Both of them had a lot to learn about him. Honesty was in his sexual programming. Teasing was not. “Hear my words, Katarina Volkov. You may think the chemistry between us is a joke, but I don’t.”
Katarina waved the hand Reed had shoved off his leg. “Bah… chemistry always big joke. That is life.”
As they crested a hill in the road, their attention left the truck and each other as they peered at a pillar of black smoke rising above the trees and curling high into the sky some distance ahead.
Yana rolled down the window and sniffed. “I smell burning, but more than to heat a home. This is smoke from a serious fire. Maybe forests?”
“Not likely. The forests are still winter wet and we’re in our rainy season,” Reed answered as his gaze took in the rolling black plumes. “That’s a dry smoke.”
“You think your village on fire?” Katarina asked, leaning forward to stare at the smoke.
“Maybe,” Reed answered quietly as he stomped his foot to the pedal. “Hang on. This could get real bumpy.”
The last fifteen minutes of their drive was rough on all of them. What greeted them in the village was chaos.
Strangers dressed in dark military clothes were running from angry werewolves. Many were carrying auto-weapons, but only those with tranquilizer guns shot at Reed’s people.
Without a word, Reed slid out of the vehicle as soon as it stopped. He shifted to a wolf half the size of the truck. Seeing him slowed the men with weapons. Several pointed and exchanged surprised looks.
Finally, one lifted his weapon and took aim at the gigantic wolf stalking toward them.
Katarina’s feet hit the ground and never stopped. If they got Reed… no, she could not let that happen. He was powerful, but power was only good if he could get past the attackers' weapons.
“Mind our things, sister,” Katarina commanded, shifting and running toward the man without glancing back.
“Sure. I am helpless wolf. I am nothing important,” Yana answered with an eye roll at being so easily dismissed.
“You are important to me,” Katarina declared just before she shifted.
Yana watched as her sister’s large white wolf sprang into the air to land in front of Reed. A tranquilizer dart meant for Reed hit Katarina’s shoulder and dropped her to the ground.
Reed’s giant wolf leaped over Katarina’s fallen body and landed in front of her to growl in warning at the men. The ones with tranquilizer guns argued for a moment with those carrying more serious weapons. One of them threw a small canister on the ground that rolled and released a heavy blue smoke that soon filled the air and made it hard to breathe.
Using the distraction for her own purposes, Yana ducked and ran through the smoke to get to her sister’s side. She yanked the tranquilizer dart out of Katarina's shoulder and threw it away, but the damage was already done. Her fierce alpha sister was out cold.
Reed turned around when he sensed Yana’s presence. Even through the thick smoke Yana winced at the sight of Reed’s enormous pointed teeth flashing white as he showed his displeasure. He was the biggest werewolf Yana had ever seen in her life—bigger than even her father.
“Katarina was saving you from being knocked out so you could continue to fight,” Yana informed him. Was she telling a lie? Maybe.
Katarina had never lived in a pack, so her sister did not understand that her sacrifice might not be appreciated by the alpha of this one. Trying to better understand her elder sibling, Yana had discussed Katarina’s character with Heidi the Healer who seemed to know Katarina best. Understanding did not, however, make her volatile sister easier to deal with, especially when she risked herself.
As the smoke cleared away, Reed shifted back to human with his clothes on, Yana noticed with regret. She wouldn’t have minded getting a look at him, and it would have been great fun to tease Katarina that she had seen his assets first. Unfortunately, the fully dressed alpha now glared down at both of them.
Yana draped herself protectively over Katarina’s wolf. She had often done the same for her mother when her father was in a wrathful mood.
“Is she alive?” he asked.
Yana shrugged as she straightened. “It is hard to kill a Russian wolf. Katarina breathes and her heartbeat is strong.”
Reed grunted. “Watch your meddling sister until our healer can look at her. I have other things to do.”
With a final warning to be careful, Yana heard Reed ordering a couple men to stop everything and follow the attackers to see where they had disappeared to so quickly. She could only sigh at yet another alpha ordering her around. In the absence of attackers to fight, Reed headed to talk to those who were putting out fires from two nearby buildings that were still burning.
She muttered to herself as she stood and looked around. “First chance I get, I make a giant batch of werewolf vodka. Strong drink takes the edge off stress for everyone in village. Yana will be everyone’s friend then.”
The smoke was almost completely cleared out. She could see people and children peeking out of their hiding places in several of the nearby buildings. Her eyes scanned for a place she could move her sister’s form until she came around.
As if reading her thoughts, Katarina suddenly rolled and groaned before shifting into a naked, large-breasted woman wearing only the shoes she’d taken from Matt Gray Wolf’s donation bin.
“Trakhni moyu zhizn',” Yana said in Russian as she scanned for gawkers who might be amused by her unconscious sibling’s nakedness.
It was embarrassing that her strong, alpha sister couldn’t keep her clothes on when she shifted. Yana had mastered shifting with clothes as a young wolf. Shifting from wolf form to a fully dressed human was far less complicated than remaining naked when your mind was in the right place.
Ariel, the alpha nano wolf, was the only exception, and she’d secretly decided that was a mistake coming from the nano wolf’s unholy creation. Until she’d met Katarina. Her alpha sister shifted on orders from her gut and without regard for the dangers to her body—whatever its form. Somehow that also translated into flashing your womanly assets to all with eyes to see them.
Yana sighed as she stared down and wondered what to do to help her sister. Muttering again to herself in Russian—because English had no adequate words to express her level of frustration—she hurried back to the truck to retrieve the rest Katarina’s clothes.
Yana told her that none of the wolves who had been tranquilized woke as quickly as she did. For her rapid return to consciousness, Katarina was deeply grateful. Yana had also warned her about Reed’s anger as she dressed in her clothes that had magically ended up in the truck during her shift. She wasn’t surprised that Reed was angry over what she’d done, but the stoic Black Wolf alpha had yet to express that anger to her. In fact, Katarina noticed Reed said little to anyone.
Was the wolf always so passionless? Reed should be livid and growling and angry beyond his ability to rein it in. If this was what a long life did to you, she would rather die screaming and fighting.
She shook her head at the sad thought that Reed’s personality no longer allowed expression of what feelings might rule him. Many Russian males were like that. They drank away their feelings or hid them behind fatalistic futility because they didn’t bother to keep fighting. That kind of stoicism did not bode well in a bed partner, and Katarina found her desire for the handsome alpha waning for the first time since meeting him.