Your Lycan or Mine? (Broken Heart Book 14) Read Online Free Page A

she saw the dreary grayness she always did. She looked at the owl head again. For some odd reason, she only saw this object in color.
    She stared at it, searching her memory. Where had she seen this before?
    Natasha’s house.
    Her best friend in junior high, Natasha Nelson, had shown her the odd statue during a sleepover. It had an owl head, a lion body, and a snake necklace. Natasha’s father studied ancient cultures and supposedly he’d found it on some kind of dig in Israel.
    Just before Claire’s sophomore year in high school, her father took a new job, and the family moved to Ohio. She hadn’t seen or heard from Natasha in years.
    She chuckled. This could not possibly be the same owl’s head.
    What did it matter? She had proof that her vision was healing. Grinning like a lottery winner, Claire dug out her wallet and extracted a quarter.
    Finding this little guy was like getting a message from Henry. I’ll always take care of you, Claire. Always. That had been the promise he reiterated every day of their lives together. It felt like the statue was his gift to her; a reminder that he was still keeping that promise.
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    T ulsa , Oklahoma
    AFTER SEEING NOR off at the airport, Ash had gone straight to her old neighborhood. She pulled into the gravel driveway and let the rental car idle. The house was abandoned, the yard unkempt, and the metal fence rusted and broken. Honeysuckle bushes were thick around the listing gate. In the backyard, weeds poked up through the high grass. Somewhere in that mess were the remains of her terrier’s doghouse.
    Her gaze wandered over the dilapidated house. The Convocation had purchased it and given it to her. She’d let the place fall to rot and ruin because the idea of coming back sent panic crashing through her.
    Were the answers to stopping Lilith actually in there? And how could her adopted parents’ murders be related to what was happening now?
    She felt frozen to the spot. Here was where her life had ended. A rebellious sixteen-year-old, she’d snuck out to go to a party and returned home to find her family murdered.
    Ash tasted bile at the back of her throat. She’d never been back to Tulsa since the tragic loss of her family, much less this neighborhood. The only time she even thought about Oklahoma was when she popped into Broken Heart.
    That awful night when she lost her parents and the Convocation rescued her, she was taken from the human world and thrust into the paranormal one. She wasn’t allowed to do anything but train. Weapons. Martial arts. Magic rites. Learning how to kick ass had given her focus, a way to work out her grief and her rage. Her first jobs had short leashes held by iron-fisted chaperones. After a while, the Convocation trusted her to go into the world, to do her job, on her own.
    Ash shut off the car’s engine and shoved the passenger door open. What had she hoped to find here? Answers? Redemption? Hope?
    She rounded the front of the car and walked to the gate. It was falling off its hinges. Honeysuckle wound through metal loops, reaching toward her like victims reciting last prayers. The sweet scent of the flowers made her nauseous. Staring at them, she drifted back to that night so long ago…
    The sweet scent of honeysuckle wafted from the vines entwining the metal fence. She leaned down and tugged off a yellow blossom. Gently she pinched the stamen and withdrew it, licking away the pearl of nectar on its end.
    Her mother had taught her how to do that.
    Guilt crimped her stomach. She looked at the desecrated flower and wished she hadn’t plucked it, hadn’t stolen its honey. The yellow petals were already browning and curling inward. Sighing, she tossed it to the ground.
    “That house is haunted.”
    Ash whirled around whipping out her hip daggers. The poisoned tips of the blades hovered above the head of the one who’d crept up on her.
    “Are those real?” The little girl’s sky-blue eyes were as wide as saucers. “Can I touch