Chapter 7

The male voices sounded distant as I slowly regained consciousness. It took my head a moment to clear enough for me to realize that I was being carried by one of them and he wasn’t being particularly cautious about jostling me about.

Confused and uncertain of what to do, I kept my eyes closed while I focused on the words being passed back and forth between the two brothers.

“I can’t believe you brought them here just before the full moon. What were you thinking?” snapped Noah.

“I had no choice,” Oscar defensively said. “I’m on a time crunch. Kenzie’s the only one I could find to help at the last minute. When she asked to bring Lisa, what was I supposed to say… no psychics allowed?”

“It’s bad enough that she’s psychic and could pick up on something, but she carries a touch of the bloodline,” Noah complained. “It’s faint, but I could smell it in her urine. We’ll be lucky if they leave her alone now that she’s marked the woods with her piss.”

“Yes,” Oscar mused. “That’s unfortunate.”

“It would have been so simple to give them a small tour of the place upon arrival,” Noah criticized.

“I got here only minutes before you did, brother,” Oscar barked.

I could feel Noah’s chest fill with air and then purge it out in a sigh of resignation.

“Well,” he huffed, “I can’t babysit her the entire time. I’ll have to leave Snow here.”

“Is he enough?” Oscar hesitantly asked.

“He’ll do what he’s told,” Noah replied.

“But is he enough,” Oscar asked again.

“It depends on who comes and how many,” Noah replied. “Does Kenzie know anything?”

“No,” Oscar said in earnest. “To tell you the truth, I had it in my head that they’d bypass this place and we wouldn’t have to say anything.”

“Not with that pool of urine she left behind. The woman’s got one hell of a bladder to hold that much,” Noah grumbled. “We’ll be lucky if half the mountain doesn’t pick up on it.”

“Can we disguise the scent?” Oscar hopefully asked. “We have a few days before the moon is full.”

“I plan on covering it as much as possible, but it’s soaked into the ground,” Noah said. “Maybe, if we’re lucky, we can mask it at least enough that it doesn’t draw those from the other side of the mountain.”

“We should still probably tell Kenzie,” Oscar suggested.

“Is she trustworthy?” Noah asked with concern.

“I mean to marry her one day,” Oscar replied.

“Don’t you think you should date her first?” Noah asked with a chuckle.

“There is that,” Oscar chuckled back.

“Damn, what a mess,” Noah huffed.

Unable to keep quiet any longer, I opened my eyes and looked at the strong jaw of the man who held me in his arms.

We were almost to the cabin when I said, “People pee in the wild all the time. I don’t know why my doing it is such a big deal.”

“It’s not the pee, but who did the peeing,” Oscar mysteriously said.

Looking at him as if he had four heads, I scowled as I complained that I had no clue what he was talking about.

“It’s you,” Noah offered. “You’ve got specific genetics that leave a special scent. It’s unlike that of the normal human.”

“I’m a normal human,” I protested.

“The hell you are,” Oscar blurted out.

Feeling alert and agitated, I looked into Noah’s dark, bottomless eyes and said in a firm voice, “You can put me down now. I can walk.”

His eyes lit up with what I assumed was amusement as he said, “I have no doubt that you can.”

To my surprise, he made no move to put me down. Instead, he climbed the steps to the porch with such ease and grace that one would have thought that he was carrying a pillow instead of a one-hundred-ten-pound female.

Oscar scooted ahead and opened the door to the cabin so that his brother could continue without interruption. It wasn’t until we were well into the room before Noah unceremoniously dropped me onto the sofa.

“What’s going on?” Kenzie asked as she scurried to check on me.

Her look of concern shifted to amusement once she realized that I was perfectly fine and simply fuming inside over Noah’s behavior. She could feel the chemistry between him and me, but could also feel us both resisting it. If Noah stuck around, she bet it would prove interesting to see how things progressed.

Before anyone could explain the dynamics of the situation, Snow appeared in the doorway. Kenzie sucked in her breath, but made no other noise as she stared, wide-eyed, at the beautiful beast.

Seeing her reaction, Oscar slapped the side of his thigh and called the wolf to him. Snow obediently moved next to the handsome veterinarian like a dog might a master.

Scratching the beast behind its ears, Oscar lightheartedly said, “Meet Snow.”

“He’s beautiful,” Kenzie muttered with awe.

“He’s going to be staying with you while you’re here,” Noah offered.

“The hell he is,” I blurted out.

Snow snarled and Oscar raised a brow.

“I was under the impression that you two made friends,” he said.

“If you mean my standing still, terrified, while it sniffed me from head to toe is making friends, then, I guess we did,” I said, “but it was one sided.”

“How so?” Noah asked.

“I never sniffed back,” I announced.

Whether it was meant to be funny or not, my remark got a roar of laughter from the room until I eventually joined in.

“Have you any idea how scary that was?” I asked when the laughter settled down.

“Lisa’s an author and a city girl,” Kenzie explained. “She’s not used to being around domestic animals, let alone wild ones.”

“So, she came into the deep woods where there are wild animals all about to relax?” Noah incredulously pointed out.

“Piss off,” I snapped.

I’d had just about as much of his pompous attitude as I could stand. Host or no host, the man was rude and insulting.

“I’d say you did enough of that for all of us,” Noah chuckled.

“You do have one king sized bladder,” Oscar noted.

“Are we back on this topic again?” I asked with exasperation.

“What topic?’ Kenzie asked with confusion. “Your bladder?”

“I couldn’t find the outhouse, so I peed in the woods,” I explained. “Apparently, that’s a no-no.”

“Peeing in the woods is a no-no?” Kenzie repeated with confusion. “Someone needs to explain what’s going on. I’m very confused.”

Oscar eyed Noah as he said, “We have something to discuss. You might want to sit down for it.”