Arielle and the Three Wolves (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) by Dani April Read Free Book Online

it, another year spent out in the wild didn’t seem so terrible.
    It was Saturday night. Tomorrow was Sunday, and she would be off from the clinic. The new movie of the week was on HBO, one that had just been in the theaters last year, but of course Arielle never went to the theater. Instead she paid for movie channels at home and waited for their arrival on that venue.
    She was alone with the wolf as she always was now. She made popcorn. The wolf ate with her. More cereal bowls came in handy for this. Half of the popcorn she shared with the wolf in the bowl because he would never eat from her hand. Anyway, she didn’t really want him to eat from her hand. He was too proud for that.
    She curled up on the sofa and watched the movie in her living room. The wolf got up on the couch with her. This was another thing that he always got his own way about. The floor was not where he liked to be. He was either in bed or up on the furniture. Normally when she was in bed he was in it with her. She had stopped any attempt to break him of the bad habit and had come to accept it.
    They each ate out of their respective popcorn bowls. She turned off the lamp in the living room, and they watched the movie in the dark. She petted him idly as the movie played upon the thirty-six inches of the screen, tucked her legs beneath her, and curled up against the arm of the couch.
    The wolf seemed to be agitated. She thought his leg might be sore. Before the movie went off, he left her on the couch and went over to the small bookshelf. He used the wall next to it to jump up and lean against. He reached over with his snout and knocked a dictionary and a set of encyclopedias off the shelf. They went crashing to the floor.
    “What are you doing?” she asked him. He had never once disrupted her house before. The movie was almost over, so she decided to let him have fun. As the last scene played, she watched him out of the corner of her eye. It looked as if he flipped pages with his nose and almost as if he read the print.
    When the credits of the movie started to scroll, she reached for the remote on the coffee table and turned off the television. She was tired. Though it had been Saturday, she had spent a twelve-hour day at the clinic. She was ready to crawl under the covers in her bedroom and go to sleep.
    She got up off the couch to see what the wolf had done and try and set its mess in order. She dropped to her knees on the carpet with it and gave it a playful rub behind the ears. “What in the world got into you tonight, wolf?”
    The wolf didn’t pay her any attention. She started to put the toppled encyclopedias back up on the shelves. Then she reached for the dictionary.
    The wolf put his paw on it and wouldn’t let her have it. She looked at him. He looked at her. She thought something was wrong. He gave her a low growl and forced her to look down. His paw was held over a word, but of course it was just random.
    “I don’t understand what you’re doing, wolf.”
    Then it lowered its nose and seemed to point at the same word. Arielle cleared her throat and looked down.
    Tonight .
    She looked at the single word at the top of the left page for a couple of seconds. “Tonight.” She spoke it aloud. Then she looked back up into the eyes of the wolf. “What’s going to happen tonight, wolf?” Sometimes she almost expected him to answer her. “Look, wolf, nothing is going to happen tonight other than I’m exhausted and I’m going to bed. You’re welcome to join me if you want to, unless you want to stay out here and read the dictionary all night.”
    She gave it a last pat on the head and got up off the floor. A low growl from the wolf followed her as she walked down the hallway. “Maybe you’re feeling a little pain from that leg now. Tomorrow I’ll give you a full examination and see about changing the splint. We can make that more comfortable for you. But tonight I’m too tired. I performed eye surgery on a cat today. I’m beat.