Page 9 of Alpha Rising (Secrets of the Northland Shifters)

Before I could react, another fat drop hit the top of my head. I looked up at the sky and took a raindrop to the eye. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

Thunder rolled in the distance, and the heavens opened in a torrential downpour.

I ran in my flip-flops, heading for the pines, though I was already soaked and freezing before I hit the ditch.

My ankle turned on the slippery grass. Sharp pain sliced through me and I cried out, going down on one knee.

Cursing like a sailor, I limped into the trees and put my back against a thick tree trunk. I slid down until I was sitting on the ground with my knees pulled up to my chest. My ankle throbbed.

I wrapped my arms around my legs, taking comfort in the knowledge that Toby knew where I’d gone. If the rain didn’t let up soon, he’d eventually come looking for me, right? Because now there was no way I’d be flip-flopping my way back to the lodge.

My body rocked with intense shivering, and my goose-bumped arms shook uncontrollably. What was I thinking, dressing for summer? I was way too optimistic for my own good. Had I forgotten I was living near the Canadian border? June in Evergreen was quite a bit colder than June in Chicago.

I buried my head against my knees and wrapped my arms around myself even tighter.

I didn’t know how much time passed after that. I’d focused all my energies on maintaining body heat, and I seriously wondered if hypothermia was possible even in June.

Once or twice, I heard something move in the woods, but it was only ferns getting beaten down by the onslaught of rain, or the wind breaking twigs off the branches.

My hands shook as I raised them to my mouth, cupped them, and blew warm air over my frozen fingers. Why had I come up here again?

Minutes later, I was so cold I’d lost all track of reality. I couldn’t even remember how I got here. Had Iwalkedinto the woods again? Was I just on the path behind the stables?

My whole body felt like it had been filled with sand. So heavy. Wet. Cold. Spasming. Exhausted. Heavy.

I just wanted to fall asleep. Take a nap and wake up to the sun.

I closed my eyes…

An hour later—or maybe it had only been a few minutes?—the ground shifted underneath me.

Heat soaked into my skin, and I burrowed into its source, lulled deeper asleep by the undulating motion of the world.

I imagined I was on a ship, rocked by the cradle of the sea as a violent storm raged above deck.

I dreamed of a hand brushing back my wet hair. Another stroked my jaw. Then a tug, as if my hair was being twisted around someone’s hand and tightly fisted.

A finger ran over my neck, and a face dipped close. Breath brushing against my skin.

“Why?” asked a rough voice near my ear. “Why?”

My heart pounded rapidly in response to the voice, the question, the male musk…

A head nuzzled against my neck, sending a tingling sensation over my skin. Desire stirred deep inside me, starting at my upper thighs, rising upward. It made me feel deliriously desperate.

There was a tug at my clothes, then another. I was instantly cold again, and the male voice grunted as if in shock or pain.

The discomfort lasted only a second this time. The cold and the wet pulled away from me until my whole body was nestled in warmth and comfort.

Such a strange, strange dream, I thought. It was nothing like the nightmares I usually had about DaBruzzi’s men pushing me, kicking and screaming, into the back of a van.

Then my eyes flew open and reality set in.

5

SARAH

Iwasn’t on a ship being rocked by the waves. I wasn’t under a tree in the middle of a rainstorm. But then, I wasn’t in the back of a dark truck either. I had no idea where I was.

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