Past My Defenses (Taming the Pack series) (Entangled Ignite) Read Online Free PDF Page A

giving up on the old ways in light of their dwindling numbers. The Glacier pack was encouraged to pair off and breed like rabbits—no, like wolves.
    She pressed her face closer. Whoever this was—and admittedly, the details were a bit sketchy—he was her mate, now and forever. She’d heard it would be like this. You’d catch their scent when the time was right, and you had to have them. You were ruined for everyone else. Everyone else was chopped liver—only not chopped liver because most wolves liked chopped liver. Oh, wow, this incredible scent was rattling her ability to think clearly.
    Mine .
    Yeah, she got that. Thanks, primal instinct. Can we figure out how to handle this? How did one tell their mate, “You’re actually mine. Hopefully you feel the same way because I don’t really have a choice here”? She should probably start by opening her eyes and seeing which member of the pack she’d dragged to bed. He was less hairy than most she’d seen. Eventually, you saw most of the pack in the flesh, and something about him…
    She should really open her eyes.
    This was momentous.
    She’d found her mate.
    Open your eyes, Vanessa.
    She opened her eyes and tipped her head back, and the memory of the cat and the cage and the man—sweet heaven on two legs—all rushed back in in an awful, grim reel of a “he’s a human” horror flick. Dane. The guy she’d been planning to convince that he was crazy today. The guy with that cat.
    “Oh, hell no.”
    He jerked, his arms tightening around her, and then one hand reached up as he grimaced and pulled something red and squishy from his ear—an earplug. “Do you always wake that way?”
    Both the wolf inside and the woman housing it moved fast with panic—even if the wolf wanted to stay. She scrambled out of the bed before he’d even opened his eyes.
    Run.
    But…mine.
    But run.
    “No…no…no…not this.” She gestured at him. This was a damn ugly mess—that’s what this was. Maybe she was hallucinating. Maybe she was dead.
    Mine.
    Run.
    Both of you, shut up!
    Frowning, this…this…this human said, “Look, whatever you think happened, didn’t happen. I needed sleep, and you were sleeping off that dose of allergy pills. I was here on this side, and you moved over to squish against me in your sleep.”
    He was hugging the edge of the giant bed opposite where she’d started.
    “So, nothing happened.”
    Oh, it had happened. She was fighting every cell of her body that wanted back in that bed next to Dane…a human. Only a very small, rational portion of her was making sense and screaming, “Run like hell! Run like you’ve never run before!”
    He was a damn human. Lycans didn’t fall for humans. Well, not many. Okay, it happened, but it wasn’t something to be proud of. And it certainly wasn’t happening with her. It was too complicated. Also, he was the park ranger—one of the last people who should know their secret. Then there were the poachers—the very reason they were a dying breed. If anyone mentioned the presence of Lycans in this area, the poachers would come, and they’d be as good as dead. There might be full-scale slaughter of Lycans in the Glacier pack if this human blabbed about their existence. The pack might have to move on because of her. At the very least, she should move…but even the thought of moving away from her…human made her stomach cramp and nausea rise in her throat.
    This ruined everything.
    And yet…
    She inhaled. Mmm. He smelled like a feast to a starving person. He smelled like her first time for everything. It pulled on her—willed her to go back to him.
    Stay.
    His.
    “It must be the hormones. It’s just being in heat.”
    Dane squinted and asked, “What?” pulling out the other earplug. Then, he stretched his jaw and rubbed his ear.
    Okay, that was weird. “Why do you sleep with earplugs in?”
    He tossed them on the small table beside the bed. “I don’t normally. You snore like you’re trying to