Read Online Moon Chilled by Caitlin Ricci - Free Book Online Page B

moment to place it, but once she had, I knew that she felt better for having received it. I trusted her and I wanted her to know that, especially as we walked into the place where I had first learned not to trust anyone. That was why I had let my wolf out for the journey, why we were approaching on four paws and wearing fur. The wolf was safer for me, and while I was not as weak as I had been, I was hardly strong enough to take on the man who had hurt me as a child.
    A blue door opened across the narrow street, and a face peeked out from the shadows. The wolf kept walking while I sought to remember and eventually did. I recalled the family that had lived in that house when I'd been just a small child playing with the other pups in the street. The man in the doorway watched us, and though I didn't know him from my short time in the pack, the wolf knew he wasn't a threat. I could feel that in her and in the way she easily dismissed him after just a cursory glance. He was submissive to her and would never be capable of doing more than watching her curiously. My wolf hurried along the road, the gravel falling away from her paws as she walked.
    More people opened their doors to see me now, as if there had been an unspoken call on the morning breeze announcing my arrival back into the place I'd once called home. I heard their fevered whispers. The wolf was more interested in an elk off in the forest. Its musky scent lingered on the grass it had walked through only a few hours before. The idea of the hunt, of having a meal that large, was only a momentary distraction for her before the scent of a fox distracted her. She continued on, walking past small houses and a few shops with peeling paint that showed their age through their thick glass windows and ragged exteriors.
    I tried not to let the memories of my time here enter my mind. I'd grown up here, in a way. My parents had joined the pack when I'd been only ten. Three years after that I'd been gone. A cold chill that had nothing to do with the crisp morning air seeped into my thoughts, surrounding me just as the wolves in human skin had started to. My wolf sped up, not understanding what was bothering me but wanting to get away from it all the same. She didn't understand my thoughts, my fears, my trepidation. She lived in the moment in a way I'd only ever be able to attempt.
    Only there was no escaping what I was afraid of. In fact, the only thing we could do was go directly toward the source of my discomfort as my wolf trotted along a quickly narrowing street. Her hackles rose as we approached the large white farmhouse at the end of the lane as the street narrowed into a fine point that fell directly at the farmhouse's front steps. I was nearly silent in my wolf's mind as she fiercely rejected the image of the place she hadn't laid eyes on in over a decade and never thought to see again.
    My wolf couldn't enter without my help, so she stood on the front porch, her ears back and her tail swaying in the light breeze as she waited. Men, women, and small children approached her from behind. Some of their scents were familiar, but when she looked over her shoulder at them, none of the faces made sense. They weren't wolves. Not right now, at least; she didn't know them as humans, but I did, and I tried not to let the faces of the people I did remember bother me.
    Voices drifted down to me from inside the house. Noises that the wolf didn't understand but that I cringed at. As my discomfort grew, she bared her teeth, ready to fight off whatever threat we faced. I sent her images that I hoped were calming. But there was still something there, something in the air that had my wolf's nerves standing on end, and I was too messed up in that moment to tell her that it was going to be okay. It would have been a lie anyway, since I didn't know that for a fact. I only hoped it as a litany of reasons to run as fast as I could in the other direction swarmed through my mind.
    The noises abruptly