The Call

by Amber Lynn

  Both my mate and Jack growled at the thought. It was the first time I’d ever seen Jack stand up to our father when it came to my choices.

  “You know nothing about her and you never did. Just because you couldn’t beat her into being the heir you thought she should be, doesn’t mean she’s any less of an amazing wolf.”

  If I wasn’t busy trying to keep my eyes peeled for any move of aggression, my jaw would’ve touched the ground. I remembered the hatred and seething the night I told Jack I was pregnant with Paul’s daughter. The disgust wasn’t an act then, and I’d done nothing over the years to change the way he felt.

  “Both of my children had so much promise, but as everyone here can see, the human world made them weak. And now our fearless leader has plans of us joining that society. Do you see what it does to you?”

  Levi was turning things into a campaign speech. He must have forgotten that only in the human world did people have the right to vote.

  “Can the speeches. You were never very good at them, clearly, since nothing you said ever stuck with me.”

  I moved, not as fast as the man with his arm around me could, but he must have seen it was something I needed to do, so he let me go. I didn’t want to stand toe-to-toe with my father, which was one of the reasons I’d left when I did.

  Fighting the women of the pack was easy, but Levi played even dirtier than they did. I could only imagine the thoughts going on in my mate’s head as he let me walk closer to the monster.

  “As your brother already indicated, you clearly weren’t beaten enough, and I’m sure he doesn’t know the half of it. How’s your human husband like all those claw marks you have?”

  There were more growls than I expected after that comment. Everyone had been careful not to show they were on one side or the other, but I had a feeling within the next hour, I’d know exactly who I could count as an ally, at least against Levi.

  “I could say all sorts of things in reply, but I respect my mate enough to keep my snarkiness to myself. Where are my girls? And god help you if you had anything to do with their abduction.”

  “You thought you were so safe up in that castle with human guards watching over you. Did you honestly think the day wouldn’t come where you had to answer for turning your back on your kind? I bet it irks you to hear those precious humans actually helped out. How many of them have you found?”

  That was all I needed to hear to know he knew something. Whether it was his idea or hers, it didn’t matter. He had a hand in threatening my life, my family.

  “You know nothing about love and what a family should be. I learned more from a human about what’s important in life and worth fighting for than I ever did from you.”

  “And maybe that’s exactly the point I’m trying to make. You let your heart get involved and chose the wrong thing to protect. Even after you found out you had a strong mate, you refused him. That made both of you look foolish and unfit to lead a parade, let alone a pack.”

  As was usual with Levi, talking sense with him was impossible. He thought his ideals were the only ones, and they should be followed without thought. If he wasn’t going to talk, I was going to sink to his level and get the information out of him the only way I could.

  My claws came out and I pounced. There was no way someone was going to stop me from doing what I should’ve done years ago. He wasn’t the pack leader, so it wouldn’t be for placement in the pack, but my father needed to know that I was stronger than he ever knew. As soon as I had my teeth around his throat, he was going to tell me exactly where my real family was.

  Chapter Eighteen

  He was ready for me, which I knew he’d be, so at the last second I dove to the right and slashed across his side. I may have had scars from him, but it was time he had one or two from me.

  The claws on my left hand ripped through his shirt and dug into his skin. The moment of success was short lived, because a little scratch wasn’t going to get Levi talking. He didn’t even growl in pain as he righted himself so he could strike.

  “I see your mate has been giving you lessons. You guys should’ve learned that I’d be ready for the same fight.”

  I didn’t think his statement deserved a response, especially since he was wrong. Implying that without help I wouldn’t have been able to even scratch him helped fuel my anger even more.

  The closed in bar area wasn’t the best space for a battle. I knocked into a table as I maneuvered in a circle. We were sizing each other up, even though we both knew the other opponent well.

  The only thing that had changed about him was a scar lining the left side of his face. He was still five inches taller than me, with about seventy pounds of muscle I’d never be able to fit on my frame. His eyes glowed a rich gold, darker than most other wolves I’d come across.

  More often than not growing up, those were the eyes I saw. Not his pale green ones. When it came to me, he was always on edge. It never made sense to me, but I supposed he somehow knew I was going to disappoint him. I was a girl after all.

  I had dummies and punching bags at home that were my usual opponents. It’d been years since I’d been able to fight an actual person. It wasn’t like I could walk into a gym and ask the biggest guy in the room if he’d like to get his ass kicked.

  I admit that I tried that once, and the guy had to go to the hospital with a broken arm. That was before I’d met Paul, so thankfully it wasn’t splashed on the front page of the newspapers, but I’d learned my lesson.

  Tired of going around in circles, and sure that there had been enough room cleared for a proper fight as the chairs and tables were moved out of the way by spectators, I charged. That time I didn’t care about slicing into him. That time it was an unload of years of pent-up frustration.

  I wailed a cry that shook the wooden walls of the building. It felt good, better than I thought was possible in a moment I was searching for answers.

  Levi wasn’t shy about his need to show me my place in the world, so he charged too. The collision that resulted was more like two freight trains meeting than the balls of a Newton’s cradle clacking together.

  He was able to gain footing because of his sheer size, pushing me back about a foot. My calves managed to keep me upright and helped me push forward as his movement came to an end. I pushed his chest hard as I whipped my right leg behind his leg to try to get him down on the ground.

  He wasn’t having any of that, and rather than play around with balance and getting the upper hand in strength, his left fist collided with the side of my head. It wasn’t the first time I’d met that fist with part of my skull. Sadly, over the years I hadn’t grown a titanium skull, so it still hurt.

  I bit my lip to keep from making noise. I didn’t want him to think he’d done anything special, and I definitely didn’t want someone jumping in because they didn’t think I could take a punch to the head.

  I wasn’t really aware of what the people were doing around us. I was an expert at tuning out background clutter. I assumed everyone was waiting to see who’d come out victorious before they picked a fight with someone.

  To prove the little love tap didn’t jumble my brains, I punched Levi in his stomach. Our height differences and the way I was pushing on him made it a little difficult for me to return the concussion.

  Levi’s stomach was probably just as hard as his head. I didn’t think anything broke in my hand, but a bruise wouldn’t be surprising.

  “You’re going to have to hit harder than that to find out where your daughters are. I can’t promise that thing you call a husband will still be alive, but I’m pretty sure the girls will be as long as they don’t backtalk like their mother used to.”

  I felt fur start to sprout on my hand. My wolf wanted out, and stopping her was useless. He’d tried his hardest to create a monster when I was younger, it was about time he realized the monster had been buried deep, but she was always lurking.

  I sensed someone behind me tense as I let my transformation roll over my body
. There wasn’t any cracking bones as I became the other part of me. I didn’t think a transformed werewolf looked that similar to an actual wolf. A Bigfoot that was able to easily traverse the woods on either two or four legs was what I thought of when I saw others change.

  “Oh shit,” I heard someone say. I knew it was my mate, but I didn’t think it was something he said for everyone else in the room to hear.

  I was confused what the problem was, so I hurried to pounce while Levi was still changing. He was an alpha, so he didn’t take more than a second to turn into his dark black wolf.

  “This is going to be fun. The little human loving whore is going to learn that hiding who she is means she doesn’t have what it takes to go against a real wolf”

  “What?” I was confused about why I could hear something in my head that my ears weren’t relaying.

  He apparently didn’t hear or care about my confusion as he bounded towards me on all fours with his fangs clacking. They made an eerily loud noise that echoed in my ears. I wasn’t about to let him use them on me, so I dove underneath him right as he leaped into the air to hit my still vertical body.

  A table that hadn’t been moved far enough away took the hit meant for me. With Levi down momentarily on the table, I took my turn running after him. He was quick to get back up, but I had an extra kick in my step and took him right back down.

  With his body absorbing the impact, I was able to concentrate on slashing into his fur. When we changed, we also grew bigger, so the clothes we’d been wearing were nothing more than shreds.

  I attempted to take a bite from his neck, but he protected it.

  “Does she honestly believe she’s going to be able to make me submit that easily? I raised a complete moron.”

  I saw his move before he performed it, which gave me time to move out of the way of his claws. I flipped over him to make sure his teeth didn’t clash with my left shoulder, as I felt the move after the claws coming.

  Landing on my feet, in one of the most graceful flips I’d ever executed, I flipped back towards him to land firmly on his chest, crushing a rib or two in the process. I still wasn’t as big as him while I was in wolf form, but I’d gained a few pounds.

  A gasp of air made it out of his lungs before I jumped up and came down again. He moved to grab my ankle. I felt the move coming and I hopped off and kicked him in the side.

  The goal was to puncture his lung. If I broke enough of his ribs, breathing would become his only concern, giving me the opening I needed.

  Tired of getting kicked around, he rolled away from me and got back to his feet. By the time he had both feet planted, I’d spun around to get some momentum and delivered a high roundhouse kick to his chest.

  It caused him to shuffle back a few steps, but the bar stopped him from going too far. I heard some mental groans come from around the room as a sharp pop sounded through the silence.

  I stepped forward and with both hands I grabbed on to his chest and hurled his body over to the side of the room he’d originally been sitting. Another table met the force of his weight and lost the battle.

  Things hadn’t been in either of our favors when we’d been humanoid, but as wolves I felt stronger. The feeling wasn’t something I was familiar with. I knew my wolf was a good fighter, but she wasn’t even really taking over.

  Closer to the surface, yes, but she didn’t take total control. She let me decide how the fight proceeded.

  “He’s taught you well. Clearly you’ve been lifting weights over the years. Seven years ago you wouldn’t have been able to throw me.”

  “I don’t know what your obsession is with someone else teaching me how to fight, but I promise you this is all me. That’s one thing you never understood. I don’t need a man to tell me how to do everything.”

  I knew he’d decided to break the fighting up with a little talk so he could grab a knife out from the pile of table scraps underneath him. The wheezing from his lungs was a little more labored, not quite as ragged as I wanted, but it was music to my ears.

  “A female wolf must be guided through life to make sure she doesn’t get herself killed. I figured that’s why you ran off to the human world; you didn’t think you’d be able to handle it as a grown wolf in a pack.”

  “Thanks to you, I was basically a grown wolf by the time I was five. There was no chance to be an actual kid with you as a father.”

  “If you would’ve been born a boy, like you were supposed to be, you wouldn’t have whined like a little girl and run at your first chance.”

  “When did I ever whine? Not once when you chained me down and scoured my back with your claws on my tenth birthday or when you tried to starve me to death by locking me in that dungeon of yours for a week.”

  At one time I thought if I showed him I could do everything a boy could, he’d finally accept that he was given a girl as a first child. I was stronger for it, so it wasn’t a totally wasteful endeavor, but there wasn’t a chance that I’d make a difference to Levi.

  I knew eventually he was going to try to kill me. I’d never told, or even let on, that I saw my death in his eyes sometimes when he was in certain moods.

  We’d evidently had a long enough talk that he was ready to throw the steak knife. As he ran his hand along it, I felt everything he did. I knew the blade was about four inches long, serrated for about three and a half of those inches. I knew it had a wood handle with three metal rivets holding it together.

  As it flew in the air towards me, time slowed around me. I’d heard the saying before, but I’d never experienced it. When it got two inches from stabbing me in the chest, I caught it by the handle and flung it back towards Levi.

  He’d sat up to throw, so his chest made an ample target. He wasn’t as fast as I was, nor did he have time to realize his plan hadn’t worked. When my true aim struck right in his heart, he looked down briefly before collapsing on the table.

  None of the injuries, even a small hole in his heart were deadly. We could be killed, but it took a lot more than a steak knife to pull it off. The disturbance in heart beats would take a second to jumpstart, then hopefully he’d be a little more willing to tell me where my family was.

  “He’s never believed in my abilities, which is why shortly before you shifted he thought about where Tera said she was going to keep the girls. If you’d like to calm down a little and change back, we can head over there now and hopefully get this day over with.”

  I glanced back to my mate, who stood ten feet away, holding Jack back. If Jack wanted to go check on Levi, I didn’t know why he was being restrained. I knew he had a different relationship with the man.

  “I’m keeping him from killing him. He could care less about whether he was still breathing.”

  I studied Jack a little closer and saw it wasn’t concern in his eyes. With his partner’s eyes already glowing brightly, it was a little hard to see Jack was pissed.

  “He can stay behind and have fun if he wants, but we should head out. I’m not confident we’re going to get everyone back alive if Levi was giving directions.”

  I didn’t want to think about the chances of Paul being dead. At the same time, I hoped that Selina would’ve sent out a distress signal if there was even a possibility of her father being killed.

  “We can deal with him later. As long as the knife stays in his chest, he won’t be up causing trouble. I don’t know for sure what we’re going to find, but I’m there for you, sis. I didn’t know until today how much I hadn’t been there when we were kids.”

  “Don’t get sentimental on me, Jack. I don’t need anyone to feel sorry for me because of how he treated me.”

  “I remember the week you were missing. He said you went away for training with another pack that week. I’m not aware of the dungeon you mentioned, but it must have made it so none of us could sense you. He really didn’t feed you?”

  My fur was almost all tucked away as I shrunk down to my normal size. I left my claws out, just in case someone didn’t like
me showing the former alpha that his daughter was all grown up. Standing there naked should’ve been a big enough clue that I wasn’t a kid anymore. It was a good thing I had extra clothes in the SUV.

  “Really, Jack, it isn’t important. As far as I’m concerned it’s the past and I need to focus on what’s going on right now. Where are the girls?”

  I looked around the room and found everyone else was nervous. They didn’t really know what was happening, and for a wolf that was usually a bad thing.

  “They aren’t as close as I’d like them to be, but we should have them back within an hour. As far as what needs to happen here while we’re gone, I’m still leader of this pack and if anyone wants to challenge that, you can to your heart’s content when we get back. Until then, the law I’ve laid down is still in effect.”

  I was interested in the laws that had changed, but we could talk about them later. There were a lot of laws I would’ve thrown out if anyone asked me, and I wondered if my mate actually did know me well enough to complete my wishes without me having to say anything.

  The road to the door was clear, so I started walking in that direction. My mate was by my side within a second and I could feel Jack was hot on his feet.

  When the fresh air from outside filled my lungs, I fully felt like a little of the weight that had been placed on my shoulders almost two decades prior had finally lifted.

  “If you don’t mind, I’d like Jack to drive. You and I have a few things to talk about, and it’s best we have that conversation before we get to our location. I assume you’re going to want to put on some clothes anyway, and that would take time neither of us want to waste.”

  I didn’t like the idea one bit. I wanted to be the one to ride into the rescue, even if it was sans clothes.

  “Clothes aside, I’m pretty sure I can multitask enough to drive and talk at the same time.”

  “I’m well aware of that ability, but we need to talk about the other abilities you triggered when you decided to call your wolf forward. I honestly expected you to stay humanoid the whole time. If I thought for even a second that you wouldn’t, I’d have warned you against it.”