by T. S. Joyce
He gave her a crooked smile, just a small one before he dragged his attention back to the road and squeezed her thigh again. He loved her, too. She could tell, even when he wasn’t saying the words. She cradled his hand in hers and kissed his knuckles, then settled it back on her leg.
“You’re different than I imagined you would be,” he said.
“What do you mean?” she asked, rolling down the window so she could feel the breeze and the rain sprinkles on her hand. She loved the rain.
“Well, I watched people pair up, and I hoped it would happen for me someday. But everyone I saw found someone who was like them. They matched, so I thought that was how it was supposed to work. You find a female version of yourself and the crow would see her and bond, and that would be that.”
“You would not do well with a moody girl who wears all black.”
Ethan laughed. “No, I would not. You’ve made my life lighter. You stumbled into it all pink and sparkles and dick jokes. But you’re more than that. You’re so fuckin’ tough. People who meet you and see the surface you, they probably don’t even realize they’re talking to one of the strongest people they’ve ever met. You’re an easy strong. You make it look simple. The way you handle life. The way you handle me, the crow, the attention on me, Lucian, and my complicated family and history… It’s like it’s the easiest thing in the world for you.”
The rain felt so good on her palm as she smiled at her mate. “It is the easiest thing in the world. My heart picked you, and that was that. The bad doesn’t matter. If it’s a part of you, it’s okay by me. The good outweighs the rest by so much, Ethan. Sooo much. You’re the easiest man to love.”
“And you’re the easiest girl to love.”
“I think that’s how it’s supposed to be,” she whispered.
He wore the softest smile. “I think so, too.”
Rolling her head on the headrest, she sighed and watched in the road stretch out in front of them. But the road wasn’t empty. There was a man standing right in the middle of it with his hands out.
“Ethan, watch out!” she screamed.
“Oh, shit!” Ethan locked up the brakes. The truck pitched slightly to the side as it skidded across the wet concrete.
Lucian smiled as they barreled toward him.
“We’ll go through him, hold on!” Ethan yelled, turning the wheel into the skid.
They didn’t, though. They didn’t go through him. Lucian held out his hands, bent at the knees, and threw the truck over his head and into the air.
Leah screamed as time seemed to slow. They were sailing through the air toward a grove of massive trees that lined the road.
“Unbuckle!” Ethan commanded.
She heard him, but her body wasn’t working. She was in shock, flying through the air like this. Lucian was solid and strong enough to throw the entire truck with them in it!
Click.
The noise of her seatbelt unbuckling sounded strangely deafening.
Ethan disappeared into a cloud of black smoke, and then there was a ripping sensation on her arm that burned like hellfire. She was out the window and airborne.
Ethan’s crow was flapping its powerful wings as they headed toward earth, and for a split second, she thought everything was going to be all right. He’d gotten her out. He’d done it.
But when the truck smashed into the trees, the boom of an explosion hit her ears just before the force of the blast threw them sideways through the air.
Crack!
Her body made an awful sound as she hit a tree trunk.
With a gasp, she crashed to the earth, the wind forced from her lungs on impact. She tried to breathe, but she couldn’t even turn over on her side and curl into a ball like she wanted. She couldn’t move at all. All she could do was lay there in agony as Lucian walked toward her with boots that echoed against the wet road. The rain was falling in her eyes, and she couldn’t tell if she was crying in pain or if it was just the weather.
She was bad off. She could tell. It was really bad. Ethan was screaming her name but she couldn’t lift her head to see him. He skidded to a stop on his knees beside her.
“Ethan, Ethan,” she whimpered, “I can’t move.” Oh, she was definitely crying. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she chanted as he cupped her cheeks and took a moment to scan her body for injuries. His face went pale as a sheet at whatever he saw, and now she was really scared. “It’s bad, isn’t it? It’s bad?”
“Everything is going to be okay,” he said in a thick voice, but his horrified face said nothing would ever be okay again. “I’m going to fix this.”
“H-how?”
Ethan leaned down and kissed her lips, rested his head against hers. The tear that fell from him to her cheek was warm.
He sat back on his bent knees, his black eyes trained on Lucian. His face had gone dead. “I’m going to kill you.”
Lucian stopped right on the edge of the road and threw his head back in laughter. The grating sound echoed through the woods.
Ethan slowly stood over her, every muscle in his body taut, rage etched into every line of his face. Rain dripped from his body, from his hair hanging in front of half his face. He clenched his fists at his sides. His knuckles were covered in white scars. She didn’t know why she noticed that now. She could barely breathe and had never been so scared in her life, but that’s what she focused on. The scars said he knew how to break a man’s body.
A man came from the woods to stand beside him. Kade. He looked at Ethan and then at Lucian. Two monsters facing off with a ghost who’d found his power.
And Leah was the casualty.
When Kade looked down at Leah, his bright silver eyes swam with sadness. His attention flickered down her body then back to her face, and he muttered, “Shhhhit, Little Human. You’re broken.”
A sob left her lips. She didn’t feel good as she gasped for air, gurgling with each breath. Something was wrong, something was wrong, something was really wrong.
“Fix her,” Ethan ground out in a gravelly voice she barely recognized. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Lucian, who was walking toward them again.
“There’s no fixing her,” Kade said somberly. “You know it and I know it.”
“Turn her.”
“Have you lost your fucking mind?”
“First order as Alpha. Turn. Her.”
Kade twitched his head hard and went down to his hands and knees. With a deep rumbling snarl, he said, “It don’t work like that for me! The wolf won’t stop with a bite, Ethan. He’ll kill her. She’s dead either way!”
“Bite her!” Ethan yelled as he stepped over Leah’s body.
A wave of pure power rocked her body as he disappeared into a cloud of thick smoke and blasted out of it as his crow.
Lucian did the same and flew at Ethan. When they hit, it was like two icebergs slamming into each other going eighty miles an hour. The trees around them bent away from the force and snapped back.
Kade was snarling terrifying sounds next to her, but she couldn’t take her eyes off Ethan. He was switching back and forth between his crow and his human while Lucian did the same. She’d never seen anything like this kind of raw violence. The crows slashed at each other, and then locked talons, and slammed each other toward earth. And a moment after landing, they Changed to their humans and blasted their fists against each other’s faces so fast, they blurred. Then they were suddenly crows again, up in the air, and just before they hit the ground, they locked onto each other again. Crows, humans, crows, humans in a dance so fast she struggled to keep up. The smoke was getting thicker with each shift.
“I’m sorry,” Kade said in an inhuman voice. “I’ve gotta…”
Can’t breathe. I can’t breathe! “Kade,” she rasped in desperation. She rolled her head toward him and looked up into the twisted face of a man mid-shift.
With a series of pops, an enormous silver and white wolf ripped out of him. His eyes were almost white, and the fur along his back was standing st
raight up. His lips peeled back from pure white, razor-sharp teeth.
She saw her death. He was the Grim Reaper. Not fair. She’d only just found Ethan.
“Please,” she pleaded. Her body was twitching, and she was getting light-headed from gasping for breath. “Help me.”
Kade opened his massive jaws and then tore into her shoulder. She screamed with the pain, and this was it. He was growling and shaking her, but she couldn’t move to defend herself.
Kade was ripped off her and hit the tree behind him. Ethan had Changed into his human and blasted a fist against the wolf’s face, but Lucian was on him. His crow slammed into Ethan from behind so that he pitched forward, the talon marks on his back welling with blood. He Changed into his crow and twisted gracefully in the cloud of smoke, raked his talons across a now human Lucian’s face.
Something was happening to her shoulder. It was catching fire. Fire. Flames licked her nerve endings, and it was excruciating. She screamed as Kade ran toward her, eyes empty and trained on the kill.
Her body tremored and seized, her back arching against the ground as something awful swelled and writhed inside of her. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe!
Ethan’s crow slammed into Kade just as he was sailing through the air to land on her. The crow morphed from animal to man in the blink of an eye, and Ethan threw a fist just in time to blast Lucian in the jaw. They went down together, and Ethan pummeled him over and over. He looked behind him with those dead-black eyes as Kade’s bloodthirsty wolf came for her again. Smoke then crow, and the wolf went flying. Smoke then human again, and Lucian’s crow slammed into a tree. Smoke then Ethan’s crow slashed at Kade’s face before he could get to Leah. Smoke then human Ethan picked Kade up by the hind legs and chucked him into human Lucian’s chest.
He was so fast, it was hard for Leah to track his movements, especially with the smoke from their Changes thickening like fog across the forest. He fought like a man who had nothing in the world to lose. Every movement was smooth as if Ethan had trained himself to be a professional killer.
And Leah lay there, her body an inferno.
But then, slowly, feeling returned to her legs toes. Then to her ankles, calves, thighs... Then her hips, her chest, and her arms. It didn’t feel like a triumph. Every cell in her body was sizzling with pain and a snarl ripped out of her throat as she arched her back against the ground.
Fire.
Fire.
Fire.
“Kill me,” she whispered to Kade. And he wanted to. She could tell from the bloodlust on his face.
He bolted for her while Ethan grunted under blows from Lucian.
“Kill her,” Lucian yelled at Kade. “Kill her now!”
Wait. Wait I didn’t meant it. No, no, no, don’t kill me! I’m just fickle! I changed my mind. Living is awesome! Kade was so fast, so close. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck! Inner wolf thing! You can come out now! Open sesame! Change! Come out of me, wolf! Come out come out come out!
Kade’s big silver wolf went flying through the air, massive paws aimed straight for her, jaws open, teeth ready to pierce her skin and end her.
She did Change, but it was a few seconds too late.
Or it would’ve been if a furry and fanged white torpedo hadn’t blasted into Kade’s side like a battering ram. A white wolf tore into his neck with a growl of hatred rattling it’s throat. The crow that dove at Kade’s wolf wasn’t Ethan’s with the ring of white around the neck. This one was pure black, and a snow white wolf half Kade’s size was latched onto his throat, shaking violently. Bailey and Rike were here.
The snarling was so loud it became the soundtrack to Leah’s first Change. Her wolf was born in war. She didn’t know how to use this body or move on four legs. And when she looked down, her hands weren’t hands. They were pitch black paws, spread wide and making two unfamiliar prints in the mud. Oh god, she was a wolf. A black wolf.
A grunt of pain echoed through the woods. Ethan? Her only instinct was to help. Ethan, Rike, and Lucian had been covered by the thick smoke, and now there were grunts of pain farther in the woods like they’d moved their fight away from her. Maybe Lucian was running. But here by the road, Kade was tearing into Bailey, and this part she could help with. Or at least she could try.
Clumsily, she lunged at him and bit down into his flank as hard as she could. He was fast and strong and jerked her this way and that, but she and Bailey held on. Her mouth tasted like iron.
Bailey was thrown off hard, and Kade rounded on Leah. She released him and lowered to her belly. This was going to hurt…
But he didn’t attack. Instead, he lifted his head, his ears erect, and stared off at something in the woods. Rike and Ethan stood with their backs to them, their shoulders heaving, bodies covered in crisscrossing talon marks.
Ethan fell to his knees and leaned back, arms limp at his sides.
Rike’s black gaze tracked back to Leah and Bailey, and he looked like he wanted to retch.
Clumsily, Leah belly-crawled toward her Ethan. Please be okay. She nudged her nose under his limp hand and looked up at his face.
He stared down at her, his black eyes rimmed with moisture. “It’s done.” He choked on the last word and pulled her huge body against him. “It’s done,” he repeated.
In the clearing in front of them, there was a pile of ashes being turned to mud in the rain. In the middle of that pile, a sharp, jagged tree branch stretched straight for the stars and was covered in blood. A single black feather stuck to it.
“Are you okay?” he murmured against the scruff of her neck.
No. She wasn’t okay. She smelled like wet dog and had eight nipples. She wanted to tell him that but a whine escaped her instead so she quit trying. But she could snuggle and lick him.
The sound of wings filled the night, and then the song of crows. “Caw, caw, caw, caw.”
“Caw, caw, caw.”
“Caw, caw, caw, caw, caw!”
“Caw, caw!”
In the branches above were a dozen crows all crying out. Ethan stood but kept his hand on her lower back. Bailey came to stand by Rike, but Kade was gone. Run off somewhere.
“Caw, caw, caw!”
“Owooooooooooooo,” Bailey sang, her voice beautiful and haunting.
It made Leah want to…want to…
Bailey took a breath and howled again. “Owooooooooooooo,” and Leah couldn’t help herself. She answered in a lower tone that faded off into nothing before she started her howl again.
In the distance, another wolf answered. Crazy Kade. He’d saved her and then tried to kill her. She didn’t know whether to thank him or leave a pile of burning wolf-shit on his doorstep.
Wolves and crows, all singing a death chant over a man no one would miss. This was a victory song for the end of the ghost.
They were okay.
They were alive.
And as Ethan’s fingertips brushed her fur, she huffed a deep breath of relief. She was different now, changed from the inside out. Would Ethan still love her the same now that she was this…thing?
When he looked down at her, there was pride in his raven-black eyes. Pride. That’s what she’d always seen when his eyes were on her. The pride of a crow. He was obviously exhausted and hurt but relieved and hopeful at the same time, and okay. Okay. That look said he could still love her just the same.
And in a moment of clarity, she realized he wasn’t the only one whose legend had started the day he’d decided to own what he was—to be the new Blackwood Crow.
Leah’s legend had started that day, too.
Bailey wasn’t the only Blackwood Wolf anymore.
Chapter Fifteen
“Faaaaamily meeting,” Leah sang as she stabbed a cherry tomato from the vegetable tray with her little pink pocket knife.
“It’s a Clan meeting,” Ethan murmured, trying to hide his smile. “And you’re going to cut your lip.”
Leah plucked the little red snack from the blade and chewed it slowly. He would defini
tely be using one of the first-aid kits on his mate today.
“Claaaaaaaan meeting,” she corrected herself. God, she was so fucking cute.
“Can I leave now?” Kade grumbled from the corner of the room where he was sitting on an old chair with one leg straightened out, arms crossed over his chest, looking pissed.
“Okay,” Leah said, “I called this meeting because I have something I want to discuss.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Kade cursed at her, “if this is about lady problems, clothes, what color glitter to use on your new design-it-yourself phone case, a pole on what to have for dinner, or any of the other dozen stupid things you’ve called meetings for, I’m going to quit this stupid fucking Clan.”
“Rude,” Leah said with a cute little frown at Kade.
Ethan leaned back in the chair and propped his feet up on the barstool next to him.
“Why aren’t you putting a stop to this dumb shit?” Kade asked. “You’re the Alpha.”
“Unwilling Alpha, and I already told you I would be shitty at this. If you want to quit the Clan, great. Be my guest.”
“I’ve decided not to sell the house,” Leah announced.
“What?” Ethan asked, leaning forward onto the island counter top. “I thought you were putting it on the market next week.”
“Well, I saved up most of the property tax money, and you contributed the rest, so I was thinking that having all this space won’t be so bad when we have our ten crow-wolf-hybrid babies—”
“That’s not how it works,” Kade muttered.
“Plus we need an MC clubhouse, and with a little TLC, this place could be that.”
“You have stuffed unicorns in your room,” Ethan teased. “It wouldn’t be a very tough clubhouse.”
“I vote yes,” Kade said suddenly, standing. “I claim the east wing.”
“Wait, what?” Leah called as he sauntered out of the kitchen.
