Free Seer: Reckless Desires (Norseton Wolves Book 8) by Holley Trent Page A

go.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
    “If you’re about to open your mouth to tell me I’m looking rough around the edges,” Arnold said to his approaching sister, “I’d prefer for you to do me a favor and keep your mouth shut.”
    He set down the gun he’d been cleaning and leaned his forearms back onto the blanket he’d been sprawled out on. Sunshine and fresh air hadn’t exactly been luxuries for him in the past few years, but there was something so magical and sublime about being outside with no external forces pushing him to run, and then run some more.
    Except for his alpha.
    Arnold’s probationary period for guard duty required a five-kilometer run three times per week, but he didn’t mind. The running distracted him from the thoughts that made him snarl and growl.
    Petra knelt beside the blanket and draped her fingers over her knees. “I didn’t come all the way out here to tell you that, actually, but I may as well. You look like shit.”
    “Fuck you, too.”
    “You need to take better care of yourself.”
    “Perhaps you have some suggestions as to how I should do that when I can’t even sleep without thinking about that woman—without the wolf in me trying to subvert even the smallest plans of mine because his instinct is to be near his mate. I’ve been purposely putting at least fifty feet between her and me for the entirety of the two months since I brought her here. I can’t deal.”
    Petra sputtered her lips and raked a hand through her messy hair. She always looked something like a wild woman with her uncombed hair, just like their mother always had. Looking at her sometimes made his heart ache. Their mother would have loved Norseton—she would have loved the freedom and the opportunities. If she’d lived, they could have thrived there together.
    He pinched the bridge of his nose. He couldn’t afford sentiment, not when the wolf inside him was already so short-tempered.
    “Hey. I understand how you feel a little,” she said. “I don’t like being far from Paul, either. I’m about to go have lunch with him now and came here to see if you wanted to come along.”
    “No thanks. Watching my sister make kissy-face with her husband when I’m trying to eat isn’t my idea of a good time.”
    She shrugged. “Figured I’d ask. Haven’t spent much time with you in a while. We never hang out anymore.”
    “Things change.”
    “Yeah. That doesn’t mean you have to isolate yourself.”
    “I’m not isolating myself. I’m giving her space.” He sat up and started to put his gun back together. “ Choices . That’s what I’m giving her.”
    “Well, the way you’re going about this looks a lot like mate abandonment to me.”
    “That’s not my fault.”
    “I’d say it is. I thought you didn’t want to be like Dad.”
    “Don’t go there. Don’t even go there. Actually, you know what? This conversation isn’t going anywhere, anyway, so leave. Enjoy your lunch.”
    “No.” Petra collapsed onto the blanket next to him. “Come on. I’ve never known you to be the type who’d give up.”
    “ Think , P. I wasn’t all that invested in the first place, right? I get some stupid vision telling me to go snatch a lady and her kid from the woods. So I go get her and bring her back to this place where I’d barely been living in for a week myself. Come to find out she’s some nut job polygamist’s seventh wife or something, and has been on such a short leash all her life that she won’t even entertain the idea of letting a man get close, much less the wolf who bit her.”
    Petra plucked at a bit of desert weed growing beside the blanket’s edge and stared at him.
    “Don’t give me that stare. You know damn well I’m right.”
    “No. You’re not.”
    “Okay, fine.” He shrugged. “Whatever.”
    “You want to know what I think?”
    “Not particularly.”
    “Well, I’m gonna tell you anyway,” she said. “Just like when you gave me unsolicited opinions about my medical condition,