Almost. The problem with mates was that they had a lot of requirements. Lots of needs that had to be met. Especially when a mate was the alpha leader of a pack. And she'd have to be the alpha female. Not that she didn't have it in her. She could never be a beta. She'd bet her last paycheck he wouldn't like it if she continued her work studying wolves wherever she could locate the lupus kind. And never in a million years was she giving up her life work. Not when wolves had saved her life. Although no matter how hard she worked at it, she could never repay the pack that had taken her in.
Then a plan began to formulate. What if she did mate with Leidolf? No more having to deal with males who wanted an unmated female. What if he wanted her so badly that he'd negotiate for terms?
She mulled that over for a few seconds. She envisioned packing her gear for a trip to North Carolina to study the red wolves there, but when she reached the front door at the ranch, she would find Leidolf standing in the doorway, his arms folded across his broad chest, legs spread apart in battle stance, his expression an emphatic no.
So no, it would be an awful mistake. He wouldn't agree with her working, she was certain, and she would be stuck leading beside him, never fulfilling her own destiny.
Leidolf's fingers swept down her back in a tender caress, and she looked up to see him watching her. "How long have you been awake?" he asked, the timbre of his voice darkly seductive.
"Hmm," she said and burrowed her head against his chest, closing her eyes again. "Just woke. How long ago did I shift?"
He swept his hands lower, down her back until he reached her buttocks and made small circular swirls across her sensitive cheeks. "Hours ago. I tried to inflate the mattress, but it was hopeless. So I made a bed of pine needles and then pulled you off the cold floor so we could share some body heat."
She opened her eyes and looked at the fire, the flames stretching upward in little curlicues, sending out the steady heat still warming the small cabin. "Hmm. You made a nice fire, and you make an awfully nice mattress."
"You make a terrific blanket." And the way he said it made her think he believed they fit together in perfect harmony.
She knew better. Perfect meant making sure the wolf kind got a fair break. Although the way Leidolf was touching her made her desire something more.
His fingers continued their leisurely caress against her skin, heating her blood. She didn't want to feel anything for him, but already he was hot-wiring her pheromones, triggering her need to have him, to stay with him, to fulfill her sexual fantasies. But more than that. She still envisioned seeing the pups with Felicity, and that triggered Cassie's own mothering needs. She stifled a sigh. Everything and everyone were ganging up on her, trying to coerce her to take another path.
"How is your shoulder?" Leidolf asked, breaking into the dreamlike state she was still enjoying.
"It's really bad." She lied, knowing just where this dialogue was going.
His fingers stilled at her waist. Then he began the slow, methodical stroking again. "So being on top like you are now is less comfortable?"
"For what?" She knew what he was getting at. The alpha leader had a job to do. Take a mate. Create his offspring. Secure the future of his lupus garou pack. Similar to the wolf packs' existence, only the human element did come into play. He seemed to be leaving that part out.
He sighed heavily and then moved his hands up her waist, his thumbs touching the curve of the undersides of her breasts. "You know what we both need. What we both want. We're right for each other. You'd make a capable pack-leader's mate."
At first, she didn't say anything in response, her ire instantly stoked. Hell, of course she would make a capable pack-leader's mate. What happened to: I want you... I need you... I can't live without you? The human element, buster?
Then again, alpha males didn't wear their feelings on their sleeves, and if she had to guess what this was all about, she'd say he couldn't reveal his feelings until she said I do in a werewolf way. Or maybe it was all about sex with him. That and the possessiveness. Conquering a mate who seemed unconquerable. Laying claim to a female when there were fewer of them to be had. Maybe he would never be able to say he truly loved her.
Still, she felt as if she was sliding down a slippery mountain of negative responses, and when she reached the bottom, she'd ultimately end up saying yes.
Despite her mind saying he was wrong, that she didn't need to have a mate, her body kept telling her that, in one aspect, he was so right and she had to reconsider. She'd been a loner for too long. And she had a job to do. It's what made her whole. Not the idea of running some pack with an alpha male. Even if he was as delicious as Leidolf.
Leidolf moved his hands to either side of her head and turned it so she was resting her chin on his chest, his green eyes challenging her to be honest with him. "Tell me the truth, Cassie. You don't belong to a pack."
She turned her head away and laid it back down on his chest again. "So what gave me away?"
He chuckled lightly. "Every inch of your skin blushed when I looked at you--from your cheeks to your toes. You were embarrassed. Which told me you weren't with a pack and haven't been for a very long time. How long ago did you lose your family, Cassie?" His voice was soothing, like she envisioned a psychiatrist's voice would be as he made her lie down on a couch and reveal the guilt she felt that she alone had survived the humans' brutality to her family.
She swallowed hard and blinked away tears. She could live another two hundred years, but the images--the smoke, the blazing heat, the fires reaching for the sun as if to join it in one unholy blaze--would never fade completely from her mind.
"Cassie, how long ago?"
"Since I was a teen. Thirteen. I lost them when I was thirteen."
"Mother, father?"
"My parents, sister, three uncles, two aunts, and a cousin. It was a pretty summer day, and I'd been searching for a lupus pack in a forest near a river where I'd discovered them the previous spring. My father kept warning me to stay away from them, counseling me that we weren't like them. That without our human disposition, they could be dangerous. But I didn't believe it.
"They played like we play, hunted, and protected each other, just like we did. They even let me get close to the alpha female's pups and play with them. When I smelled the pack's scent in the area again, I was curious how different they would be from our own kind and if they'd accept me like a pack member, even if they hadn't seen me for over a year. Just for fun." She let out her breath in a sigh of frustration.
Leidolf stroked her hair, his fingers gently caressing the strands, making her feel wanted again, which terrified her. What if she got too close to him and he was killed also?
"Cassie?"
She ground her teeth, wishing she had done something more, wishing she'd taken revenge. "We were hunters, traders, sold skins. Not farmers, sheepherders, or ranchers like our neighbors. We never had anything to do with any of them. They didn't care for us, and we didn't want them to learn what we truly were. So we stayed clear of them and all was fine. But that day, I smelled fires burning from the direction where our homes were, the three cabins not far from each other in the woods. I worried the forest was on fire. I raced home in my wolf suit to reach our homes more quickly. That's when I saw the men, a ranch family, the father, two of his brothers, and a couple of his nephews watching the houses burning."