Wicked Wolves, page 30
He means going to the wellspring, which is starting to seem less like a possibility and more like the only option. With an entire regiment of the human military and several vampire covens going right after me, there's no way to stop them.
"If he gets his hands on her, we won't be able to run and hide." Lucian flicks his eyes to me, and I try to breathe deeply so I don't have a panic attack. "This wellspring will crumble completely with no anchor inside it and an army of vampires sucking it dry. After that, all the others will follow."
The whole werewolf world is going to fall. All because of me. The only way out is to sacrifice my life, just like Fern did, without ever really getting to live it.
Adar argues, "If we run back to Mommy Wellspring, we're just as likely to die inside of it when this general takes over the pack. The only way out is to fight, damnit, and I'm not going to—"
He doesn't get to finish his sentence.
And I don't get to make a decision.
Before either of us can, a great explosion goes off, tearing up the flagstones under our feet and blowing through the walls of the pantry.
The world whites out, then blinks a dozen different colors, as I'm thrown off my feet and down into rubble.
With the feeling of magic in the air all around me, standing the hairs on my neck on end.
Chapter 81
Rina
Inside the whiteness, a silhouette appears.
Blinking around the burning light, I try to focus my eyes on it. My ears are ringing, my nose is clogged up with dust, and my head swims.
The silhouette swings its head in my direction.
I instinctively shiver, terrified beyond all reason.
And the world snaps back into place. The magic all around me dissipates. The pantry walls go back up. My body is lifted, the air stirs, and suddenly I'm standing next to Adar and Lucian again.
"—lie down and just let him take her. We have to face this threat, once and for all."
Blinking, I try to figure out what the hell just happened. "Did you see that? Or feel it?"
Adar looks at me like I'm crazy. Lucian frowns, reaching up to brush something from my cheek. "Is that plaster dust?"
Before I can answer, or figure if if I'm going mad, the pantry door swings open behind us. Thale fills the door frame, Everett just behind him. He reaches for me and snags my wrist.
"We have to go, now. The southern border has been breached. I've tried to shore up our defenses, but it just isn't going to work. Caterina—if you don't come with us into the wellspring, you won't survive."
"And after that?" Adar muscles up to Thale, tearing my arm from his grip. "What's the plan, we just stay in the wellspring forever? If it lets us back in, and Rina along with us."
"We can grow our strength," Thale insists. "If we focus on our magical energy—"
"It hasn't worked before, it won't work now." Adar's voice is full of fury. "We've planned for this, prepared for it. Now is the time to finally start fighting back."
"Not if it means losing Rina."
They muscle up against each other, and I slip out from between their bodies. Everett winds an arm around my waist and pulls me against him. His massive frame is comforting, but the worry in his eyes terrifies me.
"Is it true?" I ask him. "Have they breached our borders?"
There's an answering boom from outside the mansion. Running to the window, I look out and swallow a scream.
A cloud of smoke has gone up in the distance.
"They've brought some kind of human-witch hybrid weapon," Everett says in a low voice, while Adar and Thale continue their argument in heated whispers behind him. "It cloaks itself and gives off magical energy. I've never seen anything like it, but I can feel it with all my senses."
When I close my eyes, I can feel our pack's warriors through my pack bond. They're frightened and hurt, but rallying to fight. Vampires are streaming in through the breach in the borders. Dozens of them attack for every one warrior, and as brave as they are, they don't have the strength or numbers to hold them off for long.
I tear myself back to the present. There's a decision looming over me, one I don't want to make. Either way seems like a losing choice, and I have no idea what waits for me on the other side.
"I need to think." Striding away from the gods, I stand in front of the giant fireplace in the center of the mansion and stare into its cold, dark depths. "There has to be some way out of this, a way I'm just not seeing..."
Pinpricks go up my arms. I feel the sense of being watched. Glancing over, I find that Everett and Lucian are now in heated discussion, the Wind God motioning towards me. Meanwhile, Adar looks like he might stab Thale, who seems to be considering choking him. Their fangs are out, their eyes flashing, growls and snarls in the air.
It doesn't have to be like this. I jump, whirling around, but the voice has no source nearby. There is another way, if only you'd just look for it.
Shivering, I realize that someone is speaking to me through telepathy, like the pack bond but somehow louder and isolated. Who are you? What other way?
We don't have much time. He's coming for you. I see a flash across my eyelids, and the silhouette again, so near my stomach churns. I can only keep his violence at bay for so long.
You didn't answer my question.
Because I need you to see.
My vision whites out, and it's a struggle not to cry out in fear. Placing my hand on the mantlepiece, I shake my head and blink until the world clears around me.
Except it isn't this world. It's another world.
I'm standing on a hillside, one just like those that scatter across our mountains. A valley dips beneath me, but no green grass or verdant trees grow across it. Instead, mud churns and blood flows.
At my feet, werewolves are fighting.
Hundreds of them, stretched out on each side of the valley, clashing in confused jumbles of teeth and fur. They rip each other open, pressing fangs to throats and tearing flesh apart.
In the center of them all, a high-pitched scream starts.
I watch, full of horror, as a white female wolf is forced to shift back into her human form. A man grabs her as the wolves around her strip the clothes from her body. Throwing her down on her back in the blood-filled mud, he rips his pants open and forces her thighs apart.
I look away from what happens next, only for a strong hand to wind around my chin and force my vision back.
Chapter 82
Rina
"This is what they want for you," says the man behind me, his fingers digging into my flesh. "It's not the past, but the future. A future for your descendants and your people."
Bile strokes up the back of my throat, because suddenly I'm standing in the valley, not on the hill. This close, it's impossible to look away as the man violently rapes the woman.
No, as the alpha violently rapes the omega. He forces his knot inside her, groaning and shuddering. She cries out, then falls silent, her body going still beneath him as he penetrates her with it over and over again.
Eventually, a scent fills the air, stronger even than the blood all around us. It smells like sweet honey and lilac. The omega moans, closing her eyes, tears trickling down her mud and blood-spattered cheeks. She whines.
Stilling inside her, the man begins to purr. He bares his fangs and drags them across her neck. Grinding his hips down, he grabs her waist and holds her to him.
Around us, the battle begins to still. One of the wolves tilts his head back and howls in victory. I hear a victorious female voice cry out telepathically, Our alpha has her! The omega is ours!
Numb, I watch in horror as a grey wolf shifts into that woman, grabs the omega's face, and forces her lips to part. She pokes and prods at her until her fangs emerge from her canine teeth. Then she presses them into the alpha's neck until blood flows.
Afterwards, she pulls a cell phone out of her pocket and sends a text message.
"There will be more omegas after you," the man at my side says calmly. I try to look up into his face, but it eludes me, featureless and grey. "More alphas, too. The old world will be the new world again—unless, of course, you stop it."
I shudder, denying the imagery. "This is all just some kind of hallucination."
"Is it? If it is, you'll recognize a face in the crowd," the man says mildly. "Surely that witch girl in your coven taught you as much."
It disturbs me, that he knows about Ali. I want to get out of this vision, run to her, and warn her to protect herself. First, though, I scan through my memory of everything she's told me.
False visions will be formed from memories of people you know, for the most part. Faces will be familiar. Also, they'll lack one scent or another—smell, usually, or touch.
Seeing a scrap of cloth at my feet, I bend to pick it up, and shiver at the bloodstained wetness against my fingers. Then I scan the figures around me, looking for wolf fur patterns I know, or a face I recognize.
There's one thing that does seem familiar, I realize as the woman lets go of the omega's head and strides away. Forcing myself to look at the horror, I kneel down beside the two locked figures, the alpha purring and pressing his face to the omega, who stills and closes her eyes.
He has a tattoo on his wrist.
It's our pack's tattoo, but different.
Instead of the two simple mountains, it has two mountains, a little river, a wisp of a cloud, and going through it all, a single red slash.
I've never seen a pack symbol like it before. I wouldn't be able to imagine one if I tried.
Which means this is no made-up vision conjured from my subconscious.
It's a real vision of the future, at least one possible future, and it all could come to pass.
"I can change it," I say, to myself as much as to the stranger. "This doesn't have to happen."
"You're right. What you can't change is what's happening right now."
He waves his hand, and I'm back in the present again, floating over the land that Mountain Pack occupies. The stranger floats beside me, and below us, blood flows and bombs go off.
"I'm sad that it's come to this, but there was no other way forward," the stranger says, confirming what I've suspected, which is that he's most likely General Teller. "There will be lives lost. My only consolation is that it's for the greater good."
"Destroying the packs," I observe bitterly. "Killing all werewolves."
"Is that what you've been told?" His voice is mild. "No, the reason for this attack is to save your pack."
"It doesn't look like that to me."
"That's because you're looking with the wrong eyes." He waves his hand, and I'm back in the mansion again, facing the four gods while the stranger stands beside me. "You need to pay attention, because a choice is at your feet. One wrong move, and your people will be destroyed."
The gods don't seem to see or hear us. I glance over my shoulder, and feel a moment of vertigo to see that I'm still standing in front of the fireplace, seemingly entranced by its cold ashes.
Lucian says in a low voice, "We don't even know how long it'll take to find and kill the other three alphas. Morgan is one thing, but the Fury Pack moves all over, and by all accounts the Sky Pack is strong. If we move too quickly, we won't pull it off at all."
"If we don't move now, we'll lose our chance," Thale says, sounding exhausted. "This isn't the future I wanted for us or for our people, but if the three of you don't agree with my Plan B, this is our only chance. We have to kill the alphas and take their packs if we want to be strong enough to face the General. Starting with Morgan Hawthorne."
Shock goes through me. I barely hear Adar say, "You would want to start with this pack, since you'll be alpha of it. Let me guess—then you'll argue that you should be the first to claim Caterina. Maybe even the only one of us to claim her, since she may not be strong enough to hold four packs together, the way the old omegas could."
"Watch yourself," Everett says, and I sigh in relief. He's going to convince the others bloodshed is the wrong idea. "If you speak too loudly, she might hear us."
Chapter 83
Rina
Ifeel coldness spread through my body. Did he really just say that? Are they really doing this?
Killing the alphas. Taking over the packs. Starting with my pack.
"I can see the sense in taking over the packs now," Lucian says. "Especially if we have no choice but to claim her sooner than we planned. But there's no way we can do it all in time to fight the army and the vampire covens."
"Agreed. We'll have to find some other way in the meantime." Thale's voice starts to fade from my ears. "If we combine our magic together and pull on the control we have of the pack, we may be able to..."
The world goes white again, and it's just me standing in front of the stranger. This time, when I turn towards him, I can look up into his face.
It's a strange ripple of shock. He's a man in his mid-forties, with medium brown skin and dark brown hair. His eyes are kind, pitying almost, and an unhappy frown twists down his mouth.
"I didn't want it to come to this," he says, sounding genuinely contrite. "Of course, it must be a shock to you, discovering what your so-called 'gods' plan on doing to your packs. But you see now why I had to invade your people and take the wellspring from their control. They can't be trusted with its power—not when they're planning on betraying you all to gain even more power than they already have."
"I don't understand why they'd do this." I keep reviewing everything they've told me, everything they've done. "We were supposed to fix the pack so it was brought back together. They had me summon them so they could save us."
General Teller places a heavy hand on my shoulder and squeezes it in sympathy. "I'm sorry you had to find out this way."
"There must be some way... some way to convince them..." My voice trails off as I realize I'm talking about gods, or at least, extremely powerful, nearly immortal werewolves steeped in magic for centuries. "They can't do this."
"They can. Unless we change them." Placing his other hand on my shoulder, General Teller looks down into my eyes. "I can do it, Caterina. I have the magic and the knowledge. The US army has done similar experiments in the past, and they've perfected a technique. It'll be for their own good, in a way—and it's far better than the alternative."
"What are you talking about?"
"I can make them back into men," he says, motioning with his hand towards the blank space around us. "All you have to do is bring them to me, and I'll remove the... baser instincts that make them violent. No more knots, no more unnatural magic, no more desire for omegas.
"I've already done it to Eli—he found the whole thing distasteful to begin with. Now I can do it to them as well, and sever their connection to the wellspring, so they're simply normal men. Well, normal werewolves."
Normal men.
Normal werewolves.
Teller continues, "In a world without their powers, without their knots, they won't be violent. There will be no struggle over mating you, no violence between omegas and alphas, or alphas and betas. Just as it should be."
I turn away from him, towards the blank whiteness around us, but in its place are dozens of visions.
Alphas fighting each other. Fighting omegas. Hands on their necks and between their thighs. Tears and screams, violence and killing.
I don't want it. I have to prevent it.
"So, Caterina?" Teller turns my face back towards his, an urgent tone in his voice. "We only have a few more moments. I have to return to the battlefield soon. Tell me, what will you—"
Before he can finish, I'm thrown from the vision and back into my body by the fireplace.
An explosion rocks through the world, full of magic and violence, throwing me to the ground.
A silhouette moves through the whiteness, and this time I know who it is. General Teller may have found a way to neuter the old world alphas, but he only said that he did it to one of the brothers. The other one is still out there, fully intact.
And he only wants one thing: me.
"Fern." The voice is a low, vicious purr that claws at my skin. "Finally, finally, you're mine."
A scream starts in my belly, fills my chest, and rips out of my lungs.
It sounds just like the omega in my vision of the future.
Wolf Reborn will continue in Sinful Shifters! Preorder now to find out what happens next before anyone else.
And if you haven’t read Delilah’s story yet, turn the page for an excerpt from Rejected Exile. Wolf Ascendant is a finished four book series with five yummy mates and plenty of action, adventure, and steam!
If you’d like more paranormal omegaverse, check out Stray, out now!
Excerpt: Rejected Exile
Feeling sorry for myself, I put enough bottles of liquor into my cart to eat away half a paycheck. The bar cabinet in the dining room is empty, I tell myself. People will want to come by to have drinks and reminisce about the dead alpha. I'll need to have something on hand. Truthfully, I'm just aimlessly searching for something here that will make me forget what happened to me.
As I stray near a section in the back with strange, small bottles of clear liquor, a voice startles me. "Yuja is the best chamisul flavor. Some people like the plum, but I think it's too sweet."
Whirling around, I blink up into cool brown eyes that light up a face curved with a wicked smile. A tall man with honey brown skin stands in front of me, his fashionably-cut black hair shiny and sleek as it curves behind his ears. He has slightly delicate features and a strong jaw, his monolid eyes topped with thick black brows.
Plus he's absolutely fucking gorgeous. A stunning lovechild of Jesse Williams and Henry Golding. He looks like he should be wearing a suit and posing on the red carpet, not standing in a liquor store in the middle of Juniper. In fact, the seemingly casual outfit he's wearing, of dark-washed blue jeans and a black button-up, somehow screams style in its simplicity. I get the sense that he knows the difference between a single and double-breasted suit jacket.
