A Rose in Winter: Mail Order Mountain Brides Book One by Penny Kate & Willow Callaway

Author:Penny Kate & Willow Callaway [Kate, Penny & Callaway, Willow]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-25T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

WARREN

This was a different Warren who walked through the snow, quiet as a leopard, cunning as any hunter this side of the Mississippi, with an unyielding gaze that missed nothing. This was where he was most confident, tracking, waiting, and searching for his prey.

He’d been hunted since the wolf pack had arrived, but now it was his turn…

The way he saw it he’d be just like them. He’d pick them off one by one if he had to, just like they were trying to do to his herd. It was something he was best at, waiting.

This Warren was comfortable in his skin. He’d never grab a woman and pull her into his arms without thinking, and he’d never fall for the trap that was his brother’s fiancée, no, he was sure, certain, and ready for revenge against the beasts that dared to hurt his flock.

He was a patient man, always had been, so why the rush earlier to grab Rose and try to offer her something he had no business of even dreaming of offering?

In the back of his mind, he heard the traitorous part of his heart say, because she’s warm and forgiving, all the things you aren't.

He’d worn many hats in his life. Son, brother, shepherd, mountain man, and he felt embraced by the cold even as deadly as it was. She was a beacon of something more…

Leaving behind the idiocy of mooning over a pretty woman, he was on his mountain doing as he’d always done. He gripped tightly to his lever-action rifle, his breath puffing out like smoke, the ridge just ahead, his destination. Nathan had gone east, promising to meet him on the south side after they'd both covered some ground and found where the tracks led.

The sun was setting behind him when he reached the ridge. He paused on a cliff that oversaw a valley, it seemed to go on for a thousand miles. Unforgiving, empty, seeing tracks there in a circle on the ledge, he knew the wolves had used this vantage point as he was now to find their meal. He imagined them pacing up and back, lurking, wanting, starved for the hot blood and meat they could tear apart when they found it.

This…Warren understood this. It peeled back the courtesy of society, and it was simple. Kill or be killed.

A fleeting thought struck him, and he leaned his head back and howled. A resounding howl in the distance echoed back.

Warren smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. He howled again and they answered him.

He was close.

They were closer.

Nathan crested the opposite side just then, holding onto something he was dragging behind him. “Boss, come look at this.” They both stared at the slab of meat dangling from a rope.

“A trap?”

“Looks like it.” Nathan dropped it down into the snow, and blood smeared the white. “But there was no snare. Just the meat.”

“Maybe someone was watching it.”

Nathan scratched his head. “Maybe. From the looks of it… it don’t look like any regular trap, Boss.

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