Rutledge Werewolves 1: Scent of Passion (2 page)

Just thinking about the dreams, even now, worried as she was, made her wet. Artemais—his dark blue eyes gleaming in the soft moonlight, his tanned chest beckoning to her hands and her mouth.

Her dreams had filled some secretly yearning spot inside her that she had never known lay empty. And now there appeared to be a baby.

Sophie felt her legs weaken again, and she sat on the rim of her tub.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want a baby. She hadn’t planned on having one, and certainly not from a one-night stand, but now that she was pregnant there was no question about keeping it, and raising it happily and healthily. Her problems centered on her lack of relationship with the father.

What is the protocol here?
she wondered. Did she contact Artemais? Would he expect it from her? Surely he deserved to be informed of her situation? She didn’t need, nor want money from him, yet it seemed incredibly unfair not to inform him he would soon be a daddy. She didn’t care if he didn’t want anything to do with their baby, yet neither did she really want to raise a baby by herself.

Deciding to shelve her problems until the following morning, Sophie showered and got herself ready for bed. Making a mental note to book a doctor’s appointment for a blood test the following morning, she quickly fell asleep.

Strangely, for the first night since the Solstice, her dreams that night were not the lusty, erotic dreams she was now used to. They were…strange. She seemed to be winding deeper and deeper into some sort of silky trap, a trap made of midnight blue and forest green.

The smell of damp earth and pale, silvery moonlight cast shadows over trees and outdoorsy kinds of places. A tiny baby with deep blue, achingly familiar bedroom eyes, and her own blonde curls lay wrapped in pure white linen, cradled protectively in her arms.

Gazing in awe at her little baby, Sophie realized with that instinctive knowledge that only came to her in dreams, that her little baby was a girl—and she was perfect.

Cradling the warm infant tenderly in her arms, Sophie looked around her. They were in a large forest, the dark brown earth damp and soft beneath her feet. The
midnight
blue sky illuminated by stars overhead. Giant, dark green, thick trees surrounded them, giving the whole scene an earthy, slightly surreal feeling.

The forest was a dark, dark green, that lush, inviting color only very old trees could give. The mixture of dark brown, dark green and midnight blue created a canvas around Sophie and her little baby girl.

She felt excited and safe, not fearful in the least, even though she had no idea where she was. For a moment, stupid as it later felt, she was certain Artemais was around somewhere close, watching her and their baby.

In the distance, wolves howled. Neither she, nor her perfect little girl was scared or worried.

Chapter Two

Artemais woke up with a huge, very smug, very satisfied masculine smile on his face.

He had
known
she was the One. He and his brothers had set up their playing in a local bar this time around. They had traveled all over
Montana
, searching futilely. When none of them had found their True Mates in the state, they had moved around to encompass the surrounding states, even as far west as
Seattle
.

Constantly looking, but never finding
her
.

Neither he nor his brothers had been totally certain how they would recognize their True Mate. It was one of the very few things the curious boys-becoming-men didn’t have the heart to press their old Grandfather on.

The Old Man got tears in his eyes each and every time he reminisced about “His Naomi”. Even now, twenty-five years after the massive culling that had killed his beloved wife, their only son and daughter-in-law, Zachariah Rutledge broke down in tears when thinking or talking about his lost True Mate.

As always, Artemais felt a small pang of sadness when he thought of his dead parents. When he was ten, and his brothers eight, six and four, their parents and grandmother were killed in the National Park. They still lived in the old estate, specifically built by his ancestors, backing onto
Glacier
National Park
. Even though they had fought hard to keep their estate over the years, it was integral to their life, so during their moon time they could run free and wild as their wolf -selves.

But twenty-five years ago, unrest had crept up on many of the citizens surrounding the National Park. One man who, even now, no one really talked about had created a large stir. On the night of the full moon, many of the wolves, both natural and from the Pack were killed.

It was an old wives’ tale that the wolves running in the forest would harm any human they happened along. Each and every werewolf in his pack knew the harsh penalties for even scaring, let alone harming a human.

Artemais—while his senses were totally different as a wolf—was perfectly cognizant of what he was doing while running in his wolf form. He was interested in the scents of the earth, in the pull of the moon, in the joy and rapture of the hunt—he didn’t become some rabid beast out to drink blood and feast on human flesh.

While his sexual appetite might be huge, he had no desire to kill or maim anything other than possibly a wild rabbit if he had failed to eat earlier in the evening. The old horror movies showing hairy men turning into rabid wolf-beasts and eating virgins and munching on children was nothing more than an old boogeyman story.

Along with more than a dozen other wolves his parents and grandmother had been killed.

During the battle, Zachariah sustained a number of mortal wounds. Massive head and body wounds over long weeks and months healed into scars the Old Man still bore. The internal scar of losing his True Mate, however, had never fully healed. After all this time Artemais and his siblings worried that particular scar might never fully heal.

Six months after the attack, Zachariah returned back to their ancestral home, physically healed enough to take care of himself and watch over his four unruly grandsons.

Artemais knew the Old Man had done his best—raising the boys with a firm yet gentle hand. He listened to their worries, soothed their childhood fears and paid no heed to their pranks. In many, many ways the four brothers knew they owed their happy, carefree existence to the Old Man. They also owed their strength and full adjustment to what, for many others, would have been an inconsolable loss to him.

Yet the only help the Old Man had been able to give them were tear-filled memories he shared of the first meeting of His Naomi. The way he became enveloped in her scent, the way he hungered for her from the moment he saw her. Not just a physical connection, but to hear the Old Man talk, it was an emotional and almost psychic connection as well.

The Old Man, certainly no blushing romantic, had firmly described it as a soul-connection. Even all these years later, he insisted to each of his grandsons that they would know when they finally came across it. All four men had been disgruntled, having to accept the Old Man’s word for it.

The only other advice Zachariah had passed on to the four young men had been that only one’s True Mate could bear an Alpha’s children. Thus the responsibility fell heavily on Artemais’ shoulders to find his true mate and bear an heir. That way, not only would his brothers be able to roam further around and find their own mates, but the bloodline of his father—and the pack’s true Alphas—would be secure.

At first, Artemais hadn’t believed his grandfather about his seed only being fertile to his True Mate. When he had fallen hard for his puppy love a number of years ago, he spent two fruitless years trying to get the woman to conceive.

Though Zachariah no longer permanently lived in the ancestral home now that the four siblings were fully grown men, but roamed the world for longer and longer periods of time, he constantly kept in email contact. Zachariah had gently suggested to his eldest grandson that he was being truthful about the fact an Alpha was infertile to any but his True Mate, and Artemais’ desperation to impregnate his puppy love was futile.

Artemais had been polite to his grandfather, yet privately disbelieving. Yet as the frustrating months and years had passed, he finally accepted that only his True Mate could carry his seed. Anyone else was infertile to him.

Artemais also worried about this often on a different level. He had never fallen in love again—and he didn’t like Fate playing with him like this. The realization that only one woman could carry his child, and thus only one woman could he mate with and be fertile with, shattered him. As master of his own destiny, he would have much preferred to choose his own mate.

Yet it was not to be.

As the years passed, each and every doomed encounter simply frustrated him more and more. His anger had grown, both at his position and at the intricacies of Fate. He hadn’t truly understood how he would recognize his One, as woman after woman failed to bear his seed.

He was tired of traveling, tired of the constant, emotionless fucking. He missed his big home, missed his huge forest and parklands, where he could take the form of his wolf without worrying about who would see him, and where he could roam free and wild.

It was an act of sheer homesickness and desperation, which had him convincing his brothers they would perform in one of the local bars. It had been over an hour’s drive from their home, but they all had small apartments in the local city where they could rest overnight with their respective pick-ups.

And then he met Sophie.

The instant she had walked into the bar he could
smell
her. From all the way across the bar through all the smells of alcohol, smoke, lust and the dozens of other scents, he had scented her fresh flowers and light, mossy, wonderfully feminine smell.

When he finally got a good, clear view of her, he nearly dropped his drumsticks and rushed over to her, picked her up and mated with her there on the floor.

She seemed small to him, but then, at six foot one, many women were small to him. She might have been around five-five, five-six at the most. Curvy, but slim. Short blonde curls framed her expressive face.

Physically she was appealing, but it was her scent that drove him wild. He couldn’t get enough of it, or of her.

As she had danced around him and his brothers, he had constantly closed his eyes to draw her scent deeper into his body, his cock hardening. He had tried to hide both his cock’s reaction, and his own desperation to scent her fully, to draw her close and explore every part of her body with all of his senses. She intrigued and, unlike any other woman of his acquaintance, drew him on levels he had never experienced before, from the short curls on her head down to the fire engine red polish on her toes.

Desperate and half-wild with lust at the richness of her flowery scent, he had been extremely afraid she would spook.

Never had retaining his control, both of his beast and of his sexual lusts, been such a problem. His brothers had ribbed him mercilessly the following morning when they had woken him up from the deepest, most satisfying sleep he had had in years.

When he realized she had left him, he had gone wild with worry and frustration. His brothers’ playful teasing had brought his mind back to reality, and he started praying she had fallen pregnant.

He searched his mind for every tiny scrap of information, every name she had dropped with her tongue loosened by the alcohol. Piecing together every moment they had spent helped ease his ache, his worry. Harassing Samuel, his private eye brother, and shamelessly utilizing every record his security company could access, within a matter of days he had a wealth of information on his Sophie, including her home address.

After those first few days had passed, the waiting set in. He had sent an email to his grandfather—but for the life of him he couldn’t recall what he had said. Last night he had received a reply, warning him that his Grandfather was heading back home, although he had no idea of his return time.

Artemais prayed constantly that Sophie had conceived, that she was the one whom he could spend the rest of his life adoring and loving.

Staying away from her had been a torturous hell, but there was no point in allowing himself to continue a relationship that was sterile when he was supposed to be moving heaven and earth to find his True Mate. Even if the woman in question made his mouth water at the mere memory of her body and scent.

The waiting nearly killed him. So he had invaded her dreams and her fantasies, determined to have as much of her as possible until he knew for certain, until
she
knew if she was pregnant or not. She would soon know that True Mates knew just about everything about each other, even the small, intimate details.

And last night he had found out. She was his.

She had become pregnant with his baby—undoubtedly a boy child, as all his traceable family and ancestors were male and probably always would be—but nevertheless, it was
his
baby.

Spending every night with her in her slumber, he knew the baby was his. She’d had no carnal relations other than the fantasies and dreams he shared with her, nor had a baby been growing inside her womb when he had spent the night wallowing in her body and scent.