This Dark Wolf: Soul Bitten Shifter Book 1
Page 1
This Dark Wolf
Soul Bitten Shifter 1
Everly Frost
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Stay in Touch
This Broken Wolf: Soul Bitten Shifter #2
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Bright Wicked: A fantasy romance
Also by Everly Frost
About the Author
Copyright © 2020 by Everly Frost
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Frost, Everly
This Dark Wolf
Cover design by Luminescence Covers
For information on reproducing sections of this book or sales of this book, go to
www.EverlyFrost.com
everlyfrost@gmail.com
Flip tables. Flip birds.
Be a wolf.
Chapter One
The forest is too quiet.
I pause in the act of raising my axe above the splitting block, sensing the shift in the breeze and the sudden silence that has fallen over the clearing beside the cabin.
A shudder threatens to shake me, but I suppress it.
The worst thing I can do is reveal that I’ve sensed the approach of the three men from within the trees.
Swinging the axe toward the block, I slice neatly through the chunk of firewood resting on top of it. Continuing to act as if nothing’s wrong, I leave the blade wedged in the block and throw the cut pieces into the nearby wheelbarrow, each chunk hitting with a soft thud. I plant my gloved hands on my hips and take a deep breath to calm myself before I turn back to my task.
My senses expand while I go through the motions of choosing another piece of wood to split.
One of the men is from my pack—his musky scent is as familiar to me as my father’s. But the other two men are unknown to me.
New scents.
They reek of ugly intentions.
All three prowl toward me, keeping within the shadows of the forest, their movements stealthy. About a hundred paces away, they spread out from each other, forming an arc, no doubt so it will be easier to catch me if I try to run.
They will assume that I can’t sense them, that I will be easy prey, and that I’m not strong enough to fight back.
Unfortunately for me, my father made the rules clear to me from the moment I was old enough to understand them.
I must never reveal the extent of my abilities.
I must act as if I am not strong.
I will never fight back.
Because if I show my pack how strong I really am… If they ever see me shift into my wolf form… I will become a threat to them. Not just to them, but to every alpha within the Highlands and Lowlands of Oregon.
That’s when they’ll stop at nothing to kill me.
If I want to stay alive, I’ll take whatever crap they throw at me—no matter how many broken bones I suffer or how much they grind my heart into the dirt with their taunts and insults.
I was born different. Unequal. Nobody knows why, but despite having wolf shifter parents, my soul is human, not wolf. That makes me a freak among shifters, a source of scorn, but if they saw my wolf… I’d be dead.
Pretending to take my time positioning another piece of wood on the block, I quickly consider every object around me that I can use to defend myself. Chunks of wood. Axe. Even the wheelbarrow itself. I can make use of the clear ground around the cabin to move around. Running inside is not an option—a door won’t keep these men away.
Already, I sense the power radiating from their wolves. Their animals appear in my senses like colors. Around the typical gray that indicates a wolf shifter, each of them blazes gold, which tells me they’re all alphas in training. I sense the shape of their human forms—all tall and broad-shouldered with muscular arms and thighs and lean waists.
The two men whose scents I don’t recognize must be here for the Conclave. It’s an annual meeting when the alphas of the Highland and Lowland packs set aside their differences and gather to discuss matters of mutual importance. Every alpha—past, present, and those in training—is required to attend. It’s my pack’s turn to host the Conclave this year, which is the only reason my father isn’t here right now.
If he were here, these assholes wouldn’t dare approach the cabin. Dad might be an outcast now, but he was once the alpha of our Highland pack and has a formidable reputation.
I’m gratified to sense that all three men pause to catch their breath as they climb the last fifty feet to the edge of the clearing around the cabin. The slope sharpens before it plateaus, making it a grueling task to reach my location. I know this, because I’ve run up it many times.
Dad may have made the rules of my life clear, but that didn’t stop him from ensuring I grew up physically fit and strong. Training me like other shifters was out of the question, so instead, he hung a boxing bag in the cabin’s back room and taught me every boxing combination he knows. Outside the cabin where other pack members might see me, I split wood, lug water, and run the deserted tracks up and down the mountain. Those same deserted patches of forest are my hunting ground, where I’ve honed my senses over the years.
The cabin where I live with my father is separated from my pack’s main village, which is hidden from humans within the Cascade Range situated east of Portland, Oregon.
The vast Cascade Range is the home of five packs, which we collectively call the Highland packs. The remaining two packs are located in Portland City itself, collectively known as the Lowland packs. There’s enough space separating the territories of the Highland packs that we rarely have conflict. The two Lowland packs control territory in the city on opposite sides of the Willamette River. Even with the river separating their territory, they are constantly at each other’s throats.
Planting my feet, I allow the axe to fall, splitting another piece of firewood in half, sending a crack echoing across the clearing. Leaving the axe in the block, I grip the smaller of the broken pieces in my hand before I turn to the approaching men, feigning surprise at their appearance.
The piece of wood is solid in my hand. I may not be allowed to use my wolf to fight back, but if they threaten me, I won’t hesitate to protect myself with all of my human strength and every weapon available to me.
The three men appear at the edge of the clearing simultaneously. They’re naked from the waist up, wearing low-slung jeans and boots. Their torsos glisten with sweat in the late afternoon sunlight. Tattoos sprawl ac
ross their arms and chests, but the designs are mere outlines—sketches of the full tattoos they’ll be given once they become alphas.
The two men standing in the center and to my far right are strangers to me. They smell distinctly similar—brothers, perhaps. I quickly gauge their ages—maybe early twenties like me.
The guy in the middle is the tallest and possibly the oldest. His sandy blond hair is long enough to reach halfway down his neck but is slicked back from his face. His brown eyes are the color of hickory and his gaze rakes up and down my form, narrowing rapidly as he appraises me.
The slightly shorter guy to the far right has darker blond hair and similar brown eyes. His nose is dusted with fine freckles that might look cute except that his lips are turned down in distaste as his gaze drags over me. For a second, a golden blaze breaks through his gray aura, but it’s far weaker than the first man’s aura. If they’re brothers, then he’s second-in-line.
The third man—the one standing to my far left—is too well known to me. Dawson Nash is the son of my pack’s alpha and one of my constant tormentors. When we were younger, he started in on me with shoves and taunts that quickly became fractured bones and deep bruises as we grew older and he grew stronger.
His brown hair is cut close at the sides, shaved right to his scalp in places that form sweeping lines across the left side, while the top is longer, a wildly scruffy contrast.
We both inherited our mother’s startlingly blue eyes.
Every pack has its share of bullies, but I struggle to imagine anyone worse than my half-brother.
My mother abandoned me and my father when I was born and became the new alpha’s mate. She has had no part in my life, only tried to see me once, and to my knowledge has never attempted to stop Dawson from hurting me.
Since I turned eighteen and don’t have to go to school in the village anymore, I’ve protected myself from my half-brother by keeping to the mountain slope. The worst Dawson’s done to me in the last three years is give me a black eye and bruised ribs.
The look on his face now is dark and wild, his lips pulled back to reveal his teeth.
Damn. He must be here to show the other two shifters how tough he is.
While they take a beat to size me up, Dawson strides straight toward me, calling to the taller blond man at the same time. “Do you see, Cody? She’s a freak.”
I guess I’m not dressed up enough for them. I’m wearing a navy-checked flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. It’s untucked and falls past my backside, hiding my curves. My soft leather ankle boots sit below the hem of my jeans. My red hair is piled on top of my head in an untidy bun, a few wisps falling across my shoulders, loosened while I was splitting wood.
Still holding on to the piece of wood, I back quickly toward the splitting block, wrench the axe out of it with my left hand, and circle behind the block. The block isn’t big enough to form any real barrier between me and Dawson, but it will disrupt his stride.
“Stay the hell away from me, Dawson,” I snarl.
My half-brother laughs as he circles around the block. “Or what, Tessa? You’ll tell your daddy I broke the rules?”
He glances back at his friends with a smirk. Dawson is allowed to go wherever he wants within pack territory during the Conclave, but the visiting shifters are supposed to keep to the village. This rule is intended to protect members of the host pack—a rule that my father was relying on to keep me safe tonight.
I heft the axe, holding it securely as I quickly backstep to maintain the distance between us. “Stay back, or I’ll slice you open like a piece of firewood,” I say.
Dawson misses a step.
It’s unusual for me to threaten him. But—damn it—if he’s here to make a mess of me, then there’s a high chance he’ll beat me until I’m barely breathing. I promised my father that I wouldn’t reveal my strength, but I’m done not fighting back in my human form.
Resuming his prowl toward me, Dawson snarls. “You don’t have the strength to challenge me, Tessa. You’re weak! A pathetic waste of air.”
I pull to a stop beside the wheelbarrow. “Try me, little brother.”
His eyes widen. The muscles in his neck cord and his nostrils flare, telling me I’ve made him truly angry. He made it clear to me when we were younger that he hates the fact that we’re related.
His hands dart out. He makes a grab for my head and I picture his intentions a mile off. He plans to knock my head into the pile of wood in the wheelbarrow, kick my knees out from under me, and wrench my hands behind my back before I can scream.
Darting beyond his grasp, I pitch the chunk of wood at his temple, hitting him squarely on his forehead.
He flinches and jerks to the side, gripping his head before he checks the damage.
“Fuck!” His fingers come away coated with blood. “Bitch!”
I don’t have time to waste. Snatching up another piece of wood, I aim for his throat, but he dashes to the side and the projectile thuds harmlessly into the ground.
The other two men stride toward me, their animals visible in their sharpening teeth and descending claws, taking on a partial shift. It’s hard to predict if they’ll fully shift. Only the strongest alphas can maintain a partial shift for more than a minute.
I pitch a piece of wood at each of them, one after the other, as fast as I can. These chunks are heavier than the last, but I’m practiced in chucking wood into the wheelbarrow.
One piece hits the tall blond guy—Cody—in the shoulder. The golden aura around his body suddenly blazes again, much brighter than I was expecting—much stronger than Dawson’s aura.
I suppress a new shudder. This guy will be a much more formidable opponent than my half-brother.
The other chunk of wood smacks the younger guy in the ribs. Unlike Cody, his aura weakens with the hit, confirming that his wolf isn’t as strong as Cody’s.
Both men jolt and curse at me, but they resume their unwavering stride toward me.
Misery rises inside me. I can keep chucking wood at them, but I’m simply delaying the inevitable.
Short of killing them, I can’t stop them.
Running away will only trigger their instincts to chase me. They’ll shift into their wolf forms, and I can’t outrun them as a human.
In the distance, the sun is beginning to set, the horizon flooding with amber light, but it’s still another half an hour until the forest will be dark enough that I could hide in it.
I fight my fear and the paralysis that comes with it.
My human side swings between rage and despair.
Do I break the rules I’ve kept my entire life—or risk death right now?
Raising the axe in front of me, I hold it like a shield as all three men descend on me. “Stay. The hell. Away from me.”
To my surprise, Cody pulls to a stop with a growl. His fists are clenched, the muscles in his torso shifting with his indrawn breaths, making the outline of his wolf tattoo ripple across his chest.
His growl is pure animal, the sound an alpha makes when he’s establishing dominance. It’s directed first at my brother and then at the freckled guy.
“I want her,” Cody says.
My heart sinks. For a second, I stupidly thought he was going to back off.
Dawson checks his forehead again, slow and considered, as he studies the blood from the cut I gave him. “If you aren’t afraid to draw blood, Cody.”
A smile grows on Cody’s face. The tip of his right incisor peeks between his lips. “Never.”
My half-brother laughs, a low, unsettling sound. “Whatever you want. I won’t stand in your way.” He arches an eyebrow at the younger guy. “Cameron?”
Cameron shakes his head, grinning. He confirms my theory that he and Cody are brothers when he says, “She’s all yours, big brother.”
I back away from them. It’s unlike Dawson to hand over control of any situation to anyone. If he’s willing to let Cody take charge, then Cody must have a lot of power—political or physical
.
I’ve never met any of the other alphas or their intended heirs, but I’ve heard their names over the years.
Rapidly digging into my memory, I search for any mention of an alpha-in-training named Cody.
My blood suddenly runs cold.
Wait… He can’t be…
Not Cody Griffin?
All packs are supposed to be equal in the hierarchy, but the two Lowland pack alphas are ruthless and feared.
The most ruthless is Tristan Masters, the youngest alpha in our history. He fought and killed his own father a year ago to take his place as alpha of the Western Lowland pack. His territory spans everywhere west of the Willamette River all the way across Portland up to the edge of the Tillamook State Forest. Any wolf who crosses him ends up not only dead, but killed in a way that sends a message to the other packs not to mess with him.
The second most feared alpha is Baxter Griffin. For generations, the Griffin family has ruled the Eastern Lowland territory that stretches east of the river to the base of the Cascades. In contrast to Tristan, he’s the oldest alpha and has a large extended family at his back. The Griffins are undefeated, close to gods among shifters.
If Cody is Baxter Griffin’s eldest son, then I’m in even more trouble than I thought.
Cody could rip me apart for sport and get away with it.
I continue to backstep away from him, gripping the axe as he prowls toward me. His hickory-brown eyes shift even further, his irises becoming a paler shade of caramel, flecked with gold. The change warns me that his animal is taking over his thoughts and instincts.