Free The Dark of Twilight (Twilight Shifters Book 1) by Kate Danley

kitchen.  Was he even alive?  Now she could not stop the wash of the memories, of the final moments they probably would ever have alive together.
    The pain of that realization gripped her like a vice and squeezed her chest.  Her hand balled up into a fist and clenched her heart.  She had to trust he stayed in the larder, she told herself.  She had to trust that he was safe.  She picked up her pace.  The only way she could help him would be to get help.
    But as her mind went through the images and memories of him, something else wriggled in.  A traitorous thought.  An unwanted, unbidden thought.  But once it was there... 
    When she went down into the kitchen, he had been sitting there beside the fire without having made the next course.  He had not been rushing around.  He had not seemed worried about seeing to things.  He said the chaos would begin after the sun went down.  Was he just talking about the rhythm of the day? 
    That unwanted voice in her head whispered otherwise. 
    It was as if he knew... as if he knew there would be no need of his services.  How could that have been?  How could he have known?
    Unless... she thought.  She did not wish to think it.  This man raised her.  He had taken her from the kitchen and sent her to training.  She owed him everything.  And yet... he knew something.  He knew something was coming from the swamp... or did he know something had already been brought back from the swamp?  A delicacy which was placed in the food of every man, woman, and child in the stronghold the night of the wedding feast?  Finn warned her a cook wielded that sort of power.  Aein stopped herself.  She told herself that her mind was just creating conspiracies because the truth was too horrible to accept.
    She stopped and looked back towards the castle.  Could Cook Bolstad have lived through the carnage?  What if their very salvation, the one man who knew what was to happen, was still alive somewhere in the stronghold?  What if the one person who could stop all this died before she returned?
    She looked north.  She had promised Gisla that she would continue on to her father's kingdom.  She was half a day's journey there, but there were at least two more days ahead of her.  She had promised she would come back with reinforcements...  but that same voice reminded her she promised Lars she would come back with reinforcements, too.  She was always going off to get someone else to save the day.  And they never did.
    Could she live through that again?
    She knew the answer was no.
    And so, Aein turned back to the castle.
    It would not matter if she came back with one-thousand soldiers if they had no idea how to cause the change to stop.  It would not matter if they slew every wolf in the stronghold.  Those wolves were people.  Her people. People she had sworn to protect.  If there was some way to prevent their mass slaughter, to somehow preserve their humanity.  She had a duty.
    By the time she was within sight of the stronghold, the sun was dipping low in the sky.  She stayed behind the tree line in the hopes she would not be spotted.  It was silly, she realized.  The wolves probably already scented her.  They were wolves, after all.
    In the distance, she could see the portcullis was still shut, the beasts impaled beneath its weight.  They were still cut in two and dead.  With the way they shook off injury, she was surprised they were not still wiggling beneath the spiked gate.  She saw wolves running along the ramparts high overhead.  But she did not see that any had escaped outside.
    All she had to do was wait.  When the sun set, all of the wolves now trapped in the courtyard would change back into people, people who could let her in.  She tried not to think of all the others people trapped inside who would be shifting back with the darkness twilight brought.
    It was then she heard the leaves behind her shuffle and she knew she was not alone.  Please let it be a