Now, in contrast, all I wanted was to run home to Haven with my tail between my legs. I’d hole up in my cottage, pulling the covers up over my face and pretending the outside world didn’t exist. Or maybe it would feel better to pound my head against the wall until the pain outside matched the agony of losing a brother I’d come so far to meet. I was willing to leave my options open and play the mourning period by ear.
Because, either way, the end would be the same. Once my pack mates decided I’d enjoyed enough solitude to soothe the cavity in my gut, they’d come to call in ones, twos, and half dozens. I’d fix us all cups of rich hot chocolate and let tears salt the frothy drink. Eventually, my loss would be forgotten amid the scents and sights of home.
Even though I was currently located hundreds of miles outside Haven, I was still tempted to curl up inside those fond memories. To let the present and future fend for themselves while I drifted back into the rose-tinted past.
But my wolf’s predatory hunger gnawed at my belly, and the increasingly adamant buzz of my phone jolted me awake. The call, my inner beast urged. Our pack.
Take it then, I countered, not quite willing to relinquish the seductive allure of an imaginary homecoming. The bus ride home would give Wolfie enough time to bake me another masterpiece, and Mom would welcome me with open arms. We’d go running in lupine form as soon as the sun set, would explore our mountainside in search of prey that put this city’s measly deer and elk to shame.
This time when my wolf broke into my pity party, she didn’t bother with human words. Instead, seizing control of our shared body, she pulled the buzzing phone out of our pocket with a predator’s intensity and swiped the screen alight.
And for one long moment, we hung in suspended animation. I tried to tiptoe back toward my self-pitying solitude...while the wolf struggled to read a message that didn’t quite make sense to her dyslexic lupine brain.
In the end, curiosity drew me in just as my inner beast had known it would. The amorphous letters my wolf was peering at so intently materialized into words before my very eyes. And the resulting message slapped me in the face with its reminder that Derek wasn’t the only innocent whose safety currently hung in the balance.
Top Dog: “Dinner venue has been changed. Dress is informal. Your presence is required immediately.”
And beneath the curt invitation came a familiar street number. The zoo. Could it be mere coincidence that Chief Greenbriar was summoning me to the same location in which Harmony and her daughter had recently disappeared? I somehow doubted as much.
Chapter 24
Immediately, I lost the final vestige of lassitude as my mind kicked back into gear. Male shifters were attacking women in Chief Greenbriar’s own city. At least one of them was doing so using alpha compulsion that the male shouldn’t have been strong enough to wield.
Meanwhile, the alpha’s mate was well aware of the problem, as evidenced by Andrea’s choice to bring my potential rapist along on our morning meet and greet. Surely what Andrea knew, her spouse knew as well...which suggested the latter was implicitly supporting what was not only an ethical lapse but also a potentially earth-shattering breach of shifter security.
I’d gotten sidetracked down a blind alley earlier trying to figure out what could prompt a strong alpha werewolf to allow such shenanigans to go on under his very nose. Chief Greenbriar was no pushover, no pack leader clinging to power by the skin of his teeth. So why look the other way when his underlings’ actions threatened the shroud we’d so carefully drawn over our very existence? Why risk his entire pack—and werewolves everywhere—for the sake of a few males who could easily be barked into line?
“He didn’t ignore it. He caused it.” I only realized I’d spoken aloud...and walked halfway across the parking garage...when a car door slammed behind me and the human professor called after my rapidly retreating form.
“Wait! We can figure this out together. Whatever happened to your brother is my fault, and I’ll do anything I have to in order to fix what I broke.”
Nice thought. Sweet thought. And, at its heart, such a very human thought.
“It’s too late,” I called back, turning my head slightly so the words would carry...but not allowing myself to set eyes on a male who strummed at my heartstrings as if they were stretched across the barrel of a banjo. Instead, I pushed a modicum of alpha compulsion into my final response, hoping the order would stick. “Go home.”
Sebastien wasn’t a shifter, though, so my command didn’t push him backwards with unerring gravity. Instead, footsteps continued in my wake as I tore down the ramp and out into the darkening city. The clatter of shoes on pavement dogged my heels as street lights flickered to life above both of our heads, and the sound impinged on the cheerful chatter marking the post-work rituals that were the closest human beings came to pack life.
Deep within my belly, my wolf whined her confusion. It shouldn’t hurt this much to walk away from a human we barely knew. It shouldn’t feel like we were ripping our heart out of our very chest when we ducked into a blind alley, clambered up onto a brick wall, and flattened ourselves atop a shadowed awning while waiting for our follower to pass unwittingly by.
Unfortunately, Sebastien was a more than adequate hunter despite lacking a lupine skin. So rather than following the false track I’d presented, the professor paused beneath my perch and stared down the empty lane toward the only sign of life—a stray cat jumping up onto the lip of a dumpster in preparation to dine. The professor might be facing in the wrong direction, but he knew when he’d lost a trail.
For a long moment after that, the human merely stood silently, pupils dilating against the deepening gloom. Then he murmured into the empty air. “Ember, please don’t disappear like your brother did.”
The words would have been inaudible to a human standing further than five feet from his current position. But I was a wolf, and I heard every syllable.
I heard every syllable...and I knew I couldn’t respond. So, slithering up onto the nearest rooftop, I rose to my feet and padded away on silent hunters’ feet.
Because Harmony and Rosie were in danger two blocks to the west. And while I’d failed my brother, I refused to let down the rest of his small but deeply important pack.
AS SOON AS I LEFT SEBASTIEN’S side, a sharp jolt of pain cut through my belly. And the churning grew worse rather than better as I made my way across a series of darkened rooftops, leaving the professor further and further behind.
Only when I’d descended back to street level at the midpoint of my journey did I find something more interesting than cramping to capture my attention. There, stomach troubles were quickly forgotten as rigid hairs on the back of my neck suggested I was being watched.
Spinning in a tight circle, wolf-assisted senses took in the subtle clues hanging in the evening air. The faintest aroma of shifter proved that a member of Chief Greenbriar’s pack had passed this way within the last half hour, and the faintest tinge of fear coated my tongue like mud. Still, no one accosted me as I strode onward through streets that appeared completely devoid of life. Even the zoo—which rose out of the darkness as a long line of cast-iron fencing—had descended into nighttime silence.
The side gate, though, wasn’t locked tight for the evening as it should have been. Instead, one half of the ten-foot-tall barrier swung in the breeze, the opening inviting me forward like the sight of a gingerbread cottage had drawn Hansel and Gretel out of the woods and into the witch’s lair.
Unlike those unwitting children, I knew I was making a mistake by diving in without spending appropriate time on reconnaissance. And yet....the ache in my stomach was making it difficult to think while the faintest gasp of a baby in the distance sped my feet rather than slowing them down. If I hesitated too long and allowed harm to come to Rosie in the interim...was that really worth the safety of my own skin?
I was through the gate before I’d even made a conscious decision to continue forward. And as soon as I stepped through the gap,
words came whispering in around me, encircling my skin like a confounding fog.
“Find a mate. Find an appropriate female mate. Find a mate and settle down. Settle down and make some pups.”
I shook my head to dislodge the noise, glancing up at the speakers that dotted the top of the monkey habitat off to the left. Had Chief Greenbriar tapped into the zoo’s PA system? Because that was the alpha’s voice layering additional tension onto the roiling of my gut.
“Find a mate,” the refrain began again, growing neither softer nor louder as I padded deeper into the quiet zoo. I stalked past the reptile habitat—locked up tight—then wandered alongside sleeping giraffes and elephants.
There was still no sign of two-legged life, though. So when the pathway split, I made an educated guess and followed the most likely direction. After all, what shifter wouldn’t naturally gravitate toward real live wolves?
“Find a mate. Find an appropriate female mate. Find a mate and settle down. Settle down and make some pups.”
Despite my best attempts to keep my wits about me, the compulsion to breed built as I traveled deeper into the animal habitats. First, it was just an easily ignorable hunger that reminded me of the craving for chocolate. But then I found myself salivating over an educational poster on the side of the penguin enclosure, eying a two-dimensional woman’s cloth-covered curves as if she represented the most delectable croissant from a Paris cafe despite my formerly relentless heterosexuality.
I could handle the siren call of a poster—barely. But then the scent of an ovulating human slipped inside my flaring nostrils. The female had sat on this exact same bench only an hour earlier, had risen and walked out into the city alone. Perhaps if I turned west and picked up my pace, I could find the breeder before someone else took her to mate....?
Okay, this is bullshit. Sticking fingers into my ears did nothing to break the compulsion’s hold, but closing my eyes and holding my nose helped a little. The obsession eased yet further when my wolf rose up to join me in guiding our shared body down the path, her simple mind keeping more complex human emotions at bay.
The compulsion is coming via the Greenbriar pack bond, I realized at last, my wolf’s assistance lending me sufficient breathing room to analyze the effect rationally. Which meant Chief Greenbriar was more powerful than I’d originally imagined, his ability to compel behavior from pack mates at a distance something I’d never run into before.
Perhaps that explained the apparently civilized males driven to rape females along this city’s tree-lined streets? If so, then one of those potential rapists might have been given leave to wield his alpha’s power in the process, the pack leader’s compulsion being sufficient to freeze my feet in place when the male in question shouldn’t have been powerful enough to even stare me down.
I shivered, wondering what would lie at the epicenter of these insidious commands. Because if a female like me with no interest in members of the same sex was being so easily manipulated by the alpha’s compulsion, then what chance did male members of his own clan have against the endlessly repeated refrain?
“Find a mate. Find an appropriate female mate. Find a mate and settle down. Settle down and make some pups.”
Once again, my skin itched with the urge to obey. My hands dropped back to my sides in an attempt to speed my walking...and then, above the deep rumble of Chief Greenbriar’s voice, came the thready wail of a fussy child.
My niece.
Forgetting both caution and compulsion, I changed trajectory so Rosie’s voice guided me forward. Then I let the wolf have her head as our human feet broke into a run.
Chapter 25
“There she is, the guest of the hour.”
Chief Greenbriar was dressed every bit as formally as he had been the evening before, and the tux he wore should have looked out of place along the dusty paths of the overpopulated wolf habitat. But, instead, I almost imagined the animals had invited him over for dinner and were even now whipping up a feast within their shadowed cavern...rather than cowering in the far corner hoping to escape from a predator twice as dangerous as themselves.
“Alpha,” I acknowledged, advancing slowly so I had time to scan the surroundings in search of the child who had initially drawn me in. At first, I couldn’t find her. But then Harmony’s arm twitched and I caught sight of mother and daughter huddled together beneath a spreading maple tree at the edge of the enclosure.
I heaved a sigh of relief...then sucked the same recently exhaled breath right back in. Because what I’d taken for a tussock of browned grasses at the humans’ feet now turned its head toward me, eyes glowing forth above a slender snout. Harmony and Rosie hadn’t chosen the tree as a safe harbor in a dangerous storm. Instead, they were being herded and guarded by a territorial wolf.
Or rather, a territorial werewolf. Because the unmistakable aroma of shifter emanated not just from Chief Greenbriar, but from his lackey as well.
And while the realization that this beast was governed by human emotions might otherwise have calmed my nerves, the alpha’s compulsion was still reverberating within my own skull. Sure enough, the wolf’s teeth were bared and his gaze was intent upon the thin-skinned innocents who huddled so close to his pointed fangs. Whether or not the male’s human intellect was awake and active behind those shadowed eyes, the animal could be summed up in a single word—dangerous.
For their parts, Harmony and Rosie were terrified. Human fear spread across the enclosure like a suffocating smog, and it was all I could do to prevent my wolf from carrying me directly to my family members’ aid. Instead, I walked up to the fence line separating me from both alpha and hostages and tried to act casual as I leaned against its metal railing.
“You asked me to come and I came. Now I’d appreciate it if you released these humans into my care.”
Harmony’s already stuttering breathing caught in response to my speech and I winced, realizing what I’d said. Unfortunately, my sister-in-law was no dummy. She’d been herded here by humans, wolves, or some subset of both...and in the process she must have discovered the existence of monsters that sometimes wore humanity’s skin. My words had just lumped me in with the monsters instead of the humans. I somehow doubted Harmony would willingly parole herself into my care any time soon.
Not that my sister’s release appeared immediately imminent. “You know the law,” Chief Greenbriar answered, breaking through my regret like a hot knife through cold butter. “These humans have become privy to information they shouldn’t have ever known. As such, their fate is predetermined. But that’s not why we’re here....”
Once again, the refrain from earlier rose up through my thoughts. “Find a mate. Find an appropriate female mate. Find a mate and settle down. Settle down and make some pups.”
And as I strained against the mental intrusion, I caught the faintest flicker of movement along the path from whence I’d come. Barely managing to keep Harmony and Chief Greenbriar in view at the same time, I swiveled to look behind me...and caught sight of two shifters stumbling out of the shadows that lined the concrete path.
Aaron came first, back ramrod-stiff as he fought his father’s compulsion and nearly stumbled over his own feet in the process. I apparently wasn’t the only one whose head was filled with sexual orders, either. Because as soon as the male took in my existence, his eyes lit up and his mouth dropped open while drool began sliding down the side of his slackening face.
Charming.
Meanwhile, Roger slunk out of the darkness with more attentiveness to his current surroundings. This second male’s jaw was clenched, and he reached one hand toward his significant other before shaking his head and allowing the arm in question to fall back against his side.
And as Roger advanced yet further into the light, I realized the reason for his hesitation. Because one eye was ringed with purple bruising while a cut leaked blood at the corner of his brow. The two had struggled already, I gathered, probably initially against Chief Greenbriar’s orders then later—once
Aaron fell under his father’s sway—amongst themselves.
In the end, though, alpha compulsion had won out over the restraint of a lover. So Roger had found no solution save trailing along in his partner’s wake. He, like I, had been drawn here in an effort to save someone he held dear, and he, like I, now waited impotently to see what the pack leader had in mind.
“Son, welcome,” Chief Greenbriar greeted Aaron, either ignoring or failing to notice the other recently arrived werewolf. Now that his offspring was present, in fact, the older male stepped down from the mound he’d used to elevate himself above the fray, striding forward and unlatching the enclosure’s gate before extending one arm toward the entrance as if to usher us all inside. “I’ve selected two fine specimens for you to choose from,” he told his son proudly. “Tonight will be a very special night.”
Whatever his personal feelings on the matter, Aaron had no choice but to obey. Jerky movements suggested the heir apparent was fighting against his alpha, but legs carried him forward through the open gate anyway.
For his part, Chief Greenbriar led his son back into the wolf habitat without concern for the two other shifters—Roger and myself—who could easily have leapt upon his unprotected back. We all knew who had the upper hand here and who was no more than an audience for the upcoming charade.
“Find a mate. Find an appropriate female mate. Find a mate and settle down. Settle down and make some pups.”
For a split second, Roger and I united in our joint rejection of the stifling command. Our eyes met across the intervening space, and I thought the male might try something profoundly stupid. How easy would it be to end the craziness by spilling Chief Greenbriar’s blood across the grass?
But we weren’t wolves. We were people. And, after a split second, my companion’s lips pursed as he turned to trail along in his lover’s wake.
Shifter Origins (Series-Starter Shifter Variety Packs Book 1) Page 47
