Winter Howl (Sanctuary) Read Free Page B

her—beside Britt, who had climbed out of the truck—was Leslie, a chocolate brown male boxer with a perpetually comical look on his face. Renee was sure that Malcolm, a grey whippet-Australian shepherd mix, was not far behind.
    Rufus saw one of his favourite large dogs, a St Bernard and German shepherd mix named Pom, and bounded off like a fuzzy, excitable rat to be with him, leaving Renee to most of her primary pack, the one that had been with her for more or less her whole life that she could remember clearly. There was only one missing, and he was walking out of the door of the cabin, wearing only his jeans and carrying a hot chocolate in his hands, just the way she liked when she came home from her winter trip. He also had a midnight-blue dressing gown draped over his arms, which he tossed past Renee to the quite naked woman who had appeared behind her.
    “Don’t suppose you have some chocolate for me, too?” the woman said, wrapping the dressing gown around herself. While Renee did not have a strict policy of wearing clothing on her property—although she herself preferred to stay clothed—the cooler weather made it more necessary than during the summer months.
    “Waiting inside,” Jake said. “The rest of us have had our share.” He leant down and gave Renee a light kiss on her cheek as he handed her the hot chocolate. “I see you made it through another day.”
    “Somehow I survived,” Renee said. “Thanks. Hope you don’t mind that I brought steak for the pack tonight. Means you have to cook them.”
    “Such a trial,” Jake replied. “I’ll find a way to bolster my strength and manage.” He walked over and kissed Britt, the girl who had sprouted from her fur coat into a woman. This kiss was a bit more than a simple peck on the cheek. Renee gave Ki a scratch behind the ears, then headed into her house with her hot chocolate.
    The other dogs followed her in, transforming on the way and grabbing their respective dressing gowns from the coat rack. Britt pushed past them for the hot chocolate waiting for her on a coffee table coaster. She settled into the living room armchair, breathing a sigh of relief in her other skin. The living room was decorated like a rustic lodge, with an asymmetrical coffee table and carved wooden furniture softened with red cotton and denim cushions. One of the house cats, a fourteen-year-old arthritic Maine Coon named Claire, was sleeping on the sofa.
    Renee joined the cat on the sofa adjacent to the armchair, sipping from her own hot chocolate. While she had lived with Britt since they were both seven years old, there was something about the woman’s self-confidence and presentation that could sometimes be a little off-putting. Renee was a small person, around five feet three inches tall, and petite. Britt was tall for a woman at five feet ten inches, and built with the classic hourglass figure. She could have gone out and become a model or an actress, but instead, she stayed in the wilderness with Renee to help her take care of the sanctuary, heedless of the physical blessings with which she was endowed. It was just another skin to her.
    Ki, Max, Leslie, Malcolm, and Jake joined them in the living room. They were all usually hard at work around this time, but Renee’s quarterly forays into town translated into fairly relaxed evenings for them. They would pick up work again tomorrow.

    * * * *

    When Renee was seven, Seward and Frances Chambers had already started their collective dream to create a dog sanctuary—a no-kill shelter for all kinds of dogs from mutts to purebreds, as long as they were of a reasonable disposition. The only exceptions were the rogues, the ones who had been raised wrong and showed signs of violence. Cesar Millan might have been able to handle them, but Seward and Frances were just dog lovers, not whisperers. A little exuberance, a little bad training, that was okay. They took the supposedly violent dogs that were just defending themselves, the