Hunter's Heart

Chapter 25

Quinn lay awake in the dark as, having been startled awake by another of Christian's nightmares, she tried to get her breathing and heart rate back to normal before the anxiety left by the nightmare filtered down their bond and woke him.

It was the second dream of his she had been unwillingly pulled into in as many days and it had certainly been worse than the first. She had only just managed to stifle the scream that had threatened to burst from her this time, but her entire frame was shaking and the sheets were drenched in a cold sweat.

Instinctively, she reached out to her left, but the sheets beside her were cold and empty.

Oh, she thought to herself. Right. Christian was in the other room.

For the duration of the Meeting, she and Christian would be staying in a two-bedroom suite that had its own living room. Christian had shown her to the room she would be using, told her she was free to call down to the kitchen at any time for something to eat if she was hungry and then promptly left her to get settled on her own.

With a sigh, Quinn rolled to her left and stared at the empty side of the bed.

Two nights.

She'd only woken up next to Christian two nights out of the countless she had spent with his pack, but finding herself alone in her bed again sent a pang of sadness lancing through her. Already, she missed having him next to her, facing her, holding her. And in just a few days the bond she had with him would be gone.

She'd be on her own again.

With another sigh, Quinn rolled over and picked up the phone on the bedside table. From the digital alarm clock next to the phone she saw it was four in the morning, but she knew there was always a group of Omegas on duty in a pack's home. And she was starving.

"I know it's early," she told the man who picked up the phone call. "But is it possible to bring an order of breakfast up to Alpha St. Clair's suite?"

"The usual works for Alpha St. Clair?" he asked and Quinn knew he was asking if he should send up a full range of breakfast dishes up to their suite. She thought for a moment, focusing on the touch of Christian's mind. He wasn't sleeping as deeply anymore. The moment he smelled food, he would come right to it. Like any full blooded male werewolf in the beginning of his prime, Christian could easily eat his weight at mealtimes.

"Yes, please," she answered before she hung up and swung herself out of bed. There was no way she would be going back to sleep. She was too wide awake after witnessing Christian's nightmare.

Quietly, she padded out to the living room where she had spotted a bookcase earlier that was full of a range of different books. Slowly, she ran a finger along the spines of the books, reading their titles, and decided on a heavy book of legends.

Typical, the tiny voice in the back of her mind said almost scathingly and Quinn forced it back in irritation. Great. Now she was judging herself.

Settling down in one of the couches in the living room with her feet tucked under her, Quinn opened the book and began to flip through the pages. It wasn't a particularly old book, the pages weren't yellowed enough, but the stories and the copies of the watercolor images that she flipped through were certainly hundreds of years old.

She basked in the silence of the room as she read about how the first werewolf came to be. There were stories about the moon and her wolf lover and his foray into the world of the living and his subsequent stranding in that world. She was halfway through a story about the exploits of the first werewolf when the door to the suite quietly opened and a short man in his late twenties entered with a trolley laden with covered trays.