Free The Siege of Kadenburg by T. E. Ridener Page A

power even be back up by then? Could he really leave Louisa here without heat? Absolutely not. She’d just have to go with him.
    Or perhaps I can send her to the Kress house. She’d enjoy that.
    It was an amusing thought to have, and he was beginning to wonder if Louisa had heard it as the sound of a furiously beating heart entered his mind.
    “Louisa?” He whispered, pushing himself up from the couch. The heartbeat was fast and sporadic-as if Louisa was suddenly terrified. Beau’s body tingled in anticipation of changing. His desire to protect his cousin would always override every other sensation in the world.
    He poked his head into her room again, surprised to see that she was still sleeping soundly. What the hell? Her heartbeat was just fine. Steady and calm as it had been an hour before.
    Whose heartbeat was he hearing?
    He was distracted by the piercing shriek of his phone’s ringtone. He lifted it in his hand, gazing at the number. Yep, he called that one. It was work.
    “Hello? Do you need me to come in?” He asked, placing the phone against his ear. His brows immediately knitted together when he heard a distraught nurse on the other end. “She did what?”
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    S ammy had gone through with a lot of stupid ideas in her time, but this surpassed all of them. She had no idea the weather was going to get this bad. When they’d pulled up the radar at work, she’d only seen a few flurries headed in their direction. This was definitely not a few flurries. This was a freaking tsunami of relentless snow and skin biting ice.
    Her naked legs were receiving the most punishment at the moment. As her shoes disappeared into the deep snow and her teeth shattered, she tried desperately to hug her coat tighter around herself. The wind was merciless, sweeping her long hair in every direction as tears stung at her eyes. The bitter temperatures would be the death of her.
    I should’ve stayed inside, she thought as she reached out to grab a tree limb. I would be warm right now at least.
    No, she knew better than that. She had to get out of that place. There was no reason for them to keep her at the hospital anyway. She was fine. She was healthier than a derby stallion!
    I just celebrated my 30 th birthday a few days ago and now I’m going to die a death far worse than Jack Nicholson did in The Shining. What luck!
    Of course she had to trip over something and fall face first into the snow. Why would that work out any differently? She gasped, pushing her hands down against the iced ground and then forced her numbing body to operate.
    “Holy shit, that’s cold!” She exclaimed, clamping her mouth shut as her teeth continued sounding off like a jack hammer. She was trembling uncontrollably as she forced herself to keep going. Where was she anyway?
    Her mind was obviously shutting down on her, and any sense of direction she had had gone out the window a while back. Yes, leaving the hospital was a perfect idea.
    The ferocious air attacked her again and her hair swept into her face. She made no attempt at removing it. Her fingers were too numb to function properly anyway. The howling of the wind was growing louder and louder.
    Or at least, Sammy thought it was the wind.
    A deeper howl pierced the night air and it caused the hair on her arms to stand on end. Her heart collapsed into her stomach as she whirled about, staring into a mixture of darkness and blinding snow.
    What the hell was that? She thought as panic struck her heart. It didn’t sound good, whatever it was. In fact, it sounded hungry. Shit, shit, shit.
    Another howl sounded in the distance, and that’s when Sammy realized she needed to high-tail it the hell out of the woods. How did she even end up in the woods in the first place?!
    Aaawooooo!
    She was feeling a whole lot of hell no at the moment, and with each stumbling step she took, a million scenarios ran through her mind. This was Tennessee and some of the animals in the forest