Finding My Breaking Point

by C. C. Masters

  Finding My Breaking Point

  Seaside Wolf Pack

  Book 5

  By C.C. Masters

  Copyright 2018 by C.C. Masters.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Dedication:

  Dedicated to everyone who has supported me along this journey! Special thanks to everyone in the Seaside Wolf Pack on Facebook for always keeping me inspired and motivated.

  Thank you to Ann Marie Ware, you constantly inspire me and give me the extra push I need to be a better writer.

  Thank you to all the beta and ARC readers who helped out with this project. You’re all awesome!

  Finding My Breaking Point

  Need to catch up?

  Prologue

  Justin

  Chapter 1

  Anna

  Chapter 2

  Justin

  Chapter 3

  Anna

  Chapter 4

  Anna

  Chapter 5

  Austin

  Chapter 6

  Anna

  Chapter 7

  Anna

  Chapter 8

  Anna

  Chapter 9

  Anna

  Chapter 10

  Caleb

  Chapter 11

  Anna

  Chapter 12

  Tony

  Chapter 13

  Anna

  Chapter 14

  Anna

  Chapter 15

  Cody

  Chapter 16

  Anna

  Chapter 17

  Anna

  Chapter 18

  Anna

  Chapter 19

  Jason

  Chapter 20

  Mason

  Chapter 21

  Anna

  Chapter 22

  James

  Chapter 23

  Anna

  Chapter 24

  Austin

  Chapter 25

  Anna

  Chapter 26

  Anna

  Epilogue

  Sam

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Books by C.C. Masters

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  Sneak Peek of Hollow Crest Wolf Pack Book 1

  Chapter 1

  Lori

  Need to catch up?

  Here’s what happened so far:

  When Froston had kidnapped Anna and brought her to Winter, James and a team had followed her trail to the territory of the Northern Pack in Canada. Ragnar, pack master and mate to Anna’s Aunt Ingrid, had agreed to lend James resources in recovering Anna, but asked for his help in stabilizing a rebellion within his pack. During their discussion, Ragnar admitted he had been in negotiations with Mr. Zilker to acquire Anna for his own pack out of desperation for another white wolf. James told him that Anna would never join the Canadian Pack, but he agreed to provide Ragnar with information that could lead him to other white wolves.

  The Seaside wolves discovered that Gemma was not the wolf from the Canadian Pack that she had claimed to be upon her arrival. She was unmasked as a fae in disguise who had been feeding off the twins for her survival.

  Anna had been training hard to manage the fae abilities that she inherited from her father. Talen, her guide to her fae heritage, sacrificed his life to save Anna’s during the battle with Gemma. But in his last moments, he passed some of his knowledge and memories to her.

  Austin’s father, Mr. Zilker, was blamed for orchestrating the attacks against the Seaside Wolf Pack but disappeared before he could be brought to justice. Justin, Austin’s older brother, inherited leadership of the Zilker Pack. However, Austin was appointed to serve as Mr. Zilker’s temporary replacement on the council.

  Anna and Austin met with Arminius, who confessed that he had helped Anna’s mother run from her pack in Canada and facilitated the attempt to hide Anna with the humans until Astrid could retrieve her. Arminius denied knowing who killed Astrid, but gave Anna two journals for her to read, one of which was written by her mother.

  Drake agreed to help Anna defeat the Summer fae who attacked Seaside, but demanded she return to Winter to attend a meeting with him as payment. While there, Anna learned that she had been banished from Winter as a punishment for killing the Winter King, but that Drake had negotiated for the punishment to be lifted. She also suspects that Drake has plans to use her in his battle to ascend to his father’s vacant throne.

  Anna sees her mother in a dream, where Astrid gives her cryptic clues to follow. Astrid ends the dream too quickly because she’s afraid of being watched and caused Anna’s memory of the dream to fade once she awakens.

  Prologue

  Justin

  I slammed the car door shut behind me, but that didn’t do much to satisfy the rage burning inside. I was going to need something much more substantial to ease my craving for blood and violence. Gravel crunched underneath my feet as I stalked across the driveway and up the rickety steps of the front porch. I had to jiggle the handle of the front door after inserting the old-fashioned skeleton key before it would creak open.

  My two wolves who were supposed to be on guard duty jumped to their feet at my arrival. They kept their eyes lowered as I passed by them, and I strode to the basement door without speaking. I cursed as my key got stuck in the padlock and kicked the steel reinforced door. Not surprisingly, that didn’t help get the door open or calm my mood.

  I yanked open the basement door and pounded down the wooden stairs, hollow thumps marking each one of my steps. Finally, I laid my eyes on the purpose of my trip. He was lying with his feet sprawled out in front of him, half leaning on the wall behind him. My feet stopped inches away from where we had etched a line on the concrete floor, denoting just how far he could reach while in chains.

  It might have seemed like overkill to have manacles around his wrists and ankles in addition to around his neck, but I wasn’t taking any chances. My father had once been one of the most powerful alphas in the country, and he wouldn’t hesitate to take the slightest opportunity to escape and slaughter us all.

  Give in to your desires.

  Have him kneel at your feet.

  Use your claws to slash his throat.

  I pushed away the whispers that had been growing slightly louder every day. They had started out as a quiet murmur in the back of my mind, but now they were a force that was pushing me toward greatness. My mood improved as I stared at one of the most powerful wolves that I had ever met as he laid helpless at my feet. His hand twitched as he struggled to open his eyes, which caused a slight smile to slide across my face. My men had been keeping him heavily drugged to reduce the risk of him using his alpha power to influence them. I had cut him off from the pack bond entirely, but that didn’t mean that my men were safe from his influence.

  “Justin,” he croaked out. “Come to gloat?”

  I paced back and forth in front of him. “I came to see if you were ready to talk, Father dearest,” I taunted him.

  “You…” my father licked his cracked lips as he struggled to get the words out. “Are no longer… my son.”

  I laughed. “Twenty years ago, I would have considered that to be a threat. Now, it’s a joke.”

  My father let out his breath and closed his eyes as if the struggle to keep them open had become too much. I aimed a kick at his calf, but before my foot had even made contact, he lunged. Luckily, the chains that held his arms prison
er were too short for him to reach my leg. I chuckled as I saw the rage flash in his eyes before it was replaced with seething hatred. But he had moved much more quickly than I would have liked.

  “Looks like you’ve been playing possum to keep us from increasing your tranquilizers,” I said with a chuckle as I walked over to the table in the corner and loaded up the tranq gun we kept there just for my father. I took pleasure in aiming the gun and watching the despair on my father’s face before I shot him in the thigh. “That should do it,” I said cheerfully. “Once you’re appropriately sedated, we’ll continue our discussion about where you’re keeping my weapon.”

  My father let out a low growl. “The only thing I’m going to tell you today is how much I regret not drowning you as a pup. I should have disposed of you the moment that Austin was born.”

  “Austin,” I sneered. “He’ll find himself in your shoes soon enough.” The mention of my younger brother was enough to ruin my good mood again. That asshole had been walking around with his holier than thou attitude for way too long, it was definitely time for him to get taken down a peg or ten.

  I sat down in the wooden chair that had been left down here and leaned back to get comfortable. “By the way, Father, I thought you might like some updates on what is going on out there in the world. Austin is feeling betrayed because every single trail that he followed to find out who was attacking his pack, all led back to you. Golden boy thinks you’ve been secretly undermining his every step.”

  I gave a chuckle as I watched my father try to hide the emotions that flickered across his face. “And the legacy that you had been so obsessed with building your entire life?” The former head council member looked like he wanted to continue to struggle, but the spark in his eyes was quickly fading, and his muscles were growing weak. “Our entire community thinks you’re a villain, not a hero. How does that make you feel?” I taunted him. “To know that years of dedication were erased in a single moment, your reputation destroyed.”

  Tell him what’s to come.

  Bury him in shame.

  Let him feel the agony of failure and betrayal.

  “But there’s still time to make your life mean something,” I assured him with a wicked smile. “Help set me on the path to my destiny. Tell me where the weapon is.”

  “You fool,” my father slurred through the drugs coursing through his blood. “You have no idea what it is that you want to release.”

  I just laughed and eyed the table full of instruments that I’d left from our last session. “What do you think, Father? Do you want to start with the modified cattle prod?”

  His only response was to slump down as the rest of the fight left his body. Maybe today was the day I’d finally get an answer to my questions.

  Chapter 1

  Anna

  I stared out at the ocean waves as they crashed against the sandy shoreline and hugged Cody’s oversized hoodie closer. A particularly strong gust of wind caused some of the cold ocean spray to mist over me, and I tilted my head up to feel it across my face. The sky was grey above, indicating that either snow or icy rain would be here at any moment. The cold December weather didn’t bother me as much as it should, even though I was lacking my warm Arctic wolf coat in my human form. The solitude of being alone in this cold, grey world fit my mood perfectly right now.

  I had replayed the images of Talen’s death in my mind so many times, and each time I had cursed myself for not being able to save him. I hated myself for not being able to stop Gemma before she hurt Talen, Sam, and the twins. Sam, Mason, and Jason had all physically recovered from the battle after only a day or two, but the mental scars were taking longer to heal. I knew now that I had been magically powerful enough to beat Gemma in our battle, and I despised myself for hesitating when I should have gone for a killing blow. If I hadn’t been so weak, Talen would be here with me now.

  After Talen’s death, I had doubled my efforts to learn how to use my magic. The knowledge contained in my mother’s journal, in combination with Talen’s memories, had helped me to increase the range of my abilities exponentially. I could finally understand what Talen had been trying to teach me during all of our lessons, and I hated that it had taken his death for me to come to that revelation.

  The fae were each imbued with different types of magic that were tied to their line of creation. Talen had been from the Summer Court originally, and his magic had been that of the life that sprung forth from the land after winter had faded away. He had a particular affinity for plants and life, but he had lost his ties to Summer when he had been cast out. His magic had been slowly fading when he was in Winter, but being sent here to the human world had accelerated his demise. The last few weeks he had been alive, he had been desperate to forge a connection between himself and the earth here so that he could survive away from the fae worlds. I had a connection to this world through my mother’s heritage, but I was still learning how to use it.

  I could feel the faint hum of power on everything around me when I let myself tune into it. My magic didn’t seem to be linked to just one thing as the fae’s magic did. I could feel the pull of the ocean from within its dark depths as the waves crashed over the shore just as much as I could feel the energy in the earth below my feet and the warmth of humans when they were close by. My mother’s journals not only contained magical how-to instructions but also detailed the duty that the white wolves had to protect our people. We were supposed to be the guardians of our race.

  My concentration on the past was broken by the prickle of magic that told me another wolf was near – a wolf that wasn’t in our pack. I got to my feet and brushed the sand off my bottom as I looked down the beach. I could see a small dot on the horizon that quickly grew into the form of a wolf, moving at a fast pace right towards me.

  I extended my awareness to see which of my wolves was the closest to me but hesitated when I realized it was the twins. It had been weeks since we had burned Gemma’s remains, but our relationship was still strained. They had been distant after the battle where they almost lost their lives, and my guilt had made me hesitant to force them to talk. I blamed myself for what Gemma had been doing to them right under my nose. I should have trusted my initial instincts and tossed Gemma right out on her ass, regardless of what anyone else thought. I certainly wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  I took a deep breath to fortify myself and reached out to both of the twins with a sense of urgency, sending them the image of the mysterious wolf who was headed towards me. “I need you,” I called to them with the pack bond.

  I felt surprise echo through the bond from both of them, but Mason was first to answer. “Get off the beach, we’re coming.”

  “No,” I told him firmly. “I can handle one wolf.” I was better equipped to deal with an intruder than any other wolf in our pack. I had something that none of my other pack mates did – the magical abilities of the fae. My mother had been a white wolf with some minor magical abilities, and my father was a full-blooded fae – one of the most powerful in the Winter realm. I had inherited my father’s abilities and affinity for magic, but my mother’s connection to the earth in the human realm. Most of the fae couldn’t survive for long periods out of their world because their power was tied to the magic there. I had connections to magic in both worlds, so I didn’t have that weakness.

  The mysterious wolf was now close enough that I could see it was white and grey and on the smaller side – probably a young female. I could feel the sharp worry of the twins as they hurried through the trees that hid our home from any prying eyes that might wander by on the ocean. I sent them reassuring thoughts but didn’t let down my guard. Just because this wolf was a female didn’t mean that she was harmless, Gemma had shown us that.

  I held up my hands when the wolf was about fifty feet away from me, and she slowed to a walk. The twins burst out of the tree line, running at top speed towards us and I formed a barrier around our uninvited visitor before walking closer to her. I kept it invisible so
that if she were ignorant of the magical ways of the fae, she wouldn’t even know it was there. And if she could see or sense it? Well, that would just mark her as a potential enemy.

  Despite running a quarter mile at their fastest sprint, neither of the twins were as winded as I would have been. They were both in work-out clothes, showcasing their fit and muscular forms. They had been spending a lot of time in the gym lately, maybe to work out their anger and frustration over everything that had happened with Talen and Gemma.

  “I have her encased in a bubble,” I told them with our bond as I walked closer to examine the wolf. She sat down on her haunches and panted, never taking her eyes off me. She didn’t show any signs of being able to see the magic that surrounded her, and she didn’t make any move to try and escape us, she just waited to see what we would do.

  Mason ran a hand through his dark brown hair as he and Jason circled around the wolf’s invisible prison. “Shift and explain yourself,” Mason demanded of the wolf.

  “You’re trespassing on our territory,” Jason added with a growl. Their matching sets of hazel eyes both flashed with anger as they took in her scent.

  The wolf whined and laid down in a submissive position, but the twins didn’t relent and continued to circle around her and growl.

  “Give her a chance to explain,” I suggested softly with the bond. Jason flashed me an irritated look and held out his arm to stop me from getting closer to her. “I have her confined,” I told him with an eye roll.

  “Isn’t that what you thought with Gemma?” Mason asked distractedly.

  I took in a sharp breath as his words made my heart squeeze painfully. He was right. I’d thought I had control over Gemma and my mistake had cost Talen his life. “I need to get close to her, so I can get a feel for her magic,” I projected to him confidently. I didn’t want Mason to know just how much his words had hurt me.

  I placed my hands against the magic of the barrier that I had enacted and closed my eyes as I extended my magical senses. As Talen died, he had passed a considerable chunk of his memories over to me. I was still working through the occasional disjointed flashes of memory I would get, but I had made a huge amount of progress. The notes from my mother’s journal had helped put Talen’s knowledge in perspective and gave me a basic foundation of understanding.