Read Online The Dark of Twilight (Twilight Shifters Book 1) by Kate Danley - Free Book Online Page B

knocked over would mean death.  The front portcullis was twenty feet away.  Ten feet.  She could do it. She could get across the drawbridge.  She could get into the woods where who knew what dangers might lurk, but at least they would be better than being trapped in this courtyard.  She would get to Gisla's fathers and there, his own soldiers could take on these monsters.  She just had to not die.  She just had to get away.
    She heard Gisla's cry.  She saw as the woman backed into the stronghold and closed the door behind herself, leaving Aein alone in the courtyard.  The wolves leapt at the door in a frenzy, as if to be barred was worse than being able to take down the prey they had.
    Aein did not wait.  She ran.  She heard the wolves behind her, drawn by her footsteps.  There was the winch which held the portcullis up. All it would take was one hit to the metal handle and it would go down.  The dogs were closer.  She knocked it as she ran and slid beneath the gate before it thundered shut.  Inches behind her, it fell upon the wolves, crushing them beneath the weight of the iron, impaling them beneath the pointed base.
    Panting, she bent over, her hands upon her thighs.  She thought her heart might burst open.  More of the werewolves flung themselves against the gate, but until they learned how to work a winch, they would not be escaping through that route.
    Aein looked up at the tower walls.  Gisla stood in one of the windows and saluted her.  Then the princess looked over her shoulder as if she heard something and was gone.
    It was all up to Aein now.
    She ran as fast as she could towards the northern road. 
    She was not there to see that just an hour later, a single wolf with an injured shoulder was able to wriggle beneath the portcullis, a wolf determined to follow her and bring her down.

Chapter Eleven
    S he was exhausted.  She had not slept since yesterday morning, but she knew she could not rest.  Every moment she wasted meant someone inside the stronghold died.  She had to push on to the Haidra kingdom.  It was a day's journey on fast horseback.  She did not have a horse. 
    And even if she did have the luxury of sleep, she did not think she would have been able to.  The images of everything she had seen flooded her mind.  The carnage.  The death.  In the quiet of the woods, it all kept repeating.  It would not leave her.  It would not silence. 
    She leaned her hand against a tree for strength before continuing on.  She knew it was the shock of what happened which made it seem like nowhere was safe.  It felt as if there were eyes on her at every turn.  She felt as if in every dark shadow something lurked.  The hair on the back of her neck prickled.  She knew the reality was that at any moment, the wolves might escape the stronghold. But she knew, too, that this impending sense of doom was her own paranoia, just her mind trying to keep her alive.
    She stumbled forward, placing one exhausted foot before the other in a half-hearted jog.  If only she had thought to escape to the stables.  If only she had thought this through, but there had been no time.  Just survival.
    She scanned the road ahead.  Perhaps she would happen upon some kind farmer who would help her.  Perhaps there would be an inn.  But she knew this northern road.  Besides the bandits who inhabited the forest, when wars broke out between the Haidra and Arnkell strongholds, this was the road their soldiers marched.  The peasantry had retreated long ago.  It was a dead land.  There was a single inn in between the two territories, reachable by a full day of walking.  It was now noon.  She should reach it before the sun went down... she would reach it before the sun went down...  The words became a mantra.  ...before the sun went down...
    Where had she heard those words?  The phrase rang in her head over and over as her feet fell upon the ground.  It was Cook Bolstad, she realized.  He had said it in the