Free Hunted (Riley Cray) by A.J. Colby Page A

always said “to each their own,” but I don’t think that sentiment had extended to the undead and their daytime watchers.
    Chrismer’s gaze inched closer to my hiding spot before eventually sliding away. She had sensed my presence, but thankfully wasn’t able to pinpoint my location.
    I waited until her searching gaze moved in the opposite direction before quietly slipping back from the corner and circling around to the back of the building, all the while cursing my craptastic luck.
    Shit. What is that undead cock-holster doing here?
    Pacing back and forth in a tight circle I huffed in frustration, my breath curling into the sky in a plume of shimmering mist. Watching its ascent I felt a flicker of hope as I spied the small bathroom window on the wall. It wasn’t very big, but the thought of trying to wedge myself through the small opening was a lot more appealing than facing the media frenzy out front.
    Crouching low to the ground, I closed my eyes and focused on making the shift back to human form, gritting my teeth against the pain. Shifting from wolf to human always seemed to be comprised of less pleasure and more pain as if the wolf didn’t want to be pushed back down and fought against the change just enough to make it unpleasant. Changing under duress didn’t help make the transition any smoother.
    Biting down on my tongue to keep from crying out, my mouth was filled with the familiar sweetness of blood before all conscious thought fled. I hovered somewhere in the ether, in the crystalline moment between wolf and human, some horrifying mix of woman and beast.
    A bone rattling shudder rippled through me as I shook off the last traces of the wolf, and immediately cursed the absence of fur as the wind rained dozens of tiny icy shards down on me from the roof, each one stinging my skin like tiny biting insects. Goose bumps rose along the length of my arms and my thighs, my knees shaking as much from the cold as from the last tremors of the change.
    Glancing around, I found a broken tree branch that looked like it might be sturdy enough to use as a pry bar on the window. Armed with my make-shift crow bar, I paused beneath the unlit window, funneling all of my focus down to my hearing, listening for any sounds within the room. After hearing nothing for the count of ten, I reached up on my tiptoes and wedged the end of the stick into the window frame.
    My heart lurched at the sharp sound of groaning metal, the noise seeming to ring out in the darkness like a bullhorn. When no one shouted an alarm, or came running around the building with an arsenal of guns pointed at my head, I figured that the sound had gone unnoticed and I was safe to proceed with my first foray into breaking and entering.
    Biting my lip, because that totally helps with concentration, I wiggled the stick back and forth, trying to lever the small pane of frosted glass out of its metal housing. A second later the glass popped out of the frame so easily I almost didn’t catch it before it hit the ground.
    Wow, it’s oh-so reassuring to know we’ve got such foolproof security measures in place, I thought with a scowl as I set the window pane aside, leaning it against the wall.
    Tossing my handy crow bar away into the darkness, I backed up a couple steps and took a running jump at the window, my bare feet scraping against the rough stucco finish of the wall as I scrambled up to the window. Being a werewolf may make me stronger, faster, and all that other cool shit, but it doesn’t, unfortunately, compensate for my lack of athletic prowess or short stature. Thankfully I managed to get enough height in my jump to hook my fingers over the edge of the window frame.
    I was part way through the window when I realized that I might have made a slight miscalculation between the relative size of my ass compared to that of the window. The desire to scream a litany of curses was a bitter and cloying taste on the back of my tongue.
    “Fucking shit fuck