by Sky Winters
The front door opened and a girl walked out. She was beautiful, with long dark hair and a huge smile. He squinted into the night to get a better look at her. She was too young to be a shifter and she didn’t look like one of the biker babes that tended to run with the pack and flit from one brother to the other when someone got bored with them. Wolves mated for life once they found the right woman, but until then, they were just as randy as the next guy.
He had no mate and had not been looking for one, but looking at the girl, he felt an ache like never before. He shook it off and shifted back into wolf form running back into the darkness. Perhaps when they took out the pack, he might spare her for his own. Or, perhaps, she might be his way into the pack in the first place. A smile crossed his face as he considered this. Yes, that was the answer.
Heading back for home he began hatching a new plan. Why take his pack ramrodding in and fighting it out with these old dogs when he could simply take them down from the inside without them even suspecting anything until it was too late? Shifting before he reached the edge of the woods, he stepped out into the backyard of his home, hurriedly crossing the yard to hide his naked form and going into the back door. He picked up the phone and called a friend at the police department. It was time for a new chapter in his growing legacy. The End.
Book 2: Secret of the Wolf
Chapter 1
“They’re having a party.”
Saul Bennett, President of the Dire Wolves turned to look at his second in command, Haskin Sims as he spoke.
“A party?” he repeated to the younger shifter, his grandson, in fact.
“Yes. They are celebrating something,” Haskin told him.
“What?”
“I’ve no idea. We’ve lost all of our people we had inside their group.”
“Then we need to get someone back in there and find out what is going on.”
“And the attack?”
“It goes forth. No matter what they think they have to party about, they are still at a disadvantage. In fact, they are at more of a disadvantage while they are all drinking and not minding their hides.”
Haskin nodded and walked out, past where Grant stood quietly listening, along with several others. He hadn’t been with the Dire Wolves long, but had become far more trusted than he had anticipated when he had come here. It had been his intent to join up with the Silver Wolves, but they had rejected him. He understood. He was a stranger and they were forced to close ranks to protect themselves. Instead, he had turned to the Dire Wolves for a place in their club. It hadn’t been easy getting in, but they were larger in number and more willing to take a chance on a stranger. It wasn’t as if he had a lot of options with his past.
“You can all go,” Saul had growled at the half dozen that had remained after Haskin departed.
They had all begun to file out when Saul had called him out, telling him to stay for a moment. It caught Grant off guard, as he wasn’t usually privy to something one on one with the leader of the pack. He waited quietly as the door closed behind the others, still wondering what Saul could possibly want with him.
“How long have you been with us now, Grant?”
“Almost a year now I think.”
“Do you have any ties outside this club? Friends in town, confidantes, folks that recognize you?”
“What? No. I don’t think so. I keep a pretty low profile and stay away from town as much as possible. It’s not in my best interest to be recognized, as you know.”
“Right. Of course. Good. That’s good.”
“Is something wrong?” Grant asked.
Saul stood looking out the window, seeming to think through something for a moment. When he turned, his face was dark, serious. Grant couldn’t help but note how gaunt the older man looked. There had been no rumors about his health, but he could see dark circles beneath his eyes. Perhaps it was just fatigue, but he seemed a bit less than healthy.
“I need an inside man in the Silver Wolves. I need for you to get in there and be my eyes and ears.”
“Me? I don’t think I can. They’ve already turned me away once. I told you that when I came here to you.”
“Yes. Yes, you did. Your candor about how you had come to be with us was part of why we chose to let you in. I want you to go back to the Silver Wolves, find a way to get in with them. You’ll work it out.”
“Of course. Yes,” Grant replied.
Saul waved him away without further discussion. Grant left his chambers and walked down the hall to his room, wondering how he was going to manage getting into the Silver Wolves when he couldn’t before. He was completely lost in thought when one of the second lieutenants stopped by and barked at him.
“Get up and get ready. We’re going in ten minutes.”
“I don’t know if I’m supposed to now,” Grant began to say, but the lieutenant cut him off.
“I don’t know what you are going on about, but I don’t have time for any bullshit. Get your shit together and join ranks.”
Grant knew that he could tell him about the conversation with Saul, but he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to do that. Instead, he got up and got undressed, preparing himself to shift and join his brothers. A thought occurred to him. Why was Grant telling him to join a pack he intended to attack? If the attack was successful, there would be no need for anyone to be inside the other club. It was obvious that he didn’t think they would be successful in wiping out the other pack, so perhaps he only intended for it to be a warning.
Ten minutes later, he was standing in the middle of the other wolves as they prepared to make their way toward the Silver Wolves clubhouse, prepared to take on an enemy that would never see them coming. He took a deep breath and then they were running through the woods toward battle. His heart raced as he jaunted through brush and bramble, the cool night air exhilarating as it cooled down his rapidly heating coat of fur.
Soon enough, the enemy would come into view and everyone had their orders. This had been carefully organized. Well thought out and planned by all involved. Grant was built for battle. They all were. Still, he had lost his taste for it after what had happened to him before he had come here. His last encounter had taken everything from him - his home, his family, his future. Now, he was just another nameless stray that had fallen into a pack of animals more lethal than he had ever really considered himself.
It wasn’t that he was skittish or had any fear of what was to come. Few would argue that he was one of the most powerful and vicious wolves among them when it came down to it, but it was more by reputation than anything they had actually seen. What they didn’t realize is just how much he had lost his taste for violence. He would do what he was asked to do. That was his job as a member of this pack.
His thoughts drifted away as the clubhouse came into view. This was it. Inside the compound were less than a hundred shifters and they were being surrounded by several times their count. Their biggest defense wasn’t numbers, but security. The protective walls of their clubhouse would be their saving grace, but many would still fall and each attack would take out more of them until there were none. A howl filled the air as everyone came into position and there was a flurry of activity beyond the edge of the woods where they stood as the Silver Wolves guarding the exterior became aware of their presence.
For those wolves, it was already too late.
Chapter 2
Anguished howls of pain filled the night air as the Dire Wolves charged, seizing upon the guards before they could alert those inside. Only the commotion outside the walls could give away their presence now and it would, very quickly. Grant charged toward the front doors, eager to get into the fray, despite reservations he had held only moments ago. The windows were boarded up and the only way to get in was to charge the door or shift and attempt to open it. He flung his weight full force against the door, expecting resistance. Instead, he found himself flailing to right himself as it opened and he went sailing inside, quickly joined by a flood of other wolves.
<
br /> Catching his footing, he looked around. It was empty. Completely deserted. They were here somewhere, but it was too hard to follow their scent with it all around him in their own lair. A series of short howls sent them into groups scattering into different directions to explore. Then, the voice of a shifter was heard as he shifted to open doors and yelled at everyone to head to the back door.
“They’ve gone out the back!” he told them.
Everyone headed for the door, running out into the woods behind the building. They began tracking the footprints in the snow, noses down to follow the scent along with the trail. Grant followed along, for a while. Then something occurred to him. This was wrong. There should be more footprints. There should be human footprints. Instead, there were only the large paw prints of the Silver Wolves. He turned back, alone, not bothering to signal anyone to join him.
Nearing the edge of the woods, he watched as a girl crawled around the edge of the building, trying to push fresh snow over the trail behind her. It was only when she stood, that he could see the shredded arm of her jacket and the blood flowing from her arm. One of the Dire Wolves must have clipped her, but how did she manage to survive against them and end up here all alone? He continued to watch as she slipped inside, holding her arm to staunch the blood flow and rushing across the room toward the hallway out of sight.
Grant debated what to do. He had no desire to harm her further. It was one thing that all of the pack had agreed upon before launching their attack. All of the women here were either barren Silver Wolves or human, so letting them live had no bearing on whether the pack line survived. There was no need to hurt any of the women in the pack unless it was a matter of being under attack and not being able to avoid it. Watching the young woman until she disappeared, he had a hard time imagining that such a frail, delicate looking creature could have been a threat to anyone. Perhaps she just got nicked being too close to the fray.
A few of the other members of his pack joined him as he stood watching the clubhouse. They began to shift back into human form, hidden by the tree line. He looked around at them. All were younger members, so he waited for one of the club officers to turn up.
“Should we go in and clear the clubhouse?” one of them asked.
“No. There is no one in there,” he said, wondering to himself why he was lying.
“What about the women? You think they are hiding in there?”
“No. Everyone pushed out the back when the commotion started in the front from the looks of it. Any signs of them back there where you came from?” he asked, though he knew the answer already.
He wasn’t sure why he was covering up for the women. Sure, they wouldn’t hurt them, but they would take them, use them as leverage. It was pretty obvious that they were hiding inside somewhere in a hidden area. If they had already been sent away, the one woman wouldn’t have been left behind. There was still evidence of the party that had been going on when they arrived, so it had been a hasty exit by all, but the human women would have been too slow to have gotten away so quickly from wolves. Most likely, all shifters fled and all the rest hid in a pre-established location.
“Any signs of them back here?” Saul asked, arriving behind Grant and shifting back into human form.
“Nope. Clubhouse is clear,” Grant told him.
“Fuck. What a wasted trip. We managed to get a half-dozen guards out front and one of the guys clipped a girl. She didn’t shift, so obviously human. No threat to us. Did you see her anywhere?”
“Nope. She must have gone the other direction. Probably cowering in the woods somewhere.”
“Alright. Let’s call it a night. They got their warning. We’ll scour the woods for her on our way home. She might be worth taking with us to see if she means anything to anyone.”
“You don’t want any of us to stay here and wait to see if they come back?” one of the young ones asked.
“Nah. They won’t be back. At least not tonight. Let them come back in the morning and bury their dead. Let’s get home and get some rest,” Saul replied, immediately shifting and bounding around the clubhouse toward the woods that began again in the front.
The cubs joined him, followed by a number of other wolves. Grant shifted, as well, and ran with the pack. All the way back to their clubhouse, he thought about the girl. There was something about her that had caught his attention. Perhaps it was just sympathy, but he felt like it was something more. She had seemed delicate, dainty and he found himself intrigued by how she had somehow ended up out in the yard when all of the other women seemed to be safely tucked away.
He couldn’t help but wonder what sort of wolf pack let six of their own be slaughtered while they hid inside. It made him glad that he hadn’t been accepted into the club. Outnumbered or not, it was just pure cowardice on their part. They’d even left a woman out there to die. Luckily, she hadn’t.
Back at the compound with the others, the guys all settled in for beers and to wind down after the battle, if it could really even be called that. Saul called him into his office alone and had a long talk with him. When he was done, Grant had packed his things and left.
Chapter 3
“Alright, brother. I’ll be back in six months. I trust you will have taken care of whatever Saul has sent you here for by then,” Compton told him as he showed him around his small cabin on the edge of town.
“I hope so. I guess if I haven’t, I’ll have him to answer to, huh?”
“Oh, damn. Yeah, you will. Let’s hope you get it done for him. He can be brutal when he feels you let him down.”
“So can I,” Grant said with a grin.
“I’ll bet you can, brother. Let’s hope it doesn’t come down to who is more brutal,” Compton replied, turning his head toward the sound of a horn blowing outside. “Alright. That’s my ride to the airport. See you in six months. Don’t forget to feed Spot.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Grant laughed, glancing in the direction of the goldfish bowl by the door where “Spot” was swimming about without a care in the world.
“If you do, just replace him before I get back. I don’t wanna know,” Compton laughed, grabbing his bags and heading for the front door. “You know how to find me if you need anything.”
“Yep,” Grant replied.
Once Compton was gone, he looked around him. It wasn’t a bad little place, bit of a bachelor pad, but cozy and warm. There was already a fire going, so he added some wood to it, made himself a sandwich and grabbed a beer from the fridge before settling down in the sofa to find something on the big screen TV that sat to one side of the large den. This was his place until Compton returned. Until then, he was to have nothing to do with the club. Instead, his job was to pass himself off as a loner, the wolf the Silver Wolves had denied. His job was to use the time to get them to give him another shot.
Up until the attack on their clubhouse, he had not been sure how he was going to do that, but now he had a very good idea. Tomorrow, he would begin working his plan. Tonight, it was Netflix and chill. Drifting off in front of the tube a while later, he slept peacefully for a while, but awoke in the early morning hours disoriented and confused in his new surroundings. The remnants of the recurring dream that always came drifted away as the fog in his head began to clear.
He climbed off the sofa and made his way to Compton’s bedroom, dozing off for a few more hours until the sun filtered through the blinds and woke him. He crawled out of bed, feeling tired from a restless sleep and padded out to the kitchen to grab a bottle of water before retrieving his unpacked bags from inside the front door. After a shower, he slipped on his robe and began to unpack them, mingling his things in with Compton’s in a way that they all seemed the property of one individual. Once that was done, he did a walk through of the house, making sure there was nothing that made it seem as if he wasn’t the natural occupant of the cabin.
Putting a handful of photos and cards he found scattered around into his now empty suitcase, he locked it and slipped it un
der some other things in the closet so that it was hidden. Another walk through assured him that he was good to go, so he got dressed and headed out to his bike. It could be a long day if his efforts proved fruitless, but he had been doing some recon and could only hope for the best. Roaring down the road toward town, he parked down the street in the lot belonging to a local feed and seed, then walked down the sidewalk to the public library and went inside.
“I’d like to apply for a library card,” he told the white-haired woman behind the counter.
He flashed her a brilliant smile as she looked up at him, studying his clothes for a moment before slowly pulling out a piece of paper and handing it to him.
“Fill this out and bring it back to me with your ID. I assume you are a local resident.”
“I am.”
Grant did as she asked, filling it out quickly and handing it back to her, along with the very convincing photo driver’s license that had served him well since he had arrived here. One of the perks of having friends in low places was the ability to acquire things that might not necessarily be legal, but were realistic enough in appearance to pass in most transactions.
“You still live at this address?”
“Oh, no. I moved. I live at 763 Palm Field Road now.”
“You need to get that changed on your license. You get pulled over, they’ll ticket you for not having them updated,” she remarked as she entered the address into her system.
“I’ll do that.”
Of course, he wouldn’t. The address he had given her was Compton’s and if he got pulled over and they ran the license, he was in for a lot more than just a ticket. A fake ID would be the last thing they were concerned about. It would be more like twenty to life once they figured out who he really was.
“Here you go. You can check out three books today and once you return those, you’ll be able to check out up to a dozen at a time.”