Reagan considers herself to be a fair and just daughter of Emma Austen, so when she's showed the dirty underside of werewolf communities, it's difficult to wrap her mind around it. Stray alpha wolves start to cause havoc around her father's town in...
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The Barretto residence was a rural estate banking on the edge of a rocky bluff overlooking the sound. Each of the houses mimicked one another in simplistic style with elaborate floral arrangements situated around the yard. One of the main factors that separated Dad's house was the cylindrical tower of sorts stretching above the second floor, crafted entirely of grey brick. The windows were large, the entry archway was large, and even the trees were large. It was by no means home, but I thought that I might grow used to it's country-esque charm.
There was something earthy about the place, and perhaps that was the wooden columns flanking either side of the door, or the fact that the siding itself almost looked like adobe. The texture reminded me of the estate Rosanna and I lived in, and all of the houses back in Stonecroft were Spanish styled.
"Well, this is certainly—"
"Out in the middle-of-nowhere," Rosanna finished, earning a glare from Uncle Gavin. "What? We're, like, fifteen minutes from the downtown."
"If you throw yourself off that cliff, you halve the distance," I said, ignoring the astonished look on her face as I stepped out of the passenger's seat.
My legs were awfully stiff, so I stretched them out and cracked my back until I was thoroughly loosened up. In the process of doing so, I got a good look at the front yard of the place, and the fact that there were four-wheelers sitting out by the garage, and I swore I saw a tiny face staring at me through the foyer window.
The car doors slammed shut, and as Uncle Gavin rounded the hood of the vehicle to reach us, the front door opened. Any attempt to remain calm vanished as soon as we recognized the face of our greeter. Rosanna squealed and sprinted past me, throwing herself up the steps and into Dad's arms.
He was just as I recalled the last time we saw him all those years ago. Visiting him was just as difficult as him visiting us, so whenever the chance came we relished his company. His hair hardly had a tinge of grey to it, which Rosanna was quick to point out.
Being a man of few words, he smirked in response and nestled her hair. She shook him away with a laugh, and reorganized her black hair over her shoulders. In a matter of seconds, I found that his eyes were on me, and he was waiting for me to leap into his arms like my sister. I could hardly even manage to move my feet, much less jump anywhere.
I shuffled over to him and let his arms envelope me into his warm embrace. My senses became overwhelmed with the intense rush of knew smells, new atmosphere, and an entirely new environment foreign to me. He smelled exactly how I remembered—like all the pine trees that surrounded us, the exhaust of a motorcycle, and the vivid image of a sunny morning with a full plate of eggs, pancakes, and bacon sitting on the table.
After a while of just standing there hugging him, I began to feel guilty realizing that perhaps he didn't know the difference between Rosanna and I. Strangers couldn't tell the two of us apart, but as I stepped back to look up at him, he put a finger to his lips and surveyed the two of us. He pointed to her first: "You're Rosanna—you always hug me first."
