Wolf Tales
KATE DOUGLAS
KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com
My sincere thanks to Margaret and Bill Riley,
owners and founders of Changeling Press,
who provided a fertile birthplace for my Chanku.
And a very special thank you to my agent,
Jessica Faust, who has proved
she is even more persistent than I am.
Contents
PART ONE: Stefan
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
PART TWO: Alexandria
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
PART THREE: Anton
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
PART FOUR: Keisha
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
PART FIVE: The Gift
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 1
Xandi shoved the deflated air bag out of her lap and used her last tissue to wipe the fog off the windshield, well aware it wasn’t going to change her predicament. She saw nothing but white. At least it was still daytime. Even so, her hands shook, and her heart raced. She paused a moment, fist full of tissue pressed against the windshield, then forced herself to take slow, even breaths. Hyperventilating wouldn’t help one bit.
Look at the bright side. At least it’s still daylight. This could have happened at night.
The thought set her heart to pounding even harder.
She’d skidded at least a hundred yards down the hillside and landed in a cushion of thick snow and heavy undergrowth. Her little white sedan tilted to one side, completely surrounded by small trees and shrubs. Thick, fast-falling snow already hid the hood, and most likely the roof as well. She checked her cell phone again. Damn. Still no signal. The narrow gorge she’d fallen into must be blocking her.
Staying in the car was an option, at least until the storm abated, but she’d plowed into the drift hard and deep, and the storm showed no signs of letting up. Already the doors were wedged closed by the weight of the white stuff, and the windows were almost completely covered.
It wasn’t like anyone would be looking for her, and even if someone did, who’d be able to find a little white car buried under a ton of white snow? She was going to have to make a decision, and make it soon, before she suffocated.
Xandi grabbed her down coat out of the backseat, made sure her boots were tightly tied, her gloves were on her hands and her hat was pulled down over her ears. Slowly, she rolled the window down, pushing the heavy snow back so it wouldn’t fall in her lap.
The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on her. She had plenty of vacation time accumulated at work, and she’d taken some of it. She’d told her friends and co-workers she needed to get away, needed to think about making some serious changes in her life. Insisted they didn’t need to know her plans, as she would be gone only a couple of weeks and wasn’t going far.
Well, she hadn’t gone far, not really. She’d made it only about twenty miles out of Portland before the damned diesel had run her car off the road. She wondered if the trucker who’d cut in front of her even had a clue what he’d done.
Wondered if he even gave a shit.
Her hands were shaking as she brushed the wet flakes out of her eyelashes and stared through the open window, up the long slope. Cold. She was just so damned cold. And scared.
“Shut up.” She started, surprised by the vehemence in her own voice. This situation didn’t fit with the thick flakes of snow and the postcard image of pine boughs bending beneath their weight. It didn’t fit with her plans, the reason she’d decided to leave in spite of the storm. It just didn’t fit.
Nothing did.
The highway couldn’t be too far above her, though it was hard to tell up from down in the current whiteout conditions. Whatever tracks her car might have left were long gone. She hadn’t lost consciousness, but she’d sat in the front seat with the deflated air bag in her lap, counting her blessings, for way too long. All the while, the snow kept falling.
Of course, the fact she was still alive after hurtling down the steep slope at over seventy miles per hour deserved a word of thanks. Lately, not much in her life did. She took a deep breath, consciously putting all the crap that was Alexandria Olanet’s life behind her, at least for now. With any luck, she’d get up the hill before dark fell and thumb a ride back to town. So much for her great adventure.
So much for taking charge of her life.
Pushing the rest of the snow away from the open window, Xandi clutched her little leather backpack purse in her hand, squeezed her butt through the open window and tumbled out into the swirling snow.
She couldn’t feel her hands or her feet, and she’d lost her right mitten along with her cell phone hours ago. Snow swirled in ever-darkening blasts as nightfall approached. Obviously she’d missed the road, but where the hell was she?
Brushing her hand across her frozen nose, Xandi bit back a sob. Tears wouldn’t help. It was too late for them, and as cold as it was, they’d just freeze on her face. It was too dark to go any farther, and she was just too damned cold and tired.
Feeling slow and stupid, she looked about her, wondering how she’d go about building a shelter when all she could see was blowing snow and dark shadows.
Damn. It was all Jared’s fault. Well, Jared and his blonde nymphet. Would she ever get past the humiliation, the sick-to-the-pit-of-her-stomach feeling? It hadn’t gone away, not once over the past week…not since she’d walked into her bedroom, the one she’d shared with her fiancé for the past year, and caught him bare assed and buck naked with his face buried between the bitch’s legs.
The worst part was the woman’s reaction. She hadn’t even been upset. No, she’d just grinned at Xandi with a look of feral satisfaction, spread her legs wider and faked an orgasm. It had to have been fake—the timing was too good—but Jared hadn’t seemed to mind.
While Xandi stood there in shock, Jared had raised his head, his face streaked with the other woman’s fluids, and stared stupidly at her, blinking like the idiot he was.
In a way, she thought, it was a good thing. Okay, so her self-esteem was officially in the toilet, but at least she’d learned the truth about him before they got married. If only she’d listened to her friends. They’d been trying to warn her, had told