Looking down she became suddenly aware that Azriel was completely naked as he held her. She gulped, at least internally. His body, well the parts she could see since she was held up against him, was sculpted like Michelangelo’s David. It was as if someone had decided to sculpt the perfect man and Azriel had been created. Of course, a very important portion of the male anatomy was totally hidden from her view…
She shook her head. It was disgusting that she was even thinking about it. Did she need to make a mental note that perhaps she was a sex addict or maybe it had just been a very long time since she’d had sex? No, she had to quit that line of thinking. Clearly, she was not focusing on the things she needed to be thinking about at that current time.
“Here.” One of the other men, the taller of the two who had scars on his face, handed Azriel a blanket, which he quickly wrapped around her. Grateful for the warmth, she again wished she could wrap herself up in it and never move.
“Dude,” the shorter of the two brothers spoke. “She has fur, you’re buck naked. We brought the blanket for you.”
“Thanks, but I’m okay. The lady wolf has been down in the lab for several months—it’s always hot—and she’s just been through a fire. I don’t want her to catch a chill.”
“That’s awful considerate of you, little brother.” It was the taller of the two again. So far, Leah preferred him to the other one.
Azriel coughed. “Who did it?”
“We were hoping you could tell us.”
“How could I do that?”
“The magic alarm went off and then we saw on the monitors that your place was on fire. By the time we got here, the door was welded shut.”
She snuggled closer to Azriel, he still smelled like the ocean, as he had in the lab, but now he also smelled like the woods after a storm and that made her smile. He wrapped his arms around her tighter and the three men started walking. At the moment, she had no idea where they were going and for some reason she was completely fine with that.
“I never saw who firebombed the room. I was overwhelmed with the smell—you know that sick, sour milk smell that spreads before the fire from one of those things starts?”
The other two nodded their assent.
The shorter brother spoke again. “You’re holding her kind of tight there, Az. What have you been doing down there in that lab with her for so long?”
Leah wished she could bite him. If she had to be a wolf, maybe she should act like one. It could be fun.
“She can understand you, remember?” Azriel sighed and she remembered her impression of him from earlier in the day. He was tired, the kind of tired where he’d long since noticed how exhausted he really was. She thought there was an expression for that: bone weary.
She wondered why she cared.
Az continued. “I’ve been trying to figure out why she’s still alive.”
“Does she behave any differently than the others?” This time she appreciated the shorter one’s questions. She’d like to know the answers to that too considering she couldn’t really remember too many details since she’d opened her eyes about an hour earlier. No, that wasn’t entirely true; she knew lots of things about Azriel, just nothing about anything else. Was that odd?
“She has longer times of clarity—or at least as far as I can tell it’s clarity. I only started talking to her this morning so I don’t know if she’s been able to understand me this whole time or if it’s a recent development that’s going to precipitate some kind of change.” He paused. “I’m hoping it’s not the kind of scenario where she gets absolute understanding before she completely degrades and then dies.”
Oh wow, she hoped that too. Please, please, please don’t let it be that.
As if remembering that she understood him perfectly, he gave her a squeeze.
“Anyway, she does have episodes where she is like the others: aggressive, almost feral, and desperate for the serum. I keep waiting for her physical appearance to alter like the others. Her fur should be falling out or oily and disgusting, her eyes should be glazing over. One of the last stages is the drool. It’s everywhere and damn if it doesn’t stink something fierce.”
The shorter man took a sniff. “She smells pretty good to me. For a wolf, she has a scent resemblance to lilacs.”
A growl formed from Azriel’s throat that had Leah’s ears poking backwards. She shivered; in no way did she like that sound.
“You don’t need to be smelling her, Gabriel.”
“I can smell whoever I want. What is the matter with you?”
The taller man laughed aloud, his eyes filled with laughter. “Oh boy, do I remember this phase; I all but killed Rex.”
Azriel’s whole body had gotten very still. All Leah could feel was the beating of his heart. “What does that mean, Theo?”
“It means from the way you’re behaving towards that ‘made’ wolf, Azriel, I would say the reason she is still alive and not altered like the others is because she is your mate.” Theo patted him on the shoulder. “Welcome to the party, brother.”
His what? Okay, someone was going to have to explain that. Wolf or no wolf she was going to make them go into more detail about exactly what that meant. She knew nothing about herself. No way could she be his ‘mate’. It was simply out of the question.
She might have a husband at home waiting for her; searching all over the place and not knowing that she had somehow become a wolf. Azriel’s ocean scent mixed with the smell of the woods hit her again and she wanted to smile.
Maybe it wasn’t such an impossibility that she belonged to him, but it was still scary as hell.
Chapter Two
Azriel Kane stopped walking and stood perfectly still. Could it be true? How was it possible that Theo could have known the lady wolf in his arms was his mate when he didn’t know it himself?
Well you would have known it if you ever listened to anything I said to you.
His wolf was pissed; he could hear it in the sarcasm travelling over their link. I haven’t been ignoring you. When did you tell me the little she-wolf was my mate?
You know I can’t just come out and say it. How many times have I asked you why she was still alive or why you were so fixated on her?
Azriel let out the breath he’d held and squeezed the brown and white wolf a little tighter in his arms. Might have been nice if you could have been a little bit more direct than that. You know I don’t ‘get’ relationships. Subtlety is lost on me.
His wolf laughed. And don’t I know it…
Pulling himself out of his daze, he ran forward to catch up to Theo and Gabriel keeping his unnamed lady wolf, who happened to be his possible mate, close to his chest.
Two of his five brothers, they were used to him occasionally drifting off into moments of deep thought and losing track of the ‘here and now’. If either of them had sensed immediate danger, they would have snapped him out of it but aside from that, they’d pretty much learned to let him be.
Theo, the shorter of the two, had mated about three months earlier to a recently rediscovered pack member named Faith. Their mating had been a gift for the whole pack as it had brought Theo back from near madness and eliminated a very serious threat from creatures called the fire demons. They’d first had to become demons themselves. Az really hoped he wasn’t going to have to do anything like that to complete his mating…
Gulping, he turned to Theo. “I think I’m in serious trouble.”
“I may not be a genius like you, little brother, but I’m pretty sure you’re right.”
Theo’s tone held way too much humor for Az’s liking.
“Can the two of you get your heads out of your mated asses long enough to focus on the fact that we were just attacked, again?”