by Laken Cane
“I have nothing more to say,” she told me, her voice slightly regretful. She no longer looked me in the eye, as though she was afraid I’d read something in hers that I had no business knowing.
“You have a lot more to say,” I murmured. “But that’s okay, Seer. I know you’ll tell me if you’ve seen something critical.”
Something had changed since she’d had her peek inside me, though. She was just as polite, just as interested and curious, but she was now just a little more…guarded.
If I had known her better, I might have brought up the subject of the demon and how my blood on his blade had expelled him from his body and trapped him in this world. She might have had some advice. But I couldn’t ask her that. Not yet.
“Where is the alpha?” she asked Eli, as though her encounter with me had made her wish for his support.
“He had to discipline a couple of stupid pups,” he told her, but he looked at me when he said it.
Her stare dropped to the new blood I’d picked up from my latest fight with the demon, as well as the red bruises decorating the tattoo on the back of my hand. Her body stiffened and her eyes narrowed. “Did they—”
“No,” I assured her. “I got messy from a battle on my way here.”
“Ah.” She, too, peered at me, understanding lighting her eyes. “I apologize for our wolves, Kaitlyn. The pack was warned, but they don’t always listen. At least the young ones who’ve yet to learn of their alpha’s wrath.” She smiled slightly. “Don’t worry about them. Whatever he does to them, they will learn their lesson, and they will heal with their manners firmly intact.”
I squinted at her. I didn’t ask how she knew I was just a tiny bit worried about what Eli might do to them. She was a seer who’d been inside my head. I felt ridiculous for my worry, but that told me one thing.
I was already thinking of this pack and these wolves as mine.
“You need to talk about the creature attacking the pack,” Eli told us both, “so I can get Lennon out of the woods.”
It didn’t hurt my feelings that he wasn’t concerned with my safety. People didn’t tend to see me as vulnerable. I nodded. “Tell me everything you know,” I said.
She shook her head and clenched her fists, frustrated. “That’s why I’m here in the woods. I’d hoped I would pick up something vital to tell you—but I feel and see…nothing, really. Nothing.”
I could understand her frustration. A seer always saw something. It had to be driving her crazy that the creature was so hidden from her.
“That’s not entirely true,” she said, then. “I feel darkness. Darkness and wind, that’s what I see. I don’t know what it is, where it came from, or why it is feeding on our wolves.” This time a tear escaped.
“I’m sorry for the loss of your wolves,” I murmured. “I’ll catch this asshole, Lennon.” I smiled inwardly, remembering fondly how it felt to want to please one’s seer.
She touched my arm, secure in the fact that there were layers of fabric between her skin and mine. “You will get what you want, Kaitlyn.” She hesitated, then continued, her voice soft but sure. “You will be Pack.”
I shivered, fighting my own suddenly rising tears. I was a lone wolf by force, not by choice or nature. For twelve years I had felt like a lonely dog chained in some asshole’s back yard, and I was finally about to be brought inside. My wolf shivered as well, eager, excited, hopeful.
“You are the person you are because of your exile,” she told me. “If you’d stayed in your pack, you would not be the same. The despair of your past was necessary for the hope of your future.”
Then she stiffened and for a brief moment, she was no longer there. And I felt it, too. The cold, dark wind, the fear, the heaviness.
“He’s here,” we said at the exact same time.
Eli didn’t hesitate. He slid his arm around her waist and rushed her away, and I was alone with the coming creature.
Chapter Eleven
I put everything else from my mind and went into hunter mode. Distractions could get me eaten, and not in a good way.
Lennon had felt it like a cold, dark wind, and she wasn’t the only one. I shivered in my thin coat, and that was saying a lot since wolves didn’t feel the cold like most people. We ran hot. But the icy cold of the thing sucking the life from the wolves was insidious, and it was fucking cold.
I held my powerful demon blade in my right hand as I slipped through the woods, closer and closer to the creature. I knew I was getting closer because the coldness inside me intensified. I wondered if he was watching me, if he’d caught my scent and knew I hunted him, or if he’d just arrived in the woods and had yet to realize.
Did he go back and forth between his world and mine, or was he stuck here? I’d be happy to give him a shove back into his world, if so. I slipped from tree to tree, glad the moon was bright enough to light my way, and also glad it was not a full moon. I couldn’t hunt when there was a full moon, because the pain took over my thoughts. My instincts were off and my reaction time slow. Although I had taken out the demon boss during a full moon, so…
“Empty your mind, Kait,” I whispered.
I stood motionless against a huge tree, letting the seconds tick by as I waited. My eagerness to capture the creature I stalked was squeezing my heart, easily overwhelming my fear. Supernatural beings were susceptible to so much, and I had everything I needed in loops and pockets and sheaths all over my body. Everything else I needed was inside me. I had nothing to fear.
But when something warm pushed against my arm, I very nearly wet my pants. I whirled, blade up, then froze as I saw that a wolf had somehow managed to sneak up on me.
Not just a wolf, though.
The alpha had shifted and come to join me, and I was no longer going to face down a mysterious killer alone. My heart leaped, and I was almost ashamed of how delighted I was by his presence.
He was…enormous. His muscles bunched beneath his thick, glossy gray and white pelt, and his eyes were already familiar to me. The same light, icy blue surrounded by a ring of darker blue, fierce and piercing and full of command.
I wanted so badly to touch him that my hands shook, but I forced myself to be contented with a nod of acknowledgment. He was there because he wanted to bait the creature, not because he wanted to be with me.
His warm and spicy scent, the scent that would let every wolf he met know that he was alpha, slid into my brain and made my mind silently yell this is my alpha. Mine! and I dug my nails into my palm to calm myself.
I had a killer to hunt. There was no room for emotions and yearnings and temptations.
In the next second, while I was still reeling over my reaction to him, he gathered his legs beneath him and shot from behind the tree and into the open, and it took everything I had to remain where I was.
If the killer dared show himself to such a powerful wolf, then I would be ready to attack him when he did.
The big wolf stretched his body low to the ground, his deep growls making my skin erupt in gooseflesh and my stomach tighten as I watched him. I didn’t think I’d ever seen such a beautiful picture as that wild, sleek wolf preparing to attack an unseen enemy. The moonlight bathed the clearing in a gentle glow, and the naked fingers of thin, empty tree branches reached longingly for the mysterious sweet light.
The vibration of my cellphone jerked me out of my fanciful and dangerous distraction, and I began to wish the alpha had not joined me. I couldn’t concentrate. I was going to be slow and muddled and get us both killed. I didn’t care who was calling and certainly wasn’t going to check. There’d be time to check calls once I’d survived the supernat in these woods.
The alpha lifted his nose to the sky and howled and I moaned as my body contorted with muscle contractions and the need to answer that howl with one of my own. God, but it hurt. It hurt my heart, my mind, my body.
Soon.
I saw the dark shadow even before the alpha did, and though part of me wanted to stand there frozen in sho
ck, I didn’t even hesitate. The killer wanted the alpha, and I wasn’t about to let that happen.
I shot from the concealment of the trees and raced across the ground, fast, so fast. I held the blade in my hand, my arms pumping, my breath exploding from my lungs. I ran toward the black shadow that abruptly stepped into the moonlight, and then, I saw the killer.
The wolf raced toward him as well. I saw the gray and white blur of him from my peripheral vision, and by the time I realized I needed to warn him off, to make him shift back before it was too late…
It was too late.
Jared caught the monster’s attention, and it was almost like I wasn’t even there. I had a moment to see the wolf stopped in his tracks and lifted into the air by an invisible power, and all I could think was, “I’ve got to save his life.”
I didn’t think about the risks and I certainly didn’t have a plan. My only plan had been to explore the woods to see if I could pick up some tracks or signs or anything that might help me figure out what the supernatural was. But no. Here he was, trying to suck the life from the alpha, and my only plan was to stop him however I could.
Because in my mind, Jared was already my alpha, and like any good wolf, I would give my life for him.
The killer was a tall, dark, winged creature, a type I’d never seen before. As I watched, it flew into the air and floated there, its mouth wide and full of discolored teeth, and though it was at least five yards from the alpha, its reach was long. The alpha, frozen in midair, was stiff and still and currently having his essence sucked from inside him.
He was dying.
I flung my blade as I ran, flung it hard and viciously and with deadly aim, and even as it hurtled through the air and sank into the creature’s chest, I missed the feel of it in my hand. I would get that blade back.
But first, I would save the alpha’s life.
I leaped, following the trajectory of my blade, and hooked my arm around the killer’s neck. I grabbed the blade with my other hand and ripped it from his chest and then, as he peered at me with yellow, startled, ancient eyes, I plunged the blade into his gaping mouth.
“Suck this, bitch,” I yelled.
The blade broke the creature’s hold on Jared—I could feel the severed connection—but I didn’t look to see if the wolf fell to the ground, if his seemingly paralyzed body moved, if he opened his eyes.
All my concentration was on the creature, because he’d recovered from his broken connection and was now about as angry as anyone or anything I’d ever gone up against. He roared, though his roar was more of an earsplitting screech, like a train was slamming on its brakes right before it hit me, and he grabbed the handle of the blade.
The demon blade had gone right through his cheek, releasing a blood that was black and putrid, and we tumbled to the ground as we wrestled each other for control of the knife.
In the back of my mind was a tickle, a memory of a creature I’d read about long ago, and I knew that if I survived the night I’d chase down that memory until it led me directly to this strange, dreadful creature.
If I knew what it was, I’d know how to kill it.
Because right now, killing it was just not going to happen. The wound on its cheek knitted as soon as the blade was pulled free. I began to fight then to regain my blade, and then for my life.
We were rolling across the ground snarling and clawing and fighting like two rabid dogs after the bone that was my knife, and when all I could do was grab the razor-sharp blade, I didn’t think twice.
It sliced my fingers to the bone, and I lifted my free hand to punch him in the throat, over and over, but still, he managed to stab me in the chest. Deep. Hard.
He couldn’t suck the life from me because I was not a wolf, and it was that strange moment that I remembered what I’d read. He was a rare, mythical supernatural called an exsoloup, and once upon a time, he had been a wolf.
He stabbed me again, and I felt the pain like an afterthought as I held onto him as tightly as I could and fought to take back my blade. He wanted to run. He wanted to throw me off and run, but I wasn’t going to let him do that.
If I could just get my fucking blade, I could stick it in his mad brain and kill him. Only then, I remembered, I actually couldn’t.
Only a demon could kill an exsoloup, according to legend, and I was a hobbled wolf, not a demon—despite the fact that I carried a demon’s blade. But that was why he was terrified. That was why he’d rather run than fight me and was trying like hell to keep the blade out of my grip. Because of the demon blade, which likely held a demon’s scent, he believed I was a demon.
I struggled for one of the stakes in my belt, but as soon as I held it, I dropped it. I went for another. But then suddenly and inexplicably, Jared was there, and he was attempting to pull me away from the creature.
He was physically stronger than the exsoloup, and definitely stronger than me. He ripped me away from the killer, threw me halfway across the ground, then he took hold of the creature’s hand, the one holding my knife, and forced the exsoloup to stab himself. Over and over and over.
But the exsoloup did not die. He screamed, and he bled black and red, and he finally managed to pull his hand from the enraged alpha. Then he lurched, flew into the air, and dropping blood like red sleet, he got the hell out of there.
The alpha ran after him, but as I was attempting quite unsuccessfully to drag my poor battered and cut body up off the ground, he came jogging back. It was then, despite my injuries and the trauma of a crazy fight, that I noticed he was naked.
Back in the day, when I’d been part of a pack, seeing someone’s unclothed form was par for the course. When a wolf shifted, his clothes generally shredded into rags. When we returned to our human forms, we were quite naturally naked.
I’d been away from the life for so long, though, that I saw it like a human would see it. And if it had been another man, I wouldn’t have been so affected. But Jared Walker was...impressive. And that was putting it mildly.
He dropped to his knees beside me. “Kaitlyn. I’m going to carry you back to the pack and get you a doctor. Hold on.” And he dropped my knife and slipped his hands under my back and legs and lifted me into the air, and then started to jog from the woods.
“Wait,” I said. “My blade!”
He frowned at me as he ran. “I’ll send someone back for it. You’re bleeding out, wolf, and I’m not wasting time for a fucking blade.”
I struggled against him. “I’m fine, alpha. Let me down.” As much as I enjoyed being held against his big warm bare body, I really was fine, and I was not leaving my demon’s dagger behind. I kicked my legs until finally, and with an expression of equal parts amazement and frustration on his face, he let me slide to the ground.
I took off at a jog, focused on my knife, and when I scooped it up and held it tenderly against my chest, I realized I might have a problem. I was slightly obsessed with the blade, no doubt about it.
“How are you still standing?” Jared asked from right behind me.
I whirled, the knife cradled in my hands, then smiled somewhat guiltily, I was sure. “It looks worse than it is.”
“I saw him stabbing you, Kaitlyn. I saw the blade go in so deeply that you should have died. I know that somewhere inside you is your wolf—and she is likely a strong fucking wolf—but you are more human than shifter and you should not be standing there talking to me.” He crossed his muscled arms over his chest and stared me down.
“It’s worse,” I insisted gently, attempting to keep my stare on his eyes and only his eyes, “than it looks. I promise.”
“When we get back to the pack, I want you to lose the weapons and the clothes, and I want to see for myself.”
I gulped. Literally and loudly, I gulped.
He laughed then, and some of the tension melted from his stare. He sighed, shook his head, then turned and walked back the way he’d come. “We have a lot to talk about,” he called. “Stop staring at my ass and get a move on, Ms. Sil
ver.”
I scrambled after him, embarrassed, hurting, and elated.
Chapter Twelve
Wolves hated vampires, but they understood them. Demons, however, were a whole different matter. Demons were power-hungry, baby-killing, soul-stealing, evil-spreading, sadistic sons of bitches.
Eli was the one to tell Jared that my dagger was a demon’s blade. “She should not,” he said, “be able to wield it. As a wolf, it should burn her in battle. Yet she stands before us, nearly healed from being stabbed with it.”
Jared glanced at his own palm, which was still slightly black from the burns he’d sustained when he’d used the blade to try and kill the creature. Even though he’d simply wrapped his hand around the exsoloup’s as he’d stabbed it—or forced it to stab itself—the part of his flesh that touched the dagger had burned.
When he’d carried it back to me, it hadn’t hurt him. Only in battle does a demon blade burn a wolf. Not even shifting had completely healed him.
“Put her out,” one of the pack yelled, “before she leads the demons to us.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw another wolf walking toward me. She was small and old, but something about her caught my attention. My hackles went up, and I narrowed my eyes, watching her as she drew closer. As another wolf in the gathered crowd voiced a decidedly rude comment about where I should go, the old lady wolf tossed half a cup of water right into my face.
“Burn, demon,” she yelled, cackling.
The crowd gasped and then quieted, waiting to see if I would indeed react to the holy water. I wiped the water out of my eyes, then put my hands on my hips and lifted an eyebrow. “I have to say, guys, I’m feeling just a little unappreciated.”
“Enough of this,” Jared growled. “She’s not a demon. She came here because I hired her to help find the creature killing us. Go home, all of you.”
They dispersed quietly, some of them grumbling, none of them willing to go against the alpha. The two young wolves who’d got in my face earlier were there, but they didn’t even look at me.
