Page 159 of His Hungry Wolf

Tasha didn’t wait for me to reach the door to pull off. I didn’t blame her. She probably wasn’t ready to accept how she felt about her best friend and I had forced her to look at it. If the situation was reversed and she was saying that about Quin, I would probably be pissed too.

But, there was no doubt that she was in love with Vi. I hadn’t realized it until I said it, but it all made perfect sense.

The girl was practically heartbroken when I said that I didn’t want to have a threesome with her. I didn’t know if she was lesbian, or bisexual, but Tasha had unresolved feelings and she needed us to break up as much as I did.

The only problem was that the person I was in love with might not feel the same way about me. It had been days since the game and Quin was gone. Why? I didn’t understand. What had changed?

The only thing I could think of was that he was no longer my tutor. Could that be it? Was everything I thought that was happening between us just in my head? Was I just a stray puppy to him, and once he found me a home he was done?

I didn’t want to think about that now. I had more pressing things to deal with like how I was going to smooth things over with my father. I was sure he’d be pissed. The man hadn’t checked up on his only son as I lay in the hospital. I would have been upset if I hadn’t come to accept it. The bar for him was so low that all he had to do was come home and that would be enough.

Balancing on my good foot, I retrieved my keys and let myself in.

What I found sent a wave of terror through me that rattled me to my core.

There was something sprawled across the kitchen and living room floor. It was huge. I didn’t know what it was.

It had featherless wings that extended twenty feet as it stretched from the kitchen window to the far end of the living room. Its rounded body laid where the dinner table used to be and its limbs ended in six-inch claws.

Laying on its back, its long neck pressed against the wall displaying an elaborate design of scales. And its head, which was three and a half feet long, looked like that of an ancient reptile.

I only knew what this was because of what Quin had told me about him. This was a dragon. And the way it laid limp with its eyes closed told me that this horrifying creature was asleep.

“Ahhh!” I screamed falling back onto my ass.

Losing my crutches I frantically rolled over retrieving them. Rushing back to my feet I left my bag behind and raced to my father’s truck. I half expected to find him in there passed out or worse. Instead I found the truck empty and locked.

“Oh no! He’s still in there!” I said turning back to the cabin. “Dad! Dad, can you hear me?”

If he was in there, I had to save him.

“Dad?” I shouted a final time before returning to the door and again staring at the beast.

It was still and haunting. Was it asleep or was it dead? I couldn’t tell. All I knew was that unless my father was crushed under its mammoth-sized body, he wasn’t in the kitchen or living room. That only left the bathroom or the two bedrooms.

Moving as quietly as I could, I stepped over its python-sized tail. My crutches clicked like cheap aluminum sending waves of panic through me. Snapping my eyes up to the fearsome monster, it didn’t move. I hadn’t awoken it.

Feeling freer to search without immediately being eaten, I worked my way to the bathroom. The door was unlocked and the dark space was empty. I then moved to my bedroom next to it. It was exactly how I had left it days before.

I retreated within and quietly closed the door. My heart was thumping like I had just sprinted a mile. Whatever was going on was insane. I still needed to find my father and get out of here, though. So using my moment of familiarity to focus, I pulled myself together.

When my heartbeat returned to something approaching normal, I came up with a plan. The last place my father could be was the obvious one. If he was here when this massive creature somehow got it, he would have retreated to his room like I had. I needed to figure out a way past the beast’s five-foot wide wing to get to my father’s bedroom door.

I was really hoping my father was there to let me in after that. Unlike my room, my father kept his bedroom securely locked. I would hate to be banging on the door just to have the creature wake up and… what? Eat me? Burn me to a crisp with its breath?

What did dragons actually do? The fact that I was asking myself this was nuts. How did this happen?

None of that mattered right now. What mattered was rescuing my father and getting the hell out of here. Taking a final deep breath, I readied myself and went to work.

Although my shattered leg hurt, it didn’t hurt enough to confine me to my crutches. I could get by without them. Quietly opening my bedroom door I did just that. And when I got to the leathery wing which I couldn’t jump across, I looked for another way around it.

I could climb under it where the tip of it propped up against the living room wall. God, was this thing big. It was as if the largest elephant you’d ever seen grew wings large enough to keep it in the air. How could things like this exist? What did they eat?

Easing my way under and around the dinosaur-like wing, I climbed over the couch and to my father’s bedroom door. Trying the knob out of habit, I was stunned to learn that it wasn’t locked. How? Why? My father didn’t even leave it unlocked when he got something from his truck.

When I was 10, I had climbed under his bed and had discovered a loose plank. Removing it I found a metal box containing a gun and more cash than someone without a job should have had. He must have realized I had found it because the next day he locked his room tighter than Fort Knox. Why was his door unlocked now?

Slowly opening it and slipping in, I was shocked to find what was in there. My dad wasn’t a tidy man. But the amount of stuff squeezed into the tiny space was overwhelming. Most of it was household décor. Lamps, jewelry boxes, electronics, it was all piled on top of one another. And more important than that, my father wasn’t there. Where was he?

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