Defiance at Werewolf Keep (Werewolf Keep Trilogy) Read Online Free PDF Page A

wehr-wolves.'
    'Lass, we're absolutely serious. What attacked you two weeks ago was a werewolf, a man infected with lycant hropia. The doctors tell us it’s a contagion of some kind that is passed by bodily fluids while the man is in animal form. It doesna appear to be passed down through families.' Will leaned across and placed both his big hands on top of hers, as they lay like broken toys in her lap.
    'Lycan... I've never heard of it.'
    'Aye, likely you have no’. I nev’r heard the term until I was attacked.' Will squeezed her fingers gently as he let his meaning sink in.
    'You were attacked as I was? You saw the beast? You escaped?' Lily felt the comfort of the big hands on hers and allowed his calmness to soak into her , like water into parched soil. What her mind could not accept, her heart did. This Scot was trying to comfort her. He had shared the same horrifying experience and knew how she felt.
    'Aye, Lass , I did. Claire was driven away before she could end me.'
    'Claire ?'
    'Claire Greaves. She wa s one of the long-term residents at Breckenhill Keep at one time,' Dee informed her, a nervous smile playing across her bow-shaped lips.
    'I thought you said you were attacked by a werewolf? Now you say it was a woman?' Lily wanted to get away. She wanted to leave these people and their confusing, terrifying story and go home. She tried to rise , but Will's gentle hands held her firmly in place.
    'Claire , like most of the inhabitants of Breckenhill Keep, was a werewolf, turned by a lover who came home from the Crimean War. In those days, some eleven years ago now, there was only a small group of people aware of the plague that war had unleashed on us. It took many months to track Claire down and convince her that she needed to be protected from herself.' Byron spoke in his serious, unemotional way, as if discussing the latest harvest yield.
    'And you are taking me to a place where there are more creatures like the one who attacked me? Are you mad? What kind of cruel trick is this? Let me go!'
    S he pulled her hands out from under Will's and struggled to escape. She was wild with terror, and the big Scot, forced to draw her to her feet to still her, wrapped his arms around her writhing body, holding her as he would an injured bird as she thrashed in his arms.
    'There lass, donna fash you rself. You'll be perfectly safe. That's the point of the asylum. It protects us. You’ll come to no harm, I promise you,' he murmured into her hair.
    Lily stopped struggling. She let her head rest against her captor’s warm chest, feeling the strong arms comforting her, even as they trapped her. His words dripped into her awareness a phrase at a time. 'Perfectly safe' ...'Asylum'... 'Protects us' ...'Us…'
    'How can a place that imprisons werewolves also be a safe haven for its victims?' she asked breathlessly, almost afraid to hear the answer.
    'Because every werewolf wa s a victim. Like us, Lily, Lass. We were all bitten or scratched by werewolves. For me it was Claire, for Claire it was her lover, for her lover... I donna ken his name. He was shot before the Captain could get to him... But that ex-soldier was, in-turn, bitten on one of the bloody battlefields of the Crimean Peninsula. Before that…we have only suppositions.'
    Byron took up the story. 'We have been fighting to contain an epidemic, in the last eleven years, of such proportion that it could destroy society as we know it. And we do it in secret. If the general public were to find out what roamed their streets at night, we would have panic and mass hysteria on our hands.’
    'Is there a cure?' she asked, feeling Will's arms loosen enough for her to turn and look at Byron.
    'We’ re hopeful. But, although we now know a great deal more about the condition than we did even five years ago, we have found no cure, as yet.'
    ‘How can you live with the woman who attacked you?’ She turned her head up to Will, wanting to see another truth in his dark eyes other than the