Page 5 of Runaway Wolf
That was what made Penny move away.
Her father summoned Penny? He knew she was dating a shifter? He wouldn’t be happy about that. And Penny said shewas engaged? Did her father know that? Did her mother? Why hadn’t anyone told her?
Oh, God. She didn’t have a choice. If she was dating Noah, and Dad had signed Turn Limitations, she had a year to become one.
She pulled her cell phone out of her back pocket and pressed Dad’s contact. At first, she thought it was going to voicemail, but after the third ring, he picked up.
“Caitlin? Where are you? We thought you’d stop by the restaurant for dinner. I know your mother laid out that green dress for you.”
She didn’t even care that he didn’t bother to remember she’d put in for a week’s vacation. Had reminded him yesterday.
“Did you know Penny’s dating a shifter?”
“I told you not to call her anymore,” he said after a pause. Oh, he’d laid down the law, all right. And she’d listened. She hadn’t called. She surprised them all when she showed up.
“Did you know?”
Her father sighed. “Yes. I knew.”
So maybe Penny was right. Maybe her father had summoned her despite him telling Caitlin that he had no idea where Penny had run off to. Maybe he knew where Penny was holed up all along. Score one for her sister.
“When?
“When what?”
“When did you know she started dating the shifter?”
“Since the beginning. Do you really think I wouldn’t keep tabs on my own daughters?” he huffed as if he had to prove he was a good parent. Check all the boxes in the parental skills category.
“When?” She practically screamed, because he was avoiding the answer.
“Six months ago.”
They both went silent. She had no idea about the turmoil on his end of the phone because on her end all she could think about was his hand in the latest shifter law that was enacted three months earlier.
Shifters—those ones with the ability to change others—were now only allowed to turn one person in their lifetime. It was to protect the general population, her father had said. It was for predator shifters mostly because they were much stronger than humans. If a shifter picked a human as a mate, that human no longer had a choice. The shifter would change her or him and they would have to register as a couple. Did it punish humans? Sure, but in the long run it saved women from dangerous animals, Dad had said. That should encourage women to date within their own species, right? Now that they knew of the danger.
Now her sister would have to give up her humanity. And not all humans lived through the infection. But the worst thing about what her father had just admitted?
He didn’t veto the bill when it popped up three months ago. Yet he knew six months ago that Penny was already dating Noah.
He handed his own daughter a death sentence.
“I can’t deal with this right now,” Caitlin said softly, and disconnected the call. Her phone rang immediately, the sound shrill in the night air. She ignored it.
God. Caitlin pulled her knees up, resting her chin on them, suppressing a shiver that wracked through her body.
Surely, he couldn’t have known. But, by his own admission, he did. Why hadn’t Penny told her?
The wind whistled, crackling through the trees. She glanced out there, but it was too dark now to see anything in the shadows. A mist was rising; there must have been a bed of water somewhere.
A sharp, piercing wolf call sliced through the fog—so loud, so eerie, gooseflesh rippled along her arms.
Oooowwwoooo!
What the hell? That was the call of a predator. Her heart pounded against her ribs. God, that sounded close. Adrenaline tingled in her arms and legs and she twitched from the sudden surge. If she saw anything, anything at all come running through that mist, she’d jump up so quick and kick the front door shut.
But she didn’t have to see anything.
