Instead of Cassie, one nearly out of breath, red-faced sub-leader, Elgin, materialized out of the thick woods and headed straight for him. To Leidolf's profound disappointment. Then three more of his men soon followed. Fergus, his other sub-leader, looked just as reluctant to give him any bad news.

Hell. No way would Elgin and the others come here to speak to him unless something was wrong with the pack. Talk about lousy damn timing.

After a brief hesitation, Elgin stroked his beard and then hurried to join Leidolf. He seemed resigned to share whatever ill tidings he had, and damn the consequences. Which Leidolf was grateful for, hoping the pack he'd taken over last fall would soon heal.

He started to ask if Elgin or any of the other men had seen Cassie. She'd been dressed as though she was hunting lions in the jungles of Africa, and the notion intrigued him. A huntress at heart, not just a wolf observer. He sure as hell wished she was a lupus garou, too.

He shook his head at himself. The red hair and the olive green eyes caught his imagination--the built-in triggers for wanting to see a red lupus garou in every redheaded female he came across. And the urge to race after her still lingered in his blood.

He took a settling breath. "What's wrong, Elgin?"

Elgin cleared his throat. "Quincy, Pierce, and Sarge took off in their wolf coats across the valley and are headed in this direction. I've sent our men out searching for them, and any who spy them are to report back. Since no cell-phone contact is available this far out, I came to warn you. They had a good head start, and at a wolf's run, they could be anywhere by now."

Leidolf growled under his breath, "Any indication why the three of them took off?" Way too early for the cover of darkness to help shield the wolves from human sight.

Elgin's frown deepened. "We assumed Sarge was antsy from being newly turned and couldn't stop the change."

Giving a dark and disgruntled sigh, Leidolf took off in the direction of his Humvee, hiking at a vigorous pace through the forest, while Elgin and the other men hurried to catch up. Ensuring the men didn't get caught in their wolf coats was tantamount to their secrecy and safety. But as soon as he finished this little task, he was determined to learn the truth about the wolf he'd smelled. He just had to set aside the unfathomable urge to locate Cassie. And given the circumstances, she could become even more of a problem now.

"Sarge is another story. Fergus, you were supposed to have someone watching him at all times," Leidolf said, climbing over a fallen tree in their path.

He truly didn't blame Fergus, considering how much responsibility he'd given his second sub-leader. Anything to try and make his people feel needed and well respected, to turn around the ill feelings they had about themselves due to Alfred's maniacal rule.

"Sorry, Leidolf." Fergus hung his head a little. "Sarge was helping Quincy and Pierce clean out the loafing shed when I saw the brothers take off after Sarge, all in their wolf coats."

"Hell. The brothers ought to know better than to change and run in the woods or anywhere else during daylight hours. Especially now that we have a wolf biologist searching for wolves in the area."

Elgin frowned. "The woman who gave the lecture last night? Carver said she'd left for California."

"Yeah? Well, Cassie Roux gave him the slip and returned here." Leidolf ducked under a tree branch. "I don't envy our neighbor on the coast. Hunter Greymere's got his hands full of newly turned wolves. And all we have is one, but he's... something else." Sarge was a case and a half.

"Quincy and Pierce aren't much better, and they were bornlupus garous. I know you wanted to take them in since they needed a pack to provide them guidance, but..." Elgin didn't have any patience for lupus garous who were twenty, had been ousted from a pack in Southern California, and hadn't learned to follow pack rules.

In truth, the twin brothers had been kicked out of three packs already, no one wanting to deal with men that old who seemed untrainable. In Elgin and Leidolf's own pack, teens were another story. Elgin had the patience of a wise, old wolf when dealing with them, even though he and his mate, Laney, had never had any children of their own.

But Leidolf felt the brothers were still salvageable. "Someone should have given them more guidance when they were younger. When their parents died, they were foisted off on another pack, and the leader there didn't have the balls to make them mind. I have high hopes we'll teach them to be model lupus garous."

Elgin grunted.

Well, maybe not model lupus garous. Some never learned how to exist in a pack and became loners. But Leidolf didn't believe the brothers were hopeless.

"I suppose you don't want to shift." Elgin sounded disinterested in the proposition, despite bringing it up.

His other men appeared more hopeful that Leidolf would give them permission to shift. "No. It would probably take a fraction of the time for us to track them down, but I don't advocate running in the woods in broad daylight. If we came across hunters, we'd have a hell of a lot more to worry about." Not to mention if Cassie saw them.

Elgin cleared his throat. Leidolf pushed aside a hemlock branch and waited for him to propose his question.

Elgin cleared his throat again.

Leidolf glanced back at him, his other men remaining silent.

Elgin's concerned gaze met Leidolf's, and he blurted out, "I saw a beautiful redheaded woman running through the woods wearing khaki shorts and shirt, big lion-tamer hat, carrying a backpack, and I worried she might have seen something that had frightened her. Like three red wolves."

Fergus nodded.

Leidolf's woodland nymph. "Did you smell her?"

At the puzzled look on his men's faces, Leidolf wished he hadn't asked.

Then Elgin frowned. "No, she was downwind of us. Why?"

"I smelled a female red wolf."

Elgin's eyes widened. "Hell." He glanced back in the direction they'd come. "Oh, hell. You wanted to go after her."

Despite his genetics commanding him to go after the wolf, Leidolf wanted Cassie, but he didn't want to let his people know that. Hair the color of copper, thick and curly, was bound except for the tendrils that had escaped their confinement, and begging to be caressed. He would have loved to have tossed her safari adventurer's hat aside and released her tresses, allowing them to fall carelessly over her shoulders. And plunged his hands into the silky strands, then pulled her close to delight in the feel of her, the smell of her, and to kiss her like she deserved to be kissed, just like he craved to last night, the redheaded woodland nymph.

Skin shimmering with perspiration had flushed beautifully with his perusal. Her nipples had puckered against the tank top she wore, the luscious crowns straining for release. Given the chance, he would have freed the hostages and stroked them with his tongue to appease them.

Elgin rubbed his whiskered chin. "Do you think she saw our men in their wolf coats?"

"She didn't encounter our men, just one red wolf. Me."

Elgin stared at Leidolf. "Oh."

"I wasn't wearing my wolf coat." Leidolf's rules were the same for him as they were for his people, something the previous leader and his select cronies hadn't been interested in abiding by.

"Oh."

Leidolf raised a brow at him. "She seemed intrigued."

Elgin managed a small smile, his look hopeful that Leidolf had finally found a woman he was interested in. Fergus and his other men quickly hid smiles.

"Then she changed her mind and ran off," Leidolf explained.

"Oh."

Leidolf laughed. "Yeah, well if she'd wanted to ravish me, and she looked like she had half a mind to, I would have given myself to her willingly."

Elgin's lips lifted slowly.

Poor guy. He still wasn't used to Leidolf's leadership and wry sense of humor, but he and the rest of their people would eventually learn his ways were totally different from Alfred's. And infinitely saner.

"She was the red wolf then?"

He wasn't about to tell Elgin how desperately interested he'd been in chasing after Cassie and how he wouldn't have hesitated if his second-in-command hadn't come to him with urgent pack business, even though Cassie was the wrong object of his desire.

Elgin was still smiling, and Leidolf hoped his sub-leader wouldn't spread the word about his interest in the woman. Everything a leader did was important to the pack. He didn't feel this tidbit of news needed to be shared, but he figured it would be anyway. Still, he had to let Elgin know the woman wasn't a wolf of any variety. Thankfully, not a soul had said a word about her when he returned to his ranch, and none of the men here with him now had been at the club last night, so they wouldn't have recognized her.

"The wolf I smelled wasn't the woman."

Elgin's smile faded, and he frowned deeply. "Oh. Was the one you smelled one of us?"

"Possibly."

Elgin didn't say anything for several seconds and then finally said, "Do you want me to go after her?"

Hell no. Leidolf tried to curb the disagreeable expression he cast Elgin, but from the concerned look on his sub-leader's face, he didn't veil it well enough.

"I can't make Sarge mind me. You're the only one who can," Elgin warned.

As if Leidolf would neglect his leadership duties when it could mean exposing their kind to the world just to chase down a possible female lupus garou. "I'll track her down later, after I've taken care of this business."

Appearing relieved, Elgin nodded. "There's... well... another situation that needs to be addressed. Irving and Tynan are off somewhere again without telling me or Fergus. God knows where. I seriously think they're pulling something, and not anything that's good.

"When you first came to lead our pack, we got rid of the four who were really running things. Unfortunately there were a few more who went along with Alfred's rule. The rest of us couldn't fight against them. But some holdouts from the old regime who received Alfred's favors for... well, bringing women to him may very well still exist in the pack."