Pack (Wolves of Winter Creek Book 2), page 1
Copyright © 2023 by Sarah Spade
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover by JoY Design Studio
Fallon and Lucas Illustration by Skadior Art
CONTENTS
Foreword
Prologue
1. Answers
2. Let’s go
3. Blood ward
4. Naked
5. Back to normal
6. Nothing
7. Dinner
8. Eleanor’s visit
9. It’s Fate
10. Mine
11. Jolie
12. Marie returns
13. Fair fight
14. Grand-mère
15. Mon Chiot
16. Connection
17. Together
Epilogue
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FOREWORD
Thanks for checking out Pack!
This is the second of three books that feature Fallon Witt as the POV character. An unsuspecting human woman navigating her way through the secretive world of supes, she arrived in the hidden supernatural town of Winter Creek for a supposed week-long vacation with her estranged grandmother, only to learn the truth: Marie Bordeaux is the head of a witch coven, and she had her own reasons to inviting Fallon to Winter Creek.
Of course, by the end of the first book, Fallon learns that witches aren’t the only supes ruling the small town. A pack of wolf shifters have named themselves the protectors, standing up to the witch coven—and saving Fallon when her grandmother tried to sacrifice her to the beast in the woods.
This book picks up right after the cliffhanger ending of Prey. When we last left Fallon, she was falling off of the rope bridge leading out of town, crashing beneath it the raging river below it. She survives, of course, but that’s the inciting action that will lead to the second installment in Fallon’s story.
Enjoy!
xoxo,
Sarah
PROLOGUE
If anyone ever asked me how I thought I would die, I don’t know if I ever would’ve picked this as an option.
I mean, passing away at ninety, going in my sleep… I would’ve probably picked that. Hitting my head on the ground because I got dizzy after seeing someone’s blood and fainted? That would’ve been a very Fallon-way to die.
But drowning? I wouldn’t have had that in my top ten.
I haven’t given up yet. I would d still prefer to get out of this terrible situation in one piece, no dying required.
God knows that drowning in the dark would be a terrible way to leave this world, but with the Winter Creek raging beneath me, the water slamming ominously into boulders, the rickety bridge swaying under my weight as I try to escape my fate… my panicked brain suddenly supplies even worse ones.
Being eaten by a feral wolf shifter with a twisted jaw, overgrown fangs, and Lucas’s eyes?
Being captured by a male witch who stood there as my grandmother spilled my blood, leaving me for the beast of Winter Creek, hoping I’d survive because then he could “have” me?
Falling to my death, the boulders below breaking me into a hundred different shards of Fallon, destroyed before the river could swallow me whole?
As I stumble forward, desperate to reach the train platform on the other side of the bridge, any and all of those terrible outcomes could be my fate—and all because I thought it was a brilliant idea to take my two-week vacation to visit a grandmother I never knew in a small town I never heard of.
The rope bridge sways. In the dark, I tighten my grip around the nearest knot. The fibers from the rope burn my palm. I can’t let go, inching the top of my borrowed sandal from one wooden flat beneath me to the next.
My breath catches as I miss, my big toe slipping through the gap. I gasp, the soft sound disappearing in the roar of the river below. The space between isn’t big enough that I’ll fall, but my queasy stomach drops the first time I lose my balance.
It’s the new moon. Without any light shining down on me, and few stars to guide me forward, I can’t see anything at all. I don’t have to. On the other edge of the bridge is the train platform that will lead me out of Winter Creek, one way or another. The train rarely stops here at all. It won’t be rolling through this late at night, and I’m prepared to hop on the tracks and run if that’s what it takes to get away from the monsters on my heels.
I can still hear the echo of the wolf shifter’s baying howl, chasing after me. The unexpected shout from my grandmother’s henchman, shouting for me to join him instead of just abandoning the wolves of Winter Creek.
More than that, Lucas’s pained cry, his order for me to run… it’s been on repeat from the moment I left the broken, mangled beast behind in the Alpha’s hunting cabin.
Run, he said.
I did—until I reached the rope bridge and I needed to be more careful. One wrong step and I could be crashing down below.
Go, Fallon. I release the rope long enough to right myself, sliding the sole of the sandal along the too-smooth wood. Go—
No.
The rope bridge didn’t just sway. It bounced, the weight of someone else stepping onto it causing me to jolt and nearly lose my balance a second time.
Snatching the rope again, my head darts over my shoulder.
It’s too pitch-black to make out any features. I can’t even tell if the person who joined me on the bridge is even a person at all. Two-legged or four, supe or human, all I can sense is that I’m not alone anymore, and the platform is still a good twenty feet away from me.
I have to make it. There is no if. I’ve boiled down my frantic escape to that finish line. The curse on Winter Creek affects all of the supes. They would be risking time catching up to them—seventy years coming for them—if they leave the borders of the supernatural hamlet. If I reach the train platform, they won’t come after me.
They won’t… right?
Only one way to find out. Praying like hell that I won’t lose my footing again, I do exactly what my last lover warned me to do.
I run.
I’m still running when I slam face-first into an invisible, immovable wall that seems to appear in the dead center of the rope bridge. I never saw it. Never felt it, either, until I hit it and an electric shock as powerful as a lightning strike sends me flying backward.
There’s not even time to scream. I hit the wooden boards, the force of it knocking all of the air out of me as I bounce and roll and, in the pitch darkness, abandon any sense of where I am or what exactly happened as the bridge tips and then… well, it doesn’t matter anymore does it?
It doesn’t matter that I left my apartment and my job behind in New York.
It doesn’t matter that I found my estranged grandmother only for her to betray me.
It doesn’t matter that, since I arrived in Winter Creek, I caught the attention of three gorgeous guys—or that I somehow managed to fall for one in no time at all.
Because I’m falling for real, and I’m not sure I’ll survive it… just like last time.
On the edge of blacking out, I have one final thought that comes from nowhere, and disappears just as quickly seconds before I hit the water:
At least drowning is a better fate than being left for dead, your beloved mate finding your savaged body covered in blood as he howls for vengeance, begging, pleading, promising everything for your return…
Eh, mon chiot?
CHAPTER 1
ANSWERS
I’m warm.
Comfortable.
Cozy…
And I shouldn’t be.
The last thing I remember is an electric shock that short-circuited my body. I’d been running on the rope bridge, trying like hell to get to the train platform on the other side, but I never made it. Instead, I hit something that shouldn’t exist—like an invisible wall or something—and went flying.
I don’t recall hitting the river. It was the inevitable outcome, though, because flopping off of the bridge and falling before I passed out is something that I can’t forget.
I don’t hurt. Does that mean I’m dead? Something fuzzy is weighing down on me—
My eyes spring open.
Why? Because the second-to-last thing I remember is following Jade’s advice, tromping through the woods in order to find Lucas’s hunting cabin, and discovering that the guy I recently slept with is the monster in the woods I was convinced wanted to eat me.
So sue me if my first, terrifying thought when I realize I’m warm and fuzzy and miraculously still alive is that the furry beast is laying on top of me.
Ridiculous? Oh, yeah. But that doesn’t make the relief I feel when I see that I’m wrapped up in a plush bathrobe any less.
Then I blink because, um, how the hell did I get in a bathrobe?
Shifting my body, trying to pull myself into a seated position in the bed I was laying on, I’m so distracted by checking if I’m naked beneath the white bathrobe that I don’t even notice that the bed is in a familiar room—or that there’s someone sitting on the chair nestled in the corner of my room, hidden in the shadows beneath the dark, moonless sky.
At least, not
My next eep is a lot louder. You might even be able to call it a scream.
Okay. That’s because it was.
The shadows shift, leaning forward in the seat. “It’s okay, Fallon. It’s me. It’s Tristan.”
Tristan.
For a split second there, when I saw the male figure in the seat, I was thrown back to the last time I woke up in a similar situation. It was when my lovely grandmother tied me to a tree, leaving me as a sacrifice for the beast in the woods—for Lucas, my mind shouts at me unnecessarily—and she used my own blood as a lure for him. And while I managed to come face to face with that monster without freaking out too badly, when Lucas appeared—and I never once put two and two together that he did because he’s the freaking beast—and set me free, it was slipping in the pile of blood that had me passing out.
Hemophobia for the win, am I right?
Anyway, even though it wasn’t my fear of blood that had me going unconscious this time, I think part of me expected the male to be Lucas. After all, it was the least he could do after telling me to ‘run’ and chasing me through the woods to the point that I finally had enough of Winter Creek and tried to escape.
Well, no. If I’m being honest with myself right now, the least he could do was jump into the water after me and pull me out, but since it’s Tristan here and not Lucas, how much do you want to bet that it was the Beta on patrol who saved me?
I want to ask. It’s the first thing on the tip of my tongue, but then I think about the fact that I’m butt-naked beneath this robe and I kind of want to know that answer to that question first.
But that’s not what I say.
“What are you doing? You’re in my—”
Territory.
The word almost popped out of my mouth. I have no idea why that was what I was reaching for, though I strangle it back in time to gulp and finish my sentence with, “room.”
He nods. “It’s been about twenty-four hours. The pack agreed that someone had to sit with you while you recovered. I volunteered.”
Recovered? “Recovered from what?”
My eyes are adjusting better to the dark. I’m not so sure why Tristan was sitting in my room without any light on overhead—not to disturb me, I guess—but, as a wolf shifter, maybe he doesn’t need as much light as I do. Luckily, I’m finally growing used to the shadows. Instead of a big, black blob in the corner, I can kind of make out his features.
He looks as apprehensive as he sounds when he asks me, “What do you remember?”
Isn’t that a loaded question?
Scooting backward, I reach behind me, grabbing one of my pillows. I moved it so that it’s in front, something I can squeeze at the same time as giving me a shield between Tristan’s unblinking stare and my robe-covered body.
“Well, I went looking for Lucas…”
“It’s the full moon,” he points out.
Yeah. I know.
Nodding, I tell him, “So I guess you know what state I found him in, huh?”
Tristan exhales. “I told him. I told Luc that he shouldn’t keep the truth of the curse from you. Not when…”
“Now when what?”
He shakes his head. I hear the whisper of his clothes as he moves. “It’s not important.” To him, maybe. “So you saw the feral side of Luc, huh?”
He can say that again. “Yeah.”
“I figured. It explains a lot.”
“Like what?”
If I thought Tristan would answer that, I’m sorely mistaken. “So you ran from him. That’s why I caught your scent dashing through the woods. I thought I was wrong at first since Jade was supposed to keep you in the pack house during the full moon…”
Hmm… do I tell Tristan that Jade was the one who told me where to find Lucas in the first place?
I open my mouth. Close it. Decide that Tristan must expect it already—because how else would I have slipped away without my wolfy babysitter otherwise—and wait for him to continue.
He does.
“I followed your scent and I saw you fall into the river,” he says after a moment. “I saw Gauthier on the bridge above you and thought he was why you fell.”
Gauthier.
Remy.
At least now I know who it was who chased me onto the bridge. In my panic, I only saw a silhouette, never a face, and there was no chance after I slammed into that invisible wall.
To be fair, I never saw the face of anyone pursuing me. When Lucas told me to ‘run’, I slammed the door of the cabin before he could change back to his beast and chase me. I assumed he would, and when I heard the wolf howl coming from the side of me, I figured that had to be another pack member.
As for Remy… I knew he was there because the witch had the nerve to call out to me. He wanted me to believe that he could keep me safe from the wolves when, in reality, if he hadn’t followed me up the stairs and onto the bridge, maybe I wouldn’t have taken my tumble.
Then again, that doesn’t explain what kept me from crossing to the other side…
“Did he hit you with a spell? Because then I—”
Spell? Shit. Did he? I don’t know. “Could he have?” I don’t know enough about witches at all. “Is that something he can do?”
Marie had waved her hand once, using her magic to keep me still and in one place. Apart from being frozen, I didn’t feel a thing. With Remy at my back, I didn’t feel anything there, either. It was my front as I ran into something I couldn’t see, and I try my best to explain that to him.
When I finish, Tristan straightens up. “A blood ward.”
Excuse me? “What did you say?”
“A blood ward,” he echoes. “It’s something witches do. If a witch has your blood, they can hex it. They can take you under control in some cases, or tie it into a ward. When you ran into it, did it feel like a shock?”
“A zap,” I agree. “It was like something zapped me the same time as I couldn’t get past the invisible wall.”
“Lucas told me they cut you. I remember seeing the scab on your arm. But that was after you crossed into Winter Creek, wasn’t it? I’m not an expert on blood wards, but they need to be triggered once you cross over them in order to block you from going past them again.”
He’s right—but that’s not the only time someone took some of my blood recently.
“Are you saying that, if my grandmother had some of my blood even before I arrived her, she could… what? Trap me here?”
“If it’s a blood ward, then yes. But she would have had to leave Winter Creek to get it and, with the curse, Marie Boudreaux would never dare.” Tristan makes a soft noise in the back of his throat. “Not with the years catching up to her the way they would.”
He’s right again.
Marie didn’t go—but she sent Armand, one of her male witches, to come to New York, cut me, and sop up my blood with his hanky.
“How would I know that’s what happened to me?” I try to keep the hysteria out of my voice the best I can. I’m not so sure I pulled it off, and while anyone who’s known me for a while would think it’s because of my blood phobia, but it’s more than that.
He said something about keeping me from going past this blood ward. If that’s what stopped me short, zapping me and sending me falling backward onto the rope bridge, then off of it, I’m fucked. Forget the fact that the train that would lead me out of Winter Creek comes bi-monthly at most. As far as I know, the bridge is the only way to even try to leave the small town, and if I’m blocked from passing it, that means I’m stuck here.
I’ve already been here for more than two weeks. I have no family left, except for an estranged grandmother who didn’t care if I survived meeting the beast in the woods or not; I have no idea if Marie knew Lucas would rather keep me than eat me, and no way to ask. My boss probably has me down as job abandonment at this point, and I stupidly forgot to tell the one person—and her twin sister—who might miss me that I was coming to Winter Creek in the first place.
