by Sadie Moss
Wolf Called
The Last Shifter #2
Sadie Moss
Copyright © 2018 by Sadie Moss
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or had, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Also by Sadie Moss
Chapter One
Thick straps dug into my skin, pinning me to a smooth, hard surface.
A metallic taste coated my tongue, like blood and bile all rolled into one. My skin felt numb, and the straps across my chest, waist, and legs were so tight it was hard to breathe. Flashes of light pulsed behind my closed eyelids, but I couldn’t seem to drag them open. Whatever amount of strength it would take to perform even that small action was beyond me at the moment.
The thing I was strapped to swayed gently beneath me like a ship rocking on an open sea as a low hum filled my ears.
No. This isn’t right. I shouldn’t be here.
Something was wrong. Everything was wrong.
The fuzzy feeling in my body invaded my brain too, making me feel like half a person, a faded photograph of someone who had once existed. Someone who’d had hopes, dreams, losses, loves—though no one could guess what those were anymore.
“How many did Nils round up?”
The male voice came from somewhere near my feet.
“Eh, not as many as he wanted. The wolves scattered into the woods as soon as we moved in on ’em. Those fucking animals are smarter than I thought,” another voice answered. This one was male too, and it had a deep rasp to it, as if the speaker smoked a pack a day.
“That why he stayed behind?”
“Yeah. He’ll do a last sweep and snag any that are still hiding within the perimeter we set up.”
A third man snorted. “Jesus. He’d keep hunting them forever if he could. He lives for that shit. But it’s over, right? We got her. That was our main objective.”
“It’s over when Nils says it’s over,” the man by my feet joked. “He’ll grab at least a few more before he gives up. Like you said, he loves the fucking hunt.”
The three voices grated in my ears, and I wished I could lift my arms and press my hands to the sides of my head. Their casual, callous speech poked at a tender hole in my heart—one I couldn’t quite identify yet. What were they talking about?
Nils? Who was that? And who was he hunting?
Questions floated across the surface of my dazed mind like scum on a brackish pond, but I didn’t really want answers to any of them. A part of me knew the answers would split my soul wide open, so I clung to the numbness instead.
But the numbness was fading.
My brain was clearing, and as it did, my body grew more and more uncomfortable. My head rocked back and forth on the hard surface beneath me, sending pain shooting through the back of my skull.
I groaned, a low, pathetic sound that fell from my mouth before I could stop it.
The casual conversation around me stopped.
“Shit. She’s coming out of it. Check her straps,” the raspy-voiced man said.
“I did. They’re good,” the one by my feet answered.
But despite his words, hands grasped the leather binds holding me, cinching them even tighter, making me feel as if I were being slowly crushed to death. I moaned again, a pained, panicked sound.
“It’s all right, Alexis. It’s okay.”
The new voice was soft, feminine… and familiar.
With agonizing slowness, I dragged my eyelids open, turning my head a little to peer toward the source of the sound.
Relief flooded me.
I knew those light brown eyes, would recognize them anywhere. I knew the brown hair sprinkled with gray, the simple bob haircut, the glasses. I knew every line and curve of the face staring down at me.
“Mom?” I croaked, hope rising in my voice.
The woman’s expression twitched with surprise, then she shook her head slightly, and her features hardened. The mouth I’d seen smile so often compressed into a thin line. The crow’s feet around her eyes deepened as her brows drew together. Those little actions changed her entire appearance, and I blinked, confused.
Why was my mom so angry? What had I done? And why had she let these men strap me down to a table, binding me so tight it felt like I was dying?
“Mom, I—”
Her face reacted to that word again, and the man stationed near my feet scoffed under his breath. I broke off, fear and panic worming their way into my foggy brain.
What was happening?
“Give her more sedative,” my mom said, her voice thick with some emotion I couldn’t identify. When the man by my feet hesitated, she looked up at him sharply. “Now!”
The big man shook his head. “Sorry, McGowan. Doctor Shepherd said not to give her too much. He doesn’t want it interfering with her change. She’s close.”
McGowan? That’s not her name. It’s Maddow. Karen Maddow.
A dull pain beat at my temples as I tried to get my sluggish brain to work faster.
My mother glared at him. “She can handle a little more. You can tell him it was under my orders if you’re so worried about it.”
“All right, all right. Your fucking funeral.” He abandoned his post near my feet, crossing to the other side of the room.
No… not a room. An ambulance.
We were in something that resembled an ambulance, although the space was bigger and more empty of equipment than others I’d seen. The movement of the vehicle as it sped down the highway was the cause of the rocking motion, and two of the male voices I’d heard must belong to the two guys sitting up front.
I was strapped to a metal gurney set up along one wall midway between the front seats and the back doors. Medical equipment was stashed in a cabinet attached to the other wall, and several guns and other weapons rested on a rack nearby. A clipboard with papers bearing spreadsheets hung from a hook behind the driver’s seat. The interior of the ambulance was dark—there were no windows along the sides, so the only light came from the front and two small windows at the back.
This wasn’t a real ambulance. At least, it wasn’t like any ambulance I’d ever been in before. It looked too sparse, too makeshift for that.
This is all wrong.
I glanced back at my mom as the man dug into the medical supplies. A thought was pressing at the back of my mind, hovering on the edge of my consciousness like a tumor growing in my brain. Something important.
“Mom,” I rasped. “What
are you—?”
And then I remembered.
Like a video set on fast forward, every memory of the past few weeks came rushing back in to fill the void the drugs in my system had created.
The attack on the Strand complex. The panic, chaos, and confusion. The four men who claimed they would rescue me.
My mother, leveling a gun at my head and firing.
I sucked in a breath, my eyes widening, my chest straining against the thick leather strap that held me down.
“No… You—!”
Before I could get out more, the assault of memories continued, robbing me of speech.
Those four men had rescued me, saved me from a life of lies and cruel manipulation. I had run with them, all the way across the country, searching for some hope, some aid. For the Lost Pack.
But we’d been hunted.
Sometime during my ten-year stay in the Strand complex, they had implanted a microchip under my skin. And when I escaped, they’d used that chip to track me down like an animal. I’d been forced to flee through the woods, driven away from the men who had come to mean everything to me.
And this woman. The one whose face had seemed so familiar? I didn’t know her at all.
“You’re… not… my mother.”
The words came out stilted and harsh as an anger like nothing I’d ever experienced flooded my veins with molten fire.
“Sanders, where are you with the goddamn sedative?” She held out a hand, palm up, but her gaze never left my face.
“I’m coming, I’m coming. Fuck, calm down.”
“Give it to me. Now.” The woman who wasn’t my mother spoke slowly, as if she were addressing an idiot.
But I could barely hear her words. The rage burning through me lit up my nerve endings, feeding strength to weak muscles and making blood rush in my ears.
“You lied to me!” The scream tore from my throat, every bit of anguish and betrayal I’d experienced at the hands of this woman—of all of them—coating my words with venom. “How could you fucking do that? You made me think— You told me—”
“Sanders. Now.” The familiar stranger’s expression didn’t change, but her nostrils flared and her hand shook slightly.
Seeming to steel herself, she reached for me and smoothed my hair back with her fingertips, humming a soft lullaby. The song she always used to sing when I was sad or upset.
Our song.
The sweet, melodic sound twisted a knife in my heart, making me gasp for breath. I jerked my head away from her touch.
“No! Don’t fucking do that! I thought you loved me! You lied to me my whole fucking life!”
My voice rose with each word, and I bucked hard against the straps restraining me, wrenching my head back and forth as I fought to free my arms and legs. The restraints held fast, but the entire gurney wobbled beneath me.
“Shit! Here, here!”
Glancing at me with wide eyes, the big man pawed through the supplies, grabbing a syringe filled with a pale amber liquid. He stepped up to McGowan, the woman I’d once loved like a mother, slapping it into her waiting palm. She yanked the cap off, bending over me to slip the needle into my arm.
There was a stab of pain like a wasp sting, and I renewed my struggles, jerking and writhing as I panted like an animal.
My not-mother’s face contorted with concentration, and she bore down hard on my arm with her free hand, holding me still as she administered the drug. Her glasses slipped down slightly, and she wrinkled her nose to try to push them back up on her face—something I’d seen her do hundreds of times in the years I had known her.
That little gesture, that achingly familiar sight, broke my heart more than anything else.
I forced saliva into my dry, cottony mouth and spit in her face.
“Damn it!”
She jerked backward, yanking the needle out of my arm with another painful sting. Tossing the empty syringe into a basket behind her, she pulled her glasses off and wiped them on her shirt, then ran a hand down her face.
A muscle in her jaw ticked as she slipped the thick frames back on, but she seemed to relax a little now that the sedative was in my system. I could already feel it spreading through my veins, bringing the numbness back with it.
“I did care about you, Alexis,” McGowan said, her face impassive. “I know you don’t believe me, but of course I did. We spent too many hours together for me not to get somewhat attached.”
“Somewhat attached?” I choked out.
The sedative raced through my system, slowing my movements as I continued to struggle against my binds. I could feel it trying to soften my muscles, but the hot anger radiating outward from my stomach wouldn’t let it. My entire body began to shake, limbs quivering and teeth rattling as rage overtook me.
“You. Never. Loved. Me.” My voice shook with emotion as I forced the words out. “You don’t love someone and keep them locked up. You don’t love someone and lie to them about everything. Use them as part of your sick experiments. That’s not. Fucking. Love!”
“It doesn’t matter.” The woman with the simple bob haircut shook her head tiredly, as if she was already sick of having this argument with me. “It’s over now. No more pretending.”
My body jerked and twitched as it fought against the sedative, my muscles beginning to gain strength rather than lose it.
“No!” I screamed. “You don’t love someone and just give them up like that!”
Burning tears ran down the sides of my face, hot streaks of anger and pain that disappeared into the wild mess of my dyed-blonde hair. A sound halfway between a growl and a whine rose in my throat, and my lips curled back from my teeth.
McGowan blinked and backed up a step, fear passing over her face.
Some primal part of me saw that fear and liked it. Wanted to hunt it down, to feast on it.
“What the fuck is going on back there?” the driver called from the front.
“Shit. Why isn’t she going down? The syringe I gave you had the max dose!” The big man beside me turned to my mother, his eyes wide in his broad, squashed face.
“Give me another,” she ordered, her voice shaking.
“But—”
“Another!!”
He scrambled to obey, lunging toward the medical supply cabinet and digging out a second syringe while my mother reached for a gun on the wall behind her.
I could sense the fear rising in both of them, feeling it radiating from the front seats, and it fed the feral, wild thing that lived inside me.
The animal.
The wolf.
My body jerked again, but this time, I felt my bones break. White-hot agony filled me, and I screamed, arching against the tight restraints, the veins in my neck feeling like they would rupture.
“Motherfu—”
The man with the syringe moved toward me, needle poised, just as my mother raised her weapon.
But they were both too late.
With a howl, my wolf burst forth.
Chapter Two
It hurt.
It hurt so fucking bad I couldn’t think about anything else, couldn’t focus on anything but the pain. The shift consumed me, destroyed me, burned me to ash like a phoenix before it rises from the flame.
Inside my skin, my bones cracked and reformed, growing larger and stronger. Fur sprouted all over my body as my mouth, nose, and ears elongated. The endless scream pouring from my lips morphed into a wild howl, the fearsome sound echoing off the metal walls of the makeshift ambulance.
The pressure of my sudden shift snapped the buckles of my restraints. They fell away, hitting the sides of the gurney with sharp pinging sounds. Disorientation and pain clouded my brain as the shift completed, and my large paws scrabbled for purchase as I tried to flip over. The gurney tilted to the side just as a shot rang out, and the bullet from McGowan’s gun grazed my ear as I spilled onto the floor.
“No! We’re supposed to keep her alive!” someone yelled from the front.
But the woman
with the streaks of gray in her hair wasn’t listening. Fear and panic filled her expression as she raised the gun again, pointing it right at me.
My wolf didn’t let me hesitate.
It didn’t even let me think.
I lunged toward her in the small confines of the vehicle, front paws striking her shoulders and bringing her down with a hard thud. She was a big woman, much taller than I was in human form. But right now, pinned beneath my massive paws and the weight of my lupine body, she felt small.
Vulnerable. Like prey.
Breathing heavily, she tried to raise the gun again, but my jaws snapped out, closing around her forearm. Coppery blood painted my tongue, and she shrieked in pain, thrashing beneath me as her suddenly useless fingers dropped the weapon.
The sound of her scream made my ears prick and my hackles rise, fed the fearsome predator that had overtaken my body and mind.
Prey.
I’d seen Noah’s wolf kill a man once, seen how easily it could be done. But it hardly even mattered. My wolf knew what to do without needing any demonstration. She carried that ancient instinct deep in her DNA.
With a feral snarl, I dropped my head, clamped my teeth around the woman’s throat, and tore.
Blood sprayed in a wide arc across the side of the ambulance as her scream cut off abruptly, her body falling limp beneath me.
I stared down at her for a moment, trying to feel… anything.
But Alexis, the person I’d been all my life, the one who had once loved this woman, was buried so far beneath the surface it was like peering out through a window from miles away.