The fur of her tail prickled. No. She couldn’t go back to a cell. She was innocent, though she knew they’d never believe her. She was a Rogue, an outcast. According to pack wolves like them, not to be trusted. It was the unfortunate way of their world.
The commander’s voice chilled her. “Spread out and cover more ground. We can’t let this one go.”
The other wolves obeyed, leaving the commander in the middle of the clearing. Her heart sank further as each wolf prowled in a different direction, lessening her chances for an easy escape.With his back still turned to her, she watched the commander’s wide shoulders rise and fall. For a moment, he leaned his weight against his horse before he removed his Stetson. Setting it on the horse’s saddle, he ran a hand through his short hair, leaving it slightly ruffled. It was pale brown in color, almost dirty blond.
He must have decided to shift and search like the men he’d given orders to, because he chose that moment to reach down and tug the hem of his shirt over his head.
Had Isabella been in human form, she would have had to stifle a gasp. The spine and musculature he revealed were rippled with sinew, but the scars were what stole her breath. Even in the dim glow of the moonlight, her wolf eyes allowed her to see. The commander’s body was a history of battles won and lost, wars waged on behalf of a supernatural empire.
And then he turned around and Isabella’s breath caught.
He wasn’t any commander. He was the commander. In an instant, she recognized exactly who he was. This cowboy wolf was none other than Jeremy Lennon, high commander of the Grey Wolf armies, infamous Grey Wolf warrior, and one of the fiercest wolves ever to live.
Anytime one of the Wild Eight had returned to their compound near death’s
door and clinging to a thread of life, this man had almost always been the one singularly responsible—and that didn’t begin to cover the damage he’d done to the Wild Eight through the information-gathering and patrolling schedules demanded of his men.If she’d thought his battle scars made him intimidating, the pair of eyes locking onto the bush she hid in, as if he saw straight through the shrubbery, chilled her more than the snow beneath her paws. Irises the color of steel bore into her, distant and cold.
Those steely eyes framed a harsh, handsome face. The brown hair of his close-trimmed beard framed his strong jaw, and she realized the chill of his gaze made him more rugged than his features should have allowed. With high cheekbones and a perfectly straight blade of a nose, he should have been a charming, handsome cowboy. Yet years of a hard life had roughened him around the edges with a rugged, raw masculinity.
As he stepped toward her, Isabella hunkered lower into the leaves, hoping it wasn’t this wolf, this cowboy to discover her, because what she saw in those steel-gray eyes told her this wolf showed his enemies no mercy. He drew so close that only the toes of his brown leather boots remained visible. Just as she was certain he had detected her, his horse let out a frustrated whinny, drawing the commander’s attention.
Isabella breathed a sigh of relief.
Stepping away, the commander placed his shirt in his horse’s saddlebag before starting on the buckle of his worn, ranch-worked jeans. She averted her eyes, trying not to ogle him, but it wasn’t as if she could move from her position. She watched as he shifted into his wolf—a massive, gorgeous grey, larger than most others she’d seen of their kind—and bounded away into the woods. It was only once he was gone that the tension in her limbs eased. Slowly, she started to ease backward from her hiding spot, causing the leaves to rustle.
As if his horse had known she was there all along, the beast trotted toward her, sniffing across the ground until the soft warmth of its mouth tickled her paw. The beast examined her with dark eyes, sniffing in her scent. It must have decided it liked what it smelled, because it nudged her with its wet nose.
The horse nudged her again, this time harder, forcing her to adjust her balance. When the horse persisted, she finally shifted into human form and stood, taking in the full sight of the beast and the old, worn leather saddle on its back.Its saddle. Her eyes widened.
Having grown up on a ranch in central Florida and after spending several years working the rodeo, she was an accomplished horseback rider. She knew her way around a stable well enough that she could tell this animal was not only well cared for, but also powerful, fierce in strength and, more importantly, speed. She would move faster on horseback. Deep into the safety of the mountains, far past the Missoula Grey Wolf territory, if she could help it.
What was petty thievery compared to the horrible crimes she’d been charged with? Little consequence, if you asked her. The false accusations failed to take into account the truth of her circumstances.
Treason. Murder.And now…
“Horse thief.”
Isabella froze. She felt the blood drain from her face as she turned toward the sound of the commander’s voice.
Jeremy crossed his arms over his chest as he stared at the naked she-wolf holding Silver’s reins. “We can add horse thief to your growing list of violations.”He’d sensed a pair of eyes on him from the bushes moments ago. He had caught an unfamiliar scent, but then he’d passed it off as his own sense of paranoia. It was only when he’d paused while leaving the clearing and heard Silver huff that he trusted his initial impression. He should have known better by now. His time as high commander had honed his instincts into a lethal weapon. Not to mention that working a ranch the size of the Grey Wolves’ lands tended to teach a cowboy to trust his gut. Jeremy’s intuition rarely proved wrong.And neither did Silver’s noises. The horse always made that same huffing sound when he’d found a new loyal subject from whom to demand attention. Silver was the worst kind of bleeding heart. Friend to all and foe to none, as lo
Minutes seemed to stretch into hours as they slowly drew nearer to each other. Just when Jeremy felt certain he couldn’t take the torture a second longer, that he would close the gap between their lips and kiss her, the rustling of the vampire drawing closer to them once again broke the silence. They both froze, the spellbetween them instantly broken. He felt the terrified thrum of her heartbeat against his chest. So many creatures had prowled through the forest tonight, Jeremy hoped it was enough to mask their scents.The bloodsucker lingered for a moment, then pivoted north. It must have decided to follow a different scent. After several minutes, when Jeremy felt certain the immediate threat had disappeared, he whispered, “It’s gone.”He pushed into a plank position and lifted himself off her. Like a bat out of hell, she tore from the bushes, brushing the mixture of dirt and snow from her behind. He tried not to notice how her ro
Three things occurred to Isabella as she watched the vampire charge the alpha wolf as if in slow motion. The first was that, based on those bloodstained fangs diving toward them, vampires were far more lethal than stories had led her to believe. As a Rogue who’d grown up in the countryside of the Sunshine State, she hadn’t had occasion to encounter many. Aside from being in New Orleans, they were more common in the northern parts of the country, and they tended to keep to big cities with high human population density—the sort of places where she’d never spent a day in her life.The second revelation she had was that not only was she without an ounce of fighting ability to fend off this creature, but she wasn’t athletic. She was soft and feminine, and running without a proper sports bra was unworkable. That was certainly an annoyance, but it had never occurred to her as a survival problem. Until now that she stood frozen in place.The t
Isabella scrambled toward him, allowing her medical training to take over. She checked his pulse, measuring the beats and feeling them quickly dropping. The rise and fall of his chest seemed weak. His lips were slightly bluish around the edges. Placing her ear to his chest cavity, she listened to the sound of his labored breathing.From the looks of it, the knife had pierced the pleural space of his chest cavity, causing a steady stream of air and blood to flood in. The gravity and pressure had created a tension pneumothorax—a collapsed lung. With only one functioning lung, the air supply in his blood was dropping, causing his pulse to slow, and he was going into shock.If the blood continued to pool in his lungs, his prognosis was grave. He could die within minutes if the condition continued to deteriorate. Faster than even the most powerful of wolves could heal. She used both hands to hoist him onto his left side.Blood drenched the snow beneath them. Sh
At five years old, Jeremy learned that lies shaped reality. It was the first night his father, or the man he would one day call his father, had brought him to Wolf Pack Run, the main Grey Wolf ranch, days after his mother’s death. That evening, around a campfire with the whole of the pack in attendance, James Lennon, then high commander of the Grey Wolf armies, had stood in the flickering orange glow of the flames and announced he had a son that he hadn’t known existed.That son was Jeremy.As Jeremy had stood with James by his side, the massive man’s hand wrapped around his tiny shoulders as if James were his father, as if he were proud of him, Jeremy had looked out at the faces of the Grey Wolf pack. Their expressions had been filled with affection, as if they’d found a long-lost family member in him. Every one of the pack members believed in him, wanted him, loved him. And in that moment, Jeremy had wanted James’s words to be true so ba
As Isabella monitored Jeremy’s pulse, she spent the next several hours alternating between watching the snow-capped mountains and memorizing the relaxed lines of his handsome face. There wasn’t much else to do inside the cabin, and she tried to reassure herself that was the sole source of her intrigue with him—but she was failing miserably.Every time she looked at him, especially in this relaxed state of sleep, the vulnerability and emotion she’d seen from him in the woods haunted her, softening her opinion of him. He’d been so stoic throughout her wound care, the perfect image of the hardened soldier, yet when she’d turned away, she’d heard him wince in pain.He was strong, fierce, brave, hardened by war. All the things he showed the world, yet…There was softness underneath it all. She’d seen it. And now that she had, she couldn’t bring herself to forget it.She shook her head. She should know
Jeremy had been about to ask where he’d heard her name before, but as he’d watched her pretty features become stricken with terror, he’d recognized her in an instant. He’d seen her once before in a photograph. A photograph inside a file at Grey Wolf command control back at Wolf Pack Run.A file labeled Wanted Wild Eight.“Isabella Beaumont,” he said, recognition flooding over him.The Wild Eight’s only physician.Which meant this woman who’d saved his life, who he’d held naked beneath him until he was aching with anticipation and pleasure…was his enemy.She dropped the empty basin in her hands as the fear in her eyes deepened.And then she ran.Shit.Jeremy raced after her. He couldn’t let this woman go. She bolted into the trees as he chased her, rounding pine trunks and leaping over mounds of snow. She was fast, but even with her head start, he gained on her q
Isabella was certain no other person—wolf, human, or otherwise—had ever infuriated her more than Jeremy Lennon. She’d always considered herself a mild-mannered person. Having grown up on a ranch in the Deep South, she’d been taught to be polite, accommodating, and generally pleasant. Sugar wouldn’t melt in her mouth, her mother used to say of her. Some would have called her bookish, shy even—when she wasn’t donning her lab coat overtop her cowgirl boots, that is.Yet, at the moment, as she looked into this cowboy’s ruggedly handsome face, all Southern hospitality flew out the window. Everything about him turned her tosalt instead of sugar. Who did he think he was, bossing her around and acting as if he gave a crap about her safety?The high commander of the Grey Wolves, that’s who.And now he was baiting her. Playing on her sense of curiosity with that dark, playful grin on his face. And she was falling