by H. D. Gordon
It had led me home.
THE END
Dearest Reader,
Thank you for taking a chance on this series, and for making it through to the end.
If you’re craving more of this world, I invite you to continue reading for a sneak peek at the first book of the Blood Pack Trilogy: Moon of Fire, which follows a new heroine by the name of Dita Silvers.
If you’ve read any of my other books, you probably know that strong female heroines are totally my thing, and Dita is no exception. In fact, Dita is perhaps my favorite of all the heroines I’ve written, but you’ll have to check out Moon of Fire to see why. ;)
Many readers don’t know this, but all of the series I’ve written are loosely connected. The stories overlap, and the characters often make appearances in the stories of other characters.
So, if you enjoyed this series, and are looking for more like it, I encourage you to take a look at the “Also by H. D. Gordon” page in the back of this book.
Or just keep reading for a sneak peek at Dita’s story: Moon of Fire (Blood Pack Trilogy: Book 1)
I hope it’s all rainbows and sunshine wherever you are.
XoXo,
H. D. Gordon
Copyright © 2018 by H. D. Gordon
Published by H. D. Gordon Books LLC
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover designed by Christian Bentulan
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For my girls
Story Summary
Hustling wolfsbane is the only way Dita Silvers knows how to survive.
As a werewolf from the slums, she longs to lift her family out of poverty, and getting involved with the prominent criminals in town seems worth the potential earnings.
But when Dita makes a snap decision that changes the course of things, and a handsome stranger comes to town asking questions, her resolve to accomplish her end goals will be put to the test.
With a witty sorceress as a best friend and partner in crime, and five siblings to look after, Dita has her hands full. Female werewolves do not command the respect male werewolves do, and they certainly don’t run a bootlegging operation at the height of prohibition.
Moon of Fire is the first book in The Blood Pack Series.
Chapter 1
The moon was full and red, and the Wolves were drunk and hungry.
The sounds of the fights in The Ring floated out of the barn and into the fields beyond, an ever-present soundtrack to my Friday nights.
The main event this evening featured a brawny male on his sixty-seventh fight, the favorite over his competitor. Personally, I was more interested in the female fight that would take place beforehand. The female I’d been placing money on—and winning—was fun to watch, if one could call such a brutal fight “fun.”
I was likely to miss it, anyway, because business was flowing, and the business was what I was here for.
After taking one last long glance down at the worn parchment in my hand, I folded the paper and replaced it in my jacket pocket, leaning casually back against the wooden building behind me with feigned ease. Appearing relaxed was important, but being on one’s toes was absolutely necessary. Currently on my person, I was carrying enough Wolfsbane to make a poor Wolf’s month, and in my world, the predators were always lurking around the corners.
Catching a familiar scent on the air, I angled my head and caught sight of Phil, a frequent customer. His cracked lips pulled up as he spotted me in my usual position, his grin revealing the missing teeth the drug use had rotted and claimed. His clothes were old and carried a stench that was irremovable, and open sores spotted the skin on his arms and hands.
The weather was cool with the approaching winter, but the fine leather of my gloves never left my hands for fear of what I might contract from doing business with Wolves like Phil. I pitied the male, as well as the others, but in all honesty, I couldn’t say the hands they’d been dealt by life were any worse than the one fate had given me, so the sentiment was easily dismissed.
We all had our demons. For Phil, it was the drugs and booze. For me… Well, I had to be the demon.
“Hey there, D,” Phil crooned as he hobble-walked over to me. His tongue snaked out to wet his dry lips, and my stomach twisted, but my posture and expression remained unaffected.
“What’ll it be?” I asked.
Phil patted his pockets, as if he didn’t know the exact amount he had to barter with. “I’m a little short. Can you help me out?”
I pulled my gaze away from a small group of young Wolves who had gathered outside the barn in which The Ring was held, and gave Phil a look like he must be stupid.
He chuckled at the expression, but when I held his gaze, the laughter dried up like rain on a summer afternoon. “Always so serious, Dita,” Phil added, and sighed. “What can I get for ten?”
Still holding his eyes with the steel in mine, I reached into the fine fabric of my black jacket and produced a dime bag of Wolfsbane, exchanging it for the coins Phil handed me.
He looked like he might have something else to say, but baring my teeth a bit sent him ambling away again. I rolled my neck and scanned my surroundings, patting absentmindedly at the paper folded neatly in my pocket. Just a few more hours, and I could go home. Eat something, maybe even sleep.
The high-pitched squeal of a Wolf crying out in The Ring cut across the night, and while once upon a time the sound had given me nightmares, I’d long since grown numb to the pain-filled shrieks of the losers. Why anyone would choose such a life was beyond me, but then again, I supposed many would think the same of my own life endeavors.
It wasn’t like I had much of a choice, though, so perhaps in their individual ways, it was the same for them.
Such philosophizing had no place in my world, so I pushed the thoughts aside and continued my hustle as the darkness of the night deepened, and then gradually gave way to the wee hours of the morning.
I was checking my timepiece when my older brother, Devon, found me. As soon as I saw him, I could tell from the look on his face and the set of his shoulders that something was wrong. Knowing our family, the matter could be any range of depravity.
Devon was a large male Wolf, handsome and muscular, with blue eyes and dark hair and an easy smile that he spent a good deal of time suppressing—at my insistence. Our enemies would no doubt see his easygoing manner as weak, and while I appreciated the quality in him, I wouldn’t allow it to get us killed.
“How’d you do?” Devon asked as he approached, straightening the lapels of his jacket in the overly civilized way he had.
“Good,” I replied. “I’m almost out. Can probably go home with zero stock if we stay another hour.” I yawned and checked the timepiece in my pocket. “You can give me the rest of yours and I’ll get rid of it if you want to go.”
“Nah,” Devon said, “we need to get home. Demarco and Dad are at it again. Delia is worried they’ll kill each other.”
I rolled my eyes, loosing a heavy sigh. “Oh well if they do,” I mumbled. “Hot-headed idiots.”
Devon grinned, his handsome face lighting up, though the stress caused to him by our family still lined the crease between his brows. “We can’t all be as cold as you, Dita,” he joked.
I snorted. “No,” I agreed, “because that would be too damn convenient.”
He jerked his chin. “You coming?” he asked. “You know you’re the only one who can bre
ak them up.”
Cursing, I pushed off the wall on which I’d been leaning. We both knew I would go. The crazy people in my family were forever summoning me, a fate I both cherished and resented depending on the weather.
“I still have the scar on my back from the last time they did this,” I grumbled.
Devon slung his arm around my shoulder, a rare show of affection that I allowed for only a handful of seconds before shrugging it off. We were on The Row on a fight night; any number of people could be watching.
“We’ve all got our fair share of scars as a result of being born a Silvers,” he replied.
“Ain’t that the truth?” I mumbled, and resigned to the fact that there would be no early sleep for me tonight, not until I stopped my insane father from killing my crazy brother.
Or until I killed the bastards my damn self.
I opened the door, and a dish crashed into the wall beside my head, making me flinch and duck.
The sound of the polished clay shattering against the wood was fantastic, but it was swallowed by the bellow of my father. The timber of his tone told me that he’d been using again, and I felt my rage rise and had to force it back down again with some effort.
If not for my father’s habit, our family might be able to move out of the shithole we called home, and it was safe to say that I hated him for this. In fact, I was pretty sure that I hated my father just about as much as I loved him.
On some days, I hated him more.
The place was in absolute chaos. Devon and I had time to exchange a single exasperated glance before we sprang into action.
My father and youngest brother had torn the already pitiful shack to shreds, their eyes glowing Wolf-gold as they squared off in the middle of the room. They were both in their Wolf forms, and though my father dwarfed even the largest Wolves in size, Demarco was as scrappy a fighter as they came.
My twelve-year-old little sister, Delia, was the one who’d thrown the dish in a futile effort to break up the males. Tears streaked her pretty face, and her voice cracked as she screamed at them to stop, too afraid to shift into her Wolf form and get between them.
I did not blame her.
Demarco was bleeding on his head, right below his left ear, and a little scarlet also spotted my father’s muzzle as well, his large teeth bared in anger. Snarls and low, rippling growls rumbled in their chests as the two of them snapped at each other’s throats. Chunks of fur floated in the air along with the scent of iron from the spattering of blood already spilled.
My stepmother, Jodi, sat in the corner, holding a cigarette and a glass of moonshine in one hand and watching with glassy, disinterested eyes.
My twin little sisters, Ada and Analise, were curled up in the corner, watching the scene with wide, innocent eyes. It was this that made me most angry. I’d accepted the fact that this was my life, but no amount of hammering would ever make me accept it for them.
Come hell or high water, one day, I would take the twins and Delia out of here. I wasn’t sure how, exactly, but I would find a way. I would see to it that they didn’t have to sell Wolfsbane to survive, that violence would not be a part of their everyday existence.
And I didn’t care whom I had to kill to do it.
Starting with the idiots in this room.
“Great. You’re home,” Jodi said, taking a long swig of the liquid in her glass. “They’re gonna kill each other.”
“Thanks for the help,” I snapped, sliding past my father and brother to reach the twins in the corner. I nodded at Devon to take Delia outside, and he scooped her up. Devon and Delia had a special relationship, and I knew he would be able to calm the girl. It was important to remove the children from the situation, and then I would deal with the knuckleheads.
So I allowed the duel to continue while I picked up Ada and Ana and carried them into the back bedroom.
The first time I’d had to do this, they had only been two years old, and I could still remember the way their little bodies had shaken like leaves in my arms. Now, three years later, after only five years of life in this family, they were as numb to the violence and chaos as I was to that of The Ring.
The back bedroom was cold, as it was a space that held heat in the summer and cold in the winter, but I could have heated it myself with the rage that was steadily rising within me. I was tired after hustling to grabby Wolves all evening, and worse, I was hungry. I can be an unpleasant Wolf on the best of days. When I was hungry, I was a danger to anyone near me.
Well, almost anyone.
“You should be asleep,” I told the twins as I laid them on one of the three mattresses on the floor and placed gentle kisses on their foreheads.
“We were,” Ada replied in her sweet little voice.
“Daddy and Demarco woke us up,” added Ana.
I released a slow breath, pulled up the blanket around their shoulders, and gave them one more kiss each on the head. “I’ll go make sure they keep it down, then,” I said. “You have lessons in the morning, so you need to sleep.”
Beyond the bedroom door, there was a yelp and a thud, followed by a howl of laughter from Jodi the Bitch. The calm that always follows intense rage settled over me as the twins stared up at me from the mattress.
“Why do we have to go to lessons?” Ada asked. “Most of the other kids from The Mound don’t go.”
I smiled, though my heart had long since broken behind it. “That’s because they have ignorant parents and guardians,” I said. “People who don’t understand that knowledge is power. People who have no desire or ability to move beyond where they stand… You need to know how to read and write, girls. How to do mathematics and interact with others. It’s important. I promise.”
Identical resigned expressions came over their pretty little faces, and I felt my lips pull up again in another rare smile. When they yawned at the same time, I couldn’t help placing one last kiss on their foreheads.
Another hard thud and crash from beyond the bedroom door drew me to my feet.
“Sleep tight, little ones,” I said, and went to go wrangle the Wolves.
Chapter 2
I shut the door to the bedroom behind me with careful calm. When the latch clicked, I turned on my heels to face Demarco and my father, who were still in their Wolf forms.
They circled and snapped and went rolling in a massive ball of fur and fangs, rumbling growls and snarls, shaking the very walls of the shack we called home.
I watched them for a moment before speaking into the chaos. “Demarco,” I said. “Go outside.”
Demarco paid me no mind. He was occupied watching the monstrously large Wolf that was our father. I shook my head and skirted around them to open the front door to the little house. Once that was done, I stood back and waited for my moment.
The two idiots got in a couple more snarls and snaps at each other before I saw my opening. When I did, I made sure to move fast. That was the one physical advantage female Wolves had over the males. The males had us beat in size and strength, but females had the speed.
So there was no way Demarco could move out of the way before I shot forward and kicked him hard on the left side of his body. My supernatural strength was enough to send his furry butt flying out the cabin door and into the barren yard that prefaced the house.
Devon was out there waiting, as I knew he would be, and he’d also shifted into his Wolf form. At twenty-five years old, Devon was a fully-grown Wolf, in comparison to Demarco, who had just turned sixteen two moon cycles ago.
I shut the cabin door, anyway, keen to put a wall of wood between my father and my little brother. Then, slowly, with ardent awareness of the fanged beast at my back, I turned to face the male who’d made me.
Even with the steel that had coated over my nerves from a life lived in The Mound, it would be a lie to say that no fear coursed through me as I stared down my father. I’d seen many a Wolf during my hustling outside The Ring, and his size in both mortal and canine form rivaled that of even the largest
Wolves. Every bit of him was bulging muscle, and his fur coat, like his hair and Devon’s, was as black as the night. His lips were pulled back, his muzzle dark with the shiny blood of his youngest son, and his eyes glowed Wolf-gold that was ringed in scarlet—a feature only he and I shared.
Other than our eyes, I looked exactly like my dead mother, or so I was told. I believed this resemblance was the reason my father favored me so much. He was a mean and drunken bastard on the best of days, but the man had loved my mother. She’d died giving birth to Demarco, when I’d been only five, and I’d long since forgotten her face.
Speaking to my father in the telepathic manner Wolves had, my voice was smooth and even, a feature I’d been careful to perfect.
“I sold all the stock,” I told him.
His Wolf, with those red-gold eyes, only stared back at me, nearly eye-level with his height despite the fact that he was on four legs and I on two.
“I got you something,” I added. “It’s waiting for you down at The Row. Already paid for.”
Still, my father stared unblinkingly, his teeth bared as his lips twitched around a snarl. I held his gaze, a feat most Wolves would not be brave or stupid enough to attempt.
For all that I was, however, I was certainly not most Wolves.
I wandered over to the table where Jodi sat, and poured a drink, ignoring her, as was my custom. I took a sip of the amber liquid and felt it burning in my belly as I once more approached my father.
“Her name is Carmen,” I continued in my father’s head, “She’s new, and beautiful.”
There was a beat or two of silence.
“Already paid for?” my father finally responded at last, speaking in my head both because he was in his Wolf form and because Jodi was watching. She couldn’t hear our telepathic conversation, but she surely knew we were communicating.
