He flicked a quick look back at her, his face grim. “Stay here."
"Dakota?"
He snatched the door open and disappeared before she could even get the name out. Stunned by the sudden, complete transformation in him from teasing lover to grim faced, dangerous stranger, frightened for no reason she could grasp, Danika couldn't do anything for several moments but stare at the door. The low, threatening growl of a wolf brought her off the bed before she even considered she was going to leap to her feet. She'd already rushed to the door and grasped the handle when something stopped her, the warning tone of Dakota's voice rather than the words themselves.
Doubt shook her. She released her hold on the door knob and moved to the window instead, peering toward the woods.
The gray wolf she'd seen near her cabin several times stood just at the edge of the trail she usually took into the woods, all four legs braced as if he was ready to launch himself at the man striding toward him. Every hair on his body was bristled antagonistically, his muzzle drawn up in a snarl that revealed a double row of wicked teeth. Her heart seemed to stop in her chest when her brain finally assimilated that it was Dakota striding toward him. She sucked in a sharp, pained breath, trying to jog her mind to remember where she'd put her tranq pistol but before she could command herself to move in any direction, Dakota leapt at the wolf, simply launched himself airborne in almost a diver's arch.
She blinked and when she opened her eyes again, Dakota was gone. A huge wolf, his pelt predominantly brown but darkening to black on his head and back, sailed through the air in a lunge toward the gray that landed him nearly on top of the other wolf. The two tangled up in a wild blur of movement almost before the attacking wolf landed, snarling and tearing at one another with their teeth savagely.
Completely bewildered, Danika looked around for Dakota, trying to sift through her jumbled thoughts and play back what she'd seen. Knowing her fear must have somehow distorted what she
thought
she'd seen, she scanned the woods near the fighting wolves and then the clearing. There was no sign of him and her gaze was drawn back to the wolves. She stared at the fighting wolves in horrified fascination, her mind perfectly blank of any thought for many moments before she remembered her pistol. Turning from the window, she searched the room for it with her gaze and finally spotted it. By the time she'd retrieved the pistol, though, and rushed to snatch the door open, both wolves had vanished into the woods.
Still gripped in shock, she stood in the open door for several moments before it finally dawned on her that she was stark naked. She jolted inside and slammed the door.
No longer certain what had happened or what she'd seen, she finally went into the bathroom to bathe and dress. When she had, she left the cabin in search of Dakota, certain he must be in his own cabin. He'd rushed out without dressing. He wouldn't be wandering around naked in the middle of the day.
He wasn't in the cabin. He wasn't anywhere around that she could discover, though his bike was still parked in front of the cabin he and the others had rented.
Stymied, she finally returned to her own cabin. Settling on the couch, she went back over what had happened repeatedly in her mind, trying to sort out the puzzle.
Dakota must have heard something, she was sure.
Maybe he'd remembered something important?
She shook that off and dismissed the uncomfortable suspicion that he'd ‘manufactured’ some emergency to rush off because he'd finished what he'd come to her to accomplish. Not that men couldn't be pretty damned inventive when it came to taking their departure when they finished, but it was just too bizarre that he'd behave in such a way only to slough her off.
Either he'd suddenly remembered something—like a pot of burning food—or he'd heard something. His expression had sent a rush of fear driven adrenaline through her in response, though. The latter theory seemed as unlikely as the possibility that he'd just abruptly leapt up and dumped her off his lap because he was done with her.
She was sure she'd seen him heading toward the wolf. She couldn't think of any reason she would imagine something like that, couldn't think of anyone else it might have been. It sure as hell hadn't been the old man that ran the place! She'd only seen him from the back and she couldn't exactly claim that she knew every inch of Dakota, but it had certainly been him.
Had he rushed off to scare the wolf away and then, when the other wolf suddenly appeared, thought better of confronting two huge animals?
She would've thought he'd know better than to challenge even
one
that had given every indication that it was prepared to attack!
Maybe not—although he certainly hadn't struck her as an idiot.
Maybe that explained what she thought she'd seen, though? He'd thought he would rush the wolf and scare it away and then, when the second wolf had leapt from the woods and attacked, he'd leapt for cover?
It seemed reasonable. It even seemed plausible. She'd been watching from the window. She hadn't had a very clear view, and she'd been in a state of shock already, not the best condition for a person to be in and recall events with any clarity.
Where had he gone, though? She'd looked everywhere.
Maybe he
had
been in his cabin when she went to check and just hadn't answered the door? Maybe in the shower where he couldn't hear her?
She returned to the cabin and tried knocking again. When she didn't get an answer, she tried the door. Finding it unlocked, she opened it and peered inside, calling his name. She wasn't comfortable about intruding, but when she still didn't get a response, she finally went in and checked.
The discovery that she'd been right the first time didn't comfort her. She stood in the middle of the cabin, debating the sudden urge to snoop and see if she could find out anything about any of them. She finally dismissed it with the reflection that she did
not
want to get caught plundering through their belongings. None of them had seemed the least threatening toward her, but that might change drastically if they caught her snooping. It certainly would if she was completely wrong about them and it turned out they
were
drug runners. She was certain to hear the others if they returned—the motorcycles were loud—but Dakota had to still be close by.
Still completely baffled, she went back to her cabin.
* * * *
Balin was tense, tired, and aggravated by the time they turned on the lane that led back to their temporary lair at the fishing camp. The men and equipment had arrived and they'd spent most of the day working out the details of their plan and practicing trial runs, but he was a long way from satisfied that the plan would work. Several of the men the council had rounded up actually worked in various capacities in the medical field and knew what they were doing but the majority didn't, and he wasn't as certain as he wanted to be that they would be convincing in their roles. They still had a few days to work on it, but he wasn't sure if even a few weeks would be enough.
No doubt the approach of the full moon had a good bit to do with the tension. Wolfen weren't altogether immune to the effects, although they weren't nearly as affected as
weres
, who had little or no control at all, particularly when they hit their first transition. Generally, if they lived long enough, they gained some control after a while, but it could take them years to master the urge to change and once they
did
change they were as mindless as the beasts they became—more mindless, actually. They were more like crazed, rabid animals.
He realized the moment Danika's cabin came within view, though, and his heart rate accelerated a few notches, that neither the full moon nor the problems he'd been dealing with all day had much to do with the tension. A mixture of discomfort and anger began to roil in his belly almost the instant his gaze settled on her cabin and his mind snapped to images of her inside.
He'd made a total ass out of himself, a situation as rare for him as the acute embarrassment that had grown out of it. He hadn't needed her to call him an asshole to realize that. He didn't particularly give a fuck that what he'd done had enraged the others and they'd done their best to beat him to his knees for it. He'd almost welcomed it.
Actually, he
had
welcomed it. He'd needed something to focus on afterwards besides what he'd done, something to knock some sense into him before he compounded his idiocy and went right back to Dani and did something even
more
stupid.
He shouldn't have gone anywhere near her when the heat of battle was still on him. He should've known better. He
had
known he was as close to completely losing control as he'd ever been in his life. He still didn't know why he'd gone as directly to her as he could go, bent on doing what he had done.
He cringed inside every time he remembered the savagery of his assault. He'd never behaved like that with a woman in his life. It would've been bad enough if Dani was wolfen like him, or even a werefemale. To have treated her so roughly when she was human and so fragile was criminal even in his own mind, inexcusable. He could've hurt her so easily! It didn't make him feel better that he hadn't—that was purely incidental. He'd been too out of control to make the conscious decision to be careful with her.
And that was before he started. After he'd touched her he'd been running completely on instincts. There wasn't a lot that he remembered with any real clarity. Every time he tried, what he'd
felt
boiled up inside of him all over again and the ability for rational thought vanished.
He did know that the simmering rage he'd barely acknowledged that Con had touched her before him, claimed her, had boiled over. He was fairly certain that was what had made him fixate on Con when she'd tried to ask him to use a condom.
Not
that he would have even if he hadn't misunderstood her. He'd been running on instinct and as hazy as everything was, he was in no doubt at all that his instincts at that moment had been prodding him to plant his seed in her womb. He hadn't been focused on his pleasure as obsessively as he'd been centered on the determination to supplant Con's seed with his.
He wasn't certain which part of the incident disturbed him the most—all of it fairly equally, he supposed—but that particular thing stood out as the most irrational part of it. It was certainly the one aspect most guaranteed to have really unpleasant repercussions if he'd succeeded.
Then again, maybe the most irrational part was that he not only hoped he'd succeeded, he'd been trying to think of a way to try again to
insure
than he'd succeed.
It seemed unlikely, he thought wryly, that she'd let him get close enough to try again. He'd fucked up royally from start to finish.
He supposed it took a true blueblood to manage that big of a fuck up.
He'd never taken his antecedents all that seriously, although there was sure as hell no way of avoiding it completely. He'd fought the chains of his heritage every step of the way from the cradle to adulthood but deep down, regardless of his rebelliousness, he'd never actually considered going so far as to choose a completely inappropriate mate to mother his off-spring. Deep down, he'd always thought, eventually, he would settle on one of the females his family had deemed a suitable match for his bloodlines.
He was as baffled by his interest—alright, obsession—with Danika as the others were, but even so he'd thought he would just keep his distance and ignore the urges. He was convinced he was doing a hell of a job of ignoring it right up until he'd made the mistake of cornering her.
If he'd still had any sense at all, he wouldn't be spending the vast majority of his time trying to think how he could recover from his screw up and have another chance with her. He would consider it a gift of the gods that he'd screwed up so badly she wasn't likely to give him a chance to make things worse.