Queen Bitch of the Callowwood Pack (Siren Publishing Classic) Read Free

head back and laughed with sheer joy.
    Julianna increased her pace, pushing herself faster until she pelted down the bike trail farther from her apartment. The moonlight washed over her, soothing the ragged edges of her life like a balm. Why hadn’t she ever noticed it before? It was almost better than sex! Well, better than sex with Terence.
    Her breath sawed through her chest as a sense of unbalance gripped her. She needed to use her arms more, needed to feel the dirt on her hands. She turned sharply and dove off the path into the bushes, landing on her hands to scramble up the hillside. Branches from the shrubs caught at her clothes, and the scent of moist leaf litter filled her nose. But she couldn’t see clearly enough.
    Julianna’s nose shot out in front of her face, her spine elongated from her buttocks and grew heavy with fur, and her fingers shortened and sprouted claws. Scents became sharper, her vision cleared, and the world intensified. Then the wolf inside her took over, threw back her head, and howled in jubilation at her new-found freedom.
     
    * * * *
     
    Julianna woke with a gasp and stared at the red numbers of her clock beside the bed, trying to slow her heartbeat.
    Two thirty-seven a.m.
    She’d been dreaming. At least she thought it was a dream. It had felt so real.
    Was it a memory?
    Please, God, tell me it wasn’t a memory.
    Julianna held her breath, trying to figure out what she’d seen. A clear vision of hunting a lone raccoon surfaced, complete with the scents of blood and fear. She recalled the taste of the raccoon’s fury and desperation, and the texture of its fur along her tongue as it fought the grip of her jaws. Then she remembered the sweetness of its flesh as she fed from its warm belly.
    Panic and dread swelled with her revulsion.
    “Oh my God,” she whispered, horrified. “I’m a monster!”

Chapter Two:
    Coming Home
     
    Julianna stood beside her mother, Beth, and listened to the pastor drone on about returning to God’s side after a life lived righteously. The sun blazed over them, making the air too warm for black clothing, but she ignored the sweat trickling down her back as she waited for the service to finish.
    Her dad lay in the closed coffin with a flowered wreath on top of it. Julianna tried to ignore the stench of his rotting body in the heat. God, can’t anyone else smell it? She glanced surreptitiously around at the other mourners. Most of the town of Callowwood was there to pay their respects to a man who had lived in the community for years. No one wrinkled their noses at the odor untouched by the scents of fresh lilies. She tried to focus on the flowers on the coffin rather than the reek coming from inside it.
    Oh, Dad, I wish you were here. Grief ripped at her again, forcing more tears down her cheeks. Those bastards at the factory knew they were poisoning you and they did nothing but pay doctors’ bills and funeral costs! I wish you were here to make everything all right. Thank God you’re not hurting anymore.
    Now she had one less person from whom to hide.
    In the two months since her birthday and her unnerving discovery of her ability to shift into a wolf when the moon shone full, Julianna had lived in fear everyone would discover her secret. It had been relatively easy for her last month in Fresno where big city anonymity had shielded her from notice. But at home in her small town where everyone knew her, she’d spent the month holing up in her parents’ house, terrified they’d notice the changes in her. She’d avoided going out as much as possible.
    Despite his illness, her dad was still observant and watched her with puzzlement, though he never asked why she was so skittish. She’d tried to be the daughter they remembered, but her guilt and fear held her back. She could scent their confusion, but it only made her more aware of her new differences.
    She never told them she could hear them talking quietly in their bedroom at night, even when in the