Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 87608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87608 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
The brrp-brrp of the SUV nearly scared me to death, and if my balance wasn’t as good as it was, I would have fallen off my bike.
“Shit, sorry,” Chief MacBain said, rolling the SUV up beside me, on my right, since I was riding against traffic on the two-lane road. There were no sidewalks in this part of the town, so he was close to me. The driver’s window was down, and he was leaning on his elbow, but even though I was annoyed, I couldn’t stop staring at the way the material of his T-shirt strained around his bicep. There was no denying the man was built nicely. “You all right?”
“What?” I was momentarily lost because those deep, dark eyes of his were really something. Framed with the inky lashes, I was a fan. It hit me suddenly that it had been ages since I’d gotten laid.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I felt so much better realizing there was a reason for my overwhelming reaction to his big, hard body and beautiful eyes. It was merely a physical response to—
“Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, I—sorry. It’s fine,” I assured him, even as I heard it then, something close, a scrape on the asphalt, like leather-bottom shoes on gravel or maybe the nails of an animal. “Thank you for checking on me, Chief. Good night.”
Getting on my bike, I rode fast to put some distance between us, crossing the street, but in seconds he was back beside me. He was in his SUV after all.
“Don’t dismiss me,” he barked out of the open passenger side window, on my left now. When I glanced over at him, he groaned. “Shit.”
I slowed, then stopped, in front of my house now, at the end of the drive. “Chief MacBain, I assure you, I wasn’t—”
“I haven’t said the right thing to you yet,” he grumbled, parking the vehicle and getting out. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Shit,” I gasped, seeing it then, a vargr, as my grandfather had called them, an older word he preferred. In books, they were listed as faewolves. That was the proper name. My grandfather always told me it didn’t sound nearly as scary as it was when you were faced with one, so he went with the Old Norse he thought gave them the fear factor they deserved.
The chief spun around and saw the animal standing there under a tree, like a man, on two legs, only to lower itself to four and sprint forward. “The fuck is that?” he yelled, but moved at the same time, scrambling back to his SUV, likely for his rifle.
There was no time, and he’d be dead before he could get the gun, which was useless anyway. Man-made weapons were seldom effective against supernatural creatures.
“No!” I screamed, and he turned to check on me, powerless not to—he was a protector, after all—just as the vargr hit him as it ran by, knocking him out.
I’d never been so thankful in my life. The vargr wasn’t after him, paid him no mind, and didn’t slow and rip him in half. Instead, it came at me, leaping at the last moment, mouth open. All I saw was teeth, and I was terrified because I wasn’t on my land, I was on the road, so a barrier was out of the question. I couldn’t fly either, since I didn’t have time to shift. I was going to die, and I had no idea why.
But then the vargr was struck hard by something, thrown away from me, and I turned and ran down the drive a short way, and then off the path, into the grass and dirt, and dropped to my knees.
Looking up, I saw the vargr and Argos circling one another. The wolf was snarling and growling, and Argos, now in his true form, a cat the size of a grizzly bear, with blazing red eyes, was hissing and spitting back. When they both went silent, looking into the dark, I took a breath.
Argos shrank back to an eleven-pound ball of fluff, sprinted to a nearby oak, and went right up. The vargr, no longer interested in me, darted for the road, only to be caught by an enormous white dog with red ears.
Gwyn, the leader, the largest of them, the stealthy hunter no one ever heard, had it by the throat, but instead of killing it outright, tossed it high in the air. Osko, the mean one, who came from the shadows, leaped up and plucked it out of the sky, slamming it to the ground, breaking its back, killing it instantly. Dar, the smallest but fastest, darted in, biting and shaking the carcass, his teeth like razors, his jaw viselike, slicing through fur and muscle and bone. With the two others quickly joining him, they had the wolf torn to pieces in seconds. When they stopped suddenly, turning their enormous heads, I saw what they did—a man…but not exactly, since he had elk antlers. And he was walking toward me.