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. "Hell, you just stay here then. I'll look for the guy who was listening to us." He cocked 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 hell 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 Cassie 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 buttock 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 passed out next to the wolf.
"Hell." Thompson fell beside him, his eyes shut tight in sleep, and he began to snore.
Leidolf and his men hurried forth to check on Cassie, while his wayward lupus garous licked her face, whimpered, and pawed at her feet, trying to get her to stir. Then the sound of crashing through the woods garnered all their attention. Leidolf readied his rifle, but it was only Fergus, his face red with exertion.
"Got trouble..." Fergus stopped speaking and stared at the red wolf. "Is she one of us?"
"Yeah." Leidolf jerked off his coat, then tugged his shirt free and tied it against the wound on her shoulder as best as he could manage. "What's the trouble, Fergus?"
"The hunters who shot her, I suspect, are on their way here."
"All right. Let's get her out of here." Leidolf yanked his jacket back on and then lifted Cassie off the damp earth. He gave his new pack members a scowl that said he'd deal with them later. He had to get his pack members to work together as a bona fide pack. It was the only way they'd ever survive and flourish.
"What are you going to do with her?" Elgin asked, looking hopeful that he'd keep her.
Leidolf's wolf half said that he rescued her while she was in his territory and that she as much as attempted to seduce him when he wasn't able to respond, which meant she wanted to be his. His human half warned him to get used to disappointment. "She stays at the ranch until we learn why she was out here."
"But are you going to make her one of us?" Elgin asked.
Leidolf raised a brow at him. Everyone in the pack had to know he would be interested in Cassie if she was free to mate. But did they think he'd stoop so low as to force her to join them?
"What about them?" Fergus asked, motioning to Thompson and Joe as Leidolf carried the injured wolf away from the zoo men.
"The hunters can take care of them. Just be thankful that Thompson and Joe didn't see us. But how is anyone going to explain the appearance of two male reds and the female in the area?"
Not to mention Leidolf's own run-in with the men from the zoo.
Leidolf let out his breath. "They'll think a whole pack of reds have moved into the woods around here. No more hunting in our wolf coats here now for a long damn time. But something else concerns me. The wolf I smelled earlier was a different one. Had Cassie been alone? Or had she been with another?"
Elgin rubbed his chin and frowned. "If another unattached lupus garou female is in the area, you'll have a fight on your hands for sure."
Over only one of them. This one for damned sure was his to pursue.
As they stalked in the direction of the turnout where they'd parked the SUV about four miles from there, Cassie slept soundly in Leidolf's arms, and he held her closer. Then she stirred. He'd expected she would remain asleep until after they got her in the SUV, or even better, until they got her back to his ranch, but she wriggled a little more.
Leidolf shifted his hold on her, tightening his grip in case she became combative. A wolf was a wolf, whether it was a feral lupus or a lupus garou, and either could be a handful if it took exception to being transported in this manner, especially one that was wounded.
Elgin frowned. "She's waking."
No shit.
And she was waking fast. Again she squirmed, struggling to get free, as if she didn't like being confined by him. She hadn't opened her eyes yet and appeared to be sleeping still.
Fergus drew closer. "Want me to hold her muzzle so she doesn't try to bite you?"
Before Leidolf could respond, Cassie shape-shifted. Right in his arms. She barely gave any warning, just growled low and jerked her head up as if she was going to bite him. She didn't bare her canines, but her green eyes narrowed as she looked up at him, a strange flicker of recognition, and then... she shape-shifted...
... into a soft, naked, beautiful woman.
"Holy cow," Fergus said, jerking off his coat.
Elgin was shedding his, too, and quickly draped it over her nude body. He lifted his brows and his lips slightly. "Hot damn, she truly is the woman I saw running through the woods yesterday. No wonder you danced with her until way past closing this morning."
Leidolf ducked his head underneath a tree branch and hid a smile. His look would have been pure wickedness had he allowed his pack members to see it as he tightened his hold on the curvaceous woman. One hot, red lupus garou in the flesh. He took a deep breath of her sweet, sexy scent, all woman and wolf, and enjoyed the softness of her body, her heat pressing against him.
"Everyone said she pulled you onto the dance floor and wouldn't let go until the wee hours of the morning. And you did say she approached you yesterday at the lake, right? And she acted real interested in you?" Elgin continued, a twinkle in his eye.
It was the first time Leidolf had seen this side of Elgin, more at ease, the conversation more lighthearted.
His expression neutral, Fergus watched Leidolf to see his reaction. Leidolf refused to react in front of his men.
"Since she hung around you when you were drugged until we arrived, I'd say there's something there." Elgin seemed coolly amused. "We'll have to ensure she sticks around this time and doesn't run off again."
"I'll do whatever I can to help," Fergus said, serious-like, but Leidolf noted a slight lift to his lips.
Tightening his hold on her, Leidolf didn't reply. Hell, this was his business, not pack business. He took a deep breath of her scent. He was more than ready to win over the little red wolf who seemed more interested in real wolves than her own kind.
He meant to win.
Following the wounded wolf's trail, Alex paused when he heard men's voices. Then they faded. He continued looking for signs of the wolf until he shoved aside a pine branch and stopped dead. Two hunters lay deathly still on the ground, blood soaking the leaves beside them.
He hurried to the two men, hoping he'd find them still alive. That's when he spied the dart in the buttocks of the one man. Tranquilizers? What the hell?
Alex crouched over the smaller of the two men and grasped his wrist. A tired pulse. He checked the other man and found the same result. Relieved they weren't dead, he examined their rifles, outfitted with tranquilizer darts also. One recently fired. At each other? But only one had been fired.
Before he checked for identification, Alex searched the area, looking for signs of where the wounded wolf had managed to limp off to, assuming that the blood was hers. All he found were snapped twigs, men-sized boot imprints in the muddier areas from the recent rain, men's tracks leading to the scene from several directions, and men's footprints leading away from the scene all in one direction. And wolves' tracks. Two sets of wolves' paw prints running beside the men's boot treads.
Staring at the trail left behind, Alex rubbed his stubbly chin. It appeared other men had shot the now sleeping men with tranquilizers and taken off with the wolves. Probably the same men he'd just overheard talking. From the distance they'd been from him, he hadn't heard their conversation. Thank God, he hadn't arrived at the scene a few minutes earlier, or he imagined he would have been sleeping beside these men.
Again, he considered the wolf paw prints. The wounded female wolf and one other that hadn't been shot appeared to have moved through the area. He examined the muddy soil further. No. Two wolves had come in from a different direction than the one the wounded female had traversed, as evidenced from the trail of blood she'd left behind. So one of the men was carrying the wounded female?
Animal rights activists?
Alex walked in the direction they had taken for several yards and discovered patches of guard hairs. The wolves were still wearing heavy winter coats, and they were also red wolves, not grays. Three red wolves together in a pack? In Oregon? My God, what a find!