Several hours later, the darkness gripped the bedroom Cassie rested in. With her wolf's night vision, she could see an older woman, her strawberry curls streaked with strands of silver, as she sat dozing in an overstuffed chair, her round face peaceful in sleep. She wore jeans and a sweater, a blanket over her lap, as if she was staying the night--and would act as the pack's first warning when Cassie woke.

That's when Cassie's mind snapped to, her thoughts instantly clearing. The realization that a murderer had shot her near where she had been searching for the she-wolf and her den--and Alex's predicament--came back to her in a flood of memories.

And now? She was a guest in Leidolf's home. How far from the woods was she? How was she going to return there?

She'd parked her pickup a couple of miles from the site where she'd hiked in to locate the she-wolf. Once she could get to it, she'd have the two bags of clothes that were hidden under the seats. She groaned and ran her hands through her disheveled hair, but a shock of pain stabbed the bullet wound on her shoulder. She realized that, except for a bulky bandage, she was lying naked in the bed. It was the usual way for most of them to sleep, but she wasn't like the normal lupus garous and, instead, did her own thing.

Being naked felt way too sensual, particularly when she was lying in... She sniffed the freshly laundered sheets. His scent flooded her with a warm, tingling feeling. Leidolf's bed. And hell, she'd dreamed she'd had her wicked way with him while he was Poseidon and she was Artemis. She shook her head at her silly fantasies. In the old days, her mother would have said it was a sign Cassie was burying deeper feelings, which she didn't want to consider.

The woman guarding Cassie jerked awake and stared at her for a minute, then smiled warmly. "I'm Laney, and now that you're up, I'll tell Leidolf."

Cassie took another deep breath and smelled his woodsy scent on the ultra-soft cotton sheets again, the same as she'd smelled when he'd carried her, except that the added aroma of his sexual pheromones when he had held her were now imprinted on her brain.

"He'll be glad you're looking so much better. He brought you here because it's the nicest of all the bedrooms. He stayed with you until I was able to watch over you for a while so that he could dress down a couple of our people for going after you in their wolf coats. Now the local news station is reporting that a pack of red wolves is running through the area. All hell's broken loose."

Cassie suspected Leidolf hadn't brought her here just because it was the nicest bedroom, but because it was his bedroom. The news about the reporters and hunters couldn't have been worse. Cassie had to get to the she-wolf and pups and Alex. "I need some clothes, and I have to go back there, pronto."

The woman hurriedly rose and headed for the door as if to block it or warn Leidolf that the little red wolf was ready to make her escape. "You can't return there. Not now. A slew of hunters... Thompson and his friend, that Joe character, who are philanthropists for the zoo... reporters... you name it... will be all over the area. If that isn't bad enough, some guy called 911 and reported that two men had murdered a woman and dumped the body in the woods. And that someone had tranquilized Thompson and Joe."

Laney smiled. "Of course, Leidolf and my Elgin were the ones responsible for that once they found you with them. Well, in part because Quincy and Pierce went to attack the men--the two new members of our pack I mentioned before who were wearing their wolf coats during the day while searching for you--and Leidolf had to act quickly. So none of our people can visit the forest for a good long while until Leidolf okays it. Besides, you're wounded, for heaven's sake."

"Did they mention any name? Of the one who called 911?" Cassie prayed it was Alex and he had made it out all right. Although thinking further on the situation, she figured since he and she were the only two there when they overheard the murderers speaking, it had to be him.

"No. The sheriff's office is trying to sort it all out. They said that a man had called from the highway and reported the two tranquilized men from the zoo. Then he gave directions to where they were located because he couldn't get reception where the men had been drugged. Two more men were involved in some kind of murder scheme that he'd overheard while hiking in the forest. And one of the men had shot a rare red wolf, illegally hunting, and tried to shoot him for overhearing them.

"To top that all off, some wolf biologist is running around the area, and he's worried she's lost or come to harm. Until the police know what they're up against, I'm sure they're not saying who the man was who called 911. He's probably considered a suspect in some of the goings-on. You know how it is, since he seems to know so much. He reported the descriptions of the men, both wearing camouflaged clothes, one a short strawberry blond with a butch haircut, and the other with long, black curly hair."

"Blackbeard," Cassie said under her breath.

"What?" Laney asked, her eyes widening.

"Sounds like the guy looked like Blackbeard. The pirate. You know."

"I didn't mention that he wore a beard. No one said anything about that."

Cassie clamped her mouth shut.

Laney frowned. "Did you see the men?" She clapped a hand over her mouth and then dropped her hand away. "Of course, you did. One of those men shot you. You're the wolf biologist the man had mentioned. Oh, oh, Leidolf won't like this at all."

Quickly, Cassie changed the subject. "I'm surprised, the way reporters get hold of a story, that they haven't discovered who the 911 caller was and are reporting the guy's name all over the place."

Unless he was afraid for his life. Sure. He was a witness, and hell, so was she. At least the men didn't get a look at her in her human form, and she hoped they hadn't gotten hold of Alex, either. She did get a good look at both men, and she should have known their scent if they hadn't been hiding it with hunter's spray. She assumed that's what was covering up their smell. But lupus garous didn't interfere in strictly human affairs. Too much could go wrong.

Hell, if she had smelled them, she could see the police asking her to stand behind one of those two-way mirrors and point out the two men in a lineup. She'd want to be sure she got the right men by sniffing them first since her sense of smell was the best identifier there was. If she insisted on checking them out that way, the police would think she was a nutcase for sure.

Laney studied Cassie in a thoughtful wolf way. "If a man called 911, saying he knew you'd been shot and that he'd heard the murderers' conversation, had you also? Do you know the man who called 911? Is he your mate?"

"No," Cassie said, not about to reveal who he was or anything about him or what she'd been doing there. Lupus garous would not appreciate that she'd been in her wolf form with a human, or that she'd behaved uncharacteristically as a wolf in front of him. "It's dark out. Surely they wouldn't all be out there in the middle of the night. Even if they were, they couldn't see where they were going."

The pause between them was heavy with speculation.

Laney's gray brows pinched together. "You're probably right. I've heard some hunters have binoculars that allow them to see in the half-light of dawn and dusk, but it would be too dark for them unless they're wearing night-vision goggles. Leidolf is worried that they would want to kill the wolves, despite the fact red wolves are rare. The reporters and the others probably wouldn't be in the woods this late." Then Laney switched topics and said, "Leidolf is a royal, by the way. You wouldn't happen to be one, too, would you?" She looked hopeful.

For a heart-wrenching moment, Cassie thought of her own family--royals, too. She hadn't considered what it might be like being with a lupus garou family, a pack, again. The way that pack members all looked after each other appealed on some level. Maneuvering was always tantamount in a pack, wanting to please the leader, always trying to be on top, but she missed the closeness with others. She'd been fighting those feelings for years. Never wanting to replace her own family, as if it would hurt her memory of them. Never wanting to fear losing her family to some new lethal threat, if she joined a new one.

She couldn't deceive the woman who reminded her of her mother, caring, kind, but also not someone who was easily deceived.

The desire to have hearth and home and a family pack was starting to get on Cassie's nerves. She attributed it to the need to settle down and have children of her own, which she'd been effectively squashing. Spring and the rebirth of trees and flowers had something to do with it. Oddly, the she-wolf and her pups had stirred that need all over again to an even greater degree. Well, and being with that alpha male, Leidolf, and the way his nearness triggered estrogen levels she didn't know she had. She didn't want to desire a man like that. Ever. Although her feelings for Leidolf already ran deep, she had no intention of giving in to such needs.

"I need clothes," Cassie reiterated, avoiding Laney's question about being a royal. When few humans diluted the lineage, the biggest advantage was being able to shift when the new moon was out, or not having to shift when the other phases of the moon came into play.

She yanked aside the covers and climbed out of bed, but winced when the pain in her bandaged shoulder sent a message straight to her brain--she wasn't perfectly healed yet. She felt a lot better than she had earlier, though. Probably sleeping for several hours had helped.

"If you were recently turned, where's the pack that took you in?" Laney asked.

"In the redwoods in California."

"Northern California, oh." Then Laney frowned, and instantly, Cassie worried that frown meant she knew Cassie wasn't from there. Then the woman gave a pleasant smile, one that said she'd lived too many years for a younger lupus garou to attempt to deceive her with tall tales. "You can't leave yet."

Cassie raised her brows at the lady, not liking that Leidolf would dictate to her. She headed for the closet. "I'm doing some research, which I'm being paid for, and I'm on a deadline. So I want to thank Leidolf and all of you for taking care of me, but I need to return to the woods, finish my work, and return home to my pack pronto."