Awakening: Montana Wolves, Book 2 Read Free

bedroom, closing the door behind him.
    She yanked the sheet over her head and groaned.
    What the hell was that about? Just when she thought she’d had him figured. She was used to his teasing, but this had been different. He had looked…intense. She shivered as she recalled his hot gaze. A gaze that had haunted her all night, joining forces with her jealous thoughts to slowly drive her insane.
    What was he doing? Was Amber still there?
    From 4:00 a.m. until the last time she had looked at the clock at 5:47, she had laid perfectly still, ears straining to hear his door opening and Amber on her way out. The sound never came. She’d been hoping that after their heart-to-heart Jax might send the little tart packing. Furious with herself for even caring what—or who—he did, she tried to focus on something else.
    She thought back to the first time she had noticed him, really noticed him. It had been a brisk night in October of previous year. She and her pack, the wolves of Big Sky Canyon, had come to Pray for a meeting with all the area wolves. After a rift had driven a wedge between their two packs, Chandra, never one to follow along blindly, had chosen stay with the wolf pack of Pray.
    She closed her eyes as she recalled how hard it had been to leave. Following their alpha’s misguided example, her pack had been doing things that had not sat right with her for a long time. Hunting humans, encroaching on farmlands that resulted in the killing of timber wolves in the area. The Big Sky clan was getting more and more bloodthirsty and less and less careful.
    When her alpha had voted to murder a woman in cold blood, it had been the catalyst she needed to break away from them. Her former pack mates had been forbidden from contacting her since she left, and she missed some of them, but worse was the tension that night had created between the area packs. Alliances were made, gauntlets thrown…there was a storm brewing and, in spite of a quiet winter, it was only a matter of time before things imploded in the were community in a big, bloody way.
    And still? She was happier than she’d ever been. She felt at home with her new pack in a way that she never had with the old. And, even in the short time they had been together, the friendships she’d made with all her new pack mates, especially Amalie—the very woman her former pack had voted to kill--Maggie, and Billy, had progressed to the point that they felt like family. Not to mention that her relationship with their alpha, Liam, was one of mutual respect and harmony. He was strong but approachable, firm but fair. Everything one could want in a leader.
    Then there was Jax.
    She thought again about that fateful night, when everything had changed for her. She’d walked into the beautiful great room of the Pray house with her pack, tuning out the low buzz of conversation around her as she scanned the room. She stopped as her gaze was drawn to a man she didn’t recognize. That had seemed strange because, despite being in different packs, everybody knew everybody to one degree or another. He looked haunted, his dark eyes staring into hers but not really seeing her.
    Then she knew: Jax. Before Sara had died, his power had been almost palpable. She had seen them all together two summers before at a gathering by the lake. They were a beautiful family. Sara had been blessed with a cascade of corn silk hair and eyes the color of pansies in the spring time. Her temperament was as sweet as her face, and Chandra had looked on as they played by the water with Ryan. She remembered thinking how lucky they were and made a secret promise to herself she would not settle for less than that when she finally chose a mate and had a family of her own.
    Less than a year later, Sara was dead. Shot to death by a man who some of the area werewolves claimed was just a regular Montana hunter who had gotten lucky. Chandra doubted that. It took a little more than luck to kill a full-grown werewolf. And a game