He tried to respond but only managed a feeble woof. h.e.l.l. How could he howl with his head plastered to the moss-covered forest floor?

Instead, he listened for her to repeat her call, hoping in his not-so-clear mind that she'd grow closer to him and smell him when he couldn't vocalize his location.

She didn't make another sound, and he tried to lift his head again. Without success. Cursing himself for the predicament he was in, he thought briefly about his pack and what they would say if they could see him now. Not only that but what his sister would say if she knew what had become of her brother, who never made a mistake.

And then the darkness overcame his thoughts, like a heavy mist forming in his brain, disguising his mental notes and thickening until everything blanked out.

When Leidolf didn't respond, Ca.s.sie figured he was pa.s.sed out and unable to call to her. Frantically, she kept crisscrossing the area, searching for his location. Finally smelling the scent from his footpads on the path through the forest headed away from the river, she ran after him with her nose to the soil. Not far from the river, she located the large red male lying on his side, half-buried in ferns and dead to the world. A beautiful big red, his fur dark and shiny, his body powerful and st.u.r.dy. She needed to get him some place safe where the hunters couldn't locate him.

She moved in closer and nudged his nose with hers. He didn't respond. Not good. She tried again, this time licking his face, rubbed her muzzle against his, and then she pawed at his legs. She woofed low next to his ear, trying to stir him. How far away had the hunters parked their vehicle? How far to the nearest bridge where they would cross over and be on this side of the river? And how long would it take them to locate the male wolf from the trailhead near where they would have to park?

Maybe hours. Darkness would come soon. She couldn't wait. She shifted from a wolf to a human. Then, in her chilled and naked form, she crouched in front of the wolf's head and lifted it, talking to Leidolf, trying to get him to wake. He didn't move. She laid his head back down and then ran her hand over his body, sifting through his fur, searching for any kind of wound, unable to see where he'd been hit. Which meant he'd probably been shot on the other side.

Only one way to do this.

"Sorry," she apologized beforehand, not wanting to hurt him but needing to see the damage. She took hold of his legs and used them as a lever to turn him over. He didn't groan or growl or anything, which concerned her even more.

She gingerly swept her fingers through his fur looking for an injury. No blood on his fur and no wound anywhere, but a dart was lying on the ground where he had been resting. She picked up the dart. Tranquilizer? She didn't know what the drug smelled like, so that didn't help. Crouching at his back, she rested her head on his side and listened. His heart beat slowly, tired, drugged.

She let out her breath in relief. He wasn't wounded. If hunters found him, he could still be in real trouble.

"You need to get up," she whispered in his ear, one hand stroking his neck, the other the crown of his head. "Leidolf, you've got to get up before the hunters come for you."

Still, he didn't respond. Figuring more roughness was required to wake him, she growled and shoved at his back. "Get up! Now!" Which didn't work, either.

h.e.l.l.

Okay, fine. She stepped around him and knelt down in front of his snout, intending to offer him what she a.s.sumed he really wanted and hope that he would stir enough to get on his way, while she took off in another direction as a decoy for the hunters. Kneeling before him, she stroked the top of his head between his ears and whispered in one of them, "You chased me, and now that I'm all yours, you're too tired to come out and play?"

His eyes opened, but he didn't seem focused on anything. She rubbed her cheek against his and scratched some more between his ears. "Hmm, the big, bad wolf isn't so big and bad anymore."

She swore he smiled in a big, bad wolf way.

Naked, the redheaded woman of his lakeside fantasies, the same little wolf biologist who had stirred his interest earlier, stroked Leidolf's back and rubbed her cheek against his, a throwback to their wolf ways, not only a form of endearment but something deeper. Her brows furrowed, her expression remained concerned. When she was in her wolf form and had nuzzled his muzzle with her own, the wolf scent glands in her skin had rubbed against his, indicating she had claimed him as part of her pack. Whether she had done so consciously, or as a way to get him on his feet and hadn't meant anything by it, he wasn't sure.

He took another deep breath of her scent, memorizing it, and managed a feeble wolf smile. Her swim in the river had washed off the hunter's spray, and now he could smell her delectable scent just fine.

h.e.l.l, if he hadn't been so dead to the world, he would have responded to her touching him and claimed her right back, tenfold. Her fingers swept over his fur, examining every inch of him, sensually like a lover would in the wolf's courtship phase. Or like a pack member would groom an injured wolf, comforting him both physically and mentally. He would have been in heaven, if he hadn't been so out of it. d.a.m.n it.

Her breath tickled his ear as she whispered into it and stirred his need to have her as she pressed her heavy b.r.e.a.s.t.s against his shoulder. Then she moved her fingers to his head between his ears and began to scratch. Her touch wouldn't scratch the itch she'd started. The scent of her stirred-up feminine pheromones was an enticing concoction as she leaned in close to him.

He should have had a raging hard-on. Why was he too tired to respond to her loving ministrations? He couldn't fathom why his body didn't react to her shoving at him or her whispered words in his ear. Or even earlier, when she was a wolf, licking his face, kissing him wolf style. He sure as h.e.l.l wanted to show her just what her attentions meant to him and give her back so much more in return.

The couple of times he'd managed to get his eyes open, he'd seen the woman of his dreams kneeling before him, the red curly thatch of hair between her legs teasing him, her delectable b.r.e.a.s.t.s tantalizing him.

But the last words she spoke really got his attention. Something clicked in his tired brain--"Hmm," she'd said in such a sultry, heated way--and he was ready to flip her on her back and take her, forgetting for the moment he was a wolf and she was a redheaded woodland nymph taunting him with her s.e.xual prowess, urging him to do wicked things with that sweet naked body of hers.

He tried to pry an eye open again as her body pressed heavily again against him. He swore nerve endings in every hair follicle in his fur coat responded to her touch, sending an urgent message to his brain. Get up, shape-shift, and show the woman just how wickedly bad you can be.

The rest of her words were purred in his ear, and if he hadn't learned she was a wolf shape-shifter, he might have mistaken her for a big beautiful cat, a sleek panther type.

... The big bad wolf isn't so big and bad anymore, she had said, the words hauntingly seductive, encouraging him to take her.

He smiled. Oh, yes, he could be very bad. If he just wasn't so d.a.m.ned tired. Had she kept him up all night? Had his way with her for hours? He couldn't remember.

His thoughts drifted again, and he didn't remember anything until she shook him hard. "Get up, you lazy lout."

He managed to peel one eye open again and blinked. He sensed that the position of the sun had slipped a few notches in the sky. The air had grown colder. Her brow furrowed, Ca.s.sie kneeled before him. Lazy lout, she'd called him, he finally realized. He lifted his head slightly and looked at her.

The scowl remained fixed in place, her lips pursed, her red brows furrowed, her hair drifting in red curls over her shoulders. He stared at her hair, wanting to sift his fingers through the silky strands in the worst way. His gaze refocused on her eyes, sea green, heated... G.o.d, she was beautiful.

He had to shift. Show her what he could do with her after she had so blatantly called him out. He could barely lift his head. He tried to lie on his stomach but couldn't get the strength to lift his body in that direction.

Frowning, she looked worried and then leaned over, dangling her b.r.e.a.s.t.s in front of his nose as she tried to push him so he was lying on his stomach. He licked a breast, unable to help himself, wishing he was in his human form. She shook her head, rose to stand beside him, and folded her arms across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which left the rest of her bared for his viewing pleasure: long legs, the red thatch of hair covering her mound, pink feminine lips peeking out, teasing him to come and play.

"The hunters could be here any minute now, and you'd be in real trouble."

He refocused on her face. She spoke angrily, but no matter how much she growled at him, he loved the sound of her voice, her narrowed green eyes spitting fire, her full lips turned down. Which triggered the craving to hug her tight and kiss her into submission.

As soon as she said the words, they heard someone coming. The redhead's eyes grew big. Then she crouched next to Leidolf, her enticing b.r.e.a.s.t.s at eye level and his focal point as she whispered, "Lie down, and I'll bury you. Then I'll lead them away. Just stay here and sleep off the tranquilizer. Then go home. And leave me alone."

His gaze shifted back to hers, her expressive eyes showing a mixture of worry and pleading. He wouldn't lie down on his side again, not when he was finally lying on his stomach and felt more in control. But more than that, he was going to protect her, not the other way around.

Before he could tell her no in a wolf's growling way, she pushed him back on his side and started burying him with leaves--him, an alpha leader! d.a.m.n it. Then she shifted into the prettiest little red wolf he'd ever seen, her coat a rich red, a slightly lighter mask on her face highlighting her almond-shaped eyes, her ears perked, listening for danger, her tail tipped in black ink sticking straight out... an alpha female for sure. Before he could lift his head to tell her what to do in his wolf's commanding way, she dashed off. And if he could have, he would have cursed out loud.

Ca.s.sie started to run off in an attempt to lead the hunters away from Leidolf in his drugged state, until she smelled more lupus garous. Men, all of them, four or five, she thought. She stopped, hidden in the mosaic of evergreens and listened to their movement, no one saying a word. They had to be Leidolf's pack members. Thank G.o.d, for his sake.

She hoped they would find him without her having to give herself away. And if they located him, she was out of here.

"Elgin, do you smell what I smell?" one of the men asked, his voice hushed and a little nervous.

c.r.a.p. She figured they must have smelled her. Why wasn't the hunter's spray... oh, h.e.l.l, the swim across the river must have washed it away. Having believed they were hunters to begin with, she knew she hadn't anything to worry about them smelling her, until they turned out to be lupus garous.

"In addition to Leidolf's scent? A red female. That one he said he smelled earlier, most likely. Maybe we shouldn't have come this way looking for him. He'll be p.i.s.sed if he rendezvoused with that female and didn't want us to know about it yet," Elgin said, his voice a whisper.

"The female wolf howled, and we had to make sure she was all right," one of the men said.

"All right, Fergus. But I still say if we find him humping a redhead, we leave before he sees us, or you do all the talking."

The other two men, silent up until now, chuckled. One said, "Glad the two of you are his sub-leaders."

"Here, oh c.r.a.p. Leidolf's..." Fergus said, shuffling through leaves. "h.e.l.l, he's alive. Heartbeat's really slow though."

Lots more rustling of leaves. "No b.l.o.o.d.y wound," Elgin said, sounding relieved. "He's... d.a.m.n, he's been tranquilized. Let's get him out of here, now."

"What's he doing in a wolf coat?" one of the other men asked.

"You have to ask?" Elgin said.

They thought he was rendezvousing with her as a wolf in broad daylight? What kind of an alpha leader was he?

"He changed into his wolf form to track her more easily," Elgin added, in case the others hadn't figured it out. "I know he said he wouldn't, but if she was in need and called out to him, he would have found her more easily as a wolf."

Oh. Well they'd sure had her going for a second. She sighed. Good. She hated believing they thought she was fooling around with a lupus garou as a wolf before she'd even made his acquaintance as a human. Not that she intended to see any of these people again, but... still, she did have some pride.

"What about the female?" Fergus asked.

Ca.s.sie could envision the man's raised brows at the question, waiting for Elgin's response.

For what seemed like an eternity, although she was certain only a few seconds pa.s.sed, no one said anything. Which didn't bode well. Then Elgin said, "We've got to get Leidolf back to the ranch. And we've got to send more of our men out here to search for Sarge and the twin brothers."

For a second, she breathed a sigh of relief.

Leidolf must have fallen asleep because he didn't make a peep. She was sure he would have thrown a fit when he learned his men planned to spirit him away from the woman who had been seducing him right before his groggy eyes and no one went looking for her.

No other words were spoken, but as the men began moving, they didn't all head in the same direction. Some returned the way they had come, but others began stalking her way.

h.e.l.l, they had to have used hand signals, figuring she might be nearby and didn't want to scare her off. Which meant? Some were trying to track her down. To give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they worried she'd been tranquilized nearby also.

Still in her wolf form, she dashed off. The river trick could work again.

OmiG.o.d, Aimee thought as she caught sight of the scrawny red wolf moving her pups into a new den. Her fur-covered skin clung to her ribs, and she was way too gaunt to be able to nurse her pups well. Aimee had heard her howl and knew it wasn't Ca.s.sie's, but she'd lost Ca.s.sie some hours ago, if she was the woman in the safari outfit she'd tried to track. And the howl probably meant the female was in trouble. Aimee wanted to help her. But a real wolf? I mean, Aimee was a real wolf, too, at the moment, but this one was an honest-to-G.o.d lupus-only kind of wolf. The pups began crying.

Aimee quickly went in search of food. Was this what her cousin was trying to do? Take care of the female wolf? Sounded like something Ca.s.sie would get involved in.

Aimee had heard the other wolves howling but didn't believe they were part of this wolf's pack, or they would have been here with her now. Which meant?

She shuddered. Irving and Tynan, her would-be murderers, could be the ones calling to each other.

Chapter 7.

As soon as Alex Wellington spied Ca.s.sie Roux's green pickup parked in the Mount Hood National Forest, twenty miles east of Portland and the northern Willamette Valley, he thought the area was just her kind of place.

With sixty square miles of forest and numerous streams, creeks, several lakes, more than a million acres of land, and a thousand-plus hiking trails, the national forest was perfect for a pack of wolves. He figured Ca.s.sie must have come across wolves somewhere out here or she wouldn't have been in the small town lecturing about them.

Wedging his pickup behind hers, Alex effectively blocked her truck between the oaks and Douglas firs so she couldn't steal away if she returned before he located her. Before meeting her, work had been just that... work, a job. But not with Ca.s.sie in the picture. She made it a game. Something fun.

Glad that the rain had died down to a thick mist, Alex grabbed his backpack, locked his door, and circled around her truck, searching for where her tracks would lead. She was a d.a.m.ned good wolf biologist; he had to give her that. And he wanted to know what made her so d.a.m.ned good. Well, more than that. He wanted them to be good together, a wolf biologist team. The perfect scenario. If that rich rancher hadn't kept him from visiting with her socially after her lecture...

He frowned and jerked his backpack straps over his shoulders, then looked around at the woods for a footpath she might have taken. Spying one, he started down it, the spongy ground cushioning his every step, while green leafy branches and ferns stretched out to the foot-and-a-half-wide trail and brushed the sides of his boots from time to time.

A mosaic of leaves and pine needles shed the previous autumn covered the earth, masking the ground and the tracks of anyone who'd walked this way recently. Eyes to the ground, Alex continued down the path, searching for an elusive hiking-boot tread, Ca.s.sie's small size-six footprint, or any other indication that she'd headed in this direction. No broken twigs, no crushed ferns off the main trail.

He knew she wasn't bound to manmade trails like the average Joe. Even when she hiked through pristine forests, she left the wilds of nature undisturbed as if she were a woodland fairy who melted into the scenery. He'd always admired her for that, but it meant tracking her was all the more time-consuming and difficult. As much as it was for him when he was tracking wolf packs.

He paused and looked back at her truck, which merged with the greenery. She always seemed to find the packs as if she had a divining rod for wolves. h.e.l.l, he could go months before he finally spotted one. And even then, getting to know them took a meticulously long time.

But Ca.s.sie Roux could blend in with a pack and form attachments, as if she had been one of the gang forever, within such a short time that it was unnatural. He swore she had to have been a wolf in a former life. When he'd said so to her once after she'd given a lecture at UCLA, she'd given him a quick smile and his stomach had flip-flopped, and in that instant, he'd fallen hard for the woman.

His step less sure, he backtracked down the path to return to her truck. When he reached her pickup, he peered inside. Spotlessly clean as usual. No sign of anything left behind so that anyone who might be tempted to break into her vehicle to steal possessions, like they did at trailheads sometimes, wouldn't be bothered.

Finally spying the faint tread mark of one of her hiking boots where she had slipped off the leaves from autumns past and made several small cuts in the muddy earth in between two grand oaks, he smiled.

"Got you."

But after four hours of hiking up and down hillsides through dense forest, he observed a set of boot prints. He measured his foot against them. Size ten like he wore. And they were following Ca.s.sie's.

Had she hooked up with another man? Another wolf biologist? His heart sank with the notion, but then a fresh worry plagued him. Was someone stalking her?

Then a set of wolf prints caught his attention, and he elatedly knelt down to examine them. Glancing around, he noted several more, crisscrossing the area as if frantically searching for something. And another wolf's prints, the tracks indicating a longer gait, the prints a little larger.

Another concern overshadowed his excitement at finding the wolf prints, though. Perplexed, he glanced around the area and studied the soil closer.

The wolves' prints were all over the place, but the trail of Ca.s.sie's boot prints and the man's tread markings had abruptly ended.

"Since he shifted, we've already poured two pots of coffee--full caffeine strength--into Leidolf," Laney said to someone in the great room down the hall at Leidolf's ranch house while he reclined in his bed, the tranquilizer the hunter shot him with still stirring in his bloodstream. "And you've already brought Quincy and Pierce home. Sarge... well, Satros said he'd find him and make him return to the ranch, Elgin. We need to find the woman Leidolf was with before she gets hurt. If she's not already."

Leidolf sat up in bed, so groggy that all he knew was he had to pee really badly, and he had to get to the forest as soon as humanly possible to rescue Ca.s.sie.

"He keeps rambling about her being in danger," Laney added, her words couched in concern, her voice lowered but not low enough that Leidolf couldn't hear her.

Alone in the bedroom, Leidolf growled to himself, "I do not ramble."

"We already have two men on it. And I've talked to him about more of us going back for her, but he says no, that he has to be the one to rescue her. He's not making any sense. He can't go anywhere in the shape he's in. If she needs our help, we need to give it to her," Elgin said, agreeing with his mate wholeheartedly in the great room.

"Nothing is wrong with the shape I'm in," Leidolf groused in a mumble.

"Well, go do it, Elgin. You and Fergus. Go get her and bring her back to him. Don't listen to him. He's too drugged to make any sense. You're both great trackers and his sub-leaders, which means if he's incapable of leading the pack, the two of you run it."

"No!" Leidolf shouted.

d.a.m.n if he could barely remember what had happened except that hunters had shot him when he was trying to track Ca.s.sie down, and then she had attempted to rouse him. Roughly at some point, tenderly at another. And with neither working, she resorted to the words he wanted to hear. Hmm, the big, bad wolf isn't so big and bad anymore, rumbled around in his brain, the minx mouthing the words so sweetly even now in his half-tranquilized state, he was becoming aroused. And then? She had called him a lazy lout.