Blood Wolf Dawning. Rhyannon Byrd

want to see her crushed, which is what would happen. It wasn’t arrogance or his ego talking; it was a simple fact. She was too young to clearly separate sexual need from higher emotion, and he knew that if he touched her, she’d likely end up thinking she was in love with him. Wasn’t there a saying about how hate and love were simply two sides of the same coin? So while she might hate him now, that feeling could be twisted into the other. After everything he’d done, he owed it to her to keep that from happening.

      Does that mean you plan to keep your hands to yourself? his wolf demanded, prowling beneath his skin. ’Cause I gotta tell you, that doesn’t work for me. If given the chance, I plan on getting between those perfect thighs of hers and staying there, where we belong.

      He made a gruff sound in the back of his throat, wishing the animal would just shut up and leave him alone.

       And by the way, I still think you’re an idiot. Jackass.

      Irritated, tired and at the end of his rope, his grip tightened on the passenger’s-side door handle until he’d nearly ripped it off, the beast’s guttural laughter echoing through his head as he climbed up into the truck. It knew it’d gotten under his skin, and he wondered if his friends all had this much trouble with the possessive predators who lived inside them, or if it were only him. Seemed just his luck that his wolf would not only be a pain of the first order, but a sarcastic son of a bitch, as well.

      “Cian?” Sayre said as she cranked the engine and slid him a curious look. “Are you going to sit there growling at your door all day or are you going to shut it?”

      He didn’t bother to respond. He didn’t dare. He didn’t trust anything that might have come out of his mouth at that moment, and his pulse was thrashing in his ears too loudly to carry on a conversation anyway.

      Instead, he slammed the door shut, rolled the window down and focused his attention on the surrounding woods, knowing that Aedan could very well be out there, watching and waiting, slowly biding his time. The human thugs had been his brother’s first play, but they wouldn’t be his last.

      And now the clock was ticking.

       Chapter 4

      As soon as he parked the Audi behind Sayre’s truck and climbed out, a terrible sense of doom settled over Cian, hanging around his shoulders like a leaden weight. It sounded embarrassingly dramatic, but there was no denying the emotion. It was like a thundering death knell echoing in his head, warning him that nothing about this situation was going to end in the way that he wanted it to. He knew, damn it...and yet, he couldn’t turn back.

      Instead, he simply followed her into the small cabin, doing his best to keep his attention focused on their surroundings and not on how tight her little ass looked in those too-short-for-his-sanity shorts.

       Seriously? You sound like an old man who doesn’t even know how to get it up anymore.

      “Fuck off,” he muttered under his breath, mentally giving his wolf the finger. It wasn’t a question of not being able to get it up. It was knowing how quickly she’d have his friggin’ balls kicked in if he let the sight of her in those shorts take hold of him.

      While she closed the door behind them, he did a quick survey of the room. The cabin was built with an open floor plan, the walls lined with row upon row of packed bookshelves, the bindings on the books creased from use. A hallway on the right led to what he assumed would be her bedroom and the bathroom, the kitchen located off to their left. There was a high-tech sound system on a small table in the corner of the main room, but no television. If she watched movies, it was likely on her computer or iPad, and he recalled Jillian once talking about her sister’s penchant for comedies.

      A scowl twisted his brow as he tried to recall the last comedy he’d watched. It’d no doubt been something he’d caught down at one of the cinemas in the human town of Covington with Brody before he’d left, but he couldn’t remember the title. Just that he hadn’t felt like he got even half of the jokes, and he’d hated how old that’d made him feel.

      He hated it even more now, when there was a so-beautiful-she-hurt-his-eyes twenty-three-year-old walking away from him as she headed toward the kitchen. She would probably laugh her ass off if she knew he’d “technically” be pushing fifty in a few years.

      His body might be young—he halted the aging process when consuming blood as one of his main food sources—but his spirit felt freaking ancient, as if he’d lived three times that long.

      As she washed her hands at the kitchen sink, she looked at him from over her shoulder, eyeing his blood-spattered jeans and T-shirt, and jerked her head in the direction of the small hallway. “You’re messier than I am. Why don’t you go ahead and grab your shower? It’s the first door on your left. Towels are under the sink.”

      Taking a few steps toward the kitchen, he said, “Actually, I should go and bury the bodies first.”

      She turned around as she dried her hands on a towel, blinking back at him with those big, storm-colored eyes. “Um...of course. I wasn’t...I don’t know why I didn’t think of that.”

      Because she wasn’t a natural born killer, like he was. And because she was also probably a bit in shock, after everything that had happened. She might have grown up in the hard, often brutal world of the Silvercrest, but Sayre Murphy had always been a dreamer at heart. And dreamers weren’t the kind of girls who were accustomed to burying three dead bodies out in the woods behind their homes.

      “Is there a shovel in your shed?”

      She pulled her lower lip through her teeth and nodded.

      The sight of her white teeth on that plush lip had him sweating, and he cleared his throat a little as he swiped his arm over his forehead. “Then you go ahead and grab your shower,” he told her, the roughness of his voice telling him he needed to get back outside and cool the hell off. “This won’t take me long.”

      Her eyebrows lifted slightly. “Don’t you need help?”

      Shaking his head, he said, “I’m not letting you anywhere near them, Sayre. But I won’t go too far. I’ll be close enough that I can hear you if you need me.”

      He turned and walked back outside before she could say anything more, and pulled in a deep breath of the humid air as he headed for the shed. A half hour later, he was shoveling the last scoops of dirt over the place where he’d buried the bodies, the grave situated between two thick blackberry bushes that would quickly grow over it. He’d checked all three males’ clothing before putting them in the ground, looking for anything that might give him a clue about Aedan’s plans, but wasn’t surprised when the search turned up nothing. His half brother might be seriously twisted, but he was too smart to make a dumb-ass mistake by trusting anyone like these jackasses with vital information. That was why Cian hadn’t bothered to keep one of them alive for questioning.

      That...and the fact that he’d been too bloody furious to let them live.

      After putting the shovel away in the shed, Cian made his way back inside the cabin, locking the door behind him. He couldn’t hear the water running, so he knew Sayre was out of the shower. The sound of a hair dryer clicking on told him she’d be busy for a while longer, so he washed his hands in the kitchen, then went through the French doors that opened onto a small deck and took out his phone. After scrolling through his contacts, he called Brody’s cell phone number.

      Within two rings, the Runner answered the call. “Where the hell are you? I thought you were bringing her back.”

      “That’s still the plan,” he said in a low voice, unsure how much of this shit storm he should explain over the phone. “But it looks like we’re staying here tonight.”

      Brody exhaled a rough breath. “I told you she wouldn’t do it.”

      “Yeah, well, she doesn’t have a choice. We ran into some trouble,