Shifter Origins (Series-Starter Shifter Variety Packs Book 1)

by Aimee Easterling

  So after the alpha left, I padded outside onto the concrete patio beyond the back door and watched the full moon bathe the lawn in its glow. Looking up at the house, I noticed that Dale’s light was off—my brother-in-law had gone to bed, if not to sleep, on the night before his son’s fate would be decided. I was safely alone, the nearest neighbor half a mile distant down a long winding driveway and across the highway.

  I climbed to the top of the picnic table, the rough wood feeling good beneath my hands and feet, then I slipped off my pajamas and stood naked under the moon. Despite stories to the contrary, the full moon has nothing to do with a werewolf’s shift, but the light did seem to caress my bare skin. I could imagine how much better it would feel to leap four-footed off the picnic table, the height giving my jump added momentum. We will soar, Wolfie had said, and I could imagine a more simple, but equally fulfilling, soaring as my wolf took flight from this aerie.

  Over the last week, Wolfie and I had been playing as much as learning during my “lessons,” but the alpha had still managed to transform the way I perceived the werewolf’s shift. Unlike the shifts I was familiar with from my youth, neither the man nor the wolf dominated when Wolfie changed form. Instead, both aspects of his personality were present together, the alpha merging the two to take on the shape that best suited the situation. In fact, much of the time I wasn’t entirely sure Wolfie could have told you which form he was wearing that day, just like I might have failed the test if asked to report on my sock color without looking down. To the bloodling, his physical form had as little significance as my clothing choice.

  Although I understood the notion intellectually, I knew I needed to feel it in my bones if I hoped to replicate Wolfie’s simple shifts. So I crouched on my hands and knees on the picnic table, moving my body through simple yoga poses to fully anchor myself in place. Cat then cow, my back arched up and then my belly sank down. I breathed in deeply, smelling the night air, and then I opened my eyes wide to simulate the wolf’s keener vision.

  The time had come to move on to the mental side of my shift, and I closed my eyes to turn my focus inwards. The stairs that led down to my wolf’s cell had changed over the past week as my wolf and I together re-envisioned our internal landscape. Now, I was walking downhill through an ancient forest, deep moss indenting beneath my bare feet and regal fir trees soaring up on either side. Traveling toward my wolf’s lair had turned into a refreshing stroll instead of a terrifying journey through the dark.

  At the bottom of the hill, the iron bars had disappeared from the wolf’s door and the cage had morphed into an open cave, warmed by a roaring fire. I’d given my wolf a deep-pile carpet to rest upon in front of the fireplace, and this is where she had usually been waiting for me in the past. If the wolf wasn’t napping by the fire, ready for me to nudge her awake, she would be pacing at the bottom of the slope, her tail wagging eagerly as I approached.

  But not tonight. Instead, I entered the clearing to find that my wolf’s den was empty, the fire burned out. With increasing worry, I rushed into the trees, calling her name—my name—but no one answered. Soon, I was running frantically, branches slapping into my face and tearing against my skin. The forest seemed to extend in front of me infinitely without a sign of my other half. By the time I circled back around, even the wolf’s cave had disappeared, although the path up to the light of the outside world remained.

  A month ago, I would have been thrilled to lose my lupine half, but now I was heart-broken. With a jolt, I returned to the real world, and the splintery wood of the picnic table cut into my knees, painful rather than enticing. Up on the mountaintop, I could hear the howls of Wolfie’s pack, but I was just a shiftless human, my own wolf gone. I dropped my head into my hands and cried.

  Chapter 15

  Wolves love to pile together, but I could barely stand being crammed between two youngsters in the backseat of the pack’s car. Now I regretted the pure cowardice that had made me choose to ride with the yahoos instead of with the adults. Not that I would have been any better off struggling to avoid Chase’s eyes and trying to keep my distance from our alpha, but at least the young werewolves’ high spirits wouldn’t be clawing down my spine and assaulting my eyes and nose.

  “I call shotgun on the way back,” Blaze hooted as we approached the end of our trip. The yahoos were so confident of our success that they were bickering over who would have to ride on someone’s lap once Keith joined their ranks. I didn’t bother telling the young werewolves that there would be one fewer person in the car on the return trip—if we were lucky, Keith could have my seat. Instead, I just tuned the young wolves out, a relatively easy task since they’d given up on dragging me into their conversation hours ago.

  I hadn’t been back to Haven in ten years, but the turnoff from the highway looked just the same. No sign, just “Private Drive” discretely labeled on a county road marker. I could remember walking out to the highway with Brooke, cranking our arms at passing truck drivers and laughing uproariously as their air horns belted out a deep bellow that became lower-pitched as it receded into the distance. The memory gave me a bit more sympathy for the innocent banter of the yahoos, although it didn’t make their antics any easier to bear.

  As we turned down the private drive and slowed to a crawl, more memories rushed in, almost overwhelming me. I’d forgotten how much I loved following the creek below the main village, splashing through the water with bare feet and baiting crawdads with bits of their siblings’ flesh. It was too cold now for creek-walking, but I expected to see more people out and about, until I realized that my old neighbors would all be under lockdown, anticipating our arrival. Sure enough, we didn’t see a single person as we passed rustic farmhouses. Until we reached the village green, that is, where every male over the age of fifteen waited to greet us.

  The car in front of us ground to a halt and Chase, Wolfie, Oscar, Quetzalli, and Galena emerged, their doors banging loudly behind them. We’d left Berndt and his family, plus Tia, back at the compound to hold down the fort, and I was glad that they, at least, would be spared the sordid show about to be put on for my father’s benefit. Even though I knew I’d never be able to return to Wolfie’s pack after today, I cringed at the idea of the nine pack mates now present watching my betrayal.

  Wade was the oldest and quietest of the yahoos, and he waited beside my door after the others bounded up to encircle their alpha. “Are you okay?” he asked me, offering a hand to help me out of the car. I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t ancient enough to need assistance just yet, but I felt as old as the hills, and I ended up stumbling over my own feet, grabbing the young man’s arm after all.

  Wolfie should have had all of his attention riveted on my father’s pack, but he glanced back the instant my skin touched Wade’s, then he cocked his head to one side. The packless ache in my stomach nearly tore me in half as I realized that Wolfie wouldn’t be enfolding me in his alpha protection after today. I shot him a shaky smile, meant to reassure him, but probably just making the alpha think I was carsick.

  My father never made anything easy, so I wasn’t surprised to look out over the Haven males lounging around the green and to notice that both the Chief and my nephew were absent. Rather than becoming impatient, as I’m sure my father had planned, Wolfie simply pulled a trio of juggling balls out of his pocket and began showing off a skill I hadn’t even realized he possessed. The colored orbs whirred through the air, bouncing off Wolfie’s knee and dipping behind his back, and I soon noticed a couple of werewolf children peering out the windows of a nearby house, attracted by the spectacle.

  The yahoos followed their alpha’s lead and started turning cartwheels on the lawn...very badly. Blaze and Fen knew what they were doing, but Glen and Wade seemed to simply be tossing themselves from their hands onto their backsides, then laughing uproariously. Despite Haven’s iron discipline, it didn’t take long for a few of my father’s younger enforcers to try to show our yahoos up, and I had a feeling we would have all be
en sitting down to a cordial dinner within the hour if my father hadn’t interrupted.

  “Has the circus come to town?” Chief Wilder asked coldly from the steps of his house at the edge of the green, and every Haven youth immediately drooped his head in embarrassed submission. Our yahoos took a little longer to turn off their playfulness—in fact, I was sure I noticed Wolfie hold his hand to one side to encourage them to keep turning cartwheels for several seconds after my father appeared. It occurred to me that Wolfie had planned this whole charade, and the packless ache inside me grew stronger when I realized I’d been left out of the strategizing. Not that I had been around the compound much in recent days to give the pack a chance to include me.

  “I could say something about the clown now being here,” Wolfie drawled, “but that would just be rude.” The younger alpha smiled slightly, my father’s brow lowered, and we all knew who had won round one.

  With the ease of a well-oiled team, Chase stepped in to smooth over Wolfie’s insult. “We’ve brought the cash, as requested, and would like to see Keith to make sure he’s okay,” the beta interjected quietly, his eyes not quite meeting Chief Wilder’s. I couldn’t tell whether Chase really was cowed by my father’s dominance, or whether he and Wolfie were simply playing good cop, bad cop, with Chase’s submission part of his role. Either way, the beta’s lack of eye contact brought a bit of humor back into my father’s face, although his words were no more welcoming.

  “Well now,” Chief Wilder began, matching Wolfie’s drawl—a speech pattern neither partook of in their normal lives, but which they seemed to think added a bit of dramatic tension to this exchange. “I’ve been thinking about that and I’m not so sure I want to part with young Keith. After all, blood can’t be bought. But if you just want to see him....”

  My father waved a hand back at the house and we watched in silence as Keith was frog-marched out the door and down the steps toward us. My nephew tried to smile when he saw our pack arrayed behind Wolfie and Chase, but I could tell he’d been crying, and his feigned bravery just made the boy seem younger. The tension on our side of the standoff ratcheted up a couple of notches, and Fen laid a calming hand on Blaze’s shoulder as the yahoo took an involuntary step toward his friend.

  “Thank you,” Chase said carefully, turning away from Keith to keep his attention trained on Chief Wilder. “We’re glad to see he’s in good health....”

  “But not very well trained,” Chief Wilder spoke over our beta. “Spare the rod and spoil the child, I always say,” he continued. “But we’ll take care of that for you. Don’t worry yourselves over the matter.”

  Before I realized what was happening, Milo struck Keith with an open-handed slap across the boy’s cheek and, in nearly the same instant, Wolfie exploded into canine form, pieces of fabric fluttering off in all directions. It took the combined efforts of Chase and Oscar to restrain their alpha from leaping for the other pack leader’s throat.

  That was my cue.

  “IS THAT REALLY WHAT you want, to start over and train a cowardly adolescent?” I asked, walking from the back of Wolfie’s pack up past our restrained alpha and across the invisible line that separated us from the Haven werewolves. I stopped mere inches away from my father, and looked him directly in the eye. “I don’t doubt you can break Keith, but what use is an heir with no balls?” I continued, ignoring the wounded look that flashed across my nephew’s face.

  My father gazed down at me and smiled, the mirth flowing from his face to energize his entire body. I knew I was walking directly into his hands—this is what the wily old alpha had been angling for from the very first day he startled me on the trail—but the way I saw it, there was no solution other than to give Chief Wilder what he wanted. My father craved an heir that he could train up from the cradle the way he’d raised Ethan, and unless he was willing to look beyond his own progeny, my potential sons were the only choice he had. My nephew was far too old to be turned into the cut-throat alpha my father wanted—Keith had been a red herring all along.

  “What are you suggesting?” the Chief drew me out, his words as sweet as honey, tantalizing me with that parental acceptance I’d always yearned for. I shivered, glad I’d already made this decision for the right reasons, not for the sake of a blessing that would never come.

  “I’m suggesting that you turn Keith back over to this pack of misfits where he belongs and let me come home to live in your house and give you a real grandson,” I answered. Behind me, I could hear Wolfie shifting back to human form so he could speak to me, and I took a deep breath before firing the final arrow home. “I’m sick of living among halfies and humans,” I said, my words pointed toward my father, but aimed at Wolfie. “I want a real werewolf mate, not a bloodling.”

  I didn’t look back, just trusted Chase to do as we’d agreed and to keep Wolfie from challenging the older alpha. I could hear a strangled moan, muffled by werewolf hands, as Wolfie fought to speak, but I stood firm, filling my head with images of the yahoos and Keith joking around in the compound’s living area. This is the only way, I thought toward Wolfie, and my focus was so firmly behind me that it took me a moment to realize that my father was laughing.

  “Bravo!” he proclaimed loudly, clapping one huge hand onto my shoulder so heavily that I staggered back a step. “Very commendable, very nice. But,” he added, lowering his voice and letting the alpha dominance creep into his tone, “what’s to keep me from hanging onto young Keith just in case you don’t make a good mother?”

  Silence hung across the green as werewolves on both sides held their breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “I guess that’s just a gamble you’ll have to take,” I said quietly, “if you want my willing cooperation.” There it was, my counter-bluff. I was sure...well, almost sure...that my father had set up this whole painful charade to win me back over to the Haven way of life. I had realized one dark night while waiting for this endless week to be over that my father had to know that I was the only one of his children who had inherited his cold-blooded control. I was the one who had left home, severing all ties, not even writing back to the family the way Brooke had. I was the one who had found a way to squash my wolf, consequences be damned. Of all of his children, I was the one most like my father, and Chief Wilder would want that wolfishness passed on to his heir.

  Or so I hoped. Because if my father didn’t care about my willing cooperation and chose to keep Keith as a backup, I had no plan C. This was it—my entire hand played in one fell swoop.

  There was a scuffle behind me as Wolfie broke free of his pack mates and called toward my back. “Terra, you don’t have to do this!” he promised, true warmth in his voice despite the disdain with which I’d spoken of his pack. My father raised his brows, and I knew this was my final test, the Chief’s way of determining whether I truly was as cold-hearted as I was pretending to be. So, even though I couldn’t bear to see his face, I turned to face the wolf I loved as I threw the bitterest words I could muster back at him.

  “You’re just a bloodling, Wolfie. I deserve a man as well as a wolf.”

  Chapter 16

  It all happened so fast, I could barely take in the scene. With an anguished howl, Wolfie retreated back into his preferred canine form, the yahoos piled on top of their alpha to hold him in place, and Chase yanked a slip-knot-looped rope around his friend’s neck. Unlike the piddly collar Wolfie had been wearing when I first met him, this was a real restraint, but the alpha still lunged against the rope repeatedly, snarling as he tried to break free. My heart felt like it was bound to break in half when Wolfie finally collapsed into a panting heap on the ground, his eyes still trained on me and my father. It was unclear whether the young alpha had been trying to tear out my father’s throat...or my own.

  In the ensuing silence, Chief Wilder’s booming laughter rolled out across the green, and I struggled not to let tears come into my eyes. Wolfie’s reaction had been even worse than I’d imagined, and I ached to think of the sores he must have rubbed around h
is neck. Even worse would be the intra-pack strife when Chase finally let his friend free back in their compound, and I regretted that there hadn’t been some way to achieve the same goal without enlisting the beta’s aid.

  True to form, my father proceeded to make matters worse. “Such a bloodling,” he mused, taking in Wolfie’s battered pack as the yahoos hefted their leader back to his feet and began tugging him toward one of their cars. The only thing that lightened my heart was realizing that Keith had been set loose during the scuffle and had joined Wolfie’s entourage, hovering behind Galena’s shoulder. No matter what my friend thought of me now, I knew she’d look after my young nephew.

  “I was a bloodling too, you know,” Chief Wilder continued, and Wolfie’s pack paused in their retreat, their attention drawn back to the older pack leader. For the first time since collapsing at the end of a leash, the younger alpha seemed to take note of his surroundings as well, and his ears and nose swiveled toward my father. I could see the human wheels beginning to turn in his head as Wolfie and I both wondered whether my father’s words had any purpose other than spite.

  “If you live long enough,” my father continued, looking straight at Wolfie, “you’ll get over it.”

  Whether the Chief meant Wolfie’s attachment to me or his bloodling nature was unclear, but my father had clearly tired of the show. At a signal from their pack leader, my cousins closed in behind me as Chief Wilder turned away from Wolfie and led us all back to his home.

  I was being nudged away from the only pack I had ever truly felt a part of, and I wanted to sink into the same silent grief that had so clearly enveloped Wolfie. But instead, I glanced back over my shoulder at the last moment, catching Chase’s eye as the beta finished herding the pack back into their two cars. The beta’s face was no less cold now than it had been over the preceding days, but Wolfie’s friend did nod once in acknowledgement. Yes, Chase was saying, he would keep his pack leader confined until he was able to talk sense into the wolf. My betrayal wouldn’t be in vain.