Pack Violet Shadow

by C. M. Stunich

  The hunters have become the hunted.

  The monsters have become the prey.

  The blood of werewolves runs with the fierce, wild magic of the earth. For millennia, that's what's kept us safe, let us shed our human skins and run as beasts. Now, it's the siren song that calls our enemies.

  I'm the girl known as White Wolf, the Alpha Female for a new pack, a super pack, a combination of my wolves and the wolves governed by the seven Alpha Males I've chosen as my mates. Together, we represent and protect every werewolf in North America. Together, we represent the most highly desired prey on the continent.

  Faerie courts, vampires, witches, demons ... they want our blood, our flesh. They want the magic that runs through our veins that even we don't know how to use. If I can't learn to wield magic from my grandmother, the last werewolf to ever cast a spell, then we're all doomed.

  The hunters won't just be the prey ... they'll be extinct.

  And me, I have seven soul mates to kiss, hold, protect.

  My males and I, we'll fight to our very last breaths. I just hope that last gasp doesn't come sooner rather than later.

  Pack Violet Shadow

  Pack Violet Shadow © C.M. Stunich 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  For information address Sarian Royal Indie Publishing, 89365 Old Mohawk Rd, Springfield, OR 97478.

  www.sarianroyal.com

  Cover art and design © Amanda Carroll and Sarian Royal

  "Caviar Dreams" Font © Lauren Thompson

  "Fancy Card Text" Font © Deiter Steffmann

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, businesses, or locales is coincidental and is not intended by the author.

  this book is dedicated to my readers for their unfailing patience, support, and love.

  you never cease to amaze me.

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  Author's Note

  Welcome to Pack Violet Shadow, the second book in a new series titled The Seven Mates of Zara Wolf. This is a reverse harem werewolf series which means our leading lady, Zara Castille, will get her happily ever after with more than one man. These books are best described as new adult/paranormal romance, and while the focus is on werewolves, throughout the seven book series you'll find vampires, witches, fae, demons, and more.

  Contains: cursing, detailed sex scenes, and graphic violence.

  Read—and enjoy—at your own risk.

  Just don't think you won't be howling with need for the next one …

  Book Three, Pack Obsidian Gold, releases December 2017.

  Love, C.M. Stunich (aka Violet Blaze)

  Character list

  The Seven Mates of Zara Castille, Heir of Pack Ebon Red

  First Name, Last Name, and Pack Affiliation

  (in no particular order)

  Nic Hallett of Pack Ebon Red

  ~

  Jaxson Kidd of Pack Azure Frost

  ~

  Silas Vetter of Pack Obsidian Gold

  ~

  Anubis Rothburg of Pack Crimson Dusk

  ~

  Montgomery Graves of Pack Ivory Emerald

  ~

  Che Nocturne of Pack Violet Shadow

  ~

  Tidus Hahn of Pack Amber Ash

  I threw the severed head at my mother's feet, spattering blood across her pale toes.

  I was panting, shaking, my hands curled into fists by my sides. According to the rules of the Hunt, I should be dressed up in my finest, presenting my kill to the reigning Alpha Female with grace and dignity. Instead, I was naked and dirty and pissed off.

  My mates stood behind me in a triangular formation, their mixed emotions perfuming the air with anger, excitement, even lust. There was so much—too much, really—going on for me to pinpoint who was feeling what. Of course, I didn't need a seer's divination to tell me that Nic Hallett was furious. He was doing a decent job of holding back, but my mother would sense it anyway; she always did.

  “What's this?” Nikolina asked, leaning forward, her bloodred hair sliding over her shoulders, droplets of copper liquid draining down her chest and over her bare breasts, teased from her skin by the silver necklace that draped over her graceful neck.

  “Zara of Ebon Red,” I managed to choke out, falling back on tradition to buy myself some time. I was still reeling from what I'd seen in the forest—and I had no idea how I was going to present that information to the packs. If I told my mother the truth, she'd take action in a big and violent way, a show of bravado and strength that we couldn't afford. At the same time, I had to tell her something.

  Nikolina sat there staring at me from eyes the color of a night sky, one devoid of moon and stars. It was open and limitless, full of possibilities but impossible to understand. That was my mother, the current Alpha Female of Pack Ebon Red, in a nutshell.

  She glanced down at the head of the bull moose at her feet, examining the velvety rack of antlers, the sightless eyes, the smattering of red blood where my teeth had severed the creature's neck from its body. It felt like an empty kill. Not only had I been too stressed to actually eat any of it—and in too much of a hurry to get back here to bring the unused meat with me—but I'd also been too busy having sex to actually make the killing blow with my own jaws.

  “Zara Wolf,” she said finally, lounging back in a throne made entirely of antlers. It was sitting outside, legs buried in the snow and flanked by torches made of animal fat. The air stunk of it, of meat and burning things. The fact that tiny flakes of snow were falling, settling on our bare skin, didn't disturb a single one of us. Werewolves were nearly impervious to cold. “What is the meaning of this?”

  “We …” I started to speak when I noticed Nikolina's nostrils flaring. She was scenting me, pulling in more information than I could possibly provide with words alone. If only I had a little more of that witch hazel spray Anubis had used on me and Nic before … Somehow, I was going to have to make friends with a witch. Hilarious thought that, considering their leader had fed me the flesh of my own pack mate last time I'd been in their presence.

  “You've mated with the Alpha Son of Pack Violet Shadow,” she said loudly, clearly intending her words to carry across the clearing. Spread out across the snow covered ground behind me and my mates were tables heaped with food—partridges stuffed with apricots, pan-seared venison with rosemary and dried cherries, skewered sweetbreads, and black pudding potato cakes topped with fried eggs—as well as the wolves feasting from them. They lounged on chaises and chairs, under trees blanketed in fresh powdery snow, and on their sides with tongues lolling, hot breath frosting in the cool air.

  At the news of my mating, howls and yips and human shouts pierced the quiet calm of the gathering.

  I ignored it all. Yes, it was kind of a big deal that Che Nocturne and I had had sex. And it was also sort of a big deal how it happened, how angry Nic was, how mixed my own emotions were.

  It was an even bigger deal that we'd seen a vampire walking in the sun.

  Oh, and met a faerie queen.

  “You reek of fae,” Nikolina whispered, sliding off of her throne and moving close to me. I let her put her nose to my hair, drag in a long, deep breath. When she pressed a kiss to my forehead, the act was menacing at best. “Why?”

  “We had a visit fro
m the Unseelie Queen,” I said as slowly and calmly as I was able. Each syllable that managed to scrape past my lips left a tiny cloud of white in the air. “She has information she wants to trade.”

  I kept my gaze away from the Alpha Female of Pack Ebon Red and hoped that she'd take my lack of eye contact as respectful deference instead of what it really was—a poor attempt to cover up a half-lie. We had entertained a visit from the faerie queen while in the forest, but it was so much more than that. We hadn't been offered a simple debriefing—we'd been offered help. Help against the vampires from Kingdom Ironbound and the witches from Coven Triad.

  “Why would a faerie have information about our missing pack members?” Nikolina said, her mouth pressed so tight to my ear that even my grandmother, now standing just a few feet behind her, would have a difficult time hearing the question.

  “I don't know,” I said, and the words came out harsher, sharper than I'd intended.

  My mother froze, every muscle in her body going stiff. For a moment there, I was sure she was going to throw me to the icy ground, pin me by the throat, and show every 'were' in attendance that even though I was her heir, she was still the fucking boss.

  “Get out of here and go clean up,” she said instead, stepping back with a wicked sharp smile etched onto her face. “The Alpha-Daughter of Ebon Red brings us news of our missing family members,” she announced as she turned toward my grandmother, ignoring the shifting and murmuring emanating from the group. Nikolina Castille was Alpha of Pack Ebon Red; she could give as much or as little information as she wanted to the pack. No matter how desperate they were to know more, nobody other than another alpha would dare ask.

  I knew what a suggestion sounded like … and when an order was being issued.

  That was most definitely an order.

  “Let's go,” I told the boys, turning toward the Pairing House.

  I didn't look at anyone as I crunched through the snow in my bare feet, not even when they started cheering and howling in excitement. If the packs knew what sort of news I'd been privy to, the last thing they'd be doing was celebrating.

  No, if they found out what the boys and I knew … violence would be the only item on the menu.

  “Do you mind if I take the first shower, Alpha?” Nic snapped as soon as we were inside the front door, moving past me and heading for the downstairs bathroom without waiting for an answer. He was too mad to care about protocol and rules right now.

  “Nic,” I said as he stormed past me and around the staircase, letting himself into the study and then slamming the bathroom door behind him. I was too tired, too stressed to follow after him. Instead, I flopped down on the couch and found Che Nocturne sliding onto the cushions next to me.

  “He'll get over it,” he said in that rich, velvety voice of his. If I were a witch, and I wanted to mimic the Alpha-Son of Pack Violet Shadow's voice, I would mix grumbles, growls, chocolate, and leather into my potion. That rough but sensual voice of his was juxtaposed against his scent—vanilla, lavender and bergamot oil. He smelled sweet, sounded sinful, and burned like fire when he touched me. No wonder I'd had trouble resisting during the Hunt. Not only had the primal act of hunting in a pack stirred the bestial side of my nature, the man was just fucking attractive in his own right.

  “You don't know Nic Hallett like I do,” I said with a small, tired laugh. I ran a palm down my face and it came away smeared with blood. The coppery scent competed with Che's smell for control of my nostrils. When I glanced over at him, I saw that his pale skin was clean. Right. Because he hadn't killed the moose—he'd been too busy fucking me in the woodsy debris—and he hadn't severed the head like I had.

  Che and I stared at each other, my eyes charcoal black and his, the blue-red color of violets.

  We mated.

  We mated.

  In the woods.

  Like animals.

  I sucked in a deep breath and stood up, suddenly aware of my own nakedness in a way that was new to me, wild and fresh and animalistic. In this house were seven alpha males—and I was supposed to mate with them all, join my bodies to theirs.

  Two down … and five to go.

  My cheeks flamed red as I hit the staircase and darted up it, grabbing a bloodred robe with a black silk interior and throwing it over my shoulders. To belt it closed would somehow feel like admitting that my sensuality, my sexuality, my nakedness was shameful to me, and I wouldn't do that. I wasn't some prudish human, crying foul at the sight of a woman's nipple. How disgusting to treat one's body like that, to treat such natural acts as sinful.

  I wouldn't do it.

  But I was still an eighteen year old girl who'd not only lost her virginity in the last few days but also screwed some random guy she'd just met. I was reeling a little bit.

  “I can't remember,” Tidus Hahn was saying as I came back down the stairs, “do we have to wear our alpha silver to this thing?”

  “Does it sound like an uncomfortable hell to do so?” Che returned, standing naked and half-aroused next to the couch. I tried my best not to look down, but it was difficult—there were penises everywhere. “Then yeah, we probably have to wear that crap.”

  “Mostly I just feel sorry for Zara,” Tidus said, turning to glance over his shoulder at me. His smile was bright, like the sun on the sea, and his skin was the sweet bronze of summer days and salty waves. His eyes, they were a soft dove gray, and his hair … it was a dirty blonde that gave him this charming, surfer sort of a look. Even though we'd just met, I liked him. “I mean, if one piece of silver makes me want to cut my own arm off, what's it like to wear eight?”

  “Don't worry about me,” I told him as I avoided looking at Che. “I'm the Alpha Female; I can handle it.”

  Tidus rolled his ashy gray eyes at me, but he never stopped smiling.

  “Oh come on, you might be Alpha, but you're still human.”

  “I am werewolf,” I said, but he just laughed.

  “Yeah, werewolf. Half-human, half-wolf.”

  “No,” I corrected as I paused between him and Che, “all werewolf. We're a completely different species.”

  “Maybe,” the Alpha-Son of Pack of Amber Ash said as he grinned at me, “but you can't deny that there's still some humanity in there.” He reached out and poked me in the bare chest with a finger. “It's okay to hurt a little; it's okay to admit that we're all fallible.”

  His words were a mimicry of what Montgomery had already told me—that I didn't have to do this alone, that I didn't have to be perfect. So why did it feel like I was already failing miserably?

  Nic was upset; I was confused; my mother was pissed; the vampires and witches were ganging up on us, kidnapping us, draining us dry and eating our flesh. I refused to ask myself if things could get any worse because I knew that the second I did … they probably would.

  Instead, I just smiled back at Tidus.

  “Maybe,” is the only response I could come up with. I was used to being in charge, used to making things happen, used to knowing what to do and how to do it. This, this floundering and this uncertainty was all new to me.

  “Is your boyfriend done with the shower yet?” Silas Vetter asked, tracing a mindless finger over his scar. I turned my attention to my mate from Pack Obsidian Gold and found his amber eyes watching me carefully. If he was upset about what had happened between Che and me, he didn't let on. None of them did. “Because if he's going to keep on throwing a fucking fit, he may as well do it somewhere else.”

  “I'll check on him,” I said, my gaze panning over Jax, Anubis, and Montgomery. They were all sitting in the living room, various expressions of confusion, exhaustion, and worry scrawled across their handsome features. As if they could sense me staring, they all glanced up in almost perfect unison. “We should probably hurry and get out to the banquet,” I said absently, more to myself than to them.

  I had enough to worry about without pissing my mother off even more than I already had.

  Nic was sitting on the floor of the til
ed shower when I let myself into the bathroom. There was no lock on the door—the Pairing House was designed to accommodate the closeness of an alpha pair after all—or else I'd have probably had to break the damn thing down.

  She huffed and she puffed and she blew the house down … But even nursery rhyme jokes weren't enough to make me chuckle, not with the dejected look on my bodyguard-turned-mate's face.

  “I knew it had to happen eventually,” he whispered after I'd dropped my robe and stepped into the tiled space beside him. Folding my legs, I sat down opposite Nic and let the warm water, fresh soapy smell, and the woodsy scent of another Ebon Red pack member surround me. “I just didn't expect it to happen so soon,” he added when I didn't respond.

  “I didn't plan it,” I told him, not sure why I even felt the need to defend myself. Nic was lucky to be a part of the Pairing at all and here he was complaining about my mating with another male? But at the same time, I understood. I understood and I felt like shit about it. “Although Nikolina did order me to …”

  “That's not why you did it,” he told me because he knew me just as well as I knew myself. Maybe better. Yeah, probably better. “You're attracted to him.”

  “I am,” I said, because I couldn't and wouldn't deny it. And there was no way in hell I was lying to Nic, not now, not when I needed him by my side more than ever before. If we were going to survive this thing and come out victorious on the other side—and that was a big if—then we needed to be a team. No, more than just a team; we needed to be a pack. Werewolves versus vampires had sketchy enough odds. Werewolves versus vampires and witches was an impossibility. Werewolves and faeries versus a kingdom and a coven … that would take some political maneuvering I wasn't sure I was capable of.

  Silence fell between us as hot water pounded our matching red hair, our backs, the tiles on the floor around us.