by Dannika Dark
FOUR DAYS
A Seven Series Novel
Book 4
USA Today Bestselling Author
DANNIKA DARK
All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 2014 Dannika Dark
No part of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author. You must not circulate this book in any format. Thank you for respecting the rights of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Edited by Victory Editing and Red Adept. Cover design by Dannika Dark. All stock purchased.
www.dannikadark.net
Fan page located on Facebook
Summary
Ivy believes every life must have balance, and during the past year, she’s found harmony living with the Weston pack. When an evil spirit from her past threatens her wolf, it sets off a chain reaction of events that alters the course of her destiny.
Lorenzo Church is a powerful, wealthy Packmaster who rules his pack through intimidation and order. He has vowed to never love a woman because love can destroy an empire. But chaos is fast approaching in the form of a Shifter named Ivy—a Native American, like him, who has invaded his dreams since the moment they met. She is spirited, wise, and unattainable.
In an unexpected turn of events, Ivy must choose whether or not to let go of the one person she has always loved. Lorenzo discovers the root of her courage but will never win her as his mate unless he learns to listen to his heart.
Book 4
Also By Dannika Dark:
The Mageri Series
Sterling
Twist
Impulse
Gravity
Shine
Novellas
Closer
The Seven Series
Seven Years
Six Months
Five Weeks
Four Days
Table Of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Acknowledgments:
A free spirit is like the wind and can never be caught.
But in four days, one man captured my heart.
Prologue
When a blanket of stars stretched overhead and the luminous moon enveloped the brisk night, Lorenzo’s wolf trotted up the steps of a spacious mansion nestled deep in the woods.
His home.
Lorenzo Church led one of the largest wolf packs in Austin, Texas. His home accommodated roughly fifty Shifters, including women and children. Perhaps it was an ambitious size, but Lorenzo believed strength lay in numbers. Only a formidable leader could control a pack with that many wolves, and it required him to be demanding and merciless.
The contemporary home had sleek lines, plenty of windows, and a boxy look on the outside. While it appeared cold and unwelcoming, it gave off the impression that Lorenzo was a man to admire. The interior contradicted its modern, outward appearance. Lorenzo had customized the inside to resemble a rustic cabin of epic proportions. The social rooms were warm and inviting, each with wood floors and Native American décor. Only the kitchen and game rooms were styled with a modern touch to provide the pack a diverse environment. Towering three stories high, the Church house was an impressive estate overlooking five hundred acres of property.
He lifted his snout in the air, smelling the bitter scent of wild weeds. A small vine had tangled around one of his dirty paws, but Lorenzo ignored it and lurched up the steps. Most Shifters had no memory once their animal took over, but alphas had a powerful bond with their spirit wolf, one that made it possible for them to remember the shift and have a degree of control while they were in animal form.
Late October usually meant agreeable weather with a few cold snaps. But over the last few weeks, Lorenzo’s wolf had sensed a hard winter approaching that would bring record temperatures. The wind had shifted that morning and had been gusting all day. His wolf glanced up at the moon; dark clouds raced across the sky.
Lorenzo shifted into human form long enough to open the front door.
He’d spared no expense in building this home, which was nestled high on a hill in the forest. As soon as the air-conditioning raised the hair on his arms, Lorenzo shifted back into his wolf. His ebony toenails clicked on the reddish wood floor, and an amber glow from the light fixtures illuminated the interior.
Most of the men were at the Shifter bar, searching for the kind of gratification that only the company of an unmated woman could bring. There were sixteen bitches in his pack, all mated with the exception of five. Two of those five were teenage girls nearing the age of maturity. Lorenzo protected them, as did their fathers, since young women didn’t date until they went through their first change, which usually happened in their late teens or early twenties. It was considered a rite of passage for a young woman when her wolf emerged for the first time—symbolizing the loss of innocence, and only then did they begin to search for a mate. If they were unlucky finding a suitable Shifter, Lorenzo would relocate them to a pack of their choice, as was also the custom for young men. The remaining three unmated women were untouchable to the rest of the men because Lorenzo shared his bed with them, but only on his terms.
“Hey, Enzo,” one of his men said in greeting. Friends called him Enzo, while business associates addressed him as Church.
His wolf growled, tail high as he trotted past the man and scurried up the staircase. Lorenzo could have walked in the house in human form since Shifters didn’t have inhibitions when it came to nudity, but his men needed contact with his wolf on a regular basis. They were both in charge, and each deserved the same magnitude of respect. He polished his fangs with his tongue, the taste of blood still fresh on his palate from the hunt.
Lorenzo resided in the largest room on the third floor, and he had the entire level to himself. When he reached his door, he shifted into human form again and went inside. The door closed behind him, and he touched one of the tall bedposts on his right. Each had intricate carvings of wolves and other Native American symbols.
The room had a unique and sizeable layout. The bed and fireplace were to his right, and on the left was a dark wall with a low chest of drawers. Various heirlooms passed down from his ancestors decorated the shelf and walls. But midway through the room, the wall stopped and became a long row of floor-to-ceiling windows that extended all the way to his luxurious bathroom. His room branched farther off the left side of the house than the others to give him the scenic view. Because they were on a hill, it placed his room high above the treetops. The view in the morning was exquisite, with soft gold and copper hues spreading across the land like a brilliant tapestry of light.
He poured himself a glass of Scotch and stood in front of the window, his naked body bathed in moonlight. Tomorrow would be a full moon, and call it superstition, but nothing good ever came of a full moon.
He grimaced as the drink scorched its way down his throat. He swirled the Scotch in his glass and thought of another moonlit n
ight decades ago when his aunt had been found slain. Lorenzo was just a boy then, but the murder marked a transition for his pack… and his family. A pool of blood had surrounded her open arms, empty of the infant she’d once clutched to her bosom. His uncle had blamed a neighboring pack, suggesting they had motive because of a land dispute. They’d laid Lorenzo’s aunt to rest on sacred land. Alone. His uncle had initially told the pack he’d found the dead baby and buried it somewhere on his land—the property in dispute—but suspicion rose among his men when their wolves were never able to sniff out the unmarked grave. It was only last year that Lorenzo discovered the infant had survived.
That baby was Alexia Knight, who also went by Lexi. After years of uncertainty, the truth had finally emerged. Lorenzo’s uncle, in a jealous rage, had hired a hitman to murder his wife and child. Not his child. The baby’s biological father was a drifter from up north. Had the facts gone public, the infidelity would have shamed his uncle and he would have lost the respect of his pack. Because no evidence led to the murderer, the incident became a topic of discussion behind closed doors. Lorenzo’s father had known about the affair, and rumors had cast a negative light on the immediate family—guilt by association. Even now, Lorenzo felt branded by the shame of secrets, betrayal, murder, and lies.
The hitman hadn’t been able to bring himself to kill the infant, so in a panic he’d kidnapped the baby and given it to his wife. Alexia had been raised by the human who’d shot her mother in cold blood.
Her father, Nelson Knight, had paid for the life he’d taken. Lorenzo had made sure of that. After taking him into custody, he’d released Nelson on the property and given him a running start before Lorenzo shifted and hunted him like prey. He gave Nelson the same thing his aunt had been given: no mercy.
Lorenzo set down his glass and folded his arms, cords of muscle tightening as he admired his land. His dark hair fell past his broad shoulders like a mane, and the moonlight accentuated the dark tattoo inked on his left arm.
A few wolves sprinted on the grounds below, and he squinted, making sure they were members of his pack. Packmasters established territories, and those who broke the rules and trespassed were subject to punishment from the pack. Rogues wandered in now and again, but Lorenzo made sure his wolves marked the property regularly to keep outsiders away. Shifters were protective of their land, women, and children. Not so long ago, they hadn’t been afforded such luxuries. The immortals saw Shifters as nothing but laborers; men had been chained, women violated. So modern comforts and organized law didn’t put Lorenzo at ease. The social order could turn on a dime, even among their own kind.
Wolves had worked hard over the years to secure land, and some of the other animals who hadn’t grew envious. A few years ago up in Oklahoma, a pack of twenty had been slaughtered and their territory claimed by a small family of panthers—a mated couple and their two grown sons. Without proof of what had occurred, the local Council assumed a personal dispute had led to war, so the panthers were permitted to keep their prize. Humans might consider it savage behavior, but they weren’t human. Their laws were stripped down to the basics.
Every so often, one of Lorenzo’s men broke the rules, and Lorenzo’s job as a Packmaster was to oversee punishment. Sometimes that meant trading him off.
Other times it meant death.
A light knock sounded at the door, the kind that came from the delicate knuckles of a woman’s hand. “Enzo, do you want some company?”
“Go away,” he said impassively.
“If you change your mind…” It was Rebecca, an alpha female with intentions of becoming the Packmaster’s mate. He’d rather trade her off, but she had taken a dominant role in the house. Men who didn’t fit in with a pack were much easier to trade off than strong women were.
The unmated women had their sights on Lorenzo. A position at his side would mean power, wealth, and security. But he didn’t trust a woman not to bed another man. It had taken him years to amass this fortune and empire, and he’d witnessed firsthand how a man’s love for a woman could destroy everything he’d built. Only a foolish man believed there could be one woman deserving of all his devotion. As far as Lorenzo was concerned, love was inconsequential.
His vision blurred as his mind drifted back to a night like this, one year ago. Austin Cole, a neighboring Packmaster, had held a peace party at his house that went awry when one of his brothers drugged the snacks as a joke. That’s when Lorenzo had first laid eyes on a beautiful woman standing on a tree swing and speaking lyrically. She carried herself like an enchanted being from a distant time. Twinkle lights and ivy encircled the rope, and her long, mahogany braid loosened in the wind.
She had bewitched him.
Lorenzo had everything a Packmaster could desire: power, land, wealth, and a respected pack. Nothing was unattainable, and he acquired anything that intrigued him. Had Alexia not already been seduced by another alpha, Lorenzo would have brought her into his bed, but no woman was worth all that trouble. He hadn’t coveted her for long; envy was not a palatable trait and left a bitter taste in his mouth. The young beauty on the swing was one of Austin’s packmates; therefore, he tried to put her out of his mind.
So why did seeing an acorn remind him of this woman? Or the harvest moon on an autumn’s night? Or a child’s swing? Earlier that year, he had run into her again at an outdoor festival. When a drunk had put his brute hands on her, it incited a riotous anger within Lorenzo. It should have irritated him that the woman had fought back with her words and not her fists. What good were words against a sharp arrow or a cutting blade? And yet this demure woman from his memories enchanted him.
Perhaps the only fascination was her purity. Shifter women often protected their virginity until they began entering relationships in their early twenties. But once a flower is plucked from the garden, it withers.
Lorenzo turned away from the window and headed toward the shower. The last thing he needed to set his mind on was a woman.
Chapter 1
Another pale leaf floated to the ground and landed on my foot. I lifted it to my nose and drew in a deep breath. “It’s going to be cold this winter.”
“How do you know, Miss Ivy?” Maizy asked. Lexi’s human sister was one of the most inquisitive seven-year-olds I’d ever met.
“Because every living thing has a voice,” I said, pinching the stem between my fingers and twirling it. “Sometimes they whisper, so you need to pay close attention.”
“Like that leaf?”
I smiled warmly, handing it to her. “Shifters are more attuned to changes in the wild, and I’ve learned to trust my wolf’s instincts. But you don’t need to be a Shifter to learn such things. My mother taught me how to listen to the world. She said if you make too much noise, you’ll never hear it.”
“Where’s your mom?”
We held hands and walked up the grassy stretch of land in front of the Weston house. I often took little Maizy for walks so she could gather up magical rocks, which were sometimes nothing more than pebbles from the driveway. I enjoyed telling her stories passed down in my family—ancient fables that taught lessons to the young children and featured wolves.
“She died, honey.”
Worry filled her blue eyes and she rooted her feet in place. “Will my mommy die?”
I smiled and knelt down, looking up at her. “Someday we all will end this life and begin a new one. It’s nothing to be afraid of, and nothing you need to worry about, little one. Your mommy will be here for a long time. She’s healthy and happy.” I touched the ends of her blond hair and smoothed them out.
“But… wasn’t yours a Shifter? Why couldn’t she heal herself?”
A knot formed in my stomach. How could I explain death to a child in a way that wouldn’t frighten her? I certainly couldn’t tell her the truth about what had happened to my mother—that she committed suicide.
“We can’t heal forever. It was her time, and I miss her so much. But I can still hear her singing in the wind,”
I said, rising to my feet. “Sometimes when the sun warms my skin, I feel her love. She’s a part of everything now, so she’s always with me.”
“I like that,” Maizy said decidedly. “When I die, I want to be a cloud. That way I can see everything going on, and if someone’s bad, I’ll rain on their head.”
I burst out laughing and she giggled, pleased with my reaction. “I think we better get you inside. It’s a little chilly today. Let’s see if Austin will build a fire.”
Maizy loved it when we had a fire going because she’d never lived in a house with a fireplace before. It was too early in the season, so Austin hadn’t lit one yet. Last winter, Maizy had snuggled next to the fireplace on several occasions. Sometimes her mother was already in bed and Denver would drape a blanket over her and sleep on the sofa to keep watch. I sat with him one evening and he jumped whenever the wood snapped, afraid an ember might land on her clothes and set her on fire. I laughed and told him he was being overprotective, but Denver didn’t see it quite the same way.
“Mr. Austin won’t make one because he always thinks it’s too hot.”
“That’s because lava flows in his veins.”
Her eyes widened. “Nuh-uh!”
I restrained my urge to laugh. Maizy didn’t like people teasing her. “It’s an old saying in my family that an alpha has the resilience and fire of a volcano, and that’s why many seem impervious to the cold.”
“What’s im…impervies?”
“It just means they’re tougher than the rest of us. Like the rocks in your pocket are much stronger than… candy.”
Maizy giggled. “You’re so silly.”
Austin Cole was our Packmaster and a good mate to Lexi. Good fortune had placed me with the Weston pack. My father had wanted to trade me off for a long time, and fate sent Austin to ask him a favor. My father had seized the opportunity and sent me packing. Young women usually left their pack to mate. Those who didn’t find a mate simply switched packs when they were old enough; safety existed in numbers. It was problematic to remain in the same house with your parents and the men you grew up with. Men were also traded when they came of age in order to keep new blood in the pack. Each Packmaster would hand-select personalities that fit with their family. If I had entered Austin’s pack and wanted to leave, I could put in a request for another to take me in. The choice was mine.