"Lelandi, nothing. And don't try to psychoa.n.a.lyze me with that coursework you're taking. Your mate should know better than to let you try to become a psychiatrist."

"Psychologist."

"Same thing. Both think they can read your mind." Static began to fill the airwaves. "You're breaking up. I'll talk to you later." He hung up on his sister and saw Carver observing him.

Fergus quickly turned around to watch out the front windshield. None of his pack members had met his sister, so he was sure they were curious about his relationship with her. It was strained. Not only had she mated a gray against his wishes, which was a sticking point between them, but she resented him for leaving their pack when his family had needed him.

And considering what could have happened to his family and how their other sister had died, he would forever wear the guilt. He'd had his reasons for leaving, but Larissa's death made none of them count for anything.

Then something else occurred to him. "Elgin, why did you come looking for me in the woods? You were supposed to be searching for Quincy and Pierce."

"We had found them, and Carver took them back to the ranch. We were still trying to track Sarge down when we heard the female howl and located you," Elgin said.

"Did Elgin tell you a cougar killed two of our newborn calves?" Fergus asked. "Did you want us to hunt him down?"

The ranch had already lost a ton of money, but Leidolf couldn't figure out why. They certainly couldn't afford to lose a bunch of their livestock.

An accountant he was not. None of his pack members would volunteer for the job of keeping track of financial matters either, and he wasn't ready to force someone to do the tedious work. Not when he feared that whoever did the job would be afraid to own up to him that something was wrong with the finances or wouldn't know how to figure out the discrepancies, just as he couldn't.

"Might be a female with cubs. What about that zoo man who likes to rescue wild animals?" Leidolf suggested.

"The one who put the red female, Bella Wilder, in the zoo? Henry Thompson?"

"Yeah, that's the one." Feeling overwhelmingly groggy, as though he'd worked a week straight without any sleep, Leidolf shut his eyes for a moment. d.a.m.n the tranquilizer still clouding his blood. When he opened his eyes, everyone was watching him. Including Elgin, who slipped his gaze to the rearview mirror to check up on Leidolf. He was not sleeping, d.a.m.n it!

"Maybe Thompson will take the lion into the zoo. I'd like to get to know the man a little better. Apparently, he's still looking for the 'missing' red wolf, and I'd hate to think he might grab one of our pack members some day, thinking it's her," Leidolf said.

"Alfred said he should have eliminated him when he had the chance after the man put Bella in the zoo," Elgin said.

"Alfred said and did a lot of things he shouldn't have. And look where it got him."

Everyone was silent.

Leidolf let out his breath. "We'll hunt the cougar down and turn her over to Thompson, along with her cubs, if she has any. If the zoo staff would rather, they can relocate her to some other location where she won't endanger livestock. Halfway monitoring Thompson's activities might preclude one of our people getting picked up in their wolf forms in the future."

Elgin grunted under his breath. "And stick him or her in the zoo."

"It helps to know your... well, not exactly enemy. Thompson has the best intentions for keeping the wolf kind safe."

"Confined," Elgin sourly said.

Leidolf sighed, figuring it was going to take a devil of an effort to get this pack turned around. He reached his hand out for the thermos of coffee, and when Carver gave it to him, he began drinking the hot, black stuff again. He just hoped he could walk on his own when he got to where they were going.

He glanced out the window. h.e.l.l, was Elgin driving even slower now?

"Elgin!"

He felt the vehicle surge forward and smiled.

Between drinking the second thermos of coffee and the time it took to drive back to the Mount Hood National Forest, Leidolf felt almost normal again when they arrived. Maybe not quite. He felt half drugged and half hyped-up on caffeine. But Leidolf wasn't about to slow down. Not when his people and Ca.s.sie could be in danger.

In a rush to locate his wayward pack members and the woman of his dreams, Leidolf and his men finally reached the place where he had fallen after being drugged and where she had run off.

"Spread out," he told the ten men with him. "Pa.s.s the word along if you see a sign of any of them."

Elgin and the rest of Leidolf's men quickly spread out in a long line through the woods.

Within minutes, shots rang out, and Leidolf feared the worst. Maybe Quincy or Pierce, who had gone in search of the female in their wolf coats, had been shot. Or maybe Sarge or Satros or his woodland nymph had. But perhaps none of that had happened. Maybe hunters had killed a deer or some other unfortunate creature.

Praying his men were safe and Ca.s.sie was also, Leidolf hurried toward the sound of the last shots fired, while five of his men, led by Fergus, took off for the area where the first gunfire had sounded. Elgin, Carver, and three other men followed Leidolf, searching for any clues.

"Female red," Elgin soon warned, pointing to drops of blood and wisps of red fur snagged on a couple of branches.

His heart hammering, Leidolf lifted the soft fur to his nose and smelled. It was hers. Ca.s.sie's. His blood pounded as he quickly studied the ground for the trail of blood she would leave behind. "This way."

"It's the female who was with you, watching over you, isn't it?" Elgin asked, keeping close by, searching for any evidence of her trail. "We'll find her, Leidolf. We'll take her back to the ranch with us. No d.a.m.ned hunters are going to kill her."

Leidolf barely heard him, his temper ready to explode. If he found the man who had shot her, he'd have to rein in the darker side of his personality, or he would rip him to shreds.

Hurting like h.e.l.l from the bullet in her shoulder now, lying on the ground in no condition to run or fight back, Ca.s.sie felt as if whoever had been following her had turned into a couple of wraiths that would suddenly appear before her, their expressions grisly as they condemned her to death. She had watched too many horror movies. The men stood quietly some distance from her, hidden in the woods from her view.

"Blood trail leads this way," a man's gruff voice finally said. "d.a.m.ned hunters. They're wolf tracks, too, Joe."

Oh, h.e.l.l. Whoever they were, they'd tracked her.

Again, silence. Then, the man spoke again. "Red fur, red wolf."

Great. They even knew what she was. More wolf biologists? That would be highly unlikely. Were they Leidolf's men then? Still searching for her after they had taken their pack leader home?

"You think it's her, don't you, Thompson? Rosa? The wolf we caught and put in the zoo last year?"

Her heart skipped a beat. Zoo? Not Leidolf's men then.

"She's a red wolf all right. This is definitely some of her fur. Got to be Rosa."

Rosa? Was that the name of the she-wolf with the pups Ca.s.sie had discovered?

She lay very still as the men headed for her again, closing in. She didn't know who they were, but at least they didn't seem to be hunters intent on killing her. But the mention of zoos put a terrifying new spin on her situation.

Their heavy boots tromped the ground, growing closer and closer.

"There! h.e.l.l, she's been hit," Thompson said, stopping suddenly, his blue eyes wide, his brow furrowed. He stretched his hands out as if to show he wouldn't shoot her, while a rifle hung ominously from a strap over his shoulder. His clothes were a mottled green and black in an attempt to blend in with his surroundings, but his blue eyes caught her attention the most. If he was peering out of a hunter's blind, his eyes would easily have given him away.

She stirred, or at least attempted to, but a stabbing pain streaked through her shoulder, and she moaned.

"Easy, girl. I'm not going to hurt you," he said quietly, rea.s.suringly as if he picked up injured feral wolves all of the time.

She lifted her head to growl, to warn the two men to stay away, but she didn't have the strength.

"She's in bad shape. Should we tranquilize her?" Joe asked, drawing closer. He was not quite as tall as Thompson. He looked like an army guy in camouflage fatigues, except that his clothes were so wrinkled and baggy that she figured he would have failed an inspection in a military formation.

"Use a lighter dose on her. It'll help ease her pain."

No, d.a.m.n it, not a drug. She tried to rally and lifted her head but dropped it back down in exasperation, her strength zapped.

Joe readied his rifle and fired. A stab in her flank followed. She jerked a little in response. So much for the dart helping her fight the pain. She thought she growled at them, but she wasn't sure. Now she knew how Leidolf had to have felt. Well, not from the pain, but from the tranquilizer. She almost wished he was kneeling over her, naked, coaxing her to take him on, nuzzling her face, and shoving her limp body, anything to get her lazy b.u.t.t off the ground and in wolf motion again. Strong, agile, quick, and out of here.

Thompson walked around her, taking in her appearance. "Must be Rosa. But what of the other we shot? He has to be her mate."

Other wolf? So these were the guys who shot Leidolf! With a tranquilizer dart. Sure. h.e.l.l. Here she had saved his b.u.t.t, not that she hadn't been the one to get him into the perilous situation in the first place, but where was he when she needed rescuing?

Probably happily sleeping it off in a soft bed at home, while she ended up in a wolf pen with a concrete floor and a trough of water, caged in! Thompson took a deep breath and crouched close to her back, running his hand over her like she was his pet dog. "We've got to get her to the vet, have her patched up, and save her life."

A vet? Her wolf genetics would appear perfectly normal to the vet, so no problem there. She just didn't need an animal doctor poking around at her insides.

"Grab her muzzle, will you, Joe?"

Whatever Thompson planned on doing, she a.s.sumed she wasn't going to like it. She tried to twist her head away, but she couldn't move it an inch any which way. Joe took hold of her muzzle and held on tight. She growled low from the throat.

Thompson examined her belly, running his hand over her teats, and then lifted her leg. "She hasn't had a litter of pups, but she's in heat."

Yeah, not as a human, of course, but anytime between January and April, the wolf side of her was in heat, her wolf half-ready for a lupus garou mate. She sighed. No wonder Leidolf had sent her pheromone levels racing to the moon. Poor tired wolf. If he had been awake enough when she located him sleeping in the ferns to smell her elevated estrogen levels and felt the way she touched him so intimately like a lover would, he wouldn't have given her a chance to escape him. And she wasn't sure she would have wanted to, either.

"Just wanted to make sure we didn't leave a litter behind in a den somewhere nearby when we pack her out of here. But the big male we shot might have already serviced her."

Gently, Thompson let go of her leg and moved away from her. Joe quickly released her muzzle and stepped back. She didn't have the strength to snap at him for confining her anyway, so he needn't have worried.

"Call it in, if you can get some reception way out here. We really need to find the male, too," Thompson said.

She closed her eyes. At least Leidolf would be safe. And for that, she was grateful.

The sun was diminishing fast. The smell of the sweaty men and the feel of the cool breeze against her face disappeared. A strange heat pumped through her veins until her mind could no longer focus on what her mission was. Her thoughts about wolf pups and the she-wolf, about murderers and these men and the blond, blue-eyed wolf biologist, about vets and zoos, and Leidolf standing naked in the lake, his green eyes willing her to spend the night with him, about the way she taunted him to take her when he was a drugged wolf, and the way he smiled devilishly back, and any other thought she managed to grab onto, all faded into oblivion.

Chapter 9.

Leidolf and his men had traveled over a mile, finding the red's blood trail in spots to help them track her, when he heard two men talking. He motioned for Elgin and the rest of his men to stop in place. They were too far away to see what was going on, but they could hear the men's conversation just fine.

"I can't get any reception on the phone way out here, either, Thompson. I tried closer to the highway while I was looking for the male wolf."

"h.e.l.l, we've got to get her to the vet. At least the bleeding's stopped. We can use this between us to carry her to the truck. Here, help me roll it out. But I'd hoped we could get some more men out here to search for her mate, and we could take them both to the zoo at the same time, Joe."

Mate? h.e.l.l, these were the two men across the river who had shot him! And planned to take him to the zoo?

Elgin looked at Leidolf and smiled as if Thompson's words were an indication of things to come--as far as the mate comment went. He better not be smiling about the fact Leidolf could have ended up in the zoo.

Thompson? Henry Thompson? h.e.l.l, the zoo man. This was not the way Leidolf had in mind to get to know the man better.

"I couldn't find any sign of the male after looking for him for the last few hours. The drug in his system might have worn off," Joe said. "He could be anywhere by now. But I guess if she's got a mate, this means we can't hook Rosa up with Big Red once she's sufficiently healed."

"Never know," Thompson said. "We might not ever find the male out here to pair them up again, so Big Red might have a chance. As soon as we get her to the zoo, we'd better ensure some additional security measures are in place in case someone tries to free her again."

No way was his woodland nymph going to be stuck in a pen with a h.o.r.n.y lupus.

"Should we shoot them and rescue her?" Elgin whispered to Leidolf.

Moving as quietly as a wolf, Leidolf nodded, stepped closer to get a visual on the men, and raised his rifle, but before he could give the final order, all h.e.l.l broke loose. In their wolf coats, his lupus garou upstarts raced toward Thompson and Joe, their hackles raised, their teeth bared, both fiercely growling and prepared to lunge.

Holy c.r.a.p! Pierce and Quincy!

Leidolf would kill them.

Alex hid in the woods, desperate to chase after the wounded red wolf and take care of her, but he didn't dare move. The black-bearded man had fallen hard, hit his head on the edge of a rock, and wasn't moving. Dead, maybe? At least Alex could hope. Even though he believed in justice by trial, in a case like this where the murderer had just shot a wolf and was ready to kill him, too, he hoped the rock had done the guy in.

His companion paced, called to him, tried to get him to his feet, but the guy was too big. The other man was a sawed-off reddish-blond with a butch haircut, a tough-looking little dude, but despite his determined scowl, he couldn't budge the bigger man.

The blood in Alex's veins ran like ice as he worried about the fate of the wolf. He had to find her. He couldn't fail her after she had protected him.

He gripped his knife tighter. Normally a pacifist at heart, he wanted to kill the shooter himself for wounding the rare red wolf.

But what he couldn't get over was the way the wolf had attacked the hunter. Not attacked him exactly though. Leapt at him, and at once Alex had expected to see a torn jugular. But instead of hurting him, she'd just stopped him from shooting her, as if she had human instincts. As if she had been someone's pet.

As a wolf, she should have continued to run away. She should have left Alex behind to fend for himself. Her actions didn't make any sense.

"Can you hear me?" The short guy paced some more. "h.e.l.l, you just stay here then. I'll look for the guy who was listening to us." He c.o.c.ked his rifle and stalked into the woods to the left of where Alex was hiding.

As soon as the man disappeared from sight, Alex headed for the wolf's trail as quietly as he could, hoping like h.e.l.l the shooter wouldn't find it, too. He suspected the shooter would only go after him, not a wounded wolf. He scrambled over tree roots, tripping through ferns and wildflowers after the wolf, trying to locate the trail of blood she was leaving on leaves and branches before the shooter discovered it. This was not the kind of study Alex had had in mind when he began his wolf research eight years earlier.

As a weird afterthought, he wondered what Ca.s.sie would do for the wolf, if she were in his shoes. Then a new concern flooded his thoughts. What if she was nearby and ran into this maniac on her own? And the shooter thought she also had overheard their conversation?

She would be in terrible peril.

Hidden in the woods, Leidolf cursed his impulsive new red lupus garous right before they attacked Thompson and Joe as they were laying out a makeshift canvas stretcher while the wolf lay still on the ground. Leidolf immediately fired a shot.

Both of his wolves fled from the sound of the gunfire, and the dart made its target. Thompson reached for the dart in his left b.u.t.tock and tried to stand but stumbled. Before a stunned Joe could react, Elgin took a shot at him and the man parroted Thompson's actions.

"We've... we've been tranqed," Joe slurred and then pa.s.sed out next to the wolf.