Rogue Huntress: a new adult urban fantasy novel (Rogue Huntress Chronicles Book 1) by Thea Atkinson

Author:Thea Atkinson [Atkinson, Thea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-07-05T22:00:00+00:00

Picnicing with Wolfs

Dara left me to my own devices and when I wasn't sleeping I spent my time wandering around her small farmyard in shorts and a tank top she'd somehow scrounged for me. They were far from perfect fit, but they were clean and I was grateful. The property sprawled over a vast piece of ground and harboured a host of chicken coops and pig pens that put me in mind of an Appalachian homestead. Dara's house perched atop a swell in the ground, taking up at least 1200 square feet. Not a big bungalow by any means, but seemed built around a communal eating area with a broad open fireplace whose floor level hearth was made of soot-blackened slate. Something simmered in a pot over a tripod all day, but I didn't dare peek inside the cast iron pot. A library took up an entire wall, filled with herbals and mythology books, physiology manuals, and an entire section devoted to fiction, but no one filled the well-worn sofa chairs with books in hand. I imagined the farm took far too much time for such decadent pleasures as reading.

Outside, chickens squawked about the grounds, chased off when they got too close to the steps by an adolescent hound. As I strolled, I noted a couple women in various states of age, some of them working the land, some of them caring for the few children. I caught sight of an herb garden next to Dara's house, and I found a young woman close to my age digging through the dirt. She looked up when she heard me and I didn't have the chance to slip away.

Her mousey look was magnified by black oil drop eyes that darted up and down my frame in appraisal.

"So you're her," she said.

I spread my arms in the spirit of open friendliness, guessing my appearance might be a bit frightening to a timid little mouse, what with the scars that I knew showed on my bare arms and legs. "I guess I am."

Her trowel paused in the dirt and I noticed she had an uneven black tattoo on her wrist that had no fully articulated shape or definition. "Dara said you won't be staying."

I shook my head at the probing tone. I was never good with women. "Too dangerous."

She laughed and it made her plain face light up in a way that made me realize she was actually very pretty.

"Honey," she said. "It's dangerous for all of us."

She leaned back, showing me full view of her torso from neck to belly and for the first time I noticed she had large bruises on her bare shoulders. The tank top she wore was tight-fitting enough that I could tell she wasn't wearing a bra but she didn't seemed embarrassed about it. Not exactly the kind of thing a timid mouse would do. I chewed my lip in thought and without meaning to, I took in and processed every aspect of her demeanour and then analyzed the result, a remnant of the ingrained training of assessing threats in a few seconds.

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