WolfeBlade: de Wolfe Pack Generations by Kathryn Veque (reading an ebook txt) 📕

they were playing adeptly as a room full of dancers leapt and twirled gaily. But the moment Gavriella stepped into the warm, smoky room, someone grabbed her by the wrist and started yanking her towards the writhing throng.

Immediately, she dug her heels in and began to fight to free herself. The man who had hold of her was big and smelly, and he yanked her so hard by the wrist that she felt pains shooting up her arm. She thought she even heard something crack and, suddenly, she was in a good deal of pain as the idiot pulled her towards the dance floor. The more she dug her heels in, the more he pulled, and she finally screamed at him to let her go. He barely had time to turn around and scowl at her before there was suddenly a big body in between them.

His hold on her wrist abruptly released and he was on the ground.

The man she knew as Wolf had his big arm around her shoulders and begin pulling her quickly back to their original course.

“Come along,” he said steadily, but then he noticed she was cradling her left arm. “What happened? Did he hurt you?”

Gavriella wasn’t sure what to say. The man had hurt her, but she didn’t want to tell the man called Wolf because she didn’t want him to think she wanted him to tend her or, worse, punish the man who hurt her. She didn’t want him to feel any sense of responsibility towards her whatsoever. He wasn’t her escort – he wasn’t her anything. Just a man trying to lead her to the exit.

But she had to admit his chivalrous action had been rather endearing. She’d never experienced anything like it.

“Nay,” she lied. “I was simply… startled.”

“Are you certain you are not injured?”

“I am not injured.”

His gaze lingered on her as if he didn’t believe her, but he didn’t contradict her. He simply let go of her once they reached the darkened corridor and went on ahead of her as she followed along behind.

Now, they were in the feasting room. It smelled glorious and Gavriella’s determination to leave was deterred by the fact that she was hungry. She’d had an entire cup of ale to calm her nerves and her head was swimming a little, so she swiped a beef tart as she walked by a table.

She began shoving it into her mouth as they reached the chamber where the women in transparent clothing were, the women who had put their masks on when they had first arrived. As they entered the dimly lit chamber, the women seemed to come out of the shadows, untying their masks and pulling them off. Gavriella had a mouth full of tart, shoving the entire thing in, as her mask came away.

His mask came off, too.

Gavriella found herself looking at a man handsome enough to make her forget how to swallow.

The tart went spraying out.

Gavriella coughed violently as the women in the transparent clothing shrieked and began calling for servants to clean up the mess. The man called Wolf reached out, taking her by the arm and pulling her away from the pile on the floor that she had created.

“Are you well?” he asked, sounding concerned. “Mayhap you need some wine.”

“Nay,” Gavriella said, clutching him before he could move away. She struggled to control the cough. “Truly, I am not ill. I tried to swallow and… it… it went down the wrong way. I am not ill, I assure you.”

She was gazing up into his face as he nodded, but he still looked concerned. “Are you sure?” he asked. “It will take me only a moment to find you something to drink.”

Gavriella shook her head. “Truly, do not trouble yourself,” she said. “I have already been an immense trouble to you already. In fact, since the moment we met, I have been little else, so I wish to relieve you of my burden as soon as possible.”

He looked at her, rubbed his chin, and then shrugged. Turning away from her, he continued down another dim corridor as Gavriella swallowed hard and tried to forget the fact that she had nearly choked. For certain, looking at a man as handsome as he was had startled her. She should have suspected given his dimpled smile, but once the mask came off… well, she had made a fool of herself.

Again.

He was fair, with blond brows and pale eyes from what she could see, but she noticed that he seemed to have a faint red tint to his hair even in the dim light. Just a little, but it was there. His jaw was square, like granite, and when he turned to look at her as they passed by a torch, she could see that his eyes were a glorious shade of blue.

The man was positively magnificent.

They’d finally reached the corridor that had the two armed door sentries in it, the point of entry to Gomorrah. The armed men stood back, allowing them to the door, but once they passed through the opened panel and out into the cold night, they slammed the door behind them. They could hear the bolt thrown.

Suddenly, the were out on the darkened, dangerous London street with the burned-out church behind them. The fog that had rolled in from the river now covered everything with mist, damp and slick. Gavriella came to an abrupt halt, looking down at herself.

“I came with a cloak,” she said, looking regretfully to the door they’d just exited through. “I do not even know what happened to it. It belonged to my cousin and I hate to leave it behind, but I am not going back inside.”

He looked at the door also. “To go back inside would be to risk being trapped again.”

“I know.”

His gaze turned to her. “Where is your home?”

That was a good question. Gavriella looked around the darkened street and tried to get her bearings, cradling her aching left arm. “God’s Bones,” she muttered. “I have already