Kalen Read Online Free Page B

again and fought a grimace. For some reason, it seemed as though all smells were stronger today. It must have something to do with her animal side. She’d given up trying to convince herself that this was some sort of bad dream. Nightmare is more like it. Either way, no matter how impossible it was, what had happened to her seemed real—too real to continue to try to pass it off as something in her imagination. Her imagination was never that vivid.
    “Are ya lost?” The taller one didn’t appear to have all of his sandwiches in his picnic. He was kind of cute in a strange, bucktoothed sort of way.
    His brother, on the other hand, knew which way the geese flew and kept looking at her as though she was a piece of meat. She didn’t like it, or him, but she was cold and lost. What choice did she have but to follow them at least long enough to warm up again?
    “I’m Billy,” the tall mentally challenged one said, holding out his hand. He nodded toward his companion. “That’s my brother Bobby.”
    Ally refrained from touching him. Something about them made her skin crawl, whether it was their strong odor, or the way they looked, she wasn’t certain. All she knew was that she didn’t want to touch either of them and she had to get away from them as fast as she could.
    Something also told her if she changed in front of these two, they would kill her, skin her, then stuff her to hang on their wall as a conversation piece.
    “My name is Alice,” she lied. The last thing she wanted was for them to know her real name. At least with the Al sound at the beginning, she might remember to answer to it. She held the coat out away from her for a minute, hoping some of the smell would waft off it. “And thanks for the use of your coat. It was very kind.”
    Bobby shrugged. “‘Taint nothin’ ma’am. I was hot in it anyways.”
    “Still…” She smiled in an effort to make it look like she didn’t notice the gawd-awful smell that permeated the thing. “It was kind of you.”
    Bobby grabbed his fishing pole and the string of fish and turned to his brother. “Come on, ya nit. We need to get home before dark.”
    Ally looked up toward the ever-darkening sky. If they could get home before dark, then it meant that they didn’t live far from here. She had to do something to get away from them. Somehow, some new animal instinct told her that if she stepped one foot inside their home, she would never leave alive.
    * * * *
    Kalen ran through the woods as fast as he could. He didn’t know why, but something told him the woman was in danger. He knew why they seemed tied together. She’d bitten him. Hard. Her new canines had sunk down to the bone and that small exchange of saliva to bone tied them together.
    The only other way to form such a tie was with a mate. He wasn’t ready for that. He had a lot of wild oats left to sow. The last thing he wanted was a woman around mucking things up. Despite what he wanted, they were connected now and there was nothing he could do about it but bitch and…what was the point in that?
    He continued to run to the east as fast as he could. The sound of his paws hitting the ground and his claws digging into the earth for traction was the only noise in the quiet of the still forest. Smaller creatures knew there was a predator in their midst and kept to the brush, their little hearts drumming with terror.
    The last thing on Kalen’s mind was hunting the small rodents hiding in the brush. The uneasy feeling in his gut had set him on much larger prey. Fear spiraled in his stomach as he felt the woman’s discomfort. Two men approached her. They both scared and repulsed her, yet she felt resigned to following them. He must be close if he could feel her emotions, her repugnance at having to associate with the men she didn’t want to be with.
    Kalen slowed his pace to a trot when the roof of a little cabin came into view. A small spiral of smoke rose from the chimney, giving evidence of a fire, long