Awakened By The Wolf. Kristal Hollis

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СКАЧАТЬ tried to swallow the burning ache, but its fiery fingers fastened around his throat and squeezed until his mouth prickled from the embers.

      His banishment was well deserved and if he got caught slinking into the territory, the sentinels would waste no time hauling his bare ass in front of the Alpha.

      All things considered, Brice would’ve preferred catching rabies to facing his father. Distance didn’t always make the heart grow fonder. Sometimes it fostered bitterness.

      A faint August breeze stroked his skin like a lover grown cold and distant. Out of habit, he sniffed the night air. The familiar scents of pine and honeysuckle eluded him. Once his nose had been his pride. Now he depended on his eyes, ears and gut instinct to compensate for his lost sense of smell.

      The evening symphony of crickets calling their mates salted the wound of his loss. Scent triggered a Wahya’s mating urge. Despite the heightened acuity of his other senses, only his nose could lead him to his true mate.

      With a heavy humph, he shook. The water droplets that had pebbled on his heated body thwacked against the deck. A silver-coated house key fastened around his biceps with corded silver—the only substance that wouldn’t disintegrate during a shift—slapped against his arm. Each time it struck, electric shocks pinched his skin.

      He untied the key and rubbed it between his fingers to dispel the residual shift energy, wondering if he wasn’t about to make the second biggest mistake of his life.

      When his uncle, Adam Foster, had whisked Brice to Atlanta after his first epic fail, he didn’t have time to say goodbye to his beloved grandmother. Of course, he hadn’t known that his uncle’s offer of respite disguised a permanent relocation.

      Brice unlocked the back door. His heart paused at the click. For the past five years, the Walker’s Run pack had considered him wolfan non grata.

      Trusting that Margaret Walker wouldn’t disown her only surviving grandson, Brice clamped down on his nerves and limped into the kitchen. The dim light above the stove softly illuminated the pie on the counter.

      First his heart swelled. During his college days, Granny always had a fresh-baked pie for him on his weekend visits.

      Next Brice’s gut clenched, his stomach bellowed and his mouth watered, putting him in serious danger of drooling. Despite the ample game he’d encountered on his journey, he hadn’t eaten in days. The thought of killing again triggered nauseating sweats—if he was lucky. God-awful flashbacks if he wasn’t.

      Silently he snagged a small saucer from the cabinet, a spoon from the drawer, a knife from the wood block. Then he cut a large wedge out of the pie. The first bite of sweet-tart deliciousness slid down his throat, slow and easy.

      Mmm, cherry! His entire body sighed.

      One piece wasn’t enough. He had to have two. A chug of milk washed down the third. Abandoning all etiquette, he scarfed down the rest and licked the pie pan clean. At long last, a warm, cozy satisfaction ebbed from his belly.

      God, it’s good to be home.

      The snazzy penthouse apartment above his uncle’s law offices served as a place to eat and sleep. Brice felt no more connection to the space than he would a hotel room. His heart and soul resided here, in this simple cabin. Always would.

      He hobbled through the dark house. Each right step shot pain through his calf.

      “Granny?” He rapped a soft knock against the bedroom door. A few seconds later, Brice slipped into her unlit room.

      Nothing seemed amiss or out of place, so he assumed she’d spent the night with his parents. She often stayed in the family’s private quarters adjacent to the Walker’s Run Resort whenever they hosted a social event. Granny never missed a good party.

      Vacillating between disappointment and relief, he wanted his grandmother’s welcoming embrace and assurance that all would be well between them again, but he was too weary to face the alternative. He headed down the narrow hallway to his old room, each gimping footstep heavier than the last. At the door, his senses tingled even before he set eyes on the small lump in his bed.

      The mixed feelings Brice had about his homecoming knotted into concern. Granny knew wolfan law forbade adult males and females of blood relation to share bedding, so why had she fallen asleep in his room?

      “Granny?” He eased onto the edge of the mattress and touched her leg.

      An unfamiliar feminine gasp prickled the skin along his spine.

      “Who the hell are you?” Brice didn’t mean to sound so rough and angry, but pain and exhaustion made him edgy and terse.

      “Stay away from me!” The woman kicked out of bed and grappled with the bedside lamp.

      “Fuck!” The sudden brightness stung like a fistful of sand slung in his face. Shielding his light-sensitive eyes behind his arm, Brice tuned into his other senses. The air thickened. He could almost taste the sharp tang of her fear. Her breaths came hard and fast.

      “Get out before I call the cops,” she demanded.

      “With what? Telepathy?” To his knowledge, Granny had one telephone. A landline in the kitchen.

      “I have a cell phone.” The uncertainty in the woman’s voice said she didn’t.

      “Nice try.” Swiping his eyes, Brice sensed a change in the air pressure, heard a hitch in her breathing. His instinct warned that she had inched to her right.

      “I don’t need my eyes to track you.” He pointed to where he knew she stood.

      The woman stopped moving and quite possibly stopped breathing. Nothing but howling silence filled the space between them. Any second she would hit the floor in a dead faint. Brice forced his eyes to open.

      Not that he had any doubts, but the fragile-looking young woman pressed against the wall was definitely not his grandmother. Wild spirals of red hair gave her a sexy bed-head look regardless of the cornered animal glint in her cinnamon eyes.

      She wore an old Maico High baseball jersey. Wait. That was his old baseball jersey.

      His bed, his clothes. What else had she claimed that belonged to him?

      And why?

      She was human and likely unaware of the implications of marking a male Wahya’s belongings with her scent.

      As if he could smell her anyway.

      Still, that this small slip of a woman had claimed his discarded clothes and his abandoned bed sparked a possessive thump in his chest. His gaze prowled the small swell of her breasts and the narrow curve of her hips cloaked beneath his shirt.

      She sported the longest legs he’d ever seen on someone so petite. Soft, toned legs that inspired steamy visions of them tangled around his hips as he moved inside her until she shattered in ecstasy, breaking him with her.

      The full moon had passed, so his attraction was real. Not something prompted by primitive hormones riddling him to fuck the nearest willing female.

      That this one didn’t look so willing was like an ice dump on his stiffening cock.

      “You СКАЧАТЬ