by Laura Taylor
Finally, when Baron had finished explaining everything, John got up, stalking silently across the room and catching Baron in a hug, arms wrapped around his waist from behind. Baron stood still, unpacking abandoned for the moment, simply letting John feel his body against him, the regular inhale-exhale of his breaths, the slow thud of his heart.
“You sure you don’t want to come to bed?” John breathed, pressing his groin against Baron’s backside, and the alpha sighed.
“I have work to do,” he apologised. “The French shifters will be arriving this afternoon and I need to check their rooms are set up. Then I have to check on George in the kitchen and discuss a few things with Caroline.”
“Yeah, all work and no play,” John said with a pout, letting him go. “Fine. I’m going outside. To have a look around.”
“No shifting!” Baron called, as the boy vanished out of the room, and then he smiled as the predictable “Fuck you!” came drifting back at him just before the front door slammed. A lack of reply would have been worrying, but in John-speak, the rude exclamation meant ‘I know, and it’s fine’. Baron shook his head, then quietly turned back to the suitcase of clothes in front of him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
16 Years Ago
Caroline slumped down on the sofa in the sitting room and closed her eyes. It was two years since she’d joined the Den of shifters, two years that had been one long, tough slog through intense training sessions and challenging lessons into shifter culture and history. There had been chants to learn, politics to understand, lists of rules and regulations to memorise, complex social structures and rituals to deal with.
There had also been more than a few battles, as the Noturatii continued to threaten their existence. She hadn’t been involved in any of the battles herself, but had witnessed the fallout, had seen numerous shifters be injured, had heard the grim discussions on the Den’s strategies for future survival.
Since her recruitment, she’d got to know the rest of the shifters in the Den. Kendrick and Anna were the alphas, a happily married couple who led the shifters with diligence and a keen eye for strategy. Heron was a middle aged woman with a refined elegance who had played a big part in Caroline’s education. Eric von Brandt was the resident IT expert, a German man who had moved to the Den years ago after his recruitment, as he’d had too many close ties in Germany to remain there without the risk of being discovered, and who had also been chosen as Caroline’s sire for her conversion. He was a cheerful, if introverted man, who seemed more at home with his computers than socialising with the Den. Raven was an Asian man in his sixties, the oldest member of the Den, and he’d been alpha before Kendrick. In some ways, he reminded Caroline of Mr Miyagi – calm, wise, patient… but he was also more of a badass than the ‘Karate Kid’s’ instructor had been, a facial tattoo giving him a dangerous air, and he was more willing to kick someone’s arse if they stepped out of line. He’d retired from the position of alpha fourteen years ago, when Kendrick had taken over, but Raven remained a cornerstone of the Den, his skills in battle formidable and his years of experience as alpha providing a constant source of good advice to Kendrick and the senior wolves.
Caroline’s two years of training had culminated in her conversion into a shape shifter just two days ago, and she was still struggling to get used to the changes the ritual had caused. The conversion itself had been strange, like trying to fit two people into one pair of trousers. The instant her wolf had arrived, her mind had started working differently, seeing the world from a new angle, subtle changes in her priorities or unexpected alterations in her moods. She had been experiencing strange cravings, her mouth watering at the scent of raw meat, or she’d feel a sudden and irrepressible urge to chew things. She’d been warned about these odd occurrences during her training, Kendrick telling her that it meant her body was reminding her that she needed to spend some time in wolf form, and she was careful to obey her body’s demands, shifting promptly and seeking out whatever it was that her canine half seemed to be craving. It was an important part of the merging process, she’d been told, and the last thing she wanted to do was end up going rogue.
But despite all her achievements, Caroline still felt like she was somehow out of place here. The training had been hard, but there were also large parts of her life that had seemed far too easy. She had been given a place to live and food to eat, with nothing being asked of her in return aside from her diligent attention to her training. She was given a monthly allowance for clothing and personal effects, which had been far more than she could have earned even with a full time job. And when she had been converted, it had seemed like a gift of immense value, handed over freely despite her having accomplished nothing of any significance for the Den, no battles won against the Noturatii, no bright ideas that had helped improve their strategies against their enemies. After so many years of fighting for every mouthful, every opportunity, every tiny bit of money, she was left feeling rather hollow, a disappointment to her colleagues, though none of them had ever expressed such feelings towards her.
There was nothing scheduled for this afternoon, no more classes, no combat sessions, though Caroline knew that her training in battle would continue for months to come, and she was feeling rather at a loose end. There was a newspaper sitting on the coffee table, so, with no particular interest in the daily report on the world’s events, she opened it and started reading.
When she reached page six, a name caught her eye, in a brief article near the bottom of the page. ‘Julie Saunders’. Her mother’s name. Her immediate assumption was that the article had to refer to a different woman. There had to be more than one Julie Saunders in England, after all. But out of curiosity, she read the article anyway… and felt her heart stop.
A woman’s body had been found, bruises on her wrists and face, her throat slit. A man had been arrested on suspicion of murder, but later released due to lack of evidence. And though the article didn’t give any names, it mentioned that the man had been the woman’s estranged husband. But it wasn’t until Caroline reached the part about the location of the body that the pieces finally clicked into place. The woman had been found in a small woodland, not five minutes’ walk from her old house.
Her mother. It had to be.
A surge of rage filled her as she jumped to the most obvious conclusion: Her mother had returned to her old house for some unknown reason, and her father, still furious over her abandonment all those years ago, had killed her.
Her mind immediately began trying to fit all the pieces together. She’d heard nothing from her mother since the day she’d walked out on them, but it wasn’t out of the question to think that she’d finally come back. Caroline had spent many years hoping, praying for such a thing, even as she’d hated the woman for abandoning her so suddenly. But the years had tempered her anger, as Caroline had come to understand her mother’s actions better, had even agreed with them at times, as her own desire to escape her family had grown.
But why would she come back after all this time? A small, childish part of her wondered whether it was because she’d wanted to see Caroline again. Walking out on her abusive husband was one thing, after all, but abandoning her children must have left some sort of impression on the woman. Maybe she’d finally overcome her alcoholism? Got treatment for her depression? Come back, hoping to make amends? Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but Caroline couldn’t think of any other reason she’d have returned. She could hardly suppose that her mother still loved her father and had come back for him. Even on the best of days, she’d never expressed any kind of affection for her husband. There would also be no point in coming back to ask for money – there had never been much of that in the first place.
And if he’d truly killed her mother, then Caroline’s father had robbed her of the chance once and for all of ever seeing the woman again, of ever hearing an explanation for her departure. Of ever hearing that, despite all appearances, Caroline had actually mattered to her. She read the article again, cursing blackly as she re
ad the part that said the suspect had been released.
But Caroline was sure her father was responsible. Who else would want to kill her mother? If Caroline had been angry at her abandonment, then her father had been livid, regularly venting his fury about the woman, calling her every filthy name under the sun.
In that instant, Caroline knew she had to find out the truth. Contacting her family, she knew, was forbidden, a betrayal of trust that carried weighty consequences. She’d assured Kendrick when she’d joined the Den that her family meant nothing to her, that she would be glad to never see them again.
But murder? That was too much to ignore, regardless of the consequences.
But she didn’t need to see them in person to know the truth, Caroline reasoned, looking for an option that would pacify the raging anger boiling inside her, as well as pose the lease possible risk to the Den. She didn’t need to speak to them, or even let them know she was still alive in order to know whether her father had been involved in the murder. She had her wolf senses now. All she needed to do was check out the house, see if she could pick up her mother’s scent. Though days had passed since her death, a wolf’s sense of smell was strong enough to still be able to detect whether she’d been there.
But only if she moved quickly.
A plan formed in her mind, one that was reckless beyond belief, fraught with complications and the risk of being caught, but now that the question had been raised, the need to know the truth was imperative. Despite the risks, Caroline was familiar enough with the routines of the estate to believe that her plan had a chance of working.
So later that afternoon, she asked Silas for a firearms lesson. Upon its conclusion, she obediently took her gun back to the vault where the weapons were stored when not in use, a secret compartment hidden behind one of the shelves in the library, waiting while Silas entered the code to open the door.
With her instructor waiting outside the vault, she quickly and quietly slipped a new clip into the gun, then screwed a silencer onto the end. Then she set it on the ground. Shifted into wolf form and picked up the gun in her mouth. And then shifted back. The gun vanished, along with her wolf, so that when she emerged from the vault, there was no sign of her being armed at all. She’d earned enough trust in the past two years that Silas simply assumed she’d returned the gun, without actually checking it was on the shelf, and she genuinely hoped that he wasn’t going to get into trouble for any of this. Later, back in her room, she shifted again, bringing the gun back into reality, and the theft was complete.
Leaving the estate was tricky, but it was more straight forward than stealing the gun. While security was tight, it was more designed to keep people out than wolves in, and there were a few spots along the boundary where a wolf could squeeze through a gap, or jump over a fence without alerting anyone to their presence. Caroline left the house via the front door, prepared to tell anyone who asked that she was feeling restless and needed a run. Then, once she was safely off the estate, she headed for the nearest train station, relieved that her plan was working, but knowing that the hardest part was still to come.
Hours later, Caroline crouched in the bushes in the front yard of her old house, shaking in fury. Her suspicions about her father had been confirmed. Upon arriving at the house, she’d furtively shifted into wolf form, after checking that no one was around, and carefully scented the ground. As a newly converted wolf, identifying scents was still a difficult task – her sense of smell was excellent, but the sheer volume of information her nose could detect made it hard to pick out individual scents. But Julie had been her mother, had birthed her, nursed her, raised her for twelve years, tucked her into bed at night, and despite the intervening years, Caroline still remembered the smell of her like she’d seen her yesterday.
After a few minutes of careful investigation, Caroline was certain she was right. Her mother had been here. There was no doubt about it.
Which meant her father had killed her.
And Caroline was going to repay the favour.
The strength of her hatred for the man surprised her. After successfully escaping from his clutches and spending two years in a far better environment, she’d somehow assumed that she’d moved on from the traumas of her childhood. But now that she was back here, where so much misery had made her life a living hell, the memories came rushing back, the beatings, the insults, the lack of food, the filth in and around the house… it was making her feel ill. She pulled the gun out of her jacket, eyeing the house coldly.
It was late at night, the sky fully dark, the shadows deep in the poorly maintained yard, and with her black clothes and the beanie on her head, she was confident that no one could see her.
The curtains in the living room of the house hadn’t been drawn fully, and Caroline had got a glimpse through the crack. Her father and Greg were both home, slouching in front of the TV. No sign of Troy, but according to his last conviction, he should still be in jail, and that meant he wasn’t Caroline’s problem. He was a bastard, that much was true, but he couldn’t have been involved in her mother’s death.
Her task was simple. She would knock on the front door. Either her father or Greg would answer it, it didn’t matter who. She would shoot whoever it was in the chest, then force her way into the house to shoot the second man. The silencer on the gun wouldn’t cancel out all the sound, but it would be quiet enough that most people would simply dismiss the noise as a car backfiring. That sort of thing tended to happen a lot around here. And then she would shift, ghost away into the night, a simple, stray dog, if anyone noticed, no evidence left behind, no trace of the gun, nothing to link any of this either to herself, or Il Trosa.
She glanced down at the gun in her hand. Checked the clip. The silencer. And took a deep breath as she steadied herself, ready to stand up and march over to the front door-
A cold, hard lump of metal pressed against her temple, and Caroline froze, suddenly aware of the large body beside hers, where she had been alone only moments ago.
“I will only say this once, Caroline,” Kendrick said, his mouth scant inches from her ear. “Put the gun down, or I will put a bullet in your skull.”
Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck! She’d known there was a chance someone would notice she was missing, but she’d been hoping they would be too slow, that she would be long gone from here before they figured out what she was up to.
And how the hell had Kendrick managed to sneak up on her like that, anyway? She had excellent hearing, she was all but invisible in the dark… Fuck!
Knowing that Kendrick was totally prepared to make good on his threat, Caroline slowly placed the gun on the ground, shaking both from the shock of being caught, and the unfulfilled need for revenge swirling inside her. Kendrick picked it up and made short work of removing the clip and unscrewing the silencer.
And then the verbal onslaught of displeasure started. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Kendrick asked, then went on without waiting for an answer. “You’re about to murder two people in their own home. You think the police aren’t going to notice that? The Noturatii, even? They tried to snatch you on your way to the estate, the first time. They know who you are. Anything happens to your family, and they’ll be all over it! You think we don’t have enough problems keeping them off our tails without you lighting up a neon sign for them? Do you have any idea how much work it is to cover up a murder? And in the middle of suburbia? Or did you honestly think people were just going to ignore the two bodies lying around in pools of their own blood? For Christ’s sake, what the fuck were you thinking?”
“He killed my mother,” she bit out, knowing Kendrick was furious, but wanting to justify her actions nonetheless.
“You forget, Caroline,” Kendrick snarled at her. “The instant you joined our Den, you ceased to have a mother! You ceased to have any family at all. Now, stand up.” She did, then followed him churlishly as he led the way back towards the van, parked a few streets away.
As they arrived, Silas and Rave
n came out of the darkness, silent on booted feet, and it wasn’t a surprise that Kendrick had brought backup. Silas was the best tracker in the Den, and he would have had no trouble tracing her scent from the train station.
The look on Raven’s face was one of utter disappointment, and Caroline was surprised at how keenly she felt the brunt of that failure. Raven had been a patient and diligent teacher during the past two years, expecting a lot of her, but understanding her struggles as she trudged through some of the tougher lessons, and he’d never stopped believing in her, encouraging her, reminding her that there were great things to be achieved in the future, and it made her feel cold to know how badly she’d let him down.
Silas was harder to read, his expression blank, and she couldn’t decide whether he was angry at her for trying such a reckless stunt, or simply pissed off that he’d had to drag himself out here at night when he could be at home with a glass of bourbon in his hand and an action movie on the television.
She didn’t want to go back to the Den, Caroline realised suddenly. Her fury at her father was still vivid, a living beast that had not yet been sated, and most likely never would be, now that the Den knew what she had been up to. And she still had no idea what had driven her mother to return after all these years. The lack of closure left her feeling lost.
No, she couldn’t go back with them. Not to the welcoming lights and sympathetic glances and warm bed. Not to be locked in a cage and lectured until the truth of her betrayal hit home, and then to spend the rest of her life dealing with the emotional conflict of being grateful beyond measure for her new life and the honourable people in it, and yet wishing this one act of betrayal had been more successful.
But Il Trosa wasn’t the only wolf pack in England, Caroline remembered, her thoughts in turmoil. The Grey Watch lived to the north, in the isolated forests near the Scottish border. They lived in the open, no houses, no creature comforts. They lived wilder lives, raw and untamed, and far more brutal than their civilised counterparts in Il Trosa.