by Ryan Michele
“Let me go through some of my books. Is there any way some of the guys can go to my house and pick them up? I’d rather not leave right now,” she asks.
“What do you need? I’ll get it,” I say. It’ll only take me a second and I’ll be right back. And if it will help, we need to get this shit taken care of. Maggie explains exactly what she needs.
I kiss the top of Kenly’s head. “I’ll be right back.” Panic fills her eyes and I pull her in for a deeper kiss and rise from the chair. “Watch.”
I materialize out of the room to a gasp from Kenly and into Maggie’s home. I gather everything she needs and materialize back.
“Holy shit,” Kenly croaks. “You, you…” She trails off as I set the books down for Maggie.
“I can materialize which means I can leave one spot, think of the other and within seconds, I am there,” I reply. Maggie doesn’t seem as surprised.
“That is so freaking cool!” Kenly exclaims. Her enjoyment giving a slight reprieve from the tension in the room. “Can you do that with me?” Her eyes glitter with hope.
“Not now. We have too much shit to deal with.” Her face falls. “Sorry, babe.”
“No, you’re right. I’m just still getting used to all of this.” Kenly climbs back on my lap.
“I’ll take these to the living room and start looking.” Maggie takes off with the bundle. For a witch, she’s pretty strong.
“We need to monitor the media. TV, newspaper, internet, everything. Max, get a couple of guys on that. Also, keep security tight. Any thoughts on the connection?” Xavier asks me.
“I agree with you. I don’t know why Camp would get involved with them. I sure as shit wouldn’t, if anything I’d want vengeance on them.”
“Zara, any thoughts?” Xavier asks his mate.
“I can’t pick up anything.” He kisses her temple and Kenly sighs.
I rub my cheek against hers and she practically purrs. “I’ll get some guys on it.”
Xavier’s cell vibrates. “Yeah,” he answers, and his eyes flash to Zara.
“Shit!” she says, crawling off his lap. “I can hear her, it’s really her.” She jumps to the door. “Nana O is here.”
Maybe she can shed some light on all of this shit.
“Nana O. That’s her grandmother that gave her the crystal?” Kenly asks as we walk hand in hand down the hall.
“Yep. Been trying to get ahold of her for a while now, but she’s been MIA.”
We enter the living room and find Zara hugging the shit out of a beautiful woman who smells exactly like Zara’s old pack.
“Where have you been, Nana?” Zara asks, still holding on tight as her Nana takes in the room.
“Been getting to you. I hid in the woods after you left for quite some time. After the link from your father was disconnected, I made my way to you,” she singsongs.
“I tried to tap in to you.” Zara pulls back, confused.
“I kept you blocked just in case your father found me. I didn’t know exactly what was going on and I didn’t want to give him any way of finding you.” Her gaze drops to Zara’s neck. “Where is it?” Her eyes flash to Zara’s.
“I lost it,” she whispers, words ringing with sorrow.
“No!” Nana O yells, grabbing her chest. “You must find it at once!”
“Nana, what’s going on?” Xavier steps behind his mate, pulling her tight against him.
“That crystal.” She looks around her at the people in the room. “Is it safe to speak?” she asks hesitantly.
“Yes, Nana. These wolves are my family,” Zara explains.
Nana nods. “That crystal is very powerful. If it gets in the wrong hands.” She shakes her head and clenches her stomach with her fists. “We must find it.”
Kenly’s body tenses, no doubt the guilt of losing it riding on her hard at the moment. I give her a squeeze of reassurance and a kiss on the top of her head.
“Why would you give something like that to me?” Zara asks, stunned, now leaning back into Xavier who is taking on her weight with ease.
“Because, my child, you are set to do amazing things. The Heavens told me to give it to you. You and your family are intended to protect us. With the crystal, you will be able to do so, but if it gets into the wrong hands….” She shook her head. “We are all doomed.”
“What do you know?” Xavier questions, his Alpha tone coming through loud and clear.
“It’s time that I told you of the legend,” Nana O says on a large exhale.
Fucking hell.
Thor
THE SMELL IS BACK, the same one from the first time I was in this dungy basement library. My wolf growls, wanting to chase down her down, but the man inside struggles to tame him. The smell is strong, but fading fast. She’s not here. My fated mate was here and she smells delicious.
I’m compelled to step outside of the building and in the distance, I fear something or someone being chased. My stomach clenches and a feeling of dread washes over me. I dart in that direction, hoping it’s not what my gut is screaming at me.
Thor
WE SIT IN THE living room, all of our eyes glued to Zara’s Nana O. In all my years, I’ve never heard of this legend that she says exists, but from the intensity in her eyes, she believes every word of it.
“Nana, come on,” Zara says impatiently, and I can’t blame her. With learning that the Lobo pack is alive after all and this guy Camp up our asses, we don’t need any more bad news.
“Patience, child.” Nana O takes the cup of tea that Stella offers her, setting it on the table beside the couch. “Thank you, dear.” Stella nods, moving away swiftly.
We all stare and wait, the room thick with tension.
“There will come a time in our world when greed, power, and wealth will overrule good judgement, and packs will be destroyed.” She pauses, looking each of us in the eye. “The time has come.”
My eyes shoot to Xavier, and his tight frame and the vein pulsating in his neck tell me he does not like this at all. I have to agree with him. This shit doesn’t sound good.
“What does that mean, Nana?” Zara asks, tucked protectively under Xavier’s frame.
Nana O picks up a large bag that she’d set on the floor when she came into the den. She reaches in and pulls out a piece of very old looking parchment paper. She opens it slowly and sucks in a breath, then reads it aloud.
“The survival of all the wolves will come down to six. These six will align like the stars in the Heavens after the first female from the thirteenth generation of the Barren wolf pack meets her alpha mate. Her mate’s identity will distinguish two other males as part of the six, the beta and gamma of his pack. The mating bond will bring forth the final two wolves, two females. Everything will progress at rapid speed. The six must defeat any immediate threat or all will be lost. Wolves and humans alike will be changed forever.”
“What?” Zara gasps so deeply, she sucks the air out of the room. “I’m the thirteenth generation of the Barren pack.”
Holy hell. That means that we are the ones fighting.
“Yes, beautiful girl, you are. Now that you have your mate and it appears that the big guy over there has found his, the gamma will be next.”
It’s my turn to still. My mate? And I get to bring her into this hell? The thought doesn’t sit right with me at all.
“Does the legend say who we are battling, because we already took out Zara’s old pack?” Xavier asks.
“No, but something tells me that as soon as the third male finds his mate, everything will fall into place.” Nana’s eyes fall on me.
No way. She couldn’t possibly, I know that, but from that penetrating stare, it seems like she knows. Knows that I’ve already smelled my mate, faintly, at the library.
“It’s almost your time,” she whispers to me.
Fucking hell.
Sabrea
“MOVE, DAMMIT.” I stare at the glass of water resting on my bathroom countertop willing it to move, using ev
ery bit of my mental strength to make it happen. The liquid inside the glass mocks me, not even splashing to the sides at least a little bit. Stagnant. Unmoving, it continues to taunt me.
“Shit.” I break my concentration and look at the woman reflected in the mirror. “Seriously, Sabrea? You think that just because you’ve somehow miraculously moved things on two different occasions, it’s a sure thing?” I shake my head, annoyed with myself.
For the past week, I’ve been practicing—or more or less trying to practice—whatever this is. I’ve even cut back on reading so I’d have more time, which is a huge deal for me. Ever since that day in the living room when I sent a damn coaster flying at my bitch of a sister Savannah’s head just by thinking about it, I’ve practiced. And what do I get? Nothing. I have no clue how in the hell I did it. The second time it happened, it was a chair. It moved away from the dinner table just as my other sister, Sydney, went to sit down, and she landed flat on her ass.
I chuckled at both occurrences so, of course, they blamed me, but I played stupid. Mostly because that’s how I feel. I have no idea how the hell I did it. I keep going over and over the scenarios that led up to it, and the one similarity had been my anger. Bright spotty anger at my sisters is the only common denominator.
I’ve been using that in my practice, but either I’m not pissed enough, or that wasn’t my trigger. No one in my pack has this power, there’s nobody to ask for advice. Right now I’m not sure I’d want to anyway. I’d rather keep it to myself until I find out what it is. That’s why I went to the council’s library in town, and even though I love it there, it seriously sucked going down to the basement. The basement is a secret area that humans don’t know exist. It’s also where the original copies of the Oracles are located, and I thought maybe they could help. I dug through old documents, one after the other, trying to find answers.
Maybe I would have found some if pages weren’t missing from the books. Pages dealing with mind control, reading other’s thoughts, and telekinesis—the ability to move things with one’s mind—had been ripped out. It baffles me.
Why? What doesn’t someone want others to know?
Not finding anything isn’t what got me so damn flustered while there. It was him. I smelled him. It was faint but it was coming closer to me, growing stronger. I ditched everything and hightailed it out the secret exit, through the alley. My wolf is seriously still pissed at me for that move, but I’ve learned to control her habits. It’s not easy, but I manage, barely.
After smelling him, whoever he is, I’ve kept my searches to the internet, and let me just tell you, some of that shit on there is wacked. Seriously. I read some site that claimed that we kill humans for their blood. That’s stupid, only vampires do that, and since rules were put on them, they have adhered to them. Another site said that we only can shift on the full moon. I mean, come on. That is the oldest, stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, but for some reason, humans believe it. That’s like saying we only pee when a butterfly crosses our path. Asinine.
Oh, I’ve seen the movies, too. My best friend Dale and I watch them. We made up a special game called Wrong Shot. It’s easy. Every time you see something wrong or untrue you take a shot. Let’s just say we’re always pretty toasted by the time the movie is over and we have a super high tolerance since our blood heats up so high it burns off the alcohol quickly.
I stopped looking on the web. It got so damn boring seeing the same shit and not finding what I wanted. So, instead I’ve been practicing and having zero luck.
All right, can’t fix this problem, I need to find my mother to fix the next. My parents have it in their heads that my sisters and I need to go to a wizard named Marvin to get our futures told to us. Well, not really our futures, just when we are going to find our mates. You would think parents wouldn’t want to get rid of their daughters, hand them off to a male, but for some reason mine are determined to. If they want to get rid of Syd and Savannah, the sooner the better, but I wish them luck.
I’ve already found mine, but he won’t like what he gets in the end. Therefore, I will do everything in my power to not smell him again. I choose to stay here without a mate. Without him. My wolf growls and I feel her pain as the thought alone slices my gut.
A hurtful chuckle erupts from my throat. I act like I really have control over anything. Let’s be straight. Males lead with their dicks. Males think with their dicks. If my mate smelled me at the library, he won’t rest until he has me. And once he does, his disappointment is inevitable. I’m not stupid. I see how the rest of my pack looks at me. Poor pitiful Sabrea. She’s so pretty, too bad she’s defective. The ‘defective’ jabs really bite my ass. I’m not fucking defective. I still eat, breathe, and shit. What I don’t do is shift.
Yep, a wolf shifter who can’t shift into a wolf. Don’t get me completely wrong, I have, three times. And I remember each second of those times. The first time was a clusterfuck, but that happens to most wolves since it’s such a change and distortion of their bodies and minds. The second time was the next day and the last time was the day after that. Three days in a row and then—NOTHING.
Somehow, some way, the wolf inside me got locked into a glass box. I can see her, sense her, and feel her, but I can’t get her out of the box. I’ve tried to take a mental sledgehammer to it, but that didn’t work either.
So, my wolf and I have come to an understanding. I will continue to try and she lets up on the whining. Now, I only get it once a day instead of every minute of the day. If she could get out, though, she would be so much happier and in turn so would I, but I’ve tried everything that I can think of and nothing works. At least I can focus on this problem.
I need to stop my parents from going through with this reading and the best way to do that is through my mom. If the wizard tells my parents about him, I’ll be screwed. I’ll get the lecture from hell about why I haven’t gone with him, and then my mother will do the whole ‘you are perfectly fine’ speech…and on and on and on. Not something I want to deal with, ever.
I storm into the common room of our den, wolves are scattered all around. Some in wolf form, some in human, most just lounging around. We’ve been very lucky that things have been quiet around these parts, or at least that’s what Alpha tells us. We are only privy to what he lets us know, which is fine by me. I don’t need to know all the political crap that goes on with all the wolves.
“Look who decided to join us.”
I roll my eyes, turning to my sister Sydney and her snide words. She’s always been a bitch. She seriously came out of my mother that way and has decided never to change. I’m the oldest so I know. I’ve dealt with it the longest. She’s beautiful and she knows it, and she flaunts it to anyone she can. Lucky us. I’m a bit sarcastic, but one has to be when they can’t shift and run with the other wolves. It’s a great distraction.
“What, Syd?” I snap, the room getting quieter by the second, and I can practically feel eyes caressing my skin. I’m used to this, too. My pack always loves a good show. I wish to the Heavens that my sisters would learn not to mess with me. But…
“Oh. You. Can. Hear. Me?” She enunciates each word, loudly and very slowly, her eyes wide while they dance with humor. I roll mine. She is seriously dumber than a box of rocks. She never learns. I swear my mother pounded her upside the head with a rock when she was a pup.
“Yes, dumbass,” I growl out, clenching my fists. She’s itching for it and I’m itching to take my aggression out. Another one of my issues is that I was born with only one ear. Yep. A one-eared, non-shifting wolf, but even with only one, I can still hear with the best of them. Maybe even more so because I rely on my one ear so much.
It never really bothered me until I shifted the first time. I don’t know why I thought that I would miraculously have an ear by changing into a wolf, still I had hoped. But, that wasn’t in the cards for me. That first shift, I didn’t have the ear and my sisters never let me live it down. Nothing like being an outsider.
�
��What? I couldn’t hear you.” Sydney starts laughing loudly as Savannah strolls up behind her.
“Then maybe you should get your ears checked. Wouldn’t want you to end up like me?” I breathe in a small gasp and place my fingers over my lips in mock shock. Her eyes turn red hot and I smirk.
“I’ve been checked and I’m perfect, unlike you,” she snarls, her finger pointing at my chest.
So close. I’m so close to grabbing it and breaking it. I hold back, barely.
I let out a hard laugh instead, not taking my eyes off of them. “Perfect? I think you need a second opinion, or else stop blowing the doctor so he tells you what you want to hear.”
“You bitch!” Sydney screeches, and Savannah stomps in front of Syd, throwing an arm out to block her. What is she doing? Trying to protect her? That’s funny shit right there. “You’re just jealous. No male is ever going to want you as a mate. You’re a defective bitch!”
I cross my arms over my chest and glare at her, not saying a word because that’s what she wants. She wants me to argue back. I swear she gets off on that shit. It just annoys me. Also, I would never give her the satisfaction of knowing my target spot, the spot that will get me. I’ll never give her that power.
“Come on, Syd, let’s go.” Savannah tries to push her back. Aww. How cute. Savannah is trying to be peacemaker. I burst out laughing, unable to hold it in. This is just too funny.
“What in the hell are you laughing at?” Syd screams as Vannah tries to push her back.
“Let her go, Vannah.” It only happens for a second, but I see it. Her slight tremble. She has learned over the years, at least somewhat, unlike Syd. She reluctantly lets go and Syd comes barreling toward me.
I make a tight spin and kick with everything I have, landing right in her gut. She flies back, slamming into the kitchen island with a hard thud. Ouch, that had to hurt. What I’m lacking in ears and shifting abilities, I gained in strength and endurance somehow. My strength in human-form is about double what it would be in wolf-form, and speed? I’ve got that in spades. I can keep up with any of my pack members on only two legs. It’s actually how I got the respect of my pack. Once they saw I was not a liability everyone backed off, except my sisters.