Free Releasing the Wolf by Dianna Hardy Page A

after what happened.”
    “Yeah,” she sighed, then settled into his arms once more. “This is nice, just being held.”
    “Any time, honey.”
    She nestled under his chin, and he tightened his hold of her. A couple of minutes passed before he broke the silence. “It’s getting late – you should try to get a good night’s rest. Do you…” He hesitated. “Do you want me to stay?”
    She shook her head. “Thank you, but you’re right. I do need some good sleep, and I have tomorrow morning off so I’m going to try and have a lie in. You’d be great company,” she smiled, “but I think I just need to be on my own for a bit.”
    Returning her smile, he grabbed his helmet. “Of course.” He leaned in and pecked her on the forehead. “Call if you need anything, all right?”
    “I will, and thank you, Brendan,” she added softly.
    “No worries.”
    He stepped out of her flat and she shut the door behind him, locked it, and leaned heavily against it with another sigh. This one escalated into a yawn.
    Her bed beckoned her.
    She yawned again.
    The clock on her bedside table now read 23:59
    She smiled, dryly, turned out the light, and made her way to her bed by the moonlight that shone through the window. When she hit it, she crawled under her covers with gratitude, barely able to keep her eyes open.
    Goodbye, stinking, horrible day. Hello, tomorrow.
     

Chapter Seven
     
    “You didn’t tell her?” asked Lawrence, incredulously, as he polished the barrel of his dart-gun. “You shifted in front of her, but you didn’t explain how it all works or why she’s in danger?”
    They were in Lawrence’s study, gathering their things for tonight’s mission. The rain had begun to fall about half an hour ago, gently at first, but now it pounded against the window pane.
    “It’s not like I didn’t try. We were on limited time – and she was being difficult.”
    He made some kind of ‘harrumph’ noise. “That’s not a bad thing if she’s Ryan’s mate.”
    “I was going to go back tonight to watch over her; make sure she’s okay, but it can wait until tomorrow. Her mating pains disappeared after…” His heart squeezed in his chest as he thought about her body under his, his own pains banging against his rib cage. It was this way with all unmated wolves. The mating pains increased until you either bonded with your mate or died. The male wolves died at forty, and the age was exact, as if some timed pacemaker kept their hearts beating until then. It was tougher for the females: they died between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-seven. Their pacemaker was a little less picky about the timing, but they had less years to live. The males were born werewolves and could shift from the moment of birth. The females couldn’t. Their werewolf gene could only be activated by bonding with their mate – up until that time, they grew up within their packs virtually as humans.
    What made things worse was that since the separation of the wolf clans and their near annihilation in the late 18 th century, finding your mate was like trying to find a needle in a haystack, and once you did , the bonding could only occur under a full moon … during a thunderstorm . It came down to a crazy combination of biology, genetics and physics, which Taylor still hadn’t entirely gotten his head around. None of them had. The Trident were the only ones with answers, and they weren’t sharing.
    Add all the above together, and you had yourself a dying species.
    Lawrence spent most of his waking hours researching, studying, reading, flushing out information from their underground network – anything from relevant scientific experiments currently being conducted, to occult information coming to light, to hidden symbolism in modern pop literature and the media. He knew a lot, but not the key to their salvation – they were all heading towards extinction, sooner rather than later.
    To Taylor it was a fact he could bear. He had already