Carnival of Hearts: BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance by Scarlett Rhone Page B

herself to her feet and went sprinting towards the closest structure: the fun house.
    The fun house itself was actually a refurbished school bus that led into a series of tents built of black velvet fabric to block out the light. All the pieces of the carnival had to be mobile and easily broken down, and the fun house was no different. The lights and mirrors that separated each section gave the illusion of everything being bigger or smaller, thinner or wider, and Kat knew each twist and turn, each tricky mirror and each hiding spot. She couldn’t fight a wolf or outrun one, but she could probably hide from one in the fun house.
    They’d been attacked before, but usually they knew it was coming. This wolf pack hadn’t made it clear that they were passing into someone’s territory; if there had been signs and markers, Kat couldn’t remember her father pointing them out. And he always pointed them out to her, so that she knew precisely what to look for. Or in some cases sniff for.
    If the land was contentious, that was all the more problematic; the carnival might have gotten stuck in the middle of a feud. Mistaken for enemies. Or maybe these wolves just wanted to kill them. Some shifters gave themselves over so completely to the beast in their hearts that there was very little human left. Instinct took over. D’Orfeo did not allow those types into his carnival. He said they were too dangerous, too unpredictable, and the only law they recognized was dominance.
    Kat didn’t know what these wolves were after, but she knew that she didn’t want to get pinned to the ground and ripped to shreds by one of them. Already she could hear the others fighting as she ran. The roar of a lion lifted above the din and she knew her father had joined the fray. Bears bellowed and wolves howled; she heard the crack of Baptiste’s whip and thought maybe she recognized the heavy thunder of Mabel’s sawed-off shotgun. She didn’t dare look behind her, though. She stared straight at the mouth of the fun house and ran with all the energy and strength her legs could summon. Just as she felt her muscles begin to burn and cramp, she slammed through the fun house door, right between the gaping, smiling jaws of a laughing clown.
    As it was after hours, the fun house was completely dark, but Kat stumbled up the steps and through the body of the old bus, bursting out the back end and into the maze of mirrors. Even as she ducked behind one of the velvet partitions and behind a tall mirror, she could hear the mad scrabbling of claws across the bus’s metal floor as a wolf barreled into the fun house after her.
    She crouched down, trying desperately to stop gulping down air, and willing her heartbeat to slow so that she could hear anything other than its pounding in her ears. In the quiet, she could hear the wolf slow as it entered the mirror maze, and its footsteps on the carpeted floor were hard for her to make out. Then, across the alleyway of mirrors, she saw one of the crew exits and thought that if she could make it there, she might leave the wolf lost in the mirrored corridor for long enough that she could escape to someplace more secure. Because anywhere was more secure than being trapped in close quarters with a freaking werewolf.
    She heard, in the distance, another sharp boom from Mabel’s sawed-off, and it was like the first shot of a race. It sent her sprinting forward across the narrow alley between mirrors. In the corner of her eye, she spied a blur of movement, dark fur and sharp claws, and heard the ripple of a snarl as the wolf saw her and gave chase. But it slammed into one of the mirrors, disoriented, and the glass burst out of its frame, shattering all over the floor and all over Kat and the wolf itself.
    Though she lifted her arms to cover her head as she ran, she stumbled and her bare foot snagged on a sliver of glass. With a yelp and a curse, she went down, hitting the shard-strewn carpeting on the corridor floor. She heard the