Wolf's Lie

by Laura Taylor

  WOLF'S LIE

  Laura Taylor

  Copyright 2017 Laura Taylor

  All rights reserved.

  Smashwords Edition

  Print edition also available via online retailers.

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Editing by Karen Crombie at Exact Editing

  https://www.facebook.com/ExactEditing/

  Cover design by Linda Gee

  https://www.facebook.com/artbymeisarn/

  Cover images used under licence from Shutterstock.com

  ALSO BY LAURA TAYLOR

  THE HOUSE OF SIRIUS

  Book 1: Wolf’s Blood

  Book 2: Wolf’s Cage

  Book 3: Wolf’s Choice

  Book 4: Wolf’s Guile

  Book 6: Wolf’s Gift coming soon

  For the readers. Thank you. All of you.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you Linda, for once again doing a spectacular job on the cover art.

  Thank you Aventuraid wolf park, for giving me the experience of a lifetime and letting me meet the wolves face to face.

  Thank you Karen, my wonderful editor. It’s been an absolute pleasure working with you on this book.

  And as always, thank you Fabien, for putting up with me.

  NAMES AND ALIASES

  SHIFTERS OF THE LAKES DISTRICT DEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  The King’s Head Inn wasn’t the liveliest it had ever been; it was a Tuesday night, and it wouldn’t see its stools and booths truly full again until the weekend crowd started piling in, ready to let off steam from a hard week’s work.

  But that wasn’t to say the place was empty. Scattered pairs and the occasional loner generated a quiet background rumble, punctuated by the snapping of logs from the open fire at the end of the long room. The scents of steaming food wafted through as a waitress carried an order to a couple staring at each other with love-sick eyes in one booth, while next door to them, another couple sounded like they were on the brink of a heated argument. And from a group in one corner, loud peals of laughter regularly carried across the room, invariably followed either by a round of congratulations and back-slapping, or someone calling bullshit, supported by a chorus of jeers.

  Alistair sat with his back to the wall, right in the middle of the noisy gathering, grinning from ear to ear as he listened to Ethan telling a story of how he’d ‘rescued’ his drowning nephew the week before.

  “Ha! The only problem with that story,” another man interrupted loudly, “is that the kid was wearing floaties, in a pool that was only a foot deep!”

  Raucous laughter broke out, Ethan taking no offence at being called out. Most of the men had had more than a few drinks, and the paltry truth of the matter was hardly relevant anymore.

  “Oh, hey, Drew, you’ll like this one,” Noah said, draining the last of his whisky. “The full moon’s coming up. I heard a rumour there’s a druidic group doing some ancient summoning ritual at Stonehenge. Better get your arse over there to cover the breaking news!”

  The group was comprised of journalists of one ilk or another, Ethan covering the sports pages and Noah writing an editor’s column that largely consisted of him disagreeing with whatever any given politician had said that week. Alex’s work carried a more serious tone as he wrote for a local paper that covered light-weight ‘news’ such as the council’s plans to renovate a town hall or inflammatory comments made by a school principal. Alistair, or Drew as he was known to this crowd, worked freelance, and it hadn’t gone unnoticed that over the years his articles had focused on the portion of the population that lived ‘outside the box’; ceremonies by a wiccan group, a deluded teenager who claimed to believe her father was a vampire, or mysterious sightings of mythical ‘creatures’, invariably accompanied by blurry photographs taken in dim light.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know what this group call themselves, would you?” Alistair asked, slapping a serious expression on his face and whipping out a notepad and pen. “Or the name of one of its members?” The rest of them laughed; Alistair’s bent for the weird and wonderful was a long-time target of good-natured ribbing.

  “Why do you bother with that tripe, anyway?” Alex asked. He’d repeatedly offered Alistair a permanent position at the paper he worked for and had repeatedly been turned down.

  “Fringe-dwellers make better headlines,” Alistair replied nonchalantly, taking a sip of the light beer that sat in a half-empty glass in front of him (or half-full, as he routinely insisted it was). “And interesting headlines get more readers. Unlike you blighters with a cushy office and a regular pay cheque, some of us have to work for a living.”

  “Right. Interesting headlines,” Noah scoffed. “‘Vampire cult discovered in Liverpool!’ ‘Sightings of black creature cause terror in Yorkshire Dales!’ It was a bloody German shepherd that escaped from its owner’s yard.”

  “And yet a couple of million people still clicked on that link to find that out,” Alistair said with a grin, not taking the jabs seriously in the slightest. If nothing else was going on, these men would while away an hour complaining about the colour of the tablecloth, or the age of the rug on the floor. Complaining was in their nature, and a certain sardonic edge to their personalities was what kept them employed.

  “Okay, who’s up for another drink?” Alex offered, rising from his seat. “Noah, another whisky? Ethan, Guinness?” Ethan nodded, quickly making sure his current glass was empty. “Drew? What the hell is that puddle of piss you’re drinking anyway? Light beer? Shit, let me get you something with a bite to it.”

  “Not for me,” Alistair said, checking his watch. It was getting late, and the back of his neck was beginning to itch. He hadn’t had a chance to shift into his wolf form all day. An early start, followed by a full day of meetings ensured he’d spent upwards of twelve hours as a human by now, and his canine side was making its presence felt. Of course, it was entirely possible for a shifter to spend up to three full days in one form, but the longer it lasted, the more uncomfortable it became, and as a rule, they preferred not to push the envelope. “I’ve got to drive home, and I’ve got an eight o’clock interview in the morning. Sorry guys, I’m going to have to bow out.”

  A muttered round of complaints followed, but no one made any serious efforts to stop him leaving. After all, in a couple of days, they’d all be back here again. Alistair bade them farewell, nodding to the barman on his way out. Once he was outside he paused, inhaling the cold evening air slowly and letting his wolf senses test out the darkness.

  There were a handful of people out on the street, a couple heading home after dinner and an old man clutching a paper bag as he emerged from a liquor shop, but nothing that could really be seen as a threat. Trouble on a Tuesday night in a small town in the Lakes District was unlikely, but one could never be too careful.

  Satisfied that he wasn’t about to get jumped by the Noturatii and taken to a lab to be dissected alive, Alistair headed for the small blue car he’d driven here, slid into the chilly interior and started the motor. He switched the heater on to full blast and waited for the air to warm up a little. It was early spring in the north of England and trees were bravely putting out their first buds and the days gradually lengthening, but night-times were still bitterly cold. Reminding himself to bring his gloves next time, Alistair put the car in gear and pu
lled out from the curb. In half an hour he’d be back home, and a night-time run through the forest in wolf form was sounding like a fine idea.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Dee’s knuckles were white as she fought to keep her grip on the door frame of the jeep. The road they were travelling on was potholed and badly neglected as they headed for one of the outer regions of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, where, despite the daily hardships of such a location, the Ukrainian Den had made its home.

  In order to make this trip, Dee and Mark had been collected at Carlisle airport by the Council’s private plane, and they had been both surprised and relieved to find that Feng, one of the Councillors, had come as their official escort. Having spent a significant amount of time with him in Scotland in the early winter, he was a welcome familiar face when the two of them were going to be venturing into entirely unknown territory. Two assassin bodyguards had also come along, although so far, they had had little to say.

  After the plane had landed, they’d been greeted by a stern line-up. Four armed and muscular shifters from the Ukrainian Den looked Dee and Mark up and down like they were something to be scraped off their shoe. After the briefest of introductions, they’d hurried them all off to two waiting vehicles to begin the two-hour trip to their destination. On advice from the resident Den, Dee and Mark had each brought very little luggage, and what they had brought had been left in the plane. Security around the Exclusion Zone was tight, and while getting in and out was not a problem for wolves, humans carrying suitcases were bound to draw attention.

  “We park car at safe-house, then walk,” the driver of the car announced, and Dee merely nodded. The woman spoke broken English at best, but that was still a step up from the other guide in their car, a frowning man who didn’t understand a single word of it. Feng and the two assassins were in a second jeep travelling not far behind them, their driver speaking English more fluently, but less eagerly.

  A few minutes later, the car pulled into what looked like an abandoned barn, and Dee followed their hosts’ lead by getting out of the car and heading towards a dilapidated stock yard. They arrived just as the second car was pulling into the barn, and Dee was a little concerned to realise they would not be waiting for Feng before heading off.

  “Road to Den is difficult,” their driver said, looking at them both seriously. “Guards, many guards. You stay with me, right behind. Right behind,” she said again, emphasising her point with some vigorous gestures. “Bad guards, and...” She fumbled for the right word. “Sickness. Bad. Uh...”

  “Radiation?” Dee guessed.

  “Radiation, yes. Explosion. Very bad. You stay right behind me.”

  Dee and Mark both nodded solemnly. They’d been told that the Ukrainian Den had chosen an abandoned town with only low levels of radiation lingering, higher than would be recommended for normal humans, but some quirk in the shifter physiology apparently meant they were able to live there safely. But after the stern warning from their guide, Dee took it to mean that on the way there, they were likely to cross other areas that might be more contaminated, and serious health issues could result if she strayed from the path. “Stay with you,” she confirmed.

  “Wolf only,” the guide said next. “No humans. Wolf only.”

  “Okay,” Dee said, nodding again. “Now?”

  The guide glanced over at the barn, where the second half of their group was emerging. A wave and a few gestures passed between them, and then the guide nodded. “Now. Wolves. We go.” She shifted, waiting while the rest of them did so as well, then set off at a quick trot, heading away from the farm and into the forest. Dee went second, Mark on her tail, and the second guide, now a burly grey wolf, brought up the rear.

  It was a good hour’s journey before they reached their destination, but the trek was absolutely beautiful, the countryside untouched by human hands for the past thirty years. The few buildings they passed were being slowly overgrown by vines, weeds sprouted up from any crack in the concrete and the sense of isolation was both haunting and serene.

  Finally, after a hard, uphill slog, the small village the Ukrainian Den called home came into view. Their guide stopped, scenting the air carefully, then she threw her head back and howled. Faeydir perked up instantly, eager to add her voice to the song, but Dee quickly pulled her up, not certain that joining in would be appropriate. But all the same, she hoped they would get the chance to do some decent howling while they were here, since it was strictly forbidden at their home estate. In this unique wilderness, a sizable wild population of wolves meant that even a full-throated chorus by the entire pack was not going to arouse any suspicions.

  An answering howl came back to them, and as a formless passenger inside Faeydir’s body, Dee imagined herself smiling. That was Nikolai’s howl, and she could feel Faeydir’s excitement rising, as eager to see their friend as Dee herself was.

  In response to the howl, their guide moved forward, leading the group down a narrow path between old gardens, now wildly overgrown, along a deserted street and down a small slope. Eventually they broke free of the undergrowth and came face to face with a small group of wolves, Nikolai front and centre. Faeydir could tell he was trying to look authoritative, but the incorrigible way the tip of his tail was wagging was a dead giveaway. Not waiting for any more of an introduction, she bounded forward, head held low, tail tucked but wagging, an eager yowl coming from her throat – a thoroughly proper greeting for a high-ranking wolf who also happened to be a good friend.

  Nikolai looked entirely pleased by her behaviour, tail wagging forcefully now, and he stood grinning while Faeydir licked his muzzle. Seeing that Faeydir’s enthusiasm was appreciated, Mark came forward as well, less excited, but paying similar reverence to the alpha wolf.

  But not everyone was as eager to see them. Another wolf came forward, a female, and she stood tall and aloof, tail held high, with just a hint of a snarl on her lips. This must be the alpha female, Dee realised, and was relieved when Faeydir greeted her submissively, dropping low to the ground and then inching forward, offering a tentative lick to the female’s muzzle. The rest of the pack didn’t move to greet the newcomers, nor to display any overt defensiveness. They seemed content to take their lead from their alphas, and the attitude showed a marked degree of trust and solidarity amongst the pack.

  A second howl echoed from the forest, and Nikolai turned to listen, then issued a howl in reply. Feng and his group must have arrived.

  Dee began to wonder when it might be considered acceptable to shift. Each pack had their own customs and she didn’t want to offend anyone, but at the same time, she was eager to greet Nikolai as a human and to find out more about the two pups they had come so far to see.

  But it seemed that the Ukrainian pack lived significantly wilder lives than Dee’s own Den, and given their surroundings, it was hardly a surprise. There were no local shops for supplies, so she supposed that much of their food must have been caught through hunting, and it was likely that most meals were eaten in wolf form. Nights could be cold out here, with no electricity for heat – though she could smell the distinct tang of a wood fire – and it was possible they might sleep in wolf form most of the time as well. In some ways, they had achieved what so many Grey Watch packs aspired to; a rediscovering of their wild roots and a return to a more basic way of life.

  Not two minutes had passed since the howl had been heard, when five more wolves came padding into the clearing. For all Dee’s impatience, Faeydir seemed totally content to wait and watch while the next round of introductions went on, and Dee found herself quite curious as to how Feng and Nikolai would greet each other. Technically speaking, Feng ranked above Nikolai, but since they were on Nikolai’s territory, that wasn’t necessarily the definitive answer to their relationship. High-ranking wolves from different packs often struggled to know how to approach each other, and for that very reason, it was far more common for introductions to be made in human form.

  Aware of the potential for conflict, Feng step
ped forward, as did Nikolai, and the two of them faced each other, heads up, tails high, two proud warriors sizing each other up in an unhurried way.

  Just when the standoff was about to get awkward, Nikolai bent his head ever so slightly, a mark of deference to his superior, and that broke the tension. The female alpha came forward, and they, Feng, and the assassins all spent a few minutes sniffing each other over. Watching on from within Faeydir’s mind, Dee was a little surprised to find herself feeling both awkward and jealous.

  She was well aware of how unique her situation was. Most of the shifters – as she had repeatedly been told – were not merely a human inside a wolf’s body; in every way that mattered, they were the wolf as much as they were the human.

  But Faeydir was a completely separate mind and personality, and so Dee had never truly merged with her canine half as other shifters did. She knew a great deal about wolf behaviour, she regularly watched how Faeydir solved problems and made decisions, but she had never truly felt like a wolf, never been swept away by the wild instincts that governed Faeydir’s life. Watching the wolves in front of her sniffing each other, all she could think was that if it had been up to her to greet another wolf that way, she would have been profoundly embarrassed. Somehow having Faeydir do it was okay – particularly since Faeydir would have found it standoffish or even offensive to not familiarise herself with the scent of her new companions. But Dee still wondered how people who had been born and raised as humans embraced such a foreign culture so readily.