Page 3 of Wounded Christmas Wolf
Shifter eyes.
They stared at each other for an instant that seemed to last forever, before he wrenched himself away. Holly was so caught off guard that she stumbled back and slammed into the side of the puppy pen.
In the instant before she fell over backward, she was aware of the stranger—the shifter stranger—already whirling around and striding away from her, pushing carelessly past old ladies and little girls clutching puppies, all but running.
Then the flimsy child-gate style wall of the pen collapsed under her weight.
The next thing she knew, she was flat on her back with fluffy, curious puppies crawling all over her. Holly frantically felt around to make sure she hadn’t landedona puppy and permanently ruined Christmas for a whole room full of grade schoolers. Fortunately the only casualties seemed to be the pen, her tailbone, and her pride.
Cupcake was still barking, trying to climb over the wall of the adjoining pen, which wobbled dangerously.
“I’m fine,” Holly squeaked out, to the dog and the curious collection of kids and parents who had been drawn to her predicament. She removed a puppy from her neck.
Her lips felt strange. Tingling. Oddly sticky. She touched her fingertips to her mouth and felt that bright spark of pain again.
He had ... bitten her.
“Goodness, dear, are you all right?” a matronly voice asked from somewhere above her.
“Mommy, that lady is in the puppies. Can I be in the puppies?”
“I’m fine,” Holly said again. She took a deep breath and sat up, removing another puppy from her lap and flushing like a tomato.
Hot Shifter Guy was gone. He had literally sprinted out of the building to get away from her. She wiped at her mouth again, unable to understand what had happened.
He hadbittenher.
Holly had grown up around shifters. Her dad was a shifter. Neither Holly nor any of her sisters had come out with the shifter trait themselves; female shifters were rare. But she had never heard anything about shifters randomly biting people. The shifter trait was passed down genetically, not through biting, no matter what the Halloween monster movies had to say about it.
Her lips still tingled where he had touched them; her entire body seemed to thrum with that contact. And he’d run away from her like she was a leper, Typhoid Mary, and a plague carrier all rolled into one.
Rob was gone as well, so that was one good thing about this entire mess. Holly didn’t think she had ever been so embarrassed—no, humiliated in her life.
Or so confused.
She accepted several offered hands pulling her up, and then tried to pull the pieces of the pen back into place, which only succeeded in collapsing the side of Cupcake’s pen, so now he was out too. The puppies were too busy enjoying the sudden onslaught of child attention to really notice their freedom. Holly scooped up Cupcake, who didn’t seem to be that crazy about running off either when he could be getting petted right here.
“I’ve got it,” Mags exclaimed, swooping in to put the folding pieces back into place. “There’s a trick to it. What happened? Is everyone all right?”
“She kissed that guy,” the little girl said, clutching a puppy. “And then he pushed her in the puppies.”
“That is absolutely not what happened,” Holly said hotly, and then realized she was arguing with a six-year-old.
She had kissed a total stranger in front of half the people she knew from high school, and he’d run away from her.
After biting her.
She buried her face in Cupcake’s soft topknot as if it could erase the humiliation. Cupcake snuggled against her and licked her chin.
“At least I have one friend around here who doesn’t think I’m a total idiot,” Holly muttered.
“Oh!” Mags exclaimed. “Thank goodness, I was starting to worry the poor little guy would never find his forever home. You two are adorable together.”
“What?”
A few minutes later, as she filled out adoption paperwork, she wondered how she was going to explain to her dad thatshe had accidentally adopted, not merely a dog, but the least adoptable dog in the Pine Junction animal shelter.
She was still holding Cupcake in one arm while she filled out papers with the other hand. It felt like having a hot water bottle cuddled up against her.
