Page 32 of Wounded Christmas Wolf
Instead, his dreams had been strangely but not unpleasantly lupine. Running in the snow, then curling up in a warm safe den. The living smells of small furry creatures, hunted in the wilderness. He had drifted awake repeatedly throughout the night, only to fall asleep again, his wolf comfortably alert and on guard.
Now he lay surrounded by the glinting eyes of the dolls. The light in the room was soft and dim, barely enough to see by, even with shifter-enhanced vision. It reflected from hundreds of blank, staring eyes.
Jace didn’t know how Holly could stand to sleep in here.
He sat up and checked his phone. Not quite five. Heturned off the alarm and went quietly into the hall, which was pitch black even to shifter vision. The house was impossibly quiet. He heard when the furnace came on, a muffled thump and hum.
His hands felt chilly and stiff, and when he flexed them, he was depressingly aware of the awkward sense of fur and fingers going slightly back in the direction of wolf toes. Yesterday, he had been shocked to see his hands perfectly normal again, not a hint of shifting. Holly’s kiss under the mistletoe had kicked him over hard in the wolf direction, but it had been years since he’d been completely, fully human.
Until last night.
Now he was once more aware of the uneasy tug of war between his wolf and human halves. With a sigh, he pulled on his gloves, covering up the traces of his partial shift. Looking at his eyes in the mirror above Holly’s bureau, he was unsurprised to see the metallic glint of lupine gold.
He closed his eyes for a few moments, thinking about human things. The taste of pancakes and syrup. The multiplication table. Driving and paying taxes. When he opened his eyes again, they were brown, or at least near enough not to reflect the faint light coming through the window.
Jace slipped out into the hall. Holly’s door was closed. He located it by touch and knocked quietly several times. “Holly?” he said softly through the door.
No answer.
There was no chance that she could have disappeared from a closed room, and little possibility she would even have been able to slip past him without waking him up. He’d heard her get up in the night to use the bathroom. But panic clanged around the edges of his mind. What if something reallyhadhappened to her, what if Rob had managed to get past him ...
Jace cracked the door open. “Holly?” he whispered.
“Jeez!” There was a sudden burst of motion as she sat up. He couldn’t see her well, just a vague shape in the faint light. From somewhere, an unseen Cupcake emitted a muffled yip before Holly hushed him. “Jace?” she whispered.
“Sorry. I needed to wake you up.”
“Ugh.” She rubbed her face and ran her hands through her hair. “Come on in. Be careful of the sewing machine. I almost tripped over it in the night.”
“I know. I heard.”
Holly yawned. “What time is it?”
“Almost five. I just wanted to tell you I was going to leave so you can get back to your bed. Also, your dolls are creepy.”
Holly snorted at the end of another yawn. “That’s what Noelle always said.”
She slipped out of bed, a dimly glimpsed figure in loose pajamas, her hair tousled with sleep, carrying Cupcake. Jace returned with her to her room and picked up his boots. She hesitated, looking at the bed, and he hastened to reassure her.
“I wasn’t in it. I slept on the floor.”
“You didn’t have to. I told you that you could use my bed.”
Jace smiled, confident that the light was dim enough she wouldn’t see. The thought of lying where her body had lain, pulling the blankets over him that she pulled over herself every night, resting his head on the pillow dented with the imprint of her cheek—it was so tempting that he could never allow himself. “It’s okay. I can fall asleep anywhere. Old soldier thing. See you at the tree farm.”
Holly flopped on the bed and pulled her dog against her chest. He pulled the door shut and went quietly downstairs, tiptoeing to try to avoid any creaking boards. In the foyer, he put on his coat and stepped into his boots. He was justcongratulating himself on a job well done as he reached to unlock the door when there was a sudden, loud bark from the living room.
It was absolutely deafening in the quiet house, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, it was followed by a flurry of more barking and some high-pitched yaps from upstairs as Cupcake joined the frenzy.
“No! Rocket! Shhhh!” He tried to hiss it without being too loud, but he heard a thump from the back bedroom and also what sounded like Holly’s door opening, to the extent that he could hear anything over Rocket barking.
Then Rocket’s tiny dog brain apparently caught on to the fact that this was a Friend and she shut up, but she also slobbered on his hand, wagging. He had been wondering if it was possible to still slip out the door undetected (maybe they would think something else had set off the dogs?) but not with Rocket getting underfoot. Independent dogs. Sure.
At least the dogs had caught him with his coat and boots on, not halfway down the stairs. He reached behind him and quietly unlocked the door. Meanwhile, a light came on in the back room, and a moment later, the Colonel stumbled into view, wearing a bathrobe.
Jace glimpsed Holly at the top of the stairs, clutching Cupcake with a hand wrapped around his muzzle.
“Rocket, shut up,” the Colonel growled. “Hey! Who’s there?”
