Total pages in book: 24
Estimated words: 21858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 109(@200wpm)___ 87(@250wpm)___ 73(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 21858 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 109(@200wpm)___ 87(@250wpm)___ 73(@300wpm)
My inner animal let out a neigh of approval in my head. “I’m not saying I’m in any kind of trouble, but space to roam and the freedom to do it is always a good thing for a shifter. So I wouldn’t mind hearing more about this place.”
“Well, to start off, The Wilderness Pack is more of a nickname than anything official,” she explained. “They’re a small group with different shifters in the middle of the wilderness, led by a grizzly named Keane. He found his mate not too long ago, Laina. She’s a human, and they have an adorable cub named Atlas.”
Arbor looked up from his plate and pointed at his chest. “Atlas my friend.”
“He sure is, buddy,” Ramsey agreed, ruffling his hair.
Her son went back to his meal with a satisfied nod.
“His brother Leyton is Keane’s beta, but they’re not all grizzlies. Rome, one of our wolves and the man we named Arbor after, is still unofficially part of their pack, although he spends more time in Timber Ridge than up there now that he has Thora and the girls. She works here with my mate.”
“What other kinds of shifters do they have in their pack?” I asked, my curiosity piqued.
“Hmm, let’s see…Booker is a wolf too and used to be part of the Timber Ridge pack. Garner is a cougar, but he’s not around a lot since he works so much. And Artemis is a dragon.”
“A dragon?” If they had a dragon shifter, which was almost as rare as my kind, then maybe The Wilderness Pack was somewhere I could fit in for a little while.
“Yup.” She waited until after the server set my drink and appetizer in front of me to add, “I don’t really know Artemis since I didn’t see him much while I was there. He likes to keep to himself and claimed a cave even though one of the cabins is his.”
Hearing about a grumpy shifter who holed up in a cave might scare off other people, but it just made me more interested in visiting this place. “If The Wilderness Pack is so small, how do you know they’ll have space to take me in?”
“You can use our place if you need to.”
At the offer made in an unfamiliar feminine voice, I looked up and found a woman standing next to our table. She was human but smelled of wolf, so it was easy to guess who she was after Ramsey’s rundown—Thora.
“Are you guys for real?”
Thora patted my shoulder. “It worries me that you feel the need to ask that when letting you crash in a cabin that’s barely being used isn’t that big of a deal. But yeah, we are.”
I had never in my life experienced so much kindness. Not without being expected to give something in return.
4
CRESSIDA
Between Jack sending me to Timber Ridge and Ramsey suggesting there was a better place for me to go, the path I’d taken to get here was an odd one, but I had zero complaints about the destination. The land that The Wilderness Pack claimed as their own was downright gorgeous. With the forest surrounding a bunch of cabins, I could easily see myself getting more comfortable than I’d been in years.
As I stepped out of my SUV, I enjoyed the quiet surrounding me. The nearest town was a bit of a drive away, and I’d barely seen any other vehicles on the road since I had driven through it. If Thora hadn’t given me specific directions, I wasn’t sure I would have been able to find the place since I was in the middle of nowhere and my maps application on my phone hadn’t recognized the address for the alpha’s cabin.
Which just made it that much more perfect to me. Being somewhere that strangers stuck out like a sore thumb would make it difficult for anyone to look for me without warning.
Ramsey and Thora offered to let Keane know that I was headed up here, but I wasn’t sure which one had called until he opened his door, stepped onto his front porch and called, “Cressida Crawford? You’re earlier than Ramsey thought you’d be.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I was up, so I figured I would hit the road. I hope that’s okay.”
“It’s fine.” A woman followed him out and beamed a smile at me. “Atlas thinks he should be awake whenever the sun is up, so you’re not pulling us out of bed. He already did that hours ago by jumping on his daddy. The day that boy figured out how to climb out of his crib to crawl into our room was the last night of good sleep either of us has had.”
Keane placed his palm on his mate’s stomach with a smug grin. “He’s just getting us ready for when our next little one will keep us up all night.”