by Skye Jones
He made a good point. Something I didn’t want to admit, however. All my neediness of the day before drifted away from me as fear and confusion washed desire away.
As I thought about what he said, a sense of hopelessness took hold, making my limbs sluggish. Why was life so damn hard? Part of me wanted to simply curl up in a ball and go to sleep for a long time. If I went home, according to Jake, I’d spend my time yearning for him. If it took a stronger form than the madness causing me to set off on this foolhardy mission, then I doubted I’d survive it for long. But if I stayed here, I’d be turning my back on family and friends. Walking away from all I knew.
My old life wasn’t amazing. I lived in a tiny flat, eking out my meager wage, and living for payday and Friday nights when I’d meet up with my friends.
Both Gemma and Laura were moving on with their lives and careers, and Mum had met a bloke on holiday whom she spent hours texting. Meanwhile, I’d been stuck in a holding pattern. Until Jake. But who turned their life upside down purely for a man? My mum had, and look where it got her. Such a monumental, all-or-nothing decision seemed unfair.
“I’m going to go and talk to my friends. I won’t be long.” I needed to get out of the room and get some space away from Jake to think.
“Remember you cannot tell them anything about the reality of our life here.”
“Yes, sir,” I snapped.
Jake’s eyes widened and flared with heat. “I like you calling me sir.”
Oh, great. One lusty look from him and my own body surged with desire in response. I’d turned into a total slut for Jake and his stupidly hot body. And his amazing face. And his warm, sexy scent. Ugh, I may as well start scribbling his surname in my diary next to my first and be done with it. What was his surname, anyway?
“What’s your last name?” I asked.
“We don’t use them amongst ourselves. The whole pack shares the same last name. We are all called Frith.”
“All of you?” How odd.
“Yes. It means peace. Our pack didn’t fight in the wars of long ago between those of our kind and the humans. We kept our peace and lived here, protecting our land and our people. However, when we deal with humans, we have surnames we use to fit in. The one Drew, my father, and I share is Brodie.”
“Brodie. Jake Brodie. I like it.”
“I guess these things matter to you humans, so you can take the name also. You’d be Cait Brodie.”
And there went my internal panic button once more. From rejection to marriage in one day. My head spun. Nausea threatened as I contemplated the wondrous, but somewhat scary, facts I’d learned. “I’ve got to go talk to the girls.”
He growled, and it sounded as if a damned dog were in the room. I paused as I walked away. “I’ll be back, I promise.”
I almost ran through the kitchen, fearful he might stop me from going to speak with my friends, and once outside, I took in a deep breath. Here I’d spent all my time fearing he wouldn’t want me—when I should have been worrying about something else altogether.
It seemed I’d gone and bonded with a werewolf!
“Oh, here she is. Finally remembered she’s got friends.” Laura shot me a filthy look as I entered the spacious room where she and Gemma had holed up.
“I’m sorry. Honestly. I…we…I fell asleep.” I cursed the blush heating my cheeks.
“And the rest.” Gemma laughed. “We’re fine. Ignore her. She’s in a bad mood because some hot piece of man-stud called Boyd ignored her totally yesterday. She’s not used to it.”
Laura huffed out a breath and glowered at Gemma. “I want to get home. This place is…weird. There’s something odd going on here. I sense it. Eco-commune, my arse.”
“What makes you say so?” I shouldn’t push. Didn’t want her digging too deep, but she’d sparked my curiosity. How did she sense something off about the place?
“I don’t actually understand it, but since we’ve been here, I’ve felt…wrong. Similar to the uneasy sensation you get when someone’s watching you. I’ve been getting it all the time I’ve been here.”
Not sure what to make of this, I nodded and went to sit by them. “Sorry I put you in this position.” I took hold of Laura’s hand and squeezed. “You too, hon.”
Gemma nodded at me.
I sighed, wondering how to tell them about my dilemma. Laura’s words wouldn’t leave me alone, though. Despite the crazy stuff I now understood about the village and its inhabitants, I didn’t think they were bad people. So why did Laura feel so spooked?
“You experienced this sort of…premonition type thing before?” I asked her.
Laura flushed, a deep shade of pink crawling up her neck and along her jawline. I watched it, kind of fascinated. Laura didn’t normally do the blushing routine.
“Yes. In the tent when you were freaked out. I sensed it then, too. I didn’t want to panic Gemma anymore, though, so I tried to pretend nothing was going on. I also experienced a similar thing once as a young woman. I’d been walking home, and this guy passed me on the other side of the street, walking in the opposite direction. Some sort of sixth sense screamed at me to get out of there. Sounds crazy. I mean, he’d not looked my way, but I acted on it and ran. Sure enough, he dashed across the road and chased me for about half a mile. Thank God for me running cross-country at the weekends. I managed to outpace him and got home safely. I’ve experienced déjà vu often, too. And I once swear I saw a ghost. Don’t laugh.”
“Jeez, Laura. You’re psychic.” Gemma’s eyes were wide.
“I’m not. Maybe it is a form of instinct or something, and right now, my instincts are screaming to get out of here.”
“I’m not sure I can come with you.” I bit my lip and looked from one to the other. “This thing with Jake…he wants me to stay.”
“No.” Laura shook her head, her dark hair swishing as if made of silk as she did so. “You’re coming with us. If he’s so interested in you, then he can come visit, right?”
Actually, why not? Yeah, he might be a wolf shifter, but he’d been in the city when we’d met. Why couldn’t he come see me back in the city and take this more slowly?
About to tell her I liked the idea, I paused, mouth open as a ragged scream split the air.
“Oh, my God! What the fuck?” Gemma’s normally pale skin turned whiter still. Her blue eyes bugged.
Deep, ferocious howls rang out, and all the hair on my body stood on end. Fuck the code about keeping secrets. My friends weren’t about to die because I didn’t share.
“Listen to me.” I spoke low and urgently, and for once, even Laura did as I said. “What I’m about to say will sound ridiculous. You’ll not want to believe it, but you should if you want to get out of here. This place isn’t only an eco-village. It’s a place where werewolves live.” I didn’t have time to go into the whole wolf shifter thing, and they’d get the idea from the word werewolf.
“Ha-ha.” Gemma nudged me. “Very funny, chicken.”
“It’s no joke.” I spat the words out, and Gemma flinched at my hard tone. “Seriously. This place is not normal, and these people are not human.”
Another loud howl came from outside. It didn’t sound like a wolf, too loud, too…unearthly.
“Are they going to kill us? Eat us?” Laura’s lips trembled as she spoke.
“I don’t think the things making the noise are people from this village. Call me stupid, but I trust them.”
“Because of Jake?” Gemma asked.
“Partly. But also because of some women I met yesterday, and my own sixth sense. I’m not sure what to do, though.”
“We need to leave.”
“Go out there?” Gemma looked at Laura as if she were mad. And maybe she was, because the idea didn’t sound too good to me.
“Yes. We stay in here, and we’ll die.” Laura pierced us both with a determined stare. “And that’s my sixth sense talking.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “We’ll not go out the front door, though. Let�
��s get out of this room and see if we can find a back way out.”
Laura nodded, and we stood. Gemma still perched on the edge of the bed, hands curled around the mattress in claws of sheer terror.
“Come on, lovely.” I pried her fingers from the material and grabbed her hand in mine.
Laura took my other hand, and we opened the door to peer out into a deserted corridor. So far, so unscary.
We crept down the hallway and rounded the corner. Still, there appeared to be no signs of life. A sign pointed one way to a medical center, the other to a dining room. A third corridor led somewhere else.
“Let’s go to the dining room and see if they have anything we could use as weapons,” I whispered.
We all headed in the same direction, still gripping one another’s hands. Once there, we made quick work of looking in the drawers. Nothing but cutlery. The knives were all dinner ones, not anything with a good blade on it. I opened cupboard after cupboard, ignoring the pots, pans, and plates. Eventually, I spied something of possible use. Two heavy-looking black cases took pride of place in the final cupboard. I hefted the first one out and opened it. I smiled as lots of deadly looking stainless steel knives glinted up at me.
“What’s in the other one?” Gemma pulled it out of the cupboard. I wanted to tell her to leave it. We had what we needed, but in the next moment, she’d popped the lid.
“Ooh.” Her breath puffed out on a long sigh, and I understood her reaction.
These knives were different. Unlike anything I’d seen before. They shone as if newly made and were ornate, with carved, dark wooden handles. I took one and held it up. Laura did the same, narrowing her eyes and focusing in on something.
“These aren’t steel. They’re silver.”
“Silver?” I frowned. Why would anyone still use silver knives? Then it hit me. Silver hurt werewolves according to most stories and legends.
“Here.” I thrust one at Gemma. “Take this. We need to get out of here. If anything tries to hurt you, stab it hard with this.”
Laura grabbed one, too. I picked my own, a fearsome looking blade with a heavy handle full of intricate carvings.
At one end of the dining hall stood a fire door. We all looked at it then back at one another, nodding our agreement.
Approaching cautiously, I let go of the girls’ hands and peeked through the glass. All appeared quiet as far as I could see. The grass out front led to a wooded copse after about thirty feet. Taking a deep breath, I pulled the door open, praying no alarms went off. The silence held, and I tossed up a grateful prayer of thanks.
My heart pounded so loud, I feared it would alert whatever made those terrible howls. I stepped out and looked left to right. Nothing. A wave of my hand told the girls to follow me. We crept along the edge of the building, toward the back and away from the village.
Another blood-curdling howl rent the air, and Gemma whimpered under her breath. I squeezed her shoulder, hoping to reassure her. God knew where this brave person appeared from. Maybe she’d been inside me all along, and it took this terrifying moment to bring her out.
I glanced behind me—and froze. Two huge, gray…things ran past the building at the front. Thankfully, they didn’t glance our way to see the three of us clinging to the side of the building as we tried to sneak around the back.
The next moment, Jake and Drew ran past, followed by three huge wolves. These wolves looked the same as real wolves, the kind you saw in a zoo. Bigger than any I’d seen before, but they had the same form, just on a larger scale. The hideous creatures they were chasing, on the other hand, looked like something out of my worst nightmare. They ran on two legs but had paws and long muzzles and came covered in sparse, wiry fur.
Two of the wolves with Jake and Drew shot past them and leaped at the awful apparitions. They took them down instantly, and it became hard to follow the action as the animals rolled around so quickly they became a blur of gray and fur.
The other wolf with Drew and Jake turned and bared its teeth. Two more of the horrible creatures appeared, staggering past the front of the building on massive legs corded with muscle and veins and more of the sparse, gray fur.
The remaining wolf attacked one of them, but the creature bit the wolf so hard on its neck that blood spurted out in a horribly impressive arc. Drew gave a shout of dismay, and right in front of our eyes, he ripped his clothes off and changed from a man to a huge beast of a wolf. He lunged at the creature, snapping his great jaws.
The remaining nightmarish apparition turned bloody red eyes on Jake and smiled. I swear to God, the unholy thing smiled. Those thin lips pulling back from its stretched muzzle, dripping saliva and something green that I didn’t want to think about, knocked me sick. Terrifying and sickening at the same time, the creature truly horrified me.
It took two lumbering steps toward Jake and then twitched. The next moment, a huge, grizzled wolf stood in its place. But this thing dwarfed the other wolves and came covered in scars and areas without hair. It panted, and its eyes still glowed a horrifying red. Jake copied Drew and changed form. He turned into a magnificent silver wolf so fast it made my head spin. For a moment, I could only stare at his beauty as shredded clothing fluttered around him, dancing in the air. Then they began to fight, and my heart stuttered.
I only cared about what happened between Jake and the monstrous thing he fought. Dimly aware of other fights taking place, I couldn’t tear my eyes from the two bodies struggling before me.
At first, it wasn’t possible to see who did what to whom. They moved too quickly, but then the monstrous wolf somehow got on top of the situation, and my gut clenched as he held Jake down by his throat. When those huge yellow teeth sank into the fur of the gorgeous silver wolf, I didn’t stop to think. Acting purely on instinct, I ran straight toward the fighting.
“No!” Gemma’s cry followed me, but I paid her no heed.
I reached the scene in seconds, and the action slowed down, the horror making it move at a snail’s pace in front of my eyes, like watching a particularly gruesome slow-motion movie scene. The creature bit down on Jake’s neck and drew blood. Horrible gurgling sounds escaped Jake, and the wolf above him gave a low, satisfied growl.
I raised my arm and plunged the knife as deep into the creature’s back as I could. It immediately let go of Jake, and its head snapped around. Those blood-red eyes now focused on me. It took a step toward me but then faltered. It twitched once, then again, and then it changed form, back to the horrifying apparition I’d first seen.
A low howl came from between its thin lips, and I stayed poised above it, knife raised.
Jake changed form and once more became the human I’d grown so familiar with.
“Cait.” He spoke with some difficulty, coughing after he uttered my name. “Give me the knife, Cait. You’ll hurt yourself.”
I looked at him. What did he mean? I needed to protect him. Only when I glanced back at my outstretched arm, and realized my hand was shaking, did I hand him the knife.
Fear swamped me, and I began to tremble. He’d almost died. I didn’t believe in love at first sight, or love within a week, but the idea of losing Jake nearly took me to my knees. I blinked away tears and tried to gather myself together.
“Thank you.” He said the words between clearing his throat. “You honor me. You have saved my life. Thank you.”
My mind couldn’t take it all in. The insane things I’d seen. The astounding beauty of Jake’s wolf. But most of all, my mind kept returning to the moment when I thought he might die.
I had not hesitated. Not for a second. I might have been killed, was lucky I hadn’t been. But still, I’d charged in and done all I could to save Jake. It seemed while my mind struggled to accept this magical connection between us, my body and my heart held no such contradictions. I’d reacted on instinct, and perhaps I ought to let instinct guide me going forward.
The creature at my feet gurgled and twitched. My shaking intensified as the reality of the situation hit h
ome. I’d almost killed another living being. Almost taken a life. If the creature at my feet died, would I be a murderer?
The fights around us died down. One by one, the wolves changed back. One turned into a stunning woman with long dark hair. The other turned into Louis. And, finally, Drew took his human form.
“Is everyone okay?” I turned at the booming voice.
A mountain of a man jogged toward us. Blood snaked down his face from a cut in his brow.
“Boyd!” Laura ran toward us.
“I’m fine. Are you hurt?” Laura shook her head. He cast a quick, cursory glance her way, checking her out for any seeming injuries and then looked around at the rest of us.
He turned and moved away from Laura, but he glanced back in her direction and I swore a hint of color stained his cheeks when their eyes locked for the briefest of moments. He once more looked away and focused on his friends, and Laura shifted from one foot to the other, biting her lip. My heart ached for her at the look of desolation stealing briefly across her pretty features. Wow. It seemed she had pretty strong feelings for a guy she’d only met a day ago.
“How’s everyone?” the brunette asked Boyd.
“Fine. All the young were taken to the schoolhouse and are guarded by two females. The rest of the village joined in the fight, and the rogues are all either run off or in the same state as these fellows. You’re bleeding, Reba.”
The beautiful dark-haired woman, Reba, glanced at her arm and frowned at the blood running from a wound. “It’ll clear up soon enough.
Boyd nodded and swept his gaze over my friends and me once more. He stopped when he came to me and stared more closely at the thing at my feet and frowned. “Is this one of our silver knives?”
“Yes.” Jake nodded at me, eyes filled with what looked a lot like pride. “She stabbed him right before he ripped my jugular out. We’ll need to take the damn rogue to the infirmary. Patch it up and see if we can get any sense out of it.”
Boyd did something weird then; he smelled me. Leaned right into me and sniffed at me, nostrils flaring. “She’s an excellent mate, Jake. I’m happy for you. She may not be wolfen or empathine, but she carries the heart of a warrior. Your young will be strong.”
