Reach for the Sky (Wolffe Peak Book 1) Read Free Page A

that had picked up as she’d vacated the cab. It was him .
    At first, everything had felt fine, but after a few minutes, her inner wolf had pricked up her ears, her stance deadly alert. As an innate hunter, she recognized when she became prey.
    The moment her plane had touched down, she’d phoned Shane—exactly as the sheriff had insisted—but he’d asked her to wait until he could send a patrol car for her. That idea hadn’t sat well with her. She wanted her home, her bed, and her bathtub. A long, hot soak was exactly what she needed. So, when the cabbie flicked off his light, she’d hopped in.
    She shouldn’t have left the cab, not when she knew there was a madman after her, but all she’d wanted was to return home after a particularly exhausting week away. It wasn’t the cabbie’s fault he’d driven over glass, or that the tire had popped. These things happened. And even with a stalker on the loose, she should have been safe for the twenty minutes it would have taken her to walk home. Except, like everything else in her life, even this simple task had gone awry.
    She drew in a deep breath, but the blustery wind whisked up a plethora of scents that overwhelmed her nose. Thankfully, she could still hear, and there in the distance were footsteps wading through the dead leaves. The crunch of his steps echoed her own, as they had for the past six blocks. Though her heart raced forward, she managed to maintain an even pace. Keep calm , as the mantra said. Could be a friendly pedestrian out for a nighttime walk…down the same paths that she was headed, without any deviation. Right .
    A gust of air swirled around her, and riding the current was the recognizable stench of fur and forest. The same scent that had haunted her for the past year. It seemed no matter where she went, there he was. Always in the distance, taunting her.
    In the beginning, she’d refused to admit that she was being stalked. She’d thrown away the first letters and silenced the calls in an attempt to assure herself that they were pranks. Even after she’d finally sought out the cops, it’d taken Shane weeks to convince her that there was someone out there who was obsessed with her.
    Sky stiffened as a shiver rippled down her spine. She still felt his eyes on her, heard his careful steps as he breached the distance between them. Once upon a time, she hadn’t feared other werewolves—hell, her job was to advocate for them—but life had a way of kicking someone down. It made campaigning for her own kind difficult when one of them had turned her into prey.
    Shaking off the terror, she scoped her surroundings, dismayed to find the moonlit streets abandoned. Two blocks north, a large van sat on the curb. It would only provide her a couple seconds of a lead, but that was all she needed.
    She counted her breaths as she went, careful to keep them steady. The moment she slipped behind the van, she bolted. For a brief moment, she thought he hadn’t followed, but the sound of his quick footfalls assured her otherwise. Sky kept her eyes forward as she measured her follower’s pace, hopeful the distance between them would grow.
    It didn’t.
    Her heart fluttered with panic. His steps grew louder, his breaths uneven as he closed the distance between them. A whimper slipped from her lips as she skidded around the next corner, fingers digging into the brick wall for purchase.
    Fear had led her in the wrong direction. Eyes wide, she cursed at the sight of the large park ahead of her. Hardly the best place to escape someone. She feared her only option was to shift. Humans knew of werewolves, but it wasn’t recommended to take wolf form in the middle of the street—public indecency and all that. Not to mention that most humans felt they had the right to hunt any beasts that crossed onto their property, and Sky loathed the idea of her skin hung on a hunter’s wall.
    But what other option did she have?
    By her estimation, her pursuer had closed half the