Free Darkest Before Dawn (A Guardian's Diary Book 1) by Amelia Hutchins Page B

waiting for a signal that he was ready, but then I really didn’t care if he fell off. It would solve the issue of the butterflies currently attacking my insides.
    We drove for several minutes in silence before he started talking, which I pretended to ignore. It wasn’t until he turned on the bike and his grip tightened that I slowed and made a point to listen.
    “Don’t slow down! Fucking hell, they must smell that thing’s diaper,” he growled and one hand released me as he pulled a gun from the back of his pants. “There’s a hunter’s perch about a mile up from here, can you make it there?”
    Make it there? I turned and caught sight of what had him on edge. There were wolves running right at us. I floored it. “Protect the baby!” I shouted as we hit a bump, but fortunately the ATV corrected and we continued towards the perch. “Hold on,” I warned as we hit a hill, which I normally would have gone around because it was steep. The wolves would be more winded though, and it would give us time to climb the perch. I knew where it was, but the woods could be tricky at dusk.
    “There,” he pointed to it as he narrowly missed a low hanging branch. I stalled the bike, clicked off the gas, and shut it down before jumping off the ATV and running to the back to grab the food. I tossed the duffle bag of army rations to Jaeden and climbed up the wooden ladder at a swift pace. Sarah was crying, and I couldn’t blame her; the poor thing had been through hell. The sounds the wolves were making would have scared anybody.
    I finished climbing and reached for the bag as Jaeden handed it off to me. I tossed it into the corner and started to undo the sling. Then I was turned around, and Jaeden was there helping me to undo the knot so I could secure Sarah safely in the small pile of hay hunters would sit in while waiting for prey. I kissed her little forehead before wrapping one of the thin shirts I kept in my pack around her.
    I pulled up the AR-15 and moved to the lookout window. The perch was bigger than most, but hunters around here took their hunting seriously. Hundreds normally converged to these mountains for hunting since it was teeming with wild life. These perches were built to last, as well as for comfort.
    I snapped the red dot on, and clicked the scope open before looking through it. “Eight wolves,” I said, and waited for Jaeden to say what he saw. When he didn’t, I turned to look at him. “See anymore?”
    “Holy hell,” he whispered as he moved closer and his finger traced my cheek softly.
    I blushed to my roots. My mask had come off somewhere between laying Sarah down, and grabbing the gun. “Stop it, and pay attention!” I growled. I felt naked and exposed under the heat of his eyes.
    “Twelve wolves, eight you can see, four are lagging behind. Three brown and the rest are gray, and you’re beautiful.”
    I blinked and looked out into the woods. It was getting dark fast, and I couldn’t see much, so how had he? I peered through the scope at the trees and sure enough, there were stragglers in the bushes. The wolves closest to us had their ears tight against their heads as they peered up at us.
    I aimed the gun at the front-runner, and fired a shot into the dirt, inches from his front paw. He growled instead of yipping, and bared huge fangs.  “That isn’t normal,” I mused out loud. “Wolves cower when we shoot at them…these ones looks like they wanna chew off my face, rather than run.”
    “Shoot it,” he said as he brought up his gun and took aim at the leader of the pack. Right when he was about to shoot, a large pack of wolves burst through the brush and lunged at the pack circling the perch. “Fucking mutt,” he mumbled.
    I couldn’t look away from the wolves as they savagely attacked each other. It was eerie, and yet even though I knew I should, I couldn’t look away. The biggest of the new wolves, a black one, attacked the biggest of the brown ones, and I knew without a doubt