Pack Princess: A Fantastical Werewolf Adventure (Wolf Rampant Book 2)

by Aimee Easterling

  ***

  I wanted to make Sarah my top priority, but All-Pack was now breathing down all of our necks. So after writing a letter to Dale begging him to make a house call, I started dealing with the looming issue of which pack mates to invite to the gathering and which ones to leave behind. My father had always made his selections look easy and obvious, but now that the choice had fallen into my own hands, I realized that every iteration was fraught with problems, both inside and outside our pack. Plus, the more I obsessed over whom to bring, the more it seemed that there was no single right answer...just lots of wrong ones.

  The female component of our contingent was the easy part of my decision. Before I became pack leader, the only women who attended All-Pack had been pack princesses—eligible girls of good breeding who went to the gathering in search of a mate. Each of these debutantes was traditionally trailed by an honor guard of two or three male shifters, and the princess and her entourage stayed at the gathering just long enough to enjoy the first two days of dancing and feasting before being spirited away back to her home clan. This year, though, there were no Haven pack princesses to present since Wolfie had taken on the responsibility of managing my young relatives, giving me his yahoos in exchange.

  On the other hand, the male half of my invitation list was much more fraught with drama. Shifters considered it a great honor to be chosen to accompany the pack leader to our annual gathering, so all of my uncles and male cousins hoped to be selected. But I couldn't bring everyone because my father's honor guard had traditionally been made up of only a handful of men. The Chief had used the laxness of his security as a backhanded method of asserting his own superiority over other pack leaders, the paucity of Wilder attendants saying I am strong; I need no help to knock you down. And the plan had worked perfectly, with no one inside or outside of his pack challenging Chief Wilder until Wolfie and I came along to depose my father a few weeks ago.

  Unfortunately, the same precedent meant that, if I increased the ranks of the Wilder contingent at All-Pack this year, then my actions would make me appear weak...an image I could ill afford since my sex already counted as one strike against me. On the other hand, if I brought too few guards, I might, in fact, be vanquished during one of the late-night skirmishes that were such a popular method of shaking up the power structure during All-Pack. So it was a juggling act—should I try to assert my dominance by minimizing my guard, or should I protect myself from attackers with the help of a slew of bulging biceps?

  In the end, I decided to gamble and follow my father's lead, choosing only five attendants just as the Chief had done before me. And, rather than submerging our pack in a bloodbath by dint of expressing favoritism, I also continued my father's tradition of letting the attendants choose themselves through their actions during a midnight hunt. The first five shifters to taste wild blood would attend All-Pack, while the losers would stay home with only their own lack of skill to blame for the exclusion.

  In the end, the only untraditional part of this night was a female Wilder leading the pack instead of my father. Well, that...and the presence of the yahoo Fen's naked breasts reflecting the light of the moon as the intrepid young woman stripped down right alongside the guys.

  "Look at those hooters," one of my cousins stage-whispered, and I heard Wade growl as my other relatives snickered in response. The yahoos and I all knew that my cousin's words were malicious since even the most hidebound Wilders should have been used to shifting alongside women, meaning that my relatives weren't just displaying typical testosterone overload in the face of naked female anatomy. Instead, the relative in question was making a point about where he did and did not want the gentler sex to intersect with his own life—according to cousin Drew, a woman's place was barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.

  But, even though I wanted to support Fen, I placed a hidden hand on Wade's arm rather than giving him his head. Like my choice of attendants, managing my reaction to Drew's malice was like walking on a tightrope. I definitely wanted my cousins to get used to having women work and play alongside them in every setting, but at the same time, I didn't want to speak up in Fen's defense because I knew that the tough young woman didn't need either me or Wade to fight her battles. By being silent, I let Fen prove that fact to the relatives in question, as well as to herself.

  So I chose the simpler path instead, showing my cousins how much faster I could shift—and thus how vastly my alpha powers exceeded their own. "Those distracted by their dicks will definitely lose out," I said simply, allowing my arms to fall toward the ground as my body changed seamlessly into lupine form.

  Since following Wolfie's lead and teaming up fully with my wolf, the transformation that had previously been both painful and slow now came nearly as naturally as breathing. And as I settled onto my haunches and looked up at the two-leggers behind me, I was pleased to notice that three of the similarly-schooled yahoos were among the first to follow my lead in donning fur. Only Blaze was absent, having chosen to watch over Justin's pregnant wife rather than taking part in our midnight hunt. In contrast, Fen, Wade, and Glen had all sought my permission to attend, and I saw no reason to leave the young adults behind.

  Well, no reason except the need to find worthy prey...and fast. Because my father had never allowed another shifter to beat him to the kill during a midnight hunt, and I could do no differently, not if I wanted to continue walking in the Chief's shoes.

  So, rather than giving in to the impulse to bond with my companions by sidling up and rubbing shoulder-to-shoulder against their fur, I instead sniffed at the air and then took off at a lope into the hills. Our hunt had begun fifty miles distant from our village, up a winding mountain road where human residences were few and far between. And now it was time to take advantage of that seclusion by finding an animal that would be fitting prey for a pack of werewolves.

  As I raised my snout toward the sky, scents came flooding into my nostrils. I could smell my pack mates, of course, but my wolf soon picked out other aromas as well. Field mice and rabbits—those would have been an easy way to taste first blood, but I would also have become the laughingstock of the pack even as I enjoyed the animals' sweet flesh. Not much further away, I picked out a deer trail, and I knew that some of my younger cousins would likely head in that direction, hoping that the ungulate at least possessed antlers to give their meal a hint of status. Deer were one of the tastier prey animals to be found in these woods, but no one who slaughtered a mere buck would be attending All-Pack next week.

  There. The tiny thread of an aroma came spiraling down toward me from high in the craggy peaks of the mountain above. A cat, larger than my most massive uncle, with claws as long as my human fingers and teeth as sharp as knives.

  The human part of me, which had worked as a naturalist for years and had protected various parks' flora and fauna from unruly campers, warned that mountain lions were rare and should be left alone. But my wolf knew that only capturing the most daunting prey would serve to cement my own place as leader of the Wilder clan. So we shot one last glance back toward the relatives who were still twisting their way into lupine form, and we ran.

  ***

  By the time the mountain lion's trail began to freshen, I'd already heard the first howls of victory emanating from the woodland below. So my youngest cousins had caught their deer and would soon be feasting, making their group the first to shed blood during our shared hunt.

  But that was only a technicality. Because everyone knew that the All-Pack attendees would be chosen from the ranks of the shifters fanned out at my back, each of whom was now picking his way across the boulder field that lay between us and the feline's lair.

  We'd lost a few members during our wild run, either due to injury or exhaustion, and I hoped that our lowered numbers would simplify the upcoming kill. Glen had fallen back out of sight after twisting one foot in a crack in the rocks, but Wade and Fen were still keeping pace, along with three of my five uncles. Among my cousins, only two had been able to ma
nage our mad dash up the mountainside—Bev's son David...and my malicious cousin Drew.

  After starting the night off on a bad foot, Drew seemed to have taken it upon himself to haze Fen whenever possible, bumping the female yahoo accidentally-on-purpose whenever we crossed open ledges and once almost causing the smaller wolf to tumble out into open air. During that incident, Glen had injured himself while coming to his female companion's aid, and it had taken all of my self-control to bite down on a growl and to stop my wolf from spinning Drew head over heels until he submitted, then sending the troublemaker home with his tail between his legs.

  But Fen had told me this morning that she wanted to stand on her own four feet and to win this battle herself. So even though my cousin's actions were patently unfair, I allowed the hazing to persist and simply increased my pace until Drew became too tired to cause any more problems. I did spare a bit of brainpower to hope that my cousin would slip and twist his own ankle so I wouldn't be forced to bring the bully along to All-Pack, but I'd yet to achieve that yearned-for goal.

  We'd passed through fifty feet of rocky ground and were once again running flat out when my wolf swamped my human brain entirely. Ahead, silhouetted against the moon, the cat came into view at last, perched twenty feet up on a horizontal limb of a tremendous oak. The feline was pitch black rather than showcasing the usual tawny coloration of most mountain lions, and her eyes were already trained on my pack of wolves. Which made no sense. If our prey had known that we were coming for quite some time, why had she failed to run?

  The rest of us paused to assess the situation, but my malicious cousin ran up the base of the tree like a hunting dog, balancing on two hind feet as he bayed at the moon and made my uncles roll their eyes in disgust. Sure, our pack had gone hunting in lupine form, but the more intelligent shifter could still remember that he was a two-legger as well as a wolf, even when wearing fur.

  But we soon turned our attention away from my cousin and onto a more pressing question. Which shifter would take on human form and brave the cat's claws on tender, furless skin in order to scare the mountain lion out of the tree?

  Fen was two-legged before I had fully considered the question, and Wade soon donned human form beside her. With the seamlessness of a well-oiled machine, the latter clasped his hands into a foothold and boosted the young woman up until she could swing herself onto the first broad limb. And then three things happened all at once....

  Chapter 9

  The first occurrence of three was initiated by my Uncle Hawk's shout from behind our grouping. "There are cubs!" the shifter called, causing every head to turn in his direction. It seemed that my oldest uncle had wandered off and regained human form while the rest of us were perusing the cat in the tree, and in the process, Hawk had stumbled across the reason for our mountain lion's uncharacteristic behavior. She was a mother protecting her kits—no wonder our prey hadn't run away at the approach of a pack of wolves.

  I spared a moment to be grateful that Hawk had been the one to discover the mountain lion's lair, because Drew would have simply grabbed each kitten in his lupine jaws and shaken his head until the kits' delicate backs splintered. Although not as high-value prey as their mother, the baby mountain lions were predators just like us and might have counted as a ticket to All-Pack. Murdering kittens wouldn't have garnered very high status within our pack, but the act might have been sufficient to gain entrance into the upcoming gathering back when my father was in charge. So a shifter like Drew would have gladly taken on defenseless prey for the chance to move up in our social hierarchy.

  But as I met Hawk's eyes across the clearing, I could tell that my uncle and I were of one mind regarding baby mountain lions—the initial adjective trumped the noun. In fact, I now regretted leading the hunt toward this cat in the first place since our prey's kits would surely die without their mother's protection. Which made me wonder whether it would be possible to deter my pack from taking down the mother mountain lion without losing face in the process. I suspected not, but resolved to try anyway.

  Even as my wolf and I began scheming how to let our prey go, an even bigger revelation walked out of the woods toward us. Surprising occurrence number two was a tall man who looked as if he'd hiked all the way up the mountainside alone, in the dark, and in human form at that. But despite the fact that his clothes confirmed that our party crasher hadn't spent any time as wolf lately, the shifter didn't seem at all out of breath, and instead acted as if he were simply enjoying a stroll down a paved city sidewalk.

  As one, my pack and I each greeted the stranger's appearance by sniffing the air, and in the process I caught an odor that I'd only smelled once before in my life. The ozone scent of rain on hot summer pavement—the calling card of a Bell.

  Bells were the most mysterious of the four powerful clans who attended All-Pack, and I guessed from our visitor's age and stance that this man must be their pack leader, the elusive Thomas Bell. Thomas Bell (never just Thomas) was the oldest alpha in the region, and he was arguably the most powerful alpha as well now that my father was gone. In fact, some thought that if Chief Wilder and Thomas Bell had been forced into a standoff years ago, then perhaps this quiet, old shifter would have won the day. But neither alpha seemed inclined to test that supposition, and so my father had remained the host of All-Pack for my entire childhood. During those decades, Thomas Bell had spoken rarely, only opening his mouth when he really needed to be heard. So, despite his power, the pack leader rarely came to mind.

  If flying under the radar was his usual MO, then why had the Bell patriarch hunted us down now, during a tradition that only had meaning for other members of the Wilder pack? As these thoughts flowed through my mind, the remaining wolves in my entourage were circling around to stand between me and the other alpha. But, although I appreciated their concern, I didn't find Thomas Bell particularly menacing. My father would have been livid at having his midnight hunt invaded by an outsider, but I was instead fueled by curiosity as I nudged aside two uncles, a cousin, and a yahoo so I could shift into human form at the front of my own pack.

  But before either Thomas Bell or I could speak, the third surprise came soaring down out of the air to land amid our entourage of wolves and humans. The mountain lion had grown weary of waiting for us to leave her kits alone, and she'd decided to join in the fray.

  ***

  The cat touched down in the empty bit of space between me and Thomas Bell, and my eyes locked with the feline's even as the other members of my pack surged forward to come to my aid. Our prey's muscles were taut, but something told me she was poised to leap away and return to her lair rather than choosing to attack this mixture of wolves and humans who had invaded her home turf. So, after sparing a quick glance to ensure that Uncle Hawk was out of harm's way, I barked out a command: "Let her go!"

  I was surprised at the timber of my own words since they had the same commanding ring that had come so often from my father's lips, but that I had so seldom been called upon to use myself. And, just as when my father had bellowed, my command was instantly obeyed. Behind me, my relatives all froze in place, one uncle even stumbling in his haste to halt an impending leap for the cat's throat.

  In that instant of quiet, the mountain lion crouched and sprang again, this time soaring over Thomas Bell's head and disappearing into the darkness. I'd done it—I'd saved both the cat and her kits—and I felt my face relax into the first smile of the night.

  But my pleasure was short-lived. "Fucking shit!" Drew roared, as soon as his muscles and vocal cords had thawed from the effects of my alpha command. My cousin's fists were clenched and I could tell that the pent-up adrenaline from the night's events was catching up to him fast. Unfortunately, while the aftermath of our drama had left me shaky, Drew seemed to prefer venting his frustration in the form of anger. "The Chief would never have let our prey escape like that!" the young shifter bit out.

  My cousin was right—Chief Wilder would have gladly torn the mother mountain lion into a hundred chunks
of bloody meat and fur, then he would have taunted the kittens until they perished as well. Our midnight hunt had traditionally been a time to let our deepest, darkest predatory urges come out to play, and I'd known even as I commanded mercy that the Wilders would resent my taming of their tradition. This is what we get when a woman leads our pack, my two oldest uncles were clearly thinking. And while I couldn't quite tell whether stony-faced David and the milder Hawk were also members of the Terra-sucks-as-alpha camp, I could tell that I needed to find a way to bring my relatives into line fast.

  But I also had other issues to contend with that were equally pressing. I shot a glance toward the visiting alpha, whose face was just as expressionless as David's, and my shoulders drooped a little. Yes, letting the cat go was objectively the right thing to do, but my act of mercy definitely hadn't helped garner any much-needed support from the all-powerful Bells.

  I should have known better than to have taken my attention away from Drew, though, as a gasp from behind me proved. Leaving my back exposed to the more powerful alpha, I whirled and found the worst image of the entire hunt seared into my eyeballs. I could only guess that Fen must have slipped down from her perch on the tree during the recent commotion, and now that our prey was gone, Drew had opted to take out his aggressions on our party's physically weakest member. Dropping back into wolf form—he should be exhausted after so many transformations in fast succession, I thought inanely—my unpleasant cousin lunged at the female yahoo and caught her upper arm in his strong jaws. And just as I turned at the sound of Fen's gasp, Drew bit down hard, the crack of breaking bone ringing loudly across the clearing.