Page 18 of Her Wolf Protector

Tate grinned and gave chase.

FIFTEEN

Arwen awoke cold and stiff, and when she shook her head to clear it, metal clinked as the weight around her neck registered.

Chained up on the floor? Again? How?

It seemed like only a moment ago, she'd been running around in the sun with Wolf Man, in his wolf form, laughing and playing, before they'd gone inside so he could make her dinner.

Not that she'd needed it, because there'd been a warren of the most delicious rabbits down by the tarn and Wolf Man had graciously allowed her to eat all of them. Well, the ones she could catch, anyway. She'd scented there were more deeper in the warren, too deep to reach. They would live to become or to birth dinner for another day.

After dinner, she'd curled up on the bed beside Wolf Man, and dreamed she was human again. Sharing a bed with a man made of hot, hard muscle who was everything she'd ever wanted.

The stuff fantasies were made of.

Yet she'd awoken here, as a prisoner. Chained. She tugged at the chain, but it only tightened around her throat, threatening to cut off her air.

Arwen slumped to the tiles again, defeated. At least she could breathe now.

She needed Wolf Man, almost as much as she needed air.

She whined. Then she howled.

No answer.

She sniffed deeply, wondering why Wolf Man didn't respond.

When she realised the truth, she howled anew. Long and loud, but there was no one to hear.

Wolf Man was gone.

And she was chained up and alone.

SIXTEEN

Faint moonlight crowned behind the pack house of Wuffingas Estate as Tate slipped inside, but no one else was awake. Even as he lay down on his bed in the luxurious apartment that was his by right as pack enforcer, he could not sleep.

The scent of her. Irresistible, yet he'd had to resist. And when he couldn't...he'd fled. Though the forest in the dark, all the way to his pickup, fishtailing on the half-frozen muddy tracks with his headlights turning every tree into a monster screaming at the sky as he'd desperately tried to put as much distance between his mate and himself as humanly possible.

He hadn't even been sure what woke him.

Only that when he did wake up, he'd had a dog humping his leg. Only she wasn't a dog. She was a wolf, and his mate, and she'd gone into heat, which wasn't supposed to happen to wolf shifters, and the scent of her had been damn near irresistible.

It had taken all his self control to wrestle her into the bathroom, and back into the chains that only existed to keep out of control shifters safe until they could properly manage their own shifting skills. In all his years with the pack, both as a teen and now as one of the youth leaders, he'd never seen them used until this week. Oh, he'd heard stories of bitten shifters, struggling to adjust to their dual natures needing to be chained for a few hours or a day, as Ylva or one of the pack leaders explained to them about the secret world they'd suddenly become a part of, until they calmed down enough to remove their own chains.

It was easier to do with human hands, but even a wolf could do it with a well-placed paw controlled by the intelligent mind of a shifter. He and Shaw had practised their Houdini act more than once when Ylva wasn't looking. He'd even let the kids try it, when the foul Scottish weather had kept them inside.

Of course, the knockout potion he'd hit Arwen with would keep her from breaking herself free for a few hours yet, or at least he hoped. They kept a couple in the cabin for emergencies, and again, this was the first time he'd ever needed to use one.

On his own damn mate!

They'd blood bonded without any kind of mating frenzy, but he'd promised her he would not ask any more than she was willing to give, and even though she'd crouched down on the bed and presented herself to him, whining, he needed her full consent. As a thinking human, not a wolf, and most definitely not under the influence of an animalistic heat she should not be experiencing.

Ylva would know. She was the pack shaman. She'd know what was wrong with his mate and how to fix it.

But what if she couldn't fix it? What if Arwen was one of the few who, once shifted, could never shift back?

Tate tossed and turned, half wanting to go back to the cabin to Arwen, and half wanting to wake Ylva and demand answers, though it was hardly an emergency.