Read Online Melody Snow Monroe by Animal Passions - Free Book Online

eyes.
    All through the meal, neither man would answer her nagging questions about shifting or how she got to Anterra. Perhaps they’d be willing to share some stories not related to their environment.
    “Taryn, what were you like as a little kid?”
    His eyes sparkled. “I was a hellion. Kellum is a year younger, but we basically did everything together.”
    Kellum leaned forward. “Until we were eight or nine, remember, it was you, me, and Kranor that hung together.”
    “Who’s Kranor?” She loved getting some gossip.
    Kellum’s lips pressed together, but then he must have decided that the information wasn’t proprietary. “Kranor was a wolf-shifter friend.”
    Wolves shifted, too? She wasn’t going to bring up that tired topic and decided to go with the flow. She was having too good a time with these men to spoil her one, and only one, evening bickering. She looked over at Taryn. “I thought you all hated the wolves.”
    “We do.”
    “So not all wolves on Anterra are bad?”
    “I’ve never met an adult wolf I’ve liked.”
    How horrible for such hate to exist, though if they’d attacked her without provocation, she’d probably dislike them, also. She supposed there was a lot of prejudice across the world. That attitude was what caused so many useless wars.
    “Why do the wolves and lions hate each other?”
    Taryn shrugged. “No one knows for sure, but something bad must have happened a few thousand years ago to cause such a rift.”
    Her mind searched through her studies for a possible answer. “Did the lions steal the wolves’ food supply or something?”
    He shook his head. “No. Anterra has plenty for all.”
    “Then why still fight if the original cause is unknown?” It seemed dumb to do battle when no one knew why. Though on earth she could point to a lot of instances where hatred sprung up for no reason other than ambition.
    “It’s what we’ve always done.”
    Too bad she wasn’t staying. The archeologist in her would have liked to dig around and perhaps find the mysterious missing link.
    Kellum polished off the rest of his wine. “Can we change the subject? It’s been debated to death.”
    She didn’t want to insult her hosts any more than necessary. “What was it like growing up around here?” She didn’t direct her question to one particular brother.
    Taryn smiled. “We were typical boys. We did everything we weren’t supposed to do.”
    That was probably the first real thing she believed. “Were you defiant and rambunctious?” She could imagine them getting into all sorts of trouble.
    Kellum nodded. “I’ll say.” He glanced over at Taryn. “Remember when we broke into Rustan’s wine store and stole two bottles?” He laughed, a sound that seemed foreign. She hadn’t realized he had the capability, but she liked the sound.
    “Do I? I drank almost one whole bottle myself and vomited up every last drop.”
    That wasn’t a nice thing to imagine. “How old were you two?”
    Taryn searched the ceiling. “I must have been nine.”
    They were bad little boys. “That’s terrible. I hope you were sick for days.”
    “Trust me, we were.” Kellum leaned back in his chair. “I think we scared our parents the most when we decided to take on two adult wolves who were attacking our henhouse.”
    She sucked in a breath. “Could you shift at that age?” She’d decided that if she was going to convince them to take her home, she needed to pretend to go along with their story.
    “Yes, but we were only baby lions then.”
    “What happened?”
    He pushed back his chair and stood. Her eyes remained glued on him as he lowered his loincloth. A large, white scar cut from his near his waist to his upper thigh. “This happened.”
    Holy shit. He was telling the truth. She prayed that shifter-wolves hadn’t been the cause, but she’d read about wolves attacking people. The ugly indent implied something had taken a huge chunk out of his skin. “I’m surprised the wolves