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licked his dry lips and said, “Matthew. My name’s Matthew.”
    “Your full name.”
    “Bryant. Matthew Bryant.”
    “Matthew Bryant, I can smell your injuries. I can also smell them healing.” He paused. “And I can smell why they’re healing. But your companions don’t share your secret.”
    Matthew shifted on the damp ground, his knees digging into the earth. “No. Someone’s looking for me. One of your kind.”
    “To mate?”
    Matthew swallowed. “No. Not to mate.”
    Sal made a choked sound. Matthew hoped Sal kept his mouth shut. Chen, too.
    And God, he hoped this wolf wasn’t thinking about claiming him to mate through this heat season. Matthew had never fucked a wolf and he didn’t really want to start now with a wolf he didn’t even know, during heat season.
    Wolves were unusually attractive, no doubt about that, but the only wolf he’d ever wanted to fuck was Ash.
    The wolf straightened abruptly and turned his head.
    A coyote howled in the distance.
    When he turned back to Matthew, his eyes seemed to glow brighter than before and he growled low in the back of his throat. “We’re leaving. They’re not coming with us.”
    Matthew threw Sal a startled look, just as the wolf yanked him upright by the fabric of his shirt.
    Sal scrambled to his feet. “The hell you’re taking him!”
    Without hesitation, the wolf turned on Sal and roared, “Submit!”
    Sal jerked back, tripping over Chen. Before he could regain his feet, the wolf started hauling Matthew along beside him. Brush crackled underfoot and the wolf ripped a branch from a sapling as they passed. Matthew stumbled.
    Sal yelled and rushed them.
    The wolf swung around and knocked Sal to the ground, his reflexes so fast that Matthew didn’t have a chance to even try to stop him. The limber switch whistled through the air and caught Sal in the chest. “Don’t try to follow. If my heat comes on me while you’re near, we’ll mate. If you can’t submit…”
    The wolf didn’t finish his sentence, just threw the switch to the ground in front of Sal and turned with Matthew, pulling him along.
    Matthew tripped and the wolf’s hand twisted in Matthew’s shirt, hauling him upright again while the collar nearly choked Matthew. Matthew started coughing and he jerked at the fabric with his undamaged hand.
    The wolf paused and adjusted his hold. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said. “Walk faster.”
    “I’m trying,” Matthew gasped out. “I don’t have shoes.”
    The shadow of the wolf’s head bowed as he looked down. “Why are you in a forest without shoes?”
    “It’s—” Matthew had to catch his breath. “It’s complicated.”
    The wolf had to know Matthew was struggling, but he didn’t slow his pace through the woods. “Will he follow?”
    “Sal? I don’t know.”
    “Humans have no sense of self-preservation.” The wolf made a strange sound and started stalking through the woods so fast Matthew had trouble staying on his feet. “I would prefer it if he did, although he might regret his actions when my heat cycle washes away the last of the repression drugs in my system.”
    Matthew didn’t know what to say to that, but the relief he felt was a physical thing. Maybe this wolf wasn’t interested in him for mating.
    But if the wolf didn’t want to mate, then why had he taken Matthew?
    Matthew kept walking, all the while worried he wouldn’t like the answer when he found out.
     
     

Chapter 5
    The trudge through the woods lasted so long that Matthew was almost ready to pass out from exhaustion when it ended at a cozy little cabin in the woods, something that had obviously been built before the wolves took possession of the protectorate.
    The wolf took his time making a wide pass around the cabin, then moved in out of the shadows of the trees cautiously. He left Matthew sitting on the ground where Matthew gulped in oxygen and thought longingly of the last real meal he’d had.
    The wolf came back for him a few minutes