Page 21 of Wolf's Redemption

She halted again by a dense, prickly bush and tossed his pants into the thick of it. If she was lucky, it would have some sort of toxic leaf. A rash on his balls would certainly cool his ardor for her and was no less than he deserved.

Bek raced on, stopping only to hide his torn shirt behind a rock by the stream, and his sword in a crevasse under an overhang. Breathless, her sides heaving, she stopped one last time, and shoved his other boot into the hollow of a fallen tree. No matter how strong he was, he wouldn’t get far without his boots or pants. The chances of him risking a confrontation with villagers while starkers was low. His dagger she held onto. It might come in handy.

She set off again, slowing her pace as she followed the stream. Logic told her water was as relevant now as it was in her century. Only here, they wouldn’t have it plumbed into houses, so it stoodto reason any village would be near a convenient water source. Like the stream.

Bek didn’t have to go far to be proved right. She skidded to a halt as the forest gave way to an open meadow and farmers’ fields. Beyond them stood a ramshackle collection of small huts. Villagers—farmers by their clothes—men and women, dotted the fields.

She tucked the dagger beneath the surcoat, securing it handle down, in the waistband of her jeans. It settled in the small of her back, along her spine. If she was careful, it would be fine. The last thing she needed was to injure herself. She had enough things to worry about. Like how she was going to communicate when her school-girl French was rusty at best. And how would she make them understand she needed to get back to the twenty-first century? Without sounding like a lunatic?

If she’d thought her life was a mess before, her current situation took things to a whole new level of disaster. Dealing with Charlie and his unwanted attentions, checking in with her dick of a parole officer and facing the wrath of Mrs. Wu when she didn’t pay her rent on time wasn’t so bad. Better than being stuck in a barbaric medieval world, hunted by keep guards and escaping the dubious safety of the sexy-as-sin warrior who was on the run from what passed as the law in this place. A man who put her darkest fantasies to shame and had her ovaries, her own damn cheer-leading squad, urging her to play big, play hard and score.

She wassoscrewed.

Bek took a deep breath, planted a smile on her face, and stepped out from the shadows of the forest. Time to go chat up the natives.

* * * *

The wolf crouched, concealed, his one good eye fixed on the woman as she made her way down to the village. About her clung a scent. Male. Wolf. Tantalizingly familiar. Something from his past, perhaps, yet he could not place it. Nor did he care to. He had no business with her, nor the male. The one he sought was close by. The one who had tried to kill him.

The scars across his back itched, the cut of betrayal as fresh as the day one of his own pack had cut him down. He had come too close to the truth of his mother’s death. As had his father. He had known it then, seen it in the traitor’s eyes. Luck, and a dogged determination to survive, was all that had kept him from being another casualty of his attacker’s scheming.

But survive he had, and the time would soon come when he would have his vengeance. When this man, this wolf, would pay for his sins. Unlike his betrayer, who had made the mistake of leaving him to die, he would make certain his prey did not survive.

Chapter Ten

Ulrik rose out of the water. It felt good to be clean again and to be free of the silver that had burned his skin and subdued his wolf. He looked down at his erect cock, the cold water doing little to tame his desire for the woman he had rescued. Ulrik grinned. He had heard her muffled gasp. As if she could hide her reaction to him. As if he had not known she only pretended to sleep.

Ulrik suppressed a chuckle. He had enjoyed goading her, stroking himself while she watched, but it left him throbbing and wanting. Should he take himself to completion while she lay there listening? His hand brushed against his cock, and it jerked, happy for any attention. He would prefer it to be her hand, not his. Better still, her mouth.

A noise behind him cut off his moan. He stilled.

Merde.

She was no longer by the fire but fleeing through the forest. He spun, surging out of the water, only to find his breeches, his boots, his sword and his dagger, gone. Clever wench. She could not hide from him, nor could she escape him, but if she made it to the nearby village before he caught her, she could bring the keep guard down on them. Worse still, the village belonged to the Vautour estate. To Lance.

L’enfer.

Until they routed the traitor, he could trust none of his pack save Gaharet. Not even Lance, whose council Gaharet had often sought. Nor could he guess how any of his pack would view him, given what they must believe he had done. They couldaccept him as their new alpha, or they could want his blood for supposedly killing Gaharet.

He kicked dirt on the fire, threw the partly cooked hare carcass into the forest, and called forth his wolf. He took off at a run, sandy hair exploding across his body, his fangs elongating in his mouth and his bones cracking as he shifted mid stride. With his nose to the ground and his ears pricked, he followed her trail.

That she had thought to delay her escape, stopping to throw his boot away from her path and into the forest, caught him by surprise. She was wily, more like the she-wolves he remembered from his younger years. Not canny enough, though, to notice her magic light hidden inside. With his boot and its precious cargo in his jaws, he set off again, hunting for the rest of his clothes.

Ulrik found his breeches in the prickly grasp of a thick gorse shrub. He shifted back to human, his snout too sensitive to brave its needle-like foliage, and carefully extracted them. He donned his breeches and secured her magic light against his hip, tightening the laces to hold it in place. Pulling on his boot, he set off again. There was no time to waste. Lord knew where she had hidden the rest of his clothing.

He found his tunic beneath a rock near the stream and slipped it on. Its torn remnants did little to hide his torso, but he would attract more attention bare chested. Attention he did not need. He tracked her scent to a crevasse beneath an overhang. There, he reached in and retrieved his sword. He strapped it around his hips and continued on.

He found his other boot inside the trunk of a fallen tree. A colony of ants had made the rotting hollow their home, and his boot was crawling with them. He snarled, tipping this boot upside down and giving it a vigorous shake. He doubted she had known of the trunk’s occupants when she stuffed it in its hollow, but it had benefited her. Yet another delay.

Shoving his foot into his boot, he ignored the bites of the few ants he had failed to remove and stomped through the forest after her. Had she known to follow the stream? That it would lead her to the village? Or was it luck she headed directly for it? Given she had had the presence of mind to takeanddiscard his clothing, in five separate locations, no less, he suspected it was the former. Ulrik grinned. He liked a challenge. This woman was by the far the most intriguing he had come across in a very long time.

An unexpected scent caught his nostrils, banishing his smile. He froze, all his enhanced senses alert. Wolf. Not a real one. A werewolf. Familiar and yet… He raised his nose to the air, inhaling deeply, searching for the scent again. Nothing. The hairs on the back of his neck rose. Wolfsbane? His last encounter with that foul herb had seen him confined beneath Langeais Keep. He snarled. Not this time.

With a cautious tread, he circled back the way he had come, peering into the forest and sniffing the air. Not wolfsbane. The scents of the forest, of oak, beech and pine, were sharp. And the sounds—insects scurrying, the hint of a breeze through the canopy, the distant braying of animals in farmers’ fields—were clear. But the twitter of birds and the scurrying of rodents and game were absent. A predator lay in wait. The sense of being watched crawled up his spine.

Ulrik allowed his wolf to hover close, should he need to shift. It was not Lance. He would have recognized him, or any other member of his pack. A wolf from another pack, maybe? From across the continent? From Rus? Werewolves did not range far from their pack. Could it be a rogue? A wolf banished for misdeeds too vile to forgive. If so, Gaharet would need to know. Another reason to find his alpha. And fast.

He turned full circle, his gaze darting about. If he could catch sight of it, scent it again… But he could not. This wolf wasclever, experienced. Not young then, or newly turned. Definitely male. But there was something about this wolf that triggered a feeling of familiarity. Had he met him during his banishment in Bretaigne?

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