Wolf Deceived (Ensnared by the Pack Book 1), page 1
WOLF DECEIVED
ENSNARED BY THE PACK: BOOK 1
TESSA COLE
CONTENTS
Wolf Deceived
1. Audrey
2. Audrey
3. Audrey
4. Audrey
5. Audrey
6. Audrey
7. Knox
8. Knox
9. Cyrus
10. Cyrus
11. Bishop
12. Bishop
13. Knox
14. Knox
15. Audrey
16. Audrey
17. Audrey
18. Audrey
19. Audrey
20. Audrey
21. Bishop
22. Audrey
23. Audrey
24. Audrey
25. Audrey
26. Audrey
27. Audrey
28. Audrey
29. Audrey
30. Cyrus
31. Audrey
32. Bishop
33. Audrey
Other Books By Tessa Cole
Wolf Deceived
by Tessa Cole
Copyright © 2022 Tessa Cole
ISBN: 978-1-990587-03-0
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written consent, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are entirely the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual locals, events, or organizations is coincidental.
WOLF DECEIVED
TESSA COLE
Betrayed by my fated mate and bound to a stranger.
I thought finding my fated mate would change my life. I’m a wolf shifter who can’t shift, the lowest member of my pack, forced into servitude, and when I hear the fated mating call I think things are finally going to change.
Then my mate rejects me and serves me up as a sacrifice to a monster.
Bloody and broken, I run for my life, straight into the arms of three gorgeous brothers…
...and into an accidental mate-bond with the surliest of the lot.
Knox is powerful and angry and wants nothing to do with a weakling like me or our bond. But it’s too strong and while he can reject me — and does — he can’t break it. Despite that, I’m still drawn to him… except I’m also attracted to his brothers. Which makes no sense. The mate-bond should leave no room for desire for anyone but Knox. But I can’t deny that all three brothers call to me in ways I’ve never felt before. And they seem to be warming up to me, too, welcoming me into the pack, giving me shelter, and maybe more…
Except that’s just a fantasy. I couldn’t trust my fated mate and I can’t trust the brothers. All I can do is trust myself and if I finally want my freedom, I have to break an unbreakable bond.
Wolf Deceived is the first book in the Ensnared by the Pack series, an action-packed paranormal romance featuring possessive wolf shifters and a wounded heroine discovering her strength who doesn’t have to choose.
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AUDREY
Tonight, my wolf would awaken. It would. Fifth time was the charm, right?
I glanced up, checking the time. The full moon was almost perfectly framed by the large hole in the thick canopy of branches and leaves surrounding the pack’s sacred grove, indicating it was only a few minutes until midnight and then— Then! Then I’d become a real shifter.
I nervously ran my hands down the front of my simple white dress. I’d bought the dress on my eighteenth birthday, eager to become an adult in my pack, ready to meet the animal half of my soul even though I knew I’d have to wait ten months before the summer solstice to join the others who’d turned eighteen that year for our first shift.
Except that solstice had come and gone, and my wolf still hadn’t woken.
A part of me wished our pack was like the other packs, born with our animal natures fully awake, shifting around six or seven years old whenever we wanted and not needing to wait until our eighteenth birthday. But then I would have had sixteen or seventeen years of being the laughingstock of my pack and not just five.
Instead, centuries ago, the then pack alpha paid a witch to halt our transformation until we were eighteen. It was a way to protect ourselves from being discovered by the humans and it had made us a significant pack in North America. We’d been able to build our own village out in the open instead of hiding away from the humans and gain influence and prosperity in a world that would have hunted us down if they’d known the truth.
Then a little over twenty-five years ago, Michael had tried to exterminate every human on the planet — as well as all of us hidden supernatural beings — and Gabriel made a deal with every super in hiding to join the fight.
The deal had turned the tide of the war, and the need to hide, to avoid children losing control and shifting in front of a human, no longer mattered. The world knew about shifters and vampires and demons and angels. We were the heroes that had helped save humanity, and now we were the pack that couldn’t shift until we were adults.
And I was the girl who couldn’t shift at all.
But this year would be different. I could feel it.
This was my year.
The full moon was a good sign. Those who awakened under the full moon were said to be stronger, more connected with their wolves.
This year my wolf would awaken and I’d become an adult and get the hell out of this town. Not that I technically wasn’t an adult at twenty-two — at least according to the humans — but as far as pack law was concerned, I was still a child.
On top of that, once my wolf wakened, I wouldn’t look like a target to every supernatural being I came across the moment I left pack land, since while my essence told every super who saw me that I was a shifter, it also told them I was so weak I was practically human.
Merrick, our pack’s alpha, wouldn’t be able to use any of that as an excuse to keep me here any longer. Although I had a bad feeling he’d find some other excuse. No money, no family, no something I’d never been able to have in the first place. I was free labor, and according to him I owed him for taking me in when my father killed himself thirteen years ago.
He always told me he could have let someone else take me, but no, my father had been a valued member of the pack even after he’d come back from the war broken and haunted by the things he’d experienced, and Merrick had been obligated to take care of family.
That, of course, had been a lie, but I’d been too young to realize the truth until it was too late. Not that I’d have been able to do anything about it.
No one defied the alpha, especially someone who was still considered a child.
Joan and Shea, with their perfectly coifed blond locks, stepped into the sacred clearing with their younger siblings who’d turned eighteen a few months ago, and a chill rushed through me as my pulse picked up.
I inched back toward the deeper shadows of the grove where the pale moonlight didn’t reach and tried to make myself look smaller, even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to hide from their enhanced night vision unless I was in complete shadow. But it was the best I could do. I had to be here for the ceremony so I couldn’t just run away.
Hopefully they wouldn’t notice me and everything would be fine. They were here for their siblings, not me. But their attention instantly jumped to me as if they’d been looking for me and it didn’t matter if I made myself smaller or not.
Joan sneered, catching me trying to will myself invisible, and my pulse pounded faster. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes when I couldn’t just flee, I managed to hide in the shadows and not be noticed, but I should have known they’d search me out. I was guaranteed to be here. I was tonight’s amusement. And now I looked like prey. Prey that Joan had been toying with for years.
She’d had her eye on Sterling, Merrick’s son and my sort of — definitely unwanted — brother since we were little. She’d been furious when I’d moved into his house, her tormenting reaching new heights that had often sent me to the nurse’s office until she’d realized I’d actually become Sterling’s slave. Then they’d joined forces, honing their skills to make my accidents look more like accidents and learning that waiting for an attack elicited as big or bigger a reaction than actually being attacked.
God, I should have just run when I’d started fantasizing about it years ago.
I certainly should have done it after the first summer solstice when I didn’t shift.
I should have stolen what I could have easily carried so I could pawn it in the next town over and taken the bus as far away from here as possible, like to Union City. That was on the other side of the country and had a whole vibrant supernatural quarter. Surely the wolf pack there would take me in. I’d become damn good at cooking and cleaning, so I at least had a few useful skills.
Except it didn’t matter where I went, Merrick would find me. As soon as it came out that I was a shifter who couldn’t shift he’d know where I was because there wasn’t anyone else out there like me. And yeah, I’d spent the last five years back in my old high school’s library at their one remaining clunky student computer, searching the internet for anything that might tell me why I couldn’t shift.
&n
Except I had proof that wasn’t the reason I couldn’t shift. There wasn’t such a thing as a half shifter. Children of human-shifter pairings were either shifters with the ability to shift and the essence of a shifter, or human with the essence of a human. There was no in between like me.
Joan barked a shrill laugh, and her younger sister and Shae’s younger brother joined in.
“Stupid must run in the family,” Joan cackled, her voice rising and drawing the attention of the two dozen others in the grove. Not that she needed to speak up. Shifters had excellent senses — smell, sight, and hearing — once their animal-soul had awakened. “You’re never going to shift.”
“I think we should change the ritual this year,” Sterling purred as he slunk out of the shadows and drew up close behind me, making me jump. His ferocious power rolled over me, threatening to dominate me and force me to my knees in submission just by being near me, and I realized he’d fully suppressed his power to sneak up and surprise me. “I think we should make the mutt run when she doesn’t shift.”
AUDREY
A shudder swept through me as I fought to keep standing and not kneel in front of Sterling like his power demanded. They’d made that threat before and followed through with an incident that had left me limping for weeks. I’d thought once they’d become adults the bullying would stop, that they’d get on with their lives, but I’d been wrong. I was too much fun and with their animal natures fully heightened, they used me to hone their new hunting abilities.
Sterling nicked a claw against the back of my neck with a sharp sting and sauntered over to Joan as I slapped my hand over the wound.
The warm blood oozing from the cut coated my palm. It wasn’t deep, but it wasn’t a papercut, either. Swell.
It would heal when I shifted… if I shifted—
No. I would shift tonight. But until then, I’d draw even more unwanted attention.
He cocked a pale eyebrow and smirked, the look doing nothing to diminish his striking appearance. He was a devil in an angel’s skin, blond, beautiful, with a naturally sculpted physique, and a cruel speck of black nothingness for a heart. He knew full well that he’d made it so that if I didn’t shift, the newly awakened wolves, with their predatory senses suddenly on overdrive from being repressed, might see me as prey and attack instead of going on the run with the alpha, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Joan sniffed sharply and sneered, her lips curling back revealing her extended canines. “She always smells like prey.”
Shae inched closer to me, her eyes darkening as her wolf’s nature rose closer to the surface, her hunger clear in her expression. Even her brother and Joan’s sister, on the verge of awakening their wolf but not yet wolves, drew closer, their noses working, picking up the scent of my blood.
My pulse roared and I fought the urge to hug myself.
Don’t look like prey. Don’t. Or at least not any more than you already do. Stay. Calm.
But I wouldn’t put it past them to double back after the shift took over the newest adults of the pack and that thought terrified me.
Merrick and our packs’ beta would lead their first run, but those who’d already shifted didn’t have to join in and didn’t have to stay with the group like the newly made adults did. And if I didn’t shift, I was a target just waiting to be attacked.
“If you kill her, who will clean your house?” Royce asked.
A hint of his power rolled over me as he stepped out of the shadows on the other side of the circle and sauntered toward the group, but then he pulled it back completely like he always did when he was around Sterling, like a good beta should. His eyes were just as dark as the others, his wolf close to taking over, but his expression remained flat, not hungry, and I was almost relieved to see him.
Almost, because he’d never attacked me or put me down. Of course, he’d also never publicly gone against Sterling to stop him. As far as everyone was concerned, he was on team Sterling. Like almost everyone else. He had, however, since that first year when I hadn’t shifted, been making little comments to protect me and subtly distracting Sterling and Joan so I could slip away before things got out of hand. And while he’d been doing it for four years, I still had no idea what to make of it.
“Of course, when her wolf wakes tonight, you’ll need to find a new housecleaner regardless. She’ll be an adult and able to move out of your house. You know,” Royce added with a pointed look at Sterling, “that thing kids do when they become adults.”
“There’s no point in moving out of my father’s house. It’ll be mine soon,” Sterling huffed, jumping right to Royce’s jab about still living at home. “And she’d still be an unmated female with ties to the alpha. Dad will want her to stay until he can find her a suitable match.”
My thoughts lurched at that. “He what?”
Had Sterling just implied that Merrick was going to arrange who my mate was?
Everyone’s attention snapped to me. The force of their ferocious natures pressed against my senses, and I froze.
Crap. One wrong move and their wolves would take over and they’d attack. Or rather they’d let their wolves take over.
“Your mate would have influence over the alpha. You are my sister,” Sterling said even though he’d made a point over the years to remind me that I wasn’t his sister. “Every male in the pack knows that.”
But that was just another excuse. I didn’t have any power and everyone in the pack knew it. The only way I could get power was if my mate was powerful. Of course, that was if I stayed. If I left… yeah, the odds of me having power in a different pack were slim, too, but that was better than being here.
“Dad probably won’t even wait for your wolf,” Sterling said. “You’re old enough. You need a good match. One that looks good for our pack. Since by pack law you’re still a child, it’ll be up to him to find you a suitable mate.”
He flashed me a wicked smile, wrapped an arm around Joan’s waist, and led her, Shae, and their younger siblings away.
My heart slammed inside me, no doubt audible to everyone around me. Would Merrick let me leave even if my wolf woke this evening?
I’d be an adult. He’d have to.
Now my wolf had to show up. It wasn’t the dark ages and our pack didn’t have arranged matings, but I wouldn’t put it past Merrick to use me as political leverage. He was pissed that his wife had left him for a human and pissed that our pack no longer had the same political influence over the other North American packs that it used to have.
And he was really pissed that he hadn’t been asked to be the North American shifter representative in the Joined Parliament where supers governed pretty much the whole supernatural world. There was no way he’d sacrifice his precious heir with an arranged mating to improve his position among the other packs, which left me as the sacrificial offering to his political goals.
AUDREY
As if thinking about him made him appear, Merrick strode into the sacred grove. My attention, along with everyone else’s, jumped to him. Even with his ferocious power only partially released, it still crackled against my senses and thickened the air. It didn’t press against me, willing me to my knees like Sterling’s had, but that was only because he wasn’t trying to exert his will on us.
He reached the center of the grove and the group closed around him, ready to begin the ritual. Everyone about to meet the wolf-half of their soul was dressed in white, while everyone else was stripping out of their clothes since the nature of our magic that allowed us to shift completely destroyed whatever we wore.
For those of us about to be adults — please, oh please let me become an adult tonight — the destruction of our white clothing symbolized our transformation from child to adult. For everyone else, it was better on the bank account to strip first instead of constantly having to buy new clothing.
