Wolf Bound (The White Wolf Prophecy Book 1)

by Kayleigh King

  “Lions and cougars? Are there bears? What about Coyotes? Foxes? Oh my god, are there zebra shifters?”

  “Yes, to everything, but Zebras.” Margot laughs at me, and I blush in embarrassment. “For the most part, shifters tend to be predatory animals like you listed.”

  “What else is there?” My eyes go wide when I ask. “Are there vampires?”

  “Yes, there are vampires. They tend to stick to themselves, though. I’ve only ever met one before.”

  “What are they like?” I can’t help but ask, completely fascinated by the idea of a vampire.

  “They’re actually pretty normal. That’s something you have to remember about us, Pru, we’re still part human, and we tend to act more human then animalistic. Most paranormal creatures that exist are that way.” She pauses. “Well, except for demons. You’ll want to keep your distance from them.”

  “Demons?” I blink. “Sure, why not. I don’t know why that shocks me. After what I learned last night, nothing should shock me anymore.” I shrug my shoulders dramatically.

  “I’m proud of how well you’re handling all this. I would have bet money you would have been running for the hills by now.” She giggles.

  “I don’t think everything has sunk in yet. I’m sure I’ll have a complete meltdown sometime soon.”

  “Oh, yikes,” Addison’s voice comes from the doorway. “A Pruitt meltdown? Just give us a heads-up so we can all go take cover somewhere far, far away.” She has changed into some fresh clothes and looks much more rested than she did last night.

  “Hey! I’m not that bad, and if I did have a meltdown, I think it would be very understandable given the situation! I just found out that one day, I might sprout a tail and howl at the moon. You’re all lucky I haven’t checked myself into a psych ward by now.”

  I snap my fingers and point at Margot, “Oh, and I learned vampires and demons are real! Demons, Addie. Like this shit is getting biblical.”

  “Yes, I know. I’ve never met one, but apparently, they can be…prickly.” Addison sits down in one of the cushioned chairs across from me.

  “Prickly is putting it mildly,” Margot comments with a sneer, making her distaste for the creatures obvious.

  “Okay that settles it, I’ll just add demons to the list of things I never want to meet. I’ll put them right under sharks.” I pause and look at Margot. “Shark shifters?”

  “Of course not,” she laughs at me.

  “Well, I figured not, but thought I’d double-check.” I shrug before picking my mug off the table. “You just said there are demons and vampires, but a shark shifter is where we draw the line,” I mumble. As I lift my coffee cup to my lips, I find it is already gone, and I frown.

  “Margot, where is Elias?” Addison asks.

  “He had a quick meeting with Gage, the head of our pack enforcers. He needed to update him on the rogue wolf Ryker killed yesterday and other things…” She trails off, her blue eyes sliding over to me.

  “You mean he had to tell them about me. That I’m really, Grey.” The name is foreign, and it feels weird saying it. I have no connection to the name and honestly, don’t know if I ever will. As far as I can remember, Pruitt is the only name I’ve ever had, and as far as I’m concerned, Pruitt is my name.

  “Yes, he doesn’t feel right keeping it from the pack, and if this Nicolai fellow really is a threat, then the pack needs to be warned.”

  “Nicolai Volkov is very much still a threat,” Addison pipes up, her tone stern. “Make no mistake, if Nicolai learns Pru is here and alive, he will come looking for her.”

  “He’ll have to go through me.” A voice comes from the side door leading to the kitchen.

  Ryker stands there coffee cup in hand, his hair still wet from the shower and slightly tousled. He has on a plain white T-shirt and a pair of well-loved jeans. Margot and Addison both wish him good morning, and he nods in their direction as he comes to stand beside me. He leans down and kisses my forehead as he passes.

  “Good morning,” he mumbles before pulling away and settling in next to me on the love seat.

  “Good morning,” I whisper back at him. I feel the flush on my cheeks with Addison and Margot watching us interact.

  “Addison, if you think Nicolai is a threat, we need to make a plan on how to keep her safe,” Ryker tells my aunt.

  Wait…do I still call her Aunt Addison? Even though she isn’t really my aunt?

  “Well, as long as we’re able to keep her existence concealed, he’ll never know where she is.”

  “Sure. Please, talk about me like I’m not sitting right here. It’s cool.” I roll my eyes at them, annoyed they’re acting like I’m not actually part of this discussion.

  “Sorry,” Ryker mumbles before turning his attention back to Addison. “You mentioned last night you faked her death. Clearly, that was to trick our pack into thinking she was dead so we wouldn’t go looking for her.”

  While he talks, he notices the coffee cup in my hand is empty, and he replaces it with his own full mug. He never stops talking as he does this. He just casually leans closer and puts his arm around the back of my seat. These little actions make my heart swell.

  “But how were you able to hide her all this time from Nicolai,” Ryker continues. “He obviously knew she wasn’t in the car that night.”

  “Noah, he—” She pauses when both Margot and Ryker stiffen at his name. They’re not over his betrayal, it would seem. “He had heard of this forger who’s based out of Seattle. After I visited Esme, I drove straight there. He was able to create new identities for both of us. Grey became Pruitt, and I changed our last names to Bailey. It became impossible to track us after that.”

  “Didn’t people know you were friends with Genevieve? Wouldn’t they make the connection that you had Grey with you?” Margot asks.

  There’s that name again…

  Addison shakes her head. “Gen’s parents and pack hated humans, so she kept our friendship a secret. And even though I knew no one knew we were friends, I would only visit when business brought me out this way after Gen moved here with Archer.”

  “I’m still upset she was taken away from me for so long, but thank you for protecting her the way you did.” Ryker nods his head at Addison.

  I can’t image how hard it was on Addison to give up her entire life and take on raising her best friend’s child, which prods me to ask, “Addison, I do have a question that’s been eating at me. Why now? Why did you bring me back here now?”

  A sad smile appears on her face before she stands up from her seat. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  15

  Ryker

  I stand on the back patio waiting for Pru and Addison to come back from their walk. I know my mate is going to need me when they’re done talking. A wolf shifter’s sense of smell is so strong we’re able to pick up the scent of a deer up to three miles away. We can also smell when someone is sick, and based on the small amount of time I’ve been around Addison, I know she’s very ill.

  Addison is the only family Grey—Pruitt—has ever known, and now she might very well lose her. I don’t know how my poor mate is going to cope with all this. She’s learned so much in the past twenty-four hours. Learning Addison is dying might be the thing that makes her fall apart.

  “Is she telling Grey?” a male voice asks from behind me.

  “It’s Pruitt now, and they’re out on a walk,” I reply with a nod, but don’t turn to face Noah. I can’t look at his face without wanting to punch it in. He knew this whole time that my mate was alive, and he never said anything. He was the officer that used to drive me home when I would get caught drinking and vandalizing shit when I was a teenager. He knew and understood why I was acting out, but he never said a word.

  “She isn’t going to handle this well.” He comes to a stop next to me. From the corner of my eye, I see he is still dressed in his police chief uniform.

  Noah isn’t short by any means, but I still have a couple inches on the pack bet
a. I stand even taller when I turn to look at him. “Pru will be fine.” I scowl at him.

  “I’m not talking about your mate. I’m talking about Addison. She’s sacrificed her life to protect Grey—I mean Pruitt. And Addison feels like she’s failing her by getting sick.” Noah reaches up and scratches the side of his face. His auburn beard is starting to gray, just like his hair. “She doesn’t want to leave her.”

  “No one is ever really ready to die,” I snap at him. “People talk a big game about being at peace with death, but it’s bullshit. If they had a choice, they would choose life over death every time. People just say that so the ones they leave behind feel better about losing a loved one. It sucks when things out of your control make choices for you, doesn’t it?”

  “You want to do this before the girls get back, or would you like to wait for an audience?” Noah calmly asks as he removes his aviator sunglasses and places them on a coffee table.

  “Now works for me,” I growl. Last night Pru had stopped me from going after Noah, but no one is here to stop me now.

  “Alright.” Noah nods once and turns to face me straight on.

  “You knew she was alive, and you kept it a secret from the pack, from me,” I start, deciding to begin with words instead of fists. “You saw how much I struggled after losing her, and you never said anything. I left my home, and the pack, my family, and you never said anything. How could you sit back and watch me fall apart when you could have fixed it with one simple conversation? She could have come back years ago, and we could have protected her, but you never gave us that option. You made the decision for all of us!” I roar at him.

  “Have you ever once stepped back and thought about how this affected everyone else? Noah asks. “Or were you just busy thinking about yourself? You are so caught up in how having Grey taken away affected you and your life.” Noah’s voice is stern, but he doesn’t yell. He never yells. “How about you take a second to think about how this affected everyone else? Grey’s memories were erased, and her wolf was bound, maybe forever. Addison gave up her entire life to take care of her dead friend’s child. Your parents had to watch you self-destruct for years before you left. Every time I had to call them after you got in trouble with the law, they thought I was calling to tell them I found you dead somewhere. Your siblings, who love you very much, by the way, had to walk on eggshells around you their whole childhood because anything could set you off. And then after you left and didn’t keep in touch, they thought many times you had been killed.”

  “But she was my mate!” I shout at him, shoving him in the chest.

  “You’re not the only one who lost the person they loved that day!” Noah shoves me back, something I was not expecting. Nor was I expecting his announcement.

  “You loved Genevieve?” I ask, dumbfounded.

  Noah doesn’t say anything for almost a full minute. “No. I was in love with Addison.” he finally admits. “I am in love with Addison.”

  “But she’s human,” I say, stating the obvious.

  “No shit.” He rolls his eyes at me. “Doesn’t change the fact I’ve been in love with her for years. She was secretly in Montana to visit Genevieve, and I found them drunk on wine in a bar a couple towns over. It was a total coincidence I was even there. And the second her eyes met mine across the bar, I was a goner. But I suppose you know what that’s like…”

  Human and shifter relationships aren’t unheard of. It’s just they never last. They can be deeply in love with each other, but it will never be enough for the shifter. A shifter needs their mate, and since shifters can’t mate with humans, the relationship eventually falls apart. Also, Shifters are only fertile after they have gone through the mating ceremony with their mate, and they have been bonded. That means a human and shifter could never start a family together.

  “Noah, you know that relationship never would have worked, right?”

  “Deep down, I know, but I still wonder if we could have been together.” Noah is notoriously private, the fact he’s being so open with me now shocks me.

  “What if your true mate had come along while you were with Addison? Trust me, there is no denying the pull of your true mate.” I shake my head. “You would have had to leave Addison and the life you built with her. Even if you still loved her, you would love your true mate more.”

  “Trust me, I know all of this, but I still can’t help how I felt, how I feel now,” Noah explains. “I wish we were able to mate outside of our species.”

  “There would be fewer rogues if that was an option,” I offer. “The birthrate would rise too, I assume.”

  “It would be interesting to see what a crossbred child would be like,” Noah muses.

  We stand in silence for a while, both of us staring out at the lake. I think back to forty-eight hours ago and how this place felt like a graveyard to me. But now instead of looking down at the dock and thinking about how I stood there years ago when my father told me Grey died, I think about how I shared my first kiss with her just last night.

  “How does it feel to have her back after all this time?”

  I stop and think for a minute, trying to figure out the right words to use. “I never felt like I could breathe after that night. It was like I had to fight for every breath I took. And there was this aching in my chest, right here,” I say, pointing to my heart. “And whenever I thought about her, the aching would get worst. But the second I saw her standing there, the pain disappeared, and I took my first full breath of air for the first time in years.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you,” Noah apologizes. “I just knew I had to keep them safe. All of them safe,” he says, referring to the pack.

  “I don’t like it, and it still makes me mad, but I understand why you did it,” I concede. I had always thought I was the only one who suffered after she died, but as much as I liked to think I was alone, I wasn’t. My family and pack had been mourning just as I was, and I never once considered that. “Sorry I was an ass all those years,” I joke.

  “You weren’t an asshole.” Noah shakes his head. “You were a kid who didn’t know how to deal with what he was feeling.”

  The sound of the door opening has both of us turning around. My chest tightens when I see her face. Her eyes are bloodshot and puffy, and her makeup has run down her face, leaving black streaks on her cheeks. Her chin is still wobbling when she looks up at me, those bright green eyes full of unshed tears.

  “Pru...” I sigh, not knowing what I should say to comfort her.

  She shakes her head and walks over to me, falling against my chest, and I immediately wrap my arms around her. I nod at Noah, who slips back into the house in search of Addison. All I can do is hold Pru against me and wait for her to be ready to talk. I feel her sniffling and hear the occasional sob escapes and hold her tighter.

  After a minute, I hear her mumble something I can’t quite make out. “What did you say?” I ask, keeping my tone soft and gentle.

  Pru looks up at me with her hands still placed on my chest. “She’s really sick.”

  “I know,” I tell her, wishing there was something I could say to make her feel better. “I’m sorry this is happening.” I reach up and gently wipe the tears away from her face.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do without her. I’ve never been alone before,” Pru whispers, her eyes widening in fear.

  “You may lose her, but you’ll never be alone, Pru.” I hold both sides of her face between my hands. “I’m not going anywhere. Remi isn’t going anywhere. My family and the pack aren’t going anywhere. I promise you’ll always have us. You’ll always have me,” I remind her.

  “I know, but it won’t be the same without her.” Pru leans forward again and rests her head on my chest, her arms wrapping around my middle. “She’s the only family I remember having, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to make it through all this craziness without her.”

  “You still have some time with her now. Focus on the days you have with her, not on lo
sing her.”

  “I don’t know how to do that. I know my parents died, but I don’t remember them, I mourned the idea of them more than I actually mourned them. I miss them, but without those memories, it’s different. Addison, though…” Pru shakes her head as if searching for the words. “As far as I can remember, she’s the only thing that’s always been in my life, my one constant, and to not have that, to not have her, I won’t recognize my life. Everything I knew or thought I knew is crumbling around me, and now Addie is going with it.”

  “Your life isn’t crumbling around you. It’s changing,” I correct her. “Losing Addison will be a big change, but you will adapt to a world without her. You’ll be okay. I promise.”

  “I just don’t see how that’s possible right now.” She holds me tighter. “Did you know she was in love with Noah? When she would visit my mom, she would sneak off and spend time with Noah. They would even meet up in different cities when Addison was traveling for work. She gave him up to raise me…”

  It appears Addison disclosed more to Pru than just her diagnosis. “He loves her, too,” I confess. It may not be my secret to tell, but Addison doesn’t have enough time for secrets.

  “Can they even be together? Since she’s human?”

  “They can love each other as much as they want, but they can never be mated. That’s something special between shifters. And they both would have had to go through the change first before they can mate, in any case,” I try to explain the best I can. It’s hard to understand when you’re not raised in a shifter community. “Think of it as a sort of puberty shifters go through.”

  “How old were you when you first shifted?” Pru asks as she pulls back from me. Tears no longer run down her face, and her eyes are already less red than they were.

  “I was thirteen, which is the youngest anyone in our pack has ever shifted. Most males shift for the first time around sixteen, and females shift more around the age of eighteen.” I look down at the white shirt I’m wearing and find that black stains now cover the front of it. “I’m sending you my dry cleaning bill,” I joke with her, desperate to see her smile again.