more territory while looking for any sign of a reindeer in the area.

  But as far out on the lake as the woman had walked and then seeing her trying to break a hole in the ice, he knew it was too dangerous. With his sensitive wolf hearing, he’d heard the ice cracking in a way that meant danger, and he’d raced to warn her, to chase her back away from the peril in the event she didn’t heed the warning. He sure hadn’t expected to fall into the lake himself, and he was still chiding himself for the mistake that could have killed him.

  He was grateful that the woman’s brother, Weston, had rescued him. Maverick’s fur coat had kept him warm and helped stave off the initial shock of the cold, but the longer he’d been in the water, the worse he had felt, and the more he had realized his struggles to pull himself out of the lake had been in vain.

  Now the woman, Gina, was petting him in her tent, and he was finally feeling better, warmer. She’d put that awful-smelling antiseptic on her hand, and he wondered if she’d cut her hand on the jagged ice. He’d smelled her blood and hoped the cut wasn’t too bad. He glanced at her, enjoying the warmth from her body, her blanket helping dry his fur coat as well. He breathed in her scent—woodsy, sweet, and human. She was a pretty brunette, her hair tangled about her shoulders, her dark-brown eyes closed now.

  He had to get out of there as soon as possible so he could meet up with his brother before Josh worried something bad had happened to him.

  “I don’t know. Do we push on and keep searching for Bigfoot, or do we turn back like Gina said?” Bromley asked the other man still at the campfire as they put out the fire.

  “I think we should wait and see how Weston is feeling in the morning,” Patterson said.

  “They will never stop hunting for Bigfoot and werewolves, even if it kills them,” Gina whispered to Maverick. “As if any of that were real, of course, just between you and me. But I do worry about them encountering bears or a wild boar or even a cougar—much more likely and more dangerous than Bigfoot or werewolves.”

  Werewolves. The last time Maverick’s red wolf pack had heard about Bigfoot and werewolf hunters, their pack leader, Leidolf Wildhaven, had gotten involved, learning that the hunters had actually witnessed an Arctic wolf shifting in Maine. Those same men then killed two of the werewolves from the pack that they’d discovered, injecting them with silver nitrite, though that would kill any human, part wolf or not. One of the werewolf killers, who had all called themselves the Dark Angels, was dead. One had been convicted of the crime of killing the two men, who he swore at his trial were werewolves. And Leidolf had actually bitten the third man and turned him into one of their kind to get him to reveal the location of the other werewolf killers. Sarge was now working for him and Leidolf’s mate, Cassie, at the pack ranch as their accountant. Sgt. Elijah Wilkinson had formerly been a finance NCO in the army, but everyone called him Sarge.

  Maverick would have to warn the rest of the pack not to strip and shift out in the open where these men were located. He was afraid Josh would track his scent here and worry that these people had hurt him. What if Weston and his buddies thought Josh was a werewolf too?

  Maverick shouldn’t have gone out on the lake, though he shouldn’t have fallen in as a wolf. Then again, if he hadn’t warned Gina, she might have fallen through the ice and died.

  He kept watching her for now. She wasn’t speaking any further to him. He listened to her heartbeat slowing during deep sleep, and her eyelids were heavily closed. And he thought about the cut on her hand. He smelled her again, but she was all human, though he did have a slight concern he had cut her with his teeth and she hadn’t injured her hand on the ice.

  He listened as the two men said their good-nights, walked to their tents through the snow, and unzipped and zipped their tents.

  When Maverick was certain Gina and the others were sound asleep, he shifted and unzipped her tent. He listened for any indication anyone was still awake, but it was quiet out there. He stepped out of her tent, zipped it up, shifted into his wolf, and ran like the wind.

  Maverick hadn’t gone very far from the campsite when he ran into his twin brother, Josh, thankfully. Maverick figured Josh had given up trying to track the reindeer down to search for him instead. His brother looked understandably relieved to see him, nuzzled him in greeting, and smelled all the human scents on him.

  Yes, a woman’s feminine scent was all over Maverick’s head where she’d petted him, which he had to admit had felt really nice after the ordeal he’d gone through. And three men’s scents were on him because they had carried him. Josh would wonder what the hell had happened to him. Unless he had tracked Maverick’s scent to the lake, saw the broken ice, and put two and two together. Yeah, knowing his retired police detective brother—who was also a wolf—that’s what he’d done and come to his rescue. Luckily, the Bigfoot hunters had thought Maverick was just a dog.

  He and Josh ran back through the snowy woods to their campsite, and Maverick knew his older twin by five minutes would question him as to what in the world had happened.

  Inside the tent, they shifted, and Josh hurried to dress. “Okay, spill.” At the same time, he was looking Maverick over, checking him for injuries as Maverick quickly dressed.

  “I spied a woman who was trying to break through the ice to get some water, and I ran toward her to warn her the ice was too thin there. I heard it cracking. I knew I was light enough to cross it, but then I fell through the lake ice.”

  Josh’s dark eyes widened. “Hell, Maverick.”

  “They rescued me. When everyone was sleeping, I managed to slip out of the woman’s tent and tore off. She called me Shep, thinking I was a German shepherd.” Maverick couldn’t quit thinking about the beautiful brunette with her dark-brown, sultry eyes and how she had loved him—as a dog. If she had known he was a wolf, he figured it would have been a whole other story. “She planned to keep me.”

  Smiling a little, Josh shook his head.

  “Hey, you know if our roles had been reversed and you had seen the woman putting herself in danger, you would have been there for her.”

  “Yeah, you know it. But you’re all right, correct?”

  “Yes, even Gina’s brother, Weston—”

  Josh arched a dark brow as they began packing up their tent.

  “They were all talking, okay? Her brother went through the ice when he was carrying me, so he’d risked his life for me. But we need to warn Leidolf that the men are looking for Bigfoot and—”

  “None of us have ever seen him, so no problem.”

  “Not just Bigfoot, werewolves too. And get this—apparently they knew the men hunting back in Maine whom Leidolf and other wolves had to deal with.”

  Josh paused and frowned at him. “What about Sarge?”

  “Yeah, him too, since he was one of the men out there. They were friends of theirs.” Maverick got on his phone and told Leidolf what he’d heard.

  “At least the hunters are located about two hours out from the pack’s ranch and an hour and a half from your reindeer ranch,” Leidolf said. “What are you doing up there right now? Christmas is your busiest season.”

  “We had a reindeer gig up here, and then a couple who came to see the reindeer said they saw one running through the forest while they were on a hike. Reindeer don’t normally live here, so we put our own reindeer to bed at a neighboring ranch and headed out to search for one that might be in the woods in the state park. We did check with the other two reindeer ranches in Oregon to make sure they hadn’t lost any. Neither of them had. And you know we can cover a lot more territory running as wolves. We didn’t smell any reindeer scents. It was probably just a deer.”

  “Okay, then that’s good. I’ll talk to Sarge about the situation so he knows what to say if these people ever come to our neck of the woods and run into him,” Leidolf said. “And I’ll see you all tomorrow for the Santa and reindeer show at the pack Christmas party.”

  “Sounds good,” Maverick said, but now that he had connected with Josh and let him know he was all right and squared things away with Leidolf, he had another plan in mind.

  Josh and Maverick finished packing up, grabbed their backpacks, and started hiking to their vehicle so Josh could drive back to the wolf-run cattle ranch where the reindeer had bedded down for the night.

  “If these men know the ones Leidolf and the other wolves took care of in Maine, they probably wonder what happened to Sarge,” Josh said.

  “Right. I hope they never run into Sarge. I’m not sure how good of an actor he is. Leidolf said he’d talk to him about making up a story just in case. If they do meet up with him, they’ll question him about the others, about the Arctic wolf shifting in front of them and ask if he saw it too. It could be a real mess.”

  “What I wonder about is why Sarge never told Leidolf or any of the rest of us in the pack that he had more friends out there who had heard about the werewolves and were trying to hunt them down.” Josh adjusted his backpack. “I wonder if there’s anything else he hasn’t told us about.”

  “I don’t know. He seemed to be getting along with the pack members well enough.”

  Josh got a call, pulled out his phone, and smiled. His mate, Brooke, was calling, and he answered. “Yeah, honey, we’re headed back to the ranch for the night. No sign of any reindeer out here. The show was a success, and we’ll see you in the morning. Love you too.”

  When they arrived at their pickup truck, Maverick said, “I’m going back to their campsite.”