Shifters - The Jade Forest Chronicles 1

by Vivienne Neas

  I had to go back to Jade Forest. I’d managed to keep Aryn off my case about the land, but I wasn’t going to be able to ward off his curiosity for long, and Raphael wanted news.

  Besides, Amber’s little visit to Forechester Keep had put a time limit on the wolves. We needed to secure the land before anything went wrong, because the humans would get involved and then everything would be a mess.

  Werewolves and humans didn’t mix. We had to obey them, because the ones who lived in the Keep make it easier for the wolves to live in this world without being hunted down, but that didn’t mean we liked them.

  Amber had been stupid to go to them at all, but that was typical fae: suck-ups, the lot of them. Even Amber, although I had to admit that she was different from the general fae.

  I shook off the thought of her. I didn’t need a girl like that to mess up my mind so much that the plan would fall through.

  The journey back to the mountains took almost three days. Most of it had to be done on foot. There were roads that led from Milford to other human cities, but the town was isolated and the mountains weren’t accessible to humans. That was to keep our two species apart.

  The weather changed the closer I got to home. The warm, sunny days turned cold, with an icy wind cutting me to the bone.

  The moment I stepped into the forest, I relaxed. This land was ours. I was at home among the trees. Their trunks stretched up to the sky, and an evergreen canopy of leaves blocked out the sunlight so that it only fell in dapples on the ground. There was magic among the trees, the overflow from our power circle at Onyx Point, way up in the cliffs.

  “You’re late,” a voice said from between the trees.

  I stiffened for a second before I realized who was speaking. Aryn appeared a moment later. His blond hair was shadowed in the dusk, and his blue eyes had the jewel-like quality to them that all werewolf eyes adopted when the animal was close to the surface.

  “Were you sent to meet me, or are you just curious?”

  Aryn rolled his eyes and fell into step next to me. He was the alpha’s third, below me in the pack hierarchy, and I didn’t have to respect him.

  “Curious,” he admitted.

  Good man. Wolves could smell lies, and they just made you look like a kiss-ass when you did it, anyway.

  “I’m here because we’re going to run into trouble if we don’t act now.”

  “The fae?”

  “Idiot.” He flinched when I insulted him. “The fae don’t fight. They have rights to the land, but there are others who will learn about it soon, if they haven’t already.”

  Aryn curled up his lips, showing his teeth. It looked a little silly with him in human form, but his sentiment was clear, and wolf habits died hard.

  I nodded.

  Raphael appeared before us, and I stopped. I looked him in the eye only for a second before averting my gaze. He was my alpha, and I had to submit.

  His hair was copper and his eyes an emerald green. He was a lot more wolf than the rest of us, even in human form.

  “What news from the reserve?” he asked.

  “The land is a burial ground. Wolves rest there.”

  Raphael’s eyes shimmered, something raw flickering through them. “This is good.”

  I nodded. “The fae have reported it to Gray, though. We don’t have much time.”

  Raphael swore loud and long. He put his hands on his hips. The power that came from him in his anger rippled over us, and my wolf shook itself out, attentive now.

  “The power is strong. They’ll want it.”

  There was no need to elaborate on who they were. The witches went unnamed if we could help it. We didn’t like speaking of the enemy – it put everyone in a bad mood.

  “We’ll have to travel down there, then, and claim it.” When Raphael looked at me again, his eyes were all wolf.

  I shook my head. “We should plan this instead of rushing in.”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. Aryn took a step back. He was always quiet unless spoken to in the alpha’s presence.

  “It’s a suggestion,” I added.

  Raphael’s wolf was at the forefront, which meant he took almost everything as a challenge. The fae saw werewolves as aggressive creatures who acted without thought or mercy. In Raphael’s case, they were accurate. We weren’t all like that, but the fae weren’t wrong to keep their distance, much as I hated to admit it.

  “What else do you have in mind, then?” Raphael’s voice was dripping with sarcasm, and his power – irritation, bloodlust – crawled over my skin.

  “I have a man on the inside.” A woman, really.

  “Fae don’t trust wolves.”

  “This one does.”

  Raphael narrowed his eyes. His irritation faded, but his bloodlust still hung thick in the air, metallic on my tongue, almost like blood itself. And there was a hunger for power in it too, an ache that I knew belonged to the alpha.

  “Is there a reason your man is betraying his own?”

  The words shocked me. Betrayal? I hadn’t seen Amber’s reaction to me as a betrayal, but if she chose a wolf over the laws of her own kind, what else could it be?

  “They just don’t want a war so close to their turf.” That wasn’t an answer, but it wasn’t a lie, either.

  “And this man only trusts you and no other wolf?”

  I nodded again. That was also true, but it wasn’t the reason I didn’t want Raphael to go there. I didn’t want someone like him close to Amber. I knew what she had – some kind of magic that was damn attractive. I didn’t want anything else to come close to her. God help me, I was possessive. Already.

  Raphael stared at me until I lowered my eyes. I wasn’t going to challenge him, and he was at the top of the food chain.

  “Let’s get back to camp,” he said a moment later, and turned his back to us.

  We followed him through the trees.

  The werewolf camp wasn’t exactly a camp. We’d upgraded considerably since the time when it had just been a place on the ground for us to rest our bones. We’d built cabins from logs, and our ‘camp’ was really more like a village. We existed alongside each other as a community.

  When I stepped into the camp, the wolves who were around us stopped what they were doing and turned. I was higher up than all but the alpha, and they respected me. I nodded at them as I passed, and one by one they turned and continued what they were doing.

  It was good to be home. After a good meal and a talk with the inner circle – the top eight wolves after the alpha in the hierarchy – I went to bed.

  Dawn woke me, and I rolled out of bed. I opened the door and breathed in the crisp mountain air. The mountain spoke to me. I loved it here. I hated having to leave.

  Aryn was jogging toward my cabin, his cheeks flushed from the exercise, his breath escaping his mouth in small puffs. He stopped in front of me, breathing hard.

  “The alpha has left,” he said.

  “Left for where?”

  He didn’t have to answer me. I knew where Raphael had gone. He didn’t have to follow our suggestions or let us know what he was doing. There were seven wolves who were able to protect the pack if he left the way he had this morning. He didn’t have to answer to anyone.

  “Dammit. We have to go after him.”

  “Why?”

  I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to search for him, pushing my power outward, looking for a hit. He was far away already, out of range. He must have left just after we’d gone to bed.

  “If the witches find out about the power, he’s going to run into trouble, and alpha or not, he’s going to need backup against them.”

  Aryn nodded. Witches didn’t travel alone, and they didn’t fight alone. If a wolf met them alone, even if it was the all-powerful alpha, he was going to die. The alpha needed other wolves to draw power from if it came down to a fight, and he had none.

  “What do you want to do?”

  Raphael was gone, which mea
nt I was in charge now. Aryn was waiting for my command.

  “We’ll go after him. Get Dawn ready. We’ll leave as soon as possible.”

  Aryn nodded and set off to find his mate.

  Dawn was fourth in the hierarchy. She was a female, but her mating to Aryn had inserted her into the hierarchy, and the male wolf who was number five – Kurt – had had to move over for her. It never went down well when a female – regarded as the weaker sex – was above a male wolf in the hierarchy, but this was pack law.

  I got dressed and set off to find Kurt. His cabin was empty, but I found him in the forest behind the village. He was moving among the trees, tracking deer. When I arrived, they skipped away, and he looked angry. He didn’t mention the deer. Instead, he nodded at me and averted his eyes in respect.

  “We have to leave,” I told him. “The alpha needs us. I’m taking Aryn and Dawn with me. That leaves you in charge.”

  Kurt nodded, and when I turned, he walked back to the village with me.

  “It will be a full moon soon,” I said, “and we might not be here to control the pack when it happens.”

  “I can handle it,” he said.

  And he would. With the top four wolves gone, the power would automatically fall to him and give him the ability to control the pack. I didn’t know exactly how the magic worked and why that was possible, but it did work, and that was all that mattered. I left him in the village center.

  When I reached Aryn’s cabin, they were ready. They were dressed for travel. Dawn’s long brown hair was pulled into a braid down her back, her midnight eyes human but anticipating. Aryn nodded at me, and we set off without another word. I hadn’t even been home for twelve hours, and I was headed back to the reserve.

  Maybe I would see Amber again. I knew it was a mistake getting involved with her, but a part of me hoped I would run into her again. If we followed the magic, she might be there too. She was everywhere that power was, as if it drew her, too.

  The three days it would take to return were too long. If something happened before that, we could lose Raphael. We would know, though, if something happened to him. The mantle of power would come to me, and I would know. But that hadn’t happened. That was my only consolation. Still, traveling on foot was too slow.

  When we finally arrived at the edge of the reserve, magic tingled over my skin, but it wasn’t the good kind. It wasn’t the fae kind, either. There were witches around. Not around us, but around Raphael. I felt it inside of me, in a part of me that didn’t belong to me but to the alpha.

  “They found him,” I said.

  I started stripping. The change ripped clothes, and we hadn’t brought extra for the journey – we’d left in a hurry and had traveled light. When I was naked, I brought on the change. I wasn’t going to face a witch in human form, not if they meant to fight. And they never meant to walk away in peace.

  I crouched on the ground, the magic crippling me for a second. It washed over me, consumed me, nearly drowning me as it called out the animal from within me. A growl emanated from my throat. It was dangerous to change out in the open where humans could see us, where other creatures could attack. Wolves were vulnerable during their change – a moment where they couldn’t fight.

  The change didn’t last long. The wolf broke free. Fur covered my skin. My bones shifted, my body rebuilding itself, and then I stretched out into my wolf body. Power immediately passed from me to Aryn, who was shifting and needed the help. I pushed as much as I could spare into him. He would do that for Dawn, in turn, as soon as he was ready.

  The three of us took no longer than a minute to change, but when you’re exposed and vulnerable like that, a minute can be a hell of a long time.

  After we were ready, we moved fast. The reserve was about four miles in length and we ran along the wall, trying to stay out of sight. Urgency built inside of me. Raphael could keep the witches occupied for a while with small talk – witches were humans, essentially, and small talk was what they did. But it wouldn’t hold them for long.

  We reached Raphael the moment the conversation turned ugly.

  A handful of witches were standing at the edge of the cemetery. Raphael was facing them, calm, human.

  “Ah, you’ve brought your friends, after all,” one of the witches said. She was tall and skinny, with pitch-black hair and eyes that sliced through me.

  Raphael looked at us and nodded. “You didn’t really think I’d come alone, did you?”

  Right. Big man, now that backup was here.

  The witch laughed, and it shattered the air around us like breaking glass. It crawled under my skin, and I fought the urge to shake myself like a dog. I watched the other witches. There were more females than males – witches seemed to think that women were stronger. Maybe, with their power, they were. The men were standing toward the back, like their hierarchy expected it from them, and there were only two.

  Magic built in the air around us. The atmosphere became thick with it. It pushed down my throat, flattened against my coat. This fight was going to be tough. The witch at the front with the creepy eyes looked at me. She smiled as if she knew something, and I shivered. I didn’t want to know what she knew.

  The power kept building, and there was a point when I couldn’t breathe. Surely we could pull from the land, call on the corpses buried beneath the ground, borrow power from them? I reached out to the dead. Yes, there was something there to be had – I could feel it. This was what everyone was after, after all.

  Then new magic arrived, magic that wasn’t supposed to be here, along with the sound of a muffler. I spun around. A gray car pulled up, the back door opened, and Mr. Hayden Gray, the spokesperson for the preternatural community, got out. His humanness screamed against all the magic, and a moment later it faded. The witches had noticed him, too, and cut short their attack.

  Another person got out – the source of the magic that didn’t belong. She was tall, with hair cut in a bob that ended just above her shoulders. Her hair was the color of dark wood, starting to gray at the roots. She was fae, and high up, judging by the strength of her magic.

  “Ah, a welcoming party,” Mr. Gray said. His voice was light, but his gaze was serious when it skipped over Raphael and the three wolves, and then the witches.

  The fae pursed her lips and glanced at us, too. Then she looked at Gray. “I believe this is what you were talking about,” she said.

  “Indeed, Mrs. Bluegrain.”

  This was the woman Amber had talked about. The council member. She looked like a pain in the ass.

  “Seeing that you’re all here,” Mr. Gray said, addressing us, “I might as well tell you what we’re doing here. We have received word that this land is a source of disagreement, and I want to decree that until Mrs. Bluegrain legally sells it to whomever makes the highest bid, this land is private property. It belongs to the fae, and anyone who trespasses will be prosecuted.”

  It was ironic: the one with no power at all was so full of himself around us. We had more magic in each of our teeth than he would ever feel in a lifetime. We could just take him out.

  I glanced at Raphael. The look on his face suggested he was thinking something along the same lines. But we couldn’t touch Gray. He wasn’t the only human who had the power of the laws that allowed us to exist in the human world in peace. There were others, and we would be banished if a human died by our hands.

  All of us.

  Gray glanced at the fae as if he was checking with her that he’d said the right things, and she nodded.

  “It appears that Amber Vale was right to approach you. She is involved with the case, but I’ll be sure to kick up her involvement up a notch.” Her eyes were a watered-down blue and her face was wrinkled. Apparently she was used to smiling, even though she wasn’t doing it now.

  Gray nodded, too, and walked back to the car.

  Amber. On the case, and involved with the council. This was better than I’d thought.

  “Shall I giv
e you a ride back to the reserve gate, Mrs. Bluegrain?” Gray asked.

  She hesitated, looking like she wanted to say no, but then she nodded. Good for her. She was out of line being here. The magic would be too much for her – too much aggression. She got into the car after Mr. Gray, and the door closed with an expensive-sounding clunk. The car purred to life and pulled away.

  I turned my attention back to the witches.

  “Well, a game of politics,” Miss Creepy said. “Not our forte, but it’s never too late to branch out.”

  Politics and mind games belonged to the vampires. Thank God they weren’t involved yet – that could get really ugly. We had to make sure it stayed that way.

  The witches turned and left. It was dangerous for them to turn their backs on werewolves, but we were outnumbered and they knew that Raphael wouldn’t attack unless he had power in numbers.

  He turned toward us.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  It was a rare moment. We squirmed at his feet, rubbing against his legs like overgrown cats, deferring to his authority despite the fact that he’d been a fool to come out here alone.

  “The power is magnificent,” he breathed after a moment, patting me on the head. “You weren’t exaggerating.”

  Raphael left us at the cemetery. He was going to Milford, where he would book rooms for us at the Crown Inn, where I’d been staying. We had to stay behind until we could shift back. Wolves couldn’t just shift back and forth at will – it took a lot out of us, and after we changed, we stayed like that until the magic regenerated itself enough for us to shapeshift again.

  By the time night fell, we were all able to shift back again. We traveled to the place where we’d shifted to retrieve our clothes before we changed back to human form.

  After we’d shifted back, I took a deep breath and blew it out. It was a little like the change from being underwater and not being able to breathe, to breaking the surface and taking those first gulps of air. I didn’t know which part I preferred – both the wolf and the human were parts of me.

  Magic started up again around us, and I groaned. I was tired. There had been enough magic floating around for one day – Raphael, the witches, the fae council member.

  “Balfour?” a voice said behind me, and I turned.

  She had her glamour in place. Her hair was shorter and blonde, not white, and her eyes were a normal brown. She was still more beautiful than any other woman I’d ever seen. And she was outside the reserve. At night.

  Her eyes flicked from me to the other two.

  “What are you doing out here?” It was a shock to my system to see her. I felt magic vibrating from Aryn and Dawn, but I didn’t know what they felt toward Amber, whether it was hostility or curiosity.

  “I bribed the gatekeeper to take a quick break.” Her cheeks colored for a moment. “I felt you close by before nightfall, and I’ve been trying to get out.”

  Was she as attracted to me as I was to her?

  “There was a tussle at the cemetery earlier,” she said. It was a statement, not a question. “Muriel told me.”

  “The lady who arrived there?”

  She nodded. She glanced at the other two again. I looked at them, and Aryn and Dawn fell back without a word. There would be questions later, but right now they were going to give me space.

  “Why are you out here?”

  Amber shrugged. She didn’t know? Or she didn’t want to say? I stepped closer to her, and it was comfortable. Warm. Familiar. Other species’ magic wasn’t supposed to feel like that, but it did with her.

  “Gray and your council member—”

  “Leader,” she cut me off. “Muriel is the council leader.”

  Right. That was even better. “The council leader arrived and cut short a battle that would have settled this once and for all. I really wish you hadn’t gone to speak with the humans.”

  “What do you think would have happened if they hadn’t arrived? It was an accident that it happened at just the right time, but the fight would have taken place.”

  There was nothing wrong with that. I wanted to say as much, but of course Amber wouldn’t understand. She was different from the rest, but she was still fae. War was still unacceptable.

  I took a deep breath.

  “You’re right.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. I didn’t agree with her, and maybe she would figure that out, but I wanted her to think I was on her side. She was in Bluegrain’s pocket. I’d been making shit up when I’d said I had a man on the inside, but this was an opportunity to make it true.

  “I didn’t realize you knew the council leader that well.”

  She shrugged. “My father is on the council. That’s why I was sent to meet with Mr. Williams.”

  She glanced over my shoulder, like it might be a mistake to mention something like that out loud. I looked at the other wolves, too. Aryn and Dawn were in conversation, pretending not to listen.

  “Thank you for looking out for us,” I said. If she was on my side, we might still be able to get the land.

  She shrugged. “I should get back. I’m not allowed to be out here in the first place.”

  I lifted my hand and touched her hair. It wasn’t as striking as when she was in her true form, but it was still beautiful.

  “When can I see you again?” I needed to find out more.

  “I don’t know.”

  I leaned forward and kissed her. She stiffened for a moment, maybe thinking about the other wolves, but then she relaxed against me. I pushed my tongue into her mouth and tasted her. She was sweet, and the power that lived under her skin wrapped around me for a moment, an intoxicating heat.

  She broke the kiss and looked at me.

  “Please try,” I said.

  She didn’t nod or shake her head. She just turned and walked back to the gate. When she had disappeared down the driveway that led up to it, I turned back to Aryn and Dawn.

  “You didn’t tell us that you’re that close to a fae,” Aryn said.

  “Business and pleasure, right?” Dawn smiled at me – a knowing smile. A mocking one.

  I shrugged, pretending not to care that they were mocking me about Amber. “It’s the only way I can keep her on our side, and get some information out of her. Besides, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of fun, right?”

  Aryn guffawed. “You are so dead when Raphael finds out.”

  I stepped up to him, pushing my face in to his, chest on chest. I shoved some of that werewolf aggression the fae hated so much down his throat and growled low and long.

  “Good thing he won’t find out.”

  Aryn nodded, accepting the threat for what it was. When I looked at Dawn, she just shook her head. She answered to Aryn first after the alpha, and if he had a rule, it applied to her too. Pack hierarchy was a wonderful thing.

  “Let’s get to the Inn. Raph is waiting for us.”

  Chapter 5 -Amber