Awakened by the Wolf (5 page)

Cassie's heart swelled in her throat. Brice had nearly died, too.

While everyone else inundated him with their sobs and wails, waiting for the inevitable, she had read to him, shared the little gossip she knew, held his hand when tremors of pain had wracked his body, willed him to breathe when his lungs failed. Kissed his tightly bandaged head, begging him to live.

The day she saw him awake, she left the hospital and never visited him again. What was the point? On the road to recovery, he didn't need the likes of her mooning over him any more than he did now. “I'm very sorry for the terrible ordeal you went through.”

Chapter 5

B
itterness fisted in Brice's throat. What he had suffered was insignificant considering his brother died because of him and his damn nosy nose.

Cassidy mysteriously revitalizing his scent receptors couldn't be a good thing. Neither were the gentleness in her voice, the genuineness in her eyes or the mess of curls cascading over one shoulder.

Brice twirled a red ringlet around his finger. A man might promise foolish things to feel those silky strands sweep his stomach or tickle his inner thighs. He rubbed the curl against his cheek. The feminine softness eased the ever-present knot in his chest.

No woman had affected him to such a degree, and it was a damn shame Cassidy did. He had time only for a passionate night or two, and she didn't seem the type for a brief, inconsequential fling.

He dropped the curl. “Shoes?”

She retrieved a pair of loafers, but he needed more support for his leg.

“Not those. I left a pair of Timberlands somewhere.”

“They aren't here,” she said, rooting around the closet.

“Check under the bed.” He tilted his head as she hunkered down, shoulders touching the floor, hips high in the air.

“I can't see anything,” she grunted. “Wait, I feel something.”

Brice felt something, too. It grew more demanding each time she rocked forward to reach beneath the bed. Oh, the things he could do to her.

“Ah-ha.” She surfaced, his shoes in tow, and promptly dumped them in his lap. “Anything else?”

His gaze rested on her chest, so close and damn near eye level. The way her nipples puckered against the fabric of her T-shirt when she breathed soothed his residual annoyance from walking into the room to discover she had discarded his jersey.

The urgency to feel her touch again threatened to overpower his restraint. Wahyan females had sleek, sinewy bodies. Cassidy's skin had a suppler texture. Her muscles, although strong, were more pliable. He'd enjoyed how she pillowed him when he'd pinned her to the porch and wondered how gratifying it would be if she pulled him into her softness rather than fought him off.

Brice massaged the bunched spot between his eyebrows. The handful of aspirin he'd taken after his shower hadn't kicked in. His entire body throbbed. Overworked muscles teetered on the verge of spasm, his leg hurt more than it had in a long time, the bridge of his nose pinched every time his nostrils flared to catch Cassidy's scent, and his groin, for chrissakes, was sore from a solid kneeing and tight from on-and-off-again erection.

After he visited Granny at the hospital, he might crawl into an empty room and ask Doc Habersham for a morphine drip. Banishment be damned. Brice needed some relief.

“Grab me a pair of socks.” Most of the time Brice recognized the general look of an irritated woman. The sharply arched eyebrow, the tightly pursed lips, a hand resting on a hip, fingers tapping out a count. Any man, human or wolfan, should have enough sense to placate that look.

Apparently, tonight he didn't. When Cassidy didn't respond, he nodded toward the dresser. “Bottom left.”

She gave an exaggerated “Ugh.”

“What?” Brice opened his palms in a halfhearted shrug, intrigued by her vacillation from sweet and doe-eyed to pissed and prickly in a matter of seconds.

She snatched open the drawer, threw him a pair of white socks and stomped out of the room. “Would it hurt you to say please and thank you?” echoed down the hall.

Wahyas had little need for those particular
human
social graces. While living with Granny, he'd been more conscious of the etiquette. She would expect him to treat Cassie with the utmost Southern charm. However, if he did, the effect might backfire. Cassie's annoyance provided a safety barrier. A breach could lead to a world of trouble he had no time to mediate.

Tying his shoes, he stared at the two ragged suitcases in the corner and the sparse belongings that only an hour ago had been angry missiles. He didn't know why she had so little, but when he left he would make sure Cassidy Albright had everything she needed.

His stomach lurched, preparing an imminent launch into his throat.

Oh, God. Not this again.

When he'd awakened in the hospital after the attack, the scent of blood and bowel and death had imprinted in his nose, blocking all other smells. He seldom ate because of the debilitating nausea. Nothing cleared the stench and the relentless ordeal pushed him to the feral edge until one morning, after a brutal night of vomiting, he woke up and couldn't smell a damn thing. No one could explain why.

With his stomach settled, he ate solid food again, and he could relax around people because their scent no longer slapped him in the face like decomp. Being scentless was a godsend.

For about six weeks. Then he realized the downside.

No earthy musk before the rains. No whiffs of smoke from campfires in the fall. No more sweet-smelling flowers or fresh-cut grass. No comforting scents of family, or friends, or the enticing fragrance of females.

Yeah, he could survive without ever smelling anything again, but his experiences were muted and dulled. Much like watching a Technicolor 3-D blockbuster on a twelve-inch black-and-white television. A lot was lost in the downgrade.

Over the years, the devastating loss became a penance. A constant reminder that if he hadn't been so curious about tracking a strange scent, he wouldn't have stepped in a trap, the rogues wouldn't have found them and Mason would still be alive.

God-awful nausea reeled in his stomach with a vengeance. Hands balled into her comforter, Brice pressed the shabby material to his face, grateful and relieved her scent lingered in the threads. Sucking in a deep, exaggerated breath, he held her unique fragrance in his lungs, counting the seconds. Her residual essence filtered through not only his body but also his soul, warming every nook and cranny of his being. Stirred by the phantom familiarity, Brice's wolf instinct prowled his conscience.

Mine!

No, she wasn't. He had only a few days to settle matters with his grandmother. Then he had to leave. For good. His future lay outside Walker's Run, and he intended to embrace it alone. He had best keep his cock in his pants and his hands off Little Miss Albright's feisty body, except to smell her. Luckily for them, it would take time for his errant mating urge to reach the fucking point of no return. He could handle a few days of temptation.

Meeting him in the hallway, his temptress chucked him a set of keys. “My car will get you to the hospital and back. It just needs a few cranks to start.”

“Oh, no.” Brice caught her arm before she locked him out of the bedroom. “You're coming with me, Cassidy.”

“It's almost midnight, and I have to be at work at six.” She twisted out of his grip. “And call me Cassie. Cassidy is too formal considering—” her eyes took all of him in “—well, everything.”

Brice stood straighter. Plenty of women had stared, ogled and gawked at him. None had blushed so prettily or affected him the way she did.

He wanted to tease her. Test her boundaries. And conquer them.

No, no, no!

No conquering allowed.

“All right, Cassie, you have two options.”

“Oh, really?” She cocked her hip and folded her arms across her waist. Such a cute little protest.

“Put on your shoes and come with me like a good little girl.” He stepped close enough that she had to tilt her head to keep eye contact.

She didn't balk. “Yeah, that doesn't work for me. What's the second?”

“Barefoot and braless, hog-tied in the backseat.” He made a point to stare at her chest until her nipples pebbled against her thin T-shirt.

“What kind of choice is that?” Her skin colored to the exact shade he wanted to see.

“The kind where you get to choose the
manner
in which you'll accompany me, Sunshine.” He jingled the keys. “Don't take too long, or I'll think you're into kinky.”

Chapter 6

“W
hy are we crawling through the bushes?” Aggravation weighted Cassie's whisper.

Brice grinned because she continued to follow him, creeping along the outside of the hospital in search of the window to his grandmother's room. “I'm banished,” he answered in a hushed tone.

When he'd tried to explain his situation on the trip into Maico, Cassie had held up her hand and refused to look at him while she drove. Her silent irritation had pounded him until they reached the hospital parking lot. In an attempt to smooth things over, he'd thanked her for coming and added how much it meant to him to see his grandmother again.

Cassie's defenses faltered, and the hardness she projected dissolved. Compassion filled her eyes, and the more amicable side to her personality emerged.

The transformation made him forget that he didn't deserve her sympathy, because when the tension dropped between them, the thoughts that filled Brice's mind were not his past failures but a new hope. He didn't understand it. Didn't expect it to last. However, he sure as hell would make the most of it while he had it.

“What do you mean, banished?” Her gentle probe held no judgment.

“My pack turned me out because I'm the reason Mason is dead.” Resentment leached into his words, followed by shame. “He would've been our next leader.”

Behind him, Cassie stopped, so Brice didn't continue forward. She missed a breath, and the back of his head burned, possibly from the heat of her gaze.

“Anyone who blames you is an idiot,” she announced. “Sometimes bad things happen and it's nobody's fault. What happened to you and Mason was one of those times. You know that, right?” The warmth of Cassie's small hand against his arm urged Brice to believe.

His heart wouldn't allow it.

At the next window, Brice peeked inside. His grandmother's old flowered housecoat hung across a chair.

“This one.” Brice's excitement turned to dread. He dropped into a squat. What if seeing him became too much for Granny?

An icy chill caused him to shudder although a light sheen of sweat coated his skin. His head pounded the same rhythm as his heart. Both felt ready to explode.

He tipped his nose toward Cassie less than a foot away. The balm of her sweet scent infiltrated his senses.

Her head swept side to side. “All clear.”

Brice appreciated her watchfulness, though his wolfan senses gave him a more accurate account of their surroundings.

They faced the visitor parking lot, deserted this time of night except for Cassie's old car parked in the shadows. A mildly curious grackle watched them from its perch on the nearby telephone lines. A car on the highway a block away sounded a faint hum in the stillness of the night.

A roach inched toward Cassie, twitching its divining rod antennae. Brice chucked a piece of mulch at the insect and sent it scurrying away before she noticed.

“You should hurry.” She motioned for him to get moving.

Brice peeked in the window again. The monitors and IV pole partially blocked the view, so he couldn't see if someone sat in the other chair near the bed. He dropped down again.

“Please tell me you aren't going to Tom-peep the window all night.” Cassie's no-nonsense tone matched the exasperation on her face.

“I can't tell if someone is in the room.”

“Knock on the window. Maybe they'll let us inside before someone calls the cops.” Cassie moved from a crouch to a sitting position and leaned against the brick wall. “I don't want to spend the night in jail.”

“Neither do I.” Brice released a nervous breath.

“I doubt you would get arrested. Me, on the other hand...” Cassie's voice trailed off. She picked at a blade of grass that had wormed its way through the mulch.

“They'd haul me in the same as you. Then they'd call the pack liaison, and he'd call my dad.”

“The sheriff's office knows about your wolfy people?”

Brice shook his head. “To them, and everyone else, we're the Walker's Run Cooperative. Tristan Durrance is our law enforcement liaison. He's a pack sentinel and a sworn deputy. Trust me, I'll get the worst of this if we're caught. My dad doesn't want me in the territory.”

Cassie tugged the grass blade free and peeled it into symmetric strips. “He's expecting you. He told the resort staff that when you arrive, we are to give you any room you want and anything else you request. Without question. Why would he want us to accommodate you if he doesn't want you here?”

“I don't know.” The tightness in Brice's gut reached into his chest. His father was planning something, and whatever it was, Brice would certainly suffer the consequences.

He stared at the black sky, devoid of stars due to the glow of civilization. The woods around his grandmother's cabin protected the small homestead from the incandescence of modernization. Stretched on the grass on the slope of the backyard, he could watch the twinkling skyline for hours. He'd missed that peace and comfort in Atlanta, where he'd found only a few places a wolf could run and even fewer to stargaze.

Brice rubbed his palm along the denim covering his sore calf. The aspirin hadn't worked as well as he'd expected. He needed to do something or go home before the pain flared to unbearable again.

He eased to the window and tried to push up the pane. “The lock is jammed. I can't pop it.”

“Nice to know breaking and entering isn't your thing.” Cassie brushed past with a follow-me wave. The innocent contact triggered a rush of moony feelings that Brice vigorously shook off.

Sneaking through the hedges, she led him within a few yards of an emergency exit. The door stood ajar, and a hospital employee lingered on the stoop. The orange glow from a cigarette sharpened his blocky facial features. He took a long drag and exhaled a plume of white smoke.

Brice didn't understand the human fascination with smoking. Wahyas avoided it like the mange because it skunked their sense of smell.

Cassie's shoulder rustled the bushes. She froze. Brice did the same. The orderly leaned against the rail and squinted in their direction without any apparent concern.

Since the hospital worker seemed in no hurry to rush back to his duties, Brice crouched in a position that relieved the pressure on his bad leg. Beneath his jeans, his calf grew itchy and tight. If the inflammation moved into his foot and up to his hip, the pain would cripple him.

Hoping Cassie's scent would relax him, Brice closed his eyes and inhaled slowly. Although she crouched less than two yards away, her magic failed, or at least malfunctioned, because his nose caught wind of a faint, nasty odor.

He blew quick puffs of air through his nostrils to clear the smell. Instead of this ridding him of the stink, a putrid pungency assaulted his senses. The sensation of scurrying spiders rose in Brice's chest, and he slapped both hands over his mouth to keep from chucking up cherry pie.

“Stop making that noise,” Cassie hissed. “He'll hear you.”

If the severe nausea that plagued him after the attack returned, he'd go stark, raving rabid. Nothing—not Dramamine or Compazine or Phenergan or Antivert or a whole slew of other drugs—had controlled the queasiness.

“He's going inside.” Cassie rose to her feet.

Brice grabbed her around the middle, and they toppled into the mulch.

“What the heck are you doing?” She elbowed his chest.

Dizzy and sweaty, Brice buried his face in her hair. “I need to smell you before I puke.”

The argument he expected never came. She allowed him to smell at will.

“That's the weirdest thing anyone's ever said to me. Does that line work on wolfy women?” Cassie wiggled beneath his weight.

“I don't know. I've never said it to a she-wolf.” Brice relaxed in the comfort of Cassie's scent.

“Jeez, aren't I special.”

“Yeah, you are. Before I met you, I couldn't smell a damn thing. Now I smell you and that Dumpster over there.” He eased away from Cassie before her essence lulled him into believing the mating urge wasn't a fluke after all.

“How flattering.” Her soft-looking lips curling into an unpleasant frown, Cassie dusted wood chips from her clothes.

“Cas, your scent reminds me of a beautiful meadow of wildflowers.” And he loved her scent as much as he loved the rich, buttery flora that bloomed midspring beneath the full sun at a hollow within the wolf sanctuary.

After a few tense moments, Cassie's mouth softened into a timid smile. “Thank you.”

Oh, no. She gave him the look. The one that hooked him with her modesty and reeled him in with her sincerity. His insides went all gooey, and that had never happened. If they'd met before his life had spiraled into chaos, maybe...just maybe.

Brice cleared the frustration from his craw. He had only one path now. A path a mate couldn't follow.

Cassie raced up the steps and jerked the emergency door handle. “Hurry up. I don't have all night.”

“Is the alarm busted?” Brice slipped past her.

“I think someone disabled it a long time ago.”

“You think?”

Ignoring what he believed must be his most incredulous look, Cassie shoved him into the laundry room, where ample uniforms stocked the shelves.

Owned and operated by the Walker's Run Cooperative, Maico General not only provided state-of-the-art medical services to the town's human residents but also maintained a private ward for sick or injured pack members. If uniforms or linens stained with wolfan DNA ended up in the wrong hands, well, the fallout would be disastrous.

The Woelfesenat, the international wolf council governing the Wahya populace, had made significant political strides in recent years. Although some governments had acknowledged the wolfan population in secret negotiations, Brice knew revelations to the public-at-large would be a long time coming.

“Put that on.” Cassie pointed at a white lab coat.

“Something tells me that you've done this before.” He shoved his arms into the sleeves.

“When my mom got sick, I had to work after school to help pay the bills. Visiting hours were over before I could get here, so I'd sneak in.” Cassie yanked a pair of yellow scrubs over her clothes.

“Did she get better?”

“Nope.” Cassie handed him a green surgical cap.

“I'm sorry, Cas.” Brice wanted to pause a moment to let her know his sympathies were sincere, and it tweaked him that Cassie seemed indifferent to them.

“Act normal and don't make eye contact.” She cracked open the door. “Most people will only see the uniform unless you give them a reason to notice. Count to thirty before you follow me.”

Brice's stomach lunged. “Wait!” Pinning Cassie against the industrial dryer, he nuzzled her with abandon. His entire body sparked from her tantalizing scent and the soft suppleness of her skin.

“Hey, what happened outside was sweet, if not a little awkward,” she said. “But this is getting creepy.”

“You'll get used to it.” Brice couldn't stop his grin.

“Holster your nose,
Benji
, before someone catches us.” The fire in Cassie's cinnamon eyes counteracted her unamused frown.

“Oh, that hurts, Cas. Calling me a scruffy little dog when you've seen how big my wolf is.”

She flicked him a
whatever
wave and left. Brice counted to eight before the impulse to follow her won out. He stayed far enough behind so it didn't appear they were together.

Cassie confidently navigated the corridors. The determination in her steps, the no-nonsense sway of her hips, the steel in her spine—all of it was a pretense to conceal her tender heart. Beneath the bravado, this woman was far more delicate than she looked, and she looked fragile enough that a gust of wind might blow her to smithereens.

The human ward clerk looked up from her computer. Brice slowed his pace, lowered his head and sharpened his senses.

The woman squinted her eyes and lips at Cassie. “Are you the loaner from Chatuge Regional filling in for Rita?”

Cassie veered toward the station. “Is she the ER nurse who broke her ankle?”

The ward clerk's broad, snaggletoothed grin plumped her cheeks. “Yeah, the old biddy should've had more sense than to skateboard at her age.”

Brice shook his head. One of the blessings and pains of small-town living was that everyone knew everybody's business to some degree. Miracles or pure luck had helped the Wahyas of Walker's Run avoid discovery.

Then again, Brice suspected some of the pack's longtime neighbors knew of their duality and kept their secret out of loyalty and respect. Such as Cybil's owner, Mary-Jane McAllister.

She lived on the fringe of the co-op's wolf sanctuary, a large area of protected forest where the pack roamed. High electric fences ensured human interlopers with cameras and shotguns stayed out, while sentinels patrolled the territory to ward off rogues.

Unfortunately, even the best security measures sometimes failed.