West With Giraffes: A Novel Novels & Stories

"Do not make them look stupid for picking you. Can you handle the wolves out there, Penelope? They are not like the soft ones inside the palace walls." I stand up so fast my leather chair rolls back and hits the oak bookshelf behind me with a loud thud. "Tell Father I am already packing my bags," I say. "Tell Cooper to have the keys ready." The transition does not happen with a ceremony. It happens with blood and ink. One month passes. The heat of the Central City summer burns off, replaced by the damp, cold fog that rolls off the western tarmac every morning at dawn. I sit behind a grey steel desk in the Western Border headquarters. The building is an old, converted concrete fortress overlo

I look first to Lachlan for some help. “I’m down. There isn’t anything that needs our immediate attention anyway,” Lachlan says. “Hell yes! I miss the sun and the surf!” Weston exclaims. That’s right Weston is originally from a beach town, Sunset Beach or Sunrise Beach, or something like that. I think maybe one of those is from a book Jase had sent to me to read. It had a girl with a verb for a name and rainbow hair. I liked that series because it remind me a little of the way we are with Carley. It was only ever her for us, Princess Carley, and her knights.