Her Wolf
Westervelt Wolves - 1
Rebecca Royce
To Ralph-Words sometimes fail me, but you never do. All my love, always.
Acknowledgements
Goodness. Nothing ever gets written in a vacuum and there are so many people to acknowledge for the writing of this book.
Thank you to A and S-Mommy appreciates the time to write.
Mom and Dad-for all your help and encouragement of my imagination when I was a child.
Oh heck, this is my first book, I’ll thank all of my friends and family. Thank you for everything. No one could be more blessed than me in the people I’ve gotten to spend my life with.
With a special shout-outs to:
Jessica Shanks-Who believed I could do this when I was twelve.
Sandra Sookoo-A truly talented writer and an amazing CP. Thank you for everything.
Maria Rogers-You took this book and made it shine. Thank you for all of your gifts and your time.
And everyone at Rom-Critters and RomanticatHeart writing critique groups who have helped me more than they can ever imagine.
Chapter One
Ashlee Morrison automatically searched for him in the crowd. When she found him, she stopped breathing for a second as pleasure swirled within her chest. With his dark mane and his proud posture, he would have stood out even if he didn’t avoid the others.
She walked closer, just to the edge of where he was visible to her, careful not to draw attention to herself.
Loneliness hung like a tangible cloak around him. Ashlee chuckled at her crazy thoughts. God, if anyone heard her inner dialogue, they’d think she was talking about a man, not a wolf.
She strolled around the outskirts of the Polloza Park and Zoo’s large wolf enclosure and stopped every few feet to look through the fence. In the last week, the wolves had started playing together like puppies. They ran after one another, the bigger ones pouncing on top of the smaller ones as they nipped and bit. It wasn’t really play—she knew that—it was all about getting the attention of one of the females who was in heat.
That’s what the zoologists explained to her yesterday when she’d asked about the strange pack behavior. Well, it seemed strange to her anyway.
But who was she to judge anything as odd or different? If she hadn’t literally lost her mind and started ranting about impossible scenarios to anyone who would listen, she would now be finished with college and not living at back at home with her mother and father. She’d have a real job instead of her volunteer one at the local zoo. The doctors her father had taken her to see had helped her. She could finally tell the difference between real and imaginary.
Real was day-to-day life. Work, family, and friends were the things she needed to focus on. They actually existed. Neurotic daydreams of her sister being locked up in a cage were nothing more than manifestations by an inner psyche that was still devastated by Tom’s betrayal. Coupled with the internal jealousy the doctors insisted she had towards her sister, which was evidently, in Ashlee’s head, a recipe for disaster. Even if she had never been aware of any green-eyed feelings towards Summer before the episode six months ago. She believed the psychiatrists; if they said she was envious, she wasn’t really in any position to argue with them. They were highly sought-after professionals and, to Ashlee’s relief, at the last session they had told her family she was doing better.
Which was exactly why she didn’t tell anyone about the feelings of claustrophobia that nearly overwhelmed her each time she got too close to the wolf cage or about the strange male voice she heard in her head on an almost daily basis now.
A stab of pain pierced her stomach and she pressed her hand there. Nothing like hunger to take her out of her inner musings and back to reality. She needed to stay in the here-and-now and, moreover, she shouldn’t have skipped lunch. At least her appetite had returned; that must mean she was getting back to normal. She leaned against the outside wall of the enclosure and tried to enjoy nature’s mating show.
Not all of the pack joined in the fun. “The lone wolf,” as she had come to think of him did not seem in the least bit interested in the pack’s antics. In fact, he looked bored.
The others avoided him as if he was diseased. Maybe he was. Didn’t animals know when one of their kind was sick and avoided them? Even kill the one who was unwell? Was that true for pack animals? She wasn’t an animal expert, just a volunteer whose job was to point the visitors towards the gift shop or the restroom if they asked for it.
The thought of him being ostracized, or worse, put down, made her sad but she shoved it away. Sad thoughts were not allowed to form in her mind; they got out of control in there. She pulled her olive green fleece volunteer jacket tighter around her to protect against the cold fall breeze. For some reason over the last few months she’d come to think of him as hers, which was stupid, of course, but she’d adopted him in her heart anyway. Even convinced herself that it was his voice she could hear. His intonations that watched her walk and worried about her health and well-being while ranting about being locked up and betrayed. Ashlee supposed it could be worse. Her delusions were at least kind to her and concerned for her welfare. They weren’t asking her to shave her head or kill anyone.
A woman pulled on her sleeve and caught her attention. “Excuse me, miss, which way is the restroom? My son’s had an accident.”
Ashlee looked at the mother and her little boy. Thirty-five, maybe older, with brown hair that already held some grey. She guessed the boy was around three years old. She noted his Halloween costume—a pumpkin—had a urine stain down the front. Ashlee smiled at his big round face and dimpled cheeks.
“Straight down that path and to the left.” She hoped she didn’t look sad. Cute kid.
“Thank you, pretty lady.” The three-year-old boy gave her a big grin and pulled his mother toward the bathroom path.
Pretty lady? Not lately. Twenty-two years old and so tired, she could barely see straight. Her red hair, once strawberry blonde, seemed to have dulled along with her brain. With bland green eyes, pale skin, and a figure that needed another ten pounds to be curvy, she wound up looking sick, instead of slender.
She cleared her throat and looked at the wolf. These days all she needed were those brief glances to feel content, another fact she kept from her team of psychiatrists.
Her father had signed her on for this job even as she sobbed in her bed every day.
He’d thought it would get her mind off Tom and keep her from having another incident.
He was right. Her summer volunteer position had extended into the fall, and now, two weeks from Halloween, she hadn’t earned a dime, but she no longer mourned the five-year relationship that had ended so badly. More importantly, she wasn’t having any more strange manifestations of impending doom. She assumed Tom had married the mother of his almost-time-to-be-born child by now.
Ashlee shrugged and let the memories fade. She walked to the gate of the wolf pen and stared in. Usually, she didn’t get close to the animal cages; it felt invasive to do so and sometimes she would swear it felt like she was personally trapped in the cage. The animals spent all day with people pushed up against their enclosures pointing and staring.
She preferred to give them some space. She blinked and squinted. The lone wolf had red fur in its coat. Why hadn’t she noticed that before? Because she hadn’t been able to focus on anything before and she was going out of her way to not spend too much time focused on the lone wolf.