Chasing Destiny
Silver Tip Pack series
Megan Erickson
Volume 2
Contents
Copyright
Blurb
Author’s Note
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part II
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
III. Part III
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Glossary
About the Author
Other books by Megan Erickson
Acknowledgments
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Megan Erickson
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.
Copyedited by Edie Danford and Keyanna Butler
Cover design by Natasha Snow
First edition July 2017
Some live on memories…
Almost dying during a pack uprising has a way of shaking things up. I’m no longer Mr. Laid Back now that there’s an itch under my skin I can’t scratch.
On a volunteer mission that goes beyond the walls of our compound, we enter the territory of a pack long thought dead, and find ourselves on the business end of their spears.
What I’m not prepared for is what I find within their walls—The one shifter I never thought I’d see alive, the one I’d mourned twice, the one I’d always loved. He is alive, and if I have anything to do with it, he’ll stay that way. But he’s got secrets, and exposing them could lead us to an enemy worse than the bloodthirsty undead shifters wanting to kill us all…
Dedication
To survivors: Because you’re always meant for bigger things…
Author’s Note
There is a glossary at the end of the book for terms used relating to geography and shifter life.
Thank you for reading!
Part One
BAY
Chapter One
The stench hit me first, a thick cloud of decay so strong my eyes watered. Then the chattering reached my ears, the gnashing of undead teeth that set my nerves on edge, no matter how confident I was in my fight skills. I pulled the knife from the sheath on my hip and rolled it in my hand.
The Nowere pack had been tracking us for hours, and after we’d determined they were a small group, we’d decided to face them head-on. We had to rest eventually, and we couldn’t do that with undead shifters at our backs.
Vaughn and Dal flanked me, each brandishing their weapon of choice. Vaughn held a long saber, and Dal clutched a knife in each fist. She swung her head back and forth, her waist-length braid of dark hair capped at the end with a ball of spikes. I’d seen her take out Noweres with one whip of that deadly braid.
I shifted my weight from side to side as the sounds of the advancing Noweres drew closer. They had been like us once. As Weres, we had three forms—human, four-legged werewolf, and Were form, which was a giant wolf/human hybrid that walked on two feet. Noweres, once turned, stayed in their Were form, so they were huge, strong, and hard to kill.
“How many did you say again, Dal?” I asked. She was our top scout, and her nose was the most sensitive of any Were I’d ever met.
“About a dozen.” She cracked her neck and grinned at me, large brown eyes full of eagerness.
Vaughn was bouncing on the balls of his feet, his teeth pulled back in a snarl. He liked to get himself good and full of rage before taking on Noweres.
I angled my knife so it caught the light of the sun. “Bet I can take out half of ’em myself.”
Vaughn turned his head slowly toward me, eyes narrowing. He fluttered the necklace around his neck, a band strung with Nowere teeth. “Hey now, I planned to complete my fine jewelry piece on this mission. Don’t deny a Were his prizes.”
I grinned at him. “Guess you better kill them before me, then.”
He growled just as the first Nowere crashed through the edge of the woods into the clearing where we stood. The undead fucker was missing a foot, the flesh ragged around the edge of his stump as he limped toward us. Noweres didn’t feel anything but a mindless urge to consume and kill us—and make us like them.
The lead Nowere roared, and I shifted, roaring back, then charged as the rest of the Noweres barreled toward us.
I slashed at the first one, neatly severing his head. His body crashed to the ground and his head rolled three feet away. I didn’t have time to enjoy ridding the world of that Nowere, because three more were on me.
Dal was to my right, still in her human form. She said she preferred fighting that way, and I could see why. She was small and quick, darting between the Noweres with quick slashes of her knives. Her braid sliced through the air, the spikes at the end smashing a hole in the temple of an unfortunate Nowere.
Vaughn had shifted, his massive saber clutched in his clawed hand. He slashed it, taking out two Noweres at once. His growls mixed with roars as he took on two more. Vaughn never could keep his mouth shut, even when he was in his Were form.
I focused on the rest of the Noweres, taking them out one by one, my goal to dispatch them so we could get on with the mission. One came dangerously close to clamping down on my arm, but Dal took him out with a whip of her braid before he could do any damage.
Within five minutes, the clearing was scattered with Nowere bodies, and the last one stood in front of me, claws out, mouth open as it snapped jaws full of gray teeth.
With a snarl, I plunged my knife into its chest, then pulled it out before slashing it across its neck. As the severed head of the last of the attacking Noweres dropped to my feet, I shifted to my human form and rolled my aching shoulders. Fuck, I was tired.
Dal and Vaughn cased the clearing, checking to make sure the Noweres were actually dead and would stay dead this time. I knelt next to the head of the last Nowere I’d killed, poking at his eyeball, which was hanging from its socket down its sunken cheek.
A century ago, a virus wiped out humans and changed much of the Were population into Noweres. Law of the land was survival now, and all surviving shifter packs did what they could to stay alive, which usually meant protecting ourselves within walled compounds.
For weeks before Dal, Vaughn, and I had left our home, the compound of the Silver Tip pack, I’d had an itch beneath my skin that told me I needed to get out from behind the stone walls. That I had another purpose than what I’d been doing for years in my pack’s home. But now that we were out, that itch hadn’t let up, not one bit. I was still uneasy. I’d thought killing some Noweres would help, but even that wasn’t making much of a difference.
Our mission was to investigate the scout reports that members of the Whitethroat werewolf pack —believed to be wiped out by a Nowere attack ten years ago—had surviving members. Werewolves were shifters like us, but generally smaller and they didn’t have a Were form. This mission was of great interest to my brother, Dare. He was the alpha of the Silver Tip pack, and his beloved mate was a Whitethroat. Werewolves couldn’t be turned into Noweres, but the undead shifters were ha
ppy to eat them.
A couple of feet away, Vaughn was plucking out some Nowere teeth to add to the collection around his neck. Weirdo.
“Oh, I got a fang,” Dal said, holding up a tooth from the other side of the clearing.
“Nice!” Vaughn said. “Gross fuckers are usually missing ’em.” They then conferred about where the prized fang would look best on his necklace.
They were both fucking weirdos.
We were close to Astria—where surviving members of the Whitethroat pack were rumored to be rebuilding—and would be there by nightfall. Of course, the scent of Weres would send werewolves into a frenzy. We weren’t always on friendly terms with werewolves, but we had a vested interest in this pack. I wanted to be able to tell Dare that I’d found his mate’s home. Reese was a good wolf who made my brother happy.
“Everyone okay?” I called.
Vaughn held up his necklace. “Just peachy.”
Dal had ventured further into the woods, and she stood with her nose tipped, scenting the air. There was a stillness now, a settled feeling despite the carnage around us.
“Dal?” I asked. Back at home, she was one of our best scouts.
She turned and looked at me over her shoulder, her brown eyes thoughtful. “I smell something different,” she said. “My scouts would have told me about this, so I suspect it’s something new.”
I stood next to her and inhaled deeply. “All I smell is werewolf.”
Her nostrils flared again, then she shook her head. “Lost it. I swear it was… Never mind.”
“What?”
She faced me. “Were.”
I was going to make a joke about how obviously she smelled Were, because there were three of us right here, but Dal knew what she was talking about. “What do you mean?”
“It was so faint, but…” She looked off into the distance, nibbling her lip. “It was tainted. Injured maybe? There was just something not right about it.”
That uneasy feeling in my gut grew. “You have an opinion about it?”
“My instincts are that it’s not anything that’s going to hurt us. But I think we need to be cautious about what we find in Astria.”
“Right.” With a wave to Vaughn, I led the way forward. The journey from Eury—the area shared by our pack and a few others—to Astria took about five days. It was mostly wooded, with pockets of roaming bands of Noweres. I’d insisted on spearheading the team. Dare hadn’t been happy about it, but he’d let me go.
We’d recently had mutiny in the ranks of the Silver Tip pack. While Dare had been outside the gates, a cousin of ours tried to take over. Some days, I could still feel the blows from the gang as they’d beaten me. My ears still rung with their taunts and my own pained grunts as I’d curled in a ball to protect myself. There’d been too many, and without Dare and the rest of our guard, I’d been no match for them.
When Dare had returned, there’d been a few moments where I thought he’d be defeated, where our pack would be thrown into chaos, where I’d probably be executed. The fear I’d felt, the bone-deep chill, hadn’t left me. I wasn’t sure when I’d get over it.
My heavy boots crunched through the dried leaves on the ground. I glanced over my shoulder. Vaughn was chewing on a twig, his blue eyes scanning our path. Dal walked with lighter steps, her nose slightly in the air.
I shot them each a smile, and we continued on.
Spurred on by the adrenaline of our Nowere battle, we made excellent time, reaching the outskirts of Astria before the sun dipped below the horizon. Astria had been home to several werewolf packs, but we were approaching the specific region known to have been inhabited by the Whitethroat. Word was, the other packs had fled after a large-scale Nowere attack on the Whitethroat compound, so, as far as we knew, Astria was a ghost town.
Knew, past tense. Even now, I could smell werewolves, their scent carrying on the breeze, growing strong with each step. Different ones too. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Whitethroat weren’t the only packs rebuilding around here.
Something else wafted under my nose, the tease of a scent, and I whipped my head to Dal. She smelled it too, her eyes wide. “See what I mean?”
“What is that?” I inhaled again.
Vaughn made a face. “I don’t know.” He rubbed his nose, then twitched it. “Let’s get closer. I smell wolves too. We’re downwind, right?”
“Yeah,” Dal said. “But let’s wait—”
Vaughn took a step and froze. Thwunk.
“What the fu—” I yelped as a net buried beneath the leaves rose up all around us. I fell against the netting along with Dal and Vaughn as we soared into the air.
I scrambled to get my feet under me, but the net was swaying from where it was tied to a tree. We were suspended. Vulnerable. All my senses went on alert.
With a roar, Vaughn immediately began to shift, but then a voice tsked us from below. “Ah, ah ah, wouldn’t recommend that, Were.”
That last word was said with contempt, and I peered down to see a werewolf in his human form standing below us, holding a spear made of silver. As I placed a hand on Vaughn’s shoulder to halt him from shifting, a dozen more werewolves crept out of the woods to surround us. Each held a deadly silver spear. Dal remained quiet, her eyes taking in the scene. If there was a way out of here, she’d find it.
“If you don’t get us down in two seconds, I will shred this net and then every one of your necks!” Vaughn yelled, his voice garbled as he fought to control his shift.
“Good God, you animal.” Dal rolled her eyes. “Chill out for a second.”
I gripped Vaughn’s hair and forced him to face me. “She’s right. Calm down.”
He bared his teeth, but remained in his human form. A pissed off hunk of human, but human nonetheless.
I tried to straighten my spine and look as dignified as I could in a net that was suspended from the ground. “Hello, I’m Bay, brother to the alpha of the Silver Tip pack in Eury. We mean no harm.”
“Oh, hear that everyone?” The werewolf sneered. “They mean no harm. Just sneaking around downwind for shits and giggles.”
“Let me at him,” Vaughn growled.
“Control your mutt,” the wolf said.
Vaughn lurched forward, claws out, and I caught him mid-leap and shoved him back against the ropes. “For fuck’s sake, chill out!”
I pointed down at the wolf. “I’m maintaining my calm right now because I’m not an idiot, but we’ll talk later about you calling him a mutt.”
The wolf shrugged. “You assume there’ll be a later.”
Okay, he was trying my patience. “I introduced myself. I’d be pleased as hell if I learned who you were.”
He rested the end of his spear on the ground, point up, and leaned against it casually. There was no fear in his brown eyes, just a calm confidence. His short brown hair bore a startlingly white patch at his right temple. “I’m Pace, alpha of the surviving members of the Whitethroat pack.”
Despite our position, relief swept through me.
“Should have known,” Vaughn muttered. “Little snarky shit just like Reese.”
Pace’s spine stiffened. “What did you say?”
“He called you a snarky shit.” Dal sounded bored.
Pace shook his head, treading closer to the net and peering up at us, eyes alert. “No, you said a name.”
“Reese, a Whitethroat werewolf, is our alpha’s mate,” I explained.
There was a ripple of harsh words throughout the dozen werewolves, and Pace’s face twisted with fury. “What did you do to him?” he demanded, shoving the spear through the rope until it came to a stop inches from my neck.
“I didn’t do anything to him. Maybe if you get that fucking spear out of my face and let me stand on my feet, we can discuss this like civilized shifters.”
“There’s nothing civilized about this world,” he hissed.
I conceded his point. “True. But I think this conversation could be civilized. Reese is healthy and quite
happy, and I’d be glad to tell you more when you aren’t threatening me.”
Pace didn’t move, his brown eyes boring into mine as he considered my offer. Finally, with a grunt, he withdrew his spear and slashed at the rope beneath our feet. The binding snapped, and the three of us fell to the ground in a heap. Vaughn rose spitting-mad before I could get a hand on him, but he didn’t make it far.
Pace slung the staff of his spear, catching Vaughn under the chin and taking him clean off his feet. Vaughn slammed to the ground on his back, and Pace was over him in a second, spear poised at his throat, gaze on me. “Like I said, control your mutt, and we’ll talk.”
Now that we were on the ground, I could see that Pace was a large werewolf, bigger than Reese and corded with muscle. His arms, hands, and face bore scars that had me wondering what life had been like for him and this pack all these years.
I stood to see Vaughn shaking with anger. Behind me, Dal was brushing herself off. I turned to look at her without a word, and she waved her hand at me. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I got him. Go do your diplomatic thing.”
I held my palms out and took a step toward Pace. “Let me get him up, I promise he’ll behave.”
The werewolf raised an eyebrow at me, then backed off.
Vaughn didn’t move, probably from humiliation, and I crouched over him. “Buddy.”
Chasing Destiny (Silver Tip Pack Book 2) Page 1
