GINGER HAD ALREADY started down the stairs, Lia slung over one shoulder, when I entered my mother’s room. It was hotter here, directly above the fire, and at first I didn’t think I felt a pulse when I pressed trembling fingers into the indentation at the base of the human’s slender throat.
Sluggish, my wolf whispered. I breathed out a sigh of relief. My animal half was right—Celia’s heart continued to pump even though the rhythm was slower than I would have liked.
How I was supposed to get the one-body onto my back, though, was beyond me.
Lia had been easier. The teenager was more slender than my mother, and there’d been two of us manhandling the floppy limbs of her dead weight. Only after sending Ginger down the stairs toward freedom did I realize the flaw in part two of my plan. I mig
