The Savage Grace: A Dark Divine Novel Read Online Free Page A

“rule number one,” as both Daniel and Talbot used to tell me. Caleb was still out there, and it was impossible to predict what a madman like him was capable of doing next. Considering the state of my stupid ankle, I wouldn’t have stood a chance if I’d encountered him or any of his still-loyal boys last night.
    I stretched forward and concentrated my healing powers into my throbbing ankle until the pain subsided into an uncomfortable ache. Then a thought hit me. “How do you know what Daniel wants? Can you … can you talk to him when you’re in wolf form?”
    A trill of hope ran up my spine, and I no longer cared about the soreness of my ankle. Maybe I could get one of the boys to talk to Daniel for me. Tell him…
    “No,” Brent said. “It’s just like we know what he wants. And we do it. That’s how it works with an alpha.”
    “Like telepathy?” My brain was running much too slow this morning. But it couldn’t be any later than six a.m., so I didn’t blame myself for being so sluggish running on less than three hours of sleep. But there was a much quicker thought—too quick to be my own—that flitted through my mind. If you were a wolf, you could communicate with Daniel, too. You could be together.
    “No,” Ryan said. “We can’t read each other’s thoughts.”
    “Thank God,” I heard Zach mumble. He and Marcos had edged closer to the porch.
    “All animals have their ways of communicating,” Brent said. “Facial expressions, vocalizations, and such, but with the alpha, it’s more like a feeling. Sometimes it manifests as images or impressions. But mostly, it’s like we feel what he feels.”
    I mulled that over quietly in my head for a moment.
    “What does he feel?” I finally asked, even though I was afraid I already knew the answer.
    Ryan and Brent exchanged a look, but I couldn’t read the meaning of it.
    Marcos stepped forward. “He loves you very much,” he said in his Brazilian accent. “He wants us to keep you safe … but at the same time, it feels like part of him is … I don’t know quite how to say it. Like part of him is leaving. ”
    I nodded and bit my lip. That is exactly what I’d been afraid to hear. I didn’t need to be one of his wolves to be able to feel that a part of him—the part that was Daniel —was going away.
    You can’t stop him. Not as a weak human, the monster in my head growled. I hated how often I heard its voice now. My hand went to my neck, hoping to clasp my moonstone to help sooth the beast away. But of course the stone wasn’t there anymore. Caleb had smashed it against a wall in his warehouse, along with most of my hope that we were ever going to escape his evil plan.
    I’d worn that pendant every day for almost a year, and I kept forgetting it wasn’t there anymore until I’d reach for it. And then my neck would just feel empty and bare without it. In my dreams, Daniel kept telling me that he’d given me the moonstone to help me stay in control—to help me stay human. And sometimes now I wondered if I had the strength to stay myself without it.…
    “That’s it!” I jumped out of the swing and practically knocked Brent over. “Oh my goodness, I think I know the answer.”
    I ran down the porch steps, my hands to my head like I was trying to hold in my racing thoughts so they couldn’t escape. Brent, Ryan, Marcos, and Zach bounded up to me. Even Slade came closer, standing at the edge of the yard now.
    “I keep seeing Daniel in my dreams—the same dream over and over again. What if he’s trying to tell me something? What if I’m feeling what he feels? What he wants me to feel? He and I could be connected somehow, too. So what if he’s trying to tell me how to help him?”
    “It’s plausible,” Brent said.
    “What is he trying to tell you?” Marcos asked.
    “My moonstone!” I jogged down the driveway, once again ignoring Gabriel’s warning about running on my fragile ankle. I had to get to the parish. I had to tell