Last Chance - Sample Only!!!

1 - Home, Exhausting, Home

Rory

This place smells the same. Cedar and dried hayseed with the faintest touch of desert and wolf fur. I take a deep breath, feeling the scent roll over me, seep into my pores. My stomach churns and my tongue feels thick. This scent used to smell like home, but now it smells like a trap.

"Aurora!" I wince at my mom's voice. The bitter scent of my former home mixes with the scent of copper. I bit my tongue to keep from screaming at her tight, unwelcoming smile.

I look at her face while she closes in for a perfunctory, rose-scented hug. She feels a little bonier than I remember as if the last few years have sucked a little of the health from her body. Her face looks a little weary when she pulls back, but it's the wariness in her eyes that makes me cringe.

"Aurora," dad's gruff voice is accompanied by a swift pat on the back. Nothing else, no hug, no kiss on my forehead like he used to. I glance around them to keep from being captured in his gaze. My sister isn't here. Surprise, surprise... not.

"Rory-pup!" The roar brings relief flooding into my body so sharp that I begin to sink to the floor. Only the strong arms lifting me high keep me upright.

"Kade!" I giggle as my big brother swings me around and around in circles.

He's the only family member that visited me in prison. The rest of them are content to pretend that I don't exist. The six months in jail turned into a six-year prison sentence as soon as my little... problem... was uncovered. Thank goodness it's over... The new Wolf Council in Colorado recently uncovered the shady dealings at the Farm and I got to come home. Yay.

Kade plops me down on my feet but keeps his hands on my shoulders to look keenly into my eyes. "You look good, baby sis," he whispers before leaning in to kiss my forehead.

I blink the tears from my eyes before mom and dad can see them. "Thanks, big bro," I whisper back.

"Kade, I wasn't aware you were coming," mom says with the faintest tinge of condemnation.

"Can't miss my favorite sister returning home," he says glibly as he casts an arm around my shoulders and starts to guide me to the doors of the train station. I smirk up at him. He only calls me his favorite sister when Ariel isn't here to overhear it.

"Kade," mom admonishes, but he ignores her. His body dwarfs mine and I frown a little up at him. Way, way up at him.

"Have you gotten bigger? What do they feed you over there in ClearHowl?"

"Food," he teases me. A finger strokes my upper arm. "Nice. Did you think I wouldn't notice, sport?" He keeps his voice low so that mom and dad can't overhear.

I smirk up at him. I got the eagle tattoo from my buddy Patrick in the prison release program at the Farm. A felon with a rap sheet 'only a half-mile long,' as he likes to joke, he has an artist's soul. Big, surly, and mean, he chose to be the cliche bad-wolf tattoo artist, as I like to joke. The eagle means freedom and leadership, something that Patrick claims most of the wolves in lock-up need and that I provide, being of Alpha blood, myself.

"It's an eagle," I answer Kade's unspoken question. He can only see a little of the bird poking out of my shirt collar.

"Hmm," is his only response. He doesn't really have a leg to stand on. When he left the RedMoon at twenty to go live and train with Alpha Conner in the ClearHowl he got his first tattoo... of a wolf. I teased him mercilessly for choosing the most cliche tattoo possible. What a dork.

"Better than a wolf," I nudge him with my hip.

He snickers. "Touche, babysis."

We walk to the parking lot still teasing each other while mom and dad walk ahead of us silently. I keep my eyes trained on my big brother or my feet, all to avoid looking at the rigid set of my dad's back. The she-wolf inside me retreats. A normal occurrence that I barely notice.