Dire Warning (The Austin Wolves Series Book 2) by C.P. Rider

Author:C.P. Rider [Rider, C.P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: VC Group, LLC
Published: 2023-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY

"What are you doing out here? Don't you hear that thing?"

I did a leap-spin, coming around to the sight of a Texas red wolf seated behind me, eyes the gold of a late afternoon sunset, tail slapping the dusty ground with annoyed swipes.

"You look oddly calm, all things considered." I pressed my hand to my heart. Forced my breathing to slow.

"I'm not happy you're out here making a target of yourself, but otherwise, I feel calm." Wolf Juan gave me a wide-open mouth smile, showing all his teeth. "Infecta sent a shifter. I can handle a shifter."

"Scared they were going to send a magical—or something like moi?" I batted my eyes at him.

"At the risk of offending you, yes. Non-shifter paranormals tend to be unpredictable. I don't like unpredictable."

If the man only knew he was standing beside the dictionary definition of unpredictable.

The beast roared, again rattling the veranda, and fired out footsteps like blasts from a cannon.

"What is that?"

"Something big," Juan said, still grinning.

"Big and angry." I scanned the parking lot, but the creature was either behind the motel or invisible. Oh gods, please don't let it be invisible…

"Angry. Yeah." The wolf's tongue lolled out of his mouth.

"Stop smiling like that. It looks like you're welcoming the fight."

"We are." The growling echo beneath his words made it sound like more than one wolf was speaking. He stood, circled me, bumped my thigh with the side of his head. "Best to go inside and lock the door. Infecta sending something this big, something this perfect for me to take on… It feels like a—"

"Setup," we said together.

"They're going to distract you and make a run at me." I shrugged, nodded. "Not a bad plan, just entirely wrongheaded if they know me even a little bit, which according to Zeke and those Infecta people from this morning, they do."

"Then there's more to it. You'll need to be vigilant." His warm, furred body bumped me in the hip—once, twice, three times—herding me toward the room. He stopped when I was over the threshold.

"Hey, cut that out."

"My wolves want you inside." He wagged his tail.

"Your wolves, right. Not their bossy human."

The wind picked up, blowing a receipt, a dead mesquite branch, and a car-tire-sized tumbleweed across the lot. The branch caught on the undercarriage of the Honda, the tumbleweed lodged in the shaded niche by the ice machine, and the receipt twist-twirled off on a wind current like a paper streamer the day after a parade.

"Sheez. Talk about double underlining the desolateness of this place." I leaned against the doorjamb and studied Juan's wolf, looking for signs that he sensed something I didn't. "All we need now is the theme song from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. Can you whistle, wolf?"

He didn't reply, simply stared out at the moonlit lot from the empty parking space outside our room. After dinner, we'd parked the Honda in a spot near the manager's office. We both knew the ruse wouldn't stop a paranormal from finding us, but it might give us an extra minute or two that could make a difference.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.