Baehrly Alive Read Free Page A

with a lack of manners that would have made a cave troll blush. Its shoulders were so broad that it nearly blocked the light—shoulders that would have looked out of proportion on anyone except him.
    My fiancée.
    Kodi.
    “What did I tell you about snacking in bear-form?” I teased.
    Kodi whirled around—his form shifting from half-bear to fully male.
    Masculine, handsome, and bare-chested.
    He grinned at me. “Sorry, Goldie. I was starving. I didn’t get a chance to stop for lunch or dinner—we’ve had a huge caseload lately.” He swiped at his mouth with one arm and crossed the room to my side in a long stride.
    Kodi was a handsome man, and he knew it. His dark eyes sparkled with good humor and a wide grin almost never left his face. He was easy-going, light-hearted, and gorgeous.
    Any girl would be proud to wear his ring on her finger—especially a ring as spectacular as the one he had given me.
    I was lucky to have him.
    Very lucky, indeed.
    My bear bounced up from the corner in my psyche where she had been cowering. She wuffed and swung her head back and forth, practically salivating.
    My bear had a thing for Kodi—or, more specifically, for Kodi’s bear.
    They were soul mates, after all.
    Or so I had been told.
    Kodi bent his head to kiss me and I flinched.
    “Bad night?” he asked sympathetically. He took my icy hands in his huge warm ones and smoothed my palm with his thumb.
    I nodded.
    He really had no idea.
    I couldn’t explain what it was like to have all those voices in my head, screaming to get out. I wondered if this was true of all people who had been bitten by vampires.
    Or maybe I was rewriting the books… again.
    No one in recorded history had lasted nearly this long after being attacked by even half that number of vampires.
    I should have died that day—the day I had killed Paige Turner.
    I shuddered.
    Paige. Her voice haunted me, but not just her voice—the voice of all those people she had killed—from her grandmother to her aunt.
    But it didn’t stop there.
    No, I could hear other voices from my past—Aria and her evil boyfriend who would have done anything to be Magical—even the poachers that had murdered my father.
    Sometimes, I could even hear his voice, but he sounded lost—terrified.
    It was as if they were all trapped inside of me and fighting over who would have the chance to take me over.
    Letting Kodi kiss me would have been letting Kodi kiss all those dead people—and most of them were not the ‘good’ kind, either.
    “I wasn’t expecting you tonight,” I said, pulling my hand away from Kodi’s and heading toward the fridge to see if he had left anything even slightly edible behind for me to eat.
    Kodi shrugged. “I missed you,” he said gently. “I was thinking about you all day.”
    I knew I should tell him that I’d been thinking about him all day, too, but I had been a little too occupied. I didn’t want to tell him that he had scarcely crossed my mind all day, so I shoved a chunk of banana into my mouth so I wouldn’t have to say anything at all.
    “I think I found our venue,” Kodi said. He apparently hadn’t noticed that I hadn’t replied to him.
    I choked on my banana. “Our venue?”
    Kodi nodded enthusiastically. “You’re going to love it—it’s the same cathedral where my parents were married. It has all these amazing glass windows full of bears and knights and fair maidens—it’s spectacular.”
    I frowned. “I thought we were going to do something small,” I said. “Like… you know, elope?”
    “You only get married once, right?” Kodi said. “I want it to be special.”
    I closed my mouth on the snarky comment that my mother had been married twelve times. Kodi was in love with all this wedding stuff. For weeks now, he’d had old shoes and enchanted birdseed on his mind. Conversations were dotted with lace and first dances.
    Why rain on his parade?
    “The cathedral sounds amazing,” I told him, forcing a smile to my