Read Binding: Book Two of the Moon Wolf Saga for Free Online Page A

my ankle. I’d forgotten about my foreleg. I started forward more tentatively, but the hysterical barking of the border collies across the way reminded me that what I did next needed to be done as fast as possible.
    I loped across the field toward the house, and the sheep, sweet, beautiful sheep, high-tailed it away from me. I sent them bounding toward the double gates, and they galloped out, charging off in a panic into the dark, empty field beyond. I got to the second sheep field, and charged across it as well, and all the ewes and their little lambs ran out into the night. Most of the lambs ran at their moms’ heels, but of course a bunch of them were slow to get up, or facing the wrong way, or ran into the fence instead of the gate, and were left behind. They trotted around, crying pitifully like the babies they were, but the moms didn’t stop. It might have been a hundred generations since they’d caught the scent, but they remembered, and they knew what it meant when a wolf was in the pen. Ewes with newborn lambs, penned in squares of hay bales, found it in them to leap straight out and follow the herd, leaving their little lambs bawling behind them. I nearly tripped over one of the little sweeties, who banged his head into my leg, and nosed around, crying and looking for mom, and milk, and comfort. He smelled so good, I could have just eaten him up. But I couldn’t stop yet.
    I almost crawled over the fence into the lambing pen, where the heavy ewes rolled their eyes and jounced toward the gate and off into the lane. I followed them, and oh, how they ran. You wouldn’t think anything so big and encumbered could lumber so fast.
    The border collies were barking hysterically; Sarah and Elaine emerged from the barn. Sarah ran for the house and after a minute returned to the yard with a shotgun—I knew there would be a shotgun! I ducked around the house, and came out behind them, just off the porch, in the shadows by the cars.
    “What is it?” Elaine called. “What's out there?”
    “I don’t know,” Sarah said, sounding deadly from behind her gun. “But I’m going to find out.”
    Sarah ran for the kennels. I thought that's what she’d do. I sloped across the yard behind the trucks so I could watch from the far side of the barn. Sarah let out the first dog, and before she gave him a command he went charging toward the open field where the sheep had scattered and were only now beginning to slow down. She whistled at him and he stopped and lay down, trembling. She let out the pair that shared one kennel, and then sent all three of them to make a huge loop around the field, two going one way, one going the other. The fourth dog yelped and whined at her.
    “Get down, Polly, you’re not going.” Sarah patted the fence and then told her sharply to be quiet. I was close enough then, and on the right side of the wind, to know why this dog was locked up by herself. She was in heat.
    Elaine came over to the kennels with the flashlight.
    “Did you see anything?” Sarah asked her.
    “Just the sheep. I don’t see any down.”
    “Spook and Joe will bring them back,” Sarah said.
    “Why’d you let Tally out?” Elaine asked. They were walking away from me, toward the field where the dogs had circled out after the sheep and were gathering them up.
    “Might as well give him a run,” Sarah said. “He won’t do any harm.”
    When they crossed the lane, I changed to my human form and slipped up to the last kennel. Polly didn’t seem very interested in killing me. She stared out at the moving herd in the distance, caterwauling, her voice rising and falling in excitement and frustration. I opened the latch on her kennel.
    “Go get ‘em, Polly!”
    Polly shot out of there, leaped over the fence into the lambing pen, and took off across the field. I closed the latch on her kennel and ducked behind the barn just as I heard Sarah shouting. “Polly! Leave it! Come! No, no, Joe, get out of there, Spook, lie down LIE