Her Fierce Wolf (Marked by the Moon Book 2) - Shifter Paranormal Romance

by Kamryn Hart

  Breaking into a sprint, Derek ran to his mother. She welcomed him with open arms and hugged him. He hugged her back fiercely but softened his touch considerably when she let out a little whimper. She was bruised again in places covered by her clothes. She was always bruised. James always said it was Derek’s fault, but even if Derek was as quiet and good as he could be, James still took his mother into their room and made her scream. And hurt her.

  When Derek was little, all he could do was cry in a corner and wait for it to stop. As he got older, he tried to do something about it. A few weeks ago he succeeded in breaking into the bedroom. He broke through the damn lock because he kept slamming into the door and wouldn’t stop as he heard his mother’s screams. There was a rage growing inside of him with each passing day. He was on the verge of exploding. When he made it inside, he stopped cold. What he saw in there changed him forever. His mother was naked. He could see the bruises all over her body. James was humping her, digging his dirty nails into her thighs, ignoring her pleas for him to stop.

  Derek lost it. He ran at James with a lamp, but the bastard was too quick and strong for Derek—even though he wasn’t a small fourteen-year-old boy. He caught Derek and threw him into his own small bedroom, locking him inside. Eventually, Derek got out, breaking through that door too. Then he got a hold of the phone. He called the police. When they arrived, James turned everything around. He had Derek’s mother dressed, and a whole story planned about how Derek was out of control. He showed a broken lamp, saying Derek tried to assault him unprovoked. Derek’s mother didn’t say anything, but her silence was an admission. The cops assumed she was on James’s side, but Derek refused to believe that.

  His mother was on his side. She loved him. She was simply afraid. Afraid of getting hurt worse or killed. But that was why he was sent to juvie.

  Derek hugged his mother tightly, afraid to let her go.

  “Enough already,” James hissed as he shoved Derek and his mother inside of the house, slamming the door shut behind him.

  Derek positioned himself in front of his mother, arms outstretched as if he could shield her from the abusive prick in front of them.

  “Stop looking at me like that!” James shouted. “You little shit! You think you’re better than me?”

  He charged at Derek, throwing him on the ground. Derek was about to bounce back up to his feet, but James had his mother trapped in his arms. He licked his lips and laughed as he shoved one hand inside her pants, making her whimper and squirm.

  Derek growled. Actually growled. Like a wild animal. “Let her go!” he roared as he leaped off the threadbare carpet.

  “N-no, Derek!” his mother shouted.

  Derek didn’t stop. James was the one who had to be stopped. That anger he felt a few weeks ago had returned, and it was more powerful. He was already at the point of exploding. He was going to protect his mother. He was going to make sure she would never get hurt again.

  Derek’s skin started burning. His joints were locking and disjointing. Loud popping noises blasted inside his ears. His jaw hurt. His fingers. His feet. His entire body was on fire. His vision blazed white, and suddenly he was back on the ground. He was on his hands and knees. He looked down at his hands to see a pair of big black paws.

  “The fuck?” James breathed. His eyes were wild. He dropped Derek’s mother to the floor and whipped out his pocket knife. “A wolf?!”

  “Oh, my God,” Derek’s mother whimpered.

  Derek growled. It was natural to do. He had been in this body for a few seconds, but he already recognized it as his own body. He knew he could move it and he knew how. He knew he could do what he needed to do. This was the boiling anger just under the surface of his skin. It was a black wolf. This was the power he had been needing. He knew he had the strength to stop James now.

  Derek howled. It was a battle cry that turned his vision red. It filtered out everything else and focused in on his target. On James.

  “Stay away from me!” James screeched as he swished his knife back and forth in the air with no technique.

  Derek was growling, foaming at the mouth, and his hackles were raised high. He stalked low to the ground, watching James’s desperate movements with intense concentration. When James stumbled back into some furniture and lost his footing, Derek jumped on top of him. He caught James’s hand, the one holding the knife, in his teeth and bit down hard. James lost his hold on the knife and screamed in pain as blood dripped down his mangled hand.

  Never before had Derek hurt someone. Not like this, but his wolf instincts were in control. He knew he needed to go for James’s throat. So he did. He snarled and opened his jaws wide, snapping them down on the bastard’s puny neck. He screamed again, a gargled noise of pain that quickly faded with a crack. His eyes rolled into the back of his head as Derek bit down harder.

  “Derek!” his mother screamed. Her voice was spent like she had been screaming at him the entire time he had gone after James. He must have tuned her out as well.

  He turned his head to face her. Tears were streaming down her cheeks. He tried to talk to her, to say everything was okay now, but all that came out of his mouth was a bark. His tail was wagging too. His mother screamed again. She backed away from him. Her chest was bouncing up and down with panicked breaths.

  She was terrified. Terrified of him.

  Derek’s ears swooped back, lying flat against his skull, and his tail hid in between his legs. He whimpered. He tried to tell his mother it was him. He tried to tell her there was no reason for her to be afraid. She wasn’t going to be hurt anymore. He would never let her get hurt again.

  “Get away from him!” she screamed.

  Startled, Derek backed away from James’s corpse. His mother scurried over and held James’s head in her hands, cradling him against her chest.

  Derek whimpered. Why was his mother mourning this man’s death? It didn’t make any sense.

  His mother was shaking, mumbling incoherent words to herself. She stood back up and looked around the house. She wandered around for a good few minutes before she finally got what she must have been looking for. The phone. She dialed the three numbers everyone knew by heart with shaky fingers and held the phone to her ear. Her eyes were dull. It was like she wasn’t seeing anything. Then her gaze flickered to Derek like embers of a fire coming back to life.

  “What are you still doing here?!” she shouted. “Get out of here! Get out and never come back.” She was sobbing again, pointing her finger at Derek accusingly.

  Something was wrong. Derek couldn’t change back. He didn’t know how he had changed in the first place. He whimpered again, wagging his tail hopefully, but his mother cursed him.

  “Get the fuck out of my home! Monster! Demon! James was right about you all along. I should have listened to him. I should have always listened to him. Everything would have been okay if I had just done that.” She knelt down and cradled James’s head as she continued to hold the phone to her ear. “My husband was attacked by a wolf. Please, help him.”

  Monster. Demon. James was right about him all along.

  Derek whined, but his mother would no longer look at him. She blocked him out completely, and that hurt more than anything. How could she do that? It would have been better if she had kept cursing him. At least he would have had her attention.

  That was when he realized what had happened. Yes, he had eliminated James, but now his mother didn’t want anything to do with him. He saved her from James’s torment, and now he was all alone.

  He clawed at the front door. When he couldn’t get it open, he rammed into it and broke that door too. Dusk was setting in. Night was coming. He ran through the ghetto in Milwaukee, tail tucked between his legs, as he did his very best to stay out of sight. He was an outcast. He was a wolf of shadows, made for the solitude of a dark night.

  “You didn’t sleep very long,” Gwen pointed out as she let Willow inside of the Alpha Den and led her to the sitting room where they sat side by side, legs t
ouching, on one of the sofas. Gwen was still wearing her robe, and her long brown hair was cascading over her shoulders. It was late morning. She was usually dressed for the day by now. She was never lazy even when she was on a few days break from her job as a ranger in Blue Forest. Likely, she wasn’t planning on leaving home today. Nick either. Willow’s mate was staying in the mansion after all, and neither of them trusted him.

  “Being in heat sucks,” Willow replied. “I had hot flashes all night. Made it hard to sleep. And when I looked out my window a half hour ago to see Howard with my Thunderbird, I was too excited to try to sleep anymore.” She shrugged. She loved that car. “Guess he led some of our hunters to retrieve mine and Derek’s things. Like, that was way cool of them.”

  Gwen grinned. “They’re your packmates. Seems like a normal thing to do, but you know better than I do how packs work.”

  “Just because you’ve been in this thing for only a few months doesn’t mean I know how packs work better than you do.”

  The she-wolves laughed. Willow gave Gwen a hug. Being in her sister’s arms always felt good. Gwen gave Willow a tight squeeze in return before releasing her.

  “That wasn’t the only reason they were there though, was it? I mean, they couldn’t have gone to Boise just to get our stuff back,” Willow noted.

  Gwen shook her head. “Howard came over and said he wanted to scout Boise for the shifter collector, Erin Smith, and bring your stuff back if possible. Nick allowed it as long as Howard promised he and the other wolves with him wouldn’t do anything reckless. It was basically recon.”

  “Did they find her?”

  “Nope. They didn’t find a sign of her. It was like she and her shifters had vanished. But it looks like we have a contingency plan. Nick has been talking to Casey about a shifter alliance called Trinity. Apparently, they have experience with shifter collectors. Casey’s going to ask them for help. He’s confident they will.”

  “But the shifter collector is gone. Is there really a reason for that?”

  “Casey thinks so, and Nick agrees with him.”

  Willow mumbled, “Casey has changed a lot. He’s grown up or something.”

  Thinking about him, saying his name, seeing him, it all still hurt immensely. Why had the Moon given Karol, Casey’s human mate, such a wonderful Fated Mate? Willow understood why Casey’s family glowed around him. He always made her feel that same way. The way he held his pup fondly, the fact that he had a pup, it all made Willow beyond jealous. It made her angry at the Moon. Why did the Moon give Karol this wonderful wolf? Why did it give Willow such a jackass of a wolf?

  Willow looked up when she heard the familiar sound of her brother’s footsteps padding quietly on the burgundy wood floor. He poked his head into the sitting room. Willow’s eyes settled on a dark bruise on his chin. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, so she could see another dark bruise just under his rib cage. She gasped.

  “What happened to you?” she asked as she flew off the couch and ran to her brother. She reached her hand up and carefully touched the bruise on his chin. “And why haven’t you healed?”

  “Derek happened, and I’m probably not healing as fast because Gwen is pregnant. Besides, I’m fine.”

  Willow dropped her hand back to her side and lowered her head. She knew them fighting it out was pretty much inevitable, but it didn’t mean she liked it. With Gwen being pregnant, it made her even angrier.

  “I’m taking Derek back to my place,” she announced. That was why she came here. Derek was her Fated Mate. Her problem.

  “No,” Nick said firmly.

  “It’s fine. I want to.”

  Nick gently grabbed her chin, forcing her to look up at him. “Don’t lie to me, Will. You can’t even look me in the eye right now.” He let her go. “I need you to tell me exactly what happened. That claiming looked painful, unnecessarily violent.”

  “It was nothing. It looked a lot worse than it was.” She looked her brother in the eye so he knew she was serious. “He didn’t mean to do it. He didn’t mean to hurt me. As soon as I told him he was, he stopped. I mean, it was part my fault too. I was acting crazy because my body is kind of a mess right now and because I was like, ‘Oh, this is my Fated Mate,’ and I just… I was hasty. You know, same old Willow story.”

  She glanced back at Gwen who nodded her head. She was sure Gwen had already talked to Nick about her. There were no secrets between mates. At least, there shouldn’t be any secrets between mates.

  Nick growled, clearly frustrated. “If you’re really sure, I’ll let you take him home with you.” He grabbed the back of Willow’s neck like he needed to reassure himself that her Lunas Sigil was real. He traced her mark and released her. “But I don’t like it. Whether he meant to or not, I don’t want him hurting you again.”

  “He won’t.” To Willow’s own surprise, she meant those words with all of her being. Despite her doubt, she was certain he wouldn’t physically harm her like that ever again.

  “I’m not only talking about your body, Will. I’m talking about your heart,” Nick said quietly.

  “This is something I have to figure out for myself, Nicky. You can’t protect me forever.”

  He growled. “I’m your Alpha.”

  She smirked. “Overprotective big brother.”

  “Whatever.” Nick snorted. “You can’t let him leave until this shifter collector business is officially taken care of. I know he doesn’t want to be here. If you need my help, just ask.”

  “You got it, big bro. So where is he?”

  “First guest room.”

  Willow mock saluted her Alpha, gave Gwen a grin, and ran out of the sitting room and up the stairs. She knew the Alpha Den well. She had grown up there after all, as the daughter of the previous Alpha. It was always strange to her that the pain her parents left behind was so different from the pain Casey had left her with. She missed her parents, but they hadn’t left her with scars. Casey had.

  Now she was standing outside of the guest room housing another wolf who was leaving her with scars, and yet she wasn’t ready to give up on him. She was angry. She blamed the Moon. She didn’t necessarily believe she’d ever get that fairytale ending. But she wasn’t ready to give up. Maybe she was a glutton for punishment.

  She held up her hand to knock on the door. She froze. Her every breath was shaky.

  “Get a grip, Will,” she hissed.

  What a minute. Why was she bothering with knocking anyway? She was Derek’s goddamn mate. She could walk in if she fucking wanted to.

  Suddenly feeling brave, she barged in. Derek was already awake. He jerked at Willow’s noisy entrance. Sweat was pouring down his face and his bare chest. He was heaving like he couldn’t breathe. Concern leaped into Willow’s chest as she rushed over to him.

  She placed her hand on his clammy forehead. He turned his head, escaping her touch. The action was another dagger in her heart. Her mate was so cold. It was like when he fucked her. He didn’t want any connection to her.

  No, she couldn’t think about that right now.

  Willow did her best to shake off the unease and asked, “Are you feeling okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he said with a growl.

  His breathing was returning to normal, and he wiped the sweat from his brow before it could drip into his eyes.

  He obviously wasn’t fine. Something had spooked him… or something. Willow took in a mindful breath to keep her own temper in check.

  “Okay, great,” she replied. “You’re going to stay with me in my home until we get this whole shifter collector business figured out—and the stuff between you and me.”

  “There is nothing between you and me,” he said, exasperated. “Besides, is your brother going to be okay with that?”

  “Of course. I talked to him. And he really doesn’t have a say in the matter even if he is my Alpha.”

  Derek smirked. The simple curve of his lips and the mirthful gleam in his green eyes lit up her core. God, she was trying so hard no
t to stare at his rippling muscles, glistening with his sweat. Being in heat was hard enough without Derek around. She was craving sex constantly, but it was something she could manage—until Derek was in the same room as her.

  Willow cleared her throat. “So, yeah. You’re going to stay with me in my home, but there’s going to be no messing around. Got it?”

  “You got it, princess. That won’t be a problem since I never fuck the same woman twice.”

  God, why did he have to be so cold? Willow was not just some woman. She was his damned Fated Mate. And what was with that nickname he had decided to give her? There was that burning sensation in her eyes that was always followed by tears. No. No crying. She involuntarily touched the back of her neck. There was a warm buzz of energy as her hand came into contact with her Lunas Sigil. It succeeded in calming her. Perhaps the Moon was trying to reassure her. Maybe it really did want her and Derek together for a reason like Julie said. It so wasn’t fair.

  Derek watched her wordlessly. His gaze was heated. She could smell his arousal as well as she was sure he could smell hers.

  Willow took a moment to look over her Fated Mate more thoroughly. He had light bruising on his chin and neck. He was healing quickly, but the rate he was healing explained her own added bit of fatigue.

  “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mark up my brother again,” Willow said. “With Gwen being pregnant, their Lunas Sigil doesn’t share their connected healing the same way it did before. The bruises you gave Nick last night wouldn’t look so bad right now if Gwen could have spared him more of her energy.”

  Derek touched his chin and then his neck. His eyebrows rose. “The… mark—Lunas Sigil—did this?” he asked.

  Willow stiffly nodded her head.

  “By taking your energy?”

  She nodded again. “That seems to be the way it’s working.”

  Derek’s face fell. He rubbed the back of his neck, but he didn’t say anything else.