Wicked Wolves, page 5
It digs deeper in the more I try to dig it out. I can feel her pain, whether because of memory or because of the pack bonds.
My mom has always claimed I'm too sensitive to the bonds. That no werewolf worth her salt could feel the pain of an injured warrior from yards away, and I must be making it up in my head.
Maybe she was right. Surely, if I really was sensitive to the pack bonds, I wouldn't have inadvertently poisoned them just by existing.
My heart still hurts at the memory of my fresh rejection. It doesn't make sense—I did everything the First Alpha possibly could have wanted me to do. He chose me, and I went to him with an open heart, prepared to sacrifice everything.
The coven witches opened the Mating Circle to his spirit.
Our alpha spoke our ancient words.
My loved ones watched from the sideline, holding white flowers in their fingers, willing to let me go.
His last mate gave her blessing, and I walked to the center of the circle...
I shudder at the memory of the pain. It echoes through my pack bonds, sliding across the thin and frayed threads. Somehow my pain seems to collide with the pain of the woman who miscarried, and for a moment, I swear I can feel her.
Almost as if she was my mate.
Almost as if the whole pack was.
But no—that's impossible. I shake the thought away, letting go of the pain as best as I can. The woman's angry face fades from my mind.
I close my eyes and concentrate on my breathing. In for two seconds, out for two seconds. In for three, out for three. In for four...
Some moments later I'm drawn down into sleep, the sound of Bastian's deep chest breaths and my mother's grumbling sighs lulling me into unconsciousness.
In my dreams, I'm in the tent again, but this time I'm alone. The cots are nowhere to be found—I'm standing, though moments before I was laying down.
Pushing my hands beneath my shirt, I feel around for the bandages and find them gone.
The claw marks are still there, though they've faded to a softened, light scar that tickles as my fingers pass over it.
If this is my mind telling me that my rejection will be with me for the rest of my life, I don't appreciate it. I'm a werewolf—scars are supposed to be few and far between for me. We normally heal well enough, at least when we're not sick, poisoned, or attacked by another werewolf.
I suppose the First Alpha's claw marks count as the latter, though I desperately wish they didn't. I want nothing more than to forget the look of his angry, brutal face.
Feeling restless, I leave the tent. This dream is somehow more real and more visceral than most of my dreams. Though the canvas flap of the tent is strange and fuzzy in my mind as I touch it, I can smell the earth beneath my feet and feel the wind on my face as I pace across the open ground of the clearing.
Here, at the foot of the Mating Circle, Morgan and Laurel guided me through the steps of my Mating Ceremony. They were excited, proud, and supportive.
I could see in Laurel's face that she was looking forward to having a new First Mate. The coven's connection to our magic weakens as the mate grows older, and she'd never experienced that fresh magic in her time, since our First Mate was now in her sixties.
How quickly that eagerness turned to disappointment.
I brush it off and let it go, telling myself that I'll figure out a way to fix all this. She'll be proud of me when the First Alpha accepts me as his mate. All I have to do is figure out what went wrong with the ceremony and try it again.
Walking up the steps of the Mating Circle, I feel a shiver crawl up my spine. There's a strange scent in the air, a feeling like an omen in my blood.
This doesn't feel like a dream.
I get up to the top of the steps and walk into the center of the Mating Circle.
I'm not alone.
Chapter 13
Rina
They're here again. The men I saw, have seen, have felt.
I recognize the tall, pale blond man first. He's unbuttoned the top two buttons of his white collared shirt, revealing a stretch of pale skin that covers thick, dense muscles.
Standing beside him is the man with brown skin, a shaved head, and a thick black beard who was standing beside my mother's car. Now that I'm getting a better look at him, I see that he has pale grey eyes, striking in their contrast to his skin.
Beside him is a man with suntanned skin, long brown hair, and a clean shaved face. He has sea-foam green eyes that are full of quiet intelligence. Looking at him, I can feel the beating of my heart slow and steady, and a thrumming in the soles of my feet.
At the end of the line, standing stiff-backed and separately from the rest, is the man who I first saw when I woke up. There's a restless energy to him; he keeps rocking up to the balls of his feet and clenching his fingers like he can't relax. With brown skin and eyes, silky red hair, and a striking amount of muscles, he looks like a cannonball ready to explode.
They all wear dark slacks and loose button-up shirts like the blond man. Each of them has a distinct scent, carried to me on the wind: clean linen, cinnamon and spice, sea salt, caramel and fresh moss are all mixed in together. Something about their scents sparks something in me, and I feel a strange urge to whine, high-pitched and desperate.
I never felt this way when I was in the Mating Circle for my ceremony.
But I did when I was asleep and saw visions of the First Alpha.
Visions, I'm now realizing, that more closely resembled the three of these men.
"Do you know who we are?" The bearded man steps up, a gentle expression on his face. "Have you guessed by now?"
I want to go to him, to wrap myself up in his thickly muscled arms and rest my head against his chest.
So I step back instead, afraid of what I feel, afraid that these strange urges are why I was rejected.
"I've never met you before in my life," I tell him, though the sentence feels like a lie on my tongue. "This is a dream. I'm dreaming. If I just wake up—"
The red-haired man snarls. "Don't you dare try."
I flinch, and the bearded man scolds him. "This is all new for her, Adar. Don't get aggressive for no reason."
"We don't have time for this," he argues back. "If the Second gets out, we won't be able to—"
"Hush." The man with sea-foam green eyes speaks quietly, but his voice seems to thrum with power and authority. "Tell her who we are, Thale. Don't let Adar's impatience get to you."
The bearded man smiles a little, raises his brows and turns to me. Sensing my fear, he holds up his hands, as if he's trying to gentle a horse.
Now that he's closer, I can untangle his scent from the rest. Moss, wet earth, and growing things. It reminds me of the smell on my hands after a morning spent gardening, full of pride and in desperate need of a shower.
I wonder if I would need a shower after climbing his tall, muscular body.
Blinking, I shake the thought away. That sort of randy behavior is for Talon Birch, my mother, not me. Caterina Birch has a purpose, after all—and a mate to save herself for, no matter what.
"I understand this must be confusing," the bearded man says, seemingly unaware of my lustful thoughts, even though he's a figment of my imagination. "Have you heard of the wolf gods, though? The keepers of the four elements, who helped usher in the world you know now?"
I frown at him. "Those are myths. Fairy tales for werewolf children who want to know why magic exists. The coven says to just accept that it does—there's no reason to think it must have an origin, any more than anything else has an origin."
The red-haired man snorts disdainfully. "They would say something like that, those uptight bitches."
Yet again, green eyes rebukes him. "Hush and let Thale finish."
"Thank you, Everett." The bearded man crooks a smile at me. "Well, as you can imagine, the four of us would be pretty shocked to discover that the elemental wolf gods don't exist... given that we are the elemental wolf gods."
I stare at him.
And reconsider everything.
The elemental wolf gods existed before the First Alpha was even born. According to our legends, they helped tame the four elements of magic: earth, wind, sea, and fire. Together with the ancient witches, they buried those powers under the earth, deep inside mountains and below the ocean's floor.
The elements needed protection from harm and evil, so they chose to become the keepers of each element. Using sacrificial magic, they gave up their corporeal forms and let the witches join them to each element. That way, if evil creatures like the vampires ever tried to harness the full power of magic for themselves, they'd meet four wolf warriors to stop them.
Of course, Laurel always said it was nonsense. She taught us that magic was just that—an untamed natural resource. If vampires had less access to it, that was only because they weren't fully alive, like us. The fact that so many wellsprings were deep in the earth and ocean, or surrounded by fire and stormy winds, was just a coincidence.
"You're real?"
The blond man speaks up again, shooting a grin my way as he quips, "Real enough to ride, if you'd like an adventure."
I find myself blushing, while the other three sigh and snort in various amounts. Tucking my short dark hair behind my ears, I try to ignore the heat in my cheeks.
"There's something you should know, Caterina." The gentle voice of the bearded man draws my attention back to him. "Your pack and coven is wrong about what happened to you. You were never rejected by the First Alpha—he never even appeared at your ceremony.
"The spirit that your witches summoned instead was an imposter, and if he isn't stopped, he'll destroy all the wolf packs he can by breaking every single one of their bonds. Starting with yours."
Chapter 14
Thale
Ican tell that she's struggling with all this. Why wouldn't she? We haven't appeared to her people, or any of the other packs, for centuries.
The truth is, we've grown complacent.
And more than a little bored.
"That's not possible." Caterina shakes her head, her high, delicate cheekbones reddened with emotion. "My coven has summoned the First Alpha at least a dozen times. They know what they're doing. There's no way they made a mistake."
"It wasn't a mistake, girlie." Adar growls, his manners more than a little rusty after so long spent as little more than a raging wildfire. "Your coven did the spell right, I'll give them that much credit. Your First Alpha wasn't there to be summoned—that's why his traitorous brother came through instead."
Caterina blinks at him, then looks back at me for reassurance. I feel a stoking of protectiveness inside me, and have to tamp down on the urge to purr.
She doesn't even know what she is, little wolf, precious thing. They've kept that from her—or maybe they never figured it out.
It's a damned shame. All that potential, so much delicate power, and they were just going to sacrifice her to the spirit of a dead man.
She should be held by living arms, not given to a spirit that can't keep her warm. I may not be a corporeal, hot-blooded man anymore, but I know that much.
And if I get the chance to step back into the land of the living again, showing this sweet, delicate little wolf what truly lives beneath her surface will be my first goal.
"I know it's hard to believe, but what we're saying is true," I tell her, daring to take a step towards her. "We didn't want to come to you this way, but it's the only way to help you understand what's going on."
Cautiously, I take another step towards her. This time, she doesn't step back, and I get a hint of her perfume in the air: hickory smoke and salt spray, like the wilderness itself.
I bet she'd taste like wildfire on my tongue, her sweet slick pulsing against my lips, her whines like music to my ears.
Just the thought makes my cock want to sit up straight. Too bad I'm nothing but an incorporeal spirit right now, incapable of doing anything but dreaming of rutting while my body lays dormant beneath the surface of the earth.
"So you're saying that I am the First Alpha's mate?" Caterina's voice rises in excitement, and I realize with a pang that I've gone about this all wrong. "That means it's not too late! I can still mate with him."
"That asshole?" Adar sneers. "You don't want to mate with him, precious. You're far too good for him."
I don't reprimand Adar this time, and neither does Everett. Caterina may not be ready to hear it, but he's right. The First Alpha ushered in a new era of peace for wolf packs, but all of that was on accident—and his greediness cost all of us the greatest gift there ever was.
"I want to be his mate. Otherwise I'm mateless, and my pack dies. Please." Caterina wrings her hands and looks at me with those big beautiful eyes of hers. "There has to be another way."
"I hope that there is," I tell her, because I'm not sure how to break every bit of information to her. "But you need to know about the threat you're up against. The spirit that rejected you, the Second Alpha, is the little-remembered brother and betrayer of the First Alpha. His soul broke out of its prison and shoved the First Alpha out."
Lucian quips, "Basically, he pulled a fast one."
"Exactly. He stepped in to be summoned in his brother's place. When he attacked you, he was attempting to be reborn on Earth—and we can't let that happen for many reasons."
Caterina studies me, and I hope she's looking for, and finding, the trust she needs to have in me. "How is that possible? How is any of that possible?"
Everett is the one who explains, "Your pack is located at the center of powerful forces. A wellspring of magic capable of summoning the dead is beneath your Mating Circle."
"A wellspring." She draws in a breath. "I know about them. They're all over the place. Nothing special about that."
"This one is different," I tell her. "It's a powerful center to all the connections that the packs have. It's also where we normally sleep. But the threat of the alphas woke us, and the attack on you drew us back towards Earth."
"You were drawn to... me?" She points towards herself, eyes wide. "I'm nothing special."
She's the most special thing there is or could be, and also a far larger threat than she knows. Because if the wolves end, the wellsprings don't have healthy land to draw on, and we'll die.
That means no more magic. No more fire, earth, water, or air elements to combine. No more keeping the seas steady or helping the earth grow life. An end to bearing the flame and coaxing the wind.
Caterina shakes her head. "I'm just a regular girl who was meant to be the First Alpha's mate. Nothing special... certain not special enough to summon gods."
I don't bother to tell her that we aren't gods. We're just ordinary werewolves, bestowed with responsibilities that have given us power and strength, as well as near immortality.
Let her see us as gods. There's no easy way to explain what we really are: once-living werewolves, now soaked in the ether for so long that we're inseparable from it, capable of casting magic without spells or potions, stewards who watch over power itself and make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands.
There are ancient witches, as well as werewolf and even vampire elders who do the same, but we're the only pure elemental creatures left.
And the Mountain Pack wellspring is where we sleep, because it's the most powerful of them all, the origin well on this continent for all the magical power in North America.
Now, if the bonds remain poisoned, the blood rot spreads. The packs will die or lose their powers and bonds, the wellspring will be opened, and the Second Alpha will return.
Once he does, we won't be able to do anything to stop him. He carries with him several truths that will devastate the wolves—as well as powers he's received from being steeped in the ether for so long that he may even be more powerful than the four of us combined.
It enrages me that he's trying to escape, just like it enrages me that he left his mark on Caterina. But I hold my rage inside, not wanting her to see it and feel frightened.
"The truth is, Caterina, we need your help."
I hold my hands out palm up in a beseeching motion.
"You're more special than you know, and quite possibly the only one alive who can help us in this battle. If you don't, all werewolves, and all magic could very well die off this continent—permanently."
Chapter 15
Rina
This is a lot to take in, but for some reason I believe it.
It's not just the warm, trusting look in the god's eyes, or how safe and protected I feel when I stand near him.
Though that certainly doesn't help me summon my much-needed skepticism.
I believe what the gods are telling me for an entirely sensible reason. There's always been something different about our Mating Circle. Even the coven witches know it.
We can't let it fall, or let the packs die out. It would devastate so many. Not only would our people lose our control forever, but the vampires would take over, and even the humans who hate our kind would be vamp food in the end.
"What can we do?" I ask the four of them, though the tall, bearded man catches my attention the most. "Tell me, and I'll bring it back to my people. While you're at it, tell me your names too. I need to understand what I'm getting into if I'm going to get them to believe me."
The bearded man smiles, his eyes shining with mirth, and I feel a strange, deep need to whimper with desire and press my body against him.
"You can call me Thale," he says, running a broad, calloused hand across his shaved head. "I'm known mostly as the god of the earth, though I consider myself a steward of nature more than anything."
I think about the vines reaching up to pull the ankles of the woman who blamed me for her miscarriage, and wonder if that was him.
Before I can ask, the blond man who stood in the middle of the road steps up and clears his throat.
"My name is Lucian—it's not just what you can call me, but who I am. God of the wind at your beck and call, north, south, east, or west."
