by Kamryn Hart
Beatrice started the engine, drove out of the forest, and back onto an asphalt road. Ava withdrew inside of herself, blocking out the rest of the world. That was her habit. All she saw right now was her hands in her lap. Her skin was a medium shade of brown, almost gold-like in its warm undertone. It was lighter on her palms and the pads of her fingers. The tips of her fingers were scabs of crystallized crimson blood. Her thinking mind receded into darkness and she dug at the scabs, making them bleed anew like they had only a short time before. This was why she never healed. It didn’t matter if Black Magic reopened the wounds or not because she always did it intentionally without fail.
She couldn’t explain why she did this. She just did. It was a tick, a nervous habit, self-loathing.
Beatrice never stopped her because it didn’t hinder her work. It was of little consequence. They were small and negligible wounds. Ava relished the loss of thought and the dull, faraway pain. That pain was the one thing keeping her grounded in reality. That, and the distant thought of The White Wolf waiting in her dreams.
The eerie blue of the forest was because of more than Moonlight. The overwhelming majority of trees that covered it were blue spruces. The tint of green was still there, but the underlying color was blue. All blue. And dark. Until the White Wolf appeared.
Ava’s chest was heaving with exertion as she ran. The forest always played tricks on her. The tree roots tried to trip her, but she would hold her own for a while. She always started out running.
She looked over her shoulder when she heard the snap of a branch and the pounding of big, powerful paws against rustling mulch. The decaying scents of the forest pervaded her sense of smell, and a snowflake floated past her eyes before she caught sight of the White Wolf coming for her at top speed. He was a transparent blur in the night, a streak of light. His orange eyes were two defined points and his snarling echoed all around her, through the trees, from the earth, and even from the sky.
He was everywhere.
Running never worked. Maybe if she tried something different, she’d get away. She didn’t want the dream to play out as it always did. She didn’t want to feel that pain tonight.
She kept running as she tried to conjure Black Magic, the one thing that made her powerful—but nothing happened. She always forgot magic didn’t work here. She had no power here. She could stare at the scabbed tips of her fingers but they wouldn’t bleed with the sign of oncoming darkness. She wanted to rip the tips of her fingers off with her teeth.
Then she tripped. She always tripped. It happened in slow motion. Moonlight shone down on her like the spotlight on a stage. Her left inner thigh burned as if the Moon was concentrating its light on that specific spot, branding her and leaving its mark.
She hit the ground and scattered the fallen pine needles and pine cones. Some of them stayed trapped underneath her, jabbing into her flesh. Blood trickled from her bottom lip. The White Wolf’s howl sent shivers up and down her spine. She tried to move but couldn’t. The Moon was binding her with its power just as she trapped that she-wolf. This time she was the prey.
Ava cried out as the White Wolf landed his front paws on her spine. His warm breath made the skin on her neck clammy with moisture. She squeezed her eyes shut, knowing what would come next. The White Wolf’s weight left her for a moment, but it was only so he could use his big head to toss her onto her back and expose her stomach. She trembled in fear and knew she should keep her eyes shut, but she couldn’t stop them from opening. The White Wolf met her gaze with orange sunset eyes, the last thing she’d see before she passed from this world and on to uncharted territories.
She flinched the moment before the White Wolf bit her thigh. He sunk his teeth in deep. White-hot pain exploded through her body. His teeth were the seal on the Moon’s brand. Or maybe his teeth were hot like molten metal and this was what it felt like to have a wound cauterized. She didn’t have any real-life wounds to compare it to because this bite was the most painful thing she knew, and she experienced it over and over again. Every night the White Wolf would come to her and bite her. With that one bite, he poisoned her and she started dying from the inside out, burning from the inside out, like his teeth were injecting magma into her bloodstream.
It burns. It cleanses. It heals. It kills.
One day the nightmares would end because the White Wolf would cease to be a dream. On that day, it would all be over.
Chapter 2
A MONTH LATER.
The world around him was a red wash. His hackles were raised. Spit and foam coated his lips. His teeth were bared in a constant snarl. A silver chain with a cross hung around his neck, a strange accessory for a demon wolf. He dug his claws into the soft snow and watched his prey through the red flakes falling from the sky. They were the same color as his fur, but nothing broke his concentration. When he had his sights set on something, his focus never wavered until he killed it.
He was a mindless killing machine. Berserker.
Attack anything that moves or breathes.
A predatory howl ripped from his powerful throat, and then he charged for the big red-gray wolf standing too tall and proud right in front of him. Alpha wolf. Powerful wolf. But not powerful enough.
His moves were wild and rigid. The red-gray wolf moved as smoothly as a river, making it impossible for the Berserker to sink his teeth into his flesh. It made the Berserker angrier. His vision darkened to a deeper red. There was an indescribable rage coursing through his veins as visions of the Blood Moon danced in his eyes.
Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.
The Berserker made another wild launch for the red-gray wolf. His moves got quicker and quicker with each strike he made, but he missed again. The red-gray wolf, cool and calculated, clamped his teeth down on the Berserker’s flank. Any other animal would have been surprised and yelped. The Berserker’s vision became a brighter and a more intense shade of red. He darted out like a cobra. He whipped around without delay or hesitation and clamped his teeth down on the red-gray wolf’s thick neck. Now that he had a hold, he would never let go.
He yanked hard on the red-gray wolf’s flesh with locked jaws. He pulled so hard and furiously that he ripped that massive chunk of flesh right out of his prey’s neck. The red-gray wolf yelped and backed away as crimson blood spilled from the gaping wound like a waterfall. The Berserker didn’t allow a reprieve. In an instant, he was on his prey again. He was so close to the kill he could taste it when he bit down on the front of the red-gray wolf’s neck. This time he had a hold that would kill instantly. He’d rip out the wolf’s throat.
His ears twitched, warning him of a sound his Berserker senses couldn’t quite distinguish. Silent wings dipped from the sky, a bright red like his fur and the falling snow. The owl’s shadow grew large, combining with the shadows cast by the red spruces. The Berserker wanted to leap in the air and kill the bird too, but he couldn’t release his prey once he had a hold like this. He’d have to kill the red-gray wolf first or his jaws would never unlock.
Dark red talons dove down from the air and connected with the Berserker’s face, scratching at his eyes. The pain didn’t register. His grip on the red-gray wolf didn’t waver. He yanked his head back with an explosive power. He would have ripped out his prey’s throat with that move, but his prey was smart, not all instinct and hot fury. The red-gray wolf maneuvered well and managed to catch his own jaws on the side of the Berserker’s neck, making it impossible for the Berserker to tear away from him, locking them together in a snarling heap of bloody fur.
The Berserker tried and tried to tear away, to take his prey’s flesh with him, but he couldn’t manage it. Each time he moved, he dislodged a little more of his own flesh. He wasn’t afraid of the wound it would leave behind, but he wasn’t physically strong enough to commit to it. He also couldn’t let go. There was no letting go until the deed was done.
The owl drifted purposefully down from the sky and landed on the ground in the red snow, making himself an easy target for a wild wo
lf. His feathers puffed out and suddenly burst from his body in a feathery explosion. A mist of red feathers rained down with the snowflakes. In the owl’s place stood a naked human male. His mouth was moving, but the sounds he made were indistinct. It was like grunting and water gurgling in the Berserker’s ears.
Stop.
The Berserker faltered. Something inside of him was breaking through the rage.
Stop.
He brought his gaze back to the man. He stared at his mouth. This time his words were clear.
“Max,” he said with hands held up, non-threatening. Concern flashed in his eyes that were no longer red. They were golden. “Max, stop. You’re going to kill him. I know that’s not what you want.”
Max. That was his name. Maxim Goulding. He wasn’t a Berserker.
Slowly, painfully, Max found the willpower to release the wolf in front of him little bit by little bit. His jaws were stiff and the wildness in him wanted to keep them locked, but he was stronger than that. Max could put his wolf in his place. Maybe for good this time.
As soon as he released his grip, the wolf in front of him returned the favor. In a snapping of bones and a show of receding fur, the blue-gray wolf in front of him also became a human male. Nickolas Sipe, Alpha of Blue Pack. The snowy owl was Cedric Snow, a temporary resident of Moonwatch and under Blue Pack protection like Max.
Nick fell to his knees and his curly brown hair curtained his eyes. His human body shivered in the cold as he held his Moon Marked left hand to the bloody wounds marring his neck. If Max had succeeded in ripping out his throat, he would have been dead. He still looked half-dead.
“Max,” he rasped. “Shift back.” His Alpha authority shone through his words. It didn’t matter that he was bleeding out an inch from his life.
Whimpering, Max backed away from the Alpha. He tucked his tail in between his legs as all the traces of Berserker red faded away from his vision. His ears twitched and he held his head low as the reality of what he did sank in. He did something terrible. He would have done something worse if they hadn’t found a way to stop him in time. He was getting more dangerous by the day. God above, he hated himself. He hated what he had become. There was a monster hiding inside of him that he had no knowledge of until a few months ago. He went twenty-six years not knowing about the beast lurking within the cage of his seemingly human body.
He willed himself to shift. The white wolf, the Berserker side of him, needed to be tucked away. Permanently. He felt each snap of bone one at a time. His shifts were as unruly as every other aspect of his wolf. He had shifted quickly into a wolf, but shifting back into his human skin was a slow agony, the most pain he had experienced in his life.
He choked and stayed planted with hands and knees on the ground even after he looked fully human again. The pain of Nick’s bites and the scratches Cedric made near his eyes were now registering. He blinked furiously as blood seeped into his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. It was hard to find his voice again, but he knew Nick and Cedric heard him.
He lifted his head to see the damage he did to Nick, to really take it in. “I’m so sorry. What can I do?” he asked and gritted his teeth as the blood continued to spill from the Alpha’s neck at an alarming rate.
Nick waved at the air with his free hand. “I’m fine.” He didn’t sound fine. His voice was thick.
Pain shot through Max’s head, a sign of his demon wolf fighting back. He grabbed his head and willed the wildness deep into the recesses of his heart. “I’m done,” he announced. “I’m never letting my wolf out again.”
Nick sighed as he looked up through the canopy made of blue spruces. His eyes flashed yellow, but it wasn’t because his wolf was fighting to come back out. Nick’s hazel eyes always had that hint of yellow, that hint of the Wolf. The snow continued to fall through the trees peacefully like the planet didn’t acknowledge that something murderous had just taken place. “It’s not a good idea to repress your wolf. You’ve already done it too much. It makes him worse. It makes you worse.”
“I’ve tried, Nick,” Max replied. “I’ve tried to play nice with my wolf, but every time I shift, my wolf never settles, and I have to fight harder to make sure I don’t hurt anybody! I can’t even stop that from happening anymore!” He squeezed his eyes shut. “I want to go home to Lizbeth.”
“That’s the problem,” Nick said. “You don’t trust the wolf side of you. You’re going to have to or you’re going to be all Berserker. You won’t be you anymore. You aren’t just a human. You aren’t just wolf. You have two halves that create a whole. The two aren’t separate. You can’t have one without the other. Even when you didn’t recognize the Wolf, it was always there inside of you.”
Max screamed as he curled into the snow underneath him. He was naked, hurt and bleeding, and the bite of cold was the last thing on his mind. “I can’t hide here like a coward for the rest of my life! I’ve been lying to my girlfriend because I can’t let her see me like this. She probably thinks I’m cheating on her or ran out on her.”
He growled and sat up enough to see Cedric standing back a few feet with his arms folded, observing the exchange between wolves. He was always a silent and seemingly disinterested party. Probably because the guy came from money. He thought he was better than everyone else.
Max pointed an accusing finger at the bird. “At least none of that is true,” he said. “I didn’t run out on her, and I’ve never stopped loving her—unlike you. You couldn’t care less about your wife and daughter, right? All you care about is the fact you lost your millions of dollars worth of inheritance to your little brother. So you’ve stayed in Moonwatch with Blue Pack, pouting for days when you could probably get all your stinking money back easily enough if you just went home and explained you were a slave to a shifter collector. You’re a spoiled baby.”
Oh, there were so many curse words Max wanted to string from his mouth, but the icy cold of the silver cross hanging from a silver chain around his neck made him think twice about it. It wasn’t like cursing was a one-way ticket to Hell, though he had always found it in poor taste. Even if him swearing was the start of his fast-track to hell, it wouldn't really get him there any faster at this point. He just condemned the snowy owl shifter which was far worse than a curse word. And his wolf was doing a fine job of leading him to Hell on his own.
Cedric walked forward, gliding easily through the snow with the same elegance he used when flying as a snowy owl. Max hated how he moved. It added to his stuck-up princeliness, not to mention his stupid perfectly mussed hair that was either brown or blond with a silvery base color—Max couldn’t decide which. He was handsome, muscular like shifter men seemed to be, but not to the degree wolves or other types of shifters were muscled. He was a pretty-boy. It all made him seem like an even bigger dick.
“Knock it off,” Nick growled, warning Cedric not to step past him. He wasn’t up to moving much, but he was determined to keep himself as a barrier between the two. He forced himself to his feet and blocked Cedric’s path. Wincing, he pressed his hand harder to his neck as more blood spilled from his neck. He looked pale.
“No, keep going,” Cedric goaded. “You obviously know exactly what you’re talking about.” His eyes were large golden saucers, signaling his animal was close to the surface.
The sight aggravated Max’s wolf. He grabbed his head and surrendered to the snow underneath him again as he concentrated solely on his breathing. He tucked his wolf away, determined to prove he was in control.
“Go to your motel room and take care of your wounds, Max,” Nick said. “Give yourself a minute to cool off. Think about what I said. None of us can help you until you decide to help yourself.”
“I’m in control,” Max replied.
Nick gave a slight shake of his head.
“What about you?” Max asked. Nick was much worse off than he was.
“Cedric.” Nick looked at the snowy owl shifter. As if Cedric understood exactly what he meant, he walked to Nick’s side
and helped hold him up. “I’m good,” Nick established.
More like, he didn’t want Max’s “help” because it would only make things worse. It didn’t bother him. He agreed. Leave it to the spoiled bastard who didn’t give a damn about anything. It was better to be in his care than in the Wild Wolf’s.
There was no point in Max sticking around then. But, God, Nick really looked bad. Max shook his head and left in a hurry. He caught sight of his snow-covered clothes and quickly slipped on his pants and shoes. He worked at his sweater while he moved through Blue Forest. He couldn’t get out of there soon enough. The trees seemed to grow larger, the shadows longer, with each step he took. It was day, but the forest had never seemed eerier.
Relief spread through him when he cleared the forest and saw Moonwatch. The small town had a central area with more concentrated buildings, but as a whole, the place was spread out into big farms. New houses were being constructed downtown, in that central hub, by Howard Hunt, the pack’s architect and one of Nick’s Betas, because the place just kept growing. Wolf packs were complicated with all their assigned positions, and Max didn’t know all of them. He didn’t care to. All he really needed to know was that Nick was the Alpha, the one in charge and therefore the one who could change any of those positions whenever he felt like it. The power to change rules and run the pack the way he wanted was the reason he had two Betas.
Nick claimed another wolf pack a few months back, and those wolves were moving in. Then there were all the hapless stray shifters like Max and Cedric. Yeah, Moonwatch was pretty busy these days compared to when Max first arrived. He didn’t want to think about what would have happened if Nick and Gwen hadn’t found him and brought him here when they did. He probably would have hurt Lizbeth like he had Nick because of the mindless beast inside of him. He shuddered. Unfortunately, he hadn’t figure out his wolf problem here, but at least he was confident he could keep his wolf tucked away now. He had a lot of practice doing that by this point. That had to be worth something because at this rate he would never learn to get along with his wolf. At least he could continue living his life if he kept him locked away.