Shelli Rosewarne

Hi all,

How’s your week going? It’s been a gorgeous sunny start to the week here in Scotland (makes a change from snow at the weekend lol). Since it’s Tuesday, I’m sharing a teaser. This is from my current WIP, the second in my wolves series. Hope you enjoy! 🙂

Kat glanced back uneasily.

“Did you hear that?”

“Go faster.” Natalia’s face was set and she gripped Kat’s arm in a vice.

“Is the wildlife round here dangerous?” Kat whispered as they hurried along the tiny trail.

Natalia gave a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “You have no idea.”

Well, that was helpful. There was obviously something wrong with her niece today, but the time to discuss it was obviously not while being chased up some kind of vicious beast. Damn, what did they have in this part of the world; bears, cougars? She knew there were wolves from the howling last night. Surely she should have looked into this more before wandering around the woods with no kind of protection.

Natalia was half-dragging her along now, moving with surprising speed. Whatever was following them seemed to be moving faster though, Katya could hear it alongside them now. She pushed her aching limbs to keep moving, while panic caught her breath in her throat. The sounds in the bushes suddenly stopped, the woods eerily silent apart from their crashing footsteps and laboured breaths. Kat was just starting to think maybe whatever the hell it was had bogged off and found something better to stalk, when there was a huge crash through the bushes just ahead of them, and a huge – seriously huge – dark gray wolf was blocking their way.

Kat couldn’t stop the shriek that escaped her as the two women stopped in their tracks. The creature’s thick fur was bristling, his head was slightly down with lips curled back over an impressive set of white teeth, and its glowing eyes were fixed on them. For an instant something in those amber eyes seemed familiar, and then the thought was pushed away on a wave of pure panic.

“Oh my God.” She whispered.

This was it. This was how she was going to die. And the uppermost thought was that it wasn’t fair. Just when things were finally sort of starting to go right for her, when she’d found some family. Now she would never get the chance to see Naomi again, to hold her child, to get her back. Her parents would have a damn field day with this one.

Natalia was trying to gently push her back with one hand, her back straightening as she kept eye contact with the wolf.

“Let’s all just stay calm here,” she said to it. “Don’t do something you’re going to regret.”

Seriously? Her niece was trying to reason with a wild animal that looked like it wanted to eat them. And she’d thought she was losing it.

Stay calm. We need to stall it, Damian is on his way.

Okay, scrap that, she was losing it more. She could have sworn she heard Natalia’s voice inside her head. The woman’s lips hadn’t moved, but her words had been clear as day.

You’re not losing it. Please, just trust me.

Sure, she was dying anyway. Why not go just give in to the madness at this stage? What was it the imaginary Natalia in her head had wanted – stall the vicious wild animal. Made perfect sense, right?

“Good wolfie, wolfie.” She crooned. “See, you don’t want to hurt us really. We’d make a terrible meal, all gristly and that. Plus, I’m American, everyone knows American food is just the worse.” She giggled, an edge of pure panic skating it. Yup, she was going to die a crazy woman – nothing new there. The funny thing was the wolf was acting staring at her as she talked with an expression that on a human would only be described as incredulous. Even the wolf thought she was nuts. She giggled again.