Winter Howl (Sanctuary)

  A Total-E-Bound Publication

  www.total-e-bound.com

  Winter Howl

  ISBN # 978-1-78184-167-9

  ©Copyright Aurelia T. Evans 2012

  Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright November 2012

  Edited by Amy Parker

  Total-E-Bound Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Total-E-Bound Publishing.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Total-E-Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2012 by Total-E-Bound Publishing, Think Tank, Ruston Way, Lincoln, LN6 7FL, United Kingdom.

  Warning:

  This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a heat rating of Total-e-melting and a sexometer of 2.

  This story contains 237 pages, additionally there is also a free excerpt at the end of the book containing 11 pages.

  Sanctuary

  WINTER HOWL

  Aurelia T. Evans

  Book one in the Sanctuary Series

  Torn between shapeshifters who love her and a dangerous, seductive werewolf, will Renee choose to stay safe or run wild?

  Renee Chambers, a moderate-level agoraphobe, runs a no-kill dog sanctuary that doubles as a haven for canine shapeshifters. Britt, her best friend who also acts as Renee’s service dog, coaxes an anxious but curious Renee into a romance that has more than a little electricity. With her organisation running smoothly and a girlfriend who loves her, life could be worse.

  Then Grant Heath, a rogue werewolf, shows up and turns her safe little world upside down and inside out, with a side of out of control. She knows it’s a terrible idea, but when she’s with him, she feels different from her tightly wound, controlled self—she almost feels normal. He never does anything she doesn’t want, but he also doesn’t care how far he pushes her beyond her agoraphobic limitations.

  Renee finds herself caught between two different lovers, two different worlds. Should she stay with the shapeshifters and her sanctuary and accept being just an eccentric human being in a supernatural world? Or should she accept Grant’s offer to change her and run with him as a werewolf, violent and bloody, but also fearless?

  Dedication

  For Shannon, for getting me started.

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Samuel Adams: Boston Beer Corporation

  Ford F150: Ford Motors

  Carrie: Stephen King

  Prom Night: Shaw Media, Inc.

  Ever After: Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

  Clue: Hasbro, Inc.

  Monopoly: Hasbro, Inc.

  Risk: Hasbro, Inc.

  Freecycle: The Freecycle Network

  Judge Judy: CBS Television Distribution

  Law & Order: NBCUniversal Television Distribution

  Xbox: Microsoft Corporation

  Xanax: Pfizer, Inc.

  Gideon Bible: Gideons International

  Visa: Visa, Inc.

  Chapter One

  Renee took the last sip from her Samuel Adams and set the finished bottle down next to the first one. She smiled and nodded at Marie, who had come over to take the empty bottles and leave the receipt. There were no words between them. Usually Marie would chat to her customers, but she’d learned when she’d moved to Antoine five years ago that Renee Chambers would not look at her, half of the time wouldn’t talk and the other half of the time would stumble through some painful attempt at conversation. Renee had got better as she’d come to know Marie, but it was still more comfortable for both of them when Renee didn’t try to talk and Marie didn’t try to make her.

  Renee left the cash tip on the table, clenched the leash and slid out of the booth. Her legs stiffened when she saw Josh Beall and Marcus Levinson a few booths down. She had not seen them come in, and although she had heard their laughter, she hadn’t recognised it as theirs. She would have to walk by them to leave. The warm body against her leg reassured her, nudged her in the right direction. She took one step, then two. Her knees loosened and let her walk. She instinctively—and fruitlessly—tried to hide in her long, light blue coat.

  “…saw her at the supply store getting her checklist squared away,” she heard Josh say.

  “What’s it been, two months since she last came down here?” Marcus asked.

  “Three months. Won’t come back down till spring. You can practically set your seasons by her.” He belched, then coughed, pounding his chest a bit.

  “What does she do up there all alone, anyway?” Marcus asked.

  “Roswell says she gets a lot of mail,” Josh said. “He says she has help, but I don’t believe it. She wouldn’t let anyone up there. I bet she does it all herself. Completely crazy.”

  Renee closed her eyes and breathed in. She was not so egotistical as to believe that everyone in Antoine talked about her, but it was just her luck that she had to walk by these two rubes when they were. Neither was too far into his mug for slurred speech, but they were far enough that they couldn’t gauge their volume.

  “Maybe she does porn,” Marcus suggested. “You know, video stuff.”

  Josh snorted. “Frigid bitch like her? Don’t think so.” He leant forward conspiratorially. “Hey, what if we went up—?”

  “Hey, Renee,” Marcus said, even more loudly then they had already been speaking. Josh turned around, his scruffy but reasonably attractive face lighting up with a sly grin when he saw her huddled against the booth table behind them.

  “Speak of the scared little devil,” he said, raising his glass. “Want a drink? You look a little tense.”

  Renee’s eyes darted from Josh to Marcus to Marie to the door. At another nudge to her leg, and she stepped towards the door.

  “Yeah, come on, sweetie,” Marcus said, misinterpreting her direction. “We’ll make it worth your while.”

  How? Renee thought. By drooling on me and trying to feel me up with all those smooth moves you’ve cultivated over the last ten years? She didn’t say anything, of course, just kept inching along until she finally started past the table.

  She lurched forward when Marcus delivered a hearty smack to her ass. It didn’t hurt, but Renee could feel her face start to burn and her chest tighten. At least she could move her legs faster now that she was past them.

  “Hey, now, none of that in here,” Marie called from behind the bar. “Have a good day, Renee. Don’t be such a stranger.”

  “You always run away,” Josh shouted after her.

  “I wonder why,” Renee muttered, her tongue looser now that she was out of the bar and no one was looking at her. “Come on, Britt, one more stop before we go home.”

  “Hey, Mommy, can I pet the dog?”

  Renee winced at the high frequency of the voice and hoped that the mother would know the appropriate way to answer her child. No such luck.

  “Hello, miss. Can my daughter pet your dog?”

  Antoine was not e
xactly a highly populated town, but it had a fair tourist trade, particularly downtown Main Street, which was described in most tourist guidebooks as colourful, cheerful, folksy, and unique. Renee did not know about unique or folksy, but many tourists liked to come by for the ambience. And like most townies, the Antoine population had both respect for tourist dollars and frustration with the tourists themselves.

  Especially when tourists did not know a service dog when they saw one.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Renee said, emphatically not looking at the woman. That sometimes helped, and the warm feeling of Britt against her leg reassured her. “She’s working.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry… Hey, wait, you’re not blind.” The overly polite apology turned into a similarly grating voice of parental annoyance. “If you didn’t want Lisa to pet her, you could’ve just said. There’s no need to lie.”

  “I’m not lying,” Renee said. In fact, she was a terrible liar, but that was not the issue at hand. “They do more than help blind people. Please… I need to…”

  “Well, that’s just rude, having a dog around when you’re not really blind and then not letting a little girl pet it,” the mother said indignantly.

  “I’m sorry. She’s working.” The words came out short and clipped and curt, but Renee was not really that angry. Her throat was just tightening, and she could feel her shoulders curling in.

  “Bitch,” the woman muttered under her breath as she grabbed her daughter’s free hand—the girl’s other hand had been playing with Britt’s tail. The little girl was lucky that Britt was an extremely well-behaved dog. The woman led her daughter across the street.

  “Good girl,” Renee whispered, rubbing Britt’s ear gently. “Ready to go?”

  She barely had to tug the leash in the direction of the grocery store. Britt had a deep bond with Renee, had been with her most of her life and been her service dog for about five years. She could feel where Renee wanted to go.

  Renee admired Britt’s beauty beneath the deep green service vest. So many people confused her for a Siberian husky, and Renee understood the mistake. They were both northern sled dogs, but malamutes were bigger, with thicker fur. Britt was a little larger than average, and the darkest parts of her fur—set off by the usual white accents—were almost black. Malamutes were not traditionally service dogs. But Renee had loved Britt since the first time she’d met her, and the feeling had been mutual. There was friendship and respect between them, a connection that she had never managed to make with any of the people at school. It was really no wonder she spent all her time around dogs—she understood them and got along with them so much better than she did with most people.

  With Britt in front of her, Renee felt secure in her steps. The sides of her coat hood blocked out her periphery, like blinders on a horse, and she felt a little more confident where she put her feet. Besides, with a large dog like Britt with her—a dog that was occasionally confused for a wolf—she felt more protected. Like a celebrity with a bodyguard, thankfully without the paparazzi.

  They made it to the grocery store in about a ten-minute walk. That was what she liked about Main Street. Almost everything was within walking distance, so all she had to do was drive into Antoine, walk around a bit, then drive back home when she was finished, rather than drive from one place to another, and another, and another. Renee was able to stretch her legs after the long drive into town, and certainly Britt needed the exercise as well.

  Renee did not need to go to the grocery store often, and she did not necessarily need to go now, which just went to show how much better she had become in public places. But she wanted to get a few treats to tide herself over before all her orders were shipped in. That was actually how she did most of her shopping—online through bulk providers. She had the space, the money and the resources, and most of the things shipped in needed to be shipped in bulk. Besides, it was such a long drive between Antoine and where she lived.

  There had been a time right after her father had died when she could not even walk into a grocery store without panicking, a time when she could not walk off her property without feeling everything coming in to crush her, as if the entire world had a force field of inhospitality. That was what each successive building had felt like once she stepped out into the world—like a heavy, unpleasant curtain surrounded each of them, and it would take all her effort to pass through. And sometimes she couldn’t.

  With Britt, though, she was able to walk into places much more easily about ninety per cent of the time.

  A grocery store should have been easier, in theory. All those people should have made her feel less conspicuous—she should be able to do better in crowds where she was anonymous and no one really cared. She should do worse with one-to-one interactions. But quite irrationally, it was the other way around. While she was quite bad at one-to-one interactions outside her sanctuary, she was even worse in places that tended to attract more people. Marie’s bar, The Benefit, was small and close, and although it tended to get more crowded by around four in the afternoon, Renee avoided it at that time. The grocery store, however, was another matter altogether. It was more than just a public place—it was a frequented public place, and that meant that the unwelcome energy surrounding it seemed to pulse against her.

  Swallowing, Renee squinted at the people she could see inside. None of them were looking, none of them were judging. They were all going about their business. She was not the centre of the universe, she reminded herself sternly. The muscle of her heart felt as though it was forcing itself against the thin walls of her lungs, rattling her ribs.

  Britt whined slightly as Renee retrieved a shopping cart. She could do this with Britt at her side. Then she could leave. If she could just get through this, she could go back home. That was good motivation to do what she needed to do. Her heart was still racing and her breathing was still a little shallow, but Britt stayed next to her, with her fur brushing Renee’s jeans.

  When she had finally finished, she pushed her cart to the self-checkout. Once she wheeled the cart out into the parking lot—relieved to be outside and breathing open air again—she saw a few dry flakes of snow fall on her coat sleeves. She guessed there was not going to be anything more than a flurry, but it would only be a sample of what was to come in future months.

  Renee took the bags out of the cart and opened her duffel to pack them in. The bag was heavy on her shoulder when she started walking again, but aside from altering her gait, it did not bother her much.

  The cold air felt great on her face, since she was beginning to sweat a little. She went around Main Street this time, behind the shops, among the employee parking and the dumpsters.

  She rushed through the alleyway and finally reached the intersection between downtown Main Street and the beginning of Antoine proper. Her blue 2000 F150 was waiting at the end of the downtown parking lot. She was going to break into a jog to reach her truck that much faster, but two things held her back. One, Britt did not let her hurry. And two, Josh stepped out from behind the hood, where he had been leaning against the driver’s side door.

  “Hello, peaches,” Josh said. “Plan to leave town for the rest of the winter and use the snow as an excuse?”

  Renee hesitated at the edge of the last building, as if she had run into a glass window—but then she pushed through and circled around the truck, away from Josh. There was a chest in the covered bed of her truck that she usually put her groceries in. Her keys clinked as she pulled them out of her coat pocket and unlocked the back of the truck.

  “Sit,” she murmured to Britt. She needed both her hands to climb into the bed.

  “Just going to ignore me?” Josh asked. “That’d be nothing new.”

  Renee opened the bed and lifted her duffel up into it, then crawled up to open the chest at the other end of the bed.

  A low growl that made even the truck vibrate alerted Renee to the fact that something was wrong. She glanced back as Josh pushed himself up into the bed and started to crawl in after
her. Renee had to hand it to him. He was crawling after a woman with a wolf-like dog growling at him, and although his face showed a trace of concern, he did not seem scared enough. He was either very persistent or just very stupid. Britt’s brows twitched as she looked from Josh to Renee, waiting for Renee to decide what to do with the situation and whether she could handle it herself. But what Josh had not anticipated was that the truck was part of Renee’s space, just like her land. And Josh had just entered her space.

  “Don’t you ever get lonely up there those dark winter nights?” Josh asked. “Don’t you ever wish—?”

  “I didn’t go out with you in high school. What makes you think I’m considering it now?” Renee said.

  Josh blinked.

  “Time,” he said, overcoming his surprise. “You’re all alone, and it’s been what? Seven years? Things change. I’ve changed.”

  “I’m not alone,” Renee said.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Josh said. “Your dogs. As though that’s a substitute for good human companionship, especially in front of the fire with no lights on and sweet music playing… Unless they are a substitute, and I severely misjudged you.”

  Renee’s face twisted in automatic disgust.

  “Well, that’s a relief.”

  “You haven’t changed,” Renee spat, unloading her groceries into the chest, then shoving his arm. “You haven’t changed at all.”

  “And neither have you,” Josh said. He grabbed her arm, and although it didn’t hurt Renee, Britt’s growl kicked up a notch. “Up there, nothing ever changes, and nothing ever happens. It’s all safe and easy and alone, and don’t you wish something would happen? Something new, exciting, different?”