Silence of the Wolf

Chapter 17

Elizabeth wanted so badly to sleep, but she knew she had to remain alert. The only thing that had made her stir a little from her grogginess was the thought that the big, sexy wolf would lie with her naked to warm her. After trying to keep some distance from him, she knew that was probably a bad idea in the long run.

Yet part of her hoped he’d say that was just what he intended to do. Because it was the only way she’d live. And maybe even take it further…

He’d seemed highly amused at her suggestion, and she was sure that if she hadn’t lost so much blood and wasn’t so chilled, her face would have been three shades redder. Her cheeks felt icy, so she hoped she hadn’t blushed and given herself away.

He still smirked, the cad. She felt the difference in his footfalls, first through soft snow, then on hard wood, the porch to his cabin. She couldn’t look that way, though, not with the hood of his coat blocking her view of nearly everything except his strong jawline. Dark stubble covered the rigid bone, making him look strong-featured and sexy and able to warm her up just fine. Like he’d done before when she wasn’t nearly this cold.

She shook her head at herself. He had to be angry with her for leaving him. And she had to look terrible. She had a gash in her forehead, and the skin around it had probably turned an assortment of rainbow colors. The rest of her had to be ice white otherwise, except for the blood dried on it. As much as her skin burned, she had to have a lot of abrasions. She was a mess.

“Elizabeth,” Tom said, laying her on the floor as close to the hearth as he could safely get her. He was concerned when she closed her eyes. “Elizabeth!”

Her eyes fluttered open. He took a breath of relief. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah.”

Another wave of relief washed over him. He’d had every intention of seeing her again—but not like this. He’d planned to locate the wolves stalking their livestock first, and then he was going to fly out to be with her in Canyon, Texas. To stay with her. To learn about her. To convince her to come home with him.

He wouldn’t have let go of whatever had happened between them.

Before he unbundled her, he kindled a roaring fire in the hearth. Then he wondered what to do with her. Put her in a hot bath? Her head sported a gash and she had small cuts from the impact. Was she injured elsewhere?

As soon as he unzipped the coat and opened it and the blanket, he saw the damned handcuffs confining her wrists again. She was a prisoner. What was she involved in? Instantly, he’d thought the worst. This was why she hadn’t wanted to keep in touch: she was involved in some kind of crime. Was that why she had plans to meet someone in Silver Town?

For business, she had said. Maybe that was why she wouldn’t tell him what the business had to do with. Maybe that was why she had left so suddenly. Maybe she’d met whoever the man was at the airport and hadn’t wanted Tom to learn of it. Then she’d been caught.

He frowned. The men in the plane crash had been the same wolves as at the tavern. What did that mean?

He covered her up again and stalked to the bedroom where he’d left his lockpicks, a typical lupus garou tool of the trade, on the dresser. Grabbing the lockpicks, he returned to the living room where the fire did a good job of keeping the place warm. The bedroom was ice-cold. The bathroom would be, too.

Crouching beside her, he again moved the coat and blanket aside and began to unlock the manacles. After trying three different lockpicks and jiggling the last one, he succeeded: the lock clicked open. He tossed the handcuffs on the floor. He would have ripped through them with his wolf’s canines, had he been trussed up.

Her wrists were red from the metal scraping at her skin. Her legs seemed fine, if her ability to trudge through the snow was any indication. “Are you hurting anywhere—ribs, any sprains?”

She shook her head.

“Good.” He pulled off her wet boots and socks and wrapped a blanket around her feet. Once covered in snow, her clothes now dripped water.

He quickly removed her shredded pants. Then he touched the remnants of her pink cashmere sweater, which was stained with blood.

He wished he could absorb her cuts and bruises and make her feel all better.

“I’ll take this off. Let me know if anything hurts.”

He pulled the sweater over her head and tossed it aside, damned thankful she was okay.

“I’m fine, just… c-cold,” she said through shivers, her teeth chattering.

The fact she was so cold worried him the most. He covered her up as gently and quickly as he could. “I’ll get some warm clothes to put on you and something to bandage these cuts.”

He grabbed some of his warm wool socks, a button-down shirt, and sweatpants out of a bureau drawer in the bedroom. Then he seized a first-aid kit from the bathroom and quickly returned to her side.

He slipped a double pair of the socks onto her ice-cold feet, then rewrapped the blanket around them. “I’ll clean your cuts and then bandage them. They look pretty shallow, no debris, and should heal within a day or so.”

He gently wiped down her wounds and applied antibacterial ointment as she shut her eyes and sucked in her breath. Then he bandaged all of her scrapes.

“I’ll take off your wet bra. If I can’t get it off easily, I’ll cut it off.”

“It’s the only one I have with me,” she gritted out.

“I’ll take care to remove it, but I do have your bra from before.” Tom still had the bra she’d worn the day she arrived in Silver Town.

“I’d meant to wear it the next day.”

He chuckled. “Sorry about that. It’s home safe… waiting for you. You should have come for it.” He glanced up at her to see her response. She wore a smidgen of a smile.

He shook his head. “You wouldn’t have gotten far. I would have made sure of it.” He would have found out just why she’d been upset and why she’d planned to run away. And he wouldn’t have let her.

She might be cold, but the heat of the fire and the anxiety he felt from trying to take care of her and not hurt her further was making him burn up. He slipped off the bra and considered the thin material of the button-down shirt he’d taken out of his bureau.

“Cinderella,” she said.

“Hmm?” He pulled his own sweater off and then unbuttoned his flannel shirt.

Her eyes widened, but she didn’t say anything.

“I’ll help you to sit and dress you in my flannel shirt. It’s warmer than the one I brought for you from the bedroom.”

She nodded.

“Cinderella?” he asked.

“Cinderella left her… glass slipper behind.”

“With the handsome prince. Only Cinderella is a beautiful shifter, and she left behind a sexy, lacy blue bra,” he said.

She smiled a little.

“And of course, she left behind the prince,” he said, arching a brow.

“A wolf.”

“A prince of a wolf,” he qualified.

He couldn’t be more relieved to see her smiling up at him. Once he’d pulled the shirt on her and buttoned it, he said, “Okay, now the panties come off, and I’ll put some sweats on you.”

She raised her brows. “Seems… we’ve been doing this a lot when we’re together.”

“Yeah, and for all the wrong reasons.”

Her teeth chattered, but the shivers had lessened some and the color had returned to her pale lips. “Are you sure we shouldn’t just strip down and lie together so I can warm you up?” He dropped her wet panties on the hearth, then pulled on the sweats.

“I bet you say that to all the girls… you rescue.”

He chuckled. “You think that’s what we do on ski patrol?”

She smiled again.

“How are you really holding up?” He applied some ointment on the scraped skin around her wrists.

She sighed, the shivers lessening. “Better. Thank you.”

He wrapped the blanket around her. Then he zipped his coat up to her throat. “Good,” he said, but he didn’t like how cold she still was.

He began to clean up the gash on her forehead using a damp cloth. “It isn’t too bad. Head wounds bleed a lot, so they can look really awful.”

She grimaced as he wiped the blood away too close to the injury.

“Sorry.” He cleaned her blood-matted hair as much as he could, then bandaged the cut on her forehead. “Nothing needs stitches. Your toes look good. Color’s coming back. The same with your fingers.”

She licked her lips. “Teeth,” she said wearily.

He didn’t want to discover that she had any missing or broken teeth. “Open your mouth.”

She did, and he looked inside and smiled. “Great set of teeth. Nothing broken. Nothing missing.”

“Good,” she said. “Where are we?”

“My brothers and I own this cabin up in the mountains. I was up here tracking when the blizzard hit and I heard your plane crash. Do you… want to tell me about the handcuffs?”

Elizabeth stared at Tom for a minute, wondering why he would ask her about them. Then she realized he probably thought she was some kind of criminal.

Tom studied her, but she couldn’t read his expression. He had the most beautiful brown eyes with amber flecks of light that sparkled from the flames flickering in the fireplace. He was a handsome devil of a wolf, his face a little flushed from the heat, his hair a little longish, and a couple of days’ growth of beard making him look even more sexy. And she realized just how much she’d missed him.

A prince of wolves? He was that.

Her gaze trailed down his naked chest. She’d thought he was planning to strip and get naked with her until he put his warm shirt around her. It smelled so deliciously of him—the great outdoors, musky male, and wolf. She was glad he hadn’t bothered to put on another shirt to hide his chest.

He gently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and said, “Elizabeth.”

Her gaze shifted back to his. She’d forgotten the question.

“The handcuffs?” he asked gently.

Oh. “Prisoner,” she rasped out. As soon as his eyes widened fractionally, she realized her mistake. Annoyed with herself, she frowned and cleared her dry throat. “Hostage.”

His expression changed subtly, transforming from annoyed wariness to surprise.

“Hmm. We’ll talk about this later. You need to get some hot drink and food down.”

He sounded as though he didn’t believe her. She needed him to. As tired as she was, she didn’t care even to give it a try right now. Later, there would be time enough.

“I’ll get you some hot tea and some venison chili if that sounds good.” He still crouched beside her, not moving, until she nodded slightly. “Will you be all right?”

“Yes, thank you,” she said, her voice just a whisper. She wanted to fall asleep, to make all the hurts go away, to wake up at home in her own bed—with Tom in it—and her steaks in the fridge waiting for her to make a meal of them.

He caressed her uninjured cheek with the tips of his fingers in such a sympathetic way that it touched her deeply.

“You’ll be all right.” He spoke matter-of-factly, as though he knew what he was talking about.

He rose, looked at her for a while longer, then turned and walked across the living-room floor and into the kitchen. She felt alone and needy in a way she’d never felt before. She wanted to be with him, to share the space with him, to feel his body heat close to hers.

Without the energy to get up and join Tom in the kitchen, she observed him instead—the way his muscles stretched in his back and arms as he pulled open cabinets and found a pan, then moved to the stove.

From the kitchen, he said, “Did you know I tried calling you?”

“Not at first.”

Holding the pan, he stopped and stared at her.

“I don’t use my phone much. I had turned it off on the flight home and forgot to turn it back on,” she said with effort.

“So you didn’t know that I’d called?” Tom asked, sounding doubtful and somewhat upset that he thought she had been avoiding him.

She looked away uncomfortably and instead took stock of what she could see from the floor of the living room—a large forest-green sectional couch blocked the view of the rest of the room. With all the pillows stacked on the velvety couch, it looked comfortable and inviting. Being as close to the fire as he could keep her so she could warm up more quickly was probably for the best. But that couch had its appeal.

The fireplace was made of red stone, the floor beneath her polished redwood, the ceiling crisscrossed by large timber beams. Photos of wildflower landscapes—probably Jake’s—hung on all the walls, making the cabin look homey and well loved, an atmosphere she had missed almost as soon as she had left Silver Town.

She felt bad all over again that she had missed Tom’s calls. She had thought he might have given up on her because of the way she left. Yet she still knew she had been justified. Things had just gotten too complicated. When she couldn’t get hold of North, she could only think that her uncle was going to come after her again. She hadn’t wanted the Silver pack to get involved in fighting her battles.

But if her uncle had anything to do with her abduction, then the Silver wolf pack was destined to get involved. Nothing that she could do about it now.

“I went to call my editor and realized the phone was off. I saw you had attempted to get hold of me. I tried to reach you then,” she said finally, having settled on just telling him the straight truth.

Tom watched her closely, judging her.

“You didn’t answer,” she said.

He took in a breath. “I was probably in the woods. That’s why I tried to get in touch with you before I left. Darien was out with the search parties, too, if you attempted to call him. Lelandi was busy with patients.”

“I only tried calling you.” She couldn’t read his expression. Was he glad she had wanted to talk to him?

“You shouldn’t have left without saying good-bye.” His gaze was fixed on hers, alpha-like, challenging her to agree.

She wouldn’t look away this time. But she didn’t say anything.

“You don’t think you deserve to be loved? Is that it?” When she didn’t respond, Tom said, “Well, you do, Elizabeth.” He paused and took a deep breath.

He was still upset about her leaving him that way. She sighed.

She took a whiff of the smells in the cabin—the venison chili made her stomach grumble, and she realized it had been a long time since she’d eaten. The smell of several gray wolves and—she lifted her nose and smelled again—one red wolf, Lelandi, also filled the air.

The wind whistled around the cabin, reminding her just how chillingly cold it was outside, although she was beginning to feel a bit of warmth penetrating the marrow of her bones. The fire crackled in the large stone hearth, while she heard a teakettle whistling and then the water poured into a mug. She vaguely wondered if the cabin was part of a resort or isolated. How far was it from civilization?

“Are we close to Silver Town?”

“Yes and no. In this blizzard? With you feeling the way you do? No. If we had snowmobiles or you could run as a wolf, not too far out.”

Even though they couldn’t reach town easily right now, she was comforted by the fact it was nearby. That was a first for her. The town wasn’t what made the nearness so consoling. The wolf pack that ran it bolstered her.

If she didn’t hurt all over so much, she’d get up and watch him prepare the meal. Even offer to help him. That brought on another wishful thought of bumping against him as they worked in the kitchen making a meal together, sharing the moment.

She noticed Tom’s scent in the room most of all—musky male, gray wolf, delectable. Why was he here all alone?

Then she thought about the first time she was in Silver Town and her luggage was stolen. So was her ID. She swore under her breath.

“What’s wrong?” Tom asked.

“I don’t have any ID again, and I don’t even have any money to buy a plane ticket!” This was getting to be a recurring nightmare.

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll take care of it when the time comes.”

She got the distinct impression that he had no intention of letting her out of his sight again, not like the last time.

Another thought occurred to her, one more worrisome. “Were any of the men who had taken me hostage still alive?”

“No.”

On the one hand, she didn’t want them coming to the door, armed to the teeth and ready to take her hostage again, because she knew Tom would protect her with his life. Still, freezing to death was a fate she wouldn’t wish upon anyone, even criminals.

She shouldn’t have fretted about them, not when she could have come to real harm—and would have, if not for Tom. Would whoever had paid her kidnappers send others to search for her once they learned the plane wasn’t coming? Maybe they’d think everyone had died in the plane crash. Including her.

If Tom did get her on a flight back home, what if whoever had her taken hostage did it all over again?

“Elizabeth, don’t go to sleep on me. All right?” Tom walked around the room, bolting the door and the wolf door. He returned to the kitchen and finished heating up the chili, unable to quit worrying that she might have more extensive injuries that could cause her real trouble.

“I’ll try not to,” she said.

He wanted to get her to town, to the hospital, but traveling was too risky in this blizzard. After she had been so cold, he couldn’t expose her to that again right away.

He stirred the chili. “So what was the deal with these guys?”

“At first, I thought they had grabbed the wrong woman.” Her voice sounded more even now, her teeth not chattering as much. Good.

“Do you know who they were?”

“They were the men who made a scene in the Silver Town Tavern, the ones Darien told to leave.”

“I thought I recognized them, even though they were pretty battered.”

“One of them had ridden next to me on the ski lift. Another pushed me down the slope. The third broke into my room at the B and B. They said two men paid for the job, but they didn’t know who.”

“So why did you leave Silver Town instead of staying and letting us deal with this?”

“It was getting too dangerous,” Elizabeth said.

Was she serious? She hadn’t seemed scared. Upset, yes. But not fearful. Even Darien said she hadn’t seemed afraid. In denial that she was running away from forming a relationship with a gray wolf? Maybe.

She had shut her eyes, and he couldn’t tell if she was being earnest or not. “Don’t go to sleep,” he warned her.

Her eyes still closed, she wrinkled her nose at him in an annoyed way.

He smiled. “The picture you put on my desktop, the one of me crouching in front of the injured little girl, did you know the man who sat on the lift chair behind you had been watching you take the picture?”

She opened her eyes and frowned at him. “No, I didn’t. Are you sure?” She sounded winded, sleepy.

“Yeah, we compared it to the photo in which he had his back to you right before you were pushed down the slope.” Tom paused and looked in her eyes. “You suspect who’s behind this, don’t you?”

“I don’t want you or your family involved.”

“Damn it, Elizabeth, we are involved. Anyone who attacks a wolf in our territory—”

“I wasn’t in your territory when they grabbed me.”

He shook his head. “You were when they pushed you down the slope, and you were a hostage when they dropped out of the sky here.”

She hesitated. “I think my half brother or uncle might be behind it.”

Her words sent alarm bells ringing through him. She’d never mentioned she had family.

Processing this new information, he set the tray with a bowl of chili and a mug of tea on the coffee table. He pulled a couple of cushions off the couch and propped her carefully into a sitting position on the floor, still wanting to keep her close to the fire.

“Can you manage it all right? Or do you need my help?”

Her hands shook, so he steadied them with his own.

“I’ll be all right.”

He took one of her hands and inspected her fingers. “Make a fist for me.”

She did, but her grip was weak.

“Grasp the spoon.”

“I can do this.” But her hand trembled as she took the spoon from him.

“Here, let me. By tomorrow morning, you’ll be fine. Tonight, I’ll take care of you.” He held out a spoon of the chili to her.

She frowned at him.

“Humor me,” he said, smiling. He could tell she really didn’t like being waited on. But he was used to helping others—the pack, guests at the ski resort, or wherever wolves or humans needed him.

She took a bite of the chili. Once she’d swallowed, she said again, “I can eat on my own.”

“I’m used to it. I help feed my brother’s triplets. They don’t hold still, though, and we make more of a mess than anything. Darien usually has to wash the kids right afterward.”

He noticed then that Elizabeth’s expression was one of surprise. When she’d mentioned her half brother and uncle, he’d assumed Elizabeth was part of a pack, even though he thought she seemed too independent to have grown up in one.

Didn’t her pack members all take care of the little ones? Built-in babysitters who loved their jobs? But maybe all packs weren’t as close-knit as his. He wondered why Elizabeth thought her brother and uncle were behind all her trouble. What kind of pack would kidnap a member of their own family?

He was considering how to broach the subject when Elizabeth said, “I’m sorry for not saying good-bye. I just thought it would be easier.”

He didn’t want her to know how shook up he’d been, and yet he said just what he’d been feeling. “I was ready to punch the wall.”

She chuckled. He smiled.

“Sorry,” she said, “I just have a hard time seeing you taking your anger out on a wall.”

He wanted to set the bowl down on the coffee table and kiss her, hold her close, comfort her.

Something banged outside. He looked in that direction. He thought he’d tied everything down.

“Let me check on that real quick.” He grabbed his jacket and headed outside. The latch on the outdoor shutters had pulled loose in the high winds. He fumbled to close the shutters, noting that the latch was bent. He secured it as best he could. Nothing else he could do about it in this bitter blizzard.

He locked the door and returned to help Elizabeth. He frowned down at her bowl and saw that she’d eaten all her chili and finished her tea. He smiled.

“I told you I could do it.” She paused. “You seem worried.”

“The pack is still tracking the three rogue wolves that have been stalking the livestock. We think they’re lupus garous.”

“So you think they’re with your wolf pack?”

“They might be. But we suspect they aren’t.” He ran his hand over her cheek. “We’ve been keeping track of everyone’s comings and goings in the pack since the second incident of wolf sightings, and everyone seems to be accounted for. They have to be rogue wolves.”

She shook her head. “Has anyone left the pack recently that would want to cause you trouble?” She looked up when he didn’t say anything. “Someone else?”

“Cousins. We had trouble before within our own pack. Our uncle was the sheriff and next in line to lead the pack, but he had murdered some of our pack members and we had to take him down. His four sons left the pack after Uncle Sheridan was killed, and we haven’t heard from them since. We haven’t been able to track down their last whereabouts.”

“Your cousins. I’m sorry. And you’re worried whoever it is might be out there. Somewhere in the storm.”

“Yeah. I found wolf prints—fresh tracks before the blizzard hit. I had hoped I’d find evidence of where they were hiding after they made their strikes before the storm wiped out their tracks.”

“You shouldn’t have been out here by yourself,” she scolded.

He smiled. She narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m serious. You can’t think you could take on four male wolves.”

“I hoped to talk them out of whatever they’ve been planning. There must be some reason why they’ve been prowling the edges of our territory, and I don’t think it’s good.”

Her lips parted in surprise, then she frowned. “You were trying to protect them—if it was them—weren’t you?”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, his gaze steady on hers. Then he finally said, “It might be another pack causing trouble. Someone seeking revenge, perhaps. We’ve had trouble with another pack before. Some red wolf males thought they had some claim to a couple of our red wolf females who originally had come from their pack. Lelandi and Carol.”

“Carol?”

“Yeah… you’re not associated with any red wolf renegades, are you? They were part of the red pack now led by Lelandi’s uncle Hrothgar.”

“I’m not associated with… Lelandi’s pack,” she finally said.

Not with Lelandi’s. She couldn’t be. At least he didn’t think so, because Lelandi didn’t know Elizabeth. “There’s one guy in particular we’re not sure about. We never could tell where his allegiances lay. His name is North.”

Elizabeth stiffened a little. “You told me the ones causing trouble were grays, not reds,” she said.

Studying her, Tom nodded. She had evaded his question. What wasn’t she telling him? She looked weary and he needed to get her into bed. Rest let the body heal faster. Yet he couldn’t give up the notion that she knew something about the red pack, and that made him think of the wolf she’d mentioned the first time she was here. She’d said she needed to meet him on a matter of business, and he had been within driving distance.

“Elizabeth, who were you to meet but he couldn’t see you because of the road conditions?”

Elizabeth heaved a deep breath, as if she were too tired to continue hiding her secrets from him. “North Redding.”