Page 2 of New Blood

“Danielle?” he prompted and gripped her arms.

Finally, she found her voice again. “I’m okay. Just shaken.”

“What happened?”

“I woke up and smelled gas.”

She looked past him to see that the fire was under control. It appeared that the kitchen and bedroom had sustained substantial damage, but the living room and bathroom were still standing, even though the windows had been blown out. She tore her gaze away from it, shivering involuntarily.

“The fireplace was leaking gas, and I couldn’t turn it off.”

Cameron interrupted from behind his father, “How hard can it be to turn off the gas to a fireplace?!”

“Shut it!” William ground out, his eyes briefly flickering red like they did whenever he was annoyed and whenever his wolf side tried to break through from beneath the civilized surface.

“I tried. I really did,” Danielle insisted quickly, not wanting to anger him. After all, he was her alpha, and he was a strict leader who didn’t tolerate insubordinate pack members. “But there was no key to turn. It was gone.”

William nodded, his forehead furrowing. “We’ll look into it when the sun is up.”

“In the meantime,” Flora added, “let’s get you settled in the cottage next to Heath and Priscilla’s.”

“No!” William protested, not just to Danielle’s surprise, but also to Flora’s. “Danielle will be living in the main house from now on.”

“But that cottage is empty, and—”

He cut Flora off with a look that brooked no refusal. Flora quickly backpaddled, and Danielle felt sorry for the woman.

“Of course, as you wish, William,” she said and forced a smile.

“The room next to Thaddeus’s is empty,” William added.

“But that’s on the family floor,” Flora said.

She was right. The nine members of the Gallagher family—William and his daughter and three sons, and Flora and her daughter and two sons—lived on the second and third floors of the main house and its new wing that had been added in the last two decades. All pack members not directly related to the Gallaghers lived in smaller cottages on the grounds. Others, depending on what job they performed for the pack, lived off-site. But only cooks and other household staff had previously lived in one of the two spare rooms on the first floor of the mansion, and currently, both rooms were vacant. Priscilla, a young woman who, together with Danielle, took care of most of the household chores like cleaning and cooking, lived in one of the cottages with her brother, Heath.

Before she could say that she didn’t mind living on the ground floor where the kitchen and all common rooms were located, William spoke again.

“It’s decided. Danielle will stay where I say she stays.”

Flora mounted no further protest. She turned away from William.

“I’ll help you put sheets on the bed,” Flora said, looking at her.

Danielle put a hand on Flora’s arm and squeezed it. “That’s very kind of you, but I can do it. I’m too wound up to sleep right now anyway.”

Flora drew an audible breath into her nostrils. “Alright then. But in the morning, I’ll bring you some clothes that’ll fit you.”

Flora turned and walked back toward the house. Danielle took another look at the cottage that could have become her tomb tonight, before she followed her. She’d liked living in the little cottage. It had been her own little home where nobody ever disturbed her. It would be different living under the watchful eye of the Gallagher family without having a truly private space to retreat to. She was still not used to being part of a pack because, for a long time, she and her mother had lived on their own, without the protection of a pack. But her mother was gone, and remaining on her own hadn’t been an option any longer.

2

Present Day – Outside Bozeman, Montana

“Are you one hundred percent sure?” Jude asked the man on the other end of the line.

“Have I ever been wrong before?”

He hesitated for only a split second. Even though Striker Reed was a vampire and therefore neither an ally nor a friend of werewolves by any stretch of the imagination, the taciturn tracker had never steered him wrong.