Awakening: Book 1 of The Summer Omega Series

by JK Cooper

  “Yes.” Sherman smiled as if humbly accepting a compliment.

  Slowly but deliberately, Grant reached behind himself and withdrew the dark blade from the sheath at his back. He brought it in front of him.

  Sherman seemed to accept what would happen next. No words came to Grant’s mind, just the pure focus of a warrior facing an enemy. Sherman brought his own blade to bear.

  Grant lunged and slashed, retreated quickly as Sherman countered. They circled, Grant’s hip stinging with every step. The QuikClot had failed by now, and he felt warmth trickling down his thigh. Sherman lunged toward Grant’s neck. Grant sidestepped the attack and grabbed Sherman’s arm, pulling with the momentum of his enemy’s thrust. Sherman came forward unbalanced, and Grant’s knee struck his chest. Sherman jumped up slightly as the knee landed, but Grant could tell he still had done damage. The hunter rolled to the side and then found his feet. He cradled his ribs with one arm, held the knife with the other.

  Grant stepped forward, slashing and pressing his advantage. Sherman blocked his arc, blade to blade, then rotated his hand so his knife slid down Grant’s and ran across the back of Grant’s hand. Fresh blood hit the floor, but Grant ignored the new burst of pain and grabbed Sherman’s wrist with his free hand.

  With a grip of iron, Grant twisted Sherman's arm behind his back, his knife still clutched in his hand. As Grant forced the arm up higher, he heard something pop, and Sherman dropped the knife. With a quick leg sweep, Grant forced Sherman face-first to the ground. Even with a dislocated shoulder, Sherman proved strong, but Grant knelt on his spine and pressed his knee down hard enough to make Sherman stop resisting. He grabbed the man by the hair and pulled his head back.

  “You were always the strongest,” Sherman croaked. “It had to be done. You know it did.”

  “What I know is that you murdered my wife, allowed your vile son to rape young girls, and kidnapped my daughter with the intent to kill her. You speak of righteousness. As so, in righteousness, I claim your life.”

  “Wait, the prophecies, you’ve only read—”

  Grant thrust his blade through the back of Sherman’s neck, with such force the tip bit into the concrete, pinning Sherman to the ground.

  All turned quiet.

  Elias sprinted with all his energy toward the manor. He felt his pack in full battle, desperately fighting for their lives, for each other. And you are not there! he roared, internally scolding himself.

  Above him, he heard the whir of the drones, also at full throttle. He had caught up to them, and now he passed them, pushing himself harder. His muscles ached in protest, but he ignored the pain, demanding all the endurance they could provide.

  His home came into view. Smoke seemed to hang accusingly in the air, as if to blame him for what had happened in his absence. The sting of that accusation lanced his chest, adding to the hollowness he felt at the loss of Kale. They have taken my son from me!

  Others of his pack had died. The Southebys. Anna Bingham. Will Kaplan.

  A soft glow of orange shimmered as Elias drew closer, still sprinting. A car in flames. Sounds of automatic weapons fire sent new streaks of anger through Elias. The acrid scent of spent gunpowder and smoke. A small explosion. He was close enough now to know that it came from within his home.

  He leaped over the perimeter wall of his property, discarding all concerns for stealth, and howled a commanding tone, deep and resonant. He landed in the midst of a copse at the north end of the front yard. Five hunters that had been advancing on the house turned to him. Excellent. Elias salivated.

  The hunters fired their guns, and Elias darted for the cover of a tree, then another. In the darkness, he hunched low and prowled beneath the shrubs. The hunters fired at the first tree, obviously thinking him to still be there, still advancing. Elias launched himself from his crouched concealment and pounced on the closest enemy, dispatching him before he could scream, then the next. This one did scream as Elias bit through his Kevlar vest, tearing a piece of the man’s torso free. The other three turned in surprise and fired wildly. Elias sprinted to the next tree and sheltered behind it until he heard the slides of their guns lock back. He took them quickly.

  Above him, he heard the drones arrive followed by their higher-pitched guns firing. The autonomous targeting system had taken over. Several other hunters were taken down by the drones. Elias turned swiftly, sensing the approach of Dakota and Chenoa. Their snouts were stained with a dark crimson.

  Several have fallen, Dakota said through the pack-link.

  I know, Elias said.

  And the girl? Chenoa asked.

  Her father and Kale are seeing to her.

  Dakota averted his gaze. I do not feel your son.

  Elias did not answer but sprinted toward the house. Dakota and Chenoa raced after him.

  Sadie’s paws trod lightly on the marble floor on the lower level of the manor. Bubba, beside her, held a pistol. She wasn’t sure he knew what to do with it. The emergency lighting flickered red sporadically, leaving them in darkness mostly. But if they were going to move stealthily, Bubba needed to stop breathing through his mouth. It was like a small avalanche with each breath. She wondered what his snoring must be like. Did his mom take sedatives so she could sleep through it? Or maybe she made him sleep outside?

  Two red dots danced on the floor in front of her, then one jumped to her and the other to Bubba. Lasers. Sadie bit Bubba’s shirt and tugged hard just as the gunfire erupted. Bubba screamed. Holy SWAC did he have a pair of lungs! The muzzle flashes from the two hunters’ guns betrayed their positions and Sadie charged, too swiftly for them to target her, though a trail of bullets struck behind her as she leaped upon one hunter and took him by the throat. The other drew a pistol when his rifle ran dry, but something flew into him before he could raise it. A deep snarl rose from a dark shape that the flickering red light revealed to be Elias. The hunter twitched with the Alpha’s jaws around his throat.

  Gunfire sounded from other parts of the house. And Bubba screamed again.

  What is he doing here? Elias roared into Sadie’s mind.

  Sadie craned her head to see Bubba, his side pressed against the wall, one leg raised as if shielding his stomach, and his arms covering his head. One wide staring eye peeked out from the crook of his arm. What the . . . dozens of bullet holes pockmarked the wall around Bubba, as if outlining his body perfectly.

  “Aw, hell no!” he cried. “They put a hole in my Wilfork jersey. Look at that! Right there!” He fingered a hole near his belly. “Hell. Naw!”

  Long story, Sadie said to Elias. He saved me with a magic marker, though. Sadie felt Elias’s flustered attitude. Dakota and Chenoa strode up next to the Alpha.

  “I’m so hangry,” Bubba said. “That’s right. Hungry and angry.” He sighed, leaning his hand against the wall, apparently for balance. He shook his head. “Mostly hungry.”

  Where is Gennesaret? Elias demanded.

  I’m here, she said through the pack-link, coming around the corner. The McKinneys and Emily and Austin Kaplan, as well as Sadie’s parents, followed Gennesaret.

  Where is Shelby? Sadie asked. And Kale?

  We have to clear the manor, Elias said. This is our den. We have been invaded. This is our priority right now. Let’s focus.

  Sadie heard the strain in Elias’s voice, even through the pack-link. He was suppressing pain.

  Gennesaret shifted to her human form. “Deshawn, I thought we had you safely stowed away in the panic room.”

  “Yeah, about that. See, I was making some ramen and uh . . . um, are all y’all always naked when you do that?”

  “Please Deshawn, focus.”

  A gunshot rang out, closer. Upstairs. Sadie saw Bubba flinch but smile when a snarl answered the gunshot followed by a scream.

  “That’s Ackerman,” Gennesaret said. “He’s fine. The hunter is not.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Bubba said. “So, like I was sayin’, my girl Sadie here got herself in a hot spot, and I had t
o rescue her. That’s all, ya feel? Just doin’ what needs doin’ is all.”

  Sadie felt Gennesaret’s inquisitive gaze and averted her eyes.

  “I see,” Gennesaret said. “It seems we’ll have to have a talk once this is all over, won’t we?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Copeland,” Bubba said meekly.

  Something tugged at Shelby’s consciousness. She knew she was dying. And, she found she didn’t care. Kale’s thrumming had ceased, either that or she was too weak to feel it anymore. Pressure, she did feel pressure, a sensation that she knew should have brought pain, but she had drifted beyond that.

  She just wanted to let go. Strength had found her when she needed it, but her wounds, the silver, the truth of her father . . . she was mortal and could only take so much.

  Something stirred in her ears, daring to take her from her drifting. There, again. Were those words? A voice?

  “Shelby!”

  Pain like a white hot fire sliced up her side. She wanted to scream, but her lips did not obey her instinct. And again, in her arm, the same pain. Her mind came closer to the surface, and she felt something pulled from her. Strength began to surge through her now. Healing. Mental awareness. She reached the surface in her mind and sucked in a large, painful breath as her eyes snapped open.

  “It’s okay, Shel.”

  Her dad’s voice. He came into focus, too slowly, but she saw the knife in his hand and recoiled. He dropped it.

  “Had to pull the rounds out,” he said. “The one in your arm was deep. You’re healing now, though. Anyone ever tell you you’re tough?”

  Shelby’s eyes flickered to where Sherman lay. “He killed Mom.”

  “He’s gone,” Grant said.

  “I saw her. When I shifted. She . . . helped me.”

  Her dad went still. “How did she look?”

  No disbelief. No patronizing words. Her dad’s simple acceptance of her statement at face value steadied her. “Beautiful,” she said.

  “I brought you your clothes,” he said, “for all the good they will do. They’re pretty much shredded.”

  She took them anyway. And then she remembered. “Kale!”

  Grant sucked in a breath. “He got shot. I saw him fall.”

  Shelby touched her chest above her heart. “He’s on the catwalk!”

  “What?”

  “He’s up there. Came in through the fire escape.”

  “But . . .” Grant sputtered.

  “We have to get to him.” But she knew, even now, she was probably too late. What could she possibly do? “They did something to him. He couldn’t heal or shift.”

  Grant groaned. “Sodium thiopental.”

  “They used it on me,” Shelby said.

  “But you still shifted,” Grant said. “How?”

  She had shifted. Somehow that momentous event felt lost in the midst of this tragedy. “I think Mom did something. I’m not really sure what happened.” Her mother had helped, but that was not the full answer. No, Shelby had called forth her wolf by the use of a name. What name? Why could she not remember? It had been just minutes ago, hadn’t it? She felt that memory stolen from her. Erased.

  “I . . . I don’t know.”

  She started to get up but stopped abruptly. Healing or not, the pain was real. Holy hell was it real. She quickly dressed as best she could in the torn rags of her clothes, wincing with every move and not shy at all in front of her dad. With what they had just been through, such a petty thing as modesty was the furthest thing from her mind.

  “What he said about Mom,” Shelby began, but could not finish.

  Her dad swallowed hard. He hadn’t known what Sherman had done. Truly, he hadn’t. That comforted her, but the revelation that he had been sent to kill her own mother . . . how to process that. She couldn’t. Not now.

  “I had to get him away from Kale,” Shelby whispered. “Lucas. I . . .” Her eyes darted to the mangled mess of Lucas’s corpse. “I couldn’t leave him next to Kale. It just felt . . . blasphemous. Like his presence was killing Kale.” She suddenly felt small in the wake of all that had happened. “I shouldn’t have left him. How could I have left him alone?” That was what felt blasphemous, she decided. Her lip quivered. “Is he really dead, Dad?”

  Grant still wore the face of a hardened warrior, but his eyes swam with grief. “Let’s go get him,” came his husky reply.

  Shelby knelt over Kale’s body. As if to preserve his dignity, a stack of wooden crates cast shadows that cloaked his privates, though the dim moonlight that peeked through the windows gave little enough illumination. Grant’s flashlight made Shelby blink when he flipped it on. The sudden light seemed harsh against Kale’s body, an irreverent interruption to the desperate scene.

  Shelby recoiled. Crusted blood covered the chest of this man she loved. Streams of crimson ran down to his hips from two wounds. Her lip quivered more and she dry heaved a sob.

  “Hey,” Grant said. “You need to stomach this if we’re going to save him.”

  “Isn’t he . . .”

  Grant felt Kale’s neck. “If he’s got a pulse it’s too weak for me to find. But his wounds are still bleeding. That’s a good sign, though the flow is slow.”

  Shelby nodded. “Okay,” she said, as if speaking would summon the bravery needed. It did help. Even though her lip still trembled.

  Her dad tore open a packet of QuikClot and dumped it on the entry wound and then the exit wound on Kale’s right breast. The exit wound looked like a geyser had burst through his skin. Shelby reached forward to touch him, as if to comfort him, but her hand shook.

  “He’s lucky it was a smaller sniper round. Probably a .260. A .338 la pua or .50 cal might have torn him in half.”

  Lucky? This was lucky?

  “What do we do?” she asked.

  “He’s not healing on his own,” Grant said. “Or not fast enough. He needs to shift.”

  “But he’s unconscious!” Tears brimmed in Shelby’s eyes. “And he has that stuff in him. Lucas injected him with it.”

  Grant lifted her chin. “Shel, you have to do it.”

  “Do what?” She started to cry. “I don’t know what to do!”

  “You do. You shifted despite the drug. You can help him shift. Somehow, you can enter other werewolves’ minds. I’ve seen you do it.”

  “No.” She shook her head defiantly. “I kill them when I do that. I can’t control it.”

  Grant heaved a heavy breath, wincing from his own wounds. “He’s already dead if you don’t try, Shel.”

  Such cruel words; not because of how Grant spoke them, but because of their truth. She gritted her teeth, so mad at her disobedient tears that spilled liberally, so mad at herself for allowing this to happen, for bringing this upon Kale, upon his family. She felt the loss of others in the pack and reeled for them, their deaths feeling like candles extinguished from her soul forever. It was the blessing and the curse of an Omega, to love the pack so completely and so fully, so immediately.

  And the man before her, dying, had struggled with his last bits of energy to come for her. To save her. The price others had paid for her pulled on her neck like a millstone. She leaned over Kale’s body, heaving with an anguished sob. She beat her fist on his chest with the next sob.

  “Try, Shelby,” Grant whispered. “Just try.”

  Shelby shut her eyes, squeezing them dry. Searching for and finding those lantern-moon eyes in her mind did not take long. “I need you. Please.” And yet, she felt her wolf’s uncertainty. I don’t know what you do, but please, I need you to try.

  From the den of her mind, Shelby saw her wolf come forth. Sights, sounds, and scents all became sharper. Even the dried blood on Kale’s chest seemed to glisten, and she smelled the iron in the air. As she laid her hand on him, she felt the contours of his cooling skin more keenly, like the smooth sand of a desert at night. He had always appeared so strong to her. Invincible, even. Then her vision started to wobble at the edges, as if something tore at it. But the focus
of her eyes, locked on to Kale, remained steady and constant.

  “Shel, your eyes are changing,” Grant said.

  She felt the amber flecks scorching her irises, felt the growl building within her and, suddenly, saw Kale’s wolf—its eyes—peering back at her in her mind. They were not amber, not the bright vividness she might have expected, but a pale, sickly jaundiced color.

  Shelby felt the wolf’s fear and helplessness. It was dying, and had given into despair, believing no deliverance would come. She reassured Kale’s wolf, trying to comfort it, to give it hope, but she could not mask her own sense of hopelessness and she knew Kale’s wolf felt it through her facade.

  Again, that overwhelming feeling of familiarity came upon Shelby, a recognition that she knew Kale. “He said it was you,” she whispered to Kale’s wolf. “That it is you, our wolves, that carry the memory he speaks of. Show me.”

  Through that tendril of a link, Shelby felt the weakening of Kale’s wolf. It struggled to rise to Shelby’s request . . . because, she saw, it loved her and her wolf with a timeless love. It summoned the energy and into Shelby’s mind flashed a panoramic scene.

  A forest. Fire. Smoke and ashes. A village with screams. Her village. Her people’s screams. Wolves darted through the forest, attacking men with swords, the same men that had brought death and terror to her people. Yes, the wolves fought as her people fled, yet again, into the forest to escape the persecution. So many invaders had come this time.

  Nothing made sense. She tasted the acrid air, saw the orange embers floating like drunken fireflies, but where was she?

  A wolf nuzzled her side. In this waking dream, Shelby was not surprised to see her companion. The royal blue coat shimmered like the deepest ocean, and her wolf’s eyes shone like two beacons hovering over the gray clouds of a storm. Yes, the coloring of her snout did resemble the bluish-gray of angry storm clouds. Children ran past her, seeking refuge among the trees as their homes burned. This has happened many times, she somehow recalled.

  The vision changed, and she saw herself kneeling with frantic grief over a young boy, her wolf still at her side. She wore a simple shift, a crude nightgown, with ties at the V over her sternum that barely revealed her cleavage. Streaks of crimson stained the shift. The boy held a wound at his side, trying to stop a river of flowing blood. Kale knelt beside her—but not Kale. That was not his name in the vision, but his name did not come to her. Nor, she realized, was the dream version of herself named Shelby. The boy coughed, and her attention turned back to him.