Snow and the Seven Men: A Reverse Harem Fairy Tale Romance(27)

It had been going on for ten minutes and whatever it was out there, had to be gone by now, didn’t it?

“Rufus, if I have to come out there, I’m gonna feed you to the fucking coyotes, I swear on your life!” I roared, my ears ringing from the mutt’s ongoing diatribe.

When my favorite hound did not stop his mournful wailing and groaning, I shoved aside my sleeping bag, throwing my legs off the bed and looking around for my slippers.

At that moment, I couldn’t remember why I liked that damned dog so much.

The temperature had dropped substantially in the few hours since I had gone to bed but I rather liked it that way; the fresh air filled my lungs even though the fireplace had crackled down to only a few glowing embers.

I would put a log back on when I returned.

Shit, I might even put Rufus on if he kept this up.

Clayton joined Rufus’ noise and suddenly, I felt my skin prickle with worry.

Rufus was known for his caterwauling but Clayton needed a special reason to make his voice heard.

It had to be a persistent coyote. They had been a bigger pain in the ass than usual this autumn.

I snatched my loaded hunting rifle from the gun rack in the living room and pushed open the screen door, my steel green eyes adjusting to the darkness.

“Come!” I instructed the mutts and they instantly appeared at my side through the inky blackness.

I could see little else and with Rufus still grunting and whining, I couldn’t hear any signs of life in the trees.

“Rufus, shut up!” I growled, running a hand through the scruff on my face. I was sure it was some sort of wildlife out there but you could never be certain, even in my remote area of the Black Mountains.

Not that I was concerned for my safety.

I had a small arsenal at my disposal and despite the sucky nature of my dogs, they were trained to kill first and ask questions later.

Or at least they were in theory. I had never really had occasion to test their killer commands.

I had ever had any issues in the past but one could never be too sure.

You always see those poor assholes on the news who say, “we never had any problems before.”

I didn’t want to be one of those assholes.

Suddenly, Rufus stopped barking and sniffed the air as if trying to sense whatever it was which had gotten him going.

I eyed the mutt and he cast me a sidelong, sheepish look.

“Well?” I demanded. “All done now?”

He dropped his eyes and sighed.

Chuckling, I leaned forward to scratch his black head, slipping the gun over my shoulder by the strap.

“Can I go back to bed now?”

As if to give his consent, he started in the door first, Clayton already having gone ahead.

By the time I threw another couple logs on the fire and put my rifle back in place, the dogs had claimed my spot on the bed.

“Oh come on!” I grunted, shaking my head. “Move the hell over!”

They ignored me, closing their eyes in unison so I was forced to shove them toward the foot of the double bed, knowing full well that they would just take over while I slept.

I see why female dogs are called bitches, I often thought. They take over your bed and leave you in the cold with nothing.

It wasn’t really a fair assessment

Most of the dogs I’d had were warmer than the women I’d known. It seemed unfair to lump them together in the same category.

Sighing, I closed my eyes and stretched out to the best of my ability, my toes digging into Clayton’s ribs as he sprawled elongated across the foot of the bed and tried to regain the blissful sleep which had consumed me before Rufus had started his symphony of warning.

I was on the day shift these weeks and after coming off two months of nights, it was already hard enough to get my body in synch without the hounds keeping me awake.

Blissfully, I found myself slipping back into slumber with little sheep counting.

Maybe this weekend wouldn’t be so bad, even if I had to work it.

The double time pay was going to make it more than worth it.

I felt myself drifting off as I thought about the new extension I was working on for the cabin.

No sooner had I reached my REM state did both dogs start, causing me to jump at the same time.

Guttural noises erupted from their throats in unison and my body tensed.

Something was out there, I had no doubt.

Again, I jumped from the bed and the dogs followed me as I once more reached for my weapon, flicking on the floodlight outside the cabin.

As I stepped onto the porch, I gazed around the property, looking for the slightest movement in any direction but I could see nothing.

Like the dogs, however, I could sense a presence.

“Get the fuck out of here!” I growled into the night, raising the gun to my shoulder as I waited for whatever beast was out there to show itself.

Both Clayton and Rufus were vibrating at my side and I knew that we couldn’t all be imagining it.

I fired a warning shot out into the sky, hoping that whatever it was would run scared.

As the sound echoed through the mountains, a flutter of birds squawked in protest at being woken in the middle of the night but I still saw nothing else.

Slowly, my canines seemed to relax and after another minute, it became clear that whatever was lurking about had retreated through the ravine and away from my cottage.

Still, I was reluctant to venture off the wraparound porch.

It was rare to have such an insistent animal lurking about and I wracked my brain trying to understand what had drawn it to the property.

Every night I burned my food waste, knowing that the wildlife could sense it from a distance and that evening had been no different.

I didn’t want a nosy black bear wandering by after all and no matter how loud Rufus could be, he was no match for one of those.

I wondered what it was that night and why it was so eager to stay near.

Black bears were not nocturnal.

It had to be a coyote.

Whatever it was had disappeared again, my suspicion solidified by my now yawning dogs who padded their way back inside once more, leaving me to stand guard outside.

When I finally gave up watch and retreated into the cabin, my adrenaline was pumping and I forsook the idea of returning to bed.

I had lived in the mountains since birth and it was rare for me to be unnerved by the idea of a critter prowling about but as I put the kettle on for coffee, I could not shake the sense that whatever was out there was no ordinary beast.

Before I sat down at the kitchen table, I returned to the front door and secured the triple deadbolts, unable to shake the uneasiness in my gut.

I could count on one hand how many times I had locked the door while being home since the day I was born on the kitchen floor.





I managed to fall asleep at four but my alarm woke me obnoxiously at five, bringing me to a miserable awakening.

If I had been the kind of man to do such a thing, that morning would have been as good a day as any to call into the oil fields and catch up on my sleep but I was Harding Jackson.

I didn’t call in sick unless I was dead and I was far from being in such a state.

I was probably the healthiest person in Utah.

All the fresh air and self-reliance made me a fit and muscular, a towering six feet four inches tall with a defined body, right down to glutes made of titanium.

Chopping wood, hunting, fishing, and hiking ensured that I never skimped on exercise as if my job in the oil fields outside of Cedar City didn’t keep me occupied enough.

But it was a life I loved, one I could have traded to live in town instead of pouring copious amounts of money into the shack in which I had been raised, making it livable.

It hadn’t always been so.

Growing up on the almost uninhabited side of Black Mountain, the one-roomed cabin had housed me and my parents.

There had been no electricity or plumbing, our water coming from the trickling stream stemming from Crow Creek.

I had learned how to handle a gun before I was old enough to speak in proper sentences, something that the rest of the world might have frowned upon but in our family, it was a necessity.

Our only means for food had been living off the land in any way possible.

The nearest neighbors I knew of were miles off and once a month or so, I would encounter one of the six or eight kids who lived in that shack but they regarded me with the same skeptical eyes that I did them.

After all, we were all after the thing – survival. Friendships were the last thing on our minds.

Their shack had long ago crumbled to the ground, their family relocating for parts unknown.

I never even knew their names and truth be told if I had run into them in town I probably wouldn’t have recognized their faces either.

The Jacksons were just that secluded, that tight-knit.

It was the way my dad wanted it.

When I was in my pre-teens, my father introduced me to the world of theft, sending me into Cedar City to fill my holey pockets with whatever I could manage from the general store but those excursions were far and few between.

“You don’t want them to recognize you, son,” Jacob warned me. “Otherwise they’ll chase you out or get you arrested on sight.”

The words meant little to me until I wound up in jail overnight and I quickly learned the value of stealth.

I had never known another world than the one removed from others, without outside relationships or ties. I didn’t know there was more to life when I was young.

My education was the mountains, my skills were developed through my reclusive parents.

It never occurred to me that I wasn’t like other kids since I had nothing which with to compare.

I later learned that my mom had not been raised in the mountains like my dad. He had met her in Cedar City when she was eighteen. She had been visiting family, on her way to college at the University of Washington but Jacob Jackson was a devastatingly handsome man for all his limited social graces.