Free Highland Wolf Pact by Selena Kitt

keen one, ain’t ye?” He grinned, sitting at the table and leaning back to look at her, that amused smile still on his face. “Have ye ever gone swimmin’ in a hot spring?”
    “No.” She shook her head. She’d heard of them—warm pools that heated all by themselves. They had them in Bath. “But I’ve heard tell of them. I didn’t know there were any in Scotland?”
    “Aye, jus’ but a few, up’ere in the mountains,” he explained, sticking a spoon into his bowl of stew and stirring it around. The scent of rabbit meat and gravy and vegetables drew Sibyl even nearer. Raife nodded toward his steaming bowl. “They give off steam, ya ken? So we made our chimneys so the smoke, it looks jus’ like steam risin’ up from the pools. No one’s the wiser.”
    “Ingenious.” She slid into the seat across from him, glancing down at the bowl of stew he’d ladled for her. The dishes were made of metal, pewter perhaps, she thought. The spoons were wooden. She put her knife on the table.
    “Rabbit?” she asked, putting her nose closer to the delicious smelling concoction.
    “Aye, jus’rabbit.” He lifted the spoon to his lips. “Ye’ve tasted rabbit afore?”
    “Of course,” she scoffed, putting a spoon into the bowl and stirring it around. It certainly smelled like rabbit. She took a taste and moaned softly, closing her eyes in bliss. Food! Her stomach clenched, asking for more.
    “G’head, lass,” he said, taking another spoonful himself. “Twill’na bite ye.”
    “What about you?”
    “I will’na bite ye either.” He smiled softly, cocking his head at her in the soft, orange glow of the fire. “If we were goin’ t’kill ye, don’tcha think we would’ve done it a’ready?”
    “Mayhaps.” She continued to spoon stew in, warming her clamoring belly, hoping that logic was sound. In truth, this man had been far better to her in the space of just a day than her betrothed had been to her in the entire month she’d known him. Raife had saved her from Alistair’s wrath—and his pursuing men. This man had carried her to safety, had bandaged her wounds, had taken her in, knowing his brother, and likely his whole pack, would object. He had given her food and shelter and had asked for naught in return.
    The only problem was, this man could change into an animal at any moment.
    Of course, apparently, so could her betrothed. They were just different sorts of animals, she mused. And she was beginning to think that these creatures—wolves, wulvers, whatever they were called—might be preferable.
    “Thank you for the food.” She glanced up at the man eating across from her. His chest was bare and strangely hairless in the firelight, his plaid secured around his waist with a thick leather belt. She would have expected far more fur on a man who was a wolf half of the time, but all his hair appeared to be on his dark head. “It is far better than jerky and dried fruit.”
    “How much did ye have packed in that bag under ye skirts?” he asked, looking pointedly at her torn, tattered clothing. She’d been grateful for the fabric when she’d had to hide her satchel underneath.
    “A few days, maybe a weeks’ worth,” she replied, scraping her bowl with her spoon, sad the stew had disappeared so quickly. “But I’m skinny, I don’t need much.”
    “A’course.” He chuckled, taking her bowl back over to the fire and spooning more stew into it. “And where were ye runnin’ off ta?”
    “Back…” She almost said ‘home,’ but she didn’t have one of those anymore. And she couldn’t for the life of her remember the name of the village where they’d left Rose. “Toward York.”
    “York is home then?” He placed another full bowl of stew in front of her and she grabbed her spoon, digging in greedily.
    “It was.” She nodded, talking through mouthfuls of stew. “My mother and uncle… he’s really my stepfather now, I suppose… they live in York.”
    “And ye were promised