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“WHAT ARE YOU doing?” Michael watched her stiffen and the scorched-milk stench of her fear clogged his nostrils. She turned slowly and held his wet shirt out in front of her like a shield.
“N-n-nothing. I just rinsed the b-blood out.”
He stared at her, wondering why she was suddenly so terrified. Emotions flickered across her face and he hid his grin. Playing poker with this woman would be easier than taking candy from a baby. His shirt didn’t have bullet holes and now she was wondering if maybe he was one of the bad guys. Just to test his theory, he stepped closer. She scurried backwards until her butt banged up against the counter.
“You st-stay right there, buster.”
Buster? He snickered. “Can you put the shirt back in the sink so it doesn’t drip all over my floor? If you promise not to panic, I’m going to reach into my hip pocket and get my ID. My name is Lightfoot. I am a ranger.” As promised, he pulled out his photo ID and held it up.
She squinted at it. “I can’t see it.”
“Then come closer.”
“How dumb do you think I am?”
His brow arched. “Really? I’m assuming that’s a rhetorical question. Here...” He turned and padded toward the kitchen table. He tossed the ID on it and backed up into the living area. “I won’t move while you check it.” Trying his best to hide his smirk, he watched as she sidled over, snatched the plastic tag and scuttled back into the kitchen. She’d at least returned his shirt to the sink. He winced at the stitch in his side. His wound was knitting. Wolves didn’t heal instantly, though their DNA helped heal them faster than a normal human.
“Dr. Graham, right?”
She nodded, still comparing his face to his photo. “You really are a ranger and not one of them?”
He’d guessed her train of thought correctly. “I really am. I’m a wildlife management officer, to be precise. I’ve been watching that den since the pack was relocated here. This is their first litter. How did you find them?”
She relaxed a little and pushed her hair back, hooking a loose strand behind one ear. “I’m doing a genetics study on native populations. When I found information about this pack, I started looking for them. I’ve been studying them since before the pups were born.”
His brow furrowed. How had he not sensed her presence? Had not caught her scent? He inhaled, his nostrils flaring. She smelled of sweat and the acrid tang of fear but there was also a hint of... He sniffed again. Coconut? He wanted to sneeze but didn’t.
“Who are those guys?”
He tilted his head to watch her. “You tell me.”
“I don’t know. But...wait!” Looking like a light bulb had gone off inside her head, she dashed toward the door.
The growl rumbled in his chest before he could stop it and with the preternatural speed of his kind, he blocked her way. She slid to a stop, her eyes wide with fear. She swallowed and he watched her throat work. He wanted to bury his nose in the soft hollow where her throat and jaw joined. He wanted to bury his dick between her legs. Her fear registered at the same moment as his consternation. Fuck. She wasn’t fertile yet but she would be soon. He needed to get her out of here and far away from him. He hadn’t had a woman in a very long time and he didn’t plan on enjoying this one.
“H-h-how did you do that?” She swallowed again. Her breasts rose and fell as she sucked air into her lungs.
Michael forced his eyes to her face. “What are you doing?” Her eyes widened even more and he swore under his breath. He didn’t mean to growl but damn if his wolf didn’t want her. She was short; if he held his arm out, she could walk under it without ducking. She was compact and curvy in all the right places. He had big hands and women with skinny butts turned him off. Hers would fill his hands as he backed her up to the wall and held her while she wrapped her legs around his waist and...
“R-Ranger Lightfoot?” Her voice quivered and the sulfurous stench of rotten eggs joined scorched milk as her fear edged toward terror.
Her scent choked him so he closed his eyes. Still, her face was burned on his retinas. Brown hair he’d first thought mousy shimmered with golden red highlights. He breathed deeply and opened his eyes, his gaze colliding with hers. No longer muddy green, her eyes reminded him of the color of Irish moss but her pupils dilated as she watched him, wary and nervous.
“I’m sorry, Dr. Graham. I’m running on adrenaline and my...military training kicked it. Where are you going?”
She blinked a couple of times, as if she didn’t believe him but cleared her throat and answered. “My camera bag, there by the door. I-I used the flash to surprise those two guys. I may have actually gotten a picture of them, though it’ll be in infrared. I was just going to get it. It’s digital. We can look right now. I didn’t recognize them but we could give the images to the police.”
“Police?”
She nodded, less afraid now. He backed away from the door but still watched. His wolf had no intention of letting her leave.
“We have to call the police and report this. You were shot for goodness sakes! And I think they stole the two missing pups. I—” She paused as she dug out her camera and then glanced up at him. “I don’t think they plan on selling the pups. I think they plan on using them for...I don’t know...some sort of experiment or something.”
The last people he needed to get involved were the police. He’d been shot, but the wound would be mostly healed in a couple of days and that would be hard to explain. Michael breathed deeply, partly to calm down, partly to let her scent fill his lungs to appease his wolf. If Liz’s theory was correct, he had more than poachers to worry about. His Army unit had been disbanded because of a group of scientists working covertly with the government. Several teams like the 69th Special Operations Group were decommissioned and all records buried deep in the bowels of the Pentagon. Which in this day and age of computers and public information requests didn’t mean a damn thing.
“Here. A moment. Let me click through the frames.”
Her voice called to him and his wolf stretched lazily. Despite his best intentions, he stepped closer but concentrated on not crowding her. Liz was already spooked. He didn’t want to send her running into the night. He watched over her shoulder, which wasn’t hard given their height difference.
The first few photos showed the pack lounging around their den and the pups playing with each other and the juvenile wolves. He easily distinguished each pup based on their coloration and the personality they exhibited and picked out which two pups were missing—the biggest male and the most curious female. He couldn’t figure out how the humans got so close to the den. The pups were almost old enough to be left alone while the pack hunted but for now, a beta female stayed close when the pack was away. He’d go back in daylight and scout around the den to see if traps had been set.
Liz gasped and he focused his attention on the view screen of her camera. It was blank. She frantically pushed buttons but the screen remained dark.
“I don’t understand.” She almost wailed. “I know I fired the flash. Why didn’t the shutter click? Even though this is infrared, there should be light splotches at least. I should have caught their faces!”
A growl rattled around in his chest ready to force its way between his clenched teeth. Maybe she was one of the thieves after all. He swallowed the sound and schooled his expression. “Maybe they weren’t there? Maybe you invented them to cover your ass.” He leered down at her. “And a mighty fine ass it is.” A sardonic smile curled across the lower half of his face but his eyes remained expressionless on purpose.
She stepped backwards and clutched the camera to her chest almost as if it might protect her from him. Fat chance of that. Her skin flushed and she swallowed hard again. Several times. But she never blinked. Her gaze didn’t challenge him—a very wise decision under the circumstances. She looked more like a wounded deer. Prey.
“I-I need to go. Whether you believe me or not, my supervisor needs to know that someone is poaching the wolves.”
“Federal land, baby. State doesn’t have jurisdiction.”
“I still need to go. You can’t keep me here.”
“You plan on hiking back to your car?”
Liz lowered her eyes further and half-turned from him to stuff her camera in its bag. “If I have to. And before you get all smirky, no. I don’t know where my car is from here. But I saw your Jeep outside so there has to be at least a fire road. I’ll simply follow it down the mountain.” She slung the bag over her shoulder, inhaled deeply, and raised her gaze to meet his. “I’m sorry you got hurt. You really should see a doctor.”
She sidled toward the door but he made no move to stop her. Obviously feeling a little braver since he remained still, she reached for the door knob, turned it and pulled the door open. She peered out into the darkness and then fumbled in her bag again. She dug out a flashlight and clicked the button. The weak light formed a pale circle on the floor. The batteries likely wouldn’t last the whole distance back to her car or down the mountain on the access road that ran between the main ranger station and his cabin.
Folding his arms across his chest, he waited. She thumped the shaft of the flashlight against her palm and the pool of light at her feet brightened perceptively. She glanced over her shoulder but he couldn’t read her expression beyond determination with a hint of fear. Liz stepped through the door. His wolf reacted to a metallic click before the man could catch up. He slapped the light switch next to the door, plunging the house into darkness. His other arm circled her waist and his body drove her toward the rough wooden planks of the front porch. Michael rolled so she landed on top of him.
“What...?”
He knocked the flashlight from her hand a microsecond before what seemed like an angry wasp whizzed by and slammed into the log wall of the cabin behind her head. Reversing direction, he rolled them back toward the door and inside, kicking the door shut.
“Keep your head down,” he hissed.
One of the front windows shattered and glass rained onto the floor not far from her. She stifled a scream and pulled her legs to her chest so she formed a tight, little ball. Absolute terror kicked in all sorts of survival instincts and hers seemed to be working.
He put his mouth next to her ear. “Liz, you need to crawl over under the stairs to the bathroom. Get inside, lock the door, and hunker down in the bathtub. It’s cast iron and deep.” More bullets thwacked into the outside wall. He felt her wince and noted the low keening moan she swallowed. “That’s the safest place in the cabin.”
“You aren’t coming with me?”
Her voice quavered. He couldn’t tell if it was from fear or worry for him, and he didn’t have time to think about it. “No. I’m going hunting.”
She shuddered as she watched the face of his humanity drop away. He turned into a predator right before her eyes. He was a predator—in human or wolf form. A former Army sniper, he never missed anything he targeted in his crosshairs. He listened, head cocked toward the door, before giving her a push. “Go.”
He moved as she scurried across the floor. As the bathroom door closed, he loaded his sniper rifle. A moment later, he set a high-powered spotlight so it would shine out the broken window but would take an expert marksman to knock out. Michael suspected the shooter had night vision goggles. Had Liz been there to see him, the wolfish grin on his face would have scared ten years off her life. He had his own brand of night vision. He clicked on the light, dashed across the room and out the back door, fading into the shadows behind his house.
This is what he knew best, this elemental surge of power and hunger for the hunt. But this time...this time something else, some other emotion tinged his senses. Liz was in danger. And that was unacceptable. Michael didn’t want to examine that feeling too closely. Not now when the distraction could get them both killed. He snarled. If anything happened to Liz, he’d be ripping heads off and shitting in the holes that were left. He circled through the woods, all his senses attuned to the barest sound, a mere glimpse of movement, a whiff of stench from those who dared threaten his mate.
Mate? Oh, shit. No. Not now. He didn’t have time to be moonstruck. He focused on the task at hand. If he didn’t take out the shooter, or shooters, she wouldn’t survive long enough for him to confirm or deny. For a brief moment, he remembered when Mac had found Hannah in the midst of a dangerous black ops mission. His commanding sergeant and the Army major who’d stolen Mac’s heart managed to survive it. He and Liz would survive this.
Someone thrashed through the undergrowth up ahead. Michael paused, all his senses open. A familiar stink filled his nostrils. The man who’d shot him was back. And he’d brought friends—at least two but their scents were unfamiliar. Glass glinted through some low branches off to his left. He sighted in and a man’s face, with night vision goggles shoved up on his forehead, swam into view. The spotlight had worked, temporarily blinding him. Michael’s finger caressed the trigger. One gentle pull and the man’s face would explode. Sinews and tendons tightened almost imperceptibly. This man dared threaten Liz. This man wounded him. If he killed him, dragged his body deeper into the woods, no one would ever know. Except him. He would know. The barrel of his rifle shifted a millimeter and he squeezed the trigger.
The bullet thwacked the tree trunk next to the man and bark splattered, hitting him in the face and drawing blood. With a muffled curse, the man dropped liked he’d been pole-axed but Michael never lost sight of him, following the guy’s fall through his scope. Cloth rustled to his right and he listened intently. The other two had followed his muzzle flash and now attempted to sneak up on him. He melted into the shadows once more and circled around behind the man he’d “barked.” These men thought they were playing cat and mouse. Little did they know it was wolf and hare. As long as they followed him, Liz remained safe in his house.
“What the fuck, man?” The voice whispered on the soft night breeze. “He’s a freakin’ forest ranger.”
“Can’t shoot worth shit, can he?” That voice belonged to man he’d shot at. “I wouldn’t have missed.”
“You already did, asshole. More’n once. As long as he’s out here, the girl’s alone. We need to get to the cabin and snatch her.”
Michael saw red. Literally. He choked off the snarling growl and had to swallow a howl. He’d kill them if they touched Liz. He measured his breathing, regained control, let his training kick in to override his instincts. He wanted to kill them but knew he couldn’t. He needed to find out who they were. Why were they here? But more important, who the hell did they work for? Time to get answers.
Homing in on the voices, he reloaded his rifle. The tranquilizer darts he had would take down a large elk. At the moment, he was sorry he wasn’t loaded for bear, but he needed them alive to answer questions. Sighting in on the first man’s chest, he elevated the barrel slightly, squeezed the trigger, and smiled when the man slapped at his shoulder. His target gasped and then his eyes rolled back in his head. He melted to the ground as his knees gave way. Michael had reloaded and had the second man in his sights before the first hit the ground. That man quickly followed his buddy to dreamland, which left the third man. He slipped through the forest, intent on his final target. He found the man creeping toward the cabin. Michael stretched out on the moss-covered ground and took aim.
The hairs prickled on the back of his neck but the warning came too late. Pain exploded in his head. Skyrockets burst behind his eyes before darkness surround him. He’d failed. He hadn’t protected his mate.
I’m sorry, Liz.
