Claimed (The Lair of the Wolven 1)

He landed on the soft bed of pine needles on his side, and the struggle was immediate, useless paws batting at thin air and ground cover. As Lydia drew a little closer to him, he snarled, flashing long white fangs, his golden eyes narrowing.

“Shh … ,” she said as she kneeled down.

Her hand shook as she got out her cell phone. As she called a number from her favorites, she tried to keep her breathing steady.

In the flashlight’s beam, she could see the grayness of those gums. The wolf was dying—and she knew why.

“Goddamn it, pick up, pick up—” Her words machine gun’d from her mouth. “Rick? Wake up, I’ve got another one. On the main trail—what? Yes, it’s the same—enough with the talking, get your ass out of bed. I’m on the loop, about two miles into the—huh? Yes, bring everything, and hurry.”

She cut the connection as her voice gave out.

Letting herself fall back to a sit, she stared into those beautiful eyes and tried to project love, acceptance, gentleness … compassion. And something got through, the majestic male’s muzzle relaxing, its paws falling still, his flank rising and falling in a shuddering breath.

Or maybe it was dying right now.

“Help is coming,” she said hoarsely to the animal.

Richard Marsh, D.V.M., gunned the ATV down the trail, the unmuffled engine echoing around the otherwise still and silent forest. As the tires hit tree roots, he fought with the handlebars, wrenching them to stay on course. With the wind in his face, he had to blink a lot. He should have worn goggles. Or at least not left his contacts in.

Almost ten minutes into the racing scramble, the glow of a flashlight registered through the trees, and he eased up on the throttle. Nailing the brakes, he skidded to a stop and dismounted. His med pack was a duffel large enough to haul a set of golf clubs, and its weight strained his bad shoulder as he hefted it off the cargo platform and started marching into the pines.

He stopped dead. “What the hell are you doing?”

Lydia Susi’s long, lean body was stretched out on a bed of pine needles … next to a full-grown male gray wolf which probably weighed as much as she did. Which was a wild animal. Which was capable of anything.

“Shh,” she said, like she knew he was yelling at her in his head.

Rick cursed. “Move away from the wolf. You are violating every common sense and professional standard—I mean, come on. You know better than this—”

“Just shut up and save him.”

The woman was no more than two feet away from that muzzle, her eyes locked on the closed lids of the wolf, her running tights and shoes crossed, her windbreaker a loose bag around her upper body. Wolves could run nearly forty miles an hour, but that kind of effort was not going to be necessary to bite her. That thing could just lunge forward and sink all of its forty-two teeth into soft skin—

“He’s cyanotic in his gums. It’s the same anticoagulant as before,” she said.

“You’re assuming.” Rick put his duffel down and unzipped one side of it. “Now get the hell back—”

“You are not tranq’ing him,” she hissed as she sat up.

“And you’re not a vet. You’re also clearly not thinking. Has it occurred to you that that animal could have rabies?”

“He’s not foaming at the mouth—” She lowered her voice. “If you tranquilize him, you’re going to kill him.”

“Oh, okay. So I’ll just cozy up like you have and ask him for his consent to treat. He can put his paw print on the forms—”

“Rick, I’m serious! He’s dying!”

As she raised her voice again, the wolf twitched and opened its eyes. Rick became an instant focal point, and the animal lifted its head to growl weakly.

“Get away from him,” Rick said in a grim voice. “Right now.”

“He’s not going to hurt me—”

“I’m not treating him until you’re out of range.”

Rick rose to a stand, the tranq gun in his right hand, his trail boots going absolutely fucking nowhere. Predictably, Lydia kept talking, but when he didn’t move … she eventually did. As she finally shuffled away from the gray wolf, Rick let out an exhale he hadn’t been aware of holding in.

Then again, when it came to the Wolf Study Project’s behaviorist, he shouldn’t have been surprised by any of his reactions. Lydia had been the outlier he had not been looking for since the day he’d met her.

At least now, things moved fast. As she covered her mouth with both hands and curled her knees up to her chest, he discharged a tranquilizer into the animal’s flank. Due to the wolf’s low blood pressure, the sedation took longer to have an effect than normally, but soon enough, those golden eyes were closed and going to stay that way.