Page 14 of Possessive Mate

He went down like a sack of potatoes, grunting as the air was knocked right out of him.

Thanks, Ed, Elena thought as she howled with triumph. Her brother's careful training when they were younger really had taught her a thing or two, even if she would never admit it to his face.

But it appeared there was one lesson he had taught her that she had failed to remember. She had gotten far too cocky, and before she knew it, a second wolf was on top of her, pinning her to the ground with claws digging painfully into her shoulders.

The snarling in her ear was a definite warning to not try and fight any more. But what other choice did she have? She had no idea who these wolves were. They most definitely weren't Nightstar wolves. They smelled nothing like Eddie or Jack or even Hanson, who all shared similar elements in their scents after having been united so long as a pack.

No, these guys smelled of forest and leaf mold and worse, pig shit.

And whoever they were, they were certainly here to cause trouble.

What they didn't realize was that Elena was used to trouble following her, and though she had little left to live for, she never gave up without a fight.

Closing her eyes, she breathed out a long, deep sigh and allowed her entire body to go limp.

Whimpering just a little, low in her throat, she allowed the second attacker to believe he had gotten the best of her.

He couldn't have been more wrong.

She felt his grip loosening. More than that, she felt the wave of excitement that rushed over him as he began to believe he had been victorious.

Then, just as she prepared to show him he had been wrong, she saw something out the corner of her eye that made her blood run cold.

Thick red fur flashed right past her. A shiver ran through her body. Now, she was hopelessly outnumbered. Two wolves she might have been able, to handle but a third was pushing it.

And with the first already clambering back to his paws, she was done for.

Even Eddie couldn't have trained her enough to take on three male wolves that were all at least twice the size she was.

But just as she started to give in to despair, something marvelous happened.

The weight of the wolf on her back was gone so suddenly that she sucked in a sharp breath of relief.

The sounds of snarling and fighting filled her ears as she scrambled to her paws and whipped around to figure out what the hell was going on.

And that's when her heart stopped. The third wolf hadn't been another attacker, after all. In fact, he was taking on both of her attackers at once, and he was doing so with glorious agility.

Elena didn't think she had ever seen a wolf so swift or speedy. For one so large, he moved like one half his size, clawing and biting, pulling with swift lashes of his head or knocking away with an aggressive shoulder bump.

He made quick work of getting the two attacking wolves so tangled up in each other that they appeared unable to figure out who was their friend and who their foe.

Then, just when Elena thought perhaps he might finish them both off, he turned and bared his teeth at her.

It was an unmistakable order. She had to run. And so she turned and did just that.

Hearing paws pounding behind her, she glanced back to see a streak of red following.

Her rescuer was right behind her. Then he was running right beside her. And finally, when they were well within the pack's borders once more, he swiftly cut in front of her and blocked her path.

Elena just barely managed to skid to a halt before barreling right into him.

With a low growl, she started to shake off her wolf, wishing to give him a damn piece of her mind. But the growl caught in her throat.

With the foul scents of the enemy wolves fading from her nostrils, she got a good sniff of her rescuer, and her heart stopped.

Crouched in human form before the great hulk of a red wolf, she cowered with realization. Hanson!

The second he started to shift, too, she caught sight of his gorgeous human face, and all hell broke loose inside her.

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