AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I crawled out of bed, thankful for the tee shirt Cole had lent me. It hung almost to mid-thigh and was warm enough to keep the chill away. My bedroom door opened with a soft click and I padded along the hall and into the kitchen. I didn’t bother switching a light on. There was a full moon tonight and bright moonlight reflected off the snow outside, bathing the kitchen in a silvery glow.
The fire smoldered in the grate, casting enough heat out to warm the open-plan kitchen and living area. The tile floor in the kitchen was cold underfoot, however, and I silently wished I’d pulled some socks on before I left my bedroom.
While I waited for the kettle to boil, I hunted for the tea bags and then dropped one in a clean mug. Cole had left the cookies out on the counter, covered with some plastic wrap. Even though it was late, much too late to be eating anything, my stomach growled.
But as tempting as the idea of eating one was, I didn’t dare. While Cole had offered me a cookie earlier, it didn’t mean I had permission to eat another one. I’d learned the hard way not to take food that wasn’t offered to me.
The sound of an alarm beeping startled me as I poured some hot water into my mug, and a few seconds later, the laundry room door clicked open.
My heart leaped in my chest as a tall, ripped and very naked guy covered in swirling black ink walked into the kitchen. When he saw me standing, frozen, he stopped dead.
“Who the fuck are you?”
Tanner
It had been a few weeks since I was last home. Weeks of violence, bloodshed, and torture that meant I was feeling a lot calmer and my wolf’s blood lust had been sated. For now.
He enjoyed ripping limbs off and the heady flavor of viscous human blood. We’d had more than our fair share recently, thanks to Carlos Carelli’s issues with a rival gang.
With my help, his problems were now eliminated. All of them wiped out of existence. It was their own fault. The idiots tried to muscle in on Carlos’s trade routes.
Carlos was not a man who reacted well to people attempting shit like that. His policy was kill first and ask questions later.
It was a strategy I could get on board with. And frequently did. I didn’t particularly like Carlos, but he paid good money and didn’t care how extreme my methods got. No matter how much mess I made dealing with his problems, he always cleared it up.
The track up to the cabin was now buried under several feet of snow, which meant it was impassable to anything other than a snowmobile. I’d left the 4x4 tucked away in the trees further down the valley and hiked the rest of the way on foot. Nobody ever came up this far in winter, so my beloved truck was safe. But I fixed a couple of small cameras to some trees around it just to be sure. These linked to an app on my phone and if anyone triggered them, I’d get an alert.
It was a massive slog up the mountain on foot, but much easier as a wolf. At night the forest came alive, and I enjoyed listening to the sounds of small creatures skittering away in the dark, spooked by my scent.
A timber wolf howled mournfully in the distance when I got close to the cabin, and my wolf growled. The local wolves knew we lived here and gave us a wide berth. We were the apex predators, and they were not stupid enough to challenge us.
There were no lights on in the cabin. Hardly surprising given it was 2 AM. The guys would be asleep, although with their sense of hearing, they might wake up when I walked in.
I shifted back and disarmed the alarm before opening the door into the laundry room. The cabin was lovely and warm. I sighed with pleasure at the scent of baking in the air. Cole was such a contradiction. My brother was a fucking alpha wolf who could kill someone just as easily as me - and had, many times - but he loved to bake.
He’d make someone a splendid wife one day.
I chuckled to myself in the dark. With my bag hooked over my shoulder, I padded silently into the kitchen.
The minute I stepped through the door, I saw her. Moonlight shining through the window painted her slim body in silver. Her long blond hair and the way the shirt she wore barely hid anything stole my attention.
From the scent of it, the shirt was Cole’s. Who was she?
We never brought females back to the cabin, and certainly not humans.
“Who the fuck are you?” I didn’t bother sugar-coating my words. She shouldn’t be here, even if she was gorgeous, with a sweet curvy ass and perky tits.
She stared at me with huge blue eyes like sapphires. The steaming mug in her hand slipped through her fingers and smashed all over the floor. Liquid and china fragments spread far and wide.
Some of the liquid caught the front of her shirt, revealing the dark shadows of her nipples, but she didn’t move a muscle to cover herself. It was as if she’d frozen like a statue.
I moved closer, not caring that I was naked. “I’ll ask you again, who the fuck are you?”
Her scent filled my lungs: vanilla, cocoa, and traces of both Cole and Silas. My wolf howled with excitement, but I couldn’t sense any aggression from him. He was eager for us to get closer to the female. He wanted her.
What the fuck?
I reminded him we didn’t fuck humans. Only shifters. Humans were too frail. They got hurt too easily, and we liked to fuck hard. But he ignored me.
