Wicked Wolves, page 2
Instantly, pain slashes across my middle. I scream and lash out.
Chapter 3
Rina
Voices echo in my head—masculine, alarmed, and angry.
Colors come to me. Bright green, deep blue, searing white, and burning red. I moan, jerking away from Delilah's hand.
Barely seconds have passed. But when I open my eyes to look into her face, she's pale and trembling.
"Roarke, I think..." Croaking, she gets up to her feet.
And sways.
Her mate is instantly by her side. He grabs her and sweeps her into his arms before she can fall down. The walls of the tiny canvas tent bow out around him, as if they're incapable of holding all his strength and love.
Meanwhile, I can't help but notice that no one is paying attention to me—no one except Ali, that is, who still squeezes tightly to my hand.
Leaning towards her, I ask quietly, "Does no one care that I screamed in pain?"
"What are you talking about?" She frowns. "You didn't move or say a word until Delilah took her hand away."
That's not what it felt like. But Roarke and my mother are too busy staring at each other in mutual fury and frustration for me to ask them for their recollection of the three second event.
"I knew this was a mistake." The visiting wolf narrows his summer-blue eyes at my mother, and I feel a sudden wash of cold fear, sensing his alpha nature as much as anything. "I swear to god, if she doesn't recover from this, I'll lay the blame squarely at your feet."
Delilah stirs enough to reach up and grab his shirt collar, tugging on it insistently. "I'm fine, babe. Calm down—it was just a fainting spell."
"It seems like more than that."
She struggles out of his arms, and he reluctantly lets her down. Despite looking exhausted and drained, she manages to stand up and even plaster an energetic smile on her face. "See? I'm alright."
"Still. I'm taking you home." He glares around at the rest of us in the tent, as if we have any say in the matter or have objections to make. "You need to reconnect to the land and refill your magic reservoir. Clearly being so far from the Glass Pack is affecting you."
Talon raises her chin and stares him down. "And my daughter? What about her?"
Delilah answers. "We can leave Bastian behind—one of my mates who's good at magic. He'll help with the blood rot and check Caterina for any signs of infection. I'll come back when I can to help, and give your coven my advice."
She looks over at me, deep sympathy in her eyes. "I'm sorry for what you're going through. I hope that it all sorts itself out in the end. Whatever magic this is, I've never seen its like before. Hopefully your coven is able to figure out what I'm missing."
Ali squeezes my hand even tighter, looking at me in worry. That doesn't seem like a good sign. I've never known my best friend to be worried or out of her depths before.
Delilah says her goodbyes and steps out of the tent, dragging her mate with her.
Well. One of her mates. I've never met the woman before, but we all know the tale of the Glass Pack. Two alphas, mated to each other, one female with multiple mates.
My curiosity piques at the thought. One benefit of being the First Alpha's mate is that it's all pure ceremony. His mate gets to do as she pleases, and do who she pleases. The last First Mate dated many humans and lone wolves without ever settling down. I've always looked forward to that part of my life, knowing that I never had to be miserable with one mate until death.
Although.
Apparently that's not going to be my life anymore.
Now that I'm alone with my mother and my best friend, I look back and forth between them, an anxious question clawing at my throat.
I don't think I want the answer.
But I saw it in my fevered dreams. I felt it when Delilah put her hand on my forehead and drew on my thread bonds.
Whatever is going on, one thing is clear.
I'm not the First Alpha's mate.
I don't want it to be true, though. I want to ask how to fix it and get a straightforward answer. There must be an explanation—something ancient and magical. A reason why the ceremony didn't work.
Clearing my throat, I look to Ali for the answer. She always knows things that I don't.
"Was I really rejected at the Mating Ceremony?" For some reason she can't, or won't, look into my eyes. "By the First Alpha. Even though I was destined to be his mate."
My mother fiercely says, "He'll take you back. He has to. Once that stick in the mud Morgan gets it together and performs the ceremony again, they'll all see—"
"He rejected you completely." Ali is swift in delivering the deadly blow. "We all saw him in the end. The way he tore into you... I'm sorry, Rina. I don't know why, but that's the truth."
The First Alpha rejected me at my Mating Ceremony.
After years of being promised to him, I believed he would be mine. I saw the silver thread that led from me towards the mountains and knew he was my mate.
Even though the thread sometimes glimmered with shades of red, green, blue, and white.
Even though my dreams of him changed night to night, and so did the way he looked and acted.
It can't be.
But it is.
Delilah didn't lie.
I was rejected.
Worse, when I gingerly sit up, I discover the wound from it across my stomach. Blood soaked bandages poke out from under my shirt, so I lift it up to reveal that they stretch from my hip to my breastbone.
I reach for the edges of the bandages.
"Catty, don't—"
My mother starts forward, and Ali protests, but they're both too late and too slow. I bat their hands away, determined to see the truth of what happened to me.
In a flurry of movement, I unbandage the wound and stare down at it.
Four slashes like claw marks.
The First Alpha has doomed me.
And, it seems, my pack.
Chapter 4
Rina
"This is all Morgan's fault," Mom insists, settling down next to my cot with a flask in her right hand, the fingers of her left hand drumming on her knee. "He's too weak and insecure. Always listening to those witches—no offense, Ali. If he were more of a wolf, the First Alpha would've come for you, as expected. But he doesn't want to give his blessing to our pack with such a weak leader at the head."
That's not what Mom would've said several years ago, back when Morgan was appointed our alpha after our previous alpha died in a forest fire.
Of course, back then Talon was still trying to woo Morgan and become his mate. His real offense was that he mated with another woman instead of her. This, to my mom, is a grave offense beyond all measure.
Despite the fact that she's never taken her own mate or settled down with the numerous men who've wooed her. Maybe Morgan saw the writing on the wall and knew he was likely to be stood up at his Mating Ceremony if he chose my mom as his intended. After all, she's done it before to men on their second or third mate, usually after insisting they propose to her.
More than once, I've asked her for any clue as to my father's identity. I've begged a dozen times. I've even gone to other pack members to ask them for clues. But if she ever told a soul who he is, they've taken the secret to their grave—and my mother is probably the one who buried them.
The only person I know it isn't is Grayson Snowmelt, who she rejected when she was sixteen.
In any wolf pack, my mom is an odd one. But she's especially odd in the Mountain Pack. To be in her forties and completely unmated after spurring her intended is akin to being the blackest of black sheep.
Despite this, she's irate years later that Morgan didn't take her. Though she won't admit as much.
"He's a foolish leader," she declares, raising the flask to her lips to take a long swig of one of her strong bitter teas—she likes the looks the flask gets her even though she doesn't drink. "I still can't believe he hasn't denounced that heretic. What kind of advice is his mate giving him, anyway?"
"It was the coven that told him not to do it a second time," Ali says firmly. "They thought it was too dangerous to the pack bonds. He was just taking their advice."
My mother silently fumes, and for a moment I'm thankful that we're not going back to the same argument yet again.
Then she heaves a big sigh, making it clear that we are going there.
"I love you, Allegra," she says, calling my best friend by her formal middle name in a sugary sweet tone, "but you know how I feel about the coven witches. It's all well and good to share territory with them; that sort of thing is nearly unavoidable. But we should be more like other packs. They all broke off from their covens a long time ago."
They did—and it seems to have worked for them, though as the hybrid weaving witch wolf Delilah Glass recently made clear, there are benefits to magic in packs as well.
We do things differently here in the Appalachian mountains. Werewolves and humans alike do business with witches. The covens don't hide like they do in other places—we even have a yearly magic market where they sell their goods.
Compared to the rest of the country, where werewolf territories are hotly contested and land is rarely shared, that's saying something. Most packs are too scared of getting raided by the feds if they toe the line too close to scaring the humans. They rely on their treaties with the government and avoid getting noticed.
In comparison, Mountain Pack has always been good at keeping the feds away. The humans around here are their own breed, and the less human intervention, the better. They'd never turn us into the government for messing around with magic more than we're legally "supposed" to.
Which is good for me, as someone who's best friend is a witch. Tight coven ties are helpful for the health of the pack and our land—it keeps vampires away and makes the Mating Circle strong.
Though clearly not strong enough.
"We wouldn't be able to do the ceremony in the first place without the coven, Mom," I point out to her, gingerly sitting up and stretching. "If they say not to do it again, I'm sure they have good reason. It'd probably be dangerous or... something. I'm not even sure why we'd try."
Ali and my mom exchange a look that I don't like.
I frown at both of them, sensing that I'm being left out of something. "What is it?"
Ali leans forward and gently smoothes down the corner of my freshly wrapped bandage, which keeps flipping up. "After you were rejected, something... happened."
"It poisoned all the pack bonds," Mom says, going for bluntness. "Not just yours, but all of them. Every single one, even the alpha's—that's why I think he's weak and shouldn't listen to the witches, no offense."
"None taken." Ali grimly meets my shocked expression. "No one is quite sure what happened, Rina, but... they're pretty sure something about the ceremony going sideways messed things up.
"A few pack members think that we should try again with another potential mate for the First Alpha, though Laurel and the other witches are refusing to do the incantations to make the sacrifice possible."
To say that I'm stunned is an understatement. "Poisoned? As in they can't feel each other anymore?"
"Worse. Some of them actually attacked each other. A few don't recognize the mates in their bed... it's like some kind of group psychosis. Makes me glad I never mated anyone, though even my pack bonds are feeling frayed at the edges these days."
Mom sounds actually frightened and uncertain for the first time in her life, and I smell a bitter scent in the air as she talks that makes me wonder if it is alcohol in in her flask.
Mates turning on each other. Pack warriors unable to feel their bonds. Psychosis and abandonment.
All because I wasn't good enough for the First Alpha.
Chapter 5
Rina
Ihave to do something to make it right.
Throwing off my blankets, I grit my teeth against the pain as I place my feet on the ground. Ali tries to stop me, but I brush her hand aside impatiently.
"I've got to go out there and talk to them," I insist, pushing up to my feet and staring her down—or up as the case may be, since like most people she has inches on me. "They need to know that I'll make this right. I don't care what the coven says, I'll do the ceremony again even if it kills me."
Talon turns pale and scrambles to her feet. "You can't do that, Caterina. Laurel may be a self-righteous hypocrite most of the time—again, sorry Allegra—but she knows what she's talking about when it comes to one thing: you can't face the First Alpha again. He nearly killed you, and it took every healing witch to bring you back from the brink. I can't watch you go through that again."
I pause, shocked at the raw vulnerability in my mother's voice.
All my life, she's been as much a friend as a parent. We were always so close—too close at times, others said. For everything she taught me, I swear half the time she expected me to be her support as much as she was mine.
My troubles making friends and her difficulties settling down with a mate. The dreams I had of the First Alpha. Her impossibly black thumb and inability to cook.
My whole life, we've supported each other. Even as an adult, I still cook food for her in batches so she doesn't turn the oven on and risk burning her whole house down. Moving into my own place didn't change the fact that I have a reminder set on my phone to take the trash out at her house.
But she always kept her walls up and her pride intact. She bitched to me, but never cried in front of me. Complained about every job she ever had, and paid every bill we got, no matter what it took.
I've never seen her vulnerable.
So the tears in her eyes right now are enough to floor me.
"Was it really that bad?" My voice shakes as my mind fills in helpful memories of screaming and pain. "Did I really almost..."
"Die?" Ali grabs my elbow and squeezes. "Yes, you did."
Taking a deep breath, I let it out shakily. Then do it again, and again, until I feel calm.
Finally, I raise my chin and face my mother and my best friend, feeling a decision stir inside me.
"I know that you're both worried about me. I get that. But I'll have to face the pack eventually anyway. Better to do it now than put it off and look like a coward forever."
Ali sighs.
Then lets go of my elbow.
Talon looks up into my eyes—and grunts. With another swig of her flask, which I now suspect has some kind of hard tea in it, she steps away from the tent flap to give me space to leave.
"Just don't let it get to you, what they've been saying." My mom reaches out to push my chin up with her fingers. "Shoulders back, head high. Like the Birch woman you are."
There are a lot of Birch women in our pack—and in half the North American wolf packs. It's not exactly an uncommon name. I understand what my mom is saying, though. She raised me as a single, unmated woman, and taught me to have pride in my diminutive wolf form even when the other kids shunned me.
Becoming the First Alpha's chosen mate was going to show the whole pack that they were wrong about me.
My stomach churns as I leave the tent with the realization that maybe they were right.
Delilah is standing in the middle of one of our meeting clearings at the foot of the Mating Circle, her mate at her side. She's standing on top of a set of stone risers that have been carved into the rocky ground. Behind her, rising up towards the mountains, the path to the Mating Circle winds around and around, a clearing at the top revealing the rising sun shining between its tall, proud columns.
Heads turn as I make my way out of the tent, my steps slow and deliberate. The tent canvas rustles as my mother and my best friend follow behind me, one on each side, both supporting me in their own ways.
Every single member of my pack looks at me with hollow-eyed resentment.
Fear gathers in my throat and rises up like a knot through my chest. Ali leans forward to whisper in my ear, "We can go back inside."
"No. I want to do this."
"I was able to water down the poison running through all of your bonds," Delilah says, her clear voice rising above the silent anger around her. "But the fix will only hold for about a month. In the meantime, I'm going to look for a more permanent solution—but I'm not knowledgable about sacrificial magic like your witches are. The answer may lie in their research."
Her eyes skim the wary and anxious Mountain Pack members around her. I spot Morgan in the middle of them, sending out as much soothing alpha calm as he can, but it can only do so much.
The pack bond threads that hang from him are thin, weak, and laconic. They barely stir at his touch. Even when he takes his mate's hand and pulls her into his embrace, I barely see anything.
It's as if the bonds themselves are dying.
And I'm at the center of it all.
"I'll return in two weeks." Delilah catches my eyes for a moment, and I feel a balmy reassurance at her calm gaze, even though I barely know her. "Hopefully when I do, we'll all have more answers."
"Don't bother to come back. The solution here is obvious."
Constance Moon, one of the more outspoken members of our sister coven, steps forward to stare Delilah down.
Willowy and tall, Constance has dark ebony skin, long plaited hair, and a thick, knotty wood staff that she holds firmly in her left hand. That, combined with her gauzy white dress, sandaled feet, and wizened expression, serves to make her an intimidating woman.
Though not as intimidating as Laurel Sky, the formidable witch who leads the coven. Stepping up beside Constance, Laurel doesn't have to hold anything in her hands or wear specific clothing to give the impression that she's a powerful witch.
It's all in the confident way she holds herself, and the aura glowing around her, visible to supernatural eyes and sensitive humans, that speaks to her unnatural power.
"We've spoken amongst ourselves and told Morgan what our decision is," Laurel announces, her voice carried by an odd wind that she casts with a subtle twitch of her fingers. "Caterina Birch is obviously at the center of this disaster, and should be cast out of the pack. We're suggesting that Alpha Morgan break her bonds—and that she leave with you today, to become a lone wolf or join the Glass Pack if you'd prefer. Either way, we don't want her."
