Aislinn was standing in the middle of the street in front of her apartment. It was eerily dark and quiet. There were no stars or moon and the light from the street lamps seemed to be absorbed into the air as though it was being eaten by the darkness. The only sound she could hear was her own breathing and heartbeat.
Aislinn looked up and down the street and felt as though she was being watched. She looked up at her apartment. It may have been a hole but it allowed for some protection. She briefly considered going up there but something in her told her that it just wasn’t safe any longer. She looked down at herself and realized that she was completely naked. She didn’t understand it but somehow it felt normal and safer to be naked than to be wearing clothes at that moment.
Suddenly out of the darkness she heard quiet whispering. Unintelligible and frightening. She didn’t know what it was but she knew that she was in incredible danger. Something was coming for her.
Aislinn turned and started running down the street. She didn’t know where she was running to but she felt drawn through the darkness away from the whispering. Every time she stopped she could hear the whispering getting louder. She turned down one street and then another until the whispering was so close she couldn’t stop to look around any longer. She needed to move faster. She could feel sweat running down her face and chest and back. The night air on her bare skin. Her feet slapping on the pavement. She needed to move faster. Slowly she felt herself changing. When she looked down she had fur and was on four feet. She was some kind of animal. But she was moving much more quickly now.
As she kept running she could hear the whispering retreating a little into the darkness so she stopped again and looked around. Everything seemed brighter now somehow and she reasoned out that it was because she was looking through new eyes. She found that she was outside of the Taigh-oèsda. She walked into the lobby and as the doors shut behind her the whispering became angry and frustrated. She walked through the empty lobby and found herself looking at a reflection of herself in one of the large windows.
It was a fuzzy image. The darkness outside causing the soft light inside to turn the window into an imperfect mirror. She didn’t recognize what she was looking at. She was on all fours and shadowy. She was staring intently into her reflection when a figure came up to the window. Terror froze her solid as Rafe stared at her a lurid smile on his face. She started to backup to get away from him but he was calling to her. Suddenly the voices came into sharp focus and she understood what the whispering was. They had found her again.
Aislinn sat bolt upright in bed. She was covered in sweat and the darkness in her small apartment was overwhelming. She jumped up and turned on the lights. She stared around the room into shadows that couldn’t possibly hide anyone looking for Rafe. I had another premonition, she thought. Sometimes she wondered if it would be better to never dream. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes and concentrated on the last she remembered of the dream. She needed to get an impression of how close they were. How much time she had. And she wanted to know what the other parts had meant as well. Why she had turned into an animal and why she had felt safe at the Taigh-oèsda.
***
Cullen parked his SUV in the private garage attached to the Madadh-Allaidh Saobhaidh. He slammed the door shut and headed for the elevator. Once inside he inserted his key into the elevator panel and pressed the button for the 13th floor. The floor directly below that was mostly storage and empty. From the 11th floor down to the lobby was the public hotel and the main face of the casino. The basement, which also needed key access, held the private training and workout facilities and swimming pool, and holding cells for the rare times that they were needed, as well as the security suite that monitored the entire building.
The 13th floor was the great room and the floor that contained guest quarters when people came to visit his pack. There was the movie room which was virtually a theatre, the game room, and a small kitchen/dining area. Cullen’s rooms were on the penthouse floor and had access to the roof. His key was the only one that allowed access there. But for now he needed to take his frustration. He had briefly considered hitting a punching bag downstairs but that wouldn’t assuage the problem in his pants that had been developing all day.
Between Jenna’s teasing, which only disgusted him, and Aislinn’s scent he felt as though the was going to explode. Upon entering the great room he spied one of his usual targets for this kind of outlet. Normally he didn’t go looking for company except during hunts out at the reservation, but desperate times as they say, and Celia was always willing.
He approached her with a heated expression and she looked up at him with her hazel eyes and a welcoming smile. He didn’t have to say anything to her. When she saw him coming she ended her conversation with the other women she had been watching TV with and stood up to meet the Alpha coming toward her. His determined look told her what he was after.
Cullen looked Celia over. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a white t-shirt. She had on no socks and no bra from the looks of things. Cullen growled low in his throat at the thought, That’ll make it easier. He looked over at the couch and briefly considered taking all of them, alpha advantages after all, but then thought better of it. Celia, to date, hadn’t gotten attached to him and he didn’t want any additional female troubles right now.
Celia pushed a strand of brown hair out of her eyes and smiled at him in that innocent way of her that belied what she really was capable of. “I thought with Jenna around you wouldn’t come looking for me any time soon,” she said with a pleased sound to her tone.
“I’m not going to be very nice this evening Celia,” he growled in warning.
Celia briefly considered that. It was as though she disliked rough sex. It was that he’d never felt the need to warn her about it before. In the end though she knew that she wouldn’t turn down a chance to lie with him. She did a great job of giving him the impression that she could take or leave his company. But that was only because she had learned a long time ago that she would get more attention from him that way. There were about six females that Cullen had come to trade off in his bed over the years. Celia had become the unspoken leader of that small group of women and due mostly to her ability to appear off-hand and unconcerned with Cullen’s preference for her she had quickly become the favorite for ending up in his bed on the rare occasions that he was in the mood for company.
Celia shrugged. “Whatever you want, General,” she replied. She had never been upgraded as far as first name status. But she never stopped hoping.