Waking Sarah Read Online Free Page A

body calmed her terrified nerves, and she slowly allowed herself to sink into his embrace.
     
    She took in a deep breath of Chris’s earthy scent. Soothing heat radiated out from his body. The rest of her anxiety faded away. How? Her panic attacks never subsided that quickly. But it was gone. The tenseness in her muscles relaxed and her breathing returned to normal. “I don’t think I can do this,” she murmured into his chest, snuggling her head deeper into the crook of his shoulder. He feels so good. So right. Why?
     
    “Yes, you can, little firecracker,” he whispered in her ear and pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head. Without warning, he scooped her up and headed for the door. A few protests echo ed from the others on the porch, but Chris ignored them and kept walking.
     
    Her mind slipped in and out of conciousness, like waves on a beach.
     
    Her eyes fluttered open. A wooden beam ceiling stared down at her. She turned, glancing around. The clock on the wall read one-thirty. Only a half hour. It wasn’t long enough for a dream to come. Or was it?
     
    She sat up suddenly. “Holy crap!”
     
    Her door burst open, and Chris came barreling in. “What! What’s wrong?”
     
    Arching an eyebrow at the younger Michaels brother, she frowned. Had it all been a dream? It had to be. There was no such thing as a werewolf, but deep down, she knew there was. This voice in her head that no doctor had been able to quiet had been with her since childhood. It’d talked in her dreams of magick when she was little. It told her about the wolves that lived around her. It’d been fun, like an imaginary friend at night, but as she aged, it began to cry and mourn for the life it could never share with her.
     
    The voice’s pain had become so loud Sarah started taking sleeping pills to silence it. The pills had stifled the dreams. Every once in a while she would forget her pill or run out of her perscription, and the dreams and voice would return. But they were nightmares now. Full of pain, sorrow, and screams of loneliness.
     
    “Did I imagine it?” She met his soft gaze. He looked at her like Brad used to look at her. He cared about her. Even after she’d been hateful to him, he still cared.
     
    He shook his head. “Let me get Siobhan and Kate. They wanted to talk to you about the dreams.”
     
    She gasped. “How do you know about the dreams?” No one knew. Only her doctor and her mother. Her mother would never have said anything.
     
    “You said something about dreams and nightmares on the deck earlier. You were having a panic attack.” He stepped to the door and turned back. “We can help you, Sarah.”
     
    She shook her head. “No one can help me. Least of all conspiracy theorists who believe in werewolves.” All the suspicions returned. He might care about her, but he and her so-called friends were one step away from the loony-bin.
     
    The corners of his mouth turned up just slightly. He was trying to hold back a smile, but his twinkling eyes gave him away. What the hell is he laughing about? Werewolves are not real. They can’t be.
     
    “Let me get them.” He didn’t wait for her to object. One moment he was in her doorway, and the next he was gone.
     
    “Well, fine then.” She sighed and swung her feet over the side of the bed, scrunching her toes in the carpet.
     
    Siobhan was a family friend of Margaret’s. She’d come for the wedding. Tall, willowy, with blond spiral curls, she reminded Sarah of the hippie that ran the supplement shop down the street from her old apartment in Texas. Crazy hair, crazy clothes, and lots of crystals that supposedly made her more in tune with the earth. She did sell the best incense in town, though.
     
    Kate was petite and cute. She wore her black hair in a pixie cut, and her blue eyes were sharp, but compassionate. At the reception, Kate had introduced herself and asked if she needed anything. She’d mentioned something about her seeming down. Now,