Wolf Pact, The Complete Saga

by Melissa de la Cruz

  “Tell us what you need us to do,” she urged Lawson.

  “This has never happened before,” he grumbled. “But sure, why not? Guys, everyone focus. We just need to clear our minds, imagine the passage opening. Maybe if we all work together we can do it.”

  The pack huddled together. Bliss pushed away her fear, pushed away her doubt, and pictured the Passages of Time opening before her. Her head ached, and she put her hands to her temples, feeling them throb and pulse, and for a moment she was convinced it was working. She could feel the passage opening behind her, felt the wind through the tunnels.

  Then it stopped.

  The feeling went away.

  She opened her eyes and looked around. Nothing had changed.

  They were still standing in the clearing.

  “What’s going on?” Rafe asked, frustrated.

  “Did you do something?” Ahramin asked Lawson. “Like accidentally seal the passage behind us when we went through?”

  “Why do you always assume it was me who did something wrong?” Lawson protested.

  “Because you’ve screwed up before,” she snapped. “Remember how I got left behind the last time?”

  They sounded like an old married couple, Bliss thought. Which implied a certain kind of intimacy that she didn’t want to think about too much. Besides, it was ridiculous to even consider. Ahramin and Lawson? If they hadn’t been in the same pack, it was clear they would have despised each other. Besides, Ahramin had been pledged to Edon from the beginning. No, they weren’t like a married couple—more like bickering siblings, which made more sense.

  “Don’t be so hard on him, Ahri; he’s doing his best,” Edon said.

  “It wasn’t Lawson,” Malcolm said. “It’s like the passages have closed up on their own. Can’t you feel it?”

  Rafe nodded. “It did feel different, like something was blocking them.”

  “Or someone,” Bliss said.

  Keep reading for a preview of The Ring and the Crown, the first book in Melissa de la Cruz's exciting new series!

  The streets of London were so much more crowded than she remembered. It was as if everything in the city had multiplied. The buildings were taller and closer together, rows of red brick houses next to the new tall, skinny, cement ones with slate roofs; and there were so many people jostling on the sidewalk, elbow to elbow, shoulder against shoulder, a great army of pedestrians marching purposefully to who-knows-where. For a moment, she felt claustrophobic and trapped; lost, adrift, and alone in a sea of humanity. Her senses were assaulted from every direction: smokestacks belching into the gray sky, newsboys yelling the headlines, the salty-tangy smell of fried fish from the sidewalk vendors. It had only been four years since she’d left the city, but it felt like four decades, and Aelwyn Myrddyn stood in the middle of it all, clutching tightly the battered leather valise that contained all she had in the world. The bag was heavy with bottles of herbs, tonics, and potions from Avalon.

  “All right, miss?” the driver asked, tipping his hat in her direction.

  She hesitated for the briefest moment, feeling a pang in her heart. She thought of Viviane waving a solemn good-bye from the shore, her golden hair shining through the mist. For a moment, Aelwyn wondered if she had made the right decision in returning to the city of her childhood. When Aelwyn had turned sixteen, Viviane had told her that it was time to determine her fate. Magic users had two options when they came of age: to join the invisible orders, or to choose exile in Avalon.

  “Miss?” the driver asked again.

  “Yes, quite all right,” she said, thinking of the letter in her pocket from her father. She squared her shoulders and nodded. The driver’s orders were to take her to the palace directly, but she had persuaded him to stop a few blocks away. She wanted some time to walk by herself, to see the city up close, before she disappeared behind the black iron gates of St. James Palace. Aelwyn watched as the driver whistled and shook the reins, which were connected to an empty harness hanging in the air. The black horseless carriage rolled away slowly down the street and disappeared all at once with a thunderclap and a cloud of white smoke. Viviane’s hansoms were a rare sight in the city, and so a few pedestrians blinked in surprise; but most hardly missed a step, and were more concerned with getting out of the way of the newfangled automobiles that were clogging the narrow roads.

  “Need a hand?” asked a nearby gent, his eyes lingering over the curve of her form underneath the cloak. “That bag looks heavy, lass.”

  She shook her head and pulled the cowl over her mass of auburn curls. The ability to command male attention was its own kind of magic, but one that could backfire on a girl if she wasn’t careful. Aelwyn had learned caution during her time away from home, and not to waste her charms on unworthy candidates. The nubby fabric of her wrap was cozy and comforting; the cloth was handspun, and reminded her of the island and the simple pleasures of life there. She had given them up to return to this metropolis.

  As a child, she had not been allowed out of the palace very often; but, after the first few moments of terror and disorientation, she had navigated her way easily, using the tall tower spires of the castle as a guide and beacon through the crowded streets. Now, everywhere she looked, there were banners hanging from balconies, and storefronts were flying the red-and-blue flags of the empire. They were remnants of last week’s victory celebration for the soldiers and magicians, who were finally home from the long war against the Prussian kingdom—although “victory” was a bit of a misnomer. The smaller nation had wrestled the mighty empire to a bit of a truce, a standoff. But in any event, the war was over—and that was indeed something to celebrate.

  She walked along the mall, a broad boulevard lined with flowering trees, pretty shops, and gardens, stopping once in a while to peek into dusty book emporiums and bakeries with Cornish pasties in the windows. This is what she wanted—to live in the moment, to live in London again, to matter. She had cherished her experience in Avalon, but couldn’t imagine living there for the rest of her life as a person out of time, living in an endless present. Alone and apart from the world, she would have watched the ages going by through her aunt’s crystal glass. Avalon, for all its glories and beauty, was not enough. She was her father’s daughter, after all.

  During her exile she had yearned for the city, like a missing limb. She wanted to experience all it had to offer: live in the great palace, participate in the hectic preparations for the coming season, and dance at the Bal du Drap d’Or, the Ball of the Gold Cloth—an annual gala to commemorate the unification of the two kingdoms and the foundation of the empire. She wanted to see the queen again. Emrys’s magic might be the shield of the realm, but Eleanor was its center, its great beating heart.

  Aelwyn took a shortcut down an alley that led directly to the royal mews, heading toward the side and back entrances for staff, ministers, and courtiers. The elaborate and heavily guarded front gates and reception halls were reserved for honored guests only. Here she slowed down her pace, nervous about seeing her father again. Four years ago, he had sent her away as if she had been nothing to him; as if she’d been just a girl from the kitchens, and not his only daughter. She knew she had done something wrong by losing control of her powers and starting a fire, and she understood expulsion was the only punishment the court would accept for the threat and harm done. But because Emrys never once wrote her while she was away, never once indicated that she was forgiven, Aelwyn had taken her banishment to heart.

  In his letter, Emrys had invited her back to the palace, but she was still apprehensive about their reunion. When she was younger, she had sobbed bitterly at their parting; and while she was almost grownup now, as well as Avalon-trained, thinking about him made her feel like that sad girl once more. She wasn’t that much different, really, from the group of street kids—grubby little urchins with dirty faces—that had just emerged from the back of a fry shop into the alley. “Want some?” one of them asked with a grin, holding out mushy peas wrapped in gre
asy newsprint. She shook her head with a smile, and he shrugged, turning back to his meal and accidentally bumping her shoulder.

  “Oh, excuse me!” she said, dropping her bag. But when she leaned over to pick it up, it was no longer there.

  It was gone.

  She stood there, staring at the ground, and realized she had been had. That bump had been no accident. She looked up to see the little thief running away with it, his food scattered everywhere. “STOP!” she cried, horrified. “STOP, boy!” But he paid no attention to her, darting into the busy streets, weaving quickly through the crowd, and was soon lost in a sea of dark coats, hats, and parasols.

  Her precious stones, tonics, and herbs. Viviane’s crystal glass: her treasured inheritance from Avalon. Aelwyn pushed up her sleeves, hiked up her skirts, and ran after the little criminal, pushing gentlemen to the side and stepping on ladies’ toes. Her face flushed with anger and embarrassment. Had she looked that much like a rube? Like such an easy mark? It shamed her to think she had been robbed the minute she set foot in London. Her aunt had cautioned her, had ordered the driver to see her safely into the palace, and Aelwyn had only her stubbornness to blame.

  She saw the boy ahead of her—he was about to turn the corner—and once he did, she knew he would be lost, her valuables gone forever if she did not act. There was no other recourse. She had to do it. The boy had given her no choice.

  She stopped running and forced her heartbeat to slow, her breath to steady. She closed her eyes and focused. She had seen him for the briefest moment when he’d offered her a bite. She touched the stone she wore around her neck—obsidian, deep as midnight—and called up his face in her memory.

  His grubby little face; the face of a young street beggar, a naughty boy with shifty cold blue eyes; an operative of a local syndicate, working for a Fagin who was sure to be lurking somewhere, taking whatever he stole and stringing him along with a pittance. She concentrated and called up her memory of his eyes, and looked through them into his soul.

  Aelwyn would not have been able to do this to just anybody, but the boy was young and poor, untrained and uneducated. Children from good families were taught how to protect one’s soul from a mage. But the little thief had not had the privilege of learning how to hide his soul from the world, to disguise its nature; and so she had been able to see into his very essence, into the spirit that made him who he was. As she looked into that deep abyss, a calm settled upon her.

  The name of his soul came to her mind in a whisper.

  Bradai, she called. To me.

  She opened her eyes. Just as she had commanded, a thin gray column of smoke, shimmering in the afternoon light, came streaking toward her. She reached out and caught it with her fist. It was small and cold and shivering. His soul.

  No one noticed the little boy frozen in his tracks in the shadows, his mouth agape, his foot hovering above the sidewalk in midstep, a large ladies’ valise hanging off his arm. Aelwyn took her time as she walked toward him, holding his soul in the palm of her hand. She looked right into his eyes, which were blank now; dead. He did not know what had happened to him; did not understand what had taken hold of his very essence and frozen him into place.

  She plucked her bag from him and slapped him, hard, on the cheek. His soul trembled in her grasp, wriggling—gasping for air, for breath—for release. Aelwyn sighed. He hadn’t deserved this. It was wrenching to perform an extraction on so small a child. He was only a little boy, a desperate, hungry street urchin, and his gang leader probably wouldn’t have even known what to do with the treasures he carried. Most likely he would have tossed the jars of tonics and herbs into the garbage, broken the crystal glass, and sold the stones for a tenth of what they were worth. She turned away. When she was a few blocks safely past, she released her grasp on him and let his soul back into his body.

  St. James Palace, the home of the sovereign, was a monolith: heavy, brown, and solid. It lacked the symmetry of Parliament and the Crown’s other great structures, as its twin towers were located off to one side, their octagonal turrets standing like two sentries at the ready. The red-and-blue Franco-British flag flew proudly from the roof and whipped in the air. Above, the sky was gray, as it always was; the clouds stirred and streaked across the horizon, but never parted to reveal the sun. Perhaps the great palace would look less dour if the sun ever shone on it, but it rarely did. The gray of London made the castle look darker, more ominous. Aelwyn felt increasingly small and insignificant as she got closer to it. St. James was the seat of the queen, and had been home to centuries of British and Franco-British rulers. Its architecture spoke of unquestioned power, of a strength that had stood for centuries without interruption—of a power that would never bend, never compromise.

  Her father was in his study, she was told by his unsmiling secretary. It was the same dour old woman who had ushered her out of the castle four years before. The chamber was tall and narrow; like the castle itself, the proportions of the room were designed to intimidate anyone who entered. Slender pilasters dressed the walls, their thin golden lines interspersed with panels of rich red cloth. In the early morning light, the cloth reminded her of blood. A brazier of candles made the darkness of the room even more intense, more foreboding. Her father’s desk occupied a faint patch of light below the flickering candles. The mighty table could seat a dozen men, and the desk nearly dwarfed the man sitting at its head. A globe decorated one side of the tabletop; it spun slowly, apparently of its own accord, and she guessed it was her father’s magic that made it spin. Indeed, it was the power of the Merlin that made all things turn. Behind the desk hung a loosely knit tapestry embroidered with a map of the empire. The map’s size, its age, its glorious detail, all said one thing to anyone who braved a visit to the first magician of the realm: Our empire is vast, our power unquestioned; our rule will stand forever.

  She had not seen him in four years, but Emrys Myrddyn looked exactly the same, with his stern countenance and trim white hair and beard. He was dressed in a beautifully tailored morning suit, his gold cuff links catching the light. “Ah, there you are,” he said, looking up from his paperwork with a distracted smile, as if she had just disappeared for a moment and not been sent away for four years.

  “Hello, Father,” she said politely.

  “Have a seat,” he said, motioning to the chair in front of his desk. “How was your journey? Are you hungry?”

  She shrugged. “I’ll get something from Cook later.”

  Emrys took an apple from behind his desk, peeled it, cored it, and cut it into fourths. She was touched by the gesture. He’d remembered that as a child she had always preferred her fruit this way: peeled, prepared, cleaned of skin and pits and stones, which was the way the princess’s fruit was always served. When she was a child in this castle, she had insisted that everything she had be exactly like the princess’s. She had never settled for less than what Marie received.

  She accepted the plate gratefully and took a bite from one piece.

  “How is my sister?” Emrys asked.

  “Viviane is well. She sends her regards.”

  Emrys snorted. Aelwyn knew that Viviane believed Emrys had sold out the enchanters of the world by making them servants to the throne. “Your father is nothing but a glorified civil servant,” the Lady of the Lake liked to grouse. Viviane had chosen exile over subservience. “I will not bow to some lesser creature,” she’d told her niece, and made it clear what she thought of Aelwyn’s decision to return to the palace. “What is outside this mist that calls to you so? There we are but chattel, performing monkeys. Let them find someone else to create their fireworks and call for rain.”

  “Is my sister as stubborn as ever?” Emrys asked in a bemused tone.

  Aelwyn smiled. Other than inquiring about Viviane, her father did not mention Aelwyn’s long absence or its cause; he did not ask about her health or her happiness. Then again, Emrys had never been particularly affectionate. Her father was the nearly thousand-year-old wizard who had
advised Artucus, the first King of England, and all his heirs—including Henry VI, for whom Emrys had brought the kingdoms of England and France together to create the foundation of the empire.

  Emrys settled back into his chair and drummed his fingers on his desk. “I had to convince the Order to take you in; you know they aren’t very fond of Viviane, and were wary of her influence upon you. I had to assure them of your obedience. Do not fail me.”

  “My will is to serve,” she said, showing him she had already learned the vows of her future station.

  He nodded, pleased. “Run into any trouble on your journey?” he asked, taking a pipe out of his pocket and lighting it.

  “No, Father,” she said with a shrug, fiddling with the obsidian stone on her chain. She thought of the little thief, and how she’d held his soul in her hands. “None at all.”

  The prettiest room in the castle was built like a jewel box: all pink, white and gold, with gilt molding, pink damask wallpaper, fat cherub murals painted on the ceiling, and a crystal chandelier above the bed. It was a room fit for a sleeping princess. Except the princess, Marie-Victoria, was only pretending to be asleep. She kept her eyes closed and her breathing even as her ladies-in-waiting gathered around the bed, trying to make as little noise as possible. Marie wondered how long they had been standing there—since dawn? Or for only a few minutes? She never knew; only that they were always there when she woke up. There was an audience for everything she did, even the most mundane of activities, from rising to dining to strolling in the gardens. The practice had been handed down from the French side of their family, and even though the court was in London they kept to the French ways.

  She supposed she should get up soon. She could sense that her ladies were getting impatient; she could hear them coughing and murmuring to each other. But she also knew what was awaiting her that day, and so she wanted to stay in her soft warm bed for as long as possible. One of her ladies—Evangeline, most likely, the highest-ranking one—cleared her throat loudly, and Marie decided it was time to put everyone out of their misery.