Claimed (The Lair of the Wolven #1) by J.R. Ward

As he brushed the next tear off her cold cheek, she stopped looking at him. And refocused on the wolf.

“Just don’t let him die,” she whispered.

Rick felt time slow to a crawl. In the lunar glow that filtered down through the pine boughs, Lydia’s face was cast in loving light, the planes and angles that made her who she was visually enhanced by the illumination. Her naturally highlighted hair, which was pulled back into a ponytail, had tendrils that curled by her ears and at her neck. And her lips were a promise of things that kept a man up at night and distracted him during the day.

Rick now also looked away. “Of course I won’t let him die.”

On so many levels, he was not surprised that this woman was making him promise something he couldn’t deliver on. But an inspired heart could make stupid out of anybody.

It also made you pretty frickin’ lonely.

But who was counting the benefits of unrequited love.





ONE HOUR AND forty-five minutes after Lydia found the wolf in the veil, she was on the ATV heading back out into the preserve. The sun had now fully risen over the mountain range, the rays piercing through the pines and making her think of gold coins spilled from God’s pocket. Up ahead, the trail was as empty as it had been before, nothing but shadows cast by all that beautiful light—

The engine sputtered without warning, the interruption of the smooth purr the very last thing she needed. Cranking the gas, she was relieved by a surge of speed, but it didn’t last. All forward momentum ended as the horsepower choked off and the vehicle’s heavy, knobby wheels and complete lack of aerodynamic design dragged her to a standstill.

“Damn it,” she muttered as she tapped on the gas gauge.

The red pin didn’t budge from the E on the far left.

“Shit.” Dismounting, she looked up and down the trail. “Shit.”

She resisted the urge to kick one of the big back tires, opting instead to take her frustration out by locking grips on the back grate and leaning her weight into a shove. When the ATV was off on the shoulder, she put it in park and took the keys.

Starting off at a jog, she rounded the corner on the trail, her footfalls steady. About a quarter mile later, she came to the pattern of trunks that marked where she had seen the wolf’s eyes in the darkness. She followed her own shoe prints into the trees and stopped when she came to the disturbed place in the pine needles where the wolf had collapsed, and been treated, and finally, been carried out to the ATV.

After a moment of sad helplessness, she kept going, heading farther away from the trail. As she went along, she diverted around the pricker bushes, the rotting stumps, the occasional fallen pine. She followed a gradual decline that took her to the water shed trough that cleaved a descent through the elevation’s west-facing flank. When she came to the river way, she looked up the pathway of polished rocks. The spring rains had not started, so the torrent that would rush over them a month from now had yet to get going. Soon, though, there would be so much more than damp sand and mud between the boulders and stones.

Lydia jumped into the puzzle-piece-bed and hopscotched upward, leaping from flat top to flat top, keeping her balance by throwing her arms this way and that, making sure that she avoided the lichen and moss growth that could make her slip.

Overhead, crows circled and called to each other, aviary judges that seemed to be following her and running a commentary. She refused to look and acknowledge their paparazzi presence.

Anthropomorphize much? And to think she considered herself a scientist.

Lydia found the first dead vulture about half a mile up the riverbed. Three days old, going by the state of the remains. A raccoon was the next body. Also by the river’s edge, about two hundred yards up.

As the going got steeper, she debated whether to continue the climb because this was real needle-ina-haystack stuff. Taking a pause to catch her breath, she looked over her shoulder at the valley below. Cradled between the palms of the deep green mountains, a blue lake in the form of a salamander caught the sun—and gave it back. The glinting made her blink even from a distance, but how could anyone begrudge the splendor.

In her soul, she knew it was inevitable that she would end up here. All this natural beauty, all this space … all this lack of people.

It was also inevitable that someone with dollar signs in their eyes would fuck it up.

On the other side of the valley, at the exact elevation she was, a half-mile section of evergreens had been cleared by machines and explosives. The ragged, raw earth and exposed granite ledge were an injury to the other mountain, something that would take a decade to patch over and partially heal if left alone. But that wasn’t the future. Off to one side, enormous steel I beams extended upward, a forest of man-made trunks that were soon to be thick walls to support heavy ceilings.

The resort was going to sit on that site, a blight on the landscape, and service people who were looking for a “luxury spa experience.”

Meditation and wellness brought to you by American Express and the fine folks at Diners Club—

The snap of a stick made her turn around and go for her Mace at the same time. But she instantly recognized the tall, intense man who had come up behind her without making a sound. Until he had wanted his presence to be known.

“Oh, it’s you, Sheriff.”

Sheriff Thomas Eastwind was forty-ish, with strong features and long black hair that was always kept in a single braid. In his uniform, he was fully armed and in charge even out in the wilderness—then again, he was the boss of Walters. With a staff of three other officers, he enforced the law for not only all of the preserve, but the half dozen little towns between Walters and the Canadian border.