Read Online I'm Not Afraid of Wolves (The Cotton Candy Quintet Book 4) by Erin Hayes - Free Book Online Page A

other hand, my dress wasn’t as lucky as his pants. The poor thing was done for and when I had transformed back, I was once again naked. I went upstairs by myself and dragged my rolling bag back downstairs to change.
    All semblance of modesty was gone for me tonight. If I lived through this , I was never going to live it down.
    One thing was certain though: with the door torn off the hinges, the basement was wide open and we’d have to keep moving.
    “So let me get this straight,” Emily said as I tied my sneakers. Her voice pitched an octave higher than normal as she spoke. “There’s a group of werewolves that’s after Sara. Andrea is one of them and probably ratted us out to them. Hell, even offered her cabin as bait. Ranger Rick here is a werewolf, but he’s not a part of that group of werewolves. Christine is a mountain lion. And I’m just here because I wanted to go on vacation?”
    “That’s why I’m here too,” I reminded her.
    She shook her head. “How am I supposed to believe that?”
    “Because it’s the truth.” I finished double-knotting my shoelaces and got to my feet. Hopefully I wasn’t going to have to transform any more tonight. These were my favorite pair of running sneakers and it would be devastating if I had to ruin them too.
    “I should have stayed home,” Emily muttered, putting her face in her hands.
    I didn’t want to point out to her that this was all kind of Sara’s fault. If she had told me about her predicament before we left Atlanta, we would have been able to figure this whole thing out. As it was, well, this wasn’t going to be the restful vacation that I hoped for.
    “If you weren’t a part of the werewolf pack from earlier,” I said, look at Donnelly, “what were you doing out in the woods?”
    He sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “I heard them howling to each other.” He gave me a hard look. “You don’t hear werewolves like that unless they’re moving to attack someone. So I came to investigate.”
    “As a park ranger or as a werewolf?” I asked.
    “Does it matter?” he asked.
    “I need to know if I have to stay on the right side of the law tonight,” I told him. “I need to know if you’re here as Officer Donnelly or as a werewolf.”
    He chuckled. “Touché. I’m here as a friend. I knew you all were out here, and I was worried about you.”
    That made my stomach twist in a funny way, and I swallowed, hard.
    “Okay,” I said.
    He rubbed the back of his neck. “And then you knocked me out.”
    “The bigger they are, the harder they fall.”
    He sneered. “With a rock.”
    “Sorry about that.” Apparently, I wasn’t very good with an action-movie kind of bravado.
    But he smiled and said, “I probably would have done the same thing in your position.”
    Our eyes connected. When was the last time I’d seen eyes so blue? And again, there were butterflies flitting about in my stomach, distracting my thoughts. I needed to stop this and get my head back in the game.
    “So what’s the plan?” Emily asked. “We just hop in the Jeep and drive to get help?”
    I shook my head. “No. They made sure that we weren’t leaving that way.”
    Sara froze. “What do you mean?”
    “They slashed the tires and ruined the engine. That Jeep isn’t going anywhere.” When Sara’s face fell, I quickly added, “But Officer Donnelly here has a truck that we can take. How far away did you park?”
    “About a mile southeast of here.”
    “You think they could have gotten to it?”
    He shook his head. “I parked where they couldn’t find it. And it’s so far away, the engine wouldn’t alert them to my presence.”
    I frowned. “The flashlight would have alerted them.” Then again, he didn’t turn it on until I was nearly on top of him.
    “I’m not lying.” He groaned. “I figured if it all went to hell, I could pretend that I was here on official park business. Besides, I got to see things in the dark I wouldn’t have otherwise.”