Page 16 of Caught By the Wolf

Not leaving her, Roman told it. Protecting her. Even from us.

He pointed his nose down the mountain and ran, every sense stretched tight. The men were closer than they should have been. He could smell the residual gun oil, the faint human sweat the rain hadn’t fully erased. Hell, he could smell their intent. They were circling. Testing. Waiting for the moment the house was unguarded.

Roman ran harder and did not let himself think too hard about how much it cost him to walk out that door instead of staying and taking what was already his.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Ella

Ella stood in the middle of Roman’s living room long after the front door shut and the night swallowed the sound of him leaving. The house felt bigger without him in it. Quieter.

And her body was still humming.

She pressed her thighs together. The ache between them hadn’t faded. If anything, it had sharpened the second he’d walked out. Her body was a traitor. It wanted the man who had left her in his kitchen with wet panties and a head full of images about counters and claiming.

Mate.

The word kept circling.

She paced. The living room opened into a wide hallway lined with doors. She hadn’t explored earlier. Now the silence felt like permission—or maybe a warning.

The first two doors she knew. The bathroom and the guest room she’d slept in last night. Her clothes from the hike were still draped over the chair, torn and muddy. She left them.

There were three other bedrooms and two more baths, not counting Roman’s bedroom and its adjoining bath. All the bedrooms looked like the one she’d slept in. Cold and impersonal.

Had he built a house big enough to house a pack?

Or did he want the rooms filled with babies?

The thought made her shiver in a way that had nothing to do with fear.

You’re ridiculous, she told herself. Thirty-one years old. Standing in a stranger’s house thinking about babies with a man who had simply rescued you from a dangerous situation. Women like her were lucky to get that rescue. And after, they got polite brush-off and a lifetime of wondering. Of what ifs.

Except Roman didn’t feel like a stranger. That was the problem.

She opened the door to his bedroom and sat on the edge of the mattress. The scent of him wrapped around her immediately—pine, clean skin, and that darker note that made her stomach pull tight. She tried to think past her body’s responses. Poachers. Witness. Mate bond. The way Roman had looked at her when he said the word. The way his brothers had gone still the second they saw her, careful in a way that said she mattered more than she understood.

A loud knock sounded at the front door.

She froze.

Would poachers actually knock?

She laughed but peeked out the kitchen window before opening the door.

It was Declan.

He stood on the porch, hands visible, expression unreadable. Rain beaded in his dark hair. “He’s still, um, needs to run,” Declan said. “I was closer, so I came to check on you.”

“I’m fine.”

“Can I come in? I’ll stay on the other side of the room.”

She frowned as she opened the door wider and gestured him inside. “Why would you do that?”

“Because Roman hasn’t claimed you as his mate.”

“And?”