And given the circumstances, she could become even more of a problem now.
"Sarge is another story. Fergus, you were supposed to have someone watching him at all times," Axel Ash said, climbing over a fallen tree in their path.
He truly didn't blame Fergus, considering how much responsibility he'd given his second sub-leader.
Anything to try and make his people feel needed and well respected, to turn around the ill feelings they had about themselves due to Alfred's maniacal rule.
"Sorry, Axel Ash." Fergus hung his head a little. "Sarge was helping Quincy and Pierce clean out the loafing shed when I saw the brothers take off after Sarge, all in their wolf coats."
"Hell. The brothers ought to know better than to change and run in the woods or anywhere else during daylight hours. Especially now that we have a wolf biologist searching for wolves in the area."
Elgin frowned. "The woman who gave the lecture last night? Carver said she'd left for California."
"Yeah? Well, Cassie Roux gave him the slip and returned here." Axel Ash ducked under a tree branch. "I don't envy our neighbour on the coast. Hunter Grasmere's got his hands full of newly turned wolves. And all we have is one, but he's... something else." Sarge was a case and a half.
"Quincy and Pierce aren't much better, and they were born lupus garous. I know you wanted to take them in since they needed a pack to provide them guidance, but..."
Elgin didn't have any patience for lupus garous who was twenty, had been ousted from a pack in Southern California, and hadn't learned to follow pack rules.
In truth, the twin brothers had been kicked out of three packs already, no one wanting to deal with men that old who seemed untrainable. In Elgin and Axel Ash's own pack, teens were another story.
Elgin had the patience of a wise, old wolf when dealing with them, even though he and his mate, Laney, had never had any children of their own.
But Axel Ash felt the brothers were still salvageable. "Someone should have given them more guidance when they were younger.
When their parents died, they were foisted off on another pack, and the leader there didn't have the balls to make them mind. I have high hopes we'll teach them to be model lupus garous."
Elgin grunted.
Well, maybe not model lupus garous. Some never learned how to exist in a pack and became loners. But Axel Ash didn't believe the brothers were hopeless.
"I suppose you don't want to shift." Elgin sounded disinterested in the proposition, despite bringing it up.
His other men appeared more hopeful that Axel Ash would give them permission to shift. "No. It would probably take a fraction of the time for us to track them down, but I don't advocate running in the woods in broad daylight.
If we came across hunters, we'd have a hell of a lot more to worry about." Not to mention if Cassie saw them.
Elgin cleared his throat. Axel Ash pushed aside a hemlock branch and waited for him to propose his question.
Elgin cleared his throat again.
Axel Ash glanced back at him, his other men remaining silent.
Elgin's concerned gaze met Axel Ash's, and he blurted out, "I saw a beautiful redheaded woman running through the woods wearing khaki shorts and shirt, big lion-tamer hat, carrying a backpack.
I worried she might have seen something that had frightened her. Like three red wolves."
Fergus nodded.
Axel Ash's woodland nymph. "Did you smell her?"
At the puzzled look on his men's faces, Axel Ash wished he hadn't asked.
Then Elgin frowned. "No, she was downwind of us. Why?"
"I smelled a female red wolf."
Elgin's eyes widened. "Hell." He glanced back in the direction they'd come. "Oh, hell. You wanted to go after her."
Despite his genetics commanding him to go after the wolf, Axel Ash wanted Cassie, but he didn't want to let his people know that. Hair the colour of copper, thick and curly, was bound except for the tendrils that had escaped their confinement and begging to be caressed.
He would have loved to have tossed her safari adventurer's hat aside and released her tresses, allowing them to fall carelessly over her shoulders.
And plunged his hands into the silky strands, then pulled her close to delight in the feel of her, the smell of her, and to kiss her like she deserved to be kissed, just like he craved to last night, the redheaded woodland nymph.
Skin shimmering with perspiration had flushed beautifully with his perusal. Her nipples had puckered against the tank top she wore, the luscious crowns straining for release.
Given the chance, he would have freed the hostages and stroked them with his tongue to appease them.
Elgin rubbed his whiskered chin. "Do you think she saw our men in their wolf coats?"
"She didn't encounter our men, just one red wolf. Me."
Elgin stared at Axel Ash. "Oh."
"I wasn't wearing my wolf coat." Axel Ash's rules were the same for him as they were for his people, something the previous leader and his select cronies hadn't been interested in abiding by.
"Oh."
Axel Ash raised a brow at him. "She seemed intrigued."
Elgin managed a small smile, his look hopeful that Axel Ash had finally found a woman he was interested in. Fergus and his other men quickly hid smiles.
"Then she changed her mind and ran off," Axel Ash explained.
"Oh."
Axel Ash laughed. "Yeah, well if she'd wanted to ravish me, and she looked like she had half a mind to, I would have given myself to her willingly."
Elgin's lips lifted slowly.
Poor guy. He still wasn't used to Axel Ash's leadership and wry sense of humour, but he and the rest of their people would eventually learn his ways were totally different from Alfred's. And infinitely saner.
"She was the red wolf then?"
He wasn't about to tell Elgin how desperately interested.