Isabel and the Wolf: (Part 4) by Ariana Hawkes Page B

feet and pulled a book from the bookcase. “It’s right here.” She looked at the map he was showing her, and there it was, near the center of Romania, a country she still had only the haziest idea of, in the midst of a mountain range. On the facing page were photos of sweeping landscapes, and fairytale castles poised on steep mountain peaks. “The most beautiful place in the world.” He closed the book. “My family, like many of the werewolf packs around the world, is becoming infertile. Our gene pools are small, and most of us have been eager not to contaminate them with foreign blood. But this means that we’re now dying out. And what’s just as bad, is that this lack of continuity is making the whole pack sick. Without a new blood line, it’s like we’re becoming anemic. My parents begged me to go out into the world, to find a mate and bring new blood to renew the family line. I didn’t want to go; I love my homeland. But seeing them become sicker by the day, there came a point when I could no longer refuse.”
    “And it’s been hard to find a mate?”
    “It has. I’ve been all across Europe before I came to America, and not found the right mate.”
    “But why?”
    “Most of the werewolves I’ve met are infertile, and the ones that aren’t are usually not genetically compatible. I can tell by the smell which ones are a good match, and so far they have eluded me.”
    “And how do I fit into all this?”
    “You were a distraction – initially. While I was struggling to find a werewolf mate, I thought I might have some pleasure with a human in the meantime.”
    “But why the kinky dating site?”
    “I guess we had the same motives when we joined the dating site – to find someone to have fun with. I figured out from the way that human females reacted when I approached them that mainstream dating wasn’t going to work for me. Then I discovered that there were some females who loved to be dominated, and I realized that this could be an opportunity.”
    “And how does sex with human females compare to, uh, were-females?” The Wolf gave a gravelly laugh.
    “Well, I’ve only got one to judge it by, but it compares very positively.”
    “You’re saying I’m the first human you’ve been with?”
    “The first and only, Bella.” Peter’s eyes had been flickering to and fro as he was speaking, but now he fixed them on her, with their full amber intensity, and Isabel’s stomach flipped.
    “Wow, if only I’d known at the time how significant that was,” she said.
    “I feel you’re mocking me, Bella. But that’s ok. I appreciate how incredible the things that you’ve been hearing during the past day are.”
    “So I was a distraction, and then you went back to Romania, and when you came back, you were different. Please explain?”
    “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you more about why I had to go back home. It was impossible to explain without you knowing what you know now. The truth is that my younger brother found a mate. This was incredible news for our family, the best we’d had in years. She was pregnant with his offspring. But she didn’t make it.”
    “You mean she died?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’m so sorry.” Peter nodded acknowledgement.
    “After I went back to be with my family, it was hard to leave them in their grief, but they urged me very strongly to go back to America and try again. And when I arrived here, I was very glad to be back, as I had thought about you often while I was in Romania.”
    “You had?”
    “Over the past few weeks, I have been devastated at the thought of losing you. What's been happening to my family is an agony, but this is an agony too.” His eyes were dark, the pupils flooding the iris. He reached out and took her hand. It lay motionless in his, half of her hungry for the feeling of his skin on hers, the other half recoiling.
    “Isabel, I am a man, like any other. It's just that I am also a wolf.”
    “But you become a wolf every time you have