Ghost Wolf: Paranormal Shifter Romance (ComeShift Series Book 1)

by Sky Winters

  “But you can hear us fine, now?” Meryl asked.

  Savannah nodded. “Because of my hearing aid, but even without it, I’m really good at reading lips.”

  “Does that mean you know sign language?” Bianca asked.

  Savannah nodded. “I could sign before I could speak.”

  “Wow!” Meryl exclaimed. “And when did you start to hear sound?”

  “Around the time I was fitted with my first hearing aid.”

  “How old were you?” Zanna asked.

  “Seven.”

  “And how–"

  “Guys!” Marissa interrupted. “Don’t make her feel like a monkey in the zoo. Let’s change the subject, shall we?”

  The girls exchanged glances. “Sorry,” Zanna smiled. “We can get a little carried away sometimes.”

  “No, that’s all right,” Savannah said quickly.

  “In the spirit of changing the subject, how are you finding Grey Mountain, Savannah?” Bianca asked.

  “I like it,” Savannah replied. “It’s different from any other place I’ve been to.”

  “I bet.” Zanna laughed. “It’s boring as hell.”

  They fell into an easy chatter and Savannah found herself enjoying the company far more than she would have imagined. She had never been a part of a group of girls before, and she was starting to understand what it was about. There was a camaraderie there that she had not experienced before. It made her feel like she belonged somewhere--it was a heady feeling.

  Especially considering she had never felt as if she really belonged anywhere.

  Chapter Seven

  Savannah spent the rest of the day with Marissa and the girls. By the time the last bell had finally rung, any doubt she had about them were gone. They left school together, and Savannah couldn’t help but look around for Xander.

  “Savannah?” Marissa’s voice cut through her thoughts. “Are you ready?”

  “Oh, sure,” Savannah nodded. She got into the white car with the rest of the girls. “Do you hike often?” she asked as they started driving away from the high school.

  Bianca nodded. “Almost every week together. Sometimes more when we’re on our own.”

  “Wow,” Savannah said in a breathy voice. “You guys are really into hiking, then?”

  Marissa nodded from behind the steering wheel. “Very much. All our parents were really into hiking when we were growing up, and I guess it rubbed off.”

  “Except mine,” Meryl piped in. “My parents hate nature. I don’t know why they chose to settle down in this town.”

  Savannah smiled. “Do you guys follow the regulated hiking paths?”

  Zanna nodded. “We used to when we first started hiking together, but now we go off on our own a lot of the time. We know those woods like the backs of our hands.”

  “Really?”

  “Have you been to the glade yet?” Marissa asked. Her eyes caught Savannah’s in the rear-view mirror.

  “The glade?” Savannah repeated, wondering if she should let on that Xander had taken her there.

  “Yes…big clearing, high up on the mountains?” Marissa described. “There’s a perfect lake sitting in the center of it.”

  Savannah nodded, having made a split-second decision. “I have been, actually.”

  “Ah, so Xander did take you there.” Marissa smiled. “Well, it saves us from hiking all the way up there to show you. Did you like it?”

  “It was perfect,” Savannah said. “I loved it.”

  Savannah searched for some sense of jealousy or hostility coming from Marissa, but couldn’t seem to detect anything obvious. Her tone was calm and conversational, and the girls filled with car with a constant stream of chatter. It was the most noise Savannah had heard in a long time, and she couldn’t help but enjoy being at the center of it.

  Marissa finally pulled up by the side of the road where a few parking spots had been drawn out for hikers. She parked the car and everyone got out, leaving all the books and bags in the vehicle.

  “No one’s taking anything?” Savannah asked.

  “We’ve got our cell phones on us,” Meryl replied. “That’s enough.”

  “Do you have a cell phone?” Marissa asked.

  “I do.” Savannah nodded as she patted her jeans pocket.

  “Great.” Marissa smiled. “Then let’s get going.”

  The trail was a little different from the one Savannah had traveled with Xander. It was less wild and less dangerous. There was a narrow, winding path that led up the hill, and far fewer trees, which meant there were far fewer animals as well.

  Savannah struggled to keep up with the girls. Within the first five minutes it was obvious how practised they all were with hiking. They breezed up the first hill in a matter of minutes, leaving Savannah panting her way up, pain shooting up and down her sides.

  “Guys, slow down,” Bianca said from the top. “Savannah isn’t as used to hiking as we are.”

  They slowed down slightly, after Savannah was able to catch up faster. They kept walking for another half hour, and by the time the girls had finally decided to take a break, Savannah was truly exhausted. Her legs were hurting and she sat down with relief.

  “I can’t believe you guys do every week,” she said, panting.

  “You get used to it,” Zanna replied. “I would have thought you’d be okay, considering your hike with Xander yesterday--”

  “Oh, I guess it was less strenuous than this one,” Savannah admitted.

  “What else did you guys do?” Meryl asked.

  “Nothing, really,” Savannah replied. “Just a short hike.”

  Marissa was very quiet, and Savannah’s doubts started to creep back up to the surface. She looked up sharply and caught Marissa staring. She smiled slowly and her eyes softened, making Savannah wonder if she was just being paranoid.

  “Savannah?” Marissa said, looking at her. “Do you like Xander?”

  It was far more direct than Savannah had expected. Taken unawares she hesitated a little. “I…don’t know him all that well.”

  “Yet you went off with him yesterday,” Marissa pointed out. “All alone.”

  “Is there something I should know?” Savannah asked, uncomfortably aware of everyone’s eyes on her.

  “This morning I told you only half the story,” Marissa said. “Xander is my friend. He did just get out of a bad relationship, and she did break his heart. What I didn’t mention was that he broke her heart right back.”

  “What?”

  Zanna spoke up before Marissa could. “What Marissa is trying to say is that Xander can be a little…temperamental. He can be a little…dangerous. He’s a typical bad boy and there’s no changing him. I’d be careful if I were you.”

  “What exactly are you saying?” Savannah asked.

  “The girl he was seeing? Her name was Zoe,” Marissa explained. “When she broke up with him? Well it hit him hard. He tried to convince her to take him back and when she refused, he got violent.”

  “Violent?” Savannah gasped in disbelief.

  “He didn’t actually hurt her,” Zanna clarified. “But he scared her pretty bad. She left town because of him.”

  I looked around at all of them. “Is this true?”

  Marissa sighed. “I’ve known Xander my whole life,” she said. “He’s a good guy, but he’s had a hard life. His father was…very volatile, and Xander suffered the most for it. It left him with…a few problems.”

  Savannah remembered the scars etched across Xander’s chest and back and she felt a shiver run down her spine. She reminded herself of how fiery his aura had been, burning with passion and intensity. She had thought it had spoken more to his character than his temperament, but now she was not sure.

  “I…I just can’t believe he would do something like that.” Savannah said.

  “You yourself just said it, Savannah,” Marissa said with solemn eyes. “You don’t know him.”

  I looked up at all of them, hoping that one person woul
d refute the others and tell me it was a lie. I looked hard at Marissa, wondering if I should trust her. There was something about her that I simply could not place. She was like Xander in that way--they all were. All four girls had incredibly bright, burning auras, and she could sense something hidden beneath them, a motive that she was missing.

  Savannah tried to make sense of it. If Marissa were jealous, she would have cause to taint Xander’s character so that Savannah would want to keep her distance, but why would her entire friend group be in on it, too, unless they were just that loyal.

  “Savannah, I know this is a lot to process, but you need to understand that we’re looking out for you here,” Marissa said. “And Xander, too.”

  “Perhaps he just needs someone to talk to,” Savannah said slowly.

  “Don’t you think I’ve tried?” Marissa demanded. Savannah felt a wave of hostility billow towards her. She looked at Marissa and wondered if she had been blind to the obvious. Savannah wondered if she had let her desire to cloud her better judgement.

  “Sometimes you just need to talk to a stranger,” Savannah said, wondering why she wasn’t backing down.

  “He has me,” Marissa said. Savannah heard the possessiveness in her tone.

  “He has all of us,” Meryl said, and Savannah heard the same note in her voice, too.

  She realized that all four girls had auras tinged with hues of dark red and deep green. The wisps of color danced around them, taking the shapes of their bodies and making them seem otherworldly.

  “We should get back home,” Savannah said standing up. “It’s getting late.”

  She thought for a moment that they might prevent her from leaving, but then Marissa nodded in agreement. “Savannah’s right,” she said. “We should start heading back. Let’s take the East route, though--it’s faster.”

  Savannah had no choice but to follow Marissa and the others on the alternative path. The comfortable contentment that had surrounded her that morning had disappeared in a puff of bitter smoke. She was starting to feel uneasy, and the difference in the girls’ auras was starting to bother her a little.

  They walked for about fifteen minutes and before Savannah knew it, it was dark. She hadn’t realized how much time they had spent on the hike and on their talk atop the hills. The darker it got, the more pronounced the girls' auras became. Savannah had never seen anything so bright and wild before. It felt almost like a possession.

  The girls raced ahead of her. This time no one looked back to see if she was keeping up with them. She tried calling after them, but no one seemed to be able to hear her. Panic started to kick in when she walked into something hard, and tripped over her own feet.

  Savannah landed on the muddy forest floor, narrowly avoiding knocking her face against a sharp rock. She glanced up, breathing heavily, and realized the last spotlights of sunlight had disappeared and darkness had well and truly arrived. She also realized she was completely alone. The girls were nowhere in sight, and her senses were telling her that something dangerous was coming her way.

  She reached for the cell phone in her pocket only to discover it was no longer there. She looked around, trying in desperation to see if she had dropped it in the fall, but it was nowhere to be seen. The wind picked up and on its tail came the same, strange scent Savannah had smelt from the window of her bedroom.

  She froze in place and stared off into the dark trees. She saw nothing yet, but she sensed something was coming--a large animal, maybe more than one. Fear gripped at her throat and she could not bring herself to make a sound. She turned on the spot, trying to find some way out of this, but all she saw were the silhouettes of trees against a great canvas of black.

  Then she heard it, a scraping, scratching sound that promised pain. It was a rasping, clawing, grating sound that had the hairs on the back of Savannah’s neck standing at attention. She saw its eyes first--they looked almost red, but as it came closer, she realized they weren’t red at all. They were a stony, steely blue that had an intelligence Savannah couldn't even begin to fathom.

  She could only stare at it in shock and fear before she realized that the beast was not alone. Behind it, Savannah spied three more pairs of bright eyes, all of which narrowed, hungrily, in her direction. They moved forward, together, in beautiful synchronization. The light of the moon hit them all at once, and Savannah’s breath stilled as her body grew cold.

  They were mammoth, larger than she had ever seen before. They were beautiful, terrifying monsters, and Savannah knew she was completely and hopelessly trapped.

  “Wolves,” she whispered, knowing that no one would hear her.

  Chapter Eight

  They stared at her calmly, and Savannah felt almost as though she were being studied. She took a step back, and a low rumble of growls went up among the wolves. The largest wolf bared its teeth, and Savannah froze.

  Slowly, the wolf at the head of the pack started moving forward, toward her. It was so deliberate a move that Savannah's fear increased, tenfold. She sensed she was not dealing with normal wolves here, and that something was very, very wrong. She could feel it too, that these wolves were playing a game, and she was stuck in the center of it.

  She felt a chill run down her back when she realized the wolves had surrounded her. She had been so focused on the largest one standing in front of her, that she hadn’t even noticed how quickly they had moved to encircle her, closing ranks so that she had nowhere to run.

  “This isn’t right,” she whispered to herself. “This isn’t normal.”

  The blue eyed wolf in front of her starting growling fiercely, and Savannah had no choice but to stand there, still and silent, with no way of defending herself. The animal’s teeth were long and large; they glinted threateningly under the light of the moon. The wolf advanced, and Savannah felt the other wolves mimic the leader’s movements.

  The wolf in front of her hunched down into a position of attack, and Savannah knew she was staring death in the face. She closed her eyes, having no alternative left.

  Then there was a howl, and Savannah turned toward it to see a massive creature speeding through the trees towards them. For a moment she thought it was coming straight for her, but then the creature changed course and flew at the wolves that had encircled her.

  Savannah tripped over her own feet and fell to the ground as she searched for the mammoth form of her unlikely saviour. She stared in shock when she realized it was another wolf. This one was the largest of the lot, but it didn’t seem remotely interested in her. It snapped its jaws and growled in fury at the other four wolves in the dense little clearing.

  With howls of defeat, the four smaller wolves took off into the dark night, leaving behind the gigantic, russet-brown wolf. The animal's back was to her, and Savannah wanted to take the opportunity to flee in the other direction, but the moment she stood up the wolf turned slowly, its eyes fixed on her with a deadly calm. For one frantic moment she considered that this wolf had tried to protect her, but now she was starting to believe it had simply chased away the competition.

  Savannah froze in place as she sensed something familiar. She stared at the massive wolf in front of her and its eyes caught hers. It was almost as though she recognized the creature. Without thinking, she took a step forward, and moonlight fell directly onto the animal. Its eyes were haunting pools of silver-grey and Savannah gasped as realization dawned.

  “Xander?” she whispered.

  The air changed, and Savannah felt something was about to happen. The wolf began to shiver, slowly at first, but then more violently. Suddenly the beast transformed into a man right before her eyes, and Savannah found herself facing Xander, completely naked, and seeming completely unaware of what had happened.

  “Xander?” Savannah gasped. “Did that just happen?”

  “This is not the place or the time for explanations,” he replied. “Let’s get you out of here…now!”

  Savannah didn’t argue. Instead, she followed Xander through the forest until the
y came upon his bike, camouflaged between a thicket of shrubs and bushes. She got on behind him and they sped through the forest until they reached a little cabin, hidden in a dense and concealed part of the woods. Xander set his bike aside and led Savannah into the cabin.

  It was only once they were inside that Savannah felt a little calmer. The cabin had a rustic charm about it. There was a big sofa in the center facing the fireplace, and a table with chairs beside the cabin’s large, generous windows.

  “Why don’t you sit down?” Xander suggested.

  “I don’t want to sit down,” Savannah said, turning to him. “I want to know what just happened out there.”

  “Why on earth did you go off alone with Marissa and the other girls?” Xander demanded.

  The heat of his words took Savannah back, “I…please…are you trying to say that…every one of you can…turn into wolves?”

  Xander stared at her for a moment, then he sighed deeply. “Just sit down, Savannah. I’ll get you something hot to drink.”

  “I don’t want anything to drink.”

  Xander came up close to her and put his hands on her shoulders. He was so close that Savannah could smell every scent that perfumed his body. He smelt of oak and earth, of fire and sweat. He smelled like an animal and a man at the same time.

  “You’re in shock,” Xander said slowly. “Your body needs rest or you’re going to pass out. I will tell you anything you need to know, but first, I’m going to need you to sit down and drink something.”

  Savannah felt the weight of his words, but she felt the weight and passion of his aura more potently. She sat back on the sofa and moments later Xander brought her some hot coffee. He sat down beside her and gazed at her with searching eyes.

  “Did they hurt you?” he asked as Savannah sipped the coffee.

  “I…no, no,” Savannah stammered. “They didn’t get a chance to.”

  Xander nodded. “Are you cold? Do you need a blanket?”

  “I’m fine,” Savannah said impatiently. “What I want is answers.”

  Xander sat back. “Okay,” he said.