Claimed (The Cull Book 1)
Read Claimed (The Cull Book 1) Online
Authors: Renee George
Tags: #paranormal, #bbw, #erotic, #Renee George, #sex, #love, #werewolves
The
Cull: Claimed
By Renee George
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Copyright
© Renee George 2014 All Right Reserved
Cover
Art:
Renee George
I would like to thank my best friends Michele Bardsley, Dakota Cassidy,
Robbin Clubb, and Emma Ray Garrett for encouraging me to get off my ass and
write, write, write.
Michele Bardsley – Your critiques and suggestions have made me a better
writer and they made this book a better story. I love that you get me so
completely. Dakota Cassidy – I can’t think of another person I’d rather be out
on a ledge with. Our midnight talks keep me sane in an otherwise insane
process. Robbin Clubb – There is no one I’d rather share my love of books with
than my sister! Emma
Ray Garrett – We
practically started this roller coaster life together. You are a wonderful CP.
I always know I can count on you for an unvarnished critique!
I’d also like to thank my dear friends in the writing community for their
wonderful support and shares of my books: Robyn Peterman, Dawn Montgomery,
Ditter Kellen, Eve Vaughn, Selena Illyria, Madeline Pryce, Patricia A. Rasey,
Kate Douglas, and so many more.
Authors who
support other authors completely ROCK!
For my husband, with whom I have spent over half my life. thank you for
always supporting my dreams, accepting my crazy moods, and loving me through
all the ups and downs. I can’t imagine any other man who would have put up with
me so long or so well.
When Anna Davis woke, her chemo-ridden limbs,
no longer thin and bruised, pulsed with vitality and power.
Am I asleep? Still dreaming?
Hair clung
to her face and brow. She lifted a honey brown lock away from her face and
stared at it. She’d been nearly bald after her recent round of therapy, wearing
wigs and scarves to hide her patchy scalp. Now her hair hung loose around her
shoulders. It hadn’t been this color since her late twenties when she’d gone
bottled blonde. She pushed back the tangled locks.
Where am I?
Anna predatorily tracked her surroundings
with a sweeping gaze.
The room had a low ceiling, concrete walls,
and a floor littered with heavy, colorful blankets. As her eyes adjusted to the
darkness, she caught the scent of something more than damp wool. Amazingly, her
vision zoomed in and out, reminding her of the autofocus feature on her son’s
digital camera, until she could clearly see who she’d been scenting.
A naked man, who appeared to be in his late
twenties or early thirties, sat cross-legged against the opposite wall. The
lean muscles across his wide chest and arms created a maze of grooves and hard
angles in his chiseled torso. A crop of black hair fell around his ears. His
head was down, but she knew his eyes were the color of rubbed sage. Just like
she knew his full, sensual lips curved like a bow ready to fire when he was
deep in concentration.
Conor Evans
.
“I should have known,” she said, unable to
keep the anger from edging her voice.
Another person might have been grateful to suddenly be cancer-free, but
Conor hadn’t cured her. “I made peace with death. You had no right to make me
into this…this thing.”
Conor flexed his arms as he combed his
fingers through his dark hair, the move pushing the loose curls off his square,
masculine face. The sight of him made her lower parts clench with need. In
twenty years, he hadn’t changed. Anna couldn’t say the same. She’d been curvy
her whole life, something she’d never been ashamed of, but age had a way of
making the curves sag a bit, and cancer had a way of deflating the rest.
Self-consciously, she touched her body. The emaciated woman she’d been before
waking up in this room was gone. Even though her lush body had reappeared, it
didn’t matter how good or healthy she felt, she only had one thought:
I didn’t choose this life.
Last week, Conor showed up at her chemo
treatment and begged her to let him save her. He wanted Anna to become like
him—a werewolf. When she’d worked as his assistant, he’d told her about his
tribe and their ritual of culling. He’d explained that the last cull had taken
place during the Great Depression. His mother, a struggling jazz singer, had
been one of the
invited
. Shortly
after, Conor had been born—a first generation lycanosapien. An evolutionary
breed of werewolf and human.
Conor still looked so young for someone who
had lived more than eighty years. Seeing him made Anna realize she’d never
stopped thinking about Conor—never stopped loving him. Turning down his offer
had been difficult and painful, but she’d made her peace with dying and had
been firm when she’d told him
no
.
What he’d done to her, taking her and
changing her without permission, was forbidden by his kind. Werewolves only
took the willing. This wasn’t her
choice
,
she thought again, while trying to ignore the small, niggling hope worming its
way into her brain.
When they’d met in the 90s, Conor had been a
doctor—a researcher in the field of medical biology—and Anna had been his
assistant while she finished her education. She’d been married at the time with
a baby. All the same, she’d fallen in love with Conor, and he’d trusted her
with his secret. For the sake of her family, she refused to leave her husband
Robert for Conor. Later, Robert cheated on her, but she couldn’t deny that
she’d claimed the first betrayal—a betrayal of the heart. Had Anna left Robert
in the beginning, she might have saved them both—along with their son—many
years of grief.
God! Her son. Sam. He was twenty-one now.
Her stomach lurched. Because Conor had changed her, she’d outlive her own
child—the main reason she’d turned him down.
Anna couldn’t take the quiet tension in the
small room. “Why? Make me understand, Conor. Why would you go against your own
laws to do this to me?”
Conor’s didn’t speak. His penetrating gaze
made her uneasy, but not afraid. He wouldn’t go through all this trouble just
to harm Anna. She looked around the room again to avoid his stare. She grasped
at the blankets under her butt and her fingernails scraped against the dirt
floor beneath. Strangely, the contact with the cool earth calmed her nerves.
This had to be one of the many dens on the
tribe’s large plot of land in the Ozark Mountain Range in northern Arkansas.
She’d always wanted to see the beauty he’d described when he talked about
home—the rolling hills, clear springs and falls, the flowering catalpa trees,
and the fresh scent of pine.
Conor leaned forward, pressing his knuckles
against the floor and moving to his knees. He sniffed the air—a quick
inhalation. He cracked his neck to one side before his gaze locked with hers.
In this position, Anna could see that his gray-green eyes were nearly black.
He crawled toward her. She pressed her back
into the wall and turned her head, not afraid, but somehow instinctually
knowing that direct eye contact could make the situation escalate. His hot breath
huffed over her skin.
“What are you doing?” She couldn’t keep the
shakiness from her voice.
The heat from his body warmed her skin as he
closed the distance between them. Anna froze when he rubbed his rough cheek
against hers, his hands traveling down her arms while an inhuman growl rumbled
from his chest and his words left no room for debate. “You. Are.
Mine
.”
Crap
!
A part of her wanted to yank off her panties and throw her legs wide open while
screaming,
Take me now
! But the saner
part of her brain bitch-slapped her libido and told it to back off. “Get away
from me,” she said, trying to put as much command in her tone as he’d had in
his. She wanted to tell him to fuck off. She wasn’t his or anyone’s for that
matter. She belonged to herself and no one else.
Conor chuffed, his breath blowing against
her ears. Anna turned her head slowly and met his eyes. “Don’t you dare fucking
big, bad wolf me, Conor Evans.”
Hearing his name made him blink. He growled,
but backed off. “I could be in a lot of trouble for bringing you here.”
“Then why did you do it?” Why would he take
the risk? His veins pulsed and rippled like snakes under his skin. She’d never
seen him like this, not even the one time he’d shifted into wolf form for her
as proof of his species’ existence. His eyes watered as his soulful gaze met
hers. “I couldn’t let you die.”
“So you’d rather die. That makes no sense.”
He pursed his lips and shook his head. “I
want you to live, Anna. You had days, weeks at the most. I couldn’t convince
you and I couldn’t think straight. I could never think straight when it came to
you.”
A sob escaped from Anna’s lips. She put her
hand to her mouth to stifle another cry. “I didn’t want this life, Conor. I
didn’t.”
He closed the distance between them, this
time wrapping his arms around her shoulders and drawing her in. “I love you,
Anna.”
It was the only apology she would get from
him.
