Wild Invitation

branch where it had crashed into the opposite wall. “That’s it, we’re stuck here till the storm passes.”
    Grace thought of the concern in Cooper’s voice and hoped he wouldn’t worry too much when he didn’t hear from her, even as her wolf fretted about him in turn. “I better get to work on the air”—she picked up the wolf pup clawing at her work boot, took it back to its exasperated mother—“or we’ll have to open a window.”
    The other two laughed but it was strained—built into the side of a small hill, with only a doorway to reveal it was there, the control station
had
no windows. All three of them knew that with the unpredictable air glitches, there was no way of knowing for certain how much breathable air was left in the bowels of the facility, two levels below this one…the area that housed the sophisticated computronics needed to run the hydro station.
    •   •   •
    COOPER carried in the soldier who’d broken his leg when he slipped in the muddy terrain and deposited him in theinfirmary. “Are they all in?” he asked Shamus, using a towel to wipe off the wet, a touch of blood saturating the fabric from a piece of debris that had whipped across his face.
    “Yes. Or accounted for—few are bunkered down in the perimeter shelters, but they’ve called in and nobody’s alone.”
    The words did nothing to ease the ugly knot in Cooper’s abdomen. “Any word from the station?”
    Shamus’s expression turned grim. “No, but we’ve had no power fluctuations, so—” He stopped talking as the lights flickered. A second later, a low hum filled the air, the generators kicking in.
    Bile coated the back of Cooper’s throat, a cold sweat breaking out along his spine. “I’m going up there. You’re in charge.” He knew the senior soldier could handle anything that occurred in his absence.
    “Jesus, Cooper. Be sensible.”
    “Would you be if it was Emma up there?”
    “Shit.” The other man shoved a hand through his hair. “Take the armored all-wheel drive. Thing’s a tank.”
    Cooper shook his head, impatient to start moving. “I’ll make better time in wolf form, be lower to the ground.”
    “If you need to bring someone back…”
    Someone hurt…or dead.
    He nodded, unable to voice the thought that was a razor in his throat.
    Shamus walked with him to the garage. “Turn on the tracking signal so we can keep an eye on you.”
    “Done.” As he drove, he tried to focus only on the weather and the track, in spite of the scrabbling panic that clawed at him, filling his mind with images of fire and melting flesh.
    He knew that was stupid, that even if something had gone wrong at the station, it would’ve involved a slow suffocation as the air turned to poison, not an explosion. It didn’t matter. Fire was his horror and it was what haunted him.
    Crash!
    Wrenching the wheel, he barely avoided the tree smashing to the earth, his wolf’s eyes scouring the wind- and rain-lashed dark for signs of further danger.
    Be safe, Grace. Be safe.
    They were the most agonizing three hours of his adult life,the journey taking twice the time it should have. When he pulled up in front of the door of the control station, it was to see the vehicle he knew Grace had checked out of the garage flipped over and smashed into a tree.
    His heart turning to ice, he fought through the wind toward it, the rain knives against his skin.
    •   •   •
    GRACE sat in silence, fiddling with a conduit. Elizabeth and Diego had both bedded down in bedroom cubicles at the end of the corridor, and the rambunctious wolf pups had exhausted themselves at last, but she couldn’t sleep. Her gut was all twisted up, as if something was horribly wrong. But when she checked the air systems indicator on the wall—set to sound a piercing audio alarm if it detected a problem—it was to see everything was as it should be. No abnormal CO 2 readings, the air breathable.
    She’d repaired it, knew this one at least was functioning fine now. Regardless, she verified the readings with the small hand-held unit she’d brought up. Discovering no discrepancy, she walked over, ensured the wild wolves were okay. The mother raised her head when Grace petted one of her babies but didn’t protest. Knowing she shouldn’t wake the pup, she took her hand from his baby-soft fur and stood…just as a banging came on the door.
    The mother wolf sat up, ears pricked.
    “It’s a branch,” Grace murmured, but the sound came