Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
TWENTY-NINE
AFTER DANIEL HEADED down to the lab, Lydia went to their bedroom—and lasted about fifteen minutes before she got so antsy, she was ready to pull her own hair out. As she paced around, she kept looking into the bathroom, and every time she saw the shower and their two damp towels hanging together on the rods on the wall, she felt a fresh wave of sorrow come over her.
There was one, and only one, remedy for her agitation.
But she was going to be a little more careful if she was going out. In light of what happened the night before, she didn’t feel right about just slipping out the sliding door. Instead, she went back through the house and then down into the basement, to the tunnel that ran under the parking area to the garage. At the far end, she ascended a short stack of steps and entered the heated interior thanks to a passcode—and promptly decided against taking one of the SUVs to some remote location before she shifted. She’d just get herself followed, right? After all, humans expected people to take vehicles places, and assuming the estate was being watched on its periphery, it would be more dangerous for her to try to leave that way.
Besides, she was going to go out with four-wheel drive of sorts, wasn’t she.
Striding down the lineup of grilles and taillights, she went to the side pedestrian door, entered a code, and propped the weight open about an inch with a rock. After quickly shedding her clothing, she folded the pullover, the jeans, even the socks and underwear, into a neat pile, and set the lot on top of a bag of salt that had been brought in for the coming snowfalls.
Then she closed her eyes.
Her transformation was fast, like her body was a well-oiled machine, and in fewer than a dozen heartbeats, she was down on her paws and whispering out into the grass. As she stared out of different eyes, the landscape of the house and grounds was shaded in a new way, everything dimmer yet sharper, too, like an oil painting’s depiction had been re-rendered with a fine-nibbed, black and white ink pen.
Staying in the lee of the garage, she sent her senses out into the darkness, and when she came up with nothing, she started off, her tail down, her head lowered as well. She wasn’t worried about the guard dogs. The pair of Dobermans knew her in both her incarnations now.
They were no danger to her.
Tonight, the moon was early to rise, and the clouds that drifted over its crescent provided her with a little camouflage as she skulked for the tree line. Once she penetrated the pines and oaks, she started to move with greater alacrity, cantering now, making good time over the distance. As she went along, forest animals got out of her way, even though she presented no threat to the deer or raccoons. She hadn’t been hungry in her human form; she wasn’t hungry in this one, either.
And soon, she was really going at it with the speed.
As she leapt over fallen trunks, and dodged around boulders and stumps, while she tested her strength and endurance, a part of her soul started to sing—and the uncomplicated joy was like a drug to her, the feeling of freedom mixing with the cold night air to intoxicate her, especially as the ground began to rise and her ascent of the mountain’s base steepened.
The harder the going, the faster she went.
She needed the exhaustion that she would find when she reached the summit. She needed the solitude, too.
An hour later, when she finally crested that last rise and trotted around to the clearing that faced the valley, she was panting so heavily that her ribs were like fists around her lungs, squeezing and releasing to pump air. And as she looked up at the heavens above, the clouds decided to part like stage curtains, the full glory of the moonlight piercing down from the sky.
Lifting her head, she began to howl.
And tried to take solace as her nocturnal call… was answered by others of her kind.
She had meant what she’d told Xhex. She already knew that the mountain was her home—
Crack.
At the sound of the stick off to the side, she wheeled around, bared her fangs, and began to growl.
And that was when a male voice spoke to her: “You don’t have to be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you.”
* * *
Blade had known that his wolf would have to come to the mountain. It had been in her grid the night before when she had been up here. And it had remained in her grid when she’d been down at that house. In fact, the intention was perpetual—although after she’d stood in the pines with Xhex, what had been impulse became obsessional to her.