Free Claimed (The Cull Book 1) by Renee George Page A

left Robert
in the beginning, she might have saved them both—along with their son—many
years of grief.
    God! Her son. Sam. He was twenty-one now.
Her stomach lurched. Because Conor had changed her, she’d outlive her own
child—the main reason she’d turned him down.
    Anna couldn’t take the quiet tension in the
small room. “Why? Make me understand, Conor. Why would you go against your own
laws to do this to me?”
    Conor’s didn’t speak. His penetrating gaze
made her uneasy, but not afraid. He wouldn’t go through all this trouble just
to harm Anna. She looked around the room again to avoid his stare. She grasped
at the blankets under her butt and her fingernails scraped against the dirt
floor beneath. Strangely, the contact with the cool earth calmed her nerves.
    This had to be one of the many dens on the
tribe’s large plot of land in the Ozark Mountain Range in northern Arkansas.
She’d always wanted to see the beauty he’d described when he talked about
home—the rolling hills, clear springs and falls, the flowering catalpa trees,
and the fresh scent of pine.
    Conor leaned forward, pressing his knuckles
against the floor and moving to his knees. He sniffed the air—a quick
inhalation. He cracked his neck to one side before his gaze locked with hers.
In this position, Anna could see that his gray-green eyes were nearly black.
    He crawled toward her. She pressed her back
into the wall and turned her head, not afraid, but somehow instinctually
knowing that direct eye contact could make the situation escalate. His hot breath
huffed over her skin.
    “What are you doing?” She couldn’t keep the
shakiness from her voice.
    The heat from his body warmed her skin as he
closed the distance between them. Anna froze when he rubbed his rough cheek
against hers, his hands traveling down her arms while an inhuman growl rumbled
from his chest and his words left no room for debate. “You. Are. Mine .”
    Crap !
A part of her wanted to yank off her panties and throw her legs wide open while
screaming, Take me now ! But the saner
part of her brain bitch-slapped her libido and told it to back off. “Get away
from me,” she said, trying to put as much command in her tone as he’d had in
his. She wanted to tell him to fuck off. She wasn’t his or anyone’s for that
matter. She belonged to herself and no one else.
    Conor chuffed, his breath blowing against
her ears. Anna turned her head slowly and met his eyes. “Don’t you dare fucking
big, bad wolf me, Conor Evans.”
    Hearing his name made him blink. He growled,
but backed off. “I could be in a lot of trouble for bringing you here.”
    “Then why did you do it?” Why would he take
the risk? His veins pulsed and rippled like snakes under his skin. She’d never
seen him like this, not even the one time he’d shifted into wolf form for her
as proof of his species’ existence. His eyes watered as his soulful gaze met
hers. “I couldn’t let you die.”
    “So you’d rather die. That makes no sense.”
    He pursed his lips and shook his head. “I
want you to live, Anna. You had days, weeks at the most. I couldn’t convince
you and I couldn’t think straight. I could never think straight when it came to
you.”
    A sob escaped from Anna’s lips. She put her
hand to her mouth to stifle another cry. “I didn’t want this life, Conor. I
didn’t.”
    He closed the distance between them, this
time wrapping his arms around her shoulders and drawing her in. “I love you,
Anna.”
    It was the only apology she would get from
him.

 
    Conor’s Ultimatum
    Watching Anna stare at him with such defiance and courage,
Conor couldn’t regret his decision. This close, she smelled of earth and
nature, and beneath those scents, he could smell her desire. Her gorgeous body,
so thin with illness the day before, vibrated beneath him with restless energy.
    If Anna told the pack she hadn’t chosen to be part of the
culled, they would punish Conor outright—no defense and