Secret Wolves: Supernatural Shifter Academy Series

by Bailey, G.

  “No, you should not have when your freedom is so close,” he counters and reaches up, gently pinching my chin with his fingers and turning my head to the side. “Your lip is cut, and there is considerable bruising to your cheek. Do you like being beaten by those pups?”

  “No, of course not,” I say, tugging my face away, still tasting my blood in my mouth. “I wanted to be normal! Why is that so much to ask?”

  “Normal is for humans and not shifters. It is why they gave us the United Kingdom and Ireland and then made walls around the islands to stop us from getting out. They want normal, and we need nothing more than what is here: our pack,” he begins, telling me what I already know. They agreed three hundred years ago we would take this part of earth as our own, and the humans had the rest. No one wanted interbreeding, and this was the best way to keep peace. So the United Kingdom’s lands were separated into four packs. One in England, one in Wales, one in Scotland and one in Ireland. Now there are just two packs, thanks to the shifter wars: the Ravensword Pack that is my home, who worship the moon goddess, and then the Fall Mountain Pack, who owns Ireland, a pack we are always at war with. Whoever they worship, it isn’t our goddess, and everything I know about them suggests they are brutal. Unfeeling. Cruel.

  Which is exactly why I’ve never tried to leave my pack to go there. It might be shit here, but at least it’s kind of safe and I have a future. Of sorts.

  “Do you think it will be better for me when I find my mate tomorrow?” I question…not that I want a mate who will control me with his shifter energy. But it means I will shift into a wolf, like every female can when they are mated, and I’ve always wanted that.

  Plus, a tiny part of me wants to know who the moon goddess herself has chosen for me. The other half of my soul. My true mate. Someone who won’t see me as the foster kid who has no family, and will just want me.

  Mike looks down at me, and something unreadable crosses his eyes. He turns away and starts walking out of the abandoned house, and I jog to catch up with him. Snowflakes drop into my blonde hair as we head through the forest, back to the foster home, the place I will finally leave one way or another tomorrow. I pull my leather jacket around my chest, over my brown T-shirt for warmth. My torn and worn out jeans are soaked with snow after a few minutes of walking, the snow becoming thicker with every minute. Mike is silent as we walk past the rocks that mark the small pathway until we get to the top of the hill that overlooks the main pack city of Ravensword.

  Towering buildings line the River Thames that flows through the middle of the city. The bright lights make it look like a reflection of the stars in the sky, and the sight is beautiful. It might be a messed up place, but I can’t help but admire it. I remember the first time I saw the city from here, a few days after I was found and healed. I remember thinking I had woken up from hell to see heaven, but soon I learnt heaven was too nice of a word for this place. The night is silent up here, missing the usual noise of the people in the city, and I silently stare down wondering why we have stopped.

  “What do you see when you look at the city, Irin?”

  I blow out a long breath. “Somewhere I need to escape.”

  I don’t see his disappointment, but I easily feel it.

  “I see my home, a place with darkness in its corners but so much light. I see a place even a foster wolf with no family or ancestors to call on can find happiness tomorrow,” he responds. “Stop looking at the stars for your escape, Irin, because tomorrow you will find your home in the city you are trying so hard to see nothing but darkness in.”

  He carries on walking, and I follow behind him, trying to do what he has asked, but within seconds my eyes drift up to the stars once again.

  Because Mike is right, I am always looking for my way to escape, and I always will. I wasn’t born in this pack, and I came from outside the walls that have been up for hundreds of years. That’s the only explanation for how they found me in a forest with nothing more than a small glass bottle in my hand and a note with my name on it. No one knows how that is possible, least of all me, but somehow I’m going to figure it out. I have to.

  Find Her Wolves here…