“Make sure your people know what they’re up against,” Hunter warned.
“Yeah, I sure will.”
Nathan running off with a girl was exactly what Anna didn’t want to be involved in. How many girls was he chasing after at the same time?
She’d never run off with a boy… well, once, but that was different. No one knew or cared. Was Anna’s lecture the reason Nathan had run off to see the teen she-wolf?
She groaned. Why did Hunter believe she could be a good influence on the kid?
Nathan had to have met the girl before. She couldn’t blame the dad for the way he was reacting, but she didn’t want Carver to hurt Nathan. She felt sick to her stomach.
Anna didn’t shift from the wolf. Carver’s wife directed Bjornolf to a bedroom where he could get some clothes. When he returned, he was dressed and carefully explained the situation to Carver: Nathan’s background, his parents’ recent deaths, and his first holiday without them. Carver’s expression said he didn’t give a damn what Nathan’s situation was, only that he’d stolen his daughter and could be putting her in harm’s way.
Taking the situation in stride, Bjornolf mentioned that the girl had left willingly with Nathan, which hadn’t helped a whole lot. He was trying to say that it wasn’t a coerced situation. If Nathan had forced the girl from her home, the scenario would have been much worse.
“Nathan’s hurting,” Bjornolf said, and for a moment, Anna saw real pain in Carver’s dark eyes. She knew then that Bjornolf had touched some deep-seated chord of sympathy for the boy.
Nathan didn’t have anyone.
Carver had told them that Leidolf and several of his men were on their way to help search for the missing teen. Anna hoped that no one else would find the teens before she and Bjornolf could protect Nathan from his own folly.
Henry Thompson sipped a cup of coffee in his living room as his wife, Chrissie, hurried the kids out to their biological dad’s waiting car. Thompson was a self-made millionaire, one of the lucky ones who knew how to play the stock market and didn’t need to work a regular job. Instead, he spent his time with Chrissie and the kids while taking care of situations that arose concerning wild animals as a zoologist for the Oregon Zoo.
The phone rang, and he looked at the ID, noting it was a call from his hunting buddy. “Thompson here.”
“This is just up your alley,” Joe said, his voice eager with excitement. “We’ve got more sightings of wolves running through Forest Park.”
“You’re… kidding,” Thompson said. He knew his friend wouldn’t be, but he just couldn’t believe it. Last time he had to deal with wolves, he’d had an ordeal with a man named Leidolf. Were they the same wolves? Leidolf and his wife had sworn they were taking the wolves to a red-wolf reserve back east.
“There are three adults,” Joe said. “Two male, one female.”
“Red, right?”
“No, that’s the odd part. One male and female are gray. The other is a male red.”
Leaving the half-finished mug of java on the coffee table, Thompson crossed the living room to his den, grabbed his coat, and retrieved his hunting rifle from the locked gun cabinet.
“I’ll meet you at the park,” Joe said.
Tranquilizer darts at the ready, Thompson was headed out, determined to save the wolves, when he saw Chrissie returning. “Hold on a sec,” he said to Joe.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, as she joined him, her brow furrowed.
“Got to go. Wolves sighted in Forest Park.” He pulled Chrissie into a hot hug. “Keep the bed warm. I’ll be back before you know it.”
She shook her head and tugged on his coat button. “You’ll be running around the woods for hours looking for them.” Then she turned her face up and kissed him. “But I know you mean to protect them. I couldn’t love you more for it.”
He kissed her back, vowing that he’d return before the kids got home from school, then headed for his pickup. “Where exactly were they sighted, Joe?” he asked over the phone.
“They’re headed toward one of the exclusive residential areas.”
“Great.” He shook his head. “Whoever spotted them had to be wrong. Wolves no longer wander through Forest Park. Haven’t for years.”
Joe gave a short laugh of disbelief. “Yeah, that’s what we said the last time. And you know what happened then.”
Thompson paused, hand on his door handle, his eyes on the wolves painted on the side of his truck. Could they be werewolves?
Nah…
Anna, Bjornolf, and Carver returned to his house when they were unable to track his daughter’s scent. That meant the teens must have shifted, dressed, and left the area.
As Carver headed for his bedroom, his mate, Aimée, directed Bjornolf and Anna to the guest bedroom and said to Anna, “We have several changes of clothes in the closet and dressers for wolves who need them on occasion. Feel free to borrow anything you’d like. Sarah must have given Nathan a change of clothes. I checked out front and her car is gone.” She shut the door for them.
Anna shifted into her human form and was completely naked. She was in too much of a hurry to worry about Bjornolf being in the same room as her. If he was as much of a professional as he was supposed to be, he would be shifting and putting on the same clothes that he’d thrown on earlier to have the talk with Carver.
He wouldn’t be eyeing her naked body.
She frowned as she pulled the first drawer open and discovered only men’s boxers. She went to the next drawer and found bras and panties.
Rifling through them, she looked for anything in black when Bjornolf leaned over to peer into the drawer, naked as they come, and pointed at one of the bras. “Get the red one and the matching panties.”
She turned slightly and saw him taking his fill—of her, not the underwear in the drawer, and the internal meter that measured her embarrassment went through the ceiling.
Chapter 12
Anna couldn’t have been more surprised that Bjornolf had been watching her search for the right undergarments. She jerked out black panties and a bra, feeling her body heat so much she was certain it was already red enough for him.
Anna pulled on the black panties—she couldn’t find anything but sexy lace—wishing they were much more utilitarian.
“Then again, those look great,” Bjornolf said, his voice rough and his gaze heated as he slipped on a pair of ivory boxers, not hiding a full-blown erection fast enough before she glanced at him.
“You’re supposed to be a professional,” she chided, fastening the bra over her breasts.
What kind of wolves wore these things? Not only was it low cut, but it squeezed her breasts together and pushed them up, making her feel as though she could be on display in one of those girly calendars.
“Nice,” he said, his voice even more gravelly with lust as he considered her breasts.
She snorted, but before she could pass by him to get to the closet, he seized her arm and pulled her gently to him. His action was both possessive and guarded. Possessive in that she could tell he desired her from his darkened expression, his scent changing from keen interest to rabid arousal. Guarded in that she assumed he wanted to ensure she craved him in the same way, and so he hesitated to take this further.
She didn’t pull away from him like she should have. They had a job to do, and fulfilling some crazy sexual fantasy wasn’t going to get it done. They were standing in a guest room of a red wolf pack’s house in borrowed underwear while a teen under their care was running loose with a teen from this household. They certainly didn’t have time for this.