The Wolven by Deborah LeBlanc Page B

of chemistry—a tangle of arms and legs—a physical need met, but a soul left empty. Intuitively, he knew that any man lucky enough to be intimate with Shauna MacDonald would be satiated in ways he never thought possible.
    His intuition had been right.
    Danyon knew he was tempting fate when he’d helped Shauna retrieve the plates from the cabinet shelf. And fate did not disappoint. When he’d leaned over to grab the plates, her scent, a heady mixture of musk and lilacs, nearly shattered his resolve. His undoing, however, had been when she’d turned around, and he first tasted her lips. From that moment on, the rest of the world had ceased to exist.
    He lost count of the number of times they had made love, but it hadn’t taken him long to figure out he was already in way over his head. She had left him feeling filled and emptied at the same time, which was nirvana in its purest form. But the sure sign of his demise had been the ache in his heart, when he’d watched her leave this morning.
    Danyon was still lost in thought when the smell of blood caught his attention. Puzzled, he glanced down athis hands and then up into the rearview mirror to check his face. No blood. He slowed the car and lowered the driver’s side window. The scent of blood slammed into his nostrils. He swerved to the shoulder of the road and hit the brakes. Fortunately, the road he’d been driving on wasn’t heavily traveled. Aside from an old pickup that had passed him some time ago, his car was virtually the only vehicle on the road.
    Following his nose, Danyon inched the car back onto the road, then drove another mile or so before the scent of blood led him to a graveled road on the left. He turned and followed its meandering path to the base of a forest that was part of the Jean Lafitte Wildlife Preserve. The road eventually ended at a small boat launch on a lake.
    Danyon parked the car and got out to further investigate on foot. The blood trail led him around the short end of the lake, then deeper into the woods. It wasn’t long before he heard voices. The loudest belonged to a female, and he recognized it almost immediately.
    It was Kara Matiste.
    “When I tell you to pick it up, that means now!”
    “I tried,” a male voice cried. “It makes me—”
    “I don’t care if it makes you sick.”
    “Swear to God I tried!”
    “Quit your sniveling. What kind of man are you, crying like a girl?”
    “But I—I can’t.”
    “There’s no such thing as can’t. Do you understand me?”
    Danyon stepped into a clearing and saw Kara shoveone of her weres, who he knew— Lawrence Castille—so hard, the were stumbled backwards and nearly fell. Standing a short distance away to Kara’s left, was James Darbonne, another were from her pack. Lawrence and James had been two of Carl’s top men. Both stood a little over six feet tall and had average builds. In human years, they would have been closing in on their mid-thirties. Although James and Lawrence were twice Kara’s size and topped her by at least four inches, they cowered away from her like frightened puppies.
    Kara’s long black hair was pulled back and held in place by a gold barrette, and she wore jeans with the pant legs tucked into black cowboy boots. Her short-sleeved blouse was blood-red with white snaps running down the front. She did a double take when she spotted Danyon. Obviously, she’d been so wrapped up in verbally bashing her weres, she hadn’t caught wind of his approach.
    “What are you doing here?” she asked him, sounding a little unnerved.
    Lawrence and James looked away shame-faced.
    “I have news from August,” Danyon said. The smell of blood had grown so thick, he actually tasted it. From between Kara and Lawrence’s legs, he spotted something on the ground behind them. He suspected it was what led him here. He wanted to walk over and see for himself, but out of respect for Kara’s role as alpha and the fact that he was in her territory, he stayed