Free Trust: A Twisted Wolf Tale by Rene Folsom Page B

Did she finally realize how close we were becoming? Did it scare her to think someone could actually care for her?
    I couldn’t help but compare the situation to the protagonists in her manuscript. A disfigured woman unwilling to perceive her own inner beauty, and an infatuated prince trying his all to prove to her he truly loved her.
    My consciousness drifted along with my thoughts, and before I knew it, I was staring at my eyelids.
    A loud thud startled me awake, my heart leaping from my chest before my body could catch up. Bolting upright, my book hit the floor as I gripped the arms of the chair and stared into the smoldering ashes of the fire. Not bothering to stoke it, I watched the glistening embers glow beneath the gray wood and tried to get a grip on myself. My pulse still thrummed through every nerve ending in my body as I tried to assess what had woken me.
    It didn’t take long before another thud rung out over my head, followed by a loud scream. These noises were much, much louder than any I’d heard coming from her room in my previous nights under her roof.
    “Karoline!” I hollered, jumping up from my perch and sporting a full-on sprint to the stairs. Reaching the bottom step, I looked up to the top and contemplated what she’d said mere hours before. She didn’t want me around.
    Didn’t want me.
    Another loud scream and several growls had me climbing the steps two at a time to reach her. Fuck the fact that she didn’t want me. I sure as hell wasn’t going to sit around and listen to her scream like she was in severe pain.
    The house grew eerily quiet as I scaled the last few steps, halting me at the top, unsure of what to do next. I had to check on her, even if it meant making her angry. Those screams weren’t out of a fit of anger—she sounded truly injured.
    My hand hovered over the knob to her bedroom door, doubt seeping into my mind. What would I find? If she were hurt, how would I seek help?
    Readjusting my man card, I steeled my nerves and twisted the cool metal, the door clicking open on demand.
    The room was dark, except for the bright illumination of the full moon through the windows. Feathers from one of the pillows littered almost every surface of the room, yet there was no sign of Karoline anywhere.
    With cautious movements, I slowly stepped through the door, my eyes adjusting to the dim, moonlit space and searching for anything else out of the ordinary. A stack of books was toppled over in a corner, but not much else was displaced.
    Then I saw it.
    Several deep claw marks littered the top of her desk, the rose she had there now on the floor, its vase shattered into pieces. The gashes in the wooden desktop looked desperate—a plea of some sort—like she was being dragged away from her sanctuary and needed to hold on for dear life.
    Something was up, but the more the silence grew, the more I became aware of my surroundings.
    Picking up the rose, my gaze swept across the room, searching the corners, sensing she was somewhere in the dark space. It didn’t take long for me to settle on a figure huddled in a dark corner, my eyes squinting to focus on who—or what—it could be.
    “K—Karoline?” I called out tentatively, my voice quivering even though I willed myself to stay strong.
    Spine straightening, the figure stepped out of the shadows and into the stream of moonlight coming through the nearest window.
    Instead of Karoline, it was the woman from the photo I’d found in that desk—the one I dropped and broke. While it seemed like ages ago, I knew it was the woman pictured. I could tell.
    She wore a long, white nightgown, the wrinkly texture in stark contrast to her soft, silky skin. While the texture seemed to be completely different, the color matched well, almost making it difficult to see where the gown ended and her skin began.
    She was simply breathtaking.
    “There’s an additional detail to the story I didn’t tell you a few days ago,” she said, her voice unmistakably