Hunting Wolf: Black Mesa Wolves #3 Read Online Free Page B

course she could get a date. Guys smiled at her all the time. They gave her appreciative looks when she wore her cutest tops, or when they waited in line behind her at the coffeeshop.
    Well...they never actually asked her out. Sure, she smiled back if they seemed like the right kind of guy—thoughtful, smart, ambitious without being cutthroat—but it never led anywhere.
    She hadn't been on a date since high school. Here she was now, almost 24 years old, and she hadn't been on a date in six years. Well, okay, she'd been on a few dates. They just hadn't been real dates. More like study meet-ups, group outings her few college friends had dragged her to and which always ended with her almost out of her skull from boredom most of the evening. One memorable time, there had been the date with that shifter from the central New Mexico pack. Her parents had strong-armed her into meeting him because her mother had known his mother back in the day. They both thought it would be so sweet if their offspring got together.
    That wolf had shown up covered in tattoos and sporting an eyebrow piercing. Just another big guy, all muscle and tough attitude but no class. All he'd wanted to talk about were his aspirations to be a Guardian for his pack, his gym workouts, and that Rielle was a lot more girly than the female wolves he usually met. Definitely not a match made in heaven.
    Another strong image of Caleb bounced into her head. First his wolf form, then human. In each image, he was grinning and just looked so—very intriguing. An image of him loping through the desert night slipped through as well.
    Rielle rubbed her forehead, feeling the frown creasing it as she paced the store. Fine. Maybe if she went on a good, hard, long run, not only would her wolf go back to being quiet and settled down, but she'd also be able to get rid of that big, clueless male wolf who kept running in circles around her thoughts.
    A welter of images pattered at her mind, so sudden and overwhelming she closed her eyes.
    Caleb, arguing as fiercely as he dared with the Alpha during a Pack meeting about the rogues. His face animated, his body energy wild and rough, with his wolf's tension obviously lurking just beneath the surface as he paced the room.
    Caleb, heading out on patrol from the den one day when Rielle was there attending to historian business. Big, muscled, taking up more than half the space as he'd approached her. He never seemed dangerous to her, though. Just so at ease in his own body, so fluid in his movements. He'd nodded at her in the hallway, blue eyes friendly, then stopped to ask with genuine curiosity if being the Pack's historian was interesting. Did she get to read about battles a lot? Oh, and did she want to go on a run later with him and some of the others? She'd said no, of course, but the memory of the longing that tugged at her stayed fresh in her memory as if it had happened this morning.
    Caleb, the first time he had to make a presentation at a Pack meeting. Standing in front of the room full of shifters in the den's meeting room, thirty-odd wolves sprawled all over the place, watching him as he stumbled through his words. She remembered his stiff posture, the way his eyes kept flicking toward the Alpha, his father, as if to check his own progress by watching his father's observation of the scene. Since Rielle could never stand for anyone to be suffering, even if it was just from a fear of public speaking, she'd sent out a bare tendril of her Pack bond to Caleb, putting as much of her own calming energy into it as she could. She'd known he felt it when his eyes found her. He watched her the rest of the time. His words had evened out, come more surely, as Rielle supported him throughout his presentation.
    Afterward, he'd come up and awkwardly thanked her. They'd both been in high school then. Rielle remembered trying to cover her annoying pimples—if only shifter genes could conquer those socially demoralizing little things!—with one