Read A Wolf of Her Own for Free Online Page B

unyielding, rippling lightly as he used his strength to balance the vehicle. His warmth was beckoning her. After the morning she’d had, she just wanted to press against him to bask in it, to comfort herself.
    Do it .
    Of course the Rider wanted her to give in. It wanted her to feel safe and put her guards down. With great resolve, she kept her back straight and her attention on the surroundings.
    She hadn’t been to the forest within the estate wall in ages. Not since her wolf friend disappeared when she was eight. Before, she had roamed free there, but a lot had changed in 120 years and she couldn’t recognise her favourite places anymore. Huge trees stood where saplings had been and new paths had formed when fallen trees had blocked the old ones. Paths suitable for motorised vehicles hadn’t existed back then either—there hadn’t been motorised vehicles—but now a couple of them cut through the forest. These changes hadn’t altered the beauty of the place and she found the forest as magical as it had been then.
    "Is there still a huge oak tree by a pond at the south end," she had to ask. Her wolf friend had shown her the place when one of mother’s spells had made her flee home. She had visited it often, and couldn’t bear the thought that it might be gone.
    "How do you know about that?"
    "Your soldiers kept the enemy out. Not little girls."
    He laughed. "It’s still there, though I don’t go swimming as often as I did when I was a child. Did you swim there?"
    "Yes. A wolf friend of mine taught me how to swim when I was eight." It was more than her parents had ever thought to do. Life had been hard on the farm when she was a child; there hadn’t been time for frivolities. It wasn’t easy now, but at least they had machines helping them.
    "You had a wolf friend? Who?"
    "He was one of the soldiers. Not terribly old, maybe fifty or sixty, but I don’t know his name." It hadn’t mattered to her, not until she had tried to look for him and no one had been able to give her an answer. "He doesn’t live here anymore."
    "He went rogue?"
    "I have no idea what happened to him." She had mourned for a time—would have needed him when her mother died—but a child was adaptable and she had put him out of her mind. She’d had to assume some of her mother’s responsibilities as a housekeeper, a heavy burden for a little girl, and had been too busy to remember him.
    They emerged from the forest on the far side of the estate where all the agricultural buildings were. New, they were in pristine condition and meticulously maintained, a glaring contrast to their farm where everything had looked the same for centuries.
    Gemma thought they would stop there, but Kieran continued towards the main house along a well-used road. A group of older farm buildings emerged from behind a bend, beautiful Queen Anne style red-bricks from the early eighteenth century, like the manor itself, too small to be practical in modern farming. They weren’t abandoned but simply put to new use.
    Kieran pulled up outside one of them. "This is our abattoir. We have a walk-in freezer where we can put the carcasses to wait for the vet. We have an incinerator for disposing of them too."
    The building was fully modernised inside. Everything was squeaky clean stainless steel and smelled of disinfectants. They carried the dead sheep into a large empty freezer Kieran said they used when animals died without a cause and needed to be preserved for inspection. "The meat we eat is put into different freezers," he added with a smile.
    Their gruesome task finished, they hosed the trailer clean of any remaining sheep particles. Nothing seemed to make it clean enough and Gemma kept running water on it long after her nose—unblocked again—told her she could finish. She put the hose away reluctantly, feeling oddly restless. She didn’t want to go home. Only an empty house waited for her.
    "Will you call me when the vet arrives?"
    "He shouldn’t take long. Why