THE AWAKENING

A figure emerged from the house that immediately set her ears back in warning. Her hackles rose and she moved into a defensive posture without thought. Who was this man? Enemy or friend? She couldn’t tell. After the night she’d had, she wasn’t about to take any chances.

He broke free from the shadows and stood watching her with hard blue eyes that glittered in the night air like azure diamonds.

Like Ulster, he radiated power but unlike the sickly red that ebbed and flowed from Ulster like a fever, this man shone with a bright energy that crackled like a live wire and was just as dangerous.

He was the Alpha of Clan Janus. She could sense the truth of her sudden knowledge and there was no need to question what she knew.

He regarded her with open consternation, as if her arrival was neither a surprise nor welcome, yet he didn’t try to chase her away. She bared her teeth in a subtle warning, refusing to cow before him.

She didn’t care who he was.

On a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst, the last few days had wavered at the tipping point of fucking awful and he was the final straw.

A low growl erupted from her throat and he lifted his brow in surprise at her audacity, even as he continued to watch her every move.

“My brothers tell me that you are the Prophesied One. I didn’t want to believe them. But here you are in all your glory, white pelt and all, and I have to believe they were right. You are female and yet you changed into a wolf form. My brothers tell me it’s our job to shelter you, to put our pups into your belly to cement our claim to the Prophecy but if they have that thought then it’s fair to surmise that every clan from here to creation will want to do the same.”

His lip curled ever so slightly.

have taken the enemy into your body.

a tense moment passed before

it

narrowed as his energy rippled around him, momentarily causing him to frown as if taken aback by a sudden surge of unpleasant

against the onslaught and grunted as if he’d just been jabbed in

could see nothing aside from the man arrogantly deciding her fate but something beyond her understanding had just happened and it was significant enough to cause him to stiffen with open agitation as he barked, “It seems

the man, hating him intensely. It wasn’t her fucking fault that she

that she was some freak show with a magical womb, all she’d done is get captured and screwed because of

be simultaneously studying calculus while getting

him, “The Prick,” into the house and in spite of her less than welcome admittance, she was

fortress, built to withstand an army. The house was dimly lit by recessed lighting strategically placed in the ceiling, but she could tell immediately that Clan Janus lived by a different standard than

furnishing gleamed as if polished by a studious hand each day. Not one mote of dust drifted on the

She could smell the beeswax and lemon as it lingered within the grain of the

She had a heartbeat to realize that she was

her nauseous but within moments, she was lying

floor and she found herself between