Hello everyone! Thank you, Addison, for allowing me to steal yet another spot on your blog. 😘
This month, we’re celebrating Drowsy Driving Prevention Week, which is between November 6th and November 13th. Every year thousands of deaths and injuries are caused by fatigued drivers. Drowsy Driving Prevention Week follows right after the end of Daylight Saving Time.
Personally, I think we should stop this changing the clocks thing, not only is it confusing, but people die in the traffic because we’re tired, and it takes us some time to adjust.
This is the first time I write a story for a week instead of a specific day. And given I don’t have a driver’s license, it’s a bit weird I decided to write about driving, but you know how it is when an idea pops up in your head.
I was thinking about how when I lived up north, I always travelled down south to Mum the first week of November, and almost every year, it started snowing just around the time I would start my travels. So I watched snowflakes falling while waiting for the bus, and when I got back a week later, there was snow on the ground.
I put Returning to the Werewolf ‘up north’ because I wanted snow. I miss snow. The world turns silent when there’s snow.
Where I lived, you could go for miles and miles and see nothing but pine trees. Snowy roads and the pines like curtains on either side of it. It gets boring after a few hours of travelling through it, but there is also something… calming. Lonely. Peaceful.
So that’s where I set Returning to the Werewolf. And if you were to see a naked man standing on the road when you’re in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, and you’re drowsy, you’d hit the breaks, right? If the car skewed, and you crashed into a ditch and looked up to see the naked man having turned into a wolf, you’d assume you’d dreamt seeing the man, right? And since you’re in the middle of nowhere and there are no signs of anyone living nearby, you’d be scared if a hulking man carrying a spade stepped out through the curtains of pine trees, right?
If the man turned out to be the man who broke your heart seventeen years ago, what would you do?
Lex is suspicious, to say the least, and he’s desperately trying to get hold of a tow truck. He will not let Cash into his heart again.
Cash has been given a second chance. Seventeen years ago, Lex left the village, and Cash believed he’d lost his mate forever, but now he’s back. And Cash has no plans of letting him go.
Blurb
Lex Gray was in love once. He was young and gave his heart to Cash Udolph, who he believed would be with him forever. When his world fell apart, Cash was nowhere to be found. Lex left Warwood, the tiniest village ever placed on a map, and swore never to come back. Seventeen years later, he’s there to attend his grandmother’s funeral.
Lex needs to get out of Warwood, but driving in the middle of the night might not have been his best idea. A naked man jumps up on the road only to turn into a wolf before his eyes, and Lex slams the brakes hard enough to slide off the road. When Cash is called in to sort a situation with a human, he never expected the human to be his Lex. He’s been given a second chance, but Lex wants to leave as soon as possible. Can Cash convince Lex to allow him back into his life before the tow truck gets there?
Excerpt
Lex’s breaths created clouds around him. How come the car got cold within seconds in the winter, but stayed boiling hot for ages in the summer? He studied the wolves with a growing sense of trepidation.
The screen on his phone was shattered, and while there was some light, he couldn’t see anything on the screen, and it didn’t react to spoken commands. The dark was still thick around him, but the wolves were visible in the yellow light from the street lamps.
Lex was no expert on wolves, far from, but he believed these ones acted a bit weird. Granted, he’d never studied a pack of wolves. He’d always been a little afraid of dogs. They tended to walk all over him—he needed to show them who was alpha, Nana had told him, but it was clearly the dogs who were the alphas. Every single one he met.
One large gray wolf kept stepping closer to the car, but every time it did, a smaller, darker wolf blocked its path and showed teeth. Part of Lex wanted to run out there and tell them not to fight. He hated fights, but he feared they’d all turn on him if he did.
A huge, mostly white wolf trotted out on the road, and Lex swallowed a yelp. He’d believed the ones present to this moment had been scary, but this one… He forced himself to take a deep breath. It was huge, and the others shied away as it walked past them. Holy hell. Could wolves be that big, or was he dreaming again?
He heard the growl through the car. Shit.
The white wolf turned and looked at Lex, looked him right in the eye, and Lex dropped his gaze. He wasn’t good with eye contact under normal circumstances, not unless he was working, and meeting a predator’s gaze wasn’t high on his list.
A howl cut through the night, and Lex shivered.
In an instant, the wolves melted into the woods. The white wolf stayed the longest. It took a step closer to the car, but then turned to slowly walk into the woods.
Lex blew out a breath only to scream again. Out from between the tree trunks stepped a hulking man. On his shoulder rested a spade, not a snow shovel, as someone who wanted to be a good fellow human and dig a stranger out of the snow might have brought. No, a rusty old garden spade. Or it might not be rusty, but it was a tool fit for burying a body.
Though the ground would be frozen, would it not? Maybe not. It was only November, and the snow insulated against the cold. Perhaps it was still possible to bury a body. If he shoveled snow over it, no one would be the wiser.
There was a knock on the window. Lex yelped, then the man bent and looked at him through the window and Lex’s heart stopped. Cash.
It might have been seventeen years, but he was almost certain it was Cash. The stunned look on his face confirmed Lex’s suspicion, and he rolled down the window.
“Cash?”
They’d planned to run away together. They’d talked about it several times, and when Lex had called him after his father had given him one hour to get out of the house, they were to meet by Elsie’s gas station.
Lex had waited. A backpack slung over his shoulder and his eyes as red and swollen as they were now. He had waited, and waited, and waited, but Cash had never shown. After hours had gone by, Nana had come to get him. He suspected Elsie had called her. They’d been close friends. Elsie had been to the funeral, but Lex had snuck away before she got a chance to talk to him. He knew she wanted to talk to him, but he couldn’t face her.
The day after, he’d called Cash only to get his father. There were no cell phones back then. Cash’s father had informed him Cash had left town. Without Lex.
“Lex.” It came out as a sigh, and Lex winced. Fuck. For all the heartache and silly dreams, he’d hoped he’d never see Cash again. And if he was to see him, he’d hoped it wouldn’t be on the day he’d buried Nana or right after he’d had a car crash and almost gotten eaten by wolves.
“Are you okay?” Cash sounded shaken. Lex couldn’t blame him.
“Fine. You don’t happen to have a phone, do you?”
Cash frowned, then patted his pockets only to scowl. “Back home.” He motioned in the direction he’d come through the woods. Great.
“Are you hurt?”
“Nope. I’m fine. Could you call a tow truck for me?”
About Holly Day
According to Holly Day, no day should go by uncelebrated and all of them deserve a story. If she’ll have the time to write them remains to be seen. She lives in rural Sweden with a husband, four children, more pets than most, and wouldn’t last a day without coffee.
Holly gets up at the crack of dawn most days of the week to write gay romance stories. She believes in equality in fiction and in real life. Diversity matters. Representation matters. Visibility matters. We can change the world one story at the time.
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