* * * *

When he woke her up, it was still dark outside.

"Morning," he said, his voice a rumble under her ear. It felt so good that she pretended to still be asleep.

He wrapped his arms around her and rolled over quickly twice. She managed a squawk as they rolled right off the bed. She landed on top of him, and her hip on his belly vibrated with his silent laughter.

"Like that, is it?" she muttered, and, before she remembered his wound, touched her fingers into the muscle just under his ribs.

"Quit that," he mock growled, catching her hand so she couldn't tickle him again. He sounded amused, so she must not have hurt him. "We have a job to do, woman, and you're slowing us down."

"Hah," she said, and wiggled her hip a little, making them both very aware that he'd probably agree to a delay in getting ready. Then she wiggled a little more determinedly and slipped free of his hold.

"Morning," she told him. "Time to go." And she sauntered naked out of the room and down the hall to the bathroom.

* * * *

He watched her go with appreciation, aware of the spark of true happiness that lit his soul. She didn't look beaten at all this morning-and that little sashay of her hips told him that she was feeling pretty good.

He'd made her feel like that. How long had it been since he'd been the cause of someone else's happiness?

He lay back on the floor to enjoy it until his conscience kicked in. They had a job to do. The sooner they got out into the woods, the sooner they'd be back and free to play.

To that end, he tested out his wounds experimentally. They still hurt, and they'd slow him up a little-but as Samuel promised, he was feeling much better. And not just because of Anna.

He was dressed and collecting his winter gear from the closet-he'd have to find someplace else for all of it, so Anna could have half of the closet-when Anna came back in. She was wrapped in a bath sheet, having evidently lost some of her boldness while in the bathroom.

He decided to give her some space. "I'll fix breakfast while you get dressed."

Her eyes were on the floor as she skittered past him. If his ears hadn't been sharp, he wouldn't have heard her nervous "Okay."

But nothing would have kept the rank smell of fear from his nose. He froze where he stood and watched her keep her shoulders rounded in submission as she knelt on the floor by her box of clothes.

He tried to open the link between them...but it was no stronger than it had been yesterday or the day they'd first met.

He'd never been mated before, but he knew how it was supposed to work. Love and sex would bind human to human-then the wolf would choose, or not. Since their wolves had already clearly chosen, since he'd chosen, he'd been sure that their lovemaking would seal the bond.

He looked at her, the knobs of her spine and the sharp edges of her scapula showing clearly that she needed to gain some weight-a visible sign of the suffering that she'd endured in Leo's pack. The worst scars didn't show: werewolves seldom scar on the outside.

He opened his mouth to say something, but stopped. He needed to think some things through before he even knew what to ask. Or of whom to ask it.

* * * *

He fed her breakfast, only a little closer to the answers he sought. But even distracted, it amused him how much satisfaction he got from watching her eat-even though she wouldn't look up at him.

"We're going to get a little later start than I expected," he said abruptly as he rinsed his pans and stored them in the dishwasher. "I've got a few things I'd like Heather to do-and I have another person I need to see."

She was still in the dining room, but her silence spoke for her. She was still too intimidated by him or by last night to ask. For which he was grateful. He had no intention of lying to her-but he didn't want to tell her who he was going to talk to, either.

"I can finish the dishes then," she offered.

"All right." He dried his hands and stopped to kiss the top of her head-a quick, passionless kiss that shouldn't add to her tension, but still enough for Brother Wolf to feel satisfied that she knew who he belonged to. He was hers, whether she wanted him or not.

Heather was still at his father's, sleeping in the room next to her partner's. Bleary-eyed and tired, she made some calls and some suggestions and arranged things to his satisfaction.

Which left him with only one more person to track down. Fortunately, he'd found that most people were easy to locate at five thirty in the morning.

Chapter SEVEN

Asil dreamed of a familiar house: small and well made, a house built for a warm climate with carefully tended orange trees by the door. He paused beside the bench positioned where it would catch the shade of the biggest orange tree when the sun was high in the sky. Running a finger over the clumsy jointing between two of the pieces that formed the back, he wished vainly that he'd had time to fix it.

Even knowing what was going to happen, he couldn't make himself stay by the bench, not when Sarai was in the house. He had no photographs of her, nor had any of the paintings he'd attempted ever done her justice. His artistic talent was plebeian at best. Only in his dreams did he see her.

He took only a step and found himself in the main room. Half shop, half kitchen, the room should have been utilitarian, but Sarai had hung baskets of plants and painted flowers on tiles set in the floor, making it feel welcoming. On the worktable set near the back of the room, his mate ground a cinnamon stick into fine powder with quick, competent hands.

He sucked in the air to savor her scent, flavored by the spice she worked with, as it often was. His favorite was Sarai and vanilla, but Sarai and cinnamon was almost as good.

She was so beautiful to him, even though he knew that others might not find her so. Her hands were callused and strong, with nails trimmed blunt. The short sleeves of her dress showed muscles gained both from her work and from running as a wolf in the wilds of the nearby hills. Her nose, which she despaired of, was long and strong, with a delightful little bump on the end.

He reached out, but he could not touch her. "Sarai?"

When she didn't turn to him, he knew that it was going to be the bad dream. He fought to get free as hard as one of his wild-wolf cousins with a foot caught in an iron trap might have, but he couldn't chew off his leg or force the trap that held him here. So he had to watch, helpless, as it happened again.

Hooves rang on the cobbles he'd laid outside the door to keep the mud at bay. Sarai clicked her tongue lightly on the roof of her mouth in displeasure-she had always hated to be interrupted in the middle of mixing her medicines.