Page 6 of Caught By the Wolf

Fence posts, Roman thought, grimly, shifting in the chair. So many fucking fence posts.

She drew back slightly when he moved. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” he growled, and she just looked at him for a moment.

“It’s a through and through. You’re lucky. The bullet missed the joint, missed everything that matters. But you still need a hospital.”

“No hospitals.”

“You were shot.”

“No hospitals, Ella. It will heal on its own.”

She looked up. His tone, or her name in his mouth—something made her forget to be a nurse, and her eyes were green and very close, and they dropped to his mouth and got stuck there. And he knew. Knew she was thinking about what his mouth would feel like on hers. He was thinking the same thing. Only more in depth. Like what his mouth would feel like on her shoulder, her neck. Her breasts. The swell of her stomach. Her fucking pussy. He wanted to bury his face there and stay until she came on his tongue twice. Then he wanted to flip her over and take her from behind so he could watch that perfect ass bounce while he fucked her.

“Right because you’re a shifter. You’re all dumb-ass stubborn. Men. Males,” she muttered as she placed a gauze pad over the wound. “Every man who comes into that hospital held together with baling wire and spite.” She smoothed the tape flat over the bandage.

He didn’t say anything, just let her work.

“So. Poachers. That’s what I walked into. There’s been talk at the hospital all year—out-of-state money, illegal trophy hunts. I just never figured I’d hike into the middle of it. And then you came out of nowhere and got shot. Which was insane, by the way. They had rifles. What were you thinking?”

So she thought he was a bystander. Some local wolf who’d blundered into her bad day and paid for it. She didn’t know her scent had drawn him, made it impossible to ignore her or the danger she was in. That he would have gladly given his life to protect her.

She was his mate.

And she didn’t know.

He scrubbed his hand over his face. “Wasn’t thinking much.”

“Clearly.” She pressed the last corner of tape down, and then her palm stayed flat on his shoulder after the job was finished. She didn’t seem to notice she was doing it. He noticed enough for the both of them. “Don’t do it again.”

Yeah. That would never happen. If she were ever in danger again…

“They saw your face.”

Her hand came off his shoulder in an instant. “What?”

“They saw your face. You can identify them.”

She immediately shook her head. “No. No I can’t.”

He watched her walk through it—witness, faces, trucks, men who’d fire at whatever stood between them and their goal—and watched the color drain out of her cheeks while she did. The logic lined up all by itself. She was a witness.

“You’re staying here,” Roman said. Not an offer. A low growled order. He heard it leave his mouth—the wolf behind it—and knew he should soften it and didn’t. Couldn’t.

Ella stared down at him. Fear crossed her face with stubbornness right behind it, and then something underneath both of those that made her look away first.

“No, I’m not. You can take me into town and I can file a report with the sheriff. Just because you rescued me—”

Roman stood up, towering over her. The wolf was still too close to the surface, scraping under his skin, furious that she had even suggested walking out the door and putting herself in the reach of the men who had hunted her.

“Make no mistake, little mate. I didn’t rescue you. I caught you. Now you’re mine.”

Her eyes went wide as she took in his words. “What are you talking about?”

“You are—”

The front door exploded open and two enormous men came through it fast. Even as he registered who was entering his house in such a dramatic manner, he was pushing Ella behind him, his eyes glowing, his fangs dropping.