Page 20 of Rogue Wolf

With vampires, there most definitely was a worse.

Her pulse drummed a panicked beat. A sound behind Tamaska made her jump and she whirled around. Her neighbour, Angela, stood there, keys in her hand at her door opposite and she started to crane to look inside the ravaged apartment.

Tamaska slammed the door shut.

She refused to give into the shaking. Or the urge to run. The sun hadn’t set. The vampires couldn’t be here now. This had happened earlier, probably on the night of the vampires’ assault.

Besides, she was already here. It would take mere minutes to grab some shit and run.

A thought hit her as she started for the bathroom. Did Kodiak know? She had alarms. The attack on the clubhouse must have kept Kodiak distracted from her alarms that would have been triggered when the vampires tore her place apart to look for her.

Or he just didn’t tell me.

No. She couldn’t give in to the rising anger. It was counterproductive. Nothing more than a kneejerk reaction to discovering this. She grabbed a travel bag on a shelf in the bathroom and filled it with what she could salvage.

Then Tamaska moved into the living room and she looked about in despair. Even if she had wanted to keep some of her furniture, or other belongings, most of them were too damaged to go anywhere but the dump.

She couldn’t comprehend why the vampires wanted her so badly. All she had wanted to do was sell the Blood Opal. It’s not like she had any kind of special connection with it. Kodiak seemed to think her blood wasn’t human, that it could combine with the opal to produce some special power. But that ide didn’t resonate with Tamaska.

Then again, what did these days? Everything was the wrong way up and her only anchor was a man who happened to be a wolf.

A man she loved.

And even then, she didn’t know if love was enough.

She rushed into her bedroom, and the sight nearly broke her heart. The bed where she’d had a spicy time getting to know Kodiak had been pulled apart. Tufts of filling poured out of tears in the mattress. It was hard to imagine the fun she’d had with him in this moment, and she longed for a more peaceful time, for more time to get hot and heavy with him.

Without all the complications that surrounded them.

Her body ached for his touch, to have his hands slipping over her skin, massaging the sweet spot between her legs. If only it could be that simple for them to be together intimately, exploring each other and doing what all couples wanted to do early in their relationship. No new couple dreamed of fighting for their lives against a foe that shouldn’t exist.

Tamaska grabbed an overnight bag that had been tossed out of her wardrobe and threw the travel bag in there. Nothing in the apartment had been left unscathed, but her bedroom was especially damaged. It looked as if whoever had done this had exploded in a blind rage, tearing apart anything they could touch.

She swallowed hard, a lump of fear filling her throat. She snatched up clothes lying around and pushed them into the bag. Panties, jeans, tops—all crumpled, some torn—went into the bag. She hoped she could scavenge a few pieces of her former life to take with her into the future.

Tamaska’s instincts screamed at her to leave, but she couldn’t. She was stuck filling up the bag until nothing more would fit. Then she zipped it up, slung it over her shoulder, and started towards the living room and the front door.

A movement within the kitchen made her yelp. She dropped the bag, her pulse pounding frantically, telling her to run.

Instead, she froze.

“So,” a dark, cultured voice said, oozing like oil, “we finally meet.”

Out from the shadows of the kitchen stepped a man, dressed all in black. His skin was ghostly pale, his eyes dark.

“Get out of here,” she spat at the vampire. Kodiak was going to kill her—-if she managed to survive this encounter.

“I’m rather comfortable here, Tamaska.”

The way he pronounced her name sent bile burning up her throat.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Why not?” He shrugged an elegant shoulder. “You’re the one I want. So much blood was spilled because of you.”

“Stay away from me.” She struggled to breathe in, to keep the guilt at bay.

He laughed. “Don’t you want to know what I want first?”

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