Soul of the Wolves
Leslie Lynn Lee
First Edition 2018
©Copyright Lizzie Lynn Lee January 2018
Cover Art by (Lizzie Lynn Lee) ©Copyright (January/2018)
Edited by Amy Springer
Proofread by Lisa Bing
Line Edit by Cassie Hess-Dean
This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. 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 author.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
Contents
Soul of the Wolves
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Epilogue
Join My Mailing List
About the Author
Lizzie Lynn Lee Bibliography
Soul of the Wolves
Lizzie Lynn Lee
Vivaciously plump Susan “Sookie” Alkin is blackmailed into marrying a stranger. Her younger brother, Jesse, had been infected with a designer virus that transformed him into a feral, dangerous monster: a manmade werewolf. If she wants Jesse to be cured, she has to play as a mourning widow of a young billionaire alpha who rules the Underworld.
Ethan Hunter, Alpha of the only direwolf pack in North America, recently survived an assassination attempt. He fakes amnesia to flush out the traitor within his own family. Imagine his surprise when his cousin, Cain, brings Ethan’s curvy new bride who he said Ethan had married the night before his accident. It’s bogus, of course, and Ethan plans to punish her as Cain’s accomplice once he sorts everything out. But when Ethan sees her, he immediately knows that the curvaceous Sookie is his mate. A bonded mate.
Ethan then decides to play along with the charade. He tries to coax Sookie into revealing the truth. But Sookie has too much at stake even though the attraction between them grows into an uncontrollable wildfire. The question is can he gain Sookie’s trust because he’s the only one who can help her? If he can’t, then their bond will perish in the upcoming war that will sweep the Underworld.
Prologue
Tonight was a beautiful night for grave robbing.
The sky was clear. The gentle breeze was nice and relaxing. The moonlight was bright with the star-showered constellation framing the sky, while the cicadas sang a midsummer symphony in the background. It was a picture-perfect evening to do anything but nefarious deeds.
Susan “Sookie” Alkin grabbed a shovel from the trunk of her car and hefted it over her shoulder, all while cursing her younger brother in silence. This is the last time I do something this crazy. No more. I’ve had it. I won’t bail out his antics after this. He has to grow up and he needs to start taking some responsibilities.
But when her gaze collided with her younger brother, Jesse, her anger evaporated in an instant. He always had that effect on her. Jesse was her soft spot. Her weakness. Their mother’s dying wish echoed inside her head, “People come and go, Sookie, but bloods are forever. Watch out for your brothers for me.”
As her mom whispered those last words, she had no idea that Dad and John had already passed. Her parents had taken John, Jesse’s twin, to the ER for a sprained ankle and on the way there, an eighteen-wheeler T-boned their sedan in a practically deserted intersection. The impact killed Dad and John instantly. Mom was in critical condition when Sookie and Jesse arrived frantically in the hospital. Mom was conscious for a short time before she slipped into a coma. Three days later, Mom died, leaving her and Jesse orphaned. Sookie was seventeen years old at that time, Jesse only seven. For the past nine years, Sookie had practically raised her brother on her own.
And it hadn’t been easy.
Jesse was too mischievous for his own good.
He kept getting into problems one after another. Even if he was trying to be a good boy. As his older sister, Sookie was obligated to keep him out of trouble. After all, Jesse was the only one she had left in the world.
Why can’t he be a good kid and hold a normal job? Sookie often lamented. Her brother Jesse had just celebrated his sixteenth birthday last month and he had an incredibly short attention span. He was a bright kid but got easily bored. When he got bored he stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and so far, nothing good had ever come from that.
Jesse gusted a long-suffered teen-age sigh. “I know, I know. You’re thinking I’m incredibly stupid for doing this. I’m an irresponsible kid, yada yada yada,” he drawled. His voice dripped with regrets that never lasted. “Trust me, if I knew somebody else I could ask for help, I wouldn’t dream of asking you to do this. You’re my only hope, sis. Plus, I know you’re the only person who’d never rat me out. You think Steve and Matt would keep this to themselves if I ask for their help? They’d brag about this on Snapchat.”
Jesse’s best friends, Steve and Matt, were equally as airheaded as he was. Steve was worse because he seemed to be stoned most of the time. Luckily, Jesse stayed away from pot. He hated smoke and the taste of alcohol. Sookie often thanked God for small miracles.
Without saying a word, Sookie skewered Jesse with her famous death glare. Her brother was only sixteen but he was already a foot taller than her. His body was fit and toned because he played football at school. He was a running back. But despite his brawny build he possessed an angelic face. He was the reflection of their late father when their dad was young. From the light, golden, straw color of his hair, to his baby-blue eyes and Patrician nose. Even his easy smile.
Jesse appeared to be immune to her scowl. He grinned boyishly because he knew she couldn’t stay mad at him, no matter how big of a mess he got her into.
Sookie cursed silently again.
I should have been more firm with him. I should have spanked him more often when he was young. I shouldn’t be helping him to dig a grave in the middle of the night. What if we get caught? Who’s going to post bail? We don’t have anybody else. It just me and him against the world.
“I’m sorry, sis. I swear I won’t do this anymore,” he whined.
“Talk is cheap, Jesse.”
“I mean it.”
She sighed.
They were poor, basically living from paycheck to paycheck. She worked as inventory loader in a home improvement store, and lately, her employer had been cutting hours due to the recession. She couldn’t afford any surprise expenses. Money was tight as it was.
“Tell me why we’re doing this again?” she asked.
“I need to retrieve a package that Zeke hid in the coffin. You know Zeke, right?”
She nodded. “Your boss’s son.”
“Then you know I can’t say no to him. After all, he’s the one who got me this job. Zeke had a fight with Mr. Burke all day yesterday. Mr. Burke confiscated Zeke’s stuff and even seriously did a pat-down before Zeke left so he can’t carry his goods out—“
“Wait a minute, slow down. Goods? What do you mean by goods?”
He made face. “I don’t know.”
“Jesse!”
“I seriously don’t know. I heard Zeke did some dealing on the side. My guess is he’s moving some pot.”
Sookie went ramrod straight. “Are you telling me we’re about to desecrate a grave to dig up a package of marijuana?”
>
“Sssh. Lower your voice.” Jesse looked around. “I swear to you, I don’t know what’s in the package but Zeke told me it worth five grand.”
“Forget it. Possession of marijuana of that amount is a freaking felony, on top of desecrating a grave. We’re not going to do this. We could go to jail for a long time.”
“But sis, if I don’t get that package, I’ll owe Zeke five grand.”
“Tell Zeke to dig up the grave himself. How is it your fault in the first place?”
Her brother looked sheepish under the bright ray of moonlight. “It happened so fast, I didn’t have time to think. Zeke gave me the package to hide it somewhere. I didn’t want to bring it home because you’d have a fit about it—”
“You’re damn right, I would!”
“See? I can’t bring it to school either ‘cause they frequently do locker checkups. So I decided to hide it in the funeral house.”
“Inside a casket? Did you forget to pay your brain bill this month?”
“I thought this was safe.” Jesse widened his puppy-dog eyes. “This casket is worth twenty-five grand. We rarely move a casket that expensive. When I found out Mr. Burke had moved the Savon—”
“The what?”
“The casket. Savon casket. It’s the Rolls Royce of the casket world. By the time I found out Mr. Burke had moved the Savon from the showroom, I was too late. It was a quick burial. The family didn’t even hold a wake or a funeral service. I was told the deceased has connections with the mob and the family wanted to hush the whole thing up.”
Great. Just fucking great. Oh Jesse, what am I going to do with you? Sookie swallowed hard. She had a bad feeling about this. Why wouldn’t she? They were about to become the grave robbers of a gangster family in this bones orchard. Desperation settled in. There was no easy way to get this one. “Can you talk to Zeke about this? Can Zeke recover this package himself?” Sookie tried to reason.
Jesse let out a deep consternation. “Don’t you think I haven’t already tried? He said either I dig it up or I pay him five grand.”
“You’re sixteen. How are you supposed to come up with five grand?”
Jesse’s shoulders sagged. “I’m sorry, sis. I had no other choice.”
Damn, damn, damn.
“Oh, Jesse.” Sookie counted to ten before she made her decision. “Fine. If we don’t get arrested when this is over, swear to me that you’ll stay away from Zeke.”
Her brother’s face lit up. “I swear. This is the last time I do something this stupid.”
“You’d better. ‘Cause I’m done bailing out your sorry ass. No more, Jesse. No more.” Sookie knew her threat was like a Chihuahua’s bark. Big noise, but no bite. She’d still bail him out no matter what kind of trouble he got himself into. To hell and back.
Bloods are forever.
She grabbed a gaslight lantern and a plastic bag that contained bottled water from the trunk and slammed the lid down. “Let’s go.”
Jesse eyed the plastic bag. “Do we really need those?”
“Have you seen Supernatural? Grave digging is a hard work. I’ll be lucky if I don’t break my back after this is over.”
“I’ll do all the house chores for a month to make it up to you,” Jesse offered. “I’ll even do the cooking.”
“No thanks. You can do the chores but there’s no reason for you to poison me.”
“Well, sor-ry. You never taught me how to cook.”
“I’ll teach you how to cook when you learn how to distinguish between cooking and science projects.”
“It’s called modernist gastronomy. Every young chef is doing it on Youtube. It’s cool.”
“Uh-huh. Turning a three-pound fish filet into something that looks like cat food isn’t cool. Let’s find this grave and get this over with.”
Jesse smashed his lips into a thin line and stalked toward the cemetery fence. The Sacred Heart Cemetery sprawled over a few acres of land on the outskirts of town. It was an old cemetery owned by a Catholic church. It used to have a small chapel right by the entrance, but the building was levelled two years ago. The city claimed that small chunk of property as eminent domain to build an overpass. The dispute was still going on between the city and the church.
The fence wasn’t properly secured and judging from the look of it, there was no security camera present anywhere. Sookie and Jesse got in easily. They spent a good twenty minutes navigating among the tombstones before Jesse located the grave that they were looking for. A lonesome funeral bouquet perched sadly on top of the plot. Fresh sod was installed over the previously dug area. The grave was marked with a simple marble plaque that read: Here lies our beloved son and brother, Marcus Eddie James. Engraved below it was Marcus’s date of birth and date of his passing, which was only two days previous.
Sookie read it and found it a bit odd. The deceased was only twenty-five years old. One would think someone that young who had met an untimely demise would spend more time in the morgue, waiting for an autopsy. From the time of death to be buried in the grave in two days seemed fast, as if his family couldn’t wait to deliver dear Marcus into his final resting place as soon as possible.
“Does Marcus Eddie James sound like a gangster name to you?” asked Sookie.
“What do you expect? Don Vito Corelone?”
“Who?”
“The Godfather, geez. Watch a movie once in a while.”
“Don’t you take that tone with me, boy.” Sookie put down her stuff and lit the lantern with a match and turned it on dimly. The moonlight and the lantern gave them enough illumination to work. “Let’s dig. I only help you up until we reach the casket. You’ll deal with the rest. I don’t want to touch any corpses.”
“You don’t have to.”
They started working by removing the flower arrangement and the layer of sod. Jesse used a flat blade shovel to chisel away the outline of the grave. It had been a hot and dry summer, the dirt was easily crumbling and breaking down. They dug four inches down and Sookie’s shovel hit a solid surface.
“What is this? Don’t tell me we hit the coffin already. I thought they buried people six feet under,” said Sookie. She cleared the area with her hands.
“That’s must be a plywood the diggers use to reinforce the grass. Otherwise, the ground might collapse and create a sinkhole.” Jesse shoveled away the dirt until he found the seam where he could lift the plywood. “And actually, they don’t dig six feet deep anymore these days. The average depth for a grave is approximately four feet. That’s because the casket itself is placed inside a concrete box with a flat lid.”
Sookie stopped digging. “How are we supposed to open the concrete box?”
“A crowbar would do nicely.” Jesse threw a nod over his shoulder. He had a flat tool on the side of the mound that Sookie didn’t see he was carrying. “I’ll make it work somehow.”
“Great. This night just keeps bearing gifts.” Sookie resumed the back-breaking work. She bit her tongue, refraining from chiding her brother for the ten thousand things that could go wrong with their night excursion. She saved that anger and directed it toward digging the never-ending layers of dirt.
After they removed the plywood, Sookie vehemently attacked the soil with her shovel and soon the mound around them grew. Even though she was blessed with generous curves, she was physically fit, thanks to her day job. She moved pallets of merchandise like tiles, concrete bags and grass seeds to the display floor, often without a forklift, running around the store all day to keep up with the schedule, cranky customers and an equally cantankerous manager.
They moved two feet of soil and Sookie was already exhausted.
“Why don’t you take a break, sis?” Jesse noticed she was out of breath.
Sookie drank some water and continued digging. “I want this over with. The sooner the better.”
“It won’t do you any good if you collapse.”
“You can just bury me in here, then.”
Her brother didn’t squeak
a word at her being snappish. They worked in silence. Sookie thought she was going to faint but her fear of being caught prompted her to pour her energy into moving more earth from a stranger’s final resting place. Just when she thought she couldn’t do it anymore, her shovel hit another hard surface. The excitement alone was enough to wash off her exhaustion. She felt as if she had found a pirate’s treasure instead of desecrating a grave.
“Finally,” Sookie hissed sharply. "I thought I was going to die."
“I’ll take it from here.” Her brother was bathed in perspiration but he oddly didn't look as winded as she was.
Sookie had to take a breather. Sweat soaked her shirt. Earth found its way into her clothes and it felt like she was coated with grit and mud. Her legs were shaky and her lungs burned. She trudged toward her water bottle and climbed out of the hole. She drained the bottle while watching her brother shovel the remaining soil off the top of the casket liner.
Once the dirt was cleared, Jesse tapped along the edge tentatively. Sookie put the lantern down for better lighting. Her brother took the crowbar and shimmed it on the liner edge, seeking traction to push the lid up. Jesse grunted and fiddled with what he was doing for a few minutes.
"Problem?" Sookie asked.
"Nothing. It just—" Jesse grunted again. "The lid is sealed. With some. Ugh. Sticky tar. Ugh. Almost..."
She heard the metal graze against something made from wood and stone, then a loud creak. At this point Jesse was hacking the concrete lid as if it was his number one enemy. She inwardly sighed. They were beyond making their presence inconspicuous. She just wanted to get this over with. Jesse wanted to recover Zeke's package.
At long last, Jesse was able to open the concrete lid. It had been with sheer determination that he accomplished it.
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