Annalise Clark
Hunted: Call of the Wolf Book 2
Copyright © 2020 by Annalise Clark
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
First edition
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This one’s for a special little RH writer’s group. Your weekly challenges with serious consequences for failure (lol) kept me meeting my word count goals. Now, here we are… ;)
Contents
Acknowledgement
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Sneak Peek of The Pack: Call of the Wolf Book 3
Sneak Peek: Full Moon Rising
Sneak Peek: Insatiable
About the Author
Also by Annalise Clark
Acknowledgement
Cover design by Pixie Covers
Join Clark’s Coven – Reader Group
* * *
Author’s Note:
Call of the Wolf is a reverse harem romance series. This means the main character will have a happy ever after (HEA) with three or more other characters of this book. Recommended for readers over the age of 18 due to adult content and language.
Chapter 1
I’d been running for nearly two days before I stopped to catch my breath and gather my thoughts. I ran all the way across two states before I realized it, in fact. And through the forests, it all looked the same until I started to notice the hills getting bigger and the large, snow-capped mountains ahead of me.
My legs were aching, but they had carried me all this way. My fur was dirty and there were burrs stuck in pieces of it, as well as dead leaves and other debris. I was sure my human form probably looked a little worse for wear, also, but I hadn’t shifted back in all this time.
This was the longest I had been in my wolf form at one time.
But shifting was the last thing I’d had on my mind, and my human body never would have been able to make it all this far anyway. The whole way I had been lost in my emotions, almost as if in a haze. I could hardly remember when I first way away from the Steelmaw camp. I don’t remember the path through the woods, or if I went by Woodlands on my way out. I could hardly remember which direction I ran in. All I knew was that I had a compulsive urge to just get away from everything.
And now, I was definitely far away, although nothing else was any clearer in my mind.
Rage still pumped through my veins, along with confusion, and… lust.
That last one was really tearing me up inside. I wanted to believe Roman and Finley. Deep inside, I wanted to believe they were telling me the truth, and that day standing there in their tent, as they told me the truth, and tears welled up in their eyes as they described how their Alpha had died, something deep inside me wanted to comfort them.
I wanted to wrap my arms around them, one at a time, pulling them close to me, smelling their scent, taking them in, kissing their neck, then their face, then their mouth…
The more I felt drawn to the guys I’d left behind, the harder I ran. With the wind at my face and burrs stuck in my fur, I kept going until I felt pain in the pads of my feet. Even my wolf body would break down eventually…
Maybe it was time for a break.
Stopping to take a sip of water from a freshwater stream that was running off the mountains, I looked at my reflection.
Dried bits of leaves stuck to my fur, and my face was dirty. My grey eyes looked tired… and was it any surprise? I should be tired. I should be exhausted and then some. Not just from the physical stress of it all, but also from the mental exhaustion I had experienced. Not just over the past two days, or even the past week, but ever since the day I was bitten out in the park.
My life had been turned completely upside down by some mysterious stranger. I hadn’t asked for any of this shit, yet I had been thrown directly into the heart of it. While it was true that Jace and Ryder had eased the process once they found me and taught me more about being a wolf, that didn’t mean I felt any less… upset and violated by the entire thing.
It was bad enough that this had happened to me but now, on top of it all, they wanted me to take over and become some kind of leader of the pack?
Truth be told, I had loved my time with the Woodland Pack and had very much been planning on calling them home, but the guys were pushing me so hard and now that their father was dead, the pressure was at an all-time high. And one thing that had definitely not changed since I was bitten was the fact that when I felt pressured… I ran away.
My mom used to love telling the story of that time when I was five years old and she tried to make me clean my room on my own. After hours of sitting in the middle of the room with my toys and belongings strewn all about, she told me I had an hour to clean it up or she would start throwing things away.
I began to cry and ran out of the house and down the street. I ran so fast, my uncle had to hop on a bike to catch up with me and carry me back, kicking and screaming. And that pretty well sums up how I handle pressure.
Then, there was the Steelmaw. I never even planned to meet them. I certainly didn’t realize they were from a different, nearby pack.
And I definitely wasn’t planning on having feelings for them.
Any of them!
On top of all of this, I was still learning how to be a wolf. Unlike the rest of them, I wasn’t born into a family of shifters and everything about this was completely new to me. While there were definite signs that I was strong, there was still so much I didn’t know, or that I just hadn’t had enough practice with yet, like everyone else.
I couldn’t be the only who to think it was crazy for me to be running a pack when I was so new to this myself.
But as luck (or bad luck) would have it, that was precisely the position I was being put into. I wasn’t even sure exactly what I was expected to do as the Alpha’s mate. Of course, I’d be expected to have babies. That much had been made clear to me. But what else?
Both the Steelmaw and the Woodland had lost their Alphas… and not by accident, from what the evidence was showing. So now I was supposed to choose a pack, mate an Alpha and take over leadership of the pack as a Wolf Princess. All of this with basically ZERO clue what the job description even was?
Ugh…
Chapter 2
As I drank from the stream, I sensed them… the wolves who had been following me. They were close again. It was hard to be sure exactly how close, as my senses were dulling from fatigue, but a few miles at least.
It wasn’t Jace and Ryder, or Finley and Roman, or any other wolf I had met, as far as I knew. The scents were off… it was easy to tell.
These were new wolves, and they were not friendly.
Taking one last sip and look at myself in the water, I started to run again. This time, I ran toward the mountains f
irst, but without going all the way up their snowy caps, I went around, through some snow that I hoped would help hide my tracks, and then through the backside of the forests, merging my path West instead of due North.
I needed to lose them from my trail.
Last time they had gotten close, I head their thoughts in my head. I have no idea why, because I wasn’t supposed to be able to do that with random wolves, yet here we were. They wanted to force me mate with their leader, their Alpha, and also with other members of the pack. Was that all anyone saw me as? Some sort of breeding bitch? Well, I wasn’t having it. They’d have to kill me first… which is exactly what it sounded like they were going to do if I didn’t comply to their wishes.
The voices still echoed in my head, although I knew I had gotten away from them… for now.
You know our numbers are dwindling.
But what makes you think she will agree to this, the second voice said.
She doesn’t have a choice in the matter, the first voice said.
The closer they got to me, the more I knew I had to do whatever I could to be sure they didn’t catch up to me. I was strong… but I was outnumbered. There were at least five of them, and I was starting to feel the fatigue from all of my running. There’s no way I’d win if they caught up to me and jumped me. My only advantage right now was staying ahead and staying hidden.
Try as I might to run, I knew they were on my heels. I could smell them. I could hear them and I could sense them in my mind. They would find me and they would either kill me, or force me to mate with their leader, or worse…
I had to get away.
But how did they find me and what made them want me? It didn’t make any sense. Couldn’t they find any other female wolf out there to fulfill their needs? Until I could find some answers to why I was being hunted, I had to stay on the move.
Three weeks I ran like that. Now I was tired, dirty, worn down… but not ready to give up.
I hunted my own food, just the way the guys had taught me after my first shift.
And that was when they finally managed to catch up with me.
* * *
I was sore, filthy, and needed a break, so on one particular stop for food, I ate like a wild and hungry beast, teeth tearing through flesh without so much of second thought about what I was doing, and then climbed into a natural lake to wash my body. My fur was now covered in so much dirt, debris and blood, it hardly looked white anymore. I could have easily been mistaken for a grey or brown wolf from a distance.
Not that I was trying to win any beauty pageants, of course. Looks were the last thing on my mind. But the mud and sticks stuck to my fur was starting to make my skin underneath sore, and the dried, old blood smell was start to invade my nostrils.
At first, I had only stopped to drink but then the cool, clean water lured me in. As I walked into the lake, I felt the cold water on my legs first, and it felt magnificent. Once fully submerged, all of the gunk and the grossness began to wash away and I closed my eyes and swam under the water’s surface, feeling like some of my worries were washing away too.
This was also the first time I had ever swam in shifted form… the boys hadn’t thought to cover that one with me, but it was easy enough to figure out. Instinct seemed to kick in, and I was grateful for that.
For the first time in the three weeks that I had been running, I shifted to my human form. I could feel cuts and bruises all over my body, but the cool water soothed it. My long hair trailed behind me, tangled and a bit matted, but it hardly mattered right now. As I swam through the water, I felt at peace, at least briefly.
I came to the surface of the water, popped my head out and used my hands to scrub away at some of the dirt.
Soon after, I decided that I’d head into the nearby town and blend in with the locals a bit for some human interaction. This was also a good way to figure out where the hell I was, and try to decide what I was going to do.
Because I had no clothes, I waited until the sun set and then prowled around in my wolf form. This was a small, one-horse town with country folk, from what I could tell. And there were several houses that had clothes drying outside on the line. I spotted some that looked like they might fit me, snatched them down with my mouth and ran back into the woods.
It wasn’t perfect… but I needed to do something and this was my best option right now. Although I felt like a real ass for stealing. I’d just have to try to make up for it, when I could.
I slept for a bit, underneath the stars, waking with the sun, and once I was positive there was no one around to see, I shifted to my human form and put on the clothes I had swiped from the line. I didn’t have any shoes, but I guess I’d have to figure that out later.
As I began to walk toward the little town, my human body felt a bit wobbly, like it was hard to put one foot in front of the other now that I only had two feet. I guess that was normal… it’s not like I had any idea what would happen if a shifter stayed in wolf form for three whole weeks.
The streets in this town were unmarked, and some were even still unpaved. The houses were small and humble, most appearing to have been built by hand, but every face was friendly and many who passed me waved or said hello. No one even seemed to notice I wasn’t wearing any shoes, but many of them were in simple sandals themselves.
This was just a quiet little mountain town that probably didn’t see much of the outside world and was the least likely to judge me of any place I could have stumbled into. I just hoped I didn’t walk head-long into the person I stole my clothes from. Because that would be awkward…
I hadn’t been in the town long before an all-too familiar scent caught up to me and I knew there was no chance I could run in time. They were right behind me.
“Zoe!” a familiar voice called out and stopped me in my tracks. I wanted to run. Every fiber of my being told me to run, but there were people all over the streets right now and shifting to my wolf in front of them was just not an option.
I’d never outrun them in my human form. So, I sighed deeply, turned around, and came face to face with Jace and Ryder.
In that instant, I saw relief fall over both their faces, and Ryder looked like he wanted to kiss me, but they both restrained themselves.
“What are you doing here?” Jace blurted out.
“What are you doing here?” I countered.
“We’ve been looking for you, Zoe,” Ryder said in a tone mixed with annoyance and sadness.
“Well, no one told you to,” I snapped back. They didn’t own me and I was tired of them pretending like they did.
“Zoe, what the hell?” Jace started, fire in his eyes. “We missed our own Pop’s funeral because we had to come and find you. You just disappeared on us and we had no idea what happened. We thought you’d been killed!”
I saw the pain in his eyes and felt the fear in his voice and in my heart, I did feel bad. I cared about them, both of them. And I cared what happened to the Pack. I just couldn’t function under the type of pressure they were putting on me.
Ryder put his hand up in front of Jace’s chest, signaling him to back down a bit, and then he spoke, in a softer tone than his brother, “There is a war happening, Zoe. Between us and the Steelmaw. You know, those guys you met in town? We need you to come back home.”
“A war?” I questioned. “But why? And how could I possibly help you? I barely even know what I’m doing as a wolf?”
“We need you, we need a new Alpha, and we need our pack reunited,” Ryder explained, keeping more calm than I had ever seen him in these types of situations. Maybe losing his father had matured him a bit, sad as it was. “We need to beat the Steelmaw.”
“That Steelmaw scum killed our Alpha!” Jace shouted, a bit too loudly because a few heads from the town turned toward us.
Ryder gave him a look that warned him to zip it or he would zip it for him. We’d have to hope no one had actually understood what he said, or if they did, that they would just think he was some raving lunatic sp
eaking nonsense.
“But the Steelmaw?” I stammered. To tell them the truth would mean telling them everything… and I knew they were not going to be pleased with that. “They didn’t kill your Alpha, Jace. Ryder, I’m sure of it! I swear it.”
“How would you know, Zoe?” He raised an eyebrow as he asked, sensing that there was something I was leaving out.
And so I filled them in on the whole thing, the day I had gone to the Steelmaw, when they had rescued me from the strange wolf in the woods, how I had seen the vial outside their father’s tent and went to their camp to avenge him, only to find out, their Alpha had been murdered as well.
“You could have led them right to us, Zoe! We trusted you!” Ryder called out, his temper previously in check, swelling now.
I felt myself backing up, physically and emotionally withdrawing. This is what I had been wanting to avoid. My stomach was doing flip flops and I just didn’t want to be in this moment anymore.
My wolf was screaming inside my head for me to run…
Chapter 3
I fought the urge to run, initially. I was strong. I could face this, and besides, they couldn’t force me to do anything that I didn’t want to do.
“Listen,” I said, my voice a lot firmer than I had intended, but seeming to do the trick because they both stopped mid-sentence and looked at me. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t betray anyone, nor did I lead anyone to you. And this kind of behavior is exactly why the Steelmaw didn’t want to come to you directly and tell you what had happened to their Alpha.”
“Their Alpha?” Jace asked, but Ryder seemed to be still seeing red. He huffed and puffed, his hands balled into fists, but he didn’t say anything.
“Someone killed their Alpha, the same as they did yours. At first, they thought you may have been the enemy, so they started watching you, tracking you, and that’s how they discovered you had brought me back to the Pack with you. And so they followed me into town that day, in their human forms, and arranged to ‘bump into me’, and no, I wasn’t happy about that” I added before one of them could say what I was already thinking.
Hunted: Call of the Wolf : Reverse Harem Werewolf Shifter Series Page 1
