Storm (Rise of the Pride, Book 12)

by Theresa Hissong

  Copyright © 2020 Theresa Hissong

  Disclaimer:

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The names of people, places, things, songs, and bands are all created from the author's mind and are only used for entertainment. Any mention of a song or band, in the book has been given proper credit for use.

  This book is for adults, 18 and older only, due to content.

  Cover Design:

  Gray Publishing Services

  Editing by:

  Heidi Ryan

  Amour the Line Editing

  Cover Model:

  Nathaniel Bell

  Cover Photographer:

  Randy Sewell

  RLS Model Images Photography

  Dedication:

  To all of you.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  From the Author

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Two weeks ago…

  I don’t know who I am anymore.

  Amaya slumped to the ground as her body convulsed, changing from the monster she’d become against her will. A surge of pain made it hard to breathe. Her vision blurred for a millisecond before everything around her became clear. Panting, afraid to show weakness, she rolled to her side as a huge, unseen man loomed over her naked body. And she somehow knew it was a man by the scent that filled the air.

  Inside, she trembled with fear from the memories of her past. She’d been in that same fetal position many times in her earlier life, but this…this was different. Yet, somewhat still the same.

  “You will do as you’re ordered,” he began. The darkness of the room was only penetrated by a beam of light emanating from behind his head. She couldn’t make out his features, but his voice was scary enough. “Take my blood so you can live.”

  “No!” she screamed. The pain of her transformation had been enough.

  Two men appeared from behind the blinding light. They were huge, dark, and menacing. Their eyes were glowing a hazy yellow. She gasped and tried to back away when they opened their mouths, revealing sharp fangs. “Who are you?”

  “I am your god now,” the invisible one snickered, whispering something to the two men. One second, she was on the floor naked and panting, and the next, she was wrapped in the men’s arms as the older one she assumed was the leader slammed his bleeding wrist against her lips.

  The stench of his coppery blood burned her nose and she gagged as it hit her tongue. “Drink of me.”

  She kicked and fought, but they were much stronger. Stronger than she could ever be. Just like her entire existence…a narcissistic man treating her like nothing more than dirt on the floor. She had no other choice than to swallow the blood again. Wasn’t once enough?

  In that moment, she wished she had the power her friend, Landon, had once he had been changed into a panther. The family he’d gained was strong. They were fighters, and they were good. Nothing like those wolves…those monsters.

  So much blood.

  Remembering her visit to the pride’s land brought forth a yearning, a need, to find them for help. They would come for her; she just knew it! The cameras at the clinic should’ve caught her abduction. Where were they? Why hadn’t they found her yet?

  A tingling inside her mind made the animal she’d become cower in fear. A magical presence locked onto her mind, wiping away her previous thoughts. “From this moment on, you are to fight against the panthers. They are keeping us from our riches. Go out into the night and take from anyone you can find with money. I need more females, too. Bring them to me once you’ve fed them your blood.”

  She wanted to fight the order, but the animal that now shared her mind growled low in its throat at his words. She couldn’t deny him. The animal ruled her body now, and the man…the leader, was her puppet master.

  “Yes, Master,” she replied as a lone tear fell from the corner of her eye a second before she felt the animal inside her take over.

  Chapter One

  Two weeks.

  That was all it had taken for Storm to lose his mind over the abduction of Amaya Bradley, the nurse who worked at Landon’s veterinary practice.

  With a hard jerk to the Gadaí’s collar, Storm held a printed photo of the female in front of the wolf they’d just captured. He shook the image of that photo from his mind, or at least tried. It’d been burned into his memory since he’d found it online. “Have you seen this female?”

  “Fuck you,” the crazed male spat. His eyes were glowing with the need to shift, but the collar around his neck prevented him from turning into his wolf form. “I ain’t seen that bitch.”

  “Get him in the van,” Storm growled, tossing the male toward Taze, his partner, in a fit of disgust. He could taste the lie from the male’s scent. The vinegary hint to the air burned his nose.

  He’d been scouring the streets of Memphis for the past two weeks. While he’d run himself into the ground hunting for the men who’d taken her, Storm had only been home long enough to eat a meal and shower. Sleep only came in two to three-hour bursts before he was looking for her again.

  She’d never even said a word to him before she had been kidnapped, but he would forever remember her scent from the morning he’d seen her at Landon and Noah’s home, sitting at their kitchen table. His panther immediately knew she was to be his mate.

  But now she was gone.

  “I’ll run these ones to the airport and meet you back here in thirty minutes,” Taze announced, placing a hand on Storm’s shoulder. Storm cut his eyes to the ground when his partner’s face fell. “Man, we are going to find her. I promise.”

  “Go on,” Storm ordered as he shook off the touch, not wanting to hear anyone else promise her return. They’d been repeating the same words for two weeks, and he was losing faith. For all he knew, she was dead. Or a wolf already. He didn’t know which one was worse. “Get out of here.”

  The van pulled away from the curb as he took a moment to breathe. With every inhale, he and his panther tasted the air for any sign of her scent. A pain bloomed in the center of his chest every time he ended up empty handed. His beast wasn’t doing much better.

  Thunder rumbled off in the distance as he took off on foot. He had enough time to scour the seedier parts of downtown Memphis while Taze was gone. Noah and Evie were checking out a lead on a Khat house not far from his location, and he’d accepted a promise from Evie that if they found Amaya, he’d be the first one to know. As it was, his phone had remained silent for the past fourteen days.

  They’d found so many new female rogues over the past week, Kraven had needed an extra transport vehicle and Taze to assist in getting them to the airport. Thankfully, Gabriel Jackson, the alpha in Colorado, was ready and willing to help them get out from under the spell the wolf alpha had on them.

  Murdock had been missing since Amaya was taken. He didn’t know if she was a wolf now or not. It was only a matter of time before they turned her, and he prayed to the gods that Murdock gave her his blood before he disappeared. If not…well, he couldn’t think of that.

  With a growl, he took another deep breath, scenting the air. She wasn’t there. He kicked at the rotten remains of garbage dumped in the alleyway, cover
ing the scent of the oncoming storm. He closed his eyes and sent up a silent prayer to give him the strength to find her. The beautiful female was his, and he would do everything he could to protect her once she was rescued.

  “Hello, big guy,” a female voice rang out as he turned the corner. His eyes narrowed as his panther tensed. She was dressed casually, but her relaxed posture against the wall told him a different story the moment he saw the hazy yellow specks in her eyes. “Looking for some company?”

  “Take a deep breath, wolf, and ask me that again,” he warned. This female was as tiny as Evie, but she was most likely untrained. It went against his nature to harm the opposite sex, but he’d been working with the FBI to round up the rogues long enough that he wasn’t going to think twice about slapping a spiked collar around her throat. Plus, he was in no mood to play her little games tonight.

  “What are you?” she sneered, her head tilting to the side. She inhaled again and narrowed her eyes. “Fucking cat.”

  “I’m here to offer you a way out,” he began, already reaching into his pocket to obtain a new collar. “I can stop the order your alpha gave you to harm the humans.”

  “Ha,” she huffed, balling her fists at her sides. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

  “You can come with me the easy way or the hard way,” he warned, tightening his grip around the warm leather in his hand.

  “How about no?” she growled, her eyes glowing with the presence of her wolf. One second, she was leaning against the building…the next, she launched herself at him with canines bared.

  Storm dropped low to the ground, catching the female by the collar of her shirt. Spinning her around as carefully as possible, he slapped the collar around her throat as he pinned her to the ground with his knee between her shoulder blades. He didn’t want to touch her exposed skin, but he did. Thankfully, she didn’t cry out in pain. “Don’t shift or this collar will kill you.”

  “Have you seen this female?” he asked, producing the worn photo from his breast pocket instead of the syringe of sedative. He shook it in front of her face when she refused to answer, gritting her teeth against the need to shift. “Tell me!”

  “Yeah,” she spat as her eyes glowed. The scent of her wolf grew stronger with the shift of her eyes. “I’ve seen her. She’s his newest member.”

  Fuck…FUCK! Storm cursed inside his head. That motherfucker had changed her. “Where is she?”

  He quickly stuffed the picture away, replacing it with the medicine. He uncapped the needle and stuck her in the arm.

  “I don’t know,” the female said as she calmed, her eyes returning to the golden color that told him she was a wolf. She batted her eyes as the medicine worked its way into her bloodstream. “I only saw her right after her change.”

  “Is she okay?” he pressed. “I need to know if she’s okay.”

  “Of course, she’s not okay,” the female growled as she twisted her head to look up at him, fighting the need to sleep. “We are fucking animals!” The anguish in her face told him all he needed to know. They needed to find Murdock soon and end it all.

  “We will send you somewhere to help you,” he promised, focusing on the present. He would get this woman picked up and taken to the airport like the others. “When you get to Colorado, a new alpha will be there to undo what the wolf did to brainwash you.”

  “No!” she screamed, her eyes glazing over. The orders Murdock had given her changed the female in an instant. They were not to be taken, and they had been told to fight to the death if they were ever caught. “He will find us. He knows how to do things!”

  “Relax,” he sighed, reaching into his pocket for his phone. He sent his location to Taze and Kraven, hoping one of them was close by. “It’ll all be over soon.”

  “It’ll never be over, cat,” she growled. “He has an army coming for you.”

  Amaya tried to shake off the command, but the animal she’d become growled. It pushed her to do as the man commanded, and no matter how hard she tried to fight it, her body, and the animal inside, betrayed her thoughts. Night after night, they’d sent her out to find females to turn into werewolves. Tears filled her vision as two of the male shifters pulled her alongside them. She didn’t want to hurt anyone, and giving humans her tainted blood caused them the same pain she’d gone through.

  Every moment she had since waking up as a wolf shifter, Amaya thought of Landon and his new family. They were the good ones…the ones who were out fighting this new war. She’d heard about the wolves by accident, but she never thought they’d come to the clinic to capture someone related to the pride.

  Now, they had her. They’d changed her into a monster, and the men fed on her fear. It was bad enough she was already scared to be out in public because of the physical scars of the things that had been done to her years ago. Now, she was doomed to another life so much like her old one.

  “Bitch, you will do as our leader tells us,” the bigger of the two warned. They didn’t have names. Well, at least, they hadn’t introduce themselves. They were monsters like her, and Amaya knew monsters didn’t have names.

  She gritted her teeth when the second one backhanded her across the face. It hurt, but it was nothing compared to what it could’ve been. No, that raging burn across her face was minor in comparison.

  “Find another female and give her your blood.” He didn’t need to remind her. The voice in her head kept repeating the order so often, she thought she was going insane. “We need numbers. Those fucking cats keep capturing our soldiers, and we need more to fight against them.”

  It wasn’t that she could fight the order, either. If she strayed from the task, her monster, the animal, would redirect her…controlling her moves. The thought of hurting another person, giving them blood to go through the three days of the same sheer agony she’d endured, brought tears to her eyes. She quickly schooled her features, looking toward the sky so she could stop herself from crying again.

  Looking weak wasn’t an option.

  She’d been through it before with her ex-husband. He’d gotten off on her tears, causing more and more pain until she broke. The scars all over her body were proof of that. The only thing good about being changed into a wolf was the ability to heal a little faster than she had when she was human. The pain from the wolf man’s slap had already vanished. If she’d been a monster when she was married to Sam, she could’ve protected herself and healed…but that was an empty wish.

  Hell, she didn’t wish she was anything other than dead, at this point. How much trauma could a person go through in one lifetime? God knew she’d had enough of it.

  “We are going downtown, and you better not make a fucking scene,” the second male ordered. “You will lure a female away from the crowds and bring her to the alley.”

  “Yes,” she said automatically. The words were not her own. “I will do as instructed.”

  What bit of human traits she had left waged a war in her new, shared mind. Would she eventually become like the men? A monster with no sense of love or kindness? A robot?

  With a deep breath, Amaya broke free of the men when they stopped at the alley to wait for her return. They’d force her to change another female tonight. She’d turned one the night before, but cried while she fed her the blood from her wrist.

  There had to be a way out. She knew the panthers were working with the FBI to stop the wolves, and she prayed they’d find her soon. She wasn’t able to run away on her own.

  Again, the order from the leader kept her from finding Landon’s new family to save her. There was no way she would be able to get away from the wolves. The monster inside her was being controlled, and it was much stronger than her. She was helpless.

  Right after she’d woken up as a wolf, she’d spent time thinking about the panthers, and she knew they had to have seen the video footage from the animal clinic by then. They had to know she’d been taken. Did they not care because she wasn’t one of them?

  Don’t think that way, Amaya.
Landon will send them to find you.

  White flashes lit up the western sky, signaling the oncoming storm. She prayed the crowds would disperse enough so she wouldn’t find a female to take back to the alley. As it was, she knew if she came back empty handed, they would hurt her. It would be easier to take their physical abuse to save the life of another woman. If she could fight the animal inside her, maybe…maybe she could spare one life tonight.

  The odds were not in her favor as she turned down the infamous Beale Street. Patrons spilled out of the bars, stumbling around with their friends with no cares of the weather. None of the women were alone, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t find at least one to take back.

  A tingling inside her mind pushed her to walk faster, searching the faces of the women who passed. The order was set, and she was helpless against it as much as she tried to turn back for the alley where they waited. Young…weak…alone. The push from the monster wiped away any thought of going back empty handed.

  Her eyes narrowed on a beautiful blonde woman who leaned against the wall outside of a bar, checking her watch. Was she waiting for her husband? Boyfriend? Maybe her female friends were running late.

  Amaya stopped to retie her shoe, keeping an eye on the female for a moment longer. She had to find a way to get her alone, but that wasn’t going to be a problem. Women stuck together when it came down to one thing…

  “I need help,” Amaya spoke in a rush as she approached the woman, biting her tongue against the words spilling from her mouth. It didn’t work to stop her from speaking. “I think I’m being followed, and I just want to get to my car.”

  “Oh, no,” the female gasped, looking around the area as if she could spot some creepy stalker. “Should I call the cops?”

  “No, no!” Amaya argued, waving her hand over the woman’s cell phone. “I’m parked at the end of the road, and I just want to go home. Would you please walk with me? I’m scared.”