by Reine, SM
Contents
Caged in Bone
Copyright
About
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Dear Reader
Caged in Bone
The Ascension Series - Book Four
SM Reine
Copyright © 2013 Red Iris Books
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
This book is sold DRM-free so that it can be enjoyed in any way the reader sees fit. Please keep all links and attributions intact when sharing. All rights reserved.
Text and cover art copyright © SM Reine 2013
Cover model photo © Marcus Ranum
Published by Red Iris Books
1180 Selmi Drive, Suite 102
Reno, NV 89512
THE ASCENSION SERIES
Reading Order:
Sacrificed in Shadow
Oaths of Blood
Ruled by Steel
Caged in Bone
Lost in Prophecy (coming 2014)
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About Caged in Bone
Abel Wilder, werewolf Alpha, has gone missing, leaving his mate and the pack in a panic. His captor magicked his scent out of the sanctuary so that his mate can’t track him down. Only one witch can cast a spell that powerful.
James Faulkner has finally crossed a line that Elise Kavanagh can’t ignore.
Elise is going to have to hunt James down before the werewolf pack loses its Alpha and Rylie loses her mate. And Elise will have to find a way to make sure that James never bothers the pack—or anyone else—ever again.
One
Abel woke up on the last day he would spend with the werewolf pack and stared at his ceiling. The sun hadn’t risen yet. Moonlight reflected off the icy lake, casting silhouettes above his bed in the shape of tree branches and the ridged edge of a bush.
The pillow next to him was empty, indented where a body used to be. The sheets had been pulled aside. He could still smell the woman that had been there, even though the rapid fade of her sweat meant that she had already been gone for an hour. He dropped his hand into the empty space and imagined her warmth.
Rylie Gresham, Alpha werewolf, was an early riser. Had been for as long as he’d known her. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept in later than him, but he wished she would have slept in that morning. Would have been nice to wake up beside his mate just the once.
Abel shut his eyes again, tried to relax. But even though he had just woken up, he felt completely alert—no chance of falling back asleep now. His heart was already starting to race and he hadn’t gotten out of bed yet.
He inhaled deeply. Through the artificial barrier of the walls, he could smell the world beyond. Pine. Ice. Mud. Tar. Smoke. Wolves. Deer. Someone was already awake and starting to cook breakfast. It was a big job, feeding a pack of hungry wolves and all the humans that hung out with them. There hadn’t been a new werewolf in months, yet their pack was growing rapidly.
This was the last time he’d be smelling all of that for a while—the soaps and shampoos and sweat and human stink of it all.
He wondered if he would miss it.
Abel stuffed his feet into boots, pulled on a sweater, stepped outside. Most of the pack was still asleep. The sanctuary was quiet, even though what used to be a collection of cottages straddling a single road was rapidly becoming a small town. The two greenhouses had become four. They were building a trading post, kind of like a general store, and a school—a goddamn school.
Originally, they’d talked about those additions casually, like a “maybe someday” thing. Maybe if we don’t all die in the apocalypse, then someday we can build a school.
Hell was on Earth, the apocalypse had come, they were still alive, and now they were building a school.
He never thought he’d see the day.
Shoving his hands in his pockets, he walked fast to warm himself up, lifting his knees high to trudge through the feet of snow that had accumulated overnight. Wind bit at his nose and cheeks.
He found a shovel in the storehouse and got to work unburying the main road. They’d recovered a plow that could handle the road between the sanctuary and Northgate, but it had trouble getting down the hill into the valley. That meant that it took manual labor to clear a path all the way down. Usually, Abel let someone else do it. He liked to spend his day as a wolf, patrolling the perimeter, tracking the movements of deer through their mountains, sheltering in that no-emotion warmth of the beast’s mind.
But this morning Abel put all his weight into shoveling. He dug deep into the snow by the greenhouses and piled it on the side of the road, moving slowly down the hill. In the dim light of early morning, the snow had purple undertones. Almost the same color as the clouds in the sky.
His breath was a gray mist as he worked. The ice was settling in the forest, cracking and shifting. The river had frozen and turned the waterfall into a few long icicles plastered to the side of the cliff, and it always seemed too quiet without the water flowing. There was nothing to listen to but the rhythm of his slow, steady footsteps and the scrape of a metal shovel against asphalt.
He lost himself in the motion of it. The repetition.
Abel cut through the cottages and past the kitchen before he took a break, jabbing the shovel into a snowdrift so that he could lean on it. He was suddenly too hot. He pulled off the jacket and tossed it onto a picnic table.
The creak of hinges told him he wasn’t alone anymore. Abel turned.
A woman had appeared on the steps of the kitchens while his back was turned. She was bundled in a jacket, oversized jeans, snow boots. Her face below the collar was covered in a scarf, but he could tell she was smiling at him by the way her eyelids creased.
Abel sniffed the air, inhaling her scent across the long road. She must have been cooking breakfast. The air that came from the kitchen behind her smelled of a slow-cooked roast. But his wolf stirred at the musk of the woman, not the meat.
Mate.
This was the missing woman from his bed, the woman that had been missing in his life long before he had known she existed.
He didn’t have to speak or wave to acknowledge her. The heat of their joined gazes was enough. He wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been hot enough to melt all the snow between them.
Unfortunately, it didn’t. He had to keep shoveling.
Abel ducked his head and got back to work.
When he looked up again, Rylie had gone back inside.
The sound of an idling car engine echoed over the snow. The sky had lightened to pale violet, heralding the approach of sunrise—still too early for most of the pack to be awake, much less going anywhere. Abel propped the shovel against the wall of the nearest cottage and went to the carport.
Summer and Abram were loading a pickup, pouring gas into its tank and setting bins of produce in the bed. “Hey, Abel!” Summer called once she spotted him, waving a gloved hand over her head. “Good morning!”
“Morning,” he grunted.
Abel watched as they rearranged the bins to make them all fit a
t the bottom, and Abram watched Abel right on back. Under the brim of his knitted black cap, his face was filled with barely concealed irritation, as if Abel had interrupted something.
They’d gotten a lot of leafy winter vegetables out of the greenhouses that week. Too many to fit in the pickup easily. Abel grabbed a bin to help and Abram jerked it out of his hands.
“I’ve got it,” Abram said.
He jammed it in place and slammed the tailgate shut.
Abel’s wolf bristled. He straightened his spine, squared his shoulders. Made his profile as big as possible.
Submissive wolves knew to shrink down and lower their eyes when he looked like that. Problem was, Abram wasn’t a wolf, and he wasn’t submissive. His posture screamed dominance. It took all of Abel’s self-control not to start growling.
Summer, of course, was oblivious. “I’ve got a couple more bins before we can go,” she said, tossing a tarp over the truck bed. “We’ll need to trade all these veggies for scrap in Northgate, and I want the greenhouses pretty much empty when we go.”
“I’ll meet you back here in a few,” Abram said. “I have a couple other things to do.”
“Also known as hiding in a warm cottage while I do the hard work,” she said to Abel in a stage whisper. She dropped down from the truck, landed in the snow, and gave him a hard pinch in the ribs. “Tomorrow is a homecoming day, so we’ll be staying overnight at St. Philomene’s. See you when we get back?”
Abel stepped away from the pinch. “Well…” The gold ring on her left hand seemed to catch all the light and glow. “You still wearing that thing?”
Summer pulled her hand against her chest, like he had smacked her knuckles. “It’s an engagement ring. I’ll be wearing it for the rest of my life.”
He snorted. He didn’t mean to—it just came out of him.
A frown looked so foreign on Summer’s normally cheerful face, but her expression quickly shuttered, hiding her hurt. “Yeah, okay. Homecoming tomorrow. Stuff to do. Gotta go.”
She jogged toward the greenhouses again, curly hair bouncing behind her.
Shit. That wasn’t what Abel had meant—well, except that it was. He didn’t think much of one of the angels marrying his daughter. Especially a jackass like Nash. But Abel hadn’t wanted to pick any fights, not this morning.
Abram jumped out of the truck too. He was a little shorter than Abel. The spare inches were enough to make the Alpha wolf relax—even if just a fraction.
“I could use help shoveling, since you got a few minutes,” Abel said, pushing thoughts of Summer’s engagement out of his mind. It was hard make the request nicely. He didn’t ask for help with the pack; he demanded compliance. But today was going to be a good day, and Rylie would want him to be nice about asking.
His son didn’t seem to have gotten the message. Abram’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t bother,” he said. “It’s not happening.”
A growl escaped Abel before he could stop it. “I told you to help me shovel.”
“I don’t help assholes do anything,” Abram said.
Even though Abram was a kopis, not a werewolf, he was a quick jogger. Almost as fast as his sister. He took the left fork in the path rather than the right—the steep trail that climbed around the edge of the cliffs toward the top of the waterfall. There was only one thing up there. Abel’s jaw clenched. His hands balled into fists.
Abram was visiting the mausoleum where Seth was buried. Again.
Rylie emerged from the kitchens looking exhausted, as though she had already done far more than a day’s work. Abel was waiting for her at the bottom of the steps. “Thanks, Toshiko,” she called through the door over her shoulder, and she paused to listen to the other werewolf’s response.
He took a moment to drink in the sight of her while she was distracted—really look at her. Normally, gazing upon her shut down every rational thought and sense so all he could feel was intense need, a hunger for his mate that made the whole world vanish around her.
But now that Abram was irritated enough to see through his feelings, he thought that she looked a heck of a lot like Abram. The kid had her nose and her wide, dreamy eyes that were a little more doe-like than wolfish. He also had her fixation with Seth Wilder. Too bad Abram hadn’t also gotten Rylie’s kindness and charm.
She was startled to see Abel watching her when she turned, but that soon dissolved into a smile. The fact she ever looked at him like that still kind of stunned him sometimes.
“Done working now?” he asked. Managing the pack’s need to eat was a constant struggle against an onslaught of hungry mouths, and Rylie always seemed to end up the one in charge of it.
She sighed. “The work is never done. I’m just taking a break. I really want a shower.”
That sounded like a chore that Abel could get into.
He followed her out into the snow and cold, shielding her from the wind with the breadth of his body. It was already getting dark again. Being situated so deep in a valley meant near-constant twilight for the werewolves.
But Rylie didn’t head back to their cottage. She went to the storage shed.
“This isn’t the shower,” Abel said as she searched through a key ring. “I want that shower.”
“I hate to disappoint you.” Rylie unlocked the door and yanked a big bundle of canvas out of its depths. “Our dining hall is currently occupied by about two dozen sleeping bags, and that means we need to eat outside. Can you get the canopy and heaters set up?” She shoved the canvas and stakes into his arms.
His hands lingered on her elbows as he took them. “When’s the shower?”
She bit her bottom lip and smiled. It was a very promising smile. “We’ll probably have more people in the sanctuary this weekend. It’s a homecoming day, so everyone’s going to want to come visit. Will you help me wash all the extra linens tomorrow?”
Abel’s stomach twisted. “Laundry.”
She laughed. “I thought it couldn’t hurt to ask. Forget about it.” Her cheeks dimpled when she smiled. It really brought out the resemblance between her and Abram.
Abel’s eyes narrowed. “Your son doesn’t like me.”
“My son?” Rylie asked.
“Yeah, your son. Because I’m an asshole and he doesn’t want nothing to do with me.”
“He likes you. He just doesn’t know you well because he’s stuck on two legs and you like to be on all four in the forest. And this ‘your’ son business isn’t going to help. Just give it time—you guys will find common ground.”
“He’s avoiding me,” Abel said.
“He’s handling the homecoming because I asked him to. It’s not all about you, Abel.”
No, it wasn’t. It would always be about Seth. Guy had been dead for weeks and it was still about him.
“Thanks for your help with the canopy,” Rylie said. “I know you were up working early this morning. You can go back to prowling the perimeter as soon as you’re done. This will be the last time I bother you with chores for a while.”
“I’m not bothered,” he said. He was surprised that he meant it.
Her expression softened as she reached up to touch his face, cupping his jaw in her hands. She touched his scars without hesitation.
All the new humans living in Northgate and the sanctuary meant that there were a lot of new people to stare at him everywhere he went. Many of them stared with sympathy. The former slaves that had served in Hell had more than a few scars of their own, inside and out. But even if the stares weren’t hateful, it was a cold reminder of the fact that Abel was permanently marked as different. Other. Victim of a werewolf attack.
Rylie never made Abel feel like a victim.
After a moment, she dropped her hands to the canopy, fidgeting with its folds. She couldn’t seem to meet his eyes even though she was still smiling. “Thank you, Abel.”
That smile was going to stick with him for weeks.
But then Rylie left to do more chores—chores that weren’t, unfortunately, showering—a
nd reality crept over Abel again.
He checked his watch. Two o’clock.
Already halfway through the last day, with too much left to be done.
Abel’s stomach lurched. He gathered the canopy under his arm, glanced up at the gray sky, and headed toward the forest.
Trevin was arguing with Crystal again. They were always arguing—it was as natural a state for them as breathing, sleeping, or blinking—and it didn’t even matter what they fought over half the time. They fought for the sake of fighting. Crystal was fun when she got ticked off.
Now that the increased population of the sanctuary was forcing them to be roommates, they were in for a lot more arguments.
Christmas was going to be fun.
“You can’t have the entire closet,” Trevin said, barring the front door of the cottage with his body. “You just can’t.”
Crystal flung the cardboard box she was carrying to the ground. “And why the hell can’t I?”
“Because it’s my closet and it’s full of my stuff and I don’t want you in there.”
“Uh, no,” she said, planting her hands on her hips. She was wearing her usual uniform of a midriff-baring tank top and booty shorts, bless the merciful gods, and seemed as immune to the winter cold as she always did. “If I’m moving into this cabin, then it’s our closet.”
“Oh, now it’s ‘our’ closet, not ‘yours,’” Trevin said. “That’s not what you said thirty seconds ago.”
“Yes it was. You’re not listening to me.”
He reached for her box. “Give me that, chicken arms.”
“Chicken arms? Chicken arms?” Her voice rose to a shriek.
Before Trevin could think of a properly provocative response, Abel stalked up the street with a bundle of canvas and metal poles under his arm. He was followed by a storm all his own—not a storm of clouds, but a storm of sweat and stressed-out pheromones that made Trevin’s hair stand on end.