Free Winter Howl (Sanctuary) by Aurelia T. Evans

show any sort of shame for almost being caught doing… almost doing something. Menacing the woman who’d let him be there in the first place. If ‘menacing’ was the right word. He was right in that she was not doing anything to stop him. And she thought that if Josh were here doing the same thing, she really would have pushed him out through the door. She did not just let people do things to her that she didn’t want them to do, no matter her issues with touching people, with being near them.
    “So…” Grant said. “How do you and yours feel about hares for dinner?”
    “I’ll tell Jake and Kit. How many?”
    “How many do you need?”
    “As many as you can bring as early as possible—we have eighteen other shapeshifters, then me.”
    He stared at her. “You aren’t a…? You’re completely human.” Grant digested the unexpected information, then shrugged it off. “I was completely human once myself. I’ll see what I can do about the meat.”
    “Do you know how to clean them?” Renee asked.
    “I do.” Grant backed out of the open front door and shut it in front of him, watching her to the last second.
    Renee had to shake the prickle from her skin and press her palm against her mound to push down the gentle throb there. This was no time for an inconvenient and unsuitable reaction.
    Breathing shallowly, she passed Leslie in the hall, coming back from his foray into the kitchen for a writing snack. He offered her half of his sandwich, but she shook her head. She would make her own. She was not hungry, but she thought a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich might help settle her fluttering stomach. The encounter had only solidified her worry that letting Grant stay at the sanctuary was a bad idea. A very bad idea.
    Before going to the computer room to join Leslie after making her sandwich, Renee went out through the back door and searched the compound from her vantage point for Jake. When she saw him up on the roof of the farm animal barn, she ran over and waved him down from the roof.
    “Grant is getting us meat for dinner,” she said. She slid an arm around his waist for a sideways hug to reassure him, knowing that he would not be happy. “Don’t complain.”
    “I’m not exactly leaping for joy,” Jake said.
    “I know. But he showed a willingness to contribute. Let’s just see, okay. For me, wait and see.” She gazed up at his slightly flushed face, warm from work in spite of the cold, and smiled a little when she saw the resignation in his face.
    “Whatever you want,” he muttered. “When is he bringing them in?”
    “I told him to bring them in well before dinner. We’ll just see.”
    “Yes,” Jake said. “We’ll just see. I need to get back to work.”
    Renee left him to ruminate and returned to the house, this time taking her sandwich with her into the computer room and sitting down properly to work and print things out.
    At around four-thirty, Renee went out into the greenhouse to trim, weed, and generally get herself dirty. She did not like using gloves. She could touch so few people that she felt better when she could touch her plants, even if they hurt her hands. Most of her flowers were outside in the flower garden next to the vegetable garden, but Renee liked to keep her roses—full-sized and miniature—in the greenhouse so that she could see them all year round. The greenhouse was warmer than outside, and during the much colder months, the heater kept the room at moderate to warm temperature for the plants. All of the irrigation was from harvested rainwater or melted snow. The greenhouse was her baby, although Britt usually helped her with it.
    She wondered where the hell Britt was. When she was nowhere to be found, it usually meant she was taking one of the dog packs for a run. Or taking herself for a run in her human skin. But she usually stopped by in the afternoon for lunch or to say hi to Renee before going back out, and Renee had seen neither hide nor hair of her