Page 68 of Wounded Christmas Wolf
SQUEEEEEEEEEEEK!
Cupcake, on the floor, whined tragically.
Whether or not they actually noticed Jace come in, Holly wasn’t sure, but no one tried to make him leave. She shed her winter gear while Noelle came back from the kitchen with two half-full wine glasses.
“Who’s up at the tree farm?” Holly asked, hanging up her coat.
“We closed early,” Noelle said. She handed Holly a glass of wine. “I know we were going to stay open late on Christmas Eve this year. But it was absolutely dead. If a customer shows up, we can always go ahead and open back up for them, but I can’t see any reason not to just have a nice Christmas Eve and celebrate our win.”
Holly sipped at her wine. Jace had accepted his, but looked a little dubious, and she realized she didn’t know if he was more of a beer guy.
She was looking forward to finding out.
It was more than just that, though. Jace was jumpy. Noelle put a Christmas movie on, and the family settled in to watch, dogs, squeaky toys, and all. If Jace was unwelcome, at least the Colonel didn’t seem like he was going to openly make him leave, so Holly decided to accept that. But as a blue winter dusk fell outside the windows, Jace suddenly got up and went to look outside.
“What?” Holly asked. She needed to get up to make more popcorn anyway, so she went to his shoulder.
“I thought I heard a vehicle in the yard.” He frowned out the window. “I don’t see any headlights. No, wait.”
“What?” Holly asked. She glanced over at her family. Her dad was looking at her curiously. He and Noelle were on the couch, with a bowl of popcorn between them and Kaden in her dad’s lap.
“You guys always put up that chain across the gate when the tree farm’s closed, right?”
“Yeah,” Holly said. She squinted into the dusk. Shifter eyes were better than human eyes; she couldn’t see a thing.
“I know I closed it,” Noelle said. “Do you want me to go check?”
“No need,” Jace said. “It’s down. And I just saw something move up at the tree farm.” He lunged for the door, not bothering to stop for a coat. “There’s someone up there.”
JACE
Jace had been fairlyconfident they were being followed, but he hadn’t wanted to alarm Holly. He wasn’t completely positive, after all.
Now, running up the driveway to the tree farm through gently falling snow, with Rocket trotting beside him, he already guessed who he was going to see—and he wasn’t wrong.
There was a shiny new-looking SUV parked next to the tree shed (more of Daddy’s money, perhaps) and Rob was crouching in front of the shed, doing—what?
Jace saw a flare of light: not a flashlight, but something more golden. A match or lighter. He was setting fire to the straw in the shed!
Rocket raced ahead, barking, and Rob jerked and looked up as the dog ran toward him. Then he bent over his task.
Jace could tell he wasn’t going to get there in time to stop Rob from doing whatever he was trying to do. Holly’s farm, her family, everything they’d worked for was at risk. He felt a sudden quivering surge of adrenaline and endorphins rush through his body.
He knew this feeling. It was the surge of good feelings that always preceded a shift. Like a runner’s high, but more.
His wolf was at the surface again, and it wanted to come out.
Rob wasn’t looking; in fact, he’d vanished into the shed. Jace fumbled to unfasten his jeans without breaking stride or tripping himself. Once, he’d had the knack of stripping his clothes off and shifting in one fast, fluid motion. It was more complicated now, less automatic. But the wolf in him was all but whining in eagerness, and his hands were becoming as clumsy as paws. He left a trail of clothing behind him, and then he was flowing into the muscular body of the animal that had almost abandoned him.
It felt good. It feltwonderful. A shifter in their shift form was at their peak, as strong and healthy as they would ever be. He stretched out and ran.
Rocket had already reached the shed and was barking frantically. Jace charged on all fours into the shed.
It had been long enough since he’d used a wolf’s senses that it took him a moment to figure out that Rob couldn’t get the straw to light. The idiot apparently hadn’t thought to bring any kind of accelerant, like gasoline or lighter fluid; he was just using a regular cheap plastic lighter, and the damp straw smoldered and failed to burn.
Still, he really was trying to set fire to it. Fury overwhelmed Jace. He snarled, and Rob looked around, having all but tuned out Rocket’s barking. Jace saw the instant when anger turned to terror as, rather than a barking border collie, Rob found himself confronted with a huge, snarling wolf.
Jace leaped on him. Rob screamed, and went down flat under the weight of two hundred pounds of furious apex predator.
