Pack Ebon Red (The Seven Mates of Zara Wolf Book 1)

by C. M. Stunich

  Mr. Heath was terrified and his eyes, they were going glassy.

  He was losing too much blood.

  Sunlight was streaming across Julian's pale face.

  Sunlight.

  Sun.

  Vampire.

  I felt this awful nauseous twist in my stomach.

  “I told you that you might want my help,” a semi-familiar voice said from the tree to my right.

  A quick flick of my eyes in that direction showed me a fae woman with skin that glittered like the freshly fallen snow and hair the color of Che's eyes. But that icy voice, like a cold Antarctic river, and those sloe-eyes … those both belonged to the fae girl I'd met on Friday night—the fae girl that was now missing her head.

  It was then that I realized I might not've been speaking to a guard or a messenger or an emissary from the Unseelie Court; I might've been speaking to the queen.

  She held up another small, glass bottle and then tossed it over the edge of the cliff where it shattered and rained tiny shards down on Julian's head. He didn't pay any attention to it.

  “There's a daywalking vampire drinking my Intro to Wildflowers professor's blood,” I said as calmly as I was able, rising to my feet and trying not to scream. But I could, if I wanted to. An Unseelie Queen's glamour was virtually unbreakable and impossible to detect.

  “So there is,” she told me as the boys slowly shifted to human form around me. Nic grabbed my arm and tried to get my attention.

  “Zara, we have to help him,” he said, but I knew we couldn't. There was no way in hell we could let Julian knew what we'd seen; we had to follow him and find out where he was staying, who he was staying with, what the fuck he was. After a moment, Nic paused and released my arm, his nostrils flaring as he took in my aroused scent and the distinct smell of Che's seed.

  He took three, slow careful steps back from me, ebon eyes flashing with betrayal.

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

  Why did everything always have to hit me all at once?

  “How did he hide his fangs?” I asked the Unseelie Queen—because what other fae could traipse around in another's body, cast it aside once its head had been severed, and then pick up a new one just for fun.

  “Coven Triad magic,” she told me, giving the information freely. But her help … that would surely come at a cost. “They've finally bartered with Kingdom Ironbound and handed over the witch hazel, too. You'll notice he no longer smells like vampires.”

  “How the hell is a vampire walking around in broad daylight without a scratch or a mark on him?” Anubis asked, blinking crimson eyes up at the faerie queen. Her long, glittering legs hung over the tree branch, crossed at the ankles.

  She smiled at us all like we were stupid.

  “Don't you get it?” she said, and just then, the gears in my mind started to turn, shift, click into place. “Those idiot Bloods have finally discovered what the werewolves have been hiding so carefully from them for millennia.”

  Before I knew it, I was trembling from head to toe.

  This was bad; this was very, very bad.

  “When a vampire drinks a werewolf's blood …” the fae queen continued, hopping down from the tree and holding her hand out to indicate Julian and his red tinged lips. “They take all of that delicious earthy magic inside of them. Even an Ancient undead Blood can daywalk with that kind of power.”

  “The vampires drink the blood; the witches eat the flesh,” Jax said, and his normally cool, calm voice was gone, replaced with something darker, something heavy and angry and vengeful.

  “Aye,” said the queen, sitting down hard on a rock. A circle of mushrooms sprouted up around her, some of them growing straight out of the cliff face, their caps big and brown and teased with a hint of lavender blush at the edges. “The witches eat the flesh and gobble up the rest of the wolf's power.”

  “What is it that you want from us?” I snapped, getting angry and turning on her. “Our eyes? Our tongues? Our teeth?”

  I was so frustrated, so upset that for a moment, I forgot who I was talking to.

  Just like Nikolina, she was too fast for me to see move. One moment, she was sitting on the rock with her mushrooms and the next, Tidus was being shoved up against a tree by his throat. She'd grabbed one of the males I was supposed to protect, that I'd pledged to keep safe, instead of me.

  An icy coil of fear grew inside my belly and I held up a palm to stop my new mates from attacking. A pack would give its life to save an individual; I wouldn't let them start a fight we couldn't win.

  “The universe has checks and balances,” she said, keeping Tidus pinned but releasing some of the pressure from his throat when she saw I was backing down. Her sloe-eyed gaze dropped to the vampire on the other side of the cliff. “If this world loses the wolves, we lose the Veil,” she said, referring to that paper-thin layer that existed to keep the world of Faerie separate from ours. There wasn't a single being on this planet that would want that to come down; the fae would wreak havoc. They would murder the world.

  Apparently, they didn't want anyone here to have unfettered access to their side either.

  It was a lose-lose scenario.

  The queen finally released Tidus and let her gaze pan across Silas, Montgomery, Anubis. She paused on Nic and smiled, flicked her gaze to Che and grinned. Jax growled at her, but she ignored him.

  “Finish your Hunt,” she said, gesturing back in the direction of the game trail. Just off to the side of it, I realized the boys had taken down the moose while Che and I were mating. I'd been so wrapped up in the daywalker and the fae queen I hadn't even noticed the kiss of blood on their lips. “Eat the mushroom; come find me and we'll talk.”

  She stepped back into the faerie ring and was gone.

  This time, I let Montgomery kick one of the giant mushrooms away from the ring to close her little rabbit hole.

  Then we all paused as Julian tossed my professor's body aside like it was trash and raised his face to the sun.

  “I knew there was something wrong with that guy from day one,” Nic growled, throwing me an awful look before he turned and moved through the snow toward the still steaming carcass of the moose.

  When we'd started this Hunt, I'd been hungry, starving, ready for a wolf's feast.

  Not anymore.

  Well.

  I'd promised to find out what had happened to the missing werewolves and I had. But like with Faith's mom, it felt like a betrayal, a lie.

  Vampires were harvesting our blood to walk in the sun; witches were eating our flesh to steal our magic; dark faerie queens were watching our every move.

  I was caught in the middle of it with seven mates I'd sworn with all my heart to protect.

  I would fight until my last dying breath to make sure that that promise never turned out to be a lie.

  To Be Continued …

  Author's Note

  Thank you so much for reading Pack Ebon Red! I have to say, out of all the books I've written, this one just might be my favorite (although I do kind of say that a lot). ;) I hope you enjoyed your introduction to Zara's world and the seven Alpha Males she's been Bonded to.

  In the next book, Pack Violet Shadow, which releases August 20th, 2017, we'll get to learn a lot more about the guys, see their developing friendships—and romances—with Zara Castille form into real relationships.

  We'll also pay a visit to a vampire court, the world of Faerie, and meet a demon.

  Thank you again for reading, and I'll see you next time!

  P.S. If you enjoyed this book, will you please consider leaving a review? It's reviews from people like you that make books like this happen. Also, if you enjoyed Pack Ebon Red, you might want to check out some of my other young adult fantasy or reverse harem reads. Just keep turning the pages for more info.

  Kisses.

  C.M.

  The Sequel to "Pack Ebon Red".

  Five runaway teens, one epic love story.

  Reincarnated lovers meet seven vengeful monsters. Ma
gic, love, and fate. Launches October 2017.

  An academy dedicated to magic; a girl with six ghostly lovers. Coming Halloween 2017.

  "The fate of an entire people rests on my shoulders. I am heir to a dying throne, daughter of a dead city. I have made hard choices to get this far." Launches October 2017. Excerpt included below.

  Description

  The Feed is upon me and my destiny is laid out before me like a map. There are no detours, no hidden whirlpools that descend into the unknown. Everything I do must be carefully planned or else my choices could come crashing down around me. To change the hearts of my people, I must find the courage to surpass their expectations, to defy tradition and forge my own destiny.

  This is it, my last chance at redemption.

  ***

  The Huntswomen, sirens of the sea, have one real purpose in life: on their sixteenth birthdays, they must travel ashore and find a human male, mate with him, and consume his flesh. Only then can they return to the sea and become the last bastion against the violet ocean, warriors for their weaker brethren, the fishtailed merighean.

  Natalie is the heir to the throne of the last merighean city still standing, but there's something about the Feed that doesn't sit right with her. When she meets Seth, the man with the strange tattoos, she knows that she must forge her own destiny, even if it means breaking the rules and risking her mother's wrath. Because sometimes, to choose your own path, you must make hard choices.

  Prologue

  They came out of the quiet sea in small numbers and wicked intentions. Their eyes glowed dark and their lips twisted darker; they crawled from the sea foam in a primordial mass that writhed and spasmed. Like lizards they slithered through the sand and came for the men. The women watched them come and were disgusted, but the men, the men loved them as if they were goddesses born from the ocean's gelid waters.

  They were paramours and cannibals both, consuming, taking, destroying. They broke spirits and souls; families crashed to the floor like glass and were never again whole.

  They came to steal seed, life, came to bleed flesh.

  They came to feed.

  Chapter One

  I live in a world that doesn't understand me.

  I've been raised with a life already planned and a destiny chosen. But what if I want to make my own destiny? What if I want something different than everyone else? What does that make me?

  These questions have no answer as far as I know. But then, it's not as if I can ask them to anyone. If I even uttered a breath of dissent, my mother would come down on me like a hurricane, sweep me in the air and throw me against the rocks at the edge of the sea. I would never recover.

  I take a lungful of air into my chest and dive, swirling below eddies and fish that sparkle like diamonds. I shouldn't be out here, I know, not before my birthday, but I had to look.

  What I saw did not boost my confidence.

  The humans were not as I had been told. They were not the pale, spineless creatures of myth with sharpened spears and nets of iron and steel. I saw children with chubby legs and appendages on their feet that wiggled. I smile. So strange but beautiful. I liked them.

  My hair billows around my face as I pause, wiping it away with turquoise nails.

  Yuri and Ira are coming.

  Their muscular tails flash like silver, winding them between rocks and through crevices that would take me the better part of an hour. I'm in trouble. I'm not supposed to here. If my mother finds out …

  “Natalie?” Yuri is asking a question. He asks a lot of them. Yuri is the type of person who would span both land and sea if he were able. He loves to learn. “What are you doing?”

  Ira is already scowling. I can't stand his face, can hardly call him a friend.

  “She's spying,” he says; a leer is apparent now. I turn away and kick my legs. Water billows around his horrible sneer and makes him sneeze. Bubbles flutter around my feet and tickle. “She can't control the bloodlust any longer, and her skin burns for the touch of a human man.” I ignore him and wait for the waves to subside. Yuri is looking at me curiously.

  “I wanted to see if the texts were true.” Yuri is nodding; his eyes are sparkling from the sunlight streaming down from above. It's weird to see him in this light. I'm used to the cool whispers from the caverns and the sispa, the glowing shells that line the walls of the city.

  “Were they?” he asks, his face upturned to the light like the kelp that clings to the rocks around us.

  “Why are you asking?” Ira throws back at him, raising his brows and brushing hair from his face. It's so dark, so crimson, it looks like blood. It makes me sick. “We should go and look for ourselves.”

  And then his tail is knocking me back and sending me tumbling. I throw my arms out to the side, still myself. I'm treading water, but my heart is pounding.

  “Yuri?” I ask, wanting him to stop Ira. Ira is a male. He isn't allowed to watch the humans. It's expressly forbidden. If I am caught, I will receive a light punishment. My status as heir keeps me afloat when others would sink; Ira would be killed.

  In Yuri's eyes I see the desire for truth. He wants to know for himself.

  “Don't,” I say. Yuri looks away and doesn't move. His feelings for me will keep him below the waves which means I will have to go after Ira. The fool is already bobbing at the surface, tail flickering, scales coruscating like the metal coins I collect.

  I turn, weightless, nothing but air and scales under the water. It is so different from land, so much freer. I kick my feet, my legs bunching, pushing water behind me as my arms help me navigate whorls and currents. I'm only half-merighean so I'm not as efficient, but I'm certainly stronger. I grasp the edge of a rock and use it like a ladder, the sea pushing my bottom as my shoulders drag me upwards.

  When my head breaks the surface, I gasp. There are people coming this way in a boat. It growls through the water with speed, the device that powers it rumbling and gobbling water, spewing foam. The wakes it creates are bobbing Ira and I like buoys.

  “Down below the surface,” I say, but his eyes are open so wide, peeled back from his face and already starting to dry out. He wasn't made for this world. “I said now.” I put authority in my voice. This rouses him briefly. He knows that in this moment, I am not his friend. I am his future queen.

  Ira ducks beneath the water and is gone in a flash of silver and crimson. He wheels through crevices and past rocks like an eel, twisting and whirling through the currents as fear takes over him. He wanted to see, but he wasn't ready. None of them are.

  I stay a moment longer and breathe air into my lungs. I can absorb oxygen through the slits in my neck, but real air is so much sweeter. Then I dive, before the boat and the people inside it see me. That would not do. Not yet. Not until the Feed.

  When I get back to where Yuri is waiting, Ira is already gone.

  “He was spooked,” Yuri says and brushes blonde from his face. It's getting tangled in some kelp so I reach forward and help him unknot it. It isn't fair that the males have to wear their hair free and long just because the women like it. I touch his cheeks with my nails.

  “You two should not have come here,” I breathe and little bubbles drift between us like stars. I can feel my body aching for something foreign, something that I have never experienced. Unlike the other Huntswomen, I have restrained myself.

  “I saw you leaving, and I knew,” he says. His face is melancholy, and I know why. The Feed is coming too soon for either of us. But he wants me after. I know that. I just don't know if I want him. “I tried to come alone, but Ira followed. I'm sorry.” Yuri shakes his head, and my hand floats away from him.

  “It's okay,” I say, trying to assure us both but not about Ira, about what's coming. Yuri nods but he doesn't believe me. I don't blame him. I don't believe myself either.

  When we get back to the city, Yuri disappears in search of Ira and I find myself surrounded by a group of my fellow Huntswomen.

  “Where were you?” they whisper, th
eir breath tickling my face with tiny bubbles. I shrug and they shiver as one, like a school of angelfish, bright and colorful. Mindless. They're giggling now, kicking their feet and doing pinwheels, trying to entice some of the males that are swimming nearby, their tails slapping the water in invitation. I ignore them all and allow myself to sink to the ocean floor. There's a gasp as I do this though I do it everyday. The merighean don't like it when I walk with my legs. It reminds them that we're not the same, that we're different and we'll always be different. That the Huntswomen are to be feared. After their initial fear passes, however, they poke fun at me and say that I look like a crab. They make scuttling motions with their fingers that I ignore as I step inside the antechamber to my mother's palace.

  The walls are open to the sea, as they are in most of our structures; the rib bones of an ancient sea dragon surround me on all sides, curving up through the dark waters like the branches of trees that I've spotted on the mainland. We used to be great, my mother always says when she gazes up at them. We had cities throughout the world, civilizations that could've ground the humans to dust, but our passiveness was our downfall and so we must remain strong.

  I take a deep breath and start forward. If she sees me walking, I'll be punished, but I do it anyway because I like the feeling of solidness beneath my feet. The earth grounds me in a way the sea never can; it's so tumultuous. I sigh and bubbles burst from my mouth, spiral up towards the faded light of the sun. It seems so far away though I was there only hours ago. It's a different world above the sea, to be certain.

  “Is everything alright?” my sister asks from behind me. I know it's her because she swims crooked, making odd gurgling noises that no one else does. Half of her tail fin is missing, taken by a shark in her earlier days. I turn around and smile at her. She's the only one besides Yuri who treats me like a person and not a Huntswoman. She is also blind so I answer her quickly so that she's able to hear my smile. Not many treat Yanori with the respect she deserves.