Blind Wolf Read Free Page B

disappear, if only for a little while.
    Skimming through the spines on the shelf, she found her finger resting on a book she hadn't read in a while. It was a fairy tale book that her mother had bought her because the princess looked like Julia in the illustrations. She pulled it out and plopped down on the bed, opening the book to the first page.
    "Once upon a time," the story started, "there lived a very smart young princess named Felicity."
    Julia let her fingertips move over the princess's face on the page. The same bright red curls of hair, the nose covered in freckles, the plump cheeks. It looked like her, alright. Even though her hair had calmed down a bit over the years, she still woke up to a fuzzy mess on top of her head more days than not. Her mom said that anybody could be a princess.
    Julia choked up and closed the book, blinking through her tears. Her parents had been dead for over ten years now, and there wasn't a single day that passed that she didn't miss them. While Granny Dee was kind and loving, Julia still longed for someone else to share her life with.
    "There's nobody out there for me," she whispered. The face of the blind man, Damien, rose up immediately, unbidden, in her mind. His lips, his cheek—she felt like she could almost reach out and touch him. She remembered the almost electrical shock that he had given her when he touched her elbow, the warmth that had spread through her body when he talked to her.
    "Not for me," she said, but the memory felt so comforting that she let her thoughts spin off into dreams of Damien. Soon she was dancing in a gown as he led her around a ballroom in a stately waltz.
    "For me." Her lips formed the words, but no sound came from them. Outside in the night sky, the full moon rose soft and white, shrinking as it fell upwards among the stars.
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER FOUR
    Damien
    Back at the hotel, Damien found Kyle and Jordan talking animatedly over a map about the possibility of buying a house outside of the city. Kyle had brought back a bunch of real estate brochures which were scattered across the map in different regions. Damien walked over to the table and stood behind a chair. His hand bumped the table slightly, but as soon as he felt the slightest touch, he had already reacted and adapted to the obstacle. In public he often pretended to rely on his cane more than he needed too, for his deftness and intuition sometimes made people doubt that he was blind.
    "South of the city will be better for us," Jordan said decisively, pointing out the map topography. "The way the mountains are lined up, the wind blows south over the entire urban area. We wouldn't have to worry about any wolf passing through the city and smelling us."
    "Who passes through this city?" Kyle asked, shrugging. "College kids? Any member of a pack wouldn't be leaving their territory to go to school somewhere else. It makes no sense."
    "Anybody might pass through!" Jordan said, adjusting his eyeglasses on his nose. "Just driving through. What if someone drove through the city?"
    "We're in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere," Kyle said. "Who's going to smell us? Pardon my language, Katherine," he said, blushing as he nodded apologetically in her direction. She scowled.
    "At least we can afford any of the places around here," Jordan said. "We've got enough money to buy half the town if we wanted to. Turns out Bumfuck, Nowhere is a cheap place to live."
    "Are there any good places south of the city?" Damien asked. At his question, both Katherine and Kyle perked up to attention.
    "I found a couple," Kyle said. "And Jordan scouted around the edges to see which ones we can get to from the state park's land."
    "There are a few," Jordan said, scratching at his beard. "Most of them are pretty ramshackle, though. It's the poor part of the area, the houses are old."
    "We're going to tear down the house anyway, right? Build separate cabins?" Katherine said. She hugged close to Damien's side.
    "I'd like a study of