Half Wolf Read Online Free PDF Page B

remember correctly was the impact she had on him when those big eyes of hers were open. This fragile flower took his breath away.
    And if he admitted that to anyone, or took it too seriously, he would no longer resemble the wolf he’d always thought he was, and he would dishonor his fallen mother’s memory.
    Humans were a fickle, dangerous species. Some were even his enemies. And here he was, protecting one from things that went bump in the night.
    He observed Kaitlin steadily. “You’re pale, but looking better. Does your neck hurt very badly?”
    “Bad enough,” she said.
    Life pulsed beneath her skin. In this case, he could sense anger, an indication of her turnaround, and yet Kaitlin looked even more waifish than before. Already thin, she’d lost more weight in the past two days—a sign of her new, faster metabolism kicking in. If she didn’t eat something soon, her nerves would fry.
    Michael lifted the paper bag in his hand and watched her glance at it. “Breakfast.”
    She didn’t acknowledge that.
    “Do you feel sick, Kaitlin?”
    She shook her head. “I’m not sick, I’m scared. I’m not sure who you are, why you’re here or what’s going on.”
    He nodded. “I do realize how difficult this must be. Let me just say that I found you in the park, injured pretty badly, and that I helped in the best way I could.”
    She pointed to the bandage. “You did that?”
    “Yes.”
    “You brought me here?”
    He nodded. “As soon as I found out who you were and where you belonged.”
    Her hand went to her neck. “I can’t feel stitches.”
    “You didn’t need them.”
    “I didn’t go to a hospital?”
    “No. No hospital.”
    “Then the injury wasn’t so bad after all?”
    “It could have been your death,” he said, “if untended.”
    She took a moment to reply. “If you hadn’t come along with a bandage, you mean?”
    Her eyes were pleading with him to lie. She wanted him to laugh and tell her this was all a big joke of the worst kind and that things would be fine now. Of course, he couldn’t say any of those things and mean them. Though she had been faced with this situation for only fifty-some hours, she would have to come to terms with what had become her new reality.
    “Lucky for you, I did come along,” he said.
    Kaitlin’s shaking intensified, though Michael didn’t sense shock setting in, and that was another miracle. Her fragile exterior hid a decent backbone that made her want to try to deal.
    “Public places are bad for us,” he explained, driven to speech by the intensity of her gaze. “Finding out about what we are would mean the end of many of us. Humans aren’t partial to sharing their planet with those who are unlike them. Given that, I couldn’t take you to your real home, either.”
    She didn’t immediately press him for more information about that. Her attention moved again to the paper bag in his hand before coming back to his face. When her eyes met his, an electrified shudder passed through him that Michael didn’t like at all.
    Her bloodless lips parted. “I dreamed that I had a near-death experience. Could that be true?”
    “Maybe now isn’t the time for details.”
    “Because you don’t have any details?” she challenged.
    “Timing is everything, Kaitlin. Those details might hinder the healing process.”
    Would you want to hear how you nearly bit the big one, and that your life force was drained by a fanged parasite? Or that you now will be initiated into the moon’s cult?
    He kept those things to himself.
    Her gaze remained nearly as steady as his was. “Maybe you’ll tell me that I’m going to be a wolf, and that you really are one, too,” she said. “Like in my dreams, and according to Rena.”
    Michael glanced to the corridor before turning back to the bed. Rena had gone, but had obviously spilled some of the dirt he had intended to hold back.
    Moving slowly, he stepped inside the apartment and closed the door behind him. “If we’re to