Karly's Wolf (Hollow Hills Book 1) (13 page)

Don’t be afraid.

Karly shivered, that familiar thread of heat unfurling between her legs at the thought of what being taken care of by a man like Colton would entail. She thought about that kiss on the field yesterday, when her toes had curled and her belly had turned as hot as molten lust could make it. She thought of her ‘dream’ and that funny look that had come across his face when she’d told him how she wished that he’d been real. Well, that look certainly made sense now.

In spite of everything, she caught herself trying to smile when she thought of how he’d sat on McQueen’s front seat, stubbornly positioned in between her and his perceived rival, growling the whole way home. Puppy had been nothing but gentle with her. Nothing but tender, right from the very start when she’d hit him with her car and he’d still crawled into her bed to lay beside her, comforting her in the only way he could despite his pain.

She didn’t love Colton the man, but Colton the Puppy she had given her heart to right from the very start. And it didn’t matter what form he was in, he still made her feel safe. No one else did that for her. So while it might take some time—months, if not years—already Karly could see a point in her future when she might fall head over heels for Colton, and in more ways than just the physical attraction that pulled at her now.

“Hollow Hills isn’t a bad place to settle your bones,” Mama Margo said, still arguing as if she didn’t know she’d already won the fight.

“No,” Karly softly agreed. “No, it’s not.” And she already knew she liked at least two of the residents. A touch of giddiness came alive in the pit of her belly as she thought of Colton again. “All right, Margo. I promise, I’m not going to run.”

“Are you sure about that?”

Something about the other woman’s tone caught Karly by surprise. Her brow wrinkled. “B-but, isn’t that what you wanted?”

Mama Margo waved her hand impatiently, as if she could just as easily slap aside Karly’s confusion. “What I meant is, there’s a time and a place where running is exactly what a woman should do. An Alpha must have a Bride, and Brides are taken in the Hunt.”

That giddiness inside her twisted, becoming knots so tight that it was hard to breathe around them. “You want me to enter your Hunt? Is that even allowed?”

“It has the novelty of never having been tried before,” Margo admitted.

“What do I do?”

Margo leaned toward her, her amber eyes unnaturally bright. Now that she knew what she was looking at, it was hard for Karly not to see the wolf in the old woman shining through. “Run, girl. I want you to run.”

“Where to?”

“It doesn’t matter. He’ll catch you soon enough.”

Every knotted nerve inside her buzzed as if it were on an electric wire. “Then what?”

The corners of Margo’s mouth began to curl. Reaching across the table, she covered Karly’s hand with her own and very softly, as if imparting the most prized of all secrets, said, “Sometimes a mommy wolf and a daddy wolf, who love each other very much, get certain urges…”

Yanking her hand out from under Margo’s, her face burning in a combination of embarrassment and instant arousal, Karly grabbed the doily off the table, wadded it up and threw it at Margo. She couldn’t help it. She laughed. So did Margo.

Covering her burning face with both hands, she rubbed as if that alone could extinguish the fire smoldering in her belly. “That’s it,” she said, giving up. “I’m crazy. That’s all there is to it.”

Stark raving and completely crazy. Already she could feel the heat of Colton burning into her body
…daddy wolf…
She shivered all over again.

“Totally crazy,” she whispered.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

By the time the sun began to peek its burning face above the horizon, Karly had already been up for hours, immersed to the eyebrows in culture shock.

“Hold still,” Mama Margo told her, and Karly did, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember any other point in her life when she had been so damned self-conscious of how she looked—not to mention, how she smelled.

“Clothes aren’t important,” Margo had told her when Karly had blearily rolled out of bed. “You’ll be the only one wearing any, once the Brides are presented. It’s best to go without, though. Men want to see what they’re running for. Besides, the more you wear, the more likely it is to get caught on something in the woods. Not to mention it’ll get in the way once he’s got you down on the ground.”

Karly had flushed hot all the way from her belly to her eyebrows. “We’re going to do it right there wherever we drop?”

“No point waiting to seal the deal.”

“My divorce isn’t final yet.”

“Have you signed your fancy, legal papers yet?” Mama Margo countered.

“Yes.”

“Then time’ll take care of it. Shuck down.”

From that point on, everything Karly did revolved around the upcoming hunt. She had to bathe, twice: once to get clean and then again, immersing herself head to toe in brown, thickly-herbed water that smelled like something dead had been marinating in it for at least three days.

“Smells like a possum’s behind, but this recipe’s been in the family for centuries and believe you me, it works!”

“Oh my God.” Karly held her nose, doing everything she could to keep from gagging while Mama Margo washed that smell all through her hair. “They’re going to smell me coming from fifty miles away.”

“Exactly.” Mama Margo thumped her on the head. “Don’t expect me to do it all for you. Come on, girl. Get it all up in your privates.”

Age and hard living had given Mama Margo the kind of hands that only seasoned fishermen and lumberjacks displayed with pride. A cranky disposition and ill-concealed urgency made them rougher still as she gathered Karly’s long blonde hair, beading, braiding, and twisting it up in a series of loops and ponytails behind her.

“There,” she said, eyeing the whole mess with critical pride once she was done. “That’ll give him something to grip onto.”

“I think I’m going to throw up,” Karly groaned. “How long do I have to sit in this god-awful stench?”

“Try and do something nice for a
chevolak
,” Mama Margo tsked. “Fine, big baby. Get out if you want to, but don’t you dare touch my towels! That smell’ll never come out!”

Karly ended up standing on a wad of paper towels in Mama Margo’s tiny kitchen, drip drying in full display of three open windows

The body paints came out then, and with Karly doing nothing but watching as the kitchen clock worked its way around to 5 am and the slow gray of pre-dawn began to extinguish the stars, Mama Margo began to cover her in dark blue symbols, squiggles and lines. Starting at Karly’s shoulders, she let the paintbrush play down Karly’s spine before breaking to dash brilliant dots and swirls across her belly, and hips and eventually ending halfway down her left thigh.

“What does it say?” Karly asked.

“What do you think?” the old woman countered.

“Barefoot, pre-pregnant, get her while she’s hot, boys,” Karly guessed. When Mama Margo sat back far enough to give her a hard look, after a moment, Karly gave her own head a censuring smack. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Pushing herself back to her feet, Mama Margo came around to Karly’s front. Lifting her chin with the tip of one finger, the old woman dabbed a little paint on her brush and then placed a single dot high on the bridge of Karly’s nose. The crowning touch was the thin swooping lines she drew directly above the brow of Karly’s left eye all the way to her hair line, then from her hair line to the middle of her cheek, and from there all the way down her jaw to her chin.

“The women of my line have worn these markings, if not from the very first Hunt, then from the second. We have no written record. Mothers remember and paint them upon their daughters when their time comes to run. Should you have a daughter, remember these. From this moment, my blood is your blood. My scent is your scent. My line is yours.”

The seriousness with which Margo said that effectively sucked the levity from the small kitchen.

“I’m too old to adopt,” Karly said, but it was impossible not to feel touched by the sentiment.

“Don’t look a gift wolf in the mouth.” Mama Margo washed what little paint remained in her cup down the sink. “Wait a few minutes to let this all dry and then you can dress. Just your nightshift, girl. Pants are a waste of time. You won’t wear them long enough to make putting them on worthwhile.”

As Karly fanned the drawings on her leg with her hand, helping the paint to dry faster, the first fluttering of doubt moved through her. “He probably won’t even chase me, you know. There’s plenty of other women here.
Volka
women.” Prettier. Younger. Steeped in the traditions Colton seemed to prize so highly…

Less damaged than she was.

When she raised her eyes to the kitchen window, it wasn’t the lightening sky, but her own reflection she found herself staring at—her blackened eyes, her split lip. This awful smell and her hair, sticking out in a mass of spiky swirls and tangled braids that made the worst case of bedhead imaginable seem fashion-show-runway worthy. She was a mess.

“He’ll chase you,” Mama Margo said confidently.

“What if he doesn’t?”

“He will.”

“But—”

“There’s no way that boy will stand by while another male tackles you to ground,” Mama Margo finally snapped, exasperated. “Especially not if that other male is McQueen. Stop your fretting.”

Instead of waylaying her fears, if anything that brought them all exploding to life inside her. “Another male? How many other males am I going to have to worry about?”

“We had a good female turnout this year,” Mama Margo said. “Including you now, eighteen bitches are running. Of course, we had a good male turn out too.”

“How good?” Karly couldn’t believe she was bothering to ask. She already knew she wasn’t going to like the answer.

“Forty, forty-five,” Mama Margo said airily. “Could be sixty by now. There’s always those last minute stragglers who limp in just before the chase starts. Outcasts mostly, looking to snag an easy Bride so they can start their own territories. Try not to get caught by one of those. That’s a hard life.”

Karly barely heard her. She was still lost on ‘sixty’. Her knees weakened. “I-I don’t think I can do this.”

“Of course you can. Doing this is the easy part. With so many men, every bitch who’s willing will be taken, including you. After your display on the field yesterday, I can all but guarantee you’ll have some strong males targeting you right from the start. In fact, all things considered, you’re probably going to be taken first.” When Karly gaped at her, Mama Margo shrugged. “You’re human. Humans run very slowly.”

It was hard to be offended with facts that were laid out so bluntly.

“Don’t worry.” Margo softened her previous statement with a conspirator’s wink. “We’re going to give them all a show worth remembering. They’ll be talking about this for years.”

Karly would have groaned, but the attempt was ruined since she couldn’t even breathe right. “What if I don’t want anybody but Colton? What if someone else grabs me, Margo? I-I can’t! I just…I
can’t
!”

Coming back to her, Margo settled a rough hand on Karly’s shoulder. She squeezed. “Do you trust me?”

“Are you crazy?” Karly shot back. She wanted to laugh, but without steady breath that was also impossible. “I don’t know you! I don’t know any of you! I don’t even know what I’m doing here! What was I thinking?”

Margo squeezed her shoulder that much tighter, a grip that felt both comforting and secure. “Breathe,” she said.

Karly tried. She sucked a great gasp into her too-tight chest.

“Close your eyes.”

Both hands pressing down hard against her own constricted ribs, Karly obeyed. She squeezed her eyes as tightly closed as they would go and struggled to slow her gasping down.

She was still fighting for that when she felt Margo step in close to her and her low voice murmured near Karly’s ear, “Clear your mind, girl. Think of the safest place you’ve ever been; the safest place you’ll ever be.”

Karly tried, but the first thing that popped into her head was her first night here in Hollow Hill’s, lying with her face buried in Puppy’s soft fur while the owl from hell stood sentry right outside her window. The second night hadn’t been much better, but Puppy had been there for her then too, letting her grip and pull at him every time the thunder crashed and the storm raged on into the very small hours of the morning. He’d been there for her, making safe every scary moment she’d had since she’d left Dan. Karly tried, but no matter what she thought up, nothing felt as safe for her as it had that first time, cuddled up next to Puppy.

And Puppy was Colton.

Karly took a soft breath and held it.

“That’s what you’re doing this for,” Mama Margo said, as if she knew exactly what was in Karly’s mind. Giving her one last pat on the shoulder, Mama Margo handed Karly a nightshirt. “Time to go.”

“I’ll get my keys,” Karly said, resigned and grateful that the interior of her car was leather and not cloth. Hopefully the smell wouldn’t absorb into the seat.

Hopefully.

“Don’t bother,” Mama Margo said, already heading for the door. “Nobody drives to the Hunt. We all walk today. Tradition, girl. Tradition is very important. Hope you enjoy three-mile hikes in the early morning mountain air.”

“Not particularly.” Her legs were aching already.

“Oh well.” Mama Margo smirked. “Sucks to be you then, doesn’t it?”

“Oh my God, why do I like you?” Karly laughed, and followed her out the door.