Hot Blooded (Wolf Springs Chronicles) - By Nancy Holder Page 0,3

other in line, especially the youngsters. Be good or the Hellhound will get you. But even most of the adults seemed to believe that it could come for them if they broke any of the werewolf laws — like letting humans know their secret. Cordelia had believed the monster was real. And she’d broken the laws . . . She’d even thought she’d seen the Hellhound outside her house, but her father and the rest of the family had just laughed at her.

Justin shook his head and grinned. And angry as she was, Katelyn couldn’t stop herself remembering what it had felt like to kiss those lips. And even though she cared deeply for Trick, she couldn’t help the feelings that stirred inside her when Justin Fenner stood too close. Somehow it seemed different, even more intense, now that she was a werewolf, too.

“Getting riled up, aren’t you?” he asked, smiling at her. “Biting back?”

The drumming stopped abruptly. She and Justin stood in the relative silence, though the wind made the pine branches scrape, and an owl hooted. There was a rush of wings. She was certain he could hear her heartbeat as it roared in her ears.

Justin leaned back against a trunk and crossed his arms over his chest. The moonlight slashed his face, giving it a sinister cast. “Damn it, this is such a mess,” he said quietly.

“Hey, I didn’t ask to be attacked, okay?” she flung at him defensively. “I didn’t want this to happen to me!”

“Well, see, as I figure it, that’s the only upside.” He broke off a branch, then cracked it into two, running the ends along his palm. “That it did happen to you.”

“Not seeing that,” she snapped, moving farther away from him, although her mind flashed back to the big amazing life she was planning to escape to. “Not at all.”

He dropped the pieces of wood onto the ground. “Being stronger and faster than any human ever dreamed? You will. You’d better. There’s no going back, Kat.”

“No one else is immune to silver, or so you’ve said,” she reminded him. “So maybe it’s different for me there, too. Maybe I can . . . go back.”

“Keep your voice down.” His own voice dropped an octave.

She looked quickly around. “Who else is here?” she demanded.

“The alpha’s nervous about you,” Justin said, ignoring her question. “Our kind are born werewolves. We hardly ever bring in humans changed with a bite. Uncle Lee said the last time someone was bit in without permission was in ‘the homeland.’ That’s Scandinavia. The fjords. In the seventeenth century.”

Four hundred years ago? That lent weight to Cordelia’s refusal to believe that a Fenner werewolf had bitten Katelyn.

“Was he there when that happened?” she asked.

A fleeting smile appeared on his face, but just as quickly disappeared. “Oh, man. You don’t know anything.”

“Then enlighten me,” she retorted.

He raised a brow. “Don’t you have the sense to know you shouldn’t speak to me like that? With such disrespect? You know how high-ranking I am. Do you do it because you’re scared?”

She said nothing, just tried to look as if she wasn’t afraid. She didn’t want to appear fragile or needy in front of him. Werewolves despised weakness.

“You need to learn so much.” Even in the darkness, she could feel him studying her, assessing her. “So much.”

She remained silent, and he did, too.

“We’re not immortal, Katelyn. Of course Lee — our alpha — wasn’t around four hundred years ago,” he said finally. “We heal up quick, as you’ve already noticed, but we do have a normal human lifespan. We make the most of the time we have, though. In ways you can’t begin to imagine.” He pushed away from the tree trunk and ambled toward her. “Kat.”

Her name on his tongue was like a caress. Silky, sexy. She could feel herself reacting, and she glided out of reach.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” Justin said, and she thought there was just the slightest emphasis on the first word in the sentence.

She scanned their surroundings: the woods, the road, the front of the cabin. Was that someone creeping through the shadows beneath the overhang of the second story? A person, or a wolf?

“Who else is out here?” she asked again.

“You need to get used to being watched,” he said, still evading her questions. “You need to remember that Lee’s got to look out for the safety of the entire pack.”

“Then he needs to remember that someone did this to me. Without my permission, or