His own injuries bad, Michael was unable to stand any longer, and he collapsed on the leaf-littered ground.

  The woman ran to him and yanked off her jacket and pressed it against one of his wounds. “Live, brave wolf, so that you can be a hero another day.” She pressed a kiss on his cheek, and he noticed then she was bleeding too, both of her arms, where the gray wolf had bitten and clawed at her when she fended him off with her crossbow and arrow.

  She sat on the forest floor, lifted Michael’s head onto her lap, and stroked his head. “Don’t die on me.”

  He wanted to know her name. When he’d seen her so many years ago, the way she was standing, he hadn’t been able to see her name tag on her uniform.

  He wanted to ask if she was part of a local pack. He wanted to join that pack, and he wanted her to date only him. Because she thought he was her hero. Though she hadn’t said he was her hero. And she had been the one to take down two of the wolves with her arrows.

  He let out his breath. He had to get up and take her back to his Jeep to get help for them. But the longer he lay there, the weaker he felt. Damn it. Heroes continued to be heroic. They didn’t collapse in a bloody heap while the heroine ministered to them.

  He tried to get up again, but his body wouldn’t listen to his brain.

  “No, lie down.” She lifted her chin and howled again. But then, as if afraid her howls weren’t going far enough, she rested his head on the forest floor. “I’m Carmela Wildhaven, by the way.” Then she began to strip off her clothes. Wolves did that in front of other wolves all the time when they went running as wolves, so it was no big deal. Normally. Unless the wolf was a she-wolf and not known to the male wolf. Was she an eligible wolf? As in not mated to another wolf?

  He glanced at the other wolves. The two had turned into their human forms. It appeared they had expired. Good, fewer to have to deal with in the future, except for disposing of the bodies. Michael tried to look around further for the alpha wolf. He was gone. Hell. Maybe the rogue wolf had crawled off and died in the woods. Michael could only hope.

  They needed to do something with the remaining bodies as soon as they could and search for the other wolf also. As if Michael could do anything right now. He sure hoped she wasn’t a rogue wolf. And he hoped she was a member of a pack nearby that could help them out.

  She pulled off her black lace panties and bra last, and all he could think of was how exquisite she looked. Beautiful creamy breasts that had him staring a bit. She smiled a little at him. “You are looking a lot less heroic and perfectly wolfish now.”

  He managed a small smile back, and then she shifted into a beautiful cinnamon-colored red wolf. She licked his cheek, and then she howled. And howled. And howled.

  Her wolf’s song was the most beautiful voice he’d ever heard. For the moment, she was all his. Unless a pack full of hungry bachelor males came to rescue her, and then he was history.

  She howled again. And this time, he managed to lift his head and rolled over on his belly. He howled to join her wolf’s song, and he thought they had the most beautiful symphony in the world, right before he heard a responding howl. And another. And then several more. He felt guarded relief.

  The wolves were coming. And he knew they would take his place as her hero when they took care of her injuries.

  * * *

  Carmela was thrilled that so many of the Silver Town male pack members showed up to aid them, some in their wolf coats and some as humans armed with guns. The pack’s veterinarian, Doc Mitchell, was with them, carrying a bag of medical supplies. He quickly applied a field dressing to the male wolf’s wounds. Then Doc Mitchell did the same thing for her wounds. She thought she could run as a wolf back to the vehicles they must have parked on the road near where her car had left the pavement. But some of the men brought a field stretcher for both the injured wolf and her. Doc Mitchell kept trying to rouse the man.

  Jake Silver, subleader of the pack and brother to the pack leader, Darien, jogged through the woods to join them.

  “Can you hear me?” Doc Mitchell asked the injured wolf over and over again.

  Several men were also taking care of the two rogue wolves’ bodies, for which she was grateful. She’d been glad that she was one of the members of the Silver Town wolf pack, because everyone was so helpful in a crisis. They seemed to genuinely care about the injured man and were worried that he wouldn’t make it. Though their kind healed faster than humans, they could still die if they lost too much blood before their enhanced genetics could kick in and heal them.

  They’d covered Carmela and Michael each with blankets. She shifted so she could talk to the injured wolf as Jake and his younger triplet brother, Tom, carried her stretcher. She needed to tell the men about the wounded rogue wolf that had vanished also. And she belatedly realized she needed to tell them this one was a good guy. “He saved my life,” she said.

  On the other stretcher, the wolf shifted, and for a moment, she stared at him, worried he’d died and that was why he’d shifted. His eyes were still closed, and she wasn’t close enough to hear his heart beating.

  “Stop! He’s shifted,” she called out, her eyes filled with tears.

  Doc Mitchell checked on the injured wolf. “He’s breathing, and his heart’s beating. He’s fine. Keep moving, Peter and Trevor.” Doc Mitchell winked at her with a small smile lifting the corners of his mouth.

  But she couldn’t relax. Not when she knew the wolf was in such bad shape.

  “What happened?” Jake finally asked her.

  “Those men ran their pickup truck into my car, causing me to leave the road and crash it into a tree. Then I ran, and they stripped, shifted, and tore after me. Thankfully, I’d had the presence of mind to take my crossbow with me.”

  Jake said, “There wasn’t a pickup on the road. Just a Jeep and your car off the road.”

  Carmela closed her eyes in exasperation. “The leader got away then? I shot him in the hip. Or…or maybe someone stole the truck sitting on the road? I was hoping he might have crawled off and died somewhere else.”

  Jake called out to some of the other men, “Search the woods for an injured wolf.”

  “I helped eliminate him and the other sergeants from the army. The one that got away was the alpha, the leader of the pack. His name is Raymond Hayworth. Anyway, the lone wolf came out of nowhere. He wasn’t with the other wolves, but he had been intent on protecting me. I thought maybe he was a member of the Silver Town wolf pack but I hadn’t met him before.”

  Jake glanced back at the wolf. “He’s not one of ours. I don’t know him.”

  Tom agreed. Everyone with them said the same.

  “I—I saw him once. At Fort Sam Houston, but I didn’t get a chance to meet him. He was in a hurry to get somewhere, but I smelled his wolf scent.”

  “So he was in the military like you? Or a civilian?” Jake asked.

  “He’s a Green Beret.”

  Jake glanced at the injured man. She could tell he was impressed. She was impressed.

  “One wolf facing three wolves, it figures,” Jake said, shaking his head.

  “Two of us, not just him!” Carmela said.

  Jake smiled at her. “Hell, yeah, here I thought you were kind of a sweet beta and had a cool hobby of shooting a crossbow in competitions. I didn’t know you were so badass.”

  She never considered herself that way. Sweet when she wanted something. Beta? No way. And her crossbow had been her life since she was little. Even while she was in the army.

  “This wolf could be real trouble,” Jake said, “with the kind of training he has if he’s a problem wolf.”

  He wasn’t trouble. He was her hero. She loved being with the pack. Loved the warm and welcoming Silver Town wolves. But if they kicked her savior out of here, she had half a mind to go with him. Not that he’d even want her to tag along. But what if he had a great pack? And he was interested in a little courtship on the side? If he wasn’t mated.

  “I recognize one of the dead men,” Tom said. “He was questioning Bertha Hastings at her bed and breakfast about whether you were a member of the pack or not. By then, you had already left for Germany to compete in the crossbow competition. She said you were living here, and he asked where your place was exactly, that he was a cousin and wanted to see you. She called me, and I came over to see what was up. He smelled like a gray wolf though, not a red.”

  “I don’t have any close cousins that I know of. And none that are gray wolves,” Carmela said.

  “We didn’t know that,” Jake said. “We need to know who else might have a vendetta against you because of your army background.”

  “No one. At least no one who is a wolf. Those men were the only three I had encountered who were wolves and had done something illegal while serving in the military.”

  They finally reached the road and found a bunch of piles of clothes, the lone wolf’s fiery-red Jeep, and her poor smashed car. She wanted to cry. She’d saved up for two years to buy it. Her first new car. She’d bought used cars over the years. But missing was the black pickup truck. “The black pickup isn’t here,” Carmela said, disappointed. Though she recalled them saying it was gone, she had to see it for herself. She’d so hoped the wolf had crawled off and died. “They were parked right there.”

  “The truck left skid marks,” Jake said.

  “The injured wolf’s name is Michael Hoffman,” Mason, the bank president, said, holding up a wallet and driver’s license. He pulled out another plastic card from the wallet, and she could see it was Michael’s military ID. “Retired lieutenant colonel, U.S. Army.”

  They lived so many years but aged so slowly, he looked like he was a really young LTC, maybe thirty in human years. Of course, she looked like that too. “And a Green Beret,” she said, wanting everyone in the pack to know that he was.

  And then she was helped into Jake’s SUV, the blanket still wrapped around her. One of the men set her clothes, crossbow, and quiver of arrows on the seat beside her. She thought of getting dressed, but she knew they’d just make her strip when she got to the clinic and start her on an IV to fight infection from the wolf bites and claw marks.

  They carried Michael into another vehicle, and she wished she could be with him instead as Jake and Tom drove her to the clinic.

  Once she was in a hospital bed at the clinic, her arms freshly bandaged and an IV dripping antibiotics into her veins, a concerned nurse checked her vital signs again. Nurse Charlotte Grey was a middle-aged woman, smiling at her, but the worried look in her expression told Carmela that things were not good. Carmela was anxious then that the wolves they killed were some of the Silver Town wolf pack’s. No one had said anything about it, and she’d been so concerned about Michael, she hadn’t even thought to ask. Then again, Tom said that the one wolf had been trying to locate her, so they couldn’t be part of the pack.

  Maybe Michael was in distress and he wouldn’t pull through. That made her sick to her stomach. “How is Michael doing?”

  “He’ll live,” Nurse Grey said, smiling.

  “Can I see him?”

  “Not yet. He’s in surgery.”

  That didn’t sound good.

  “How come he came upon the scene so quickly? Did it seem a little…convenient?” Nurse Grey asked.

  Carmela frowned at her. She understood the wolves in the pack had to be wary of other wolves coming into their territory and causing trouble for them, but she knew Michael was one of the good guys. “He was heroic. I owe him my life. I was just lucky he was there, so close at hand.”

  “It’s a good thing that you compete in crossbow target shooting competitions and have won several national and local championships,” Nurse Grey said. “I imagine, after how you handled yourself, you’ll find more of our pack members wanting to take lessons from you on how to use a crossbow.”

  “I’ve never used it as a weapon before.” Which made Carmela think of how she’d abused the bow and an arrow while trying to beat off the one wolf who had been too close to her to shoot. Not that she’d had any other choice.

  Carmela glanced at the doorway and realized she had an audience. A dark-haired man with amber eyes, wearing a badge, jeans, and a tan shirt, was standing there taking down notes. Sheriff Peter Jorgenson.

  “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?” Peter asked.

  Hadn’t he already overheard enough? Not only that, but he’d helped carry Michael’s stretcher, and she told him what happened to them then too.

  She explained everything to him again. She sighed. She owed it to Michael to help him out in any way that she could. He might need some time to recover, though she suspected many members of the pack would be offering him assistance after he had helped to save her life. While she’d been in the army, she could never “be” with wolves in a pack, so that was her goal once she’d retired. She’d actually been on her way to check out a pack near Denver, the pack leaders Devlyn and Bella Greystoke, when she’d gotten a flat tire and some wolves of the pack of Silver Town had fixed it, free of charge. She’d learned then that the Silver pack ran the town, and they needed a receptionist. Not to mention the pack leader, Lelandi, was a red wolf like her. They’d even found they were related, distant cousins, and that had been great news. She was eager to get to know Lelandi better. She was surprised to learn that their families had begun in Colorado, but hers had ended up in Texas, and they had lost contact with the earlier families.

  Carmela had even had several dates with some of the bachelor males in the short time she’d been here, but she was trying to date a wolf only once to leave her options open. And she wanted to make sure she truly loved being here with the pack before she set down permanent roots.

  Then she heard someone being wheeled into the room down the hall, and she thought it must be Michael.

  “Can I see him? Michael?”

  Three

  Michael felt like hell, like when he’d been wounded in a firefight on a combat mission. Though having a bullet rip through him was a lot different than having a wolf chewing on him. He was all bandaged up and hooked up to an IV while being transferred to another bed in one of the clinic rooms.

  One of the wolves who had helped load him into a vehicle to bring him here, Jake Silver, subleader of the wolf pack, said, “Darien and Lelandi Silver run the pack, and I am sure they’ll be delighted to meet you after you helped to save one of our own wolves.”

  Then a man joined them who was wearing a sheriff’s badge. “Sheriff Peter Jorgenson,” he said, reaching over to shake Michael’s hand. “We have a ton of folks offering to put you up once you can leave the clinic. Bertha Hastings’s Bed and Breakfast will even accommodate you for free until you can get on your feet.”

  “What about the huntress?”

  Peter frowned a little. “I’m not sure about you staying at Carmela’s place.”

  “No, I mean, how’s she doing? I saw the bite marks on her arms.”

  “She’ll be fine. She’s being taken care of at the clinic also,” Jake said.

  “What…what about the men?” Michael asked, still not knowing if they had been part of the pack or not.

  “We’re looking into it,” Peter said. “We have two of them in the morgue for now. We brought your Jeep in and impounded it, just to protect it until you can leave the clinic. Carmela’s car was totaled. We’re taking care of it also.”

  “Wait, what about the other man? The leader of the three? He was wearing one of Carmela’s arrows too.”

  “No sign of him. The guy’s name is Raymond Hayworth. He must have made it back to the truck and left. The truck was gone. We found the clothes of the other two men and their IDs. No sign of Raymond’s clothes. According to Carmela, they’d been in the army. She had been on an army board that gave them other than honorable discharges, and they’d threatened her for not voting in their favor, so we’re certain they were after her for that reason. What we need to know is how you happened to arrive in time to help Carmela,” Peter said.

  Michael was wondering when they were going to question him about that. He would be a mystery to them. Except he was certain they would have found his ID and could check into his background.

  “I saw Carmela at the service station near there. I was going to ask her if there was a wolf pack in the area that she belonged to that I could check out. I’m looking to settle down with a pack since I retired from the army. She was headed for the store, but she suddenly whipped around, got in her car, and tore off as if she saw some kind of trouble headed her way. The three men came rushing out of the store, said they had to catch her, jumped into their new model black pickup, and took off after her. I didn’t realize they were wolves at first. I couldn’t smell their scent, the way the breeze was blowing. I followed, concerned that she must have known them—which was the reason for her quick turnaround—and that they were hassling her. A few miles down the road, I saw them hit her car, and it sailed off the road. I pulled in behind them, saw they were shifting and racing after her. That’s when I knew they were wolves. My only thought was to help protect her. That was my job.”

  “You did a good job,” Peter said. “You saved her life. Now we need to know if the injured wolf survived his injury and if he belongs to a pack. Carmela is new to our pack, if you didn’t know.”

  Now it sounded like the sheriff thought she might be trouble and had brought this trouble to their pack. Michael could understand their concern. If the rogue wolves had family, friends, other pack members, any one of them could want revenge.

  Then he heard footfalls and saw Nurse Grey poke her head into the room. “Do you mind having a visitor? Carmela Wildhaven would like to visit with you for a little while if you’re feeling up to it.”