by Lucy Lyons
There were howls of delight, and some of consternation behind me as the metal caught and scraped across my paws, releasing me into the night to wind my way through allies and narrow back streets, avoiding the humans wherever I could.
Trust the hunt, Alpha. The humans can’t see you in the mist, Onyxis was as clear in my head as Caroline when we spoke, and I could feel her jubilance at the power we were gathering as wolves, her wolves, in her mind.
I raced out into the lit areas, crossing Blanchard and continuing to Mercer toward Lake Washington Boulevard. The cars seemed to slow where we ran, enabling us to easily jump or sidestep them, and pedestrians vanished from view. Just as we were nothing but a rolling mist to the world, the human inhabitants of it became nothing but mist to us. As we made it out of civilization, the magic grew stronger, no longer muted by the steel and concrete of man’s creations.
Faster and faster, we flew across the landscape without any thought to obstacles until I smelled something familiar and slowed. I’d brought us up the side of the mountain to our old cabin retreat where kids had already moved in and tagged the buildings, littered beer cans and condoms, and set fire to the old alpha cabin where Ashlynn had lived.
I panted, my sides heaving, and I heard a score of wolves and rats and the vampires that had been caught up in the magic all stood behind me as I sniffed the air and found my prey. A couple of teenagers were squatting in my old cabin. I could smell their unwashed bodies and the scent of hunger and fear.
The door swung open, and the guy who stepped out onto the postage stamp of a porch was close to adulthood, scruff thick on his jaw, shoulders broad enough to suggest he was done growing. He walked to the end of the porch and undid his pants to pee into the dirt before he saw us and went still, his face confused and still sleepy as we stared at each other.
He glanced back toward his companion but didn’t call out, simply turning back to us and zipping up his pants before stepping down to the grass and walking toward the mixed pack. When he reached us, he knelt in front of me, and I waited to him to try to touch my fur, but he simply sat there, tears in his eyes, smelling of destitution and misery and surrender.
I glanced back, but the pack had gone, melted away into the forest to search for other prey. Only Ashlynn and I stood before the young man as time stood still.
What am I supposed to do? I wondered, asking Ashlynn silently, even though the question was more for myself.
Change him or move on, came the response. Is he worthy? I flinched back, and he started at the sudden movement then turned his eyes to the ground and waited again.
I don’t understand. We aren’t supposed to change people in to werewolves, I argued and saw the cinnamon wolf make a very human shrug.
The wild magic creates new Fae. It brought you here. So . . . piss or get off the pot, Clay. I can hear the pack, they found a deer. We’re missing the hunt.
Despite her need to join the pack in chasing the buck I could now smell as their howls drew near, Ashlynn stayed by my side. She had been too weak to be the alpha when the honor was hers, but she was wiser than I often remembered to give her credit for. I leaned in to the kid so my nose was on his cheek, and he looked up sideways into my eyes. The wild magic was already in him, changing him without any consciousness behind it to tell it what to make him.
In a flash, I made my decision and snapped at him, biting down on his shoulder hard enough to draw blood. Pulling back, I howled to the pack, celebrating the new member we’d created with the wild magic and my guidance. Then we turned to leave as the poor homeless guy collapsed on his side and curled up on the dewy grass. Ashlynn hesitated, but I led her to the edge of the clearing and sniffed the air before looking back toward the balled-up figure in the center of the clearing.
The wild magic had wakened him, chosen him, before we’d met him in the camp. His utter lack of fear hadn’t come from humanity but the magic that swirled around him as he experienced the bone-crushing pain of his first shift from human to wolf. I howled and felt the pack turn as one, herding their prey toward us. The vampires were long gone, taken to the sky to watch the festivities from the air or to hunt on their own, and the rats had slunk off into the trees to use the magic as was their wont.
The kid in the clearing heard the howls and got to his feet, fear etched into his face as he turned toward the safety of the log cabin behind him.
You belong with us, I spoke directly to his mind, thinking it less terrifying than to hear the words as they would sound aloud from my muzzle as a wolf.
The young man jumped and spun around staring in my direction then glanced at the cabin as though he were measuring the distance between us and the door. The brays of the pack were closer than before, and the magic in the breeze ruffled through my fur as I stared him down, still drunk, still confused and in pain.
I can heal your shoulder. Do you want that? I asked, and he put his hands over his ears, glancing furtively all around him. Do you want to be healed?
“Yes,” he whispered into the wind, but I heard him as clearly as if he’d shouted it across the clearing.
Then run with us, I commanded and called forth the beast I’d sensed in him, the magic that he didn’t know beneath the surface, setting him apart and making him a stranger in his own world. NOW! I pulled the beast out of him, saw his limbs lengthen and reform as animal limbs, heard the cracking of bones and his pain-filled moans as his body broke itself and reformed and mucus flew as his skin tore apart to reveal the fur beneath, and he stood shaking and wet on all fours. Then I felt Ashlynn’s shock echo my own at the creature that stood before us. Because instead of a wolf as I had assumed, a large, tawny cat, who stood as tall as I did, with paws twice the size and fangs that jutted from his jaws, met my gaze with mild surprise of his own.
Am I not a wolf? He thought, and I chuffed and stood on my hind legs before dropping again.
I was bitten by a rat, and I am a wolf. You were bitten by a wolf, and you are a lion. Wild magic does as it wishes, and we are not to question it. Welcome to the pack.
I’d barely finished my last thought when a four-point buck leaped into the clearing and bounded across it, and the pack followed shortly behind, swarming the young lion in our midst and propelling him forward with them, too intent on the hunt to care that their new packmate smelled of a different continent and roared when they brayed. Ashlynn and I joined the rear of the hunt happy to see our Leo carried away by the hunt for the moment.
He would need his own kind before long, but the loneliness and aching separateness I’d felt when he stumbled out of the cabin was gone, replaced by the same untamed, unbridled joy of the hunt as the pack. Tomorrow there would be a trial, and I would both testify against a Fae to her kind and plead for myself among mine. Tonight, there was only the moon, the tang of fresh blood as the first wolf bled our prey, and the rhythm of my mate by my side where she belonged.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It had been a while since I’d woken in a pile of bodies instead curled around Ashlynn, and for a moment I felt lost until I caught her scent and found her with a couple of females that had challenged her after the hunt. She’d fought them all at once and despite their coordinated efforts had beaten each one down with the ease of a seasoned fighter against cubs.
I’d taken her away from the group for a bit after that and resumed human form to use my subtler healing magic, since I wasn’t comfortable licking wounds yet, even though my beast insisted that it would work the same.
After that, everything was a blur of introductions and learning that the Leo’s name was Byron. He and Ashlynn bonded instantly over their shared histories as one-time rising star athletes, and Dirk teased us, complaining that he was the only black male wolf in the pack, and he wanted to join his “melanin brother” as a lion.
Byron had quickly learned his place in the pack as he was initiated the way we all were, with challenges, both sincere and half-hearted, from other junior members. His size was a great advantage to him, and h
e won several rounds even without any skill as a fighter, but each time he was challenged, I was required to draw the lion from him because he didn’t know how to shift, and he wasn’t ruled by the moon as we were.
I looked around the pile of bodies for him and found him nestled near Ashlynn, his hand on her thigh. A swift and immediate stab of jealousy went through me, and I jumped up from my place among the others and stalked to her, separating his scent from hers and growling low in my throat at the amount of him that clung to her.
Ashlynn’s eyes opened and grew round with alarm as I stalked toward her, the grow in my throat deepening until I realized I’d begun to shift, my legs lengthening and my hands reshaping into wicked claws as I drew near to them. I gripped her around one arm and lifted her from the pile of now alert and frightened females, holding her so her feet dangled above the floor. I pulled her in close and sniffed her, snarling as I found his scent on her skin from her mouth down to her torso, and I bent her forward to see the bite marks on her neck that showed he’d forced her to submit to him.
“My God, you’re such a hypocrite,” I growled at her as I set her down. Hot rage burned my heart to a cinder. Her tears and pleading meant nothing to me, and I turned my back on her to face the Leo who had earned my wrath.
I reached down with one clawed hand and grabbed him by the throat, squeezing until I heard him struggled to breathe. I picked him up and threw him against the wall, watching with satisfaction as he slid down into a heap of quivering flesh on the floor, too afraid to meet my angry gaze. I shifted back to my human form and lunged for him again, picked him up and slammed him against the wall, holding him inches from my face.
“This is how you show your thanks for what the gift I gave you? You put your hands on my mate? I should kill you now and leave your carcass for the bears.” I jerked my head when a hand slid up over my shoulder, and Ashlynn ran her fingers down my arm to my hand, gently pulling it away from the Leo’s throat.
“You two already had this talk last night, Clay. The wild magic was so much a part of you, I think you’ve forgotten. You didn’t kill him then, and you won’t kill him now because the only one to mate with me after the hunt was you.”
“Then why was he sleeping with you instead of me?” I asked, and she sighed and tugged on my hand some more until I followed her away from the spectators behind me.
“Because he’s a lion, and lions mate in harems, Clay. The beast wouldn’t rest, so we split up and gave him females to sleep with.”
“And you?”
“And I was there to make sure he minded his manners, Clay. We agreed to it.” She slugged me in the arm, hard enough to make me wince, and growled as she paced in front of me. “I appreciate your jealousy and approve of your possessiveness . . . most of the time. But he’s new and scared and not in control of his animal. Don’t make an enemy out of him, at least not until we know we’ve obliterated the ones we already have.”
She stormed away from me, and I rubbed the back of my neck and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly before I approached the Leo again.
“Byron, right?” I asked. He rubbed his throat and cautiously nodded his head. “Don’t touch our mated females. Ever. I don’t know if there are any other Leos in existence or if you’re the first. But we’ll let you audition willing females from the pack for your harem as long as you understand that when they find a mate of their own they’re no longer yours.”
He nodded again and tried to squelch a cough. “Your mate almost killed me last night because I couldn’t scent your pairing,” he reassured me. “I’m happy just dating one girl at a time. I don’t know about this . . . this thing inside me, but I don’t want a harem.”
“Just know your place in the pack, and I’m sure you’ll find a Regina someday,” I said, the name coming to me in a thought that sounded suspiciously like Onyxis thoughts in my head.
“What’s a Regina?” Byron asked, still wary of me.
“You are the only Leo I know. That makes you the Rex, the alpha of your kind. Your Regina will be your queen.”
“Do I have to do the things you do for the pack because I’m an alpha—I mean, a Rex?” I could taste his regret at having accepted the magic I’d offered him, and it cooled the fire inside me to ash. I grinned at him and offered him my hand.
“Not until you have a . . . well, not a pack, or a herd . . .” I searched my thoughts for the answer and it came again from Onyxis. Pride, Clay. A lion has a pride.
“I think a group of lions is a pride,” Byron said aloud, and I nodded.
“Yeah, that’s it. A pride.” I glanced around at the wolves I’d forgotten were still watching us, but once the fighting was over, they’d gone back to ignoring us and getting up for the day. “I know I welcomed you to the pack, but I know someone who might be more valuable to you than us, in learning about your new life,” I added. “Find some clean clothes, get some breakfast in you, and you’ll be joining Ash and me when we go into town.”
Too scared to argue, Byron wandered back to the common area where Jodi offered him some clothes in exchange for a college football story, and Dirk promised not to introduce him to Rae when we went back to the club.
By the time I’d showered and dressed, Byron, Ashlynn, and Dirk were ready to go and sitting together outside, sipping the amazing coffee made by Bernie, our patriarch and one of my closest friends. I selected a handful of wolves to join us at the dojo for the trial and asked for volunteers who didn’t have other plans to go back to the club and help Henny look for more runic doorways that made shortcuts to the tunnels.
The knowledge that such magic even existed made my skin crawl. Just as Caroline was adamant about the privacy of our minds, I wanted my home to be safe from the bad guys. They weren’t supposed to be able to get into our home and hurt us. There were supposed to be rules against it, and Circe had broken them. I didn’t know what constituted an appropriate punishment for that, but I was going to fight for the maximum possible sentence if for no other reason than to deter any other Fae from coming after us.
Bernie, his mate Sophie, and a few other wolves asked to stay behind at the camp. I knew I wasn’t the only one shaken by what we’d learned about the Fae, and Ashlynn and I agreed that now that we’d become part of the larger Fae world, we needed to up our own security. I promised to send Henny and the professor back to them as soon as they had helped Caroline protect the club and assigned two more of our strongest soldiers to help if trouble knocked on our door.
Those of us who were going piled into three SUVs, with Ashlynn, Dirk, Byron, and I joining Jodi in his Escalade. As he drove away from the camp, I couldn’t help but glance back in the passenger rearview mirror and watch it vanish behind the trees. I’d never lived anywhere by myself, always in the Venatores barracks or the campground since I’d become a wolf.
After waking up to the shock of Ashlynn not by my side, perhaps it was time to make the longhouse a place to gather instead of a place to live. Dirk and Rae had their jobs and their house, and Henny and the professor had chosen to build a cabin away from the rest of the camp for privacy. I looked over my shoulder at my mate, sitting just behind Jodi and watching the trees go by out her window. Ashlynn was right. We weren’t wolves—we were people with wolves in us. She wanted dates, and I wanted time alone with her to get past the pack issues and learn how to be a couple, not just a mated pair. The problem was how to convince the pack to accept their alpha not being available twenty-four-seven after decades of always being together.
Of course, that problem would have to get to the back of the long line of problems that were more important—like how to make sure we’d stopped all the Order of the Crow folks who wanted to steal wild magic from the lesser Fae and how to convince the Fae to accept the half breed lesser Fae as deserving of protection . . . I forced myself to clear my mind and gazed out the window at the passing scenery. One of the biggest downsides to being the alpha was that the pack could feel what I felt, which meant I never got the chance to jus
t stew in my worry because they could sense what I felt, just as I could them.
I should’ve sensed Ashlynn’s loyalty and not just her attraction to Byron. I sighed and silently cursed myself. It was going to take a lot more than just dinner and a movie to make it right with Ashlynn after what an idiot I’d been. The pack could be trusted to take my side against any outsider. As far as they were concerned, my outburst had to have been warranted because I was the alpha. But I was already on thin ice with Ashlynn. It didn’t matter that I’d figured my crap out because we hadn’t had any time together for me to tell her. This morning just made me feel more like a jerk, enough that I was going to have to pull out all the stops to make it right, and that meant getting some help.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jodi drove us straight to the Red Dagger to meet with Maria and the council and let them ask me their questions. Ashlynn had never been inside the dojo, so while we were forced to wait, I showed her the training rooms where I taught my classes and led her back to the entrance to the tunnel that Maria had first sent us down. But when we got down to the sublevel, the room where we’d gone in was twice as large and the opening no longer existed. Instead, there was a great wooden door, carved with runes that glowed with ivy that grew up around it and hung down over the top.