Wolf Tales IV Read Online Free PDF

I don’t think you can forget me in a week .
    She took off at a tired, wobbling run, but he caught her thoughts as she passed by him.
    I couldn’t forget you in a lifetime. Not if I lived forever .
    * * *
    Keisha tipped the cabby an extra ten dollars when he carried her bags to the front door and waited until she got inside and turned on the lights. She’d been terrified of coming home to her townhouse alone at night, terrified of leaving the safety of her friends’ love.
    Terrified of staying.
    She leaned against the door, staring down the well-lighted hallway at the beautifully decorated entry, the attractive front room. She’d loved this place from the moment she bought it. Now it just felt empty… lonely and empty.
    Would it ever feel like home again?
    Home now was high in the mountains of Montana, where the air was cool and the forest dark and deep and welcoming. Where she could run freely with her pack, feel the night air against her furred body, stretch her legs out and race the wind.
    Race the wind with Anton beside her.
    Already she missed him. He’d taken her to the airport, held her tightly before she boarded the plane, kissed her forehead when she turned her lips away from his.
    She loved him. Of course she loved him, but how could he know that?
    She hadn’t told him, certainly couldn’t show him.
    That, of course, was the problem. Until she could come to him freely, make love to him as a whole woman, she was useless to him. Anton deserved better.
    She carried her bags up to her bedroom, checked on her studio, made sure the greenhouse watering system had kept her plants alive, then went back inside.
    The night called to her. She opened the door to the fenced back yard and took a deep breath. Anton, Stefan and Xandi would be running right now. Running as a pack beneath the nighttime sky, following the trails of deer and rabbits, leaping creeks and fallen logs, baying and yipping with the pure joy of the hunt.
    She smiled, imagining Xandi’s beads scattered all over the planks on the deck, and hoped Oliver wouldn’t slip on them when he came to work in the morning.
    Slow tears coursed down her cheeks as she sat in the dark on the back porch step. The sounds of the city were all around her, the stars lost in the bright reflection of a million lights. Before Keisha was even aware of what she’d done, she became the wolf.
    A single leap took her over the tall fence, into the narrow alleyway that was a direct link to the only wilderness within miles. She ran low to the ground and fast, weaving in and out of shadows until she leapt the last barrier between herself and the freedom of the forest that was Golden Gate Park.
    She circled Stow Lake, found the spot where her memorial garden would eventually grow if the commission accepted her entry, then raced the length of the park, staying clear of roads and lights. Watching, always watching, hiding in shadows, avoiding sleeping transients and their skinny, underfed dogs, curling her lip in disgust at the smells of unwashed humanity, overfilled trash cans, the detritus of too many people in too small a space.
    She dreamed longingly of the thick forest and fresh air of the Montana mountains, missed the sense of brotherhood she’d known with her pack running beside her, searched fruitlessly for the sense of freedom she’d discovered under the big Montana sky. She ran until her muscles ached, until each breath screamed in her lungs, until her footpads were raw from asphalt and gravel paths.
    Well before dawn she retraced her path, slipped quietly through the sleeping neighborhood, leaped her backyard fence and paused in the silence near the greenhouse. Something seemed out of place. Something was not quite as it should be.
    Her Chanku senses went on high alert as she checked the yard, sniffed the back door still slightly ajar, just as she’d foolishly left it. Hackles rising, she squatted and peed by the back step, marking her territory.
    Nothing. She sniffed the