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Автор Лора Ли
A Christmas Kiss
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
Breeds -19
Lora Leigh
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A special thank-you to all the dear and special friends who have stood behind me, beside me and in front of me through a very difficult year.
Lue Anne, Natalie, Jennifer and Janine. Jessica, Crissy, Donna and Sheila. For my son, Bret, who always has my back; and my dearest friend, Sharon, who has supported me more times than I can count.
For my daughter, Holly, for running the roads; and Ryan, for putting up the fence. For Renae, for helping when I needed it the most; and for Ann Marie, for the shoes and wonderful e-mails.
All of you have made my life brighter, enriched it and understood when things got crazy.
Thank you.
ONE
Wolf Mountain, Colorado Wolf Breed Compound, Haven
There was something about a winter snowfall that Jessica
Raines had always loved. A sense of warmth, despite the cold. A sense of wonder, a remnant of her childhood that she had never lost.
Now, as she moved through the soft, heavy winter white that fell around her, she had never felt less like a child. At twenty-four, she felt old, worn and tired.
Christmas was coming. Lights were strung around the Wolf Breed Compound of Haven and windows were lit up with the festive colors of the season as lavishly decorated trees twinkled merrily into the winter night.
Christmas was coming and Jessica had never felt less festive.
The snow was beautiful though. She had missed it last year during her imprisonment in the underground cells to which the Wolf Breeds had kept her confined. Because she had been a traitor.
No matter how reluctantly, still, she had betrayed the very people she had believed in so deeply. Even as she had done it, helpless against the compulsions rising inside her, Jessica had raged, fought, screamed silently. But still, she had hidden information, relayed defense maneuvers and revealed the residences of the Wolf Breed alpha and his mate, as well as their second-in-command to her father.The pure blood society he had worked with had nearly killed them. If she hadn’t found the strength to pull two of the mates from their homes before the attack, then they would have been killed.
She pushed her fingers through her hair, tugging at the tender roots as she fought to make sense of the betrayal her father had dealt her. He had been sending her to certain death. He had to have known it. The drug he had slipped into her food and drinks when she visited, the orders he had given her—he had known beyond a shadow of a doubt that she would be caught, and that she would die. And still, he had done it.
She couldn’t even ask him
She had lost everything because of his hatred for a species that hadn’t asked to be created. One that was determined to survive now that it existed. He had sacrificed his daughter, and then his own life, for nothing.
