Becoming the Enigma
Sheritta Bitikofer
Copyright © 2017 Sheritta Bitikofer
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means – except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews – without written permission from its author.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and a product of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Cover art by Angela Quincoces Rivera at http://www.dream-designz.com
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-946821-13-3
Print ISBN: 978-1-946821-15-7
Created with Vellum
This story has been one that is near and dear to my heart. I have to thank everyone for helping me through the ordeal of writing, editing, revising, and countless reediting. I couldn’t have done it without the support and love of my family and friends.
Also, a big thanks to my husband for rejoicing in my quirky obsessions. I can always count on you to be by safe harbor, someone I can speak freely with about my stories without fear of rejection. Your support has been invaluable.
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
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Sneak Peek into “Beast Within”
Afterword
About the Author
Also by Sheritta Bitikofer
1
Darren rubbed at the back of his neck as he reclined in one of the plush armchairs in the sitting room, while Ben sat on the piano stool, clutching his hands tightly together as if in prayer. Dustin sluggishly paced in the foyer just beyond the open French doors, diligently watching the sleeping figures of Katey on one couch and Logan on the other across from her.
The teachers had loosened their formal attire, top buttons and ties undone. Darren had shed his jacket long before then in the heat of getting the two unconscious kids safely into the house.
It’d been hours since the attack and neither of them had moved. But, as long as the three men could still hear their gentle breathing and strong heartbeats, they knew that there was still hope.
Ben glanced to the clock on the wall, watching the pendulum swing with each second that dragged. Dustin blew out a short breath and stopped just inside the French doors. Darren looked to his beta and his impatient, shifty gaze.
“Brooding won’t make them wake up,” he commented as he unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves to his elbows.
Ben rolled his shoulders. “What else are we supposed to do? I can’t just carry on with my evenin’, knowin’ that they’re like this.”
“When I tried to change Carlotta in Italy, she passed out, too,” Dustin said, brushing his fingertips underneath his chin with a distant look in his eye. “She was unconscious for nearly a day before she started fading.”
“Katey won’t fade,” Darren stated, knowing that he had to stay strong for his pack. If he showed the slightest bit of panic, they would latch onto it and claim it as their own. “We didn’t have time to prepare, but she’s strong. She’ll pull through.”
Ben hung his head and ran his hands through his hair, gripping at the roots. Dustin turned away, his arms crossed and shoulders rigid. Darren swallowed hard and turned his attention back to Katey, who looked to be sleeping soundly. At least she wasn’t in any pain… yet.
Katey moaned as feeling finally returned to her body. Everything ached, from her muscles and bones to her skin, as if she had been stretched too thin and then pushed back together. She moved her head and pain shot down her spine. She hissed and struggled to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt bruised and swollen.
The lights blinded her and she squeezed her eyes shut again with a whimper. Bright dots danced in Katey’s vision as her retinas tried to recover from the sudden assault.
All three men were on their feet the moment she stirred.
“Ben, turn off the lights,” Darren whispered. Ben dove for the wall just behind the piano and flicked them off, leaving only the light from the foyer to illuminate the sitting room.
Katey sighed and blinked for a moment, trying to think, but that, too, made her hurt. She glanced between her three teachers and their frantic gazes.
Through the haze and chaos of alien sensations and pain, she tried to remember where she was. The faces that stared down at her now were clear and unforgettable. She squinted around and recognized the old furniture and crystal chandelier.
But as her mind reached into the past, another face appeared. One distorted with rage and the golden eyes of the wolf staring at her with hunger and anguished longing. Growls and harsh words hummed in her ears and she remembered what happened.
More pain struck her body, but it could do little to distract her from the memory of Logan bent over her with teeth bared in a snarl. Katey found the energy to push herself up, but Dustin gently pushed her back down onto the sofa, his touch like needles jabbing into her flesh.
“Just take it easy. Everything’s okay. How do you feel?”
“Don’t shout at me,” she moaned, her own voice sounding like a clanging gong in her ears.
“I’m not.”
“Give her ears a bit to get used to it,” Darren whispered from behind Dustin.
Katey blinked hard and raised her hand to her throbbing head, the effort to move alone expending what energy she had left. “Where’s Logan?” she asked.
“He’s right here,” Ben replied, his voice much softer than the others.
Katey turned her head and her eyes fell upon the couch across from her. There lay Logan’s limp and unconscious body. His face was blank, as if he were sleeping. It was certainly not the face she saw last in Dustin’s classroom.
“Don’t worry, we crammed meat down his throat when he woke up a couple of hours ago. He’s just resting now,” Dustin assured, gently rubbing his thumb against her tender shoulder. The prickly edges of bandage tape bit into her skin as it shifted under her clothes.
“Everything hurts,” she remarked.
Darren took a careful step forward. “It’s going to hurt for a little while. But, once everything sets in, you’ll feel relatively normal again.”
Katey stretched her head over and looked at the sleeping Logan. Her thoughts were a tangled mess, searching for an explanation why everything was so sensitive and vivid.
“Am I...” she muttered.
The guys glanced to each other and Darren nodded solemnly. “We think so.”
Katey took deep breaths and it was like each inhale was a new experience. Air passed in and out of her lungs, but it didn’t quite feel the same as it had before.
She glanced over to the coffee table in the middle of the room and saw that her glasses were folded up and resting on the cold marble. Her eyes fluttered around and every detail appeared in sharp
relief. No more blurry lines. It was like she could see the way she did when she had her glasses on, only better. Everything from the fibers of the red carpet to the rough texture of the wallpaper was clear and vibrant. With her eyes wide open, she realized that colors were brighter, more distinct in their varying shades.
Not only that, but her mind was assailed with potent scents and smells she couldn’t quite recognize. The guys’ distinct scents from their cologne and deodorants, the metallic acrid scent of dried blood smeared all over her hoodie and jeans, the musty smell of old carpet, chemical odor of the paint and building materials, the earthy scent of the wood floors in the foyer and living room. She could even smell the food in the refrigerator all the way in the kitchen.
As the aching slowly began to subside from her nerves, she began to feel something like static shocks under her skin that made her muscles twitch. A tingly feeling in the back of her skull developed and slowly dissipated as the moments passed. She recognized it as a caffeine buzz, but like everything else, it wasn’t quite the same.
And there was another sensation that was completely strange to her. It was a spiritual and emotional pull, like a loosely tethered rope between her and each of the men in the room that allowed her to move independently, but with a constant reminder that they were there. The connection pulsated as if strength and life were surging between all five of them. Was this the pack bond they had talked about before? Was this what imprinting brought or was it something else to do with what she had become?
“What time is it?” she said, straining her vocal cords to speak louder, though her ears protested.
“A little past ten o’clock,” Ben replied. “You’ve been out for a while now.”
“We are so sorry this happened,” Dustin pleaded. “We thought Logan knew better than to go behind our backs like this.”
Katey could hear the sorrow in his voice, but what was more, she thought she could smell it. Like a predator smelled fear on an animal of prey, Katey smelled their worry, their regret, and guilt clearly as if it were written on their faces.
“If we had known,” Dustin continued, “we would have taken every measure to keep an eye on him.”
“But, I asked for it,” Katey managed to say as the cloud of disorientation cleared from her head.
Dustin sat back on his heels, a look of shock on all of the teachers’ faces.
“You asked for it?” Dustin questioned. “But we told you he wouldn’t be the one to change you. Why didn’t you tell us you were ready? One of us would have.”
Katey felt the edges of her mouth twitch into a weak smile, straining against tired and sore facial muscles. “But he did.”
She was proud of him in a weird, morbid sort of way. Logan did what they thought he couldn’t do, what they thought no loup-garou could do. It was worth the risk of death to give him such bragging rights.
Darren shook his head, fury returning to him like it had hours before when he got the call from Dustin. “That’s not the point. He could have killed you. If Dustin hadn’t walked in, he probably would have. We don’t know how long he had been holding onto you like that. He could have put way too much venom into you. You lost a lot of blood... We weren’t all sure if you were going to make it.”
The aching had faded away and Katey felt a sliver of worry pierce the fog in her mind as she tried to comprehend it all.
“Please,” she whispered, “don’t scold him. Everything turned out fine.”
“Oh, we will scold him,” Dustin retorted in his Irish accent. The anger flowing off him in buckets, threatening to drown Katey’s delicate nerves. “He knows better and it might not have all turned out fine. It could have been much worse.”
Katey looked between their frustrated gazes and tried to push back the thickness that developed in her throat. She understood how much worse it could have been. She wasn’t a fool. They all told her the dangers and Logan made it perfectly clear that being around him was more dangerous than she could have possibly imagined.
By agreeing for Logan to change her that day, Katey wasn’t meaning to sign her death certificate. That was the last thing she ever wanted to do anymore. More than anything, she wanted to be part of their pack, part of their family, and a permanent fixture in Logan’s life. Love was the reason, not foolishness.
The guys’ heads swiveled around to look to Logan who was just beginning to stir on the couch.
“Ben, take her upstairs until we’ve had a talk with Logan,” Darren ordered.
“No, I want to stay,” Katey entreated, grabbing at Dustin’s sleeve, her weak fingers gripping at the material.
He pulled her hand away and stood to join Darren. “You will not stay down here. Take her up, Ben.”
Ben approached and in one slow, fluid motion, pulled her to her feet.
Katey felt more shocks and tingles in her muscles that caused her to tremble. Ben’s hand gripped under her arm and he platonically wrapped his arm around her waist to steady her. The room swayed in her vision and bile tried to push its way up her esophagus.
“Your strength will come to you after a while,” he told her. Katey took his word for it, knowing that he had been where she was over a century and a half ago.
As they hobbled out of the sitting room and into the foyer, her eyes stayed fixed on Logan, apprehensive to leave him to his alpha’s rage. She wanted to tell them everything, convince them to be gentle with Logan, but she was too weak, too dazed to form the words coherently.
Katey and Ben soundlessly made their way through the living room and just as they were taking the first step up the stairs, Katey stopped to hear Logan rise from the sofa in the sitting room. She pushed herself from Ben’s grasp and clung to the corner of the wall, desperate to eavesdrop.
Logan passed a hand over his face and around his neck. The gnawing hunger no longer ate away at his insides, so his mind was free of the beast for a time, but that did little to help fill in the blanks of how he came to be on the couch with his alpha and beta glaring down at him.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Darren growled.
“I’ll tell you what he was thinking,” Dustin rattled off in his thick accent. “The boyo wasn’t thinking anything. He just wanted to go and kill Katey, blatantly disobeying us.”
Logan turned his eyes to his mentors and exhaled deeply, recalling only vaguely what had transpired at the school. The wolf in him had taken control. It was his words, his passion behind the prompting to change Katey, but the wildness wasn’t his.
“Takes after you all right,” Darren quipped.
“Kill? Is she alive?” Logan’s scratchy throat managed to mutter. His senses probed out to find her. Her scent was fresh in the sitting room and he felt a new addition to the pack bond, just as he had felt when Ben joined them decades ago after Darren broke him. Though they were hundreds of miles apart, the link was keenly felt. Yes, Katey was alive and she was loup-garou. There was no way to measure the hope and pure joy that blanketed his soul.
“She is alive, but that’s beside the point. You could have killed her!” Darren roared, making everyone’s ears ring. “Why didn’t you come to us first? Why didn’t you make sure there was someone there to watch you?”
Logan was not fazed by his anger. He’d been in trouble before. Nothing this serious, but he was accustomed to getting a verbal thrashing from his alpha. This time was different and he could practically taste the unquestionable authority in his voice. What he didn’t expect was to be riled so disproportionately by his dominance. “I knew if I told any of you what I wanted to do, you’d just hold me back.”
“Damn right we would have!” Dustin exclaimed. “Why in hell’s blazes did you do this?”
Logan lowered his gaze and ran his fingers through his matted hair in frustration. “I ... I just wanted to be with her.”
Darren scoffed. “That’s a lame excuse. You could have been with her in the way everyone else deals with having a mate.”
“She was okay with it,” Logan
countered.
“Yeah, I’m sure she would be after being terrified out of her mind!” Dustin cried. “I’d hate to have seen how you looked since you didn’t eat all day.”
“I didn’t mean to scare her.” Logan’s eyes drifted shut at the realization that he did frighten her. He could smell her fear, see it glimmering in her eyes like unshed tears. Katey had even said so herself and it barely deterred him. Logan’s chest grew tight, knowing he had done the one thing he had promised never to do.
“But you probably did,” Darren said. “You pushed her into making that decision. This situation could have been a lot worse than it was. I’ve given you a lot of chances, Logan, but this takes the cake. I’ve taught you better than to go and do something like this.”
“I’m sorry,” Logan whispered, feeling the gravity of his sins weigh heavily upon his shoulders. His alpha always had a way of convicting him better than even he could himself.
“You’re sorry?” Dustin exploded, pacing behind Darren. “What would you have said if you had killed her? Sorry?”
Logan’s head shot up and looked toward the foyer. “Where is she?” he demanded.
“Ben took her upstairs to rest,” Darren said, then raised his voice a bit and angled his head toward the foyer. “Didn’t you, Ben?”
Ben took the cue that they knew she was still listening. They heard the omega pry Katey’s hands away from the wall and began to lead her upstairs again.
“Is she okay?” Logan asked, his voice cracking from the emotions that welled within him.
Becoming the Enigma (The Loup-Garou Series Book 2) Page 1