[BOOK ONE] When hunter-gatherer Adele Shepherd comes across an injured werewolf in the woods, it's up to her to take him in and save his life: in a remote town dedicated to killing the creatures, she's the only one left who wants to help no matter t...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
________________________
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
________________________
AS THE TEMPERATURE continued to drop outside, it only got hotter inside the cabin as steam rose in the cramped bathroom and fogged up the cracked mirror that hung askew above the sink. The window was misted up both inside and out, the rain freezing on the pane until the falling droplets turned to a heavy slurry that would soon become hail. The fog had begun to lift but it left its roots behind, the echo of a dream hovering in the forest.
Hot water tumbled down Adele's back like a waterfall, dripping down her cheeks as it soaked her hair and flowed over her skin. Closing her eyes, she covered her face with her hands before pushing her fingers through her hair and she let out a heavy sigh, resting her shoulder blades against the cold tiles. She usually kept her showers short, rarely spending more than five minutes under the stream, before she for fifteen minutes she had stood beneath the water as she tried to make sense of the morning.
She had thought that talking to Caleb would clear her brain but all it had done was crowd her head with more questions, forcing an uneasy pill of dread down her throat. Confusion and despair mixed with white rage, her emotions uncomfortably bubbling up as she tried to drown them in the shower. She couldn't shake the heavy rock in the pit of her stomach, the fast unravelling ball of hatred that had her shaking.
She wanted to fly at Jade; to tear her down from the pedestal she had put herself on; to claw at her skin and search for the sister behind the mask. But she couldn't. There was nothing she could say without sending Caleb to certain death. His life was in her hands.
Twenty minutes passed. She shut off the shower. The hot water wouldn't last much longer anyway, stored in a tank beneath the garage, and she began to feel a niggle of guilt that she had left Caleb for so long. Drying her hair with a shake of her towel, she tied it around her chest and stepped out of the hot bathroom and into the freezing hallway. An instant shiver shook her, her fingertips beginning to chill as she padded into the kitchen where her clothes were warming in front of the fire.
