Page 1 of The Last Sanctuary
Chapter One
Silence could drown a person.
At least, that’s what Raven Nakamura’s mother had said three years ago, the day she left home for good.
Raven’s mother hadn’t been correct, though. It wasn’t silence.
There were more sounds than Raven could count—the whirring of insects, the breeze rustling the elm and maple trees lining the flagstone paths, the constant calls, screeches, hoots, bellows, grunts, and growls of the numerous and varied exotic animals that lived here in the wildlife sanctuary Raven called home.
It was isolation that could drown a person. Solitary confinement. Loneliness like a great bottomless ocean, sucking you under.
Her mom had been full of crap. She’d told herself whatever would justify abandoning her husband and her home, leaving her whole life behind, including her daughter, discarded like a grubby candy wrapper, a piece of trash to sweep away, to ignore and forget.
Raven rubbed her eyes with the back of her arm and forced herself to focus on the swishing tail of the enormous cat sprawled in the enclosure a mere twenty feet below her.
The Siberian tiger tilted his great head and blinked lazily up at her, yellow eyes shining with a vicious, uncanny intelligence. A seven-year-old male, Vlad weighed over five hundred pounds and stretched nine feet from nose to tail.
A creature of incredible power and beauty, his thick orange fur, was stippled with inky-black and rippled across his muscular torso and powerful forelegs.
His majestic head was larger than a basketball and ringed with a thick white ruff. Sharp fangs glinted from impressive jaws. He flexed enormous paws that could rip off a man’s face.
Every inch of him was formidable, exquisite, and lethal. Raven utterly adored him.
The tiger was just fine with isolation. They were solitary creatures by nature, nomads of the jungle. Or, in this case, of Haven Wildlife Refuge, the family zoo Raven’s father had owned and operated for over a decade.
The private zoo was nestled along the perimeter of the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge, a 35,000-acre nature preserve located twenty-five miles north of Macon and about sixty miles southeast of downtown Atlanta.
Not too far from civilization, but the nearby sanctuary of the Piedmont wilderness made it feel isolated, remote, a million miles from the loudness and chaos of the cities. That, and her father barely allowed her to leave the grounds.
Raven wasn’t afraid of being alone. She vastly preferred solitude to any kind of human contact. She’d inherited that trait from her father.
Her mother had been the one who couldn’t stand the loneliness, the isolation, the long hours with wolves, bears, anda tiger for company. Her mother had loathed this place so much she’d chosen her freedom over her daughter.
Raven gritted her teeth at the swell of uncomfortable emotions squeezing her chest: anger, shame, and loss. Too many emotions to count or name.
Usually, she was successful at keeping thoughts of her mother buried in a dark corner of her brain, shoved somewhere down deep, so deep she couldn’t feel the sting of betrayal, the grief of rejection.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Except for today. October sixteenth. Raven’s eighteenth birthday.
It was a beautiful fall day—too lovely for the dark tangle of emotions knotted inside her, for the awful things happening outside the safety of the fenced walls of the sanctuary, the disturbing reports coming from the nearby towns and cities of Georgia and beyond.
Scraps of clouds drifted across the sun, shining brilliantly in the cobalt sky. It was a pleasant sixty-five degrees. Nature hadn’t changed. The sun still shone. The breeze still kissed her cheeks and ruffled her ink-black hair.
Raven wore her usual cargo pants, scuffed work boots, and a looseNirvanaT-shirt. Her N95 mask was stuffed into the cargo pocket of her pants, just in case.
Not that there were many visitors left to worry about. Or any. Not anymore.
Her fingers tightened around the small parcel she held in her lap. Her mother had sent her something, after all. It had arrived two weeks ago, the day before the postal service had stopped delivering the mail. A hiatus, they’d called it.
She didn’t want to know what was inside the box. At the same time, she did. She considered chucking it into the tiger enclosureso Vlad could rip it to shreds as part of his daily enrichment activities.
And yet, if she threw it away unopened, that niggle of curiosity tugging at the back of her mind would remain unassuaged.
This was the last birthday she’d have here. Which meant this was the last present from her mother she’d ever receive, whether the mail came back or not. Likely, not.
Raven shifted her weight, stretched out her legs, and leaned over the edge of the tiger house roof to catch a glimpse of her hiking backpack slumped against the outer wall of the enclosure.
