by CJ Cooke
Grey’s arms tightened around me, and I could tell he was fighting his nature to order me to do it. Tanner smirked happily, which wasn’t the reaction I was expecting, and River nodded thoughtfully. The rest of the pack seemed to be hanging out in the background warily, almost like mom and dad were fighting in front of them, and they weren’t quite sure what to do about it.
“And how would you feel about slipping him a magical roofie?” Tanner said casually.
“I’d tell you I’d be more likely to shove it up your ass,” I snarled at the suggestion. I couldn’t believe they were even considering such a thing. Even if I knew how to do it, there was no way I’d violate Maverick’s trust by doing that.
“Then he has to join the bond,” Grey told me. “Those are our only two options right now.”
“Really, the only options? You won’t even consider sitting down with him and talking to him like he’s a person?”
“We’d have no way to know if he was telling the truth, Calli,” River told me quietly.
“Are you willing to risk Jacob being taken by the Council because you don’t want to hurt his feelings?” Grey asked nastily.
“What has gotten into you?” I pulled out of his arms and stepped away from him. “You're not acting like the level-headed, kind man I know you to be.”
“No, Calli, I’m acting like an alpha that has a potential threat in the packhouse and three pups to protect,” he snapped.
“It doesn’t have to be all or nothing, Grey. You can get the answers you want without crushing him under your paws while you do it.”
“We can’t trust him,” he seethed back at me.
“And what do you think about this?” I asked, spinning to Tanner, who just raised his hands in defence.
“The pack is bigger than any one of us, Calli,” he told me softly, almost like he didn’t want to be taking Grey’s side, but he was doing it anyway. Of course he was. He was Grey’s beta, and he would always take his side.
Spinning to River, I looked at him in question. He didn’t need to say the words, though. It was written all over his face that he agreed with his brother.
“We can discuss this later. We need to bring Hunter into the bond now while we have the time to do it uninterrupted,” Grey said finally.
Without waiting to hear what they were going to say, I shifted and padded out of the room. I didn’t want to talk to any of them. Slamming my mental shields in place, I strode across the grass and sat next to the bush Jacob was rolling around inside. I was so fucking angry with them. How could they so easily dismiss what I was saying without giving me a second thought? They should know by now that I would never do anything that would put Jacob at risk. But I didn’t think we should sacrifice Maverick at the cost of that. They weren’t even willing to talk to him before they made a decision. They could hear him out first before they decided to just drug him and take his choices away. How would that be any different from what his father had done to him his whole life? He was right. This was not how a family worked.
I watched them go through the steps, bringing Hunter into our pack. This should be a happy time, a time to celebrate. Our pack was getting stronger, and Hunter and Cassia were good people. They deserved to have a place that would accept them. But I was too angry to celebrate. I didn’t want to be near my mates right now. I started to think I was being childish, but I didn’t trust myself to speak to them. All that would happen would be more arguing, and I didn’t have it in me to fight all three of them. I could feel it every time one of them tried to talk to me. The brush against the walls I’d put up to deny them.
I could see the pack getting ready to run, to celebrate together, but I turned away from them. I didn’t want to run with the pack right now. I opened my mind to Jacob and linked with his mind. He’d been so quiet up until now. He’d always been able to tell when I was upset, and he’d always wait for me to come to him. He knew me better than I knew myself sometimes.
“You’re sad,” his little voice said, flowing into my mind.
“Yes. Can you go inside and play with the others until dinner, spud. I need to go for a run to clear my head.” I’d never lie to Jacob. I would always take the time to try and explain to him what was happening, and I was just hoping he didn’t ask me about it right now.
Jacob shuffled out of his hiding place and gave my nose a lick. “Be careful,” he told me, and then he rushed across to Grey, who helped him shift.
He was a good kid, and he’d do as I’d asked, mainly because he’d want to be with Abby, but I’d take it for the win it was.
Without looking back, I strode quietly around the house, and as soon as the woods came into view, I took off. Lengthening my stride, I pushed myself to run. My wolf loved the freedom, but I could feel her worry that our mates weren’t beside us. She understood, though. So she picked up her speed, and we flew across the forest floor, the rush of clean air surrounding us as the mud squelched beneath our paws. I retreated into the back of her mind, relinquishing control to her. She’d keep us safe while I stewed in my sadness.
26
Maverick
I stood at the top of the stairs and listened to Calli standing up to the pack for me. It didn’t surprise me that they didn’t trust me. Why should they? I was a stranger coming into their pack, trying to claim their mate as my own. Of course, they were wary of sharing their secrets with me.
I was surprised Calli refused to tell them what I’d told her, though. She actually stood against an alpha in my defence. She wasn’t like I’d expected. She was kind, but I could see the fierceness underneath that would arise in defence of those she cared about. I was just surprised I seemed to already have made it into that category.
I had no idea why I’d told her those things about me. I never admitted that crap to anyone. It was weak, and I was supposed to be strong. But talking to her had felt good. Admitting to some of those things seemed to shed some of the weight sitting on my shoulders.
I wasn’t even angry when I heard them talking about trying to drug me to tell them the truth. I’d probably do the same if I were in their position. It was better than what my father would have considered. He’d have strapped me to a chair and tortured me for hours until he was satisfied I would be too terrified to make any move against him. I’d seen him do it too many times before to know it was a messy, if not thorough, technique of ensuring compliance.
My wolf brushed against his cage again, and this time I didn’t lash out at him. It was almost like he was trying to remind me he was there. Turning away from the pack, I went back to my room and laid down on the bed. What the fuck was I doing here? My father sent me to infiltrate the pack and return with Calli. There was no way I’d do that now? Even my own plans of taking the pack for myself were starting to feel a bit shaky. Because Calli deserved better than that, but where that left me, I had no idea.
Did I want to be part of this pack? Calli called them a family, they sure fought like one, but there was an undercurrent of love about it. Like they fought so hard because they wanted the best for each other, not because they were in some kind of competition. It was nothing like the life I’d been used to. Even if I did want to be part of this pack, I was probably too broken to become one of them. My father had spent so much time moulding me into the image he wanted. It was probably too late for me now.
I felt my wolf brush against the back of my mind again, and it terrified me just how comforting I found it. Rolling over, I curled up in a ball, trying to ignore him, but it was so much harder now that I’d acknowledged he was there. It was almost like he’d moved a step closer to the front of my mind but not in a threatening way, not in a way that felt like he was trying to take over. It was more like his presence was just larger than before, almost like he was more whole and with him came a sense of kinship, a rightness I’d never felt. That was more terrifying than anything else, though. Accepting him, linking to him, felt like giving over the sense of control, which was the only thing that had gotten me throug
h living in that house. I didn’t know if I could do it—but I wasn’t in that house anymore.
I didn’t remember falling asleep, but given that I was now running through the forest, there was no other explanation for it.
It wasn’t even disconcerting to find myself suddenly in a different place. Running through the trees, surrounded by the smells and sounds of the forest, was where I was supposed to be. The wet dirt squelched between my toes as I dug in my claws to dart between the trees, the wind in my fur… what the fuck!
Coming to a sudden stop, I spun around. I had no idea why I was doing it. Maybe I was looking for a tail? But then I’d officially be just a dog chasing his tail. I could feel my nostrils flaring as my breathing quickened in panic.
I was a wolf. I was a fucking wolf!
“Always wolf,” the voice echoed through my mind, freezing me on the spot.
“No, I am a man!” I immediately responded, just like I’d been trained to.
I could hear his canine huffs of laughter in my mind, and it surprisingly didn’t freak me out as much as I’d have thought it would. Instead, my lips curled into a smile at the sound, and I found myself sitting my ass down on the damp ground.
This was so surreal, it was obviously a dream, but it felt like so much more. “You’re really here, aren’t you?”
“Have always been here,” he told me softly.
My head dropped in shame at the way he tried to comfort me even after the way I’d treated him for all these years. I could feel the strength of the body I was in now, and my mind flashed back to all of those times when I’d be scared and hurting, and I’d felt the brush of his presence across the back of my mind. He had always been there. No matter how many times I’d pushed him away, he stayed.
“I don’t deserve you,” I admitted. Why would he stay with me after everything?
Some days I’d sat all alone in that big house and wished I could melt away into nothing, like a morning fog once the sun shone down on it. What was the point in surviving through that hell when the next was just going to be the same? It felt like a loop of an endless nightmare, and there were so many days when I just wanted it to be over.
“Father is poison. Wolf will always stay,” he reassured me.
Standing back on my four paws, I took a deep breath of the cold forest air. I wasn’t in that house anymore. I had my wolf, and maybe it was time to see what that actually meant—what it meant to be a shifter.
The wolfy grin that pulled across my lips wasn’t mine, it was his. It was time for both of us to be free. It was time to run. And we did. There was nothing in this dream world to stand against us, and tonight would be the first night he showed me the joy that came with being a wolf.
27
Calli
I didn’t know how long I’d lingered in the back of my wolf’s mind while she ran through the forest, but a tingle of awareness down my spine drew me back to the surface. Coming to an abrupt halt, my ears swivelled, trying to gauge what it was that had pulled me back into the present. That tingling sensation rushed down my spine again, and I immediately realised what it was—someone was testing the wards.
I took off at a run toward the general direction of where the magic was sending me. As I got closer, I slowed down, lowering myself closer to the ground as I crept closer to where the ward barrier laid. It took me a moment for my mind to catch up with what my eyes were seeing, but when it did, terror had me rooted to the spot.
A black shadow stood at the invisible line where the wards lay. The air around it seemed to shimmer with malice as it reached out and ran a hand across the surface of the ward. I felt the sensation of it rush across me, my fur standing up on end, almost like the shadow had reached out to stroke me. It was vaguely person-shaped, and you could almost see through the shadows that seemed to create it. Something about it looked wrong through. The shadows dripped from its outstretched arm, collecting on the ground before moving back, flowing across their feet and back into its being.
I didn’t know what to do. This had to be either a reaper or a shadow demon, but for some reason, it either couldn’t cross the wards, or it didn’t want to, for now at least. It almost looked like it was testing them as it reached out again and ran its hand across the surface.
I shouldn’t have come out here alone. I shouldn’t have run so far from the pack without having someone with me. We were facing too many threats for me to run off just because my feelings were hurt. For all we knew, the witches were just waiting to get one of us alone.
I was considering reaching out with my mind to see if anyone else was still in wolf form when I heard a shuffle of leaves close to my hiding place. I froze in terror. What I’d felt up until now was nothing. My heart was beating so hard it felt like it was going to break through my chest. Part of me was too scared to look behind me at where the sound had come from, but the thought of cowering here waiting for whatever it was to pounce on me was even worse. Counting down the seconds till I had my soul ripped out of me, I huffed out a breath and quickly looked over my shoulders, my muscles bunched in anticipation of running for my life. When I saw Aidan in his wolf form creeping closer to me, I nearly peed in happiness—it sounds strange, but I think it was the overwhelming relief more than anything.
I felt him brush against my mind. Realising I still had my walls firmly in place, I dropped them so we could talk.
“What the actual fuck is that?” he gasped into my mind.
“I’m going to guess shadow demon, but I don’t know,” I said, turning back to the terrifying creature in question.
“What’s it doing?”
“It seems to be testing the wards.” If I were human, I’d be frowning right now because that somehow didn’t feel right, but I had no idea what else it could be doing.
Aidan crept closer until he was lying on his belly beside me, and we both stayed there watching the creature. If it passed through the wards, I had no idea what we were going to do. There was no way we could fight it, we didn’t even know what it was, and I was pretty sure it would walk away from any fight without a scratch and two souls up. Our only hope was that it would get bored and go back to wherever it came from.
“What are you doing out here anyway?” I asked Aidan, my eyes fixed on the potential threat in front of us.
“I saw you leaving, and I followed you.” I could hear the cringe in his voice even if I couldn’t see it while he was in his wolf form. “I was worried about you,” he added quietly.
I hoped his protectiveness was a pack thing because I didn’t have time for complications like that in my life. I didn’t get those kinds of vibes from Aidan, though. He didn’t seem interested. It was more like he was concerned.
The creature started to pace along the boundary of the wards, every so often reaching out to brush against them. I could see its frustrations rising as the shadows seemed to almost grow denser, the pits in its face which would have held its eyes almost started to glow, and then it swung around and locked eyes with me—or rather it would have had there been eyes in its head. I felt my whole body lock up. It was almost like a falling sensation as I was sucked into its gaze. All awareness of my surroundings fell away, and all that remained was the creature in front of me.
An icy feeling started to flow through my body, and it was like I found myself in a void—a dark, black pit. There was no way to tell what lingered in the darkness, but my fur stood on end as I felt the sensation of eyes watching me from all around.
My heart started to pound as terror seized hold of me. This wasn’t a place I was supposed to be. I couldn’t even remember how I’d gotten here in the first place. The last thing I remembered was running through the forest and then finding the… a sudden sharp pain in my hind leg had me yelping and spinning to see what had attacked me. The darkness suddenly receded, and I was back in the woods again.
Aidan was staring at me. His eyes were wild with panic.
“What just happened?” Aidan panted. “You wouldn’t respond to me. Y
ou were frozen to the spot staring at that…”
We looked up, but the shadow demon was gone. I was certain that was what it was now.
“I don’t know. I, I, I don’t know,” I panicked. “Do you think it's gone? What should we do?”
“Let's wait for a couple of minutes and see if anything else happens, then we run back to the pack,” he suggested. “I can’t reach any of them.”
I was too ashamed to admit that I hadn’t even tried, so I just nodded. The next few minutes were excruciating. It was like waiting for an executioner to come and collect you from your cell, except this one was going to rip out your soul, which sounded far more painful.
“Are you going to be able to run on that?” Aidan asked quietly. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t think of any other way to pull you out of it.”
I looked at where he was staring and saw the bite wound on my hind leg. That was what had drawn me out of the trance or whatever it was I had found myself in. I’d never been so pleased to find myself injured. If it wasn’t for Aidan’s quick thinking, I didn’t know what would’ve happened to me in that darkness otherwise.
“It’s fine. I can barely even feel it,” I reassured him. “Thank you, Aidan. I don’t know how I know it, but I’m pretty sure you saved me by doing that.”
When the minutes had ticked by, I heard Aidan’s sigh of relief just as loudly as my own.
“I guess we head back then.”
I didn’t want to do this right now. I wanted to go somewhere quiet, on my own and sulk for longer. I didn’t want to have to go back to the pack and admit to my mates that my foolish behaviour had led to me putting not only myself but potentially Aidan in danger as well.
“Come on, Calli. It’s not going to be as bad as you think,” Aidan said softly as he turned towards the pack and looked back to make sure I was following him.