Shadows at Sunset: Sunset Trilogy ~ Book 1 (15 page)

“What do you want?” I whispered.

In the next instant, Dakota leaped out from the trees beside it. His front legs were stretched out in front of him and his teeth were bared, ready to rip into the wolf that stood above me. On impact, the two wolves became one big ball of black fur. Snarling growls and loud angry yelps cut through the silent wintry night. The wolves tumbled into the snow, their sharp fangs snapping at one another.

“Dakota, no!” I screamed and suddenly shot upright in my bed.

My pulse raced and the sheen of my sweat stuck to the sheets. It was all just a bad dream. My heavy breathing and pounding heart slowly returned to normal as my eyes adjusted to the dark shadows in my room. I pulled the covers up against my chest as I eased back down onto my pillow, trying to shut out the image of the strange black wolf.

As I desperately tried to think of something other than the wolf that haunted my dreams, I heard a faint howl in the distant night. My eyes flew wide open and I scrambled out of my bed. After racing across the room, I leaned over my desk to raise the window. Cool, crisp midnight air blasted into my room, sending shivers through me as I peered into the darkness. Not even the slightest breeze could be heard in the silence. I remained at the window for a few minutes, waiting for another howl. An owl hooted from a tall tree in the distance, but that was all I heard. I couldn’t help wondering if I had imagined the howl. It must have been an aftershock from my nightmare.

With a sigh, I slid the window down into place. After locking it, I returned to the cozy warmth of my bed, hoping to forget my nightmare and fall back to sleep.

***

I didn’t have any more nightmares that night. A misty gray sky loomed outside the window when I awoke the next morning. Raindrops tapped lightly on the roof. I sighed as I pulled the comforter against my chin, my nightmare vividly replaying over and over again in my head.

Stop
!
I finally ordered myself, flipping onto my side.
Can’t you think about something else
?
Like Noah.
I smiled at the memory of our first meeting and what his hands had felt like on my waist. I really wanted to go out with him. I wondered what we would do, where we would go, if he would kiss me on our first date. My eyes fell shut as I imagined him pressing his lips against mine.

When I opened my eyes in my mind, I saw Xander’s intense blue eyes staring at me. I bolted upright in bed. Where had that come from? It would be one thing to dream about him as I slept, but I was awake in full control of my fantasy. Or so I thought.

I ran my fingers through my hair as I slipped out from under the covers. My bare feet padding softly against the floor, I left my bedroom and wandered down the stairs. When I reached the empty kitchen, a scratching sound scraped at the back door.

“Dakota?” I wondered out loud as I ran to the door and flung it open.

He stood on the patio, his head hung low and his fur soaking wet. Water dripped from him in tiny beads, pooling underneath him.

“Dakota, come in here. You look miserable.” I held the door open until he crept into the kitchen and then shut it behind him. He seemed to be limping, favoring his right front paw, but he took so few steps that I couldn’t be sure. I knelt down beside him to stroke his damp fur. “What happened to you?”

Dakota looked up at me, his amber eyes tired. He whimpered softly and, once again, I wished he could tell me what was going on. He stood perfectly still beside the door. “Wait here,” I told him. “I’ll get a towel to dry you off.”

I ran upstairs and grabbed a clean towel from my bathroom closet. Then I hurried back down to the kitchen where he waited. He hadn’t moved an inch since I had left. “Here,” I said, kneeling on the hard floor beside him again. “Let’s get you dried off.”

I rubbed the towel over his wet fur, starting with his neck. As I rubbed it across his side, I glanced down at the floor and gasped. The water pooling on the white tile was tinted pink.

I looked at the towel in my hands, afraid to turn it over. Slowly, I moved it until I could see the other side. My heart raced as I swallowed the lump in my throat. The white towel was streaked with bright red blood.

Chapter 9

Panic consumed me and tears welled up in the corners of my eyes. I started shaking as I sifted my fingers through Dakota’s thick matted black fur to find the source of his bleeding.

“Dakota,” I said, fighting for every ounce of composure. “What in the world happened to you?”

He gazed at me soberly, and I now recognized that what I had mistaken earlier for concern in his eyes was actually pain. He nudged my arm as if to reassure me that he would be okay, but I couldn’t believe it until I found where he was bleeding from. If it was bad enough to need stitches, I didn’t know what I’d do. I couldn’t exactly take him to a vet. My hands trembling, I pressed the towel against his neck.

As more blood continued to soak the towel, I yelled, “Mom! Dad! I need help, please!”

Within seconds, their bedroom door opened and they rushed into the kitchen. My mother tied the rope around her navy robe as she hurried toward me and Dakota. Fear shone in her brown eyes, and I felt a little guilty for jolting them up so suddenly on a Sunday morning. My father followed closely behind her in plaid pajama pants and a white T-shirt.

Kneeling beside me, she assessed the situation. Her wide-eyed fear quickly faded when she saw that Dakota was the one injured, not me. “Here,” she said, gently taking the towel from me. “Let me do this.” She rubbed Dakota’s neck with a clean section that wasn’t soaked in blood yet. “Laken, get me the kitchen scissors from the utility drawer. We’re going to have to cut his fur to find where he’s bleeding from. Tom, I need your clippers and the hydrogen peroxide from our bathroom.”

My father hesitated. “My clippers?”

“Yes. Once I find where he’s bleeding from, I’ll need to shave his fur closer to his skin around the wound.” She paused, noting my father’s curious expression. “We’ll buy you a new pair if they get ruined,” she said sharply before returning her attention to Dakota’s neck. Dakota continued to stand still, fully aware that we were trying to help him.

I scrambled to my feet, rushed across the kitchen to our utility drawer, and retrieved the scissors from their place among the knives, skewers, and other sharp utensils. My fingers closed around the black handles, my hand still a little shaky. Then I returned to my mother’s side and carefully handed them to her.

“Thanks. I think I found a puncture wound.” She started cutting his fur. Thick black clumps cut straight across fell to the tile floor. “Can you get a few more towels, Laken?”

“Got it.” I raced upstairs to grab two more towels. When I returned, my father stood over my mother as she gently ran the buzzing clippers against Dakota’s neck. She concentrated intently, like a surgeon focusing on a patient. “How bad is it?” I asked, looking over her shoulder.

“It looks like a bite. There are two punctures.” She continued shaving, exposing about three square inches of skin. Two deep round openings seeped with blood.

My mother handed me the clippers when she finished. “Towel, please.” I gave her one of the clean towels. She dabbed at the wounds, first soaking up the blood that pooled on his neck and then holding a towel firmly in place, applying pressure to his wound. “Put some cold water on the other towel. It’ll help stop the bleeding.”

I did exactly as she instructed and handed her the wet towel after taking the bloody one. “Is it getting any better?”

“Yeah, I think it’s almost stopped. Can I get the hydrogen peroxide, please?” She held her hand up and my father placed a brown medicine bottle in it. “Tom, can you check our bathroom for gauze pads and an ace bandage?”

“Sure,” was all he said before disappearing down the hallway to look for the supplies.

“Laken, now I need you to hold his head. This might sting a little and I don’t want him to bite me.”

I smiled. “Mom, Dakota would never bite you. He knows you’re just trying to help.” I knelt beside his head on the other side and looked into his eyes. ‘
Hold still,
’
I told him silently. ‘
This might burn for a minute.
’

My mother tipped the bottle at a slight angle, pouring the clear liquid onto his open wounds. Upon contact, it foamed and Dakota winced. I stroked the fur between his ears, reassuring him it would be over soon.

My father returned with a box of gauze pads and an ace bandage. After he handed the gauze to my mother, she ripped one of the individually wrapped pads open and blotted the wounds as the hydrogen peroxide foam dissolved. Then she gave it to me and reached for a new one.

“There,” she said. “The bleeding has stopped. I think he’ll be fine. It looks superficial enough. I’ll just cover it up to keep it clean.” My father handed her the ace bandage, and she wrapped it around his neck to keep the gauze in place over his wounds.

When she finished securing it in place with a tiny metal clip, I glanced at my father. “Dad, you’re not going to send him back outside in this miserable rain, are you?”

“I suppose not. Go ahead and take him upstairs. Things are blowing over around here, so we can try to go back to the way things were before Ryder went missing.”

A bright smile lit up my face. “Thank you.”

As my parents headed back to their bedroom, I helped Dakota up the stairs to his big fluffy bed in my room. My earlier suspicion that he was favoring his right front paw had been dead on. He winced, jerking his head up every time he stepped down on it.

After hobbling up the stairs and into my room, he plunked down on his bed with a big sigh. His eyes fell shut immediately. Confident that his wounds would heal in time, I left him to rest and returned to the kitchen to clean up the blood-soaked towels.

***

Before leaving for work that day, I placed a bowl of water next to Dakota’s bed. He slept soundly, not even cracking an eye open as I moved about getting ready for another day of serving pizza. He growled a few times in his sleep, and I watched curiously as his lip curled up while his eyelids fluttered. Perhaps the golden-eyed wolf haunted him, too. There was no doubt in my mind that the wolf I had seen in the woods at the party had bitten him. I was grateful that my parents hadn’t asked me what I thought had hurt him. They seemed to accept that it must have been a bear or a lynx or another animal indigenous to these mountains.

The pizza shop wasn’t quite as busy as the day before. The gray rainy weather seemed to keep the tourists away. The lunch rush passed quickly, and Mike dismissed me as soon as the last customer left. I returned home to find Dakota exactly where I had left him, sleeping comfortably on his bed.

Still wearing my smelly jeans and white polo shirt stained red near my waist from pizza sauce, I knelt beside his bed and gently stroked him. He flickered his eyes open with a sleepy sigh, stretching out his paws. Then rolling up onto his belly, he rested his big black chin on my knees as I continued rubbing between his ears.

“Hey, boy,” I whispered. “How are you feeling? Did you sleep well?”

A soft knock suddenly tapped at my bedroom doorway and I turned to see my mother. “I don’t think he moved since I left for work,” I told her.

“I think you’re right. I’ve been home the whole time and I haven’t seen or heard him. He must have been exhausted, but he looks more alert now. I wonder what did that to him. Whatever it was, hopefully he’ll have the sense to stay away next time.”

I nodded, acting as though I agreed with her when I was really wondering if he had a choice to stay away from the other wolf. “I hope he at least got up for a drink.” I glanced at the water bowl I had left for him, noticing that it was still quite full.

“I put some frozen chicken legs out to thaw,” she said. “They might be ready by now. I figured he’d be hungry soon.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

When we fed Dakota, which wasn’t often since he preferred the local game of squirrels, rabbits, and deer, we gave him the closest thing to his natural diet we could get, raw meat.

I had offered him dog food when he first came to live with us, but even as a pup he had turned his nose up at it. When he had climbed up on a kitchen chair to steal a hamburger off the table, we realized a wild animal like him needed a wild diet. Fortunately, except for the winter when food became scarce for him to find on his own, we rarely needed to supplement his diet.

“We’ve been invited to the Wilson’s for a barbeque tonight. Your dad and I are going. Would you like to come?”

“No, thanks,” I replied quickly. I didn’t even consider the invitation. There was no way I wanted to leave Dakota tonight. “I just want to take a hot shower and stay with him.” I nodded toward Dakota. “But you guys go and have a good time. I’ll be fine here tonight.”

“Okay. Your dad went grocery shopping today, so there’s plenty to eat in the refrigerator.”

“Sounds good. Thanks, Mom.” I looked over at her, meeting her gaze before continuing. “I mean for this morning. You were so calm. How did you know exactly what to do?”

She chuckled, her brown curls swaying next to her face. “I’m a mom. I used to clean up your scrapes and cuts all the time. Of course, I didn’t have to find them buried under thick fur, but it’s the same protocol. Clean, disinfect, and cover.”

“Well, I really appreciate it.” I looked down at Dakota’s neck. “Do you think we need to change his bandage?”

“I would wait until tomorrow.”

“Okay. Well, have fun tonight.”

“We will. Call me or send me a text if you need anything while we’re gone.”

“I’m sure I’ll be fine, Mom.” I watched as she disappeared down the hallway, leaving me with Dakota. When I gazed back down at him, his honey-colored eyes were alert and bright from his day of rest. “Listen, now that you’re better, I have a bone to pick with you. All I wanted was for you to stay safe yesterday when you chased me back to the house. You didn’t keep your end of the bargain.”

Of course, he hadn’t really agreed to the promise since our communication only went one way, from me to him.

He sighed, his tongue swiping my hands as if to apologize.

I grinned. “Okay, you’re forgiven. As long as it doesn’t happen again. Now let me get cleaned up. Then I’ll take you out and get you some dinner.” That earned me several more big licks on my hands before I stood and headed for the shower to wash the greasy pizza smell off my skin and out of my hair.

Thirty minutes later, after a hot shower and dressing in clean jeans and a black hoodie, I helped Dakota limp down the stairs to the kitchen. Once he was on level ground, he still limped, but he managed on his own without being lifted around his chest to help take the weight off his injured leg. I opened the back door and followed him outside, my tennis shoes squishing in the small puddles on the patio. The gentle rain from earlier in the day had subsided, but a cool, damp mist lingered. Low clouds hovered, hiding the tops of the tallest trees in their gray foggy cloak.

I pulled the black hood up over my head, my damp hair spilling out over the front collar. Tucking my hands into the front pockets, I stood on the patio since everything was too wet to sit on. Dakota wandered through the yard, his nose buried in the grass as he sniffed along the tree line. He would need a few minutes to go to the bathroom, and I didn’t want to lose sight of him in his condition. I paced slowly along the edge of the patio as he limped around the backyard.

Suddenly, he raised his muzzle from the grass and growled. I stopped instantly, my spine stiffening as my pulse quickened. I followed his stare to the side of the house only to see Noah walking through the wet grass. Dressed in jeans, a black T-shirt, and a denim jacket, he froze in place as soon as he saw Dakota’s stare locked on him. Dakota continued to growl, the hair on his back ruffling upward.

I relaxed for a moment, relieved to see it was only Noah. However, his timing couldn’t have been any worse. Dakota would have run off before being seen if he hadn’t been injured. Now I had to explain Dakota to Noah. I wondered how Noah would react to the fact that the sheriff allowed his daughter to keep a wolf.

I turned to Dakota, his lip still curled up, his sharp fangs gleaming in the mist. “Dakota, it’s okay. Easy boy.” Then my eyes locked with his. ‘
It’s only Noah. He’s not a threat,
’
I told him silently as I held his gaze
.
After a few seconds, he stopped growling and the fur settled back into place along his spine. He reluctantly resumed sniffing the ground, watching Noah out of the corner of his eye as he dropped his nose.