Free The Last Wolf: A Highplains Shifter Erotic Romance (Wolf Fire Book 1) by Alice Longstaff

witnessed, but the volunteers were helping Jase shakily to his feet and Earls friends seemed deep in drunken conversation.
    Running over I tried to pull Hakan off the barman and received a heavy slap to my arm. “Stop it now!” I screamed as loud as I could, my whole body bursting with adrenalin. Everyone around the fire froze, including the two men on the floor. Earl stood up slowly and began wiping the rain wetted mud from his shirt, “come on boys, time to head back to the bar, I’ve got everything I needed to done here.” He said.
    As I watched him help his two drunken friends back to the bar I felt something wet dripping from my fingers. I looked down at my arm and saw three deep gashes welling with dark crimson blood.
     

Chapter Ten
    We sat in Hakan’s kitchen while he cleaned and dressed my wounds. The volunteers had finally gone to bed after much grumbling at the way they were being treated, leaving me and Hakan alone, not something I was entirely happy about given the violent and dangerous man he had proved himself to be, hurling poor scraggly Jase over the fire like that. Also I hadn’t seen whose hand, or claw, had struck me during the tussle. But I couldn’t be entirely sure that it wasn’t his.
    “What was Earl talking about, The Prophesies?” I asked.
    Hakan let out a deep sigh, “I was going to tell you, I really was. I just wanted to make sure that you were comfortable with the idea of us shifters first.” He continued wrapping the bandage around my arm as he spoke. “The last of the Yee Naaldlooshii left a prophesy before he died. A prophesy that told the future of the shifter folk. It’s never been written down, but has been passed orally from generation to generation of shifter folk.”
    “But why was Earl talking about you and your baby? I didn’t even know you had children. What is it to do with you?”
    Hakan looked uncomfortable. “I don’t have a baby,” he paused. “Yet.”
    “Oh no, this isn’t about me is it? Was he talking about a baby he thinks we are going to have? That’s madness Hakan, I am not having a baby.”
    “I’ll tell you what The Prophesy said.” Said Hakan, his voice changed, taking on a lilting tone, it was obvious that he was reciting something long committed to memory: “ Fear for the shifters, fear for my people, of the four races only three shall survive. The white man has come, the storm it has broken. Fear for the Eagle-Folk, pulled from the sky. Fear for the Bear-Men, caught in the caves. Fear for the Wolf-Folk, run down on the plains, and fear for the Lions of whom none shall remain. ”
    “So,” I said. “The Prophesy told you that only three of the four races would survive, and the lions would die out. But you told me that the Eagle-Folk had all been killed, meaning that there are only three races left already. The prophesy is obviously not true, your Lee whoever got it wrong.”
    “I told you that I had thought the Eagle-Folk were all dead, I don’t anymore, and neither does Earl, not since he saw you in the bar. Let me tell you the rest of The Prophesy, it will make things clearer.” He fell into his singsong voice again. “ The shifters shall rise when a new chief is born, a child to lead them to where they belong. Born of an eagle bred with a wolf, she will save three races and kill the last lion.”
    “So let me get this straight. You and Earl think that I’m the eagle from your stupid prophesy and that my child is going to kill his people? That’s why he attacked me on the plain?” This was all getting far too intense for me. I needed to get away from these country folk, they had obviously spent too much time in isolation out here, it had poisoned their minds, made them strange.
    “Yes, that’s why he tried to kill you. When they heard The Prophesy the Lion-Folk vowed they would not let it come true. They believed that the best way to prevent it was to stop the promised child ever being born between the Eagle-Folk and the