by Kimber White
I spit frost away from my lips as I opened the door to Crow’s General Store. Lloyd Crow carried basic household goods at ridiculous prices, but unless you wanted to brave US-31 in a blizzard and try to make it to Petoskey, you paid Lloyd’s prices for your loaf of bread and diet pop.
“Hey, Tamryn!” Lloyd’s voice boomed from some back corner of the store. I didn’t know how he did that. He had no security cameras. No two-way mirrors. But, the minute anyone walked through the front door, even if a wall separated them, Lloyd always knew who it was. I asked him about it once and he just wagged his thick, black eyebrows at me and told me it was an ancient Odawa secret.
“Hey Lloyd!” The bell above the door clanged as I pressed it shut behind me. I wasn’t quite fast enough, and a drift of snow blew in at my feet. I muttered a four-letter word under my breath and shot Lloyd a sheepish grin.
“Don’t worry about it,” Lloyd said as he came around the long counter filled with tobacco products, shot glasses for the tourists, and lotto tickets. “My nephew Benny’s working today. He’s out back shoveling the walk.”
“Thanks,” I said, dusting the snow off my jacket and peeling back the hood of my parka. My hair stuck to my face and I pushed it back. Lloyd’s eyes went to the fiery strands between my fingers and he gave me a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
I got that a lot around here. People like me don’t look like they belong in Oodena. It’s silly, I know. They’re good people. Strong families. Kind hearts. Any one of them would give me the shirt off their backs or lay down their lives for each other. Including me. But even in the twenty-first century, they couldn’t quite get past my red hair and my fair skin. I was a living reminder of the path my grandfather chose, and his daughter after that.
You see, half-breed isn’t exactly true. I’m a quarter-breed. Maybe if my grandmother and parents hadn’t died when they did, it wouldn’t have mattered so much. Now, though, they take it as objective fact that bad luck follows me wherever I go.
I gave Lloyd a bright smile and grabbed a shopping basket from the wall. “Bread, eggs, milk, and that awful orange powdery stuff he likes to put in his tea.”
Lloyd raised a brow as he followed behind me down the first aisle. I pulled a loaf of bread off the shelf and turned back toward him. He stood with his hands on his hips and his head cocked to the side.
“Honey, you sure you need all that?”
My turn to cock my head back at him. “Every Wednesday.”
Lloyd nodded. “I know. It’s just, uh, honey, Wyatt was in here about an hour ago picking up the same stuff.”
I dropped my shoulders and turned to face him. “Are you kidding?”
“No, hon. Ya know, I’m sorry. I should have tried to call you. My nephew told me I should.”
My heart raced. My grandfather had been fast asleep when I left him two hours ago. Just like every day right after lunch. I had spent that last two hours in the Oodena Public Library looking over college admissions applications. We didn’t have internet up at the house and the cell reception was for shit.
Just then, the bell clanged over Lloyd’s door and Beau Karrow walked in. He cut a tall, hulking figure in the doorway with his black nylon jacket with a fur collar, his shiny sheriff’s badge catching the light.
“Hey, Beau,” Lloyd called out. His lips parted, and I knew he was about to tell Beau about the possible issue with my grandpa. I put a hand up to stop him. Lloyd looked from me to Beau but clamped his jaw shut and gave me a slight nod. I didn’t know if this was a crisis yet, and Beau never seemed to miss a chance to get me alone.
He walked over to me, holding his black campaign hat with its pinched Montana crease and gold band around the center. Beau put a hand on my shoulder and leaned down as if he were going to kiss me. Startled, I took a step back. He had a habit of invading my personal space. His dark eyes flicked over me and one corner of his mouth lifted in a smirk. I caught Lloyd’s face from the corner of my eye. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other and chewed the side of his lip.
“Good to see you, Tamryn,” Beau said. “It’s getting cold out there. A storm’s coming. You need a ride back up the hill?” He wore his coal dark hair clubbed in the back. His dark brows cut straight across his forehead, lending him a fierce expression even when his lips curled back in a smile.
I shook my head. “I’m good. Thanks, though.”
I set the loaf of bread I was carrying back on the shelf and looked out the window. The sky had darkened in the short time since I’d entered the store.
“Maybe he’s home again already,” Lloyd said, trying to convince himself more than me, I think. “Why don’t I just call up to the house right now?”
Dammit. Now, there was no way I could easily get rid of Beau’s questions.
“Wyatt take off again?” he asked.
“It’s nothing I can’t handle. I’ll let you know if that changes.”
Beau raised a thick eyebrow, but the half smirk didn’t leave his face. I said a silent prayer, and for now, he seemed to let me drop the issue.
I nodded slowly at Lloyd, crossed my arms, and walked to the front window, pressing my forehead against the cold glass. Lloyd grabbed a cordless phone from the counter and dialed my grandfather’s number. He only had one phone in the house, a clunky black rotary dial with a receiver heavy enough to brain someone with. But, the thing was deafeningly loud and he could hear it no matter where he was in the house. Hell, when it rang it chased squirrels out of the trees.
I looked back and Lloyd gave me a smile and a shrug as he listened to the phone ringing on the other end. With a sigh, he set the receiver down. “I’m sorry, honey. I really am,” he whispered as Beau had wandered off to the back of the store near the soft drink cooler.
I pulled my hood back over my ears and plastered on a smile. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not your job to watch him. And even if you had called me, I couldn’t have stopped him from leaving.”
Lloyd nodded, and his shoulders sagged with the relief of knowing I didn’t blame him. “Tamryn, old Wyatt Redbird knows those woods better than anyone. If he isn’t back up that hill by now, he will be by the time you get there.”
I gave Lloyd a friendly salute and stacked my empty shopping basket back against the wall. “It’s okay. I’ve got the four-wheeler. Shouldn’t be too hard to track him. The snow has been blowing a little, but not falling fresh.”
“Now you hang on, Tamryn.” He put a hand on my shoulder and shot a quick glance toward the back of the store. “Why don’t you let Beau help you out? I don’t like the thought of you going up that trail on your own. If Wyatt’s got hisself in some trouble, no need for you to get in it too.”
God bless Lloyd and his sweet, if not slightly sexist, inclination to look out for me. I can’t deny it. Oodena was far from perfect. But, after spending half my childhood in Tallahassee away from anyone who knew that I’d played the Little Mermaid in my first-grade pageant, or that my mother had been a mostly self-taught opera singer who made every wedding and funeral in Oodena feel like an evening at the Met, the place felt like home. Quirky, pain-in-the-ass, backwoods home. A twinge of anger mixed with grief bubbled beneath my breast. What if I’d never left? What if I’d never come back at all?
I shook my head and waved to Lloyd as I hurried out the front door. My grandfather had come down from the hill putting one obstinate foot after the other. He’d be no match for me on the four-wheeler. I heard Lloyd cluck something else after me, but I was already halfway down the street.
I hopped on the ATV and hoped that the thing would fire up. It had been twitchy all week, and if I couldn’t get it started, I knew Lloyd would be two steps behind me offering up Beau or some other nice, Odawa boy of suitable marrying age to help me out. The other thing about Oodena: Everyone wanted to play matchmaker, whether I was cursed or not.
Mercifully, the machine started up on the first try. I snapped the chin strap on my helmet and sped off in a cloud of snow. Once I got off Main
Street and hit the trail toward home, I slowed down. Squinting against the blinding white, I tried to pick out my grandfather’s tall shape against the barren birch and maple trees. I scanned the ground for tracks in the snow but found only squirrel and maybe a hare. No footprints. The wind wasn’t blowing as hard up here either, so I knew if I kept on going, I’d have to find something.
On a hunch, I veered off to the east. Grandpa liked to check his rabbit traps, and I just bet that’s where he’d been headed. Sure enough, as I slowed the four-wheeler, I saw a deep set of footprints cutting a zigzag path toward Miskwaa Creek. I parked the ATV and climbed off.
“Grandpa!” I cupped my hands around my chin. The wind kicked up and whistled back, but he didn’t answer. My heart dropped. It was getting damn cold out here. In mid-January, it got dark by 4:30. I had maybe twenty more minutes of good light.
I hated to leave the ATV behind, but there was no way I could ride it through the thicker part of the woods. Grandpa’s footprints were starting to blow over, but he couldn’t be that far ahead of me. I kept going. Some niggling part of the back of my brain told me I’d been stupid not to wait for Beau or somebody else to come with me.
I called his name as I tromped through the woods. Low branches tangled in my hair where my hood had fallen back. About ten yards away from the vehicle, I hit a drift of snow that buried me up to my waist. I pulled myself free of it and stumbled forward, nearly landing face first in the creek. Fed by a deep underground spring, Miskwaa Creek never quite froze over, but it was shallow here. I could see my grandfather’s faint boot prints on the other side.
“What the hell?” I said to myself. He usually didn’t venture off that way. Well, he usually didn’t venture off much at all. He must have gotten some bug or another up his ass. I took a big leap and just made it to the other side of the creek without falling in. That was the good news. The bad news was that if I did find him and he wouldn’t come willingly, there was no way I could get the four-wheeler through here.
Another twenty yards up the hill and Grandpa’s tracks disappeared. The wind started to howl and grainy snow like sugar blew straight at my face. I told myself I’d go another hundred yards or so then I’d have to turn back. I was getting to a part of the woods I didn’t know very well. Lloyd was right; there was no sense me getting myself into whatever trouble Grandpa had.
I went another hundred yards, then maybe another hundred yards after that. Then, I saw him. My heart shot straight to my shoes. I recognized his red and black checkered wool hat. Thank God for it, or maybe I wouldn’t have seen him at all. The snow had covered him almost completely. He was lying face down and very still. I ran as fast as I could through the deepening snow and skidded to my knees at his side.
“Grandpa?” I put my hand to his cheek. Thank God, he was still warm. He moaned a little as I nudged his shoulder. I couldn’t see a scratch on him. Was it his heart? A stroke? His eyelids fluttered as I got him to his side and he tried to look up at me. But they went in and out of focus. He tried to say something but erupted in a fit of wet coughing.
I needed help. Now. Whatever had made him collapse was secondary to the fact his lips were turning blue. If I didn’t get him warm, I’d lose him.
I tried to get my bearings. He’d come far east. Way off his property line. The house was probably a good two miles northwest and uphill. The ATV was maybe a half a mile back the way I’d come, but I couldn’t drive it up here.
“Don’t move,” I told him. “Just hang on.” I ran a little further up the hill to get a higher vantage point. There was nothing but barren woods around me.
Then, I saw it. A memory flashed from when I was a little girl and he’d brought me out here looking for walnuts. A small, red brick cabin nestled almost against the side of the hill a half mile in the other direction. The place was abandoned, almost falling in on itself. My grandpa had let me pick wild strawberries from an overgrown garden nearby but warned me never to go up to the building.
It looked the same to me at first. My eyes played tricks on me. I shielded my brow with my hand and squinted. Someone had fixed the place up. The roof no longer caved in and smoke poured out of the chimney. Thank God, someone was there!
I ran without thinking, calling for help as I went. They’d have a landline maybe. At least another pair of hands to help me get my grandfather back down the hill.
I’d almost made it to the front door made of thick, dark wood with an arch at the top and an old-fashioned brass knocker at the center. Then a pair of strong hands grabbed me by the shoulders and whipped me around so hard I nearly lost my balance.
A mountain stood in front of me. My eyes came just to the center of his chest and the wall of rippled, sinewy muscle that seemed to go on forever as I craned my neck to meet his eyes. He was shirtless. Sweat beaded across his sculpted pecs and in some back corner of my brain I knew this should puzzle me. Twenty degrees with the wind howling through the trees and snow swirling all around and this man looked more like someone standing on a sun-soaked beach.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said, his voice a deep, rich baritone that sent heat through me. But his words didn’t come smoothly. He strained over them like he hadn’t spoken in days.
I took a step back. He kept his hands on my upper arms. I felt them burn hot, even through the thick down of my jacket. I had the urge to reach up and run my fingers along the anvil-sharp lines of his jaw as he clenched it. Dark stubble covered his face and neck and his hair fell in chestnut-colored waves, scraping the top of his shoulders. God. He was beautiful. Strong. Dangerous.
“Help me,” I said past a dry throat. “Please. My grandfather’s had a bad fall. He’s just a few yards down the hill. I can’t move him by myself and he’s going to freeze to death if he stays out here much longer.”
I saw something stir in him. Storm clouds seem to swirl behind his bright green eyes as he stared down at me with a fierce scowl. My heart hammered behind my rib cage, and for a moment I thought maybe I was the one about to collapse. He made a sound that seemed more animal than human. A low growl that made the air vibrate somehow. Like I heard it with more than just my ears.
He tore his eyes away from me and looked back down the hill. With a slight lift of his chin, he sniffed the air. Then, he looked back at me with those penetrating emerald eyes. Finally, he let me go. It felt as though the air had been sucked from my lungs. I stood for a moment as though my feet had grown roots. Then, he moved down the hill with the speed of an avalanche, his body a blur as I ran after him.
END OF EXCERPT
You can pick up your copy of Dark Wolf here if you’d like to keep reading!
Books by Kimber White
Claimed by the Pack Series
The Alpha’s Mark
Sweet Submission
Rising Heat
Pack Wars
Choosing an Alpha
The Complete Series Box Set
Wild Lake Wolves Series
Rogue Alpha (featuring Mal)
Dark Wolf (featuring Luke)
Primal Heat (featuring Bas)
Savage Moon (featuring Alec)
Hunter’s Heart (featuring Derek)
More to Come! Check http://www.kimberwhite.com/wild-lake-wolves for the latest releases.
Wild Ridge Bears Series
Mammoth Forest Wolves Series
