Read Online Savage by Nancy Holder - Free Book Online

He’d said it was “a court thing.” He’d been falsely accused of breaking into people’s houses.
    Just like he’d been falsely accused of murder?
    And someone broke into our cabin.
    She couldn’t even believe she was thinking like that. Was she so twisted that she could even suspect Trick of doing anything wrong?
    “Hey, it’s going to be okay,” he said. “All of it. We’re going to figure it out.”
    “No. Just stop it,” she said.
    “You’re shaking like a leaf.” He put his hands on either side of her face. “I’m going to make these woods safe for you, Katelyn. Or . . . I’m going to take you out of them.”
    You can’t , she thought, but a dozen images of life with Trick unfolded like flowers: getting away from here; being together for the rest of their lives, with him knowing what had happened to her, and dealing with it.
    “Trick,” she whispered, but she didn’t know what to say next. She had almost bitten him out of sheer selfish desire to have him. She couldn’t have him. Period.
    “I’ll watch out for him,” he promised, misreading her tone. “I know he’s all the family you’ve got left.”
    You. I want you to be my family . But she held her tongue and inclined her head as if in thanks.
    “Trick,” her grandfather called. “Time.” Then the older man looked at Katelyn. “You stay home. With your gun.”
    If he asked to see the gun, she was sunk. She was too off-balance to lie convincingly. Holding her breath, she nodded and said, “Okay, Ed. Grandpa. But please, please tell me. Who was it?”
    He came over to her as the front door opened and the crowd filed out. Truck engines began to roar.
    “Was it Mr. Henderson?” she asked, so afraid of the answer. She had liked their history teacher — missing now for some weeks — started to connect with him. He was a person to her.
    “Another Inner Wolf attendee,” Mordecai said. He smiled grimly. “This gets out, maybe that place will finally shut down.”
    She blinked. Given the immediate circumstance, that was a pretty cold-blooded way to think.
    “Where’s your weapon?” her grandfather continued. “You leave it in your car? I can fetch it for you.”
    “It’s in my room,” she said quickly.
    “Let me check it out, make sure it’s working.” He looked so worried.
    “We gotta go, Doc. She knows how to check her weapon,” Trick said. He looked at Katelyn. “You’ll get it out and stay put, right?”
    She blinked. Was he covering for her? Uneasily, she nodded.
    “There, you see?” Trick said. He turned to Katelyn. “Anybody knocks and tells you they’re selling Girl Scout cookies, you blow ’em away.”
    She pursed her lips and nodded. “I will.”
    Trick and her grandfather joined the parade to the vehicles parked up and down their little country road. Trick climbed into the passenger’s side of her grandfather’s truck, unrolled the window, and gave Katelyn a wave as she watched from the window. She wasn’t allowed to go outside after dark, not even on the porch. When she had first arrived in Wolf Springs, she had chafed at the edict. She’d thought her grandfather was super-overprotective.
    Then I hated him for making me come somewhere that was so dangerous. But . . . am I safer here than I would have been in Los Angeles?
    She texted Justin:
    HUNTING PARTY 2NITE. SOMEONE ELSE KILLED.
    She hesitated. She was assuming Justin was alive, that he had made it back safe. She didn’t know the current status of the pack, let alone her own. But in the event that they were out in the woods, they had to know, to be warned. She hit send and waited.
    She would have preferred never to speak to any of the Fenners again, but she was still connected to the pack. What happened to them happened to her. Justin didn’t answer. She almost phoned him but she didn’t know where he was, and if he was with Lucy, that might be enough for his almost-fiancée to renew her challenge to a fight to the death. Katelyn was