Justin smiled in triumph at the same time that I dropped his brother's hand in shock. Meanwhile, below us, a murmur of voices suggested that the members of our combined pack were also greeting my mate's uncharacteristic surrender with confusion. Since when did Wolfie cede his responsibilities so easily?
Since never apparently. "As long as they want to go," my mate repeated. As he spoke, the bloodling alpha's gaze roamed across the Wilders who had spent the last few months in his camp, and, in reply, two teenage girls paused as they trailed behind their parents on the way to the black SUVs. The girls looked back over their shoulders...and then spun on their heels to sprint back in our direction.
As if the teenagers had opened a chink in a dam holding back the force of a raging river, the line of retreating relatives splintered. A few continued toward Justin's vehicles, but most circled back around to face in our direction, and for a moment, I allowed myself to hope that Wolfie had called the invaders' bluff and that now the elder Young's pack would leave us alone at last. Perhaps we'd all finish this day no worse off than we'd begun it, with my relatives safe from Justin's greedy regard and with no blood spilled across our perfect lawn.
But an immediate surrender was far too much to hope for. Inches away from me on the porch, Justin's nostrils flared in irritation, but he squashed any further show of anger and simply held up a hand before the girls could scamper past him up onto the porch and into the safety of Cricket's house. In response, the teenagers—and all of my other relatives—paused in their flight.
"Do you really think you can prevail against the full force of the Young clan?" the elder brother demanded, and at his words shifters emerged from SUVs by the dozen. I stifled a gasp as I realized that Justin had not only brought his own pack mates for backup, but that he'd also included the cream of the Cooper and Gray clans who had camped nearby at All-Pack. All told, there must have been a hundred male shifters waiting beside the vehicles parked in Haven's green, and despite werewolf tendencies to consider weapons taboo, at least a few were armed to the teeth.
But Wolfie wasn't daunted. "Do you really want to challenge me?" my mate rebutted, reminding his brother of Justin's frequent defeats at Wolfie's hands when both were teenagers. And I relaxed just the tiniest bit because Justin wasn't safely surrounded by his pack mates—the elder Young was perched precariously on Cricket's porch, the soldiers in his army far below. If it came right down to it, all of us knew that Wolfie could tear his brother to shreds before the first shifter could raise a gun to his shoulder and fire, and Wolfie was betting that his sibling had too strong of a self-preservation instinct to risk his own demise.
But Justin also wasn't willing to back down. And why should he when even my Wilder relatives were wavering between making a stand with me and Wolfie or fleeing for the dubious safety of Justin's pack? So the alpha siblings' gazes met and locked, and I could feel the battle that I'd thought safely sidestepped now heating back up, only this time with more serious weapons than teeth and claws threatening my pack mates from the opposing side.
And I don't doubt in the least that Haven ground would soon have been watered with blood...had the cavalry not taken that opportunity to arrive.
***
Of course, I don't mean that our rescuers were literally cavalry. We're werewolves, remember? Horses aren't fans. But the wolves who came streaming out of the woods by the dozen were so numerous that the sound of their paws hitting earth resembled hoof beats, and I certainly felt as if mounted reinforcements were riding to our aid as the out-pack shifters galloped toward Haven's central green.
Equally heartening was the recognition of familiar scents and shapes among the newly arrived werewolves, and the ensuing realization that I hadn't wasted all of that alliance-building time at All-Pack after all. Yes, perhaps I'd been tricked into steering clear of my mate due to Justin's telegram, but the hours spent conversing with other alphas had clearly proven productive if I gauged their worth by the rich and enticing fruit now being born from my parlaying. I recognized Camilla's young husband Chad, his burly wolf surrounded by equally burly cousins, and saw that the gawky Gavin Griffin led a score of his own relatives at the back of the merged pack. There were Reeds and Prices present as well, their numbers more than evening up the field with six packs now united against Justin's mere three. And I hoped that, even with firepower at his disposal, Justin would finally be forced to think twice before attacking so many powerful werewolves.
But it was the grizzled wolf at the head of the pack who took my breath away. Less than a week ago, when I'd led my relatives through our pre-All-Pack hunt...then watched my clan dissolve into a mass of backbiting strangers...I'd assumed that the mysterious alpha who had come to observe was writing us all off. Surely Thomas Bell had dismissed me as beneath his concern and had chosen to ally with Wolfie's brother instead once he saw how tenuous my hold over the Wilders had become. That was, if the loner felt called to throw in his lot with any pack at all.
But, once again, I'd been wrong. Luckily, being wrong had never felt so right.
"Thomas Bell?" I asked in disbelief. Why had this pack leader, who was every bit as dominant as my father—but so much less likely to involve himself in other packs' affairs—decided to help the Wilders fight their personal battle? The only conclusion I could draw from the facts presented was that, perhaps, the powerful alpha hadn't been as dismissive of my unusual mode of leadership as I'd at first assumed.
As if in response to my words, the shifter's fur dropped away and the Bell patriarch was bounding up the steps toward us before his name had even left my lips. Waves of dominance rolled off our visitor's wizened body, and I could see Justin try...and fail...to prevent his inner wolf from submitting, finally looking away rather than meeting the older alpha's eyes.
"I heard that our region had split in two," Thomas Bell said by way of greeting, getting straight to the point just as Justin had a few moments earlier. But the older alpha's point was much more palatable than the younger's had been. "So I came to see when you'd be hosting our new region's All-Pack," the Bell alpha continued, gazing directly into my eyes.
The pack leader who could easily have dropped us all to the ground with a single roar was looking at me now with a gaze that didn't hold a single hint of threat, instead seeming to wait patiently for my honest reply. Since a similar eye lock was often the first challenge between two shifters, a challenge that frequently ended with the combatants rolling around in a pile of teeth and claws, I couldn't quite force myself to breathe, knowing that I was severely outclassed. But in this case, the other pack leader didn't seem to be challenging me. Instead, Thomas Bell—the most dominant shifter that I'd ever met—appeared to be accepting a female alpha as his equal.
So I played along. "What do you think of the spring equinox?" I answered, surprised that my voice sounded so firm when I was barely able to force air down my throat. There was no menace in Thomas Bell's face, but I still had to break our gaze long enough to ease the restriction in my chest, and in the process I noticed that Justin was already fleeing down our walkway far more quickly than he'd arrived. SUV doors banged as Young shifters retreated to their vehicles, and I didn't argue when several of my least pleasant uncles and cousins took advantage of the offered rides to leave our familial home behind. As Wolfie had said, if my relatives didn't want to stay in Haven, then we didn't want them here.
But the pack leader in front of me drew my full attention once again as he spoke. "The spring equinox sounds perfect," he agreed, breaking into a smile now that our joint enemy was tearing away down our driveway. "Warmer too."
Then, sliding back into lupine form at the same moment that he bounded off the porch, our unlikely ally once again took the lead, drawing the out-pack shifters along with him until they all filtered into the tree line just beyond the boundaries of Haven's village. And then, with a chorusing howl of farewell, our rescuers were gone.
Epilogue
"What about Buttercup?" Wolfie suggested, and I couldn't r
esist glaring in my mate's direction. Snow was beginning to fall onto our bare heads, and I belatedly realized that today was the solstice, usually a time of celebration among werewolf clans. But instead of decorating a tree and baking ginger snaps, our merged pack was gathered in the village green, intent upon building a bonfire that would send Wade off on his journey into the next world.
And, with the yahoo in question currently lying cold and dead in wolf form at our feet, Wolfie thought this was a good moment to present me with a nickname? And an insipid one at that?
The bloodling alpha was undaunted by my stern expression, though, and merely dropped a finger onto the furry head of Sarah's child, who was half tucked under my sweater, the pup's tiny body cradled in my arms. In all the excitement, I hadn't even taken the time to check whether the bloodling was a boy or a girl, but Wolfie solved that mystery (as well as the mystery of the crazy nickname) when he added, "As a name. For her. But maybe you like Daisy better?"
"Or, how about Jasmine?" Blaze offered as he tossed an armload of limbs upon the every-growing pile of flammables. I thought I might have caught the yahoo's irrepressible grin resurfacing, despite the fact that we were currently commemorating his compatriot's passing, and my slumbering wolf perked up at the oddity and took notice.
"Bluebell," my Uncle Hawk offered next, sticking his finger into the pup's mouth and allowing her to chew for a moment before returning to his task of assembling the bonfire-to-be. It meant something that a Wilder of my father's generation was willing to help name a bloodling, even if Hawk's suggested moniker wasn't particularly apropos. And I felt the tiniest trickle of warmth reenter my cold limbs when I also noticed that our bonfire-building effort wasn't divided along familial lines, but instead involved both Wilders and members of Wolfie's pack working side by side in cordial, if somber, camaraderie. Perhaps this joint pack that Wolfie and I were trying to build wasn't doomed to failure after all. Perhaps my relatives could be pulled out of the nineteenth century, Wolfie's pack would come down from their twenty-first century cloud, and we'd meet in the middle right here in Haven.
"Petunia," Cricket offered, coming up behind me and tilting her tray of hot chocolate in my general direction. It was only when my stepmother joined in the debate that I realized I was being teased, and I thanked the older woman with a smile as I pushed the bloodling pup further into the crook of one arm so I could accept the mug out of her hands with the other. Girly names had always made me roll my eyes when I'd been growing up, and Cricket, of all people, should know that Petunia was the worst of the lot in that regard. So the knowledge that my stepmother felt safe enough after the just-past ruckus to needle me with flower names warmed my heart just as much as the heat from the drink warmed my hands.
But while I appreciated my pack mates' teasing, the truth was that I didn't want to name this wolf pup at all...not when choosing a label would seal my fate as protector of a baby too delicate and needy to be entrusted into my dubious care. My reservations were also based upon the memory of the way the pup's mother and father had both betrayed me in the worst possible way, and I had a sinking suspicion that the baby shifter in my arms wasn't done bringing harm to our pack. What was to prevent Justin from waking up one morning and deciding that he wanted to reclaim his daughter after all? Or, if Justin had indeed forgotten about this bloodling, mightn't the father's bad blood show through as soon as the wolfling in question turned two-legged in her early teens? Would I really be able to survive another betrayal...this time from someone whom I already thought of as my daughter?
My mate's wolf watched me through the human's kind eyes, giving me all the time I needed to come to the same conclusion that he—and the rest of the pack—had clearly already achieved. Yes, all of those possibilities might lie in this wolf pup's future...but I loved her anyway.
And thus she deserved a name.
But... "Not a girly name," I rebutted, holding the bloodling up to face the assembled shifters, one hand under each tiny armpit as she dangled in the cold solstice air. In response, the newborn yawned large, showing minuscule baby teeth, and then she whimpered a complaint at the biting wind. "She's strong and dangerous, see," I continued, smiling despite myself. "So she needs a strong and dangerous name."
At that moment, the fire that Hawk had been carefully nurturing took hold, fingers of flame shooting up through the layered branches to reach toward the darkening sky. And even though the death of a beloved comrade didn't seem like something to be cheering about, every shifter present released a joint whoop—the traditional opening of a werewolf funeral. Because Wade's life was worth celebrating, even if that life had been far too short.
But before I could open the ceremony or return to our previous topic of the bloodling's name, the back of my neck prickled and I turned to find my father standing behind me in human form. Like my mate had before him, the Chief reached out to run one finger down the pup's back, and for a split second, my father's battle with his own inner wolf seemed to ease. "Ember," he said at last, the single word seeming to offer up every ounce of the approval that I'd always yearned for, but had never before heard enter my father's voice.
But before I could ask whether the Chief really was content with the way our All-Pack campaign had ended, the old shifter was falling back down onto four feet, his lupine half seizing control as it had so frequently in the past. Still, rather than fleeing, the Chief simply stood beside us this time around, waiting with the rest of the pack for the bonfire's flames to build enough force to consume our lost yahoo's inanimate body.
"Ember Wilder," I agreed quietly, releasing my father's gaze in order to seek out the eyes of my mate.
But Wolfie shook his head in denial. "Ember Wilder-Young," he countered.
...And then Glen and Blaze were swinging their companion's silent body between them and tossing the lost yahoo up and over, into the heart of the flames. Sparks exploded into the air, and from the hillsides around us, the chorus of out-pack werewolves proved that Thomas Bell and his contingent had lingered on our borders long enough to watch this final leap of the young shifter who had given his life for the safety of our clan.
It was then, while peering down into the blazing coals that formed the foundation of the bonfire, that I finally I accepted every single shifter clustered together in this wintry meadow as part of my pack. Scary cousin Drew—I'd love him if I had to. Just as much as I loved the intrepid Fen, in fact, who had been dragging firewood out of the forest for hours despite her injured arm. I would love the Wilders, the yahoos, my mate...and even little Ember who had snuggled her way back down beneath my sweater to lie warm against my breast.
Because it didn't matter where the bloodling had come from. She was here now. And like all of the other werewolves around us, Ember was pack.
From the author
I hope you enjoyed Pack Princess! If so, I'd be eternally grateful if you'd consider writing a review (even of just a sentence or two) on Amazon or Goodreads. And while you're on Amazon, you might want to check out the conclusion of Terra's adventures in Alpha Ascendant, the final book in the Wolf Rampant trilogy.
For a sneak preview of my newest spunky heroine, you can also check out Fen's short story in the FREE anthology Beyond Secret Worlds. Then, if you sign up for my email list at http://forms.aweber.com/form/35/528967935.htm, you'll be the first to hear about new releases (and will be able to download a FREE copy of the story Bloodling Wolf immediately).
Bloodling Wolf is a short story about Wolfie's childhood that can be read as a standalone but that is also the first installment in a five-part serial. The next episode is In Deep Shift, or you can save a couple of bucks when you buy the bundle.
Meanwhile, if you love shifters, you won't want to miss Jaguar at the Portal. Ixchel is a veterinarian running from her past and Finn is a were-jaguar hunting for his future. It sounds like a classic case of boy-meets-girl, boy-holds-girl-up-at-knife-point, boy-and-girl-fall-in-love, but a honeymoon-like jaunt through the ruins of pre-Columbian Mexico tur
ns into an action-packed chase through moonlit forests and across crumbling pyramids.
Before you leave, I want to take one more minute to thank everyone who helped make this book possible. Those of you who read Shiftless and told me that you wanted a sequel ASAP are largely responsible for the fact that I persevered through three failed drafts to find the truth in draft four—I had a hard time figuring out where book two wanted to go, and if you hadn't made your wishes clear, I might have let it go to the devil. That said, Swati is this book's godmother since she raced me word for word in a fun and inspiring NaNoWriMo (and then took time out of finishing her own first draft in order to read mine). My father, as always, was glad to drop everything so he could look for plot holes on a moment's notice, and Chereese from grammar-rulesatoz.blogspot.com squeezed in a careful copy edit despite the Christmas rush. (Any remaining errors are my own—in fact, I probably added them after Chereese was done looking!)
Finally, thank you so much for reading and for spreading the word! Kind readers like you are the reason I keep on writing, so I hope you know that you've earned my eternal gratitude.
Character list
Me: I'm here today with the cast of Pack Princess. We thought you might need a bit of a reminder about who's who before diving into book two of the Wolf Rampant series. Terra, do you want to start us off?
Terra Wilder: Okay, if you really want me to. I'm Terra, and I'm pack leader of clan Wilder at the moment. And, um, I guess I'm the heroine too.
Wolf Young: You are the heroine. [Takes Terra's hand.] I'm her mate, Wolf Young, although everyone who knows me calls me Wolfie. I run my own pack of slightly damaged werewolves.
Justin Young: Slightly damaged—that's a joke! Halfies, meat, and misfits is what you have in that so-called pack of yours.
Pack Princess: A Fantastical Werewolf Adventure (Wolf Rampant Book 2) Page 16