Blood Wolf Dawning Read Online Free PDF

other males. Not even with Max Doucet and Elliot Connors, who were her closest friends, and the youngest of the Bloodrunners.
    The final straw had come a few weeks after the war they’d won over the neighboring Whiteclaw pack. Finally deciding she was done with whatever stupid game he’d been playing with her, the next time Sayre got him alone, she’d given him an ultimatum: he couldeither stop acting like a jackass and take her virginity, or she was going to say to hell with it all and give it up to the first of her male friends who agreed. He’d been livid at her threat, but she’d refused to back down.
    Instead, she’d left his ass standing there in the forest, and had walked away.
    What had happened that night had been the most difficult thing she’d ever done, puttingherself out there like that, but she’d been fueled by ridiculous hope that it would make a difference. A hope she’d refused to admit even to herself at the time. But now, looking back, Sayre knew she’d been gambling her pride on the idea that if she could just get Cian to touch her, he’d realize she was all he needed and that they were meant to be together.
    God, she’d been such a patheticlittle fool.
    In the morning, she’d heard that he’d left the Alley and nobody knew where he’d gone, or if he would ever return. Her heart had been completely shattered, but within a few days it became clear that more than just her heart had been altered by his absence. And while the others had become aware of her increasing problems with her powers, none of them had ever figured out her secret—andshe sure as hell never planned on telling them the truth.
    Now, after everything that had happened and all the time that had passed, she could hardly believe he was standing in front of her. All the pain she’d tried so hard to bury these past years came rushing back in a surge of emotion, cutting its way through her insides like a scalpel, and she shuddered as she took another step back fromhim, shaking, no doubt turning as pale as a ghost. She watched his eyes darken with sympathy, and her palm tingled with the urge to slap his beautiful, faithless face.
    “I didn’t know,” he said again, the rough words sounding scraped from his throat. “I would have come home sooner, Sayre. I wouldn’t have stayed away. I was only trying to—”
    “Stop!” she snapped, cutting him off. “Just stop.I don’t want to hear it, because if you say you left to protect me from your big bad self, so help me, God, I just might have to kill you.”
    He pulled in a sharp breath, nostrils flaring as he shoved one of those big hands back through his thick, dark-as-midnight hair. She’d never seen it as short as it was now, the ends only just brushing the back of his collar. “You know, I
should
have leftfor that reason. But I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have had the strength. As bad as I am, Sayre, I left to protect you from something even worse.”
    “Oh, God, that’s funny,” she said with a choked laugh, wrapping her arms around her middle. But no matter how tightly she squeezed, she still felt like she teetered on the cusp of falling apart. “What could be worse than
you
?”
    He flinched atthat brutal assessment, but didn’t back down. “It’s a long story and we don’t have the time to get into it now. I just...I need you to trust me.”
    “Cian, just stop,” she said with a derisive snort. “I honestly didn’t know you could be this freaking hilarious.”
    “This isn’t a goddamn joke,” he muttered, giving her a look that seemed to say he was thinking of putting her over his knee andswatting her backside. And, God, did that piss her off. He’d lost the right to even think about putting his hands on her.
    “You’re damned right it’s not a joke,” she seethed, crackling with so much energy she was in danger of singeing her beloved garden. “Now get the hell off my land!”
    “Sayre.”
He said her name on a long, drawn-out sigh, sounding