Free Terry Spear’s Wolf Bundle by Terry Spear Page B

companionship after all. “I’ve never chosen a mate. Seems I can’t find the right one either.”
    She let out her breath. “Why have you never left the pack? I thought you would years ago.”
    “I did, a few times.” He wasn’t about to tell how long and hard he’d searched for her. “But I alwayslonged to be back with my own kind. When Argos took me in—”
    “What?”
    “I thought you knew.”
    “Argos’s wolf pack wasn’t your own?”
    Nuzzling his mouth against her ear, he nibbled at the lobe. “No. They took me in like they did you.”
    “I thought you were part of the family.” Her fingertips caressed his arm with feather-light strokes.
    His body hardened in response, but he fought giving into his baser instincts. “I was…am. They’re my family. And, as much as I don’t care for Volan, he’s the pack leader. For the most part, he rules well and keeps the pack safe. I’m not a lone wolf kind of guy. I like being a member of a family.”
    “So your cousins who came with you aren’t really your cousins?”
    “They are, in a manner of speaking. You’re a distant cousin, if you want to get right down to it.”
    “Thank you, no.”
    “Don’t think you’re good enough to be a cousin to a gray?”
    A sensual chuckle issued from her belly, warming him several degrees.
    Ringing her nipple with the tip of his finger, he enticed it to harden. The sensation shot a spark of interest straight to his groin. He could never get enough of touching her to make up for the time lost. Yet, in the back of his mind, he knew she didn’t want him, that it was only her wolf’s heat that made her crave him. “Argos wondered if we did you a disserviceby not finding a red lupus garou pack to return you to, if maybe you would have settled down with your own kind.”
    “I’m afraid I’ve been with the bigger grays for so long that the reds look puny.”
    He stilled his hands. “You’ve been in touch with some, Bella?”
    “At…at the zoo.”
    “What?”
    “Two men. About our age. They said they’d break me out. One urinated along the fence line. Didn’t you catch his odor?”
    Hell and damnation. Fisting his hands in her hair, he knew damn well what the red intended with his actions. “The breeze must have shifted.” Damn his bad luck. Not only would the reds frown on another male lupus garou trespassing, but a gray trying to take a red to another wolves’ territory wouldn’t set well with them. “You should have told me.”
    “You’re not worried about them, are you? We left the zoo and then ended up at the hospital and now here. They won’t be able to follow me.”
    “The news will carry the story about your hospital stay and subsequent disappearance. The mystery woman found in the wolf’s pen, without clothes, the disappearance of the red wolf, and most likely my description, too. If the red who targeted you is a pack leader, no one would cross him. So he’d know I was from out of town, not a member of his pack.”
    “He was young, your age…early twenties, small. He wouldn’t be a leader.”
    “Reds are smaller.” He wasn’t dismissing the fact that they could have more trouble than they bargained for—first zoo man Thompson, then the cops, and now a pack of red wolves.
    “Besides, Devlyn, I am selecting my mate.”
    “That’s what this is all about? You want to choose instead of a male choosing you?” His voice sounded as incredulous as he felt.
    “This is all about not wanting to be Volan’s mate. Don’t you see?”
    “He’s the leader. You should be proud a leader wants you. He’ll always safeguard you. Besides, I thought you and he shared a connection.” He couldn’t help sounding peeved. But, in truth, besides the fact she wanted a human mate and the way she denied wanting to be with Volan, he felt otherwise.
    She didn’t respond.
    “Bella?”
    “Leave it,” she snapped.
    “Why do you despise him so? It’s not because he killed the boy at the lake. You hated