AWAKENING
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue
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
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
Awakening
Copyright © 2017 Kristen Cooper
Cover design by Deranged Doctor Design
Interior design: Mikey Brooks (mikeybrooks.com)
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the publisher. For information regarding permission please visit: www.authorjkcooper.com
Summary: Nightmares are doomed to repeat themselves. Shelby Brooks learned she is a werewolf on the same night she learned that love and betrayal go hand in hand. She was sixteen. Now, going into her senior year in a new town, love is the last thing Shelby is looking for, but she finds herself irresistibly drawn to Kale, the son of an Alpha. As her heart slowly reopens to the possibility of happiness, threats mount and her very presence brings mortal danger to Kale and his entire pack. Is her destiny to be a savior? Or a harbinger of death, as the Summer Omega prophecies foretell? Shelby Brooks must reach deep within and discover what lies there, something she fears to unleash.
eBook Edition
Dedication
This book is dedicated to C. Scott Gill and Elizabeth Gill. Mom,
your love for reading and stories was contagious and I caught it. Bad.
Dad, you made love the most important thing in life
and inspired me and others daily.
I miss you.
Mareus, Alpha Prime of the Advent, sent his orders through the mental link to his werewolf pack as they scoured the Hoia Baciu forest in Romania. He sniffed a pile of moss-covered rocks with his long snout then moved on. Already, the pale gray of the pre-dawn morning brightened. The sun would crest the horizon within the hour, and his pack would have to retreat. The world could not know of his movement. Not yet.
We must find it. He allowed these thoughts to be perceived by the pack. A great reward lies in store for the one who brings me the Isluxua.
The ancient tome had to be here. Mareus had tracked the legends of it to this forest over the centuries. Unlike other Lycans, he had actually seen the Isluxua, handled it. That had been long ago in a place he could barely remember. Just the echoes of memory remained, really. Viersin, his Immortal Wolf, had been dribbling those memories back to him since his awakening. Viersin had slept for centuries.
The cool mist of the morning condensed upon the twisted trees and blackened stumps. It had always been a mystery of this forest, the unexplained erratic growth of the vegetation and randomly charred trees. The Hoia Baciu was considered the most haunted forest in the world, even a gateway to another dimension by some. Mareus smiled, or would have if his wolf form allowed for it. He wondered what the frequent visitors to this forest from across the world would say once they encountered his pack.
They were thousands now, he having united dozens of packs across Europe. Never had his kind seen such a uniting. The Advent is rising. Few Alphas had acquiesced to his claim as the Alpha Prime destined to bring about the Advent, but he supposed he would have been disappointed by such weak-spirited leadership. Each Lycan harbored the remnant of an Immortal Wolf from the realms of Alsvoira within them, no matter how miniscule. To simply abdicate rule of a pack to another . . . yes, that would have disappointed him, even if they understood who he really was. Still, the deaths of so many strong werewolves bothered him.
All will be needed as I bring the Advent upon this world, Mareus thought.
But first, he needed the Isluxua to discover—no, rediscover—the secrets of the Immortal Wolves of Alsvoira. Even he was not strong enough to see the Advent to fruition without its secrets.
I had known them once . . . the secrets of Alsvoira. But his journey here had changed him, stripped most of his memories. The price of survival, he mused. But survival was not enough. He must rule.
Athena, his daughter, glanced at him in her wolf, roughly a stone’s cast from him, backdropped by a vine covered tree that glistened with a thin sheen of humidity. She was beautiful: a coat of white with slanted black markings across her rib cage, golden eyes rimmed by thick black circles, and a sleek body that bespoke her agility. As an Omega, she brought oneness to his pack. Of course, other Omegas had been assimilated into the pack as it grew, absorbing others from across Europe.
The dew is thinning, Father, she said through the pack link. The sun rises. We must retreat.
Mareus hid his agitation from the other wolves, but let his emotions run more freely between him and his daughter.
Twenty minutes more, he said, only to her.
Otto, his lieutenant, a former Alpha from a German pack along the French border and one of the few who had abdicated rule to Mareus, approached him. Mareus did not hide his mental disgust from the weaker-willed creature.
We have found something, Otto said. In a cave. The mouth is hidden by thick growth. We almost missed it.
And? Mareus asked. He often masked his desperation as impatience.
It is better for you to see for yourself, Alpha Prime. Otto looked to Athena, and Mareus felt Otto’s attraction to his daughter through the pack link. Both of you.
Very well, Mareus said.
Behind a curtain of foliage, the cave floor fell away quickly, turning to a steep slope. Beneath his paws, Mareus felt the rough, almost sharp, rocky terrain. His eyes adjusted quickly to the fading light, and he spotted several pairs of glowing amber eyes from other wolves ahead of him.
What is it? Mareus asked.
The wolves parted and let him through. There, between two unnaturally smooth rocks, sat something that appeared to be a glass rectangle, crusted over with time’s patina and the forest’s detritus. Flashlight beams lit the scene with their sudden harsh light as more of his pack, having switched to their human forms, entered the cave. Their lights focused on the object, revealing the shape to indeed be a rectangle with rounded edges. Insects scurried away from the light.
The object cast reflections of tiny dull rainbows from the flashlight beams, and Mareus could barely see through the translucent glass. A dark object, something that had the shape of a book, came into focus.
Mareus smiled internally. The Isluxua. It had to be. After all these centuries, he had found it. He felt Viersin’s excitement and relief. Instinctively, he sniffed the book, but only caught the mineral-scent of whatever crusted over the glass capsule.
Otto shif
ted to his human form, naked. “I will break it open, my Alpha.”
Mareus growled. No, he said through the pack link, knowing Otto could still hear his thoughts even if the lieutenant could not transmit his own in human form. The air could damage the book. Retrieve it with its shell. We will proceed cautiously.
Mareus turned to his daughter. With these secrets, Athena, you will help us achieve Ascension. I will forge you into that which has been prophesied by our Mystics for ages. The Summer Omega. Then, we will bring about the Advent and Earth will fall to its knees.
I want to see the world bleed first, Father, for what it has done to you, Athena said.
It will, Mareus answered. It will bleed like the Five Rivers of Alsvoira.
Shelby Brooks caught a scent in night air. Them. It had to be. She had smelled that acrid sweet scent only once before but could never forget it. Of course, her sense of smell had become superhuman last year after that new, terrifying, part of her had awoken. Her Converse Chucks made no sound on the freshly paved street as she came to a sudden stop.
“Dad.”
Chills raced up her spine despite her seemingly ever-present hoodie, rooting themselves between her shoulder blades and at the nape of her neck. She and her dad had taken to walking at night in their new town just outside Odessa, Texas. It had only been a few weeks since they arrived, not-so-patiently yet apprehensively waiting to find some sign of those they sought.
She hissed her words. “Dad, wait. Don’t move.”
“Shel?” her dad asked, turning back to her. He hadn’t shaved today, and his stubble mixed with the soft light of the moon seemed to sharpen his hard facial features. “You okay?”
“Something’s following us.”
Grant, her dad, looked behind them and then to the too-perfectly manicured shrubs on either side of the street. Shovels and gardening equipment lay at their base, the landscaping crews from earlier obviously not concerned with theft in this new development. Partially finished homes, tractors, and piles of plywood and conduit sat on every corner, abandoned until morning when construction would resume. A few streetlights lined the newly paved roads, but power had not yet been routed to them.
His hand moved slightly closer to his hip. “Are you sure?” he asked. “I can’t—”
A breeze carried confirmation to her. She wrinkled her nose at the unmistakable Lycan scent, something like salty citrus.
“Yes.”
Shelby’s long hair, veins of sandy blonde mixed with a brown base, tickled her back and neck, the skin more sensitive suddenly. A threat hung in the air, a different feeling than she had sensed with Lucas almost a year before. She had not heeded the warnings then.
She didn’t hide or try to escape what had happened. Not really. The Night of Scars had seemed magical at first, but had quickly turned to one of terrifying revelations. She had discovered that love and betrayal went hand in hand that night . . . and that she was a werewolf. In only minutes, her world had changed so abruptly. So violently. But she did not fully remember that night with Lucas, other than she had hurt him. Scarred him for life. But hadn’t he deserved it? After what he had tried to do to her?
She needed a pack. Though she was still new to this werewolf thing a year later, that much she knew. Her dad had told her of the danger of not finding a pack after she had manifested. Lycans without a pack lost their humanity and identity, shifting to wolf form and one day never being able to shift back, becoming one of the Feral. Perhaps searching for other Lycans was foolish, but it was a promise—an oath—her father had made to her mother. Shelby knew her dad could not shirk a mission, especially one given him by his dead wife. The Special Operations Forces Delta training still ran deep within him, an ethos which would see him succeed or die trying. For her dad, Shelby knew, death was the only excuse for failure.
Grant scanned their environment, but Shelby stood still. Frozen. Anxiety started to burn in her eyes and she fought the urge building within her. He glanced at his daughter, the question on his face. Shelby nodded. She was sure.
She saw the tension in her dad’s countenance increase. He became focused, preparing for a fight if needed. She prayed it wouldn’t be. His hand checked the pistol at his hip, concealed by his shirt, and then the blade sheathed horizontally on the belt at his back. Extra magazines for the pistol waited in each of his pockets.
“They’re close,” Shelby whispered.
She pulled her hood over her head, holding the draw stings but not pulling them tight. She spotted a small copse of trees surrounded by shrubs just ahead, to their left. As if knowing her thoughts, her dad said, “It won’t matter.”
She realized he was right. “If I can smell them—”
“They can smell us,” her dad finished. “Can you tell how many?”
Shelby shook her head. “Maybe a few. Not more than half a dozen.”
“If you meant that to be comforting, it wasn’t.”
The chills between her shoulder blades strengthened, and she thought maybe the gooseflesh would become permanent. Grant turned around, facing the direction they had walked from —where they were—and took a couple steps past Shelby. She spun as well, staying slightly behind her dad and to his right. Even in the dim moonlight, his rigid muscles showed through his Under Armor t-shirt as a breeze whipped it tight against his body. Despite the breeze’s warmth, Shelby shivered.
“We mean you no harm,” he said. Not a shout but a full voice nonetheless. “We have sought you out for help.”
Shelby took his arm in hers, still just a bit behind him, peering down the vacant street beneath the soft rim of her hood. Though she would probably be more a protection for him, she felt shielded and safer behind him. There was that part of her, even at seventeen, that believed her dad was immortal.
A single figure appeared in the street. She tensed. He took slow, deliberate steps toward them. The man stood at average height, several inches shorter than Grant. Was he wearing a trench coat? It looked like something from a different age, Colonial almost. Buttons that ran from the chin-high collar of the coat to below the waist caught the moon’s dull glint. As he strode forward, Shelby’s apprehension stoked hotter.
“Dad,” she said, tugging on his arm. “This doesn’t feel right.”
She released his arm as he raised his hands. The man stopped about ten feet from them. His brow bone jutted forward severely, enough to hide his eyes in deep shadow, save for the flecks of amber that almost glowed in the night.
“We have been sent here to seek you out. My daughter,” Grant motioned to Shelby, “she—”
The man raised a hand in a dramatic fashion—almost if he were conducting an orchestra—and pointed at Grant with his index finger and letting his other fingers dangle freely. “You . . . you are not one of us.” The tone bespoke a warning.
Shelby grabbed her dad’s arm again and tugged.
“My daughter is one of you,” Grant said.
“You do not remember me,” the man said. “But I . . . I remember you. I remember the havoc you brought upon us.”
He knows my dad? Shelby wondered. The havoc?
Grant did not answer.
“You are her father?” the man asked, raising his chin.
“I am,” Grant said. “Moriahna sent us to you.”
The man snorted a growl and looked away. “Moriahna. And, pray tell, where is she? It has been quite some time.”
“Dead,” Grant said. “Sixteen years ago.”
The man smiled. Shelby didn’t think that was a good thing.
“So,” he said, “the deserter has met with justice and sent her half-spawn crawling home.” Shelby felt his judging eyes upon her.
Deserter? Shelby thought. She felt her lip sneer slightly at the insult to her mother.
“She followed her heart,” Grant said. “I make no apology for her, nor would she want me to. She left your pack with the blessing of Tobias and the promise of welcome at any time. I have the letter with his seal, unbroken.”
&n
bsp; Grant slowly took out a folded envelope from his left, rear pocket, the rounded corners frayed and paper crinkled with time. A red blot of dried wax sealed the envelope, a signet of a small crest with a crescent moon and a comet.
The man they faced spat. “Tobias has since departed from our ranks. Well, to be truthful, he has simply departed.”
Grant took a step back, finally obeying Shelby’s insistent tug on his arm, and returned the letter to his pocket. His hand found the hilt of the knife at his back and held firm.
“I only wish to find a home for my daughter,” he said. Pain laced his words. “The home I . . . cannot provide. She never knew about her mother, but Moriahna made me swear to find her a pack if she shifted. I thought the time had passed, but she shifted last year. Her time is running short. She needs a pack.”
The man snorted, quite dramatically, Shelby decided. “You should divert your eyes from me, little one,” he said pointedly to Shelby.
She felt the urge to obey, something within responding to his direct words. He’s an Alpha, she thought, the first time she had ever met one. Yes, there was power in his words, as her dad told her she would feel. But she did not obey. Would not. Why should she? He was not her Alpha, for her wolf had not chosen him. That she felt most powerfully.
The man, as if sensing her defiance, stepped forward, shoulders hunched aggressively. Grant and Shelby took another step back. A howl broke through the silence of the night, and Shelby started breathing heavily.
“Please,” Grant said, “my wife only wanted—”
“Do you remember, Grant, when she chose you instead of me?”
Her dad went completely still. Shelby could almost feel him searching his mind, plowing through memories nearly two decades old.
“Nicholas?” he asked, squinting.
“Tobias was weak,” the man—Nicholas—said. “Too careless with our secret. To forgive you, Grant, for what you brought upon this pack, to let one of our own outside the pack and mother a half-spawn with you, knowing what you were . . .”