Free Pride's Pursuit (a Wolf's Pride novel, book three) by Cat Kalen

leaves from my hands. As they fall to the ground in
a shimmer of color, I answer with,“No, but a female wolf has been through here recently, and
she’s frightened.”
Stone scents the woods and spins around in a circle to commit our current location to
memory.His voice is calm but I don’t miss the underlying urgency when he says, “We need to
move.Fast.”
I nod in agreement and with that he gestures for the others to follow. Using hurried
footsteps, I fall in behind him and while he takes the lead on this trek, Logan stays at the back of
the pack, keeping every one of us in his sight at all times.
Our feet fall mutely as we track deeper into the woods, until the sounds of the highway, the
ocean, and all forms of human life are left far behind.
My skin begins to itch, burning in warning, and I resist the urge to claw at my flesh as I
continue to scan the forest. I angle my head to the side, sorting, searching, listening for signs of
danger.
I take another step, but when Stone stops abruptly, I crash into him. My nose smashes into
his hard back and I let loose an undignified oomph as my legs falter.
He spins on the balls of his feet, and in a movement so fast it catches me by surprise, he
curls protective arms around my waist and pulls me against him. His familiar scent drowns out
the smells of the forest around me, and practically steals the breath from my lungs. I open my
mouth to speak, but he presses a finger to my lips to silence me.
“ Sorry ,” he whispers into my thoughts, as the rough pad of his thumb scrapes across my
bottom lip. His touch, warm and deliberately intimate, sends sensations rippling through me. A
flurry of emotions pass over his face, and everything in the hungryway he’s looking at me,
purposely dragging his thumb over my mouth in a slow agonizing caress, confuses my wolf and
tortures my soul.“ I didn’t mean to hurt you. ”
“ I’m…I’m okay ,” I say, but he doesn’t make a move to let me go. Instead, his nostrils flare
and heavy lashes briefly fall over his dark eyes as he sends me a look, one that promises so
much. We stay like that a moment longer, my body completely immobile as he keeps me
anchored to his.
Somewhere in the near distance, a twig snaps, the sharp sound piercing the quiet and
dragging me back to reality.
“ What is it, Stone ?” I finally ask breaking the moment between us. I look past his shoulders,
trying to see what spooked him as hurried footsteps herald the approach of the others.
Logan moves close and fixes Stone with a dangerous look, but the alpha with his arms
circled around my body still seems reluctant to break his hold. Stone glares back, but when I
push on his arms, he uncoils them from around my waist. After I extricate myself from his grip,
my father steps up beside us all and when he gestures to a spot behind Stone, I use that time to
pull myself together.
“What’s going on?” Logan asks between clenched teeth, tension crackling in the air.
Stone aims his finger, and using our exceptional night vision, we all look in the direction
he’s pointing. Collective gasps can be heard when we glimpse an old cabin camouflaged
beneath a cluster of weeping trees. Tucked far off the beaten path, the place is invisible to the
road, the sky, or even hikers. And for some reason that has the hairs on my nape tingling.
As I stare at it, and recall the scent saturating the fallen leaves, my mind takes me in a bleak
direction, one that has me realizing how a wolf’s tortured screams would go unanswered way
out here in the middle of nowhere.
That dark, disturbing thought has a shiver moving through meand I don’t miss the strange
tingling in my bloodstream. I will the image from my head but there is nothing I can do to stop
the tremble running along my spine.
As if sensing my distress Logan steps close, his stance protective, and his eyes are full of
genuine concern as his body hovers over mine.
“What is it, Pride?” he asked, his