Her Wanted Wolf (4 page)

Would his other senses betray him too? But no, he could still hear and
see. He heard the thunderous beat of his heart. His ears picked up the frantic
beating of an owl’s wings before it stilled in mid-motion to dive downward.
Through the darkness, he clearly saw the owl snatch a mouse scrambling through
the dead leaves on the ground a dozen yards away, proof his ears and eyes
retained their acuteness. It was only his sense of smell that had deserted him.

Drew stuck his muzzle into the ground and sniffed the loamy dirt that
would be rich with the odor of decaying vegetation. At such close proximity, he
should smell something. Nothing. It wasn’t possible. Then it hit him. There was
nothing wrong with him. It was his surroundings.

The air, the ground, the trees were devoid of all scent, including the
vital trace of the wolf he followed. One question was answered, but he still
had a mystery to solve. What could wipe away the scents of nature?

Drew trotted forward a few feet and stopped. Concealed by the thickness
of a clump of trees, he hesitated. He sniffed the air again. Still nothing. He
gritted his teeth, fighting the urge to rush forward blindly. Near bursting
with frustration, he conceded neither speed nor brute force would get him what
he wanted.

Stealth and cunning would.

Think, Drew, think.
He sunk to the ground and pressed his body
into the earth. The vibrations of a four-pawed animal’s steady swift gait
reached him. He zeroed in on his target’s position by the direction of the
reverberations. The wolf he followed was exactly where Drew figured he’d be and
lengthening the distance between them rapidly. He’d lose him soon if they
didn’t find his scent trail.

Drew shifted into human form.

The sleek compact sinew of his wolf gave way to the longer, bulkier body
of his man-form. The larger balls of his joints snapped into their sockets. His
paws lengthened and separated into long, tactile fingers. Nerve endings tingled
as his fur receded to expose smooth skin stretched taut over a long frame. The
transformation left him shuddering. His limbs felt uncoordinated and
cumbersome. He’d lived as a wolf for months, far too long.

Drew paused to reacquaint himself with the differences in his perceptions
and physique. He shivered when the wind caressed his skin like loving
fingertips.

The kinks in the stiff muscles covering his body eased as he flexed them.
Hunger and weariness weighed him down more in this body. Bare skin was a
disadvantage and a handicap right now.

Eyes closed, Drew focused. The wolf’s spoor would rise with the heat his
body gave off.

Taking care not to abrade his skin, Drew clambered up a tree. He wasn’t
about to put the scent of his blood into the air. He inhaled and grinned with
relief. He was right. He could smell. The redolence of autumn filled his
nostrils. Decaying leaves combined with the sweet scent of wild apples drifted
by on a brisk breeze.

Drew’s head jerked up when he caught a faint telltale whiff of musk. His
lips twisted with wolfish anticipation for the moment he located his sister.

He separated the piney tang of sap from the dense smell of wet bark, and
the sweet sootiness of moist dirt to focus on the wolf’s spoors lingering on
the air. Drew marked the wolf’s scent-trail.

Got him.

Careful not to disturb the leaves, he slid in silence to the ground. In a
single fluid motion, he shifted back into his more efficient hunting form.

One with his wolf, he used the inherent skills of his kind and slunk through
the thicket. With each lope, he gained ground on the were he pursued. In spite
of his rush to catch up, he took care not to step on any brittle twigs or to
brush against any trees.

His nostrils flared when the faint hint of another scent mingled with the
were’s. Drew pulled to a stop, his body tense, and listened for any sound of
the wolf backtracking.

Something was off. The wolf’s scent had changed. The ripe testosterone
vapors blended with something sweeter.

The beguiling fragrance of a she-wolf drifted down to Drew. Unable to
help himself, his tongue flicked out to catch the invisible airborne flavor of
the unknown female. He tasted and savored her essence. Ambrosia.

Inhaling deeply, he filled his lungs with the womanly lushness of her
scent. Drew’s shaft hardened in answer to the pheromone-rich lure of a
she-wolf. His mind spun, drunk on the sultry fragrance, he raced forward.

A yelp followed by the growls and snarls of a vicious fight reached him.
The coppery scent of blood diffused the aroma of the female and pulled him out
of his sexual reverie.

Fuck! The son–of-a-bitch had attacked the she-wolf.

He’d wasted precious moments drinking in her scent. If he could smell
her, his quarry could, too. Discarding his previous cautiousness, Drew wove in
and out of the trees, flinching as the supple branches lashed his vulnerable
eyes and muzzle as he raced to the source of the she-wolf’s scent.

Drew skidded to a halt when he broke through the trees into a small
clearing. He lowered his body, prepared to attack when he saw the injured were.
The wolf was struggling to transform into a man on the blood-soaked ground. He
managed to shift, curled up in a fetal position, and held his hands over his
shredded stomach.

What the fuck happened here? Drew spun around to look for the she-wolf
whose scent had roused the most primitive of instincts—the urge to mount the
female who emitted a call to mate.

Drew caught sight of her perched above them on a stony outcropping,
panting from exertion. His steps faltered and his jaw almost dropped.

The unalloyed silvery whiteness of the she-wolf’s fur shocked him into
immobility. Only one pack had that coloring. But it wasn’t possible. A
Silverwolf? The were council declared the pack extinct several generations ago.
Drew stared at the living proof of their existence in disbelief.

No wonder he hadn’t picked up her fragrance earlier. She’d masked her
scent. Shit, if she was shielding Bardo, he was so screwed. The breathtaking
beauty, who’d aroused Drew’s lust to the point of mindlessness, and triggered
his instinctive protectiveness, was now his enemy. She’d die with those she
shielded.

Her fur shimmered eerily in the pale moonlight, the tufts marred by dark
splotches of the blood from her attacker, or victim, he wasn’t sure which. A
mere she-wolf couldn’t take down a fully grown male and leave him bloodied and
wounded.

Drew angled his body to face her. He wouldn’t leave his back vulnerable
and open to an attack. With his eyes fixed on her, he shifted into his
man-form, and approached the wounded man.

The she-wolf shied nervously on her pedestal.

“Easy, I won’t hurt you,” he murmured to reassure the skittish she-wolf.
Drew dropped to his knees and rolled the man onto his back.

The size and musculature of the wounded wolf’s body belied the immature youthful
curve of the boy’s jaw.

Drew grunted. He’d been so fixated on finding Aimee, he never took the
time to test the hormones in the boy’s spoor to check for his age. The cub’s
wounds were fatal. Blood gushed from the gaping holes in his belly and neck.
The flesh struggled to knit together, but the damage was too great. The stench
of perforated intestines hung over the boy. The piteous whimper and the plea in
the youngster’s eyes tugged at Drew. The boy’s wet gurgle was a request to put
an end to his suffering.

Drew’s cursed inwardly. Hell, he wouldn’t get any information out of the
dying were.

Reluctantly, he morphed his hand into a paw and extended his claws. In an
act of compassion, he slashed the wolf’s jugular to hasten his death. Blood
dripped from Drew’s fingers in silent condemnation, as they lengthened to take
the place of his claws.

Drew swung around to meet the black-ringed blue brilliance of the
she-wolf’s expressionless eyes.

The surging tug of arousal in his groin made his voice unnecessarily
gruff.

“Where is your alpha?” Drew demanded, taking a step toward her.

The haughty little bitch didn’t deign to respond. She merely spun around,
flicked her tail in dismissal and disappeared behind the boulder.

Drew gaped in disbelief.

Infuriated
by her insult, Drew leapt off the ground. In midair, he willed his hands to
shift into paws. In an undulating ripple, fur sprouted over his skin. Sinewy
muscles covered the shortening bones of his lupine body as he sailed over the
rocky ridge in pursuit of the silver wolf. The loud thump of his paws when he
landed a few feet behind the she-wolf jerked her around to face him.

Drew bared his fangs at her startled yip. Her shock didn’t last long. She
took off through the trees in a silver blur.

Excited by the chase, he followed. He growled when he lost her scent, but
the abrupt dissipation of her scent-trail didn’t faze him. In her rush to evade
him, the girl got careless. Drew found the traces of her presence, a line of
crushed leaves on a bush. A snapped branch on a sapling not long after. Her
mistakes were going to cost her.

Drew tracked the impertinent little brat, and raced to shorten the
distance between them. The lupine side of his nature demanded a show of
contrition from a beta.

If he were honest about the root of his anger, he’d admit it was the
enticement of her aroma, which pulled him mindlessly after her.

Drew’s musings were cut off when he ran straight into a cloud of the
cock-hardening fragrance their females exuded to signal their willingness to
mate. His blood sang with lusty exhilaration. All thoughts of disciplining the
wayward female faded. His body tightened with anticipation and need.

He glimpsed the plume of her tail disappearing into the brush and
quickened his gait. They were only a few yards apart. He released a purely
masculine growl of triumph and cut through the greenery.

Drew caught up with her, panting from more than breathlessness. He
sported the cock-stand of all cock-stands. The knowledge that she was about to
submit to him in more ways than one drove all else from his mind.

The she-wolf cast a mocking glance over her shoulder, slipped between two
trees, and ran into the dense shrubbery, out of sight.

Drew lunged after her and stepped into thin air.

Chapter Four

Drew pumped his limbs in a frantic parody of a bird flapping its wings to
stop himself from falling. Even as he clawed the air, his mind registered the
uselessness of his actions, but he kept at it anyway.

His furious snarls of disbelief, disgust at himself, and anger rang out through
the night.

Damn it to hell. He’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book.
Led
by his freaking nose, he’d followed the treacherous bitch’s lust-invoking
pheromone trail right into a trap. Now his ass and ego were going to pay.

Instinctively, Drew tucked his head into his stomach, twisted and rolled
to position himself for a better landing. Catching the female would be the
least of his concerns if he broke a limb. In his weakened condition, it’d take
time to heal, time he couldn’t afford to lose.

His swift descent into the hole ended in a loud thump on the pitted
limestone bedrock. The sharp stones bit into the pads on his paws and bolts of
agony shot up his wobbly legs.

Driven by fury, he ignored the pain and took a running leap at the wall
of the pit. In a desperate scramble, Drew tried to claw his way out of the
trench, but the loose, root-riddled dirt crumbled under his paws. He slid down
like a raindrop on a windshield.

Where was she?

He glared up at the grassy edge of his prison. Drew’s angry growls echoed
through the valley. At this point, he didn’t give a rat’s ass who heard him.
Let them come. He was pissed enough to take on a battalion.

Finding a foothold in the loose soil of the gully’s walls proved
impossible. It didn’t stop him from attempting to get himself out of the shaft.
After each try, he slithered in an undignified heap. For his efforts, all he
got were sore paws and aching joints. Growling and snapping in fury, his wolf
held onto his base form. Lupine pride wouldn’t allow him to accept the fact he
wasn’t able to work his way out of his predicament as a were.

He prowled the circumference of his stony cage. His anger at himself and
the Jezebel who’d led him into this humiliating situation grew with each
circuit he made. Drew couldn’t understand why a she-wolf would lead
unsuspecting weres into a hole. He never imagined he’d be susceptible to such
an obvious ploy.

Just wait until he got his hands on her…he’d take pleasure in slowly
teaching her the proper way to show respect to an alpha.

Pebbles skittering down the sides of the pit drew his attention back up
to the edge of the shaft. He reared back, muscles bunched, ready to spring. A
threat rumbled from his throat.

Some of the fight went out of him when he spotted the trio of women above
him. The she-wolf had morphed into human form, and she’d brought company.

Bathed in the white-blue light of the moon, their pale hip-length hair
caught the moonbeams to create an ethereal corona around them. At first glance,
they could easily be mistaken for mythical creatures. But he knew better. The
little bitch and her friends were very real.

In silence, they scrutinized him with an avid curiosity.

“Now that we’ve caught him, what are we going to do with him?” the
shortest of the trio asked her companions.

Her question took Drew by surprise. Do what with him?

The women studied him as if he were a specimen in a Petri dish.

“Set him free, I suppose. I’m disappointed. I thought he’d be harder to
catch. He can’t possibly be what we need. We’ll have to find another one.” The
emasculating statement from the she-wolf he’d stalked was the last straw. He
recognized the pissy attitude.