Tate Stevens took a critical look at the quilt he was working on. He’d nicknamed it ‘Summer Patchwork’ but another name for it could be pain in his ass. He sighed, rolling his shoulders. What the hell had he been thinking, coming to this small western town of White Deer, Montana? That he’d be inspired as an artist? So far it hadn’t happened and he knew why.

He was heart sick.

He was lonely.

So yeah, what a genius idea, coming here where he was even more isolated than in L.A. Terrific. Maybe he could cozy up to the crickets currently chirping up a storm in the wild grass outside his tiny cabin.

Restlessly he abandoned the sewing machine that had traveled all the way from the city in the back of his vintage purple Volkswagen van. Not a new SUV for him, but the kind of vehicle you could keep running with chewing gum and a spare rubber band. He liked old things, which was what had gotten him into quilt making in the first place.

Tate had worked in his uncle’s junk shop all during high school. When people bought in Grandma’s patchwork on consignment, Tate did any repairs needed to the pieces by hand. He had just been drawn to pick up a needle and thread and do it because looking at quilts, at the homemade embellishment of words or flowers, at the choice of colors and patterns, he’d experienced a connection with the quilt maker. He’d dreamed up lives behind the blocks of patterns, imagined what it might be like to sleep all his life beside a husband under a double wedding ring quilt.

So far he had lots of wedding quilts but no lover, not since his last boyfriend had ditched him. ‘You’re too much of a dreamer for me, man,’ Jerrod had told him. ‘It’s like you want every guy to be the one, you know? You need to get over that romantic shit.’

Yeah, thanks. Dump him and also trash his soul. It was all his fault his boyfriend couldn’t keep it zipped whenever he was out. So why couldn’t Tate stop pining for someone in his life? Because he was a pathetic loser. He did fall in love at the drop of his pants. No, more like after the perfect kiss, not that he’d ever quite experienced that.

But he’d dreamed about it plenty.

Fantasizing about being gripped by urgent hands, the crush of lips on lips, the need singing through his body and into the body of his lover.

Which was not helping any since he was totally alone up here.

He pushed open the slider and let in the evening air, grimacing when his bare feet hit the rocks outside the cabin. Jesus, he’d forgotten to put on shoes again, so carried away working on his latest design. And he’d forgotten to shave and shower so his hair was still flattened on one side. Hell with it.

No one to see him, even though lately he’d been a little spooked out here. But that was just because of the wolf he’d spotted by the stream a few weeks ago. Ghostly silver, horribly scarred, as if it had been burned, and so very still, watching him, seeing into him and then gone, nothing but swaying tall grass where it had stood a second before.

Tate had yearned for his camera. He was trying now to capture those uncanny blue eyes in a design.

Since that glimpse, he hadn’t seen the big animal again but he’d felt as if it was nearby, watching him.

More, he’d felt as if it had been a sign, as if now that he had held the gaze of a wild, magnificent wolf, that his life would somehow change.

It was chilly out so Tate wrapped his arms around his bare chest, walking to the crude wooden bench near the dense patch of woods. He sat down, staring toward the stream where he’d glimpsed the wolf. It had been as large as a creature from a fairytale. Why did he feel so blessed that he’d seen it? Since its appearance he’d spotted deer, rabbits and even a mountain lion once—though fortunately from a distance. But nothing had been as intense as that moment looking at the wolf. It had felt like a moment of destiny.

His iPhone rang and he didn’t need to check the number to know it was his agent, Sheila. “Hey, girl.”

“Hey.”

He caught the snap of gum and wondered if it was helping her kick her addiction to nicotine.

“What’s up?”

“Tate…you promised you’d get those galleys back for Quilting in the Smoky Mountains to your publisher by Friday.”

Tate sighed. Shit. “Yeah, I know. I’m glad you called because it’s…Tuesday, right?”

“Try Wednesday. Don’t you ever go into some kind of town? I mean, they do have towns up there, right?”

“Har. It’s Montana, not Mars. And not lately.”

“Are you eating all right?” Now her tone was motherly, though she was younger than he was, but he seemed to bring that out in women, a need to take care of him. It was probably his boyish looks—he knew he looked about seventeen, not twenty-seven, with shaggy brown hair, olive skin and sad brown eyes. Not that he was sad, unless he’d gone a long time without someone in his bed. He might want love but he also loved sex, lots of it, and he was a cranky puppy without it.

“I had some peanut butter.” His favorite.

“Oh, good. Survivalist food.”

He laughed. “Hey, I’ll get those galleys done tonight, okay?”

“I’ll have FedEx there for a pick-up in the morning.” Her tone was half warning, half affection.

“Ouch, cracking the whip.”

“It’s what I do best.”

He found himself grinning, some of his earlier dissatisfaction leaving him. “I’ll have to ask your husband sometime if that is true.”

“Please. He’s only allowed to talk if Mistress allows it.”

Laughing, he cut the call, then felt a little wistful he wouldn’t have more time to work on his latest art quilt, but being the boy-wonder of the quilt world with his talent for clashing colors and wild design paid for his lifestyle, which wasn’t rich by any means but was something he could call his own.

Tate was something of a maverick. He’d begun attending quilt shows when he was still in high school and started cutting and sewing—with scissors and no fancy rulers—his quilts in his spare time. He’d finally gotten up the guts to show a few of his pieces to some of the members of his local guild and they’d been astonished over his work. It was angry, it was energetic, it was even sexy, which was a new take on an old art form.

But mostly lately it was lonely.

Because, yeah, he was lonely.

“Time to change this song,” he muttered. But he stayed outside and watched as stars went on like light bulbs in the sky, until he felt a shiver climb down his spine, as if he were being watched.

Simon Morrison watched Tate.

He was close enough to touch him but, of course, with his training, Tate couldn’t see him, but sometimes Simon thought he might sense him.

His nostrils flared as he analyzed Tate’s scent. Peanut butter for lunch again. And ink. And some kind of chalk, the stuff he used to draw over his quilts. And cotton, fresh, unwashed. And Tate hadn’t showered yet but that didn’t matter. Simon liked his musky natural scent.

He closed his eyes, imagining capturing Tate. With his Navy SEAL background he could do it. Like an old time hermit, he could capture himself a mate, drag him up to the mountains and—

And that was crazy talk.

It was thinking like that, primal, that had made him flee to the hills. He couldn’t fit in. He forgot the most basic things sometimes because of his head injury. The black outs were the worst—he sometimes couldn’t remember what he’d done for days.

He couldn’t seek help from traditional medicine because of what he was, so he’d done the smart thing—removed himself from the picture.

He hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone and he was dangerous.

But gradually he’d been getting better. His head didn’t hurt as much. He had more long stretches of clarity and he couldn’t remember his last blackout.

Simon rubbed the jagged scar on his temple, left over from a sniper in Afghanistan. He remembered he’d been there. He’d been a warrior.

Mostly though when he tried to remember, he got a handful of faces he didn’t remember, flashbacks, and a head pounder of a headache.

It was easier to live as the wolf though even as the wolf he didn’t function normally anymore.

The wolf didn’t feed itself anymore. It didn’t hunt.

Instead, lately, Simon had found himself lurking around Tate’s cabin, watching him. Sometimes Tate came out onto the porch and rocked on one dilapidated rocking chair while he hand sewed quilts.

Simon was fascinated. The colors, the swirl of patterns…one quilt was the shade of sand under a desert sunset, vivid peaches and oranges and browns and another reminded him of the misty Pacific Northwest, all weeping grays and sad blues. It was like Tate was a magician, pulling out toy after toy, bright and shiny, distracting Simon from himself and the worries that he was a ravaged man, a ravaged wolf.

Tate frowned and looked directly at Simon. Simon closed his eyes. Prey could sense when you were looking at it. It was instinctual. And though Simon no longer had it in him to hunt, he was still a predator.

“Huh, too much time spent alone,” Tate said, shaking his head. He got to his feet and carefully crept across the debris of his front yard and back into his cabin. But Simon caught the click of the dead bolt. Tate had locked himself in.

Simon could have told him it wouldn’t help. When Simon got hungry, he helped himself to Tate’s food. And sometimes, even knowing it was creepy and he shouldn’t do it, he stood just outside Tate’s bedroom door, listening to the soft sounds he made as he slept. The creak of the mattress as he turned over, the pale arm or leg that flopped over the end of the bed. He wanted to go in and lick that skin.

He wanted to wrap himself all around Tate and have Tate wrap himself around Simon.

* * * *

Simon reached the lean-to just after dark. He’d built it for the times he lived as a human. It contained his back pack, a few supplies he knew he had to add to it soon, such as coffee—he hated like hell he’d run out a week ago.

He sat down on his sleeping bag, breathing deeply of the night air, immediately feeling soothed, grounding into his own bones, his own body. The wolf stirred inside him, wanting to go back and spend endless hours watching Tate’s cabin.

“No,” Simon muttered to his yearning wolf, hoping the stupid bastard would listen. “You’d just scare him. Hell, I would.” He rubbed the horrific scar on his face. He avoided looking at his reflection now because he wasn’t pretty. As well as the scar on his face, he had them on his arms and back and they tangled badly with the tattoos he’d worn so the art work was now interrupted by shiny skin, some of it plastic looking and opaque.

He looked like a fucking monster, not someone a cute guy like Tate would find attractive.

Simon’s throat tightened.

He was so lonesome sometimes he thought he should just give up, stop eating altogether and go deep into the woods. Let himself starve as the wolf.

He’d been on the verge of doing just that when Tate had moved into the empty cabin and immediately he’d caught Simon’s attention, pulled him out of his depression. Simon didn’t know dick about quilt making but even he could see Tate was an artist.

And slowly, watching how absorbed Tate was in his work, how alive he was as he pieced together stories in pictures, Simon forgot the noise, the screams in his own head. Watching Tate healed him.

His favorite design was the one Tate worked on sometimes at night—a silver wolf by the stream. How Tate managed to make a portrait out of blocks of cotton, some of it patterned, was a mystery to Simon. The wolf was dominated by startling blue eyes, eyes that were full of the pain Simon felt eating him.

He remembered that night, the first time he’d ever seen Tate. Tate had looked so awestruck as he’d gazed at the wolf. Awestruck, but not afraid, as if the giant scarred creature would never hurt him.

Since that night they’d first encountered each other, Tate walked by the stream often, as if inviting the wolf to visit him again but Simon could never do that. He was marked now, the wolf bearing the same scars that Simon wore. If Tate ever saw the creature close up and then saw Simon, well, he was an artist. He noticed details.

He’d have to wonder if there couldn’t possibly be a connection between a scarred wolf and a scarred man and then there were all those rumors in town about shifters. Most laughed at the stories but some knew well they were true.

Simon pulled the bag around his shoulders, knowing he should light a fire and make some tea. He’d come up with a recipe that wasn’t so bad made of tree bark and wild herbs. It was hot, and that was something when the mountains got cold at night.

But it sure as fuck wasn’t coffee.

He sighed, knowing he’d have to go into town. He’d be careful, try to avoid the other shifters. Hell, there was even a deputy now who was one of his kind.

But instead of making a list of things he needed he sat there, trapped in his freak show of a body, wondering if he could ever dare go talk to Tate. Just…talk to him. Have him look at Simon as if Simon were a normal man and not a scarred wreck.

Simon would love to sit in Tate’s studio and watch him work on his quilts. He had loads of questions to ask him about his color choices and how he got his ideas. Questions he’d never get to ask as long as he kept lurking in the shadows like a pathetic loser.

Maybe he could brush his long hair over the scar on his forehead, keep his face averted?

And then suddenly Simon had an idea.

He knew Tate was an author. He’d seen some of his books on quilting in his studio.

* * * *

Tate finally put the galleys into an envelope at eleven that night. He wiped his eyes, hoping he hadn’t missed anything. It sometimes amazed him how small things could be missed during the editing process, things that would be dead obvious to a reader.

He stretched then grabbed a sweater on a peg by the door, deciding to go and wander by the stream where he’d seen the wolf. Although he knew he likely wouldn’t see the animal tonight, there was always the possibility of a second magical appearance. He wanted a closer look so he could better capture the creature for the likeness in his art quilt.

As he walked, a pebble got in one of his sandals so he stopped and shook his foot, hopping around. Again he felt that prickle, like he was being watched. Really, who did he think he was, Bella from Twilight? He wasn’t being watched. Stuff like that only happened in the movies or in fantasy novels.

And he was such a hopeless romantic, because as he looked up at the sky, he was wishing it would happen to him. How cool to have your own vampire? Or maybe a ghost who came to life only with you? He shook his head. He had to stop reading those gay romance novels.

He didn’t see it at first—in fact, he stepped on it, and only the crackle of dry paper under his sandals caught his attention. He leaned down and squinted, seeing a piece of note paper anchored by a couple of river rocks. Even more intriguing, there was writing on it.

He picked it up, wondering if it had somehow blown out of his studio but it wasn’t one of his drawings, wasn’t even his handwriting.

R U ever lonely? I think U must be. U walk these woods at night. U aren’t safe here. Not that I… I would keep U so safe, I promise. I wish I could talk with U, U know? Not smart, not like U, but I want to listen to U. I’m good at that, good at listen.

Cold chills worked down Tate’s back. His heart galloped as he peered around but everything was shades of gray and starlight, the trees dark huge shapes, branches moving like beckoning arms in the still night.

He wasn’t alone.

He was being watched.

So why the fuck wasn’t he running for his cabin and locking the deadbolt behind him?

“Yeah, I’m lonely,” he announced, flushing when nothing moved, when everything remained as quiet as before. He was losing it, thinking he was talking to the mysterious note-writer. And was it a completely sane idea to do it? In the city it was best to avoid anything that gave you chills. “I’m lonely,” he repeated, softly now as he dug his hands into his pockets.

Why was he so sure someone was listening? Someone who felt the way he did. And then Tate frowned, kneeling down to the rocks where he’d found the scrap of paper. He couldn’t be sure but this seemed like the exact place where he’d first glimpsed that wolf. Could that be a coincidence?