Once Bitten_Wolves of Hemlock Hollow

by Heather McCorkle

  I chose to ignore the last part, because if I didn’t, I’d swoon. “But it’s more than that, isn’t it? It’s Raul’s pack, and that other one.”

  One long moment stretched into another until I feared he wouldn’t answer. The truck glided down the road so quietly it was hard to tell we were on gravel. Trees zipped by, giving the occasional view of a cloudy sky.

  “Yes,” he finally said.

  The next question had to be forced past my constricting throat. “Am I part of his pack now?”

  Ty’s eyes never left the road, but by the way he tensed, I could tell the question bothered him. “Not unless you want to be.”

  Somehow I knew that if I said I didn’t, he’d relax, but something in me wanted to keep that information close to my chest for now. If he relaxed too much around me, then I’d relax around him and then things would progress to a place I couldn’t afford for them to go, and didn’t want them to. Or so I told myself. Lying to oneself is no easy thing. When I didn’t respond after a moment, he went on. “I did a bit of online research, cross referenced it with varúlfur records, and found that your dad descends from a Swedish pack.”

  “That can’t mean my dad was a werewolf. We were close. I would have known.” It wasn’t just denial. He would have told me something like that.

  “No, but I think he knew about the Swedish pack.”

  He handed me his phone. On it was a picture of a man with a roaring wolf formed of knotwork covering his back. Above the wolf was a phrase in Norse runes: Seeker Wolves. I knew it from memory. At first I thought it was a picture of my dad’s back, but the man’s build was wrong. The tattoo, though, was dead on.

  “That’s my dad’s tattoo,” I whispered.

  “I know. I also found his admission photos. Sonya”—he looked at me from across the truck—“that is the crest of the Swedish pack from which your father’s family descended. That is where you get your varúlfur blood.”

  The world swam. My stomach heaved. “I thought all the stories of werewolves and Vikings were only that, stories. But he knew. He loved those stories. He would have wanted to be a werewolf. Why wouldn’t he have gone to the pack and asked to be bitten in? It makes no sense,” I protested, unable to wrap my mind around it.

  Ty gave me a long, meaningful look. “Because he loved you. The odds of surviving to become varúlfur are not good, remember? I do not think he wanted to leave you alone, or take the chance of you wanting to follow in his steps and try to become one too.”

  Like I could forget. “He would have asked before I was born,” I argued, unable to accept it.

  “I do not think he knew until after you were born. I spoke with the Alpha of the Seeker Wolves pack. He said a seer of theirs predicated your birth, and that they reached out to your father when you were born, offering your family the chance to join the pack if they would go to Sweden. When he declined, they offered him their mark—their tattoo—so all would know his family was protected by them.”

  I dropped my head into my hands. “My mother wouldn’t have let us go so far from her family.”

  That would have meant my dad denied himself the one thing in life he would have wanted more than anything. Well, almost anything it turns out. Tears stung my eyes and I couldn’t blink the damn things away.

  “There is more,” Ty warned.

  “I want to know. Tell me everything,” I demanded without hesitation.

  “He went to prison for murder, right?”

  I nodded.

  “The man he killed was not a drug dealer like they said. He was a member of a Cherokee pack who tried to kidnap you. The Swedish pack found out and threatened the other pack.”

  The world swayed. Gripping the dash in front of me didn’t help. Things were starting to click into place that I didn’t want to believe. I grasped onto the one thing I did want to believe. “My dad wasn’t a murderer.”

  Ty’s hand came to rest on my leg. “No he was not. A no-touch creed was issued on your family after that. It is all in the varúlfur records.”

  Half the reason I had wanted to become a doctor was to balance the scales—in my mind at least—for what my dad had done. “This is insane.” I might have yelled, I couldn’t tell.

  All this time I had thought my dad had been involved in drugs. Now…

  But Ty wasn’t done blowing my mind. “Your mother descended from the Cherokee pack, that might be why they targeted you.”

  My mind couldn’t wrap around the fact that my mom had varúlfur blood in her too. The guilt of knowing it had been her own people that had tried to kidnap me, resulting in her husband going to prison, might have explained my mother’s descent into a haze of drugs after my dad’s death in prison. I’d never blamed her for her fall. She lost the love of her life. But I’d also lost my dad, and she always seemed to overlook that part. If this was true, it meant she had reason to blame me for everything. And I hadn’t spoken to her in years because I blamed her. What kind of person did that make me?

  “Why would they want me?”

  “That I do not know. The Alpha would not tell me, but he wants you to get in contact with him. His wolves lost track of you when you moved to Idaho and they have been worried about you,” Ty said.

  Taking slow, measured breaths, I lay my head back against the seat and closed my eyes. I took a while to process it and fought back tears. Once I got the lump in my throat down, I told him, “Not until after the verða. I want to be at full strength before I have to deal with anyone else who expects something of me. You didn’t tell him where I was, did you?” I wanted to know, I needed to know, everything that Alpha had to say, but right now I needed to focus on getting myself through this.

  He squeezed my leg. “Of course not.”

  “Good. When I left Washington, I made sure I’d be hard to track so my mom couldn’t find me. I had just put her into a rehab facility, again. I was hoping that my leaving might actually be enough to make her think she’d really hit rock bottom this time. In psychology, I learned they have to believe that or else they’ll just keep falling off the wagon. At the time it had seemed like the only option,” I said, the last bit dropping to a whisper.

  Without a word, Ty grabbed my hand and held it. His power flowed over me, cradling me. I relaxed into it for a mile or so before pulling my hand away. I owed my mom. Making it through this wasn’t just about me or the people I could help as a doctor anymore. It was about family.

  “You still haven’t told me about the Hemlock Hollow packs.” They were an immediate threat that knew right where I was. Forewarned was forearmed.

  His jaw tensed, making me wonder if he was struggling to keep his fangs retracted. An interesting reaction to a simple statement.

  “Don’t keep me in the dark, Ty. I don’t like it,” I warned.

  A long breath blew from him, and he sagged a bit. “That is not my intention.” He drew in an equally long breath before going on. “There are three packs in Hemlock Hollow: Reinhard, Draupnir, and Arnoddr. While they live in a relative sort of peace for the most part, they each have their own…politics, and there are politics between the three of them.”

  The tension tightening his features told me varúlfur politics weren’t the same as normal world politics.

  “Is that why you spend so much time in Missoula?”

  “Partly.”

  His following silence told me the conversation would end there if I didn’t push. So I pushed. “Did you ever belong to one of the packs?”

  “Once, yes,” he practically growled in a low voice.

  Tension filled the cab of the truck like fog, so thick I could taste its acidity on the back of my tongue. His hand withdrew from my leg. The absence of his heat made my heart sink. No, not my heart, exactly, more like the rush that waited in my chest. It wasn’t just attraction. This rush had hovered within ever since I woke up on the bathroom floor. I think it was my power. What did it mean that he made not only my body thrill, but my varúlfur power as well?

  The p
ain that pinched his brows together made me want to stop there. But I couldn’t. If I made it through the verða, I would need to know things. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hit a touchy subject. Which one is Raul’s pack? What are they like?” I asked.

  I knew throwing too many questions together tended to make him clam up, but we were starting to come across more houses than trees, which meant we were nearly to town. Time was running short, and once he stopped talking about this subject, it would be hard to get him going again.

  “His is the Reinhard pack, and they are…driven.”

  “Do they all belong to the AVW organization or whatever you call them? And is that just a huge group of speed-loving werewolves?”

  He chuckled. “Someone watches too much TV. We do not use the term organization, just pack. The AVW is considered an umbrella type of pack, one that encompasses many with the cooperation of their Alphas. And no, not all of the Reinhard belong to the AVW, mostly those of Raul’s generation and newer. And yes, I guess you could say they are all speed demons.” He shrugged. “Most of our kind are. We love to run, and driving something fast is the next best thing.”

  “Is the AVW the only umbrella pack?” I asked.

  The look of approval he gave me made me feel like teacher’s pet. That thought took me to all kinds of dirty places.

  “No. There is also the AVV, the American Viking Varúlfur, though they tend to be the older generations. I used to be one of them,” he said, voice growing quiet with the last sentence.

  I wanted to know more, but I could tell by the distant look in his eyes that was all I would get on that subject. “The other pack that came after me, on the road. Which one are they?”

  “Arnoddr.”

  His short answers suggested a new direction was called for. “How do the packs work? Is there, like, an Alpha that everyone follows?”

  To my surprise, he answered quickly. “Two, a male and a female, lead the pack together. Their family is considered konunglegur—royalty. The sons or daughters, whichever proves the best leader, usually rise to the position after their parents reach a venerable age and become elders.”

  “Usually?”

  Again his jaw clenched so hard that if he weren’t a varúlfur (I was finding that term was more comfortable than werewolf to me, maybe because it made it less fantastical), his teeth may have cracked. Through his parted lips I could see that both his top and bottom fangs had extended a bit.

  “Sorry, you don’t have to—”

  “No, you need to know what you are getting into. Struggles for dominance between the three packs are always ongoing, though it is usually kept to a minimum. Struggles for dominance within the packs are another matter. The elders consider that pack business and they do not get involved in it.” Voice drifting off, he swallowed hard and looked out the driver’s side window for a moment.

  After almost a minute, I didn’t think he was going to go on, and at this point, I wasn’t going to push him. Finally, he did. “Raul is the Alpha’s son. His pack arranged a marriage for him to solidify an alliance with the Arnoddr pack, and if they are forced to recognize and accept you, then that alliance crumbles.”

  The breath knocked right out of me as if I had been struck. It took a minute to recover. I shifted sideways, needing to see Ty better.

  “Why would Raul want to ruin that alliance?” And arranged marriages? Seriously?

  When he answered, I definitely saw the flash of extended fangs. “I honestly do not think the whelp cares. Ever since we were children he has only ever been concerned with what affects him directly.”

  That led down an avenue of self-loathing I really didn’t want to travel right now. How could I have been attracted to a man like that, again?

  “So, if you aren’t working for one of the packs, who sent you after me?” I asked.

  His blank expression revealed nothing, but tension filled up the cab of the truck as if it were thicker than air. I hated that I was bringing up so many sore subjects for him, but these were things I had to know. His reactions had me worried about the packs for more than one reason.

  “The elder Council. They are comprised of elders from all three packs and they sent me because they know I am neutral.”

  The courage to ask more had almost built up when he pulled into the parking lot of a coffee shop. Damn. Before I could get my seatbelt unbuckled, he shut the truck off, got out, and was halfway around to my side. Like a gentleman of old, he opened the door for me and offered me his hand. My body screamed at me to take that hand, revel in the feel of his skin, his warmth. This damn attraction had to be a werewolf thing, part of the verða maybe.

  Yes, a heightened sexual instinct. That made sense. Raising an eyebrow at the offering, I ducked under his hand and stepped from the truck in one easy leap. He shrugged and closed the door. Swallowing the desire to apologize, for what I had no idea, I strode around to the sidewalk at the front of the truck. The heat of his body tried to wrap around me as I passed by him. Resisting its pull almost took more resolve than I had. The devil was in the distraction. But hell, at this rate, resisting my attraction to him alone was threatening to drive me mad.

  “If you would like to go ahead and order, grab a table, I have to run to the store across the way.” With a thrust of his head, he indicated a grocery store down a few buildings from the coffee shop. “I will meet you back here in a few minutes.”

  “Sounds good.”

  Nose in the air, drawing in a deep breath, he started to back away, eyes scanning the parking lot as he went. Was he worried about Raul showing up here? Seeing as he was being detained, I didn’t think that was possible. I was about to ask when he turned and started to stride away at a swift pace. Shrugging his weirdness off, I started for the coffee shop. My eyes only betrayed me once or twice, sneaking a peek at his fine backside as he walked away. Fine, maybe three times.

  The bell hanging on the glass door jingled as I entered, a clear tone that rang above the swishing and banging of coffee drinks being made. Ten or so tables filled with college-age students chatting or typing took up the floor space, leaving a small aisle clear that led to the counter in the back. Three baristas worked with what was no doubt a caffeine-induced speed, hands a blur as they mixed up drinks for the four people standing at various points along the counter. The rich, wonderful aroma of fine coffee, flavored syrups, and milk made my mouth water in anticipation.

  One step inside the door and the euphoria that began to settle over me tore away like duct tape being ripped from dry skin. Something—no someone—in this room set my nerves to screaming. Bumps rose all over my skin and chills spread out from my center. Every smell and sound amplified until I was drowning in a sea of sensations. Then one suddenly banished the others. The beating of a heart that I knew with a terrible certainty was a varúlfur, terrible because something about them wasn’t right. Drawn by both a need to help and a force I couldn’t fight, I walked toward their table.

  Or, her table, rather. A young brunette with a bright stripe of purple in her hair who had to be under eighteen sat alone at a table, wide eyes staring out the window. The paper coffee cup in her hand shook so badly it was a wonder there wasn’t coffee all over the table. Next to her chair sat a beat-up backpack, one of its straps hooked through her right leg. Her clothes were rumpled and slightly dirty and she smelled as though she hadn’t bathed in at least a week. Compelled by a force I didn’t understand, I sat in a chair across the table from her.

  “Mind if I sit here?” I asked. A bit late, yeah, but my mind was still trying to catch up with where my body was leading me.

  One twitch and her gaze shot to me, her body going tense.

  When she didn’t respond I leaned my elbows on the table and whispered, “Are you all right?”

  She made a strangled sound and shook her head.

  “Are you from Hemlock Hollow?”

  Confusion clouded her eyes and again she shook her head. “Never heard of it,” she said so quietly it was scarcely more tha
n a broken whisper.

  Prickles of alarm began to work their way up my arms. Ty hadn’t mentioned any other varúlfur being in Missoula, or anywhere for that matter. It seemed he and I had a lot more to talk about. But right now I had more pressing matters to worry over, like why something about this young woman felt wrong.

  “I know what you’re going through. I think my friend and I can help,” I said.

  She made a sound between a snort and a laugh and fixed half-crazed eyes on me. “I seriously doubt that.”

  “Trust me, I do and I can.”

  “Really?” she growled, baring fangs at me.

  Now her whole body shook, as if she were struggling to control something and was quickly losing.

  For the first time, I willed my fangs to grow, and they did. Hiding my surprise, I smiled, exposing them to her. “Really.”

  The girl pulled back so fast that her chair rocked back onto two legs. She teetered, arms flailing. Faster than I ever imagined I could move, one of my hands shot out and grabbed her right wrist. I steadied her, holding tight to that wrist and rising with her as she stood, making it look as though I supported her. A few eyes turned our way.

  “Enough caffeine for you, time for some air,” I said aloud for the benefit of the onlookers.

  Thankfully, she resisted only long enough to grab her backpack and toss it over her shoulder, before walking to the door with me. A breeze carrying the scents of blacktop and fast food hit me like a slap as we walked outside. How something I had once loved could now smell so foul, I had no idea.

  “You’re one of them,” the girl whispered in a harsh tone.

  Her darting wide eyes told me she would attempt to run the first chance she got.

  “Them?” I asked.

  She tried to pull her arm from my grasp but I held tight easily. “Like the son of a bitch that bit me, that turned me into…this.”

  I walked her over to stand beside the bed of the truck, putting it between us and the windows of the coffee shop. “I’m nothing like that one, trust me. I was bitten and turned against my will too.”