The Wolf Came on Christmas (Johanna and Alexander) novel Chapter 85

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That huge knife, or maybe a gun. Anything would have worked for me.

I pulled Sasha slightly out of my embrace and searched her little eyes. She looked at me with a pout, her brow furrowed in such an adorable way that I couldn’t help but smile. The child was smart. Maybe she had guessed my thoughts. I kissed her forehead and her cheeks.

“I’m sorry, little princess. I have to go, but I want you to stay with Kaylee, she is a mother too and she won’t hurt you,” I whispered, and the little girl made a small sound, as if she were trying to speak. “No, no. No, my love, nothing is wrong. I’m going to come back. I promise I will come back, with your brother. And with your dad.”

As the words came out of my mouth, I convinced myself more and more that it was the right thing and that I wasn’t throwing myself headfirst into the abyss by deciding to go after them. I had to do something, I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t resist it.

My blood was boiling, I simply couldn’t…

And do what? I couldn’t fight. I knew little how to do anything besides shoot decently.

But if I stayed there without moving a finger to try to recover Andre, if something bad happened to that boy or to his father, I would never forgive myself for having remained in the safe place. Maybe yes, maybe I had already ended up going crazy or maybe I was already dead and all that was part of a heroic fantasy in the afterlife, but never in my existence had I been so sure that I HAD to do something. With all my strength. I could have protected Sasha, that is also true, but a part of me knew that the baby would be safe if I left her with the rest of the pack. No, not pack. Alexander would have been offended by that term: they were a family. Even Luke had a family, he was not a vile and solitary animal, he was not a murderer.

I approached the group and pulled Kaylee aside for a moment. The sheriff’s wife looked at me with her eyes wide open when I placed Sasha in her arms, almost sitting on her advanced-pregnancy belly. The girl did not struggle, and I leaned down to kiss her cheeks again and tuck her better inside her yellow jumpsuit. I adjusted the little hood with ears over her head, she was a beautiful little bear.

I think I kept looking at her longer than I should have, because Kaylee spoke.

“Johanna, what’s going on?” she demanded cautiously.

I watched for a moment as Christian, the Hattai and Sheriff McCord lifted Hans’s body into the vehicle, and then went toward the house, perhaps to recover also the snow leopard’s corpse. A crash behind my back announced that some part of the cabin had just collapsed under the flames, but I didn’t pay much attention. Kaylee was still waiting for me.

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<Chapter 85-1

“I have to do something,” I confessed to her, and swallowed.

+25 Points

“What kind of ‘something’?” she asked seriously. Her green eyes looked at me with almost oppressive intrigue. “What are you thinking, Johanna?”

“… I’m going back. I promise. But I have to go.”

“What? Johanna, where do you think you’re going now?” she stopped me, grabbing my arm with a strength that did not seem proper of a fragile pregnant woman. “You’re hurt, you hit your head. Come with us, we’ll go to my house; there we’ll be safe until Luke finds…”

“Exactly, I have to go. I have to find Andre, he is…”

I couldn’t finish. Again I had tears in my eyes, and the blonde woman in front of me put an anguished expression on her beautiful rounded face. I could already imagine that she would stop me, that she would tell Luke and together they would put me in the truck and take me away from that place. That it would be useless to beg. Terror made me tremble, and Kaylee inhaled deeply. She didn’t tell me, of course, but she smelled my desperation. Or I wished she

did.

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“Family, then,” she replied, and pushed me a little so that I would go.

But I was not going to leave empty-handed. Logically, I couldn’t go hunting without provisions, that was another thing my father had taught me well. I didn’t need something to eat, but rather…

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<Chapter 85-2

+25 Points

The others were already coming back with another body, this one wrapped in a black corpse bag.

I hid behind the black truck and slowly opened the door of the second cabin, so that I could not be seen. For Heaven’s sake, I still don’t know what the hell I was thinking, but I rummaged among the stacked bags until I found a backpack. It wasn’t very big or very heavy, and when I opened it I found that it had some warm clothes, an LED flashlight, a toiletry bag with matches and some flammable liquid, an emergency first-aid kit… I realized it was Christian’s backpack, the one he carried when he went out to do his surveillance rounds if he was converted into his wolf form. Conditioned for a werewolf on duty?

I didn’t think twice and slung the backpack over my shoulder. If this stretched into the night, it could be useful. Or if not for me, for someone else. The emotion pushed me as if all that were the most natural thing in the world! As if I did things ‘like that every day! I could hardly feel the terror invading my veins because there was more adrenaline in my blood than sanity at that moment. I removed the locks from a suitcase that, by the shields, also belonged to the Schneiders. My eyes widened when I saw the arsenal! At least four pistols with ammunition of various calibers and some huge knives like the one Nika had on her back.

Needless to say I didn’t hesitate either. It was simple to choose.

I took one of the gigantic knives with one serrated side and hid it in my clothes, I stuck a pistol (a semi-automatic, I couldn’t read it well but I think the letters engraved on the barrel said “Israel Military Industries, LTD”) into the waistband of my jeans and several magazines into the pocket of my jacket, at that moment I couldn’t stop to see which of them went with that weapon or make much noise. The ears of my canine friends could be very sensitive, I had already proven that.

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