Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 92559 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92559 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
No, not home, Callum corrected in his head. He didn’t have one of those.
Reaching for the dash, he turned the heater down, then resettled in the seat. He’d been out for a good hour, and he had no interest in speeding the job up. The mile-long lane into the historic Adirondack great camp had been carved out of the forest back when construction on the big house had begun in the late 1800s, and in the winter, clearing the drive was a nightly thing. So, yeah, no reason to rush. There was also a meditative quality to the work, the way ahead mostly obscured, the piles on the sides growing higher and higher as he went all the way to the gate and came back.
Also, time had no meaning for him anymore.
He’d been employed at Camp Ghreylke as an off-season groundskeeper since September, and the isolation was the main reason he’d taken the position. Nobody fucked with him up here. He just cashed his checks, ate, slept, and didn’t think about what might be coming next.
He was choosy about the plow, though. Mounted on the front of the Ford Super Duty was a head that had more rust, scrapes, and dings than a beater from the twenty-twenties, but like all things that had been made in the good ol’ days, it was tougher and better than the new shiny red one that sported the property’s official logo.
That flimsy fucking thing, with its gold leaf and that crest, could stay in the maintenance garage. It had left streaks in the center of the plow field, had the wrong curve so a constant splash of snow was kicked up over the hood, and the angle was not steep enough for the side outflow to be high enough.
And who knew he’d have an opinion on any of that—
The streak came from the left.
The predator in him was the only reason he saw the flash of movement through the blizzard. Then again, his wolven side was always with him, even if he hadn’t shifted, so his eyes automatically tracked whatever it was through the snowfall.
As he felt his nostrils flare, a growl percolated up over the sound of the engine and the heater.
For a split second, everything inside of him came to life, his thigh muscles twitching, his skin pricking, his jaw burning, as the other half of him demanded to be let out. The contrast to his usual numb detachment was like a flare of light in the darkness, but he let it slide.
It had been a long, long time since anything had made him feel alive, and he preferred shit that way.
He just kept plowing forward in a slow, relentless path, one hand on the wheel, boot lolling on the accelerator, stare fixated out into the storm.
The next crossing was a minute later. And there were two of them.
Callum hit the brake, even as he didn’t know why. There were all kinds of four-legged things on the estate. What the hell did he care—
Three more.
The coyotes shot across the lane, hopping off the ridge he’d created on the right, flowing like water across what he’d cleared, jumping up and over the pile on the left.
Drumming the steering wheel, he opened his mouth to stretch his jaw. His teeth were tingling, especially the canines in the front and the large molars in the back. He could feel the rib bones of the prey breaking down as he gnawed on them, and taste the warm, fresh meat.
Then again, it was in the nature of predators to hunt and bring down—
Even more of the rangy little fuckers ran in front of him.
Callum was out of the cab before he was aware of deciding to move, the cold slapping at his cheeks and making his bare hands curl up. But the sounds from deeper in the pines were what got his attention.
The hunting pack was chattering with excitement, the vocalizations piercing through the falling snow. They’d found their next meal, and he knew they were circling the deer—or whatever it was—but taking their time with the attack because the torture of delay was part of the ritual of dominance.
His nostrils flared and he imagined the scent of the fear.
The prey drive that echoed in the center of his chest was familiar and all the easier to ignore because he’d been shutting it down for how long now? Yet it was hard not to remember that he’d once been a part of what the coyotes were: a community of hunters that went out to bring food back, that protected a territory, that were tied by blood and common interest to a clan—
The scream that threaded through the wind was an all-wrong that snapped him into focus For a second, he could have sworn he’d misheard it.
Like the coyotes, the sound came again.