Review
"As this hero and heroine struggle to uncover the truth behind a series of frightening events, Warren packs in lots of action and sexy sizzle." --Romantic Times on Born to be Wild
"An incredible find." --All About Romance on Born to be Wild
"Another good addition to the OTHERS series." --Romance Junkies on Born to be Wild
"Warren takes readers for a wild ride and when she is done the reader begs for more." -Night Owl Romance on Born to be Wild
“[A] sexy, engaging world…will leave you begging for more!”
—New York Times bestselling author Cheyenne McCray
Book Description
Josie Barrett brings out the animal in men. Literally. As the local veterinarian in a town that’s approximately seventy percent Others—mostly shapeshifters—Josie deals with beastly situations all the time. It’s practically part of her job description. But when the werewolves of Stone Creek, Oregon, start turning downright feral, Josie smells a rat—among other, more dangerous critter.
Teaming up with the ferociously sexy Eli Pace, a full-time sheriff and part-time were-lion, Josie tries to contain the shapeshifting problem before it spreads like a virus. But when more shifters get infected—and stuck in their animal forms—the fur really begins to fly. Josie and Eli have to find the cause, fast, before the whole town goes to the dogs. But first, they have to wrestle with a few animal urges of their own.
From the Back Cover
New York Times bestselling Christine Warren lures you back to the
world of The Others, where darkness beckons and passion bites…
Josie Barrett brings out the animal in men. Literally. As the local veterinarian in a town that’s approximately seventy percent Others—mostly shapeshifters—Josie deals with beastly situations all the time. It’s practically part of her job description. But when the werewolves of Stone Creek, Oregon, start turning downright feral, Josie smells a rat—among other, more dangerous critters…
BORN TO BE WILD
Teaming up with the ferociously sexy Eli Pace, a full-time sheriff and part-time were-lion, Josie tries to contain the shapeshifting problem before it spreads like a virus. But when more shifters get infected—and stuck in their animal forms—the fur really begins to fly. Josie and Eli have to find the cause, fast, before the whole town goes to the dogs. But first, they have to wrestle with a few animal urges of their own…
“[A] sexy, engaging world…will leave you begging for more!”
—New York Times bestselling author Cheyenne McCray
About the Author
Christine Warren is the bestselling author of The Others series, including Wolf at the Door, Big Bad Wolf, Prince Charming Doesn't Live Here, and Black Magic Woman. Born and raised in coastal New England, she now lives as a transplant in the Pacific Northwest. (She completely bypassed those states in the middle due to her phobia of being landlocked.) When not writing, she enjoys horseback riding, playing with her pets, identifying dogs from photos of their underbellies, and most of all reading things someone else had to agonize over.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
Dr. Josephine Barrett had just flipped off the lights in her triage area when a low, heavy pounding thundered at the clinic’s back door. So much for the novel experience of eating her pizza while it was still hot.
For a split second, she debated hiding behind the ultrasound cart and pretending the office was already closed, locked, and deserted; but that was just cowardly, not to mention irresponsible. No one would be trying to knock down the door on a Saturday night unless they had a genuine emergency. And it wasn’t like this was Portland, where the next clinic down the road could take the case. In the tiny, rural town of Stone Creek, Oregon, Josie was the only veterinarian in twenty miles, and there was no way she could turn her back on a patient in need.
No matter how strong the urge.
Sighing, she flipped the light switch back up. Fine, but if this is Mrs. Cowlitz’s Persian with Dentu-Creme matted in its coat again, I swear to God I will not be responsible for the size of my bill.
Grabbing her stethoscope, Josie strode to the rear of the clinic and pushed open the heavy security door. “The office is closed right now. Is this an emergency?”
The second sentence bounced off the back of a large and fast-moving male form that hadn’t bothered waiting for her to step aside and let it in. The intruder shouldered straight past her and over to one of two surgical-steel exam tables at the far side of the room. Her subconscious barely had time to register recognition of the local sheriff in time to choke off an irritated threat about calling the police.
“Sheriff Pace, I’m not sure if you realize this, but it’s after nine o’clock, and I’ve been—”
Whatever she’d been about to say died in her throat as the uniformed figure stepped to the side to reveal the ragged bundle he’d just deposited on the table.
“Jesus Christ!”
Josie bolted forward, shoved the sheriff out of the way, and peeled aside a corner of the reflective silver survival blanket. She pressed her palm hard against the bloody, matted fur beneath a limp forelimb. The beat she felt there was weak, but discernible.
“What the hell happened?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” the deep voice answered, sounding taut and . . . displeased, “as long as it involves at least one round from a .50-caliber hunting rifle.”
“Where?” Now intently focused, she ran her hands over the rest of a shockingly still gray body, searching for wounds.
“Left flank.”
Josie grunted, shoved the blanket entirely aside, and began probing the heavy muscle he’d indicated. Or rather, where that muscle should have been. Right now there was more blood than meat. A long, ragged trough of flesh had been carved out of the animal’s leg just below the hip.
She swore again and grabbed a packet of sterile packing from the counter just behind the table. While she tore it open, she ran an educated eye over the rest of the still form. “Any others?”
“Bullet wounds? Not that I saw, but she’s a mess. I didn’t waste a lot of time checking her over. I thought I’d leave that to you.”
Pressing the wad of cloth against the top of the wound where it bled sluggishly, Josie applied pressure and jerked her chin in the sheriff’s direction. “I need to hold this in place for a minute, so I’ll need your hands. You’re going to take her rear paws in one hand and the front in the other and gently roll her over so I can check her other side. But first, you’re going to grab that blue muzzle on the counter and slip it over her nose. When it’s in place, you can tie it off at the back of her head.”
“She’s unconscious. I don’t think she’s in any condition to take a chunk out of me—”
“I don’t care,” Josie cut in. “You just brought me a critically injured adult female timber wolf. She might be too weak to fight, but I’m not taking the chance. And more importantly, you’re not taking the chance in my hospital. Pain makes us all do strange things, and it’s not like she’s wearing a rabies tag.” She scowled and nodded toward the counter. “Muzzle.”
The sheriff obeyed, and since she didn’t have time to wonder how he felt about it, Josie couldn’t have cared less whether or not his macho sensibilities had tinged his movements with reluctance. She just concentrated on applying pressure to the bullet graze and waited for him to turn the injured wolf onto her other side. A quick assessment when he did revealed a few scratches, but nothing that looked nearly as serious as the wound she’d already seen.
She nodded. “Okay. Back over.” When he had the animal resettled, she grabbed his right hand and pressed it down on the gauze packing. “Hold this. Firmly.”
He didn’t bother to protest, and Josie didn’t bother to mention that she didn’t care for being stared at, especially not when the injured animal opened her eyes and fixed Josie with a steady, amber gaze. That was an observer she’d deal with happily.
Josie’s hands were already moving to the hole at the front of the muzzle and lifting the animal’s lips to peer into her mouth. The fact that the wolf didn’t even blink was making her nervous. As was the pale, pale sticky surface of the animal’s gums.
“I’m sorry, girl,” she murmured, her voice pitched soft and soothing even while her movements remained briskly efficient. “I know it hurts, but you’re being so good. Just be good for a few more minutes, and I promise I’m going to do everything I can to help you.”
The wolf didn’t move, but she whined and the tip of her tongue flicked out the end of the muzzle, almost as if she understood. Josie repeated the promise to herself and shrugged her stethoscope into place, positioning the chest piece behind the animal’s elbow and listening intently. Then she frowned.
Her hand went automatically to her pocket and pulled out her ophthalmoscope. When she peered into the wolf’s dark golden eyes, she nearly dropped the instrument on the poor thing’s nose.
“This is not a wolf,” she blurted out.
The wolf whined.
The sheriff frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that this”—Josie pointed, pointedly—“this is not a timber wolf. It’s a human being.”
The sheriff lifted an eyebrow.
“Okay, she looks like a wolf,” Josie conceded, “but she’s not. Or at least, that’s not all she is. She’s Lupine.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because I went to school for four years and did another six months of internship and three years of residency to learn how to identify and treat members of canine species. This”—she pointed again, for emphasis—“is not canine. She only has a partial tapetum lucidum.”
“Tapa-who?”
“A reflective layer of tissue behind the retina that helps to reflect light and enhance night vision. In canines, the tapetum lucidum lines the entire back of the eye’s lens. Hers is concentrated just around the fovea. If she were a wolf, that would be really, really not natural.”
The sheriff shrugged. “Okay, I’ll take your word for it. But I don’t think it matters all that much. She’s still hurt, and you’re still a doctor, so how about you give a comparative anatomy lesson later and just patch her up right now?”
“Didn’t you hear me? She’s human. I’m an animal doctor. I can’t treat a human being.”
“No, she’s not. She’s Lupine, but at the moment she’s got more physically in common with Mr. Potter’s springer spaniel than with Mr. Potter.” He spoke slowly, as if she needed extra time for comprehension. As if she hadn’t graduated at the top of her class from both Reed College and the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. “Not to mention that Dr. Shad’s office is closed until Monday, and I don’t think it would be in her best interest to wait for an appointment. So what do you say? Why don’t you take a shot at it? You know, as long as we’re here.”
Although the impulse to inject the man with a horse laxative tugged at her seductively, Josie’s sense of responsibility and medical ethics won out. Turning her back on the sheriff, she placed her stethoscope against the wolf’s belly and tried to hear any important sounds over the angry throbbing of blood in her ears. A soft whoosh immediately caught her attention.
Frowning, she shifted the scope a few inches caudally and listened again. Then she straightened up and pressed the tips of her fingers gently against the wolf’s abdomen.
“Grab that phone and press the button next to the name andrea,” she ordered, looking back up at the sheriff. “There’s internal bleeding. She’s going to need surgery.”
“Andrea?”
“And tell her to hurry. Otherwise I’m going to have to teach you how to tube and anesthetize an injured Lupine.”
Without a word, the sheriff turned and strode for the phone. Apparently he approved of Josie’s decision to go into private practice rather than teaching.
Eli waited in the clinic for almost three hours, despite Dr. Barrett’s warning that the surgery would be a long one and she’d be happy to call him with an update when it was finished. His shift was over, had been over before he’d stumbled on the still, bleeding form of the injured Lupine a little before nine o’clock. So he had nowhere else he had to be. At least, not for another seven or eight hours.
He supposed he could have gone home and tried to sleep—Gods kn...
Dr. Josephine Barrett had just flipped off the lights in her triage area when a low, heavy pounding thundered at the clinic’s back door. So much for the novel experience of eating her pizza while it was still hot.
For a split second, she debated hiding behind the ultrasound cart and pretending the office was already closed, locked, and deserted; but that was just cowardly, not to mention irresponsible. No one would be trying to knock down the door on a Saturday night unless they had a genuine emergency. And it wasn’t like this was Portland, where the next clinic down the road could take the case. In the tiny, rural town of Stone Creek, Oregon, Josie was the only veterinarian in twenty miles, and there was no way she could turn her back on a patient in need.
No matter how strong the urge.
Sighing, she flipped the light switch back up. Fine, but if this is Mrs. Cowlitz’s Persian with Dentu-Creme matted in its coat again, I swear to God I will not be responsible for the size of my bill.
Grabbing her stethoscope, Josie strode to the rear of the clinic and pushed open the heavy security door. “The office is closed right now. Is this an emergency?”
The second sentence bounced off the back of a large and fast-moving male form that hadn’t bothered waiting for her to step aside and let it in. The intruder shouldered straight past her and over to one of two surgical-steel exam tables at the far side of the room. Her subconscious barely had time to register recognition of the local sheriff in time to choke off an irritated threat about calling the police.
“Sheriff Pace, I’m not sure if you realize this, but it’s after nine o’clock, and I’ve been—”
Whatever she’d been about to say died in her throat as the uniformed figure stepped to the side to reveal the ragged bundle he’d just deposited on the table.
“Jesus Christ!”
Josie bolted forward, shoved the sheriff out of the way, and peeled aside a corner of the reflective silver survival blanket. She pressed her palm hard against the bloody, matted fur beneath a limp forelimb. The beat she felt there was weak, but discernible.
“What the hell happened?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” the deep voice answered, sounding taut and . . . displeased, “as long as it involves at least one round from a .50-caliber hunting rifle.”
“Where?” Now intently focused, she ran her hands over the rest of a shockingly still gray body, searching for wounds.
“Left flank.”
Josie grunted, shoved the blanket entirely aside, and began probing the heavy muscle he’d indicated. Or rather, where that muscle should have been. Right now there was more blood than meat. A long, ragged trough of flesh had been carved out of the animal’s leg just below the hip.
She swore again and grabbed a packet of sterile packing from the counter just behind the table. While she tore it open, she ran an educated eye over the rest of the still form. “Any others?”
“Bullet wounds? Not that I saw, but she’s a mess. I didn’t waste a lot of time checking her over. I thought I’d leave that to you.”
Pressing the wad of cloth against the top of the wound where it bled sluggishly, Josie applied pressure and jerked her chin in the sheriff’s direction. “I need to hold this in place for a minute, so I’ll need your hands. You’re going to take her rear paws in one hand and the front in the other and gently roll her over so I can check her other side. But first, you’re going to grab that blue muzzle on the counter and slip it over her nose. When it’s in place, you can tie it off at the back of her head.”
“She’s unconscious. I don’t think she’s in any condition to take a chunk out of me—”
“I don’t care,” Josie cut in. “You just brought me a critically injured adult female timber wolf. She might be too weak to fight, but I’m not taking the chance. And more importantly, you’re not taking the chance in my hospital. Pain makes us all do strange things, and it’s not like she’s wearing a rabies tag.” She scowled and nodded toward the counter. “Muzzle.”
The sheriff obeyed, and since she didn’t have time to wonder how he felt about it, Josie couldn’t have cared less whether or not his macho sensibilities had tinged his movements with reluctance. She just concentrated on applying pressure to the bullet graze and waited for him to turn the injured wolf onto her other side. A quick assessment when he did revealed a few scratches, but nothing that looked nearly as serious as the wound she’d already seen.
She nodded. “Okay. Back over.” When he had the animal resettled, she grabbed his right hand and pressed it down on the gauze packing. “Hold this. Firmly.”
He didn’t bother to protest, and Josie didn’t bother to mention that she didn’t care for being stared at, especially not when the injured animal opened her eyes and fixed Josie with a steady, amber gaze. That was an observer she’d deal with happily.
Josie’s hands were already moving to the hole at the front of the muzzle and lifting the animal’s lips to peer into her mouth. The fact that the wolf didn’t even blink was making her nervous. As was the pale, pale sticky surface of the animal’s gums.
“I’m sorry, girl,” she murmured, her voice pitched soft and soothing even while her movements remained briskly efficient. “I know it hurts, but you’re being so good. Just be good for a few more minutes, and I promise I’m going to do everything I can to help you.”
The wolf didn’t move, but she whined and the tip of her tongue flicked out the end of the muzzle, almost as if she understood. Josie repeated the promise to herself and shrugged her stethoscope into place, positioning the chest piece behind the animal’s elbow and listening intently. Then she frowned.
Her hand went automatically to her pocket and pulled out her ophthalmoscope. When she peered into the wolf’s dark golden eyes, she nearly dropped the instrument on the poor thing’s nose.
“This is not a wolf,” she blurted out.
The wolf whined.
The sheriff frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that this”—Josie pointed, pointedly—“this is not a timber wolf. It’s a human being.”
The sheriff lifted an eyebrow.
“Okay, she looks like a wolf,” Josie conceded, “but she’s not. Or at least, that’s not all she is. She’s Lupine.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because I went to school for four years and did another six months of internship and three years of residency to learn how to identify and treat members of canine species. This”—she pointed again, for emphasis—“is not canine. She only has a partial tapetum lucidum.”
“Tapa-who?”
“A reflective layer of tissue behind the retina that helps to reflect light and enhance night vision. In canines, the tapetum lucidum lines the entire back of the eye’s lens. Hers is concentrated just around the fovea. If she were a wolf, that would be really, really not natural.”
The sheriff shrugged. “Okay, I’ll take your word for it. But I don’t think it matters all that much. She’s still hurt, and you’re still a doctor, so how about you give a comparative anatomy lesson later and just patch her up right now?”
“Didn’t you hear me? She’s human. I’m an animal doctor. I can’t treat a human being.”
“No, she’s not. She’s Lupine, but at the moment she’s got more physically in common with Mr. Potter’s springer spaniel than with Mr. Potter.” He spoke slowly, as if she needed extra time for comprehension. As if she hadn’t graduated at the top of her class from both Reed College and the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. “Not to mention that Dr. Shad’s office is closed until Monday, and I don’t think it would be in her best interest to wait for an appointment. So what do you say? Why don’t you take a shot at it? You know, as long as we’re here.”
Although the impulse to inject the man with a horse laxative tugged at her seductively, Josie’s sense of responsibility and medical ethics won out. Turning her back on the sheriff, she placed her stethoscope against the wolf’s belly and tried to hear any important sounds over the angry throbbing of blood in her ears. A soft whoosh immediately caught her attention.
Frowning, she shifted the scope a few inches caudally and listened again. Then she straightened up and pressed the tips of her fingers gently against the wolf’s abdomen.
“Grab that phone and press the button next to the name andrea,” she ordered, looking back up at the sheriff. “There’s internal bleeding. She’s going to need surgery.”
“Andrea?”
“And tell her to hurry. Otherwise I’m going to have to teach you how to tube and anesthetize an injured Lupine.”
Without a word, the sheriff turned and strode for the phone. Apparently he approved of Josie’s decision to go into private practice rather than teaching.
Eli waited in the clinic for almost three hours, despite Dr. Barrett’s warning that the surgery would be a long one and she’d be happy to call him with an update when it was finished. His shift was over, had been over before he’d stumbled on the still, bleeding form of the injured Lupine a little before nine o’clock. So he had nowhere else he had to be. At least, not for another seven or eight hours.
He supposed he could have gone home and tried to sleep—Gods kn...
