Seduced by the Wolf

Chapter 8

Despite Leidolf's insistence that he drive, Elgin wouldn't let him, and Fergus and Carver backed his sub-leader up. Who the hell was the pack leader around here, anyway?

Elgin kept defending his actions. "You could barely dress without my help."

Leidolf gave him a look warning him not say another word about it. Carver and Fergus tried to appear serious, but he noted the slight humor in their expressions. He ignored the other men, not wanting to see the same kind of smirks on the rest of his people's faces.

Not once had Leidolf ever shown a "drunken" side of himself, and they wouldn't ever see him like this again, if he had anything to say about it. "That was dressing. I can drive just fine."

His men looked half worried that he'd give them hell when he was feeling more like himself, but he could see they were proud of themselves for sticking up for what they felt was right. All of them stood taller, their chins raised, their expressions determined, their brows slightly furrowed.

Even in his fog-clouded mind, he knew that their standing up to him when they thought it was the correct action to take was a positive step in the right direction. If only he hadn't been so mad that they overrode his every order.

He growled at them when Fergus and Carver carried him out to the Suburban and helped him into the middle seat. He snarled at them when Carver had the nerve to fasten his seat belt for him. And damn if Elgin didn't drive like a little old man when he finally hit the main road.

"Drive faster, damn it, Elgin. I could trot out there as a wolf and make it there a hell of a lot faster."

He glanced at the rifles they'd brought with them, and Fergus said, "We brought tranquilizer guns in the event we run into the hunters who are armed in that manner. Figured you didn't want to shoot anyone with bullets."

"Good thinking."

Carver handed Leidolf the first of the thermoses of hot, black coffee that Laney had made for him. He seized the damned thing and began drinking. Taking a pause after swallowing another mouthful, he said, "Elgin... drive... faster!"

Then his cell phone rang, and Carver hurried to take the thermos from him while Leidolf fumbled to get the cell phone off his belt, nearly dropping it in the process. Carver raised his brows at him as if to point out that Leidolf couldn't have managed driving in the shape he was in. Leidolf gave him another hard scowl back.

When Leidolf answered the phone, expecting news from Laney or the other men in the truck following them, he heard his sister's too sweet voice. Mated to a gray and living in Silver Town, Colorado, his sister, Lelandi, would not have believed it to learn her stern brother was pampering a pack of psychologically and physically abused werewolves. But only within his pack. Elsewhere, he would take on the best of them if any threatened trouble for his kind.

"Laney called and said you found a mate. When would be a good time for me to visit?" Lelandi asked.

"Laney was mistaken." Hell, he might want Cassie for a mate, and she certainly seemed interested in him, although somewhat apprehensive to let on, but where women were concerned, he could never be certain. And what had possessed Laney to tell his sister what was going on anyway? Hell, she'd better not call his mother.

"You sound drunk, dear brother. Which is totally uncharacteristic for you. In fact, I don't remember you ever drinking anything alcoholic. What's wrong?"

"I've got--" He almost said pack problems. Not the thing to say. Hell, what if his brother-in-law felt the urge to come out and rescue him? Or worse, his sister? He sure wasn't going to tell her a hunter had tranquilized him. He growled. "I'm in the middle of... hell, nothing's wrong."

"Let me talk to Elgin."

"He's driving." As soon as the words slipped out, he knew it had been the wrong thing to say.

Such a long pause followed that he swore he could hear his sister's thoughts churning. If he went anywhere, he always drove. Even once he turned thirteen and was tall enough to reach the gas pedal because of their dad being wheelchair-bound. Well, more than that. He didn't trust women drivers. Or men.

"What's wrong?" she asked again, sounding worried this time.

"Lelandi, nothing. And don't try to psychoanalyze 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. Damn 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, damn 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. Hell, 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 Cassie 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. "Pass 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 Cassie 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. Cassie'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 damned 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 hell from the bullet in her shoulder now, lying on the ground in no condition to run or fight back, Cassie 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. "Damned hunters. They're wolf tracks, too, Joe."

Oh, hell. 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 Cassie 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! Hell, 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, reassuringly 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, damn 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 butt 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. Hell. Here she had saved his butt, 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 assumed 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.