by Meg Ripley
Sera was almost ready to shoot anyway when Seth finally struck the final blow, sending Aiza to the ground in a lifeless lump. The second her sister fell, Stephanie scooped Seth up in her arms, unmindful of his size and the blood and raced to the door, pausing for a moment to look back to Aiza’s still form.
“Sera, come on. We have to go now.”
Even now, she wanted to voice a protest, wanted to gather her sister up in her arms and carry her to the nearest hospital.
“Sera!” Seth called her name, and it was only the sound of his voice that pulled her from her fantasy of finally saving Aiza. She let the sound of his voice lure her away from the cabin and she stumbled down the walk after him, groping for him in the darkness. When he caught her, his hands were slick with blood, but his grip was strong and she knew he wouldn’t let her go.
“There’s a truck over there,” Stephanie said. “Hurry.”
Everything became a blur as Sera raced at Seth’s side, hurrying towards their salvation. Seth pushed her into the front seat and Stephanie took the wheel, crowing triumphantly when she located the keys in the visor. Sera allowed herself one last look at the cabin as they sped away. She saw a shadow moving near the doorway, and she found herself hoping it was Aiza’s. She stared until she couldn’t see it anymore, until the cabin fell away from sight, swallowed by the moonless night.
****
Sera called her boss and told her that she would not be returning to work. Her boss begged her to reconsider, asked her if a raise would make her change her mind at all, and finally said with a sigh, “If you ever want to come back, you know where to find us.” She called her landlord next and advised him she would not be renewing her monthly lease, and to keep the security deposit to cover any funds he was entitled to. She called her parents and didn’t tell them anything important—she didn’t mention Aiza, or the Wolf Brotherhood, or even Seth and the baby. She merely stated that she liked it in the northwest, and she would give them a call once she was settled.
After that, she spent a lot of time simply sitting quietly and thinking. Her guilt over her sister’s demise was unquantifiable, even though she knew logically that it was none of her fault. Aiza had been an adult who made her own choices, and yet Sera couldn’t help but think that her sister would still be alive if only she had gone home. If only she had listened to the sheriff when he warned her to let it go. If only she had listened to Seth when he warned her there were not people she wanted to be involved with.
The events in the cabin didn’t make the news. No police came knocking on their door to demand an explanation for all the bodies, and though Seth upped security and warned his entire pack to be on the lookout for Brotherhood members, there was no sign of the biker gang.
“Won’t they want revenge or something?” Sera asked.
“They likely want all of this to go away,” Seth said. “We’ll continue to be cautious, but I don’t think we have anything to worry about.”
But Sera disagreed. They had a lot to worry about. She was growing bigger by the day, and it was only the reality of her child that kept her grounded to earth, kept her eating, kept her sleeping, kept her sane.
“What do you think happened?” she asked Seth one night.
“I think Aiza stole money or drugs or guns from the Brotherhood. Or maybe Dwight did and she was his accomplice. Maybe she even took the fall for it and that’s why they went through all the effort to fake her death.”
“Did you kill her?”
“I don’t know.” Though the words were inconclusive, she knew they were honest.
“I hope she’s still out there. I hope…”
“I know. Thank you, by the way.”
“For what?”
“For putting your life at risk to save mine.”
Sera snorted. “I nearly killed us all with that stunt. I should have stayed home and sat tight, like you said.”
“Maybe. But you know what? Nobody’s ever loved me enough to risk their life for me. You thought I was mad at you, but I wasn’t.”
“You weren’t mad?” Sera asked.
“Of course not.” He kissed the back of her neck and she felt herself relax against the heat of his mouth. “I mean, I wasn’t happy that you would blindly stumble into a dangerous situation, but...I felt better when you were there. I feel good knowing you have my back.”
“I’ll always have your back,” Sera said. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” His hand went to her stomach. “And I love this little pup. When will you let me make it official?”
“Official? Are you asking me to marry you?”
“I am. I can’t imagine my life without you, Sera.” He paused for a moment, tears pricking the corners of his eyes. “Well, what do you think?”
“I think…” Sera took a deep breath. “I think I’d love to be your wife.”
“So that’s a yes?”
“It’s a definite yes.”
“Perfect. Just tell me what you want and it’s yours,” Seth said. “Your dream wedding.”
“My dream wedding?” She could never have her dream wedding, because her dream wedding would include her entire family, but with this man, she’d have the wedding that she never dreamed was possible. And with him at her side, she would have the foundation for a new family. A close family full of love and support and kindness. A family like she never knew before. A pack. “Just as long as I have you, all my dreams will come true.”
As she said the words, she realized how true they were. For as much as she lost, she’d gained the world.
THE END
Rogue Wolf: Wild Forbidden Mates
Two rival shifter clans.
One relentless and forbidden love that breaks all of the rules.
In the small town of Spring Lake, the long-standing rivalry between a pack of werewolves and a clan of were-panthers erupts into full-scale battle. Raul, an ex-Navy enforcer of the Wolf pack, is forced to take sides in the conflict when a group of panthers—who have been raiding werewolf businesses for weeks—is finally captured, and the order given by the Pack's Alpha male is to execute them without trial.
He can only save one: Keira, a voluptuous panther female who only consents to let him rescue her after she nearly beats him in personal combat.
But the war between the two groups is more complicated than either of them know. As they begin to unravel the two Alphas' motivations in attacking each other, Raul and Keira's rivalry develops into a hot, heavy, and forbidden romance, sparking further reprisals and deeper battles between their people.
With threats of death—or discovery—hanging over their heads, Raul and Keira must find a way to bring their communities together, or risk losing each other in the chaotic war.
“Raul, we’ve got another one,” the voice on the other end of the line began as soon as the call connected. Raul groaned, scrubbing at his face. It was still dark outside—but it was nearly four in the morning, and he had been looking forward to finally going to sleep.
“Bastards keep slinking off before one of our guys can catch them in the act,” Raul said bitterly. He could feel the frustration of his pack-mate on the other end of the line, sense it as an extension of his own irritation.
For weeks, he, Gary, Cameron, and Adeline had been tracking a group of vandals; their scent marks at the scenes of the crimes were easy enough to read, but all traces of the assholes responsible for the graffiti and broken windows—not to mention a few petty thefts—disappeared within a half mile of the site. It was just like a bunch of sneaky panthers, Raul thought bitterly. The town of Spring Lake had fewer than five thousand residents; and yet, Raul and the other enforcers for the Pack hadn’t been able to track down what they’d counted as five panthers. The other members of the Pack had started looking at him doubtfully, and the Alpha—Reginald—had put more and more pressure on Raul as the Pack’s number one enforcer to get the job done.
“Someone was asleep at the wheel,” Cameron said, his voice full of brittl
e irritation. Raul growled low in his throat; he had asked for the Pack’s participation in staking out the various businesses that might come under attack. He, Cam, Gary, and Adeline simply couldn’t watch over all of the businesses that the members of the Pack owned in the town. They needed people to be vigilant, and they had needed to have a way to track the shifty, good-for-nothing panthers to their den, wherever it was.
There were just enough people in the town for it to be impossible for any of the members of even the large wolf pack to know everyone, to know all of the addresses. Spring Lake was home to a thriving supernatural community—and even Raul, in his position of relative authority within the Pack, didn’t know all of the shifters in the area. There were even some, he was fairly certain, who lived outside of the town proper—in the woods that surrounded the town, closing it off superficially at least from the rest of the country. He had done what he could, asked who he could, about the whereabouts of a group of panthers and had come up empty.
“Which business was it?” Raul put his phone on speaker and set it down, standing up from his seated position on the couch to get ready to leave the house. If another one of the Pack-owned businesses had been vandalized, the Pack would expect him to be there before daybreak, working the scene, trying to find a clue that might not have been at the other raids. Eventually those fucking panthers are going to get sloppy, he thought. And when they do, we’ll track them down and put the bastards on trial.
Even with scent marks at the scene, there wasn’t a whole lot of information to be gleaned about the vandals. Raul knew that one of the panthers involved in the crimes was a fertile female—he could smell it in the rich honey-moss smell of her scent mark, buried in the deeper, sharper musk of big cat that the males left behind. He knew that there were five of them. He knew what they were. But until I know who they are, I am going to have this goddamned albatross around my neck, pulling me down.
He had been a natural successor to the Pack’s previous lead enforcer; Reginald had groomed Raul for the position for years, even mentoring him through the Navy when Raul had enlisted. Reginald had told Raul more than once that the best thing he could cultivate beyond ruthlessness was the ability to lead, and Raul had taken that seriously. If Reginald retired—or if he fell in a challenge, or met with an accident that cut short his time as Alpha of the Pack—then Raul would be the first in contention for the Alpha position within the Pack. He would need to have the skills that it required, whether or not he ever took on the job.
“Alicia’s bakery,” Cameron confirmed on the other end of the line. “And get this: they’re escalating, the fucking cats.” Raul felt Cameron’s barely-controlled rage and reveled in it, breathing in and out slowly. The low-level telepathy that members of the same Pack shared was sometimes a joy—but more often a pain. He didn’t want to feel heartbroken just because one of the younger members of the Pack had been rebuffed in his romantic advances to some girl or guy. But when it came to hunting down prey—or even fellow predators—it came in handy.
“Escalating how?” Raul pulled a shirt over his head and glanced at himself in the mirror, smoothing his hair down against his skull. As soon as he had left the military, he’d let it grow out into a full, dark-brown mane, in defiance of the strict military grooming standards he’d subjected himself to for years. No one in the Pack thought that a man with long hair was anything to be laughed at, and members of the town who weren’t of the supernatural persuasion learned quickly that to laugh at his long hair was to court almost certain disaster.
“There was a fire,” Cam said. “We managed to put it out with minimal damage, but someone still called 9-1-1, so there’s going to be an official investigation if we don’t sort this out quickly.”
Raul groaned, throwing his head back and cursing long and fluently. “The last fucking thing we need is the cops on this,” he said. He took a quick breath. “Who’s coming to the scene?”
“We’re trying to get ahold of Tanya and Jeremy, see if we can’t get them to take the case, keep it quiet.” Tanya and Jeremy weren’t Pack, but they were shifters—were-foxes. They could be trusted to a certain extent to slow up the investigation if they could get themselves on it, give the Pack a chance to handle it.
Everyone in Spring Lake knew and didn’t know that there were supernatural humans living in the area; there was plenty of local lore about not going into the woods and scrublands surrounding the town during the week of the full moon, with vague implications of what happened to people who did. But nobody directly said that there were shifters, even elementals living amongst perfectly normal humans.
Whenever possible, the two-natured community tried to police themselves, along with the other supernatural elements of the town. The elementals intervened only when they had to; otherwise they kept to themselves, and Raul preferred it that way. “Text me the address, and I’ll be there in fifteen,” he told Cam after a moment’s thought. “Maybe they’re getting sloppy. Maybe we’ll luck out this time.” Raul checked his pockets to make sure he had his wallet, and when Cam said goodbye, he slipped his phone into another pocket, checked for his keys. He could feel the animal nature—the part of his brain that was always the wolf—shifting, fidgeting inside of him. He wanted to be on the hunt. He wanted to track down the assholes who thought it was a good idea to harass the wolves. He growled low in his throat and headed for the door, picturing the panthers in their animal forms, slinking away from a burning building. Raul stepped out of his house and strode towards his car, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. I am going to catch them this time, even if it kills me.
****
Keira’s heart pounded as she, Lachlan, William, Blake, and Floyd sped away from the scene of their most recent raid in the scent-blocked car that Noelle had contrived. She smiled to herself, worried and exhilarated, terrified and proud of what she and her clan-mates had done. “The fire was a stupid fucking idea,” Blake told Will as they put distance between themselves and the scene of their crime.
“It wasn’t exactly an idea,” Will said defensively, shifting in his seat. “It just kind of happened.”
“We can’t have things ‘just kind of happen,’” Lachlan told the others, glancing at them each in turn. His gaze lingered on Keira’s face and she looked back blandly, keeping her expression neutral until he looked away. There was an uneasy power dynamic going on between the members of their clan, and while Keira was not by any stretch interested in going for the Alpha, she wasn’t about to let Lachlan—or any of her clan-mates—push her to submit when she had no reason to. “We have to be more careful,” Lachlan added, turning his attention back onto the others.
“How can something like that be an accident, anyway?” Keira looked at Will. “I mean, you don’t accidentally light a match. You don’t accidentally drop it on the ground.” She crossed her arms over her chest as Floyd navigated the darkness. Keira could feel the tendrils of almost-thoughts from the rest of the members of her clan in the car with her; she could feel their excitement, the adrenaline pumping in their veins.
“It wasn’t a match or anything,” Will said sullenly. “I tried to do something with the breakers and the fire started that way.” Keira watched her clan-mate intently for a few moments in silence, trying her best to take in as much information from him as she could from the slightly telepathic bond they shared. From what she could tell, Will was being honest; at the very least, he believed what he was saying. It had been an accident.
“Then yeah, we need to be more careful,” Keira said, glancing at Lachlan. “It’s one thing to raid these assholes’ businesses, it’s another to get sloppy about it.” Keira hadn’t been entirely in favor of the raids herself—but once the clan had voted on it, she and the other four were the natural candidates for the job. All five of them were fast, difficult to trace—especially with the car that Noelle had worked over, masking the usual scent marks—and skilled.
“The wolves will keep the police out of it if they can,” Lachlan said t
houghtfully. “But we can’t have any more fuckups like this. The goal is for them to know who’s raiding their businesses and that we’re serious about keeping them in check.” Keira pressed her lips together, looking around the car. She wasn’t actually sure what the true goal of the raids was; in the clan debate where it had been decided, it seemed to her that for the most part people just wanted to get back at the wolves, to get some kind of revenge.
The wolf pack and the panthers had been rivals since long before Keira had been born; she had grown up knowing that the wolves were untrustworthy, and that they looked out for their own—proud, overambitious and exclusionary. She had known by the time she had made her first transformation that if she encountered a wolf in the woods, she was likely going to be in for a fight—and that she should never be alone in the woods during the full moon, lest she find herself surrounded by the vicious jackals.
But why they had chosen to begin raiding the wolves’ businesses in the past few months, Keira had no idea; she had heard vague reports that one of the panthers’ homes had been raided by some of the wolves—but nobody in the clan seemed to know who it was who had been affected, or who hadn’t been affected. As soon as it starts to be about wolves, everyone has a grievance, Keira thought wryly as the car made its way back to the clan’s headquarters on the outskirts of town. She had to wonder: did the wolves feel the same way about the panthers? Keira knew that the wolves thought that the panthers were little more than scavengers, that they were not good enough to ally with—unlike the foxes or the bears that lived in Spring Lake, the wolves didn’t think anyone was truly good to ally with. But did the wolves have the same tendency to jump at shadows when it came to the topic of the panthers? Or were they so confident that they couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to crowd them out?