Wolf Pawn (Wolves of New York #2)

by Bella Jacobs

  Wolf Pawn

  A Dark Mafia Shifter Romance

  Bella Jacobs

  Contents

  WOLF’S PAWN

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  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

  About the Author

  Also by Bella Jacobs

  Sneak Peek

  WOLF’S PAWN

  Wolves of New York

  By Bella Jacobs

  Copyright Wolf Pawn © 2021 by Bella Jacobs

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This contemporary romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy sexy, fast-paced urban fantasy reads. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work. Edited by Fedora C. Proofing. Cover Design by Violet Duke.

  Created with Vellum

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  I thought Maxim Thorn was ruthless before, but I haven't seen anything yet...

  Maxim's pack is under siege. His enemies will stop at nothing to lay claim to everything he holds dear. And thanks to an ancient prophecy, half the shifter world believes being mated to me (or my long-lost sister) is the key to unlimited power.

  That's the other thing--the sister I haven't seen in years?

  She's alive, and out to destroy Maxim.

  When we were younger, Kelley was my hero, but now she's putting innocent people's lives at risk. Meanwhile, Maxim truly seems to want the best for his people, even as he pulls no punches when it comes to interrogating--and erotically torturing--me.

  It's getting hard to tell light from dark, good from evil so wicked it'll scare the Big Bad Wolf himself.

  Meanwhile, I'm starting to doubt any of us will make it out of this war for the throne alive...

  To the cottage at Rooky Wood.

  Best place to write ever!

  Chapter One

  Willow

  Sixteen years ago…

  If Mama finds me, she’s going to swat my bottom.

  That’s what she always says when she’s mad at me for being stubborn—Willow Rainbow Astor, listen to me right now or I swear I’m going to swat your little bottom!

  But she never does, and she promised me she never will.

  She said so last Christmas, when we were waiting in line to see Santa in the park and the man in front of us spanked his little boy so hard that he started screaming. I turned to Mama, my eyes full of scared tears, wondering if that was what a “swatted bottom” looked like, and she leaned down and whispered, “I’ll never hurt you like that, baby. Never ever. I promise. No child deserves to be treated that way, no matter what they’ve done.”

  But she might change her mind today…

  If she catches me.

  “So, make sure she doesn’t catch you, silly,” I mutter to myself, sticking my head out from behind the back of the laundromat.

  But there’s no sign of Mitch coming down the trash-littered alley.

  But that’s okay. He’ll be here. Mitch is one of my best friends and he knows I’m dying to play Unicorn Blood Sport 2, and that there’s no way my mom will let me buy it, even though I have sixty whole dollars saved up from my birthday party last week.

  Mama thinks violent video games are bad, even ones with cute cartoon unicorns who fart rainbows and make super funny faces when they kill off the bad goblins.

  Once she found out Mitch’s mom let us play games like that, she said I couldn’t go over to his house after school anymore. I had to come straight home, check in with Aunty Sarah next door—who isn’t really my aunt and is also very old and super cranky—then let myself into our apartment and start on my homework.

  But second grade homework only takes a few minutes and then I have two whole hours to sit around and wish I had a friend to play with—or some goblins to kill.

  I’ll have plenty of time to finish my homework, beat a level of Blood Sport 2, and still get my chores done before Kelley gets home from volleyball practice and Mom and Dad from work.

  That’s the good part of being “the most responsible eight-year-old” my parents have ever met. They trust me, and I think it’s okay to use that to my advantage once and a while.

  I know lying is wrong, but this doesn’t feel wrong. Playing video games isn’t going to make me a bad person or give me nightmares. Mama’s scared of that for no reason.

  Kelley, my big sister, fights with our parents about stuff like that, but I don’t see the point in fighting when I can sneak around and do what I want without upsetting anyone. That way Mama’s happy, I’m happy—everyone wins.

  Unless Mitch takes much longer and then I’m going to be super late to check in with Aunty Sarah, she’ll call Mama to report me missing, and then Mom will track me down with her crazy accurate kid-tracking powers and my bottom will be so much swatted toast.

  I glance down at the empty alley again and then at my red watch, the one Kelley gave me because big plastic watches aren’t cool anymore for big kids. But any kind of watch is cool for little kids. I’m the only girl in second grade who wears a watch. Even Pax, the meanest bully in school, who makes fun of me any time he has the chance, said he liked it.

  Then he tried to make me give it to him and punched me in the back when I wouldn’t. He punched me so hard it hurt to pee for a whole day, but he didn’t get in trouble. The teachers are too afraid to punish Pax. He’s the Alpha’s son and gets to be as mean and lazy as he wants.

  Mama says it’s natural for a kid to take advantage and that it’s the grownups’ fault for indulging him.

  She doesn’t know how often Pax hits me. I don’t tell her. I know it would make her mad and sad, and I’m afraid she might try to stop him.

  I might only be in second grade, but I’m old enough to know that would be a bad idea.

  The Alpha wouldn’t believe my mom. Or me.

  The Alpha would believe Pax is an innocent little prince and I’m a dirty little liar who deserves to spend my weekend in an isolation pit thinking about what I’ve done.

  According to the rumors, the Alpha has lots of deep, scary pits in his basement. People who make him mad enough to punish them, but not kill them, end up at the bottom of one of those pits in the dark with no food or water for forty-eight whole hours. They say there are bugs and rats and things down there that crawl all over you. That they bite and scr
atch and make it too scary to sleep even if you could find a way to lie down. But the pits are so narrow there’s no room to lie down, not even if you curl up in a tiny little ball.

  That’s part of the torture, that you can’t sit or lie down or rest and that when you go potty it just runs down your legs inside your clothes and makes you feel stinky and itchy and awful and sad.

  I shiver, fighting to swallow past the knot in my throat, the feeling that something bad is about to happen swelling inside my chest.

  I try to tell myself it’s just nerves from disobeying Mama and a case of the creeps from thinking about Alpha Victor’s torture pits.

  But I know better. I know that when I get a feeling like this—so strong and sure it feels like my bones are vibrating a warning—I should listen. Listening is the only way I’ve avoided being bullied by Pax more than I am already. I sense trouble and make a run for it.

  But sometimes I can’t run.

  I can’t leave school or children’s circle at pack meetings on Saturdays. I can’t turn into a puff of smoke and float up into the air when Pax corners me on the playground.

  And I can’t push past a man three times my size, either.

  As I peek around the corner again, I see just such a man—with giant hands and a massive head and creepy tattoos crawling up his forearms—and for a second I wonder if I conjured him with my fear.

  That’s what it feels like sometimes, like I see the future coming so clearly that I must have dreamed it into being.

  And then I meet his gaze, see the utter lack of compassion in his cold black eyes, and I stop worrying about how he got here. All that matters now is escaping him.

  I turn to run, racing toward the rear entrance to the laundromat, knowing it’s my only chance. I won’t be able to climb the fence at the back of the laundry’s trash area fast enough, and there’s no way I can slip past the man without him snatching me up in one of his giant hands.

  He’s too big.

  Unfortunately for me, he’s also too fast.

  I’m still at least six feet from the door when he grabs me from behind, slamming his hand over my mouth and nose as he picks me up. I try to scream, but no sound comes out and no air comes back in.

  I gasp again and again, kicking my legs and fighting to dislodge his hand, but he’s too strong.

  Black spots dance in front of my eyes and terror churns inside my brain until there isn’t room for anything else. I realize I’m probably about to die—to die without getting to grow up or tell my family I love them again or do any of the things I’ve imagined doing when I’m big.

  I’ll never travel to a foreign country or become a scientist or learn to take beautiful pictures. I’ll never have a family of my own or babies or the kitten I’ve always wanted even though Dad says cats don’t like living with wolves, even when the wolves are in human form most of the time.

  I won’t even live to get really good at algebra or play stupid Unicorn Blood Sport 2.

  The knowledge swells inside me until it’s as big as the terror.

  Then bigger.

  Bigger, until my suffocating brain is howling with rage at the injustice of it all.

  That’s when it happens—a current of something sharp and electric explodes inside my core and zaps out along my skin. For a moment it feels like my heart stops and my lungs do, too, and I’m suddenly…quiet inside in a way I’ve never been before.

  Then the man holding me groans a weird, low groan in response and removes his hand. A beat later, I feel the zap of electricity zoom back into me, hitting the play button again.

  I gasp, gulping air into my aching lungs as my heart jerks in my chest, so grateful to be able to breathe that I don’t waste energy struggling at first.

  And then the man grunts into my ear, “That’s right, baby girl. Let’s do that again. Feels so good, doesn’t it?”

  No, it doesn’t feel good.

  It feels like dying. Really bad dying.

  I open my mouth to scream for help, but his hand is over my mouth again, sending me back into that desperate, terror-filled, near-death place until the thing inside me explodes again.

  He does it again and again, until tears and snot flow freely down my face and I’m so broken by it that when he finally lets me go, I can’t even run.

  I just lie on the pavement crying until Mitch shows up with his mom.

  Later, I realize he must have seen what was happening and gone for help, but at the time all I could think was that it was strange that his mom came to drop off the game, too.

  But I’m so glad she’s there.

  Mrs. Burnbaum is so nice, so gentle.

  She takes me home and cleans me up and sits with me until Mom gets home.

  Then they talk in hushed, urgent tones in Mom’s room for a long time, while Mitch and I sit pretending to play with blocks.

  But really, he’s just avoiding looking at me, and I’m trying not to start screaming again.

  I can’t talk at all.

  I’m afraid if I open my mouth I’ll start wailing and never stop.

  Finally, the moms come back into the living room and Mitch and his mom leave. Then Mama turns to me with the saddest eyes.

  I can tell she’s been crying, and I know it’s my fault. I also know I would usually feel awful about making her sad, but right now I can’t feel anything but…full. I’m chock-full of the screams I’m holding in, so stuffed there’s no room for anything else.

  But Mama seems to understand.

  She’s very quiet and goes slow as she explains to me what happened.

  She explains about a pack gift just a very few Alpha wolves have—the ability to bring people back from the dead. She says it’s a sacred gift, and one usually used very rarely and respectfully, but that the man who grabbed me had used his in a dark, ugly way, because he received pleasure from hurting kids.

  “He was a monster, baby,” she whispers through fresh tears as she smooths my hair away from my face. “And I’m so sorry you had to learn there are people like that, and so sorry he did what he did to you.”

  She pulls in a breath, her lips pressing together for a beat before she adds in a shakier voice, “But I’m so grateful he left you alive. The world needs good people like you, Willow, and I need you and I love you so much and I promise I will fight like hell to make sure no one hurts you again, baby. I swear on all the stars.” She sniffs and swipes at her eyes. “And I’m going to do my best to help you forget this, too, okay? If you can promise if you remember anything about this to keep it a secret, just between us?”

  I nod desperately, eagerly.

  All I want is to forget.

  And after several months of working with my mom every night, letting her use her own secret pack gift, one so tightly under wraps allegedly not even my father knew what she could do, Mama gave me the gift of forgetting.

  Until the night Maxim Thorn ripped it away.

  Chapter Two

  Maxim

  You’re fucking monstrous.

  Damn you to hell.

  As Willow comes out of her memory gasping for breath, with tears streaming down her face and terror in her eyes, fresh from reliving some past horror, I hate myself. I don’t know what she just remembered, but I could feel the effect it had on her, the way it made her heart race like a trapped animal and her soul writhe.

  I never see the memories I summon with my pack gift, but I feel them—and hers were…terrifying. This memory will haunt me long after tonight.

  But not nearly as much as it haunts her.

  My throat tightens until it feels like I’m choking on self-loathing, but still, I insist to myself that I shouldn’t regret what I’ve done.

  This is how she learns that I am her Alpha, that my word is law, and that obedience is her only option if she wants to remain under my protection.

  “Wh-what was that?” She blinks, sending fresh tears down her cheeks that she can’t even wipe away.

  I have her wrists bound behind her and my lit
tle wolf on her knees in my study. I’m interrogating her in my apartment, in a dim room lit only by the fire behind me.

  Because the dark part of me only comes out to play in the shadows.

  “When I ask a question, I expect it to be answered,” I growl, soft and low.

  “But what was that?” she asks, her voice pitching up. “How did you—”

  “My pack gift is fear. I reach in and pull out the terror,” I cut in, pacing the thick carpet in front of her, grateful that her tears have banished the fucking hard on I’ve had since I put her on her knees twenty minutes ago.

  I’m not above using my ugly gift to prove my point, but I’ve never been turned on by scaring someone.

  I’m glad that hasn’t changed.

  I can be monstrous, at times, but I don’t want to be a monster.

  “So, you…” She swallows hard, her throat working. “You did that on purpose.”

  “I told you that you should be frightened of me. Do we understand each other now, little wolf? And what happens to people who threaten the safety of my pack?”

  “But I wasn’t… I’m not…” She blinks faster, fresh tears rising in her eyes. “Did you… Did you pick that one on purpose?”

  “I don’t know what you lived through. I can’t see into your head, I just…feel your fear with you,” I say flatly, trying to ignore the way my conscience is prickling.