Wolves of Black Pine (The Wolfkin Saga Book 1)

by SJ Himes

  Luca tried to tell them his name, and that he was lost, and that he wanted to go home, but neither one of them heard him. It was like their heads were broken. Didn’t humans speak to each other in their heads like the wolves? They made words with their mouths, and yet they didn’t talk to him like he was used to his family talking to him, both words and mind. They didn’t respond when he said that Kane was supposed to find him and take him home, and they didn’t hear him when he asked them if they had shamans, too.

  Luca got even more confused when he tried to become a human cub again. He thought about being a boy, and using his mouth to speak to the humans so they could take him home, or help him find Kane, but he couldn’t figure it out. He spent a few minutes trying to Change, but just ended up falling over and growling at himself, and the human female laughed, telling him he was cute again.

  The big male smelled good and had more food on him. Luca was distracted by the scent of the dried meat when the female slipped a thin rope over his head and around his neck. He stood still, bewildered, trying to see what was around his neck and why it was there.

  When it tightened as she stepped away he got scared. It was tugging and pulling and his feet didn’t move with the rope. He fell over, and tried twisting away, whining and nipping at the rope. He fussed, crying, and he wanted his mom and his dad and wished his grandpa would come back.

  The female was making distressed noises, trying to calm him down, and Luca was having none of it. He snapped at her when she reached out, and Luca yelped when the big male loomed over him and picked him up by the back of his neck.

  “Don’t think the leash is a good idea, Cat.” Luca cowered, ears back, and the big male pulled him to his massive chest and pulled off the rope, handing it to the female who frowned down at it. “I’ll carry him.”

  “You’re carrying most of our gear too, Glen.” Luca was confused, wondering why the big man was named after a small place in the woods when he was big enough to be named after a mountain.

  “Then it’s a good thing the car isn’t that far away. God knows you can’t carry him, and you’re not dropping my camera equipment again. Come on, I want to go home and he’s gonna get heavy real quick.”

  Luca submitted, the big male holding him with authority, just like Grandpa Caius. Luca felt confused again, wondering how Kane was going to find him if the humans were going to carry him away. Maybe he’d hid too well and Kane couldn’t find him? He whined, resting his head on the big male’s shoulder, and was restless until a warm hand stroked his back a few times.

  “Easy, little wolf. We’ll take care of you.”

  Sins of the Brother

  EACH STEP the wolf’s paws made on the flagstones left white slashes across the expensive polish. Long gouges marred the priceless floor, but Sebastien Remus wasn’t going to tell his guest to calm down and cease his pacing. He enjoyed having all his limbs intact.

  “Are you certain you got away without a trace?” Sebastien asked, sipping his scotch on the back porch of his mansion, the rich liquor burning a trail as it flowed over his tongue and down his throat. His stomach was churning, and if it wasn’t for the previous glass he’d gulped down before his guest arrived, he wouldn’t be half as restrained as he was right now.

  The wolf, a large beast that was a brown and black brindle with dark eyes, stopped its pacing and turned his menacing head in Sebastien’s direction. Eyes devoid of any humanity stared back at him, and he had to fight down the mouthful of scotch to avoid choking, as every instinct in him told him to run. He sucked in a breath, trying to be subtle, but the beast seemed to know he was fighting off the urge to flee. He let his lip curl back at it, refusing to show fear. He may be nothing to this beast, but he was a wealthy man, with hundreds of people on his payroll, and no one, no animal, was going to intimidate him.

  The monster on his porch silently shifted on its big paws, the snap of bones bending and warping, and grunts of vague distress filling the warm evening air as his guest took on human form. He looked away, out towards the skyline of Augusta, and deliberately, for the sake of his stomach, avoided watching as the monster finished its transformation, and knelt panting on the flagstones.

  “They got away clean. I used the masking agent to clean my tracks and stayed behind for the blood sample. The others barely made it out in time before they closed the borders,” snarled the naked man, lifting his head and chewing at the words. Sebastien rolled his eyes, and waved a hand at the small table beside his chair, where the bottle of scotch and another glass sat waiting. Beside it was a tube of red liquid, priceless and the beginning of a new world order. “They would have torn us apart, and then come hunting you.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic.”

  “Dramatic? Dramatic?! Do you comprehend what will happen if Caius, or any of the other Greater Clan Leaders, discover who was behind the attack this morning?” His guest stood, and instead of filling the other glass, grabbed the eighteen year old bottle of scotch and drank straight from it in several long draws. Sebastien made certain the glass tube was secure before casting a glare at the beast who drank his best scotch.

  “That’s a thousand dollar bottle, you animal.”

  He got a snarl in response, as his guest flung himself naked on to the other patio chair.

  “It was supposed to be a simple job, Remus. Care to explain what happened? We’d have the shaman and his heirs, along with millions of dollars, if you’d only done your fucking job like you were hired. That blood sample I got may not be enough to rectify this disaster.”

  “Information was inadequate,” he retorted, thinking about the men he’d lost in that very expensive waste of an operation earlier that day. Highly trained mercenaries were hard to come by, and even harder to keep employed if their coworkers died in large numbers on ‘training ops.’ “I was told the shaman was old, and that there were no alphas in his family pack, nothing but betas and brats. My men were burnt alive by that old dog,” he sat up, and moved his feet off the patio recliner and faced the monster in human form beside him. “It was your job to supply me with adequate information, and I lost almost two dozen men because of your incompetence!”

  “He was old, dammit! Oldest fucking shaman in the Clans, and there were no alphas in his family pack that were there! You just didn’t listen to me when I said a shaman was dangerous.”

  “Magic,” he scoffed, putting his crystal glass down on the wooden table with a harsh clink. “Party tricks and sleight of hand are nothing against bullets.”

  The monster threw back his head and laughed harshly, lank brown hair moving in the faint wind. His blood chilled at the human sound coming from the creature’s throat, and he stiffened his spine, refusing to show his discomfort.

  “Sleight of hand that can burn men alive, manipulate the elements, travel across vast distances in seconds, use telekinesis and pyro-kinesis, telepathy, accelerated healing, and countless other abilities that can fucking rule the world, and you discounted them all because you don’t believe in magic! Fucking moron.” The monster shook its head, and took another drag on the bottle. “We had a deal, Remus. You failed to hold up your part of it. I got Gray Shadow’s blood, so my end wasn’t a total loss.”

  “I won’t fail the next time. I can have a new op planned and ready to move in the next twelve hours. There are more shamans out there, from what my intelligence tells me. We can get fresh samples, and a living specimen.” Sebastien stood, and gazed out over the landscape as the sun finished setting. “Now I need you to leave, my brother will be here any minute, I’m not explaining why I have a naked man on my porch.”

  His guest smirked up at him, a nasty excuse of a smile that twisted his seemingly human features into something….wrong. He stood, a hulking man covered in dirt and smelling like wet dog, the odor enough for Sebastien to take a step back in disgust.

  “Oh, you don’t need to worry about explaining about the werewolf, Sebasti
en,” came a voice from the back door. Sebastien whirled, and his little brother Simon stepped casually over the threshold. The monster slowly moved closer, and Sebastien struggled to understand what was happening. His little brother was supposed to be coming over for dinner in an hour, not talking about werewolves he wasn’t supposed to know existed.

  “You know?” Sebastian spun to glare at the monster, and sneered at the chuckle rising from the naked creature on his porch. “Did you tell him? I wanted him kept out of this!”

  “I’ve known the whole time, brother dear. Just as I know you fucked up a job that was going to make us all obscenely rich.” Simon shook his head and chided him with a thin, wagging finger as he pulled out a cell from his jacket with the other. He hit a button, and held the ringing phone aloft as it connected on Speakerphone.

  “Nine-one-one, please state your emergency.”

  “Please help! I think my brother’s been kidnapped! There’s blood everywhere and I can’t find him!” Simon suddenly screamed into the cell, making Sebastien jump, startled and confused. His brother glared at him with flat, dark eyes, and Sebastien felt a cold, sinking sensation coil in his gut.

  He was about to shout, to do something, but he never finished the thought as a burst of pain and white lights exploded in his temple. He heard the faked terror in his little brother’s voice as he fell, and then his thoughts faded away.

  SIMON REMUS played the concerned little brother to the cool-voiced dispatcher on the other end of the line as the alpha werewolf lifted his unconscious brother over his shoulder, and strode off the porch and down into the back yard. Blood dripped from Sebastien’s head and down the finely muscled bare ass of his assailant, and Simon leered at the sight until he caught a glimpse of the scotch bottle in the monster’s free hand. He snorted, turned it into a sob, not wanting to clue in the dispatcher to his perfectly calm state.

  He answered questions with an appropriate degree of hysteria as the werewolf carried away his brother, the tall creature quickly swallowed up by the darkness under the trees. Sebastien would be dead by morning, his body found in a bad part of town, the slain victim of a kidnapping gone wrong, dumped by his kidnappers as they fled the city.

  In reality he was being taken to the Clan Leader of Black Pine, a sudden dead end on the trail leading to Remus Acquisitions. Caius McLennan would not spare Sebastien Remus, not with his precious daughter and grandchildren dead, and there was no proof leading to Simon’s involvement. The beast who just left with his brother would see to that. With the CEO and owner dead and unable to tell anyone who had hired him or who he was working with, Simon was safe to continue on and improve upon their plans. No one would look to the grieving young man who would bravely take over his brother’s company in the wake of his death. His brother’s mistakes would not come back to haunt him.

  Sebastien had screwed up a mission that was posed to make them millions, hell—billions of dollars, and he’d even had the audacity to try and keep him out of it, too. Simon reached out with his free hand and picked up the shaman’s blood. Despite being taken from a corpse and hours past adequate preservation, the blood was still worth millions. His brother’s death wouldn’t affect the bottom line for long.

  He looked down at the marble, its smooth finish marred by blood and claws. He pretended to cry as he wondered how easy it was to get blood out of stone.

  Part Two

  Ghost

  Fourteen and a half years later...

  “STOP! OH MY GAWD! Glen, he killed it!” He ducked his head as Cat’s scream of frustration soared through the laboratory, his claws skidding in haste over the white and black tiles, dodging the torn towel flung his way. It fell short, and he huffed softly in amusement as it flopped limply, like a dead bird.

  The wolf flashed her a toothy grin, red tongue lolling from the side of his muzzle, tail flagging high. Cat tossed her hands up in the air, hair fuzzy, glasses askew, as she gaped at the wreckage of the once lone couch situated along the one clear wall of the lab, a horrendous monstrosity of puke green, and a yellow reminiscent of urine stains.

  Glen strode from his office, still powerful and strong after all these years, just a few more lines around his eyes and mouth. He was still an alpha to the young wolf, and moved with a calm authority that resonated with him, even when his human alpha was angry. He wasn’t, not this time, just resigned.

  “Ghost…,” Glen sighed to the wolf, wiping a hand over his mouth as he struggled not to laugh, eyes lighting on the destroyed couch. “I told you he wasn’t a fan of that couch, Cat. It looks better torn up.” Glen sent the wolf they named Ghost a quick wink, and he wagged his tail once in reply.

  “Glen, he ate the couch. Ate it! There’s stuffing everywhere! I was planning on having our guests up here, where would you like me to have the meeting with the conservation officers now?” Cat grumbled, kicking at the white stuffing littering the floor, damp from saliva and coated in gray hairs. Her shoulders slumped, and the wolf dropped his tail, cocking his head to the side, watching as the human beta sat disconsolately on one of the numerous steel stools beside the table in the middle of the room.

  He hadn’t meant to make her sad. It was funny when she got frustrated, but it never lasted long, her mood lightening quickly. She always made the funniest sounds when he did something outrageous, squawking like one of the water birds he hunted in the autumn, hands flapping like wings, hair going every which way.

  Ghost stepped lightly across the floors his feet soundless, great black claws making no noise as he wound his way through the mess, before approaching the female, the one named Cat. He still found that name confusing after all these years since she never changed into a cat, and she smelled totally human. A human woman who smelled faintly of the gray wolves kept in the enclosure outside the building, but still a human. Yet they called him Ghost, and he was not one of those faint lost souls that haunted the old pioneer cabins out in the wild woods, past the sanctuary boundaries.

  He dropped his giant head in her lap, mindful of how small she was compared to him. Ghost had vague memories of giant wolves, much larger than he currently was, great beasts that ruled the dark pine forests in his dreams, and spoke in his mind. Ghost did not feel small, yet a part of him knew somehow that he really was, his memories of giants on four paws faraway, yet painful.

  He whined, slowly blinking his liquid silver eyes up at her, nudging her hands with his nose. She tried to glare at him, but he widened his eyes, tail wagging, and she groaned, dropping a hand behind his ear and scratching.

  It was his turn to groan, a rear paw spasming with the urge to scratch as her thin fingers wove through his thick fur, finding the same spots that always itched. He wasn’t carrying the tiny parasites that sometimes bothered the smaller wolves of the sanctuary, but his skin still dried out from the central air that cycled through the large building that contained the laboratory, Glen’s photo studio, and the rooms the humans used as their den. It was winter, the cold season of death and slumber lying heavily on the wilds of New Brunswick. He had learned about maps over the years by sneaking out of the wolf enclosure and finding his humans in their den. He learned about a lot of things that humans liked, and the things they liked to do, and it wasn’t all that different than what he was accustomed to as a child. He knew more than the gray wolves that were content in their run outside the building, simply because he knew there was more out there past the fence, and he could get out any time he wanted. Glen and Cat eventually stopped locking him up, letting him come and go as he pleased, patrolling his territory and sticking his nose wherever he wanted. They were his pack, Glen and Cat, more so than the simple creatures that ran behind their fence, convinced they were free.

  “We’ve got an hour until they’re supposed to be here, babe. I’ll clean this up, go take a shower and relax. Everything’s ready for the meeting. I’ll put Ghost out with the puppies. He never gets into trouble when he’s in there.”
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  Ghost sent the human alpha a glare, annoyed at the insinuation he was still a cub. He was nearly twenty years old, ancient for a wolf….and very young for his kind. He fought back the dim memories that threatened to confuse him, and remembered that he was here and now. There was a small fenced in area right outside the building, where the youngest of the sanctuary’s ‘guests’ were kept, all of them wolf cubs under six months, too young to be released with the grown wolves in the main enclosure. They were close enough that scents and sounds traveled the short distance between the two pens, so that the cubs would be at least known to the grown wolves if they survived long enough to be added to the sanctuary’s pack. Ghost had spent a few weeks in there himself, until the disparity in his growth cycle became overwhelmingly obvious, and Cat brought him into the lab to study him and his unusual physiology.

  Ghost pulled back from the female, and shook his great head, hackles rising and falling, before darting away from the humans. He far outweighed the female, and the male was not as strong as he. If he didn’t want to be locked up with the puppies, he wouldn’t be. Ghost ran to one of the windows, skidding through the guts of the couch, and nosed the latch. The lab was on the second floor, overlooking the rear yard and the high fence that enclosed the wolf run.

  “I swear he understands us,” Glen grumbled as Ghost opened the window, the lever swinging the pane out and away from the frame, then sent Glen and Cat a haughty look before jumping out the window, hurtling to the snow covered ground below.

  He landed in the thick wet stuff, sneezing away the flakes that coated his nose on impact. He could hear them as easily as if he were still up there in the lab, as Glen moved to the window, reaching out to shut it.