This Dark Wolf: Soul Bitten Shifter Book 1

by Everly Frost

  We could do this all day, neither one of us achieving our goal.

  My head spins as I come to a deliberate stop beside the table.

  He also stops. Smiles at me. Then he inches forward, testing my resolve to keep him at a distance.

  I remain where I am, allowing him to approach.

  He takes it slow as he slides his arms around my waist outside of the robe, pulling my hips against his, before lifting me onto the edge of the table with ease, guiding my legs to either side of his hips.

  “I understand your strongest emotions,” he says. “I can anticipate your impulses, your wants, and your needs. But your thoughts—the things you choose to keep secret—are hidden from me. You can choose to hide your emotions from me too, if you wish. But I can sense the emotions you don’t cage. For example…” He dips his lips to the corner of my mouth, a tingling contact. “I know that if I kiss you right now, you won’t push me away.”

  He tugs at the sash keeping my bathrobe in place, allowing the strip of material to fall to the floor. My breath catches when his palm presses against the exposed skin at the base of my stomach.

  He leans forward and presses another kiss to the other corner of my mouth.

  “I love that you let me win just now,” he whispers.

  I allow myself to smile, brushing his cheek with mine. I was the one who chose to stop dancing around the table.

  He said that our strongest emotions will be plain to each other. I read the desire in his eyes, but I keep my own in check. With difficulty.

  Damn, it would be so much easier to give in.

  “We can embrace the connection between us,” I say, assessing our situation. “Or we can use it against each other. Both options carry risks.”

  He gives me a single acknowledging nod.

  Since the fight yesterday, Tristan has allowed me to choose our path. I suddenly understand what a leap of faith that is for him. He gave me the choice yesterday to decide how to resolve the power struggle between us. Now he’s allowing me to choose our future.

  It takes me by surprise to realize I have more power than I thought I did.

  I turn my mouth to his, catching his lips. A brief contact. It’s nearly too much. I thought the lightest touch would give me some sort of closure, but now I don’t think any contact with his body will ever be enough.

  The growth across his jaw makes my lips tingle before I force myself to pull back, drawing on every bit of will inside me not to return to his lips and give in to the desire to explore his mouth.

  “I accept your proposal.” I curl my fingers around the back of his neck. “Show me your city. Give me what I need to kill the shifters who hurt me. I’ll stay for as long as it takes to end them.”

  Removing my hand from his neck and placing both my palms on his chest, I push him firmly but slowly away from me. “But remember that I belong to me. Once I’m done here, I’m leaving.”

  I wait for his response, wondering if he will raise the subject of the three-headed wolf—if he will finally reveal to me that he wants me to stay and kill it.

  He simply gives me a nod. “I accept your terms.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Reaching an agreement puts us in a position of an alliance, a situation that is so unexpected that I’m trying not to be thrown by it. After eating a quick breakfast of toast and fruit, I’ve only just finished getting dressed in the bathroom when the elevator whirs.

  I hurry out to find Tristan alert where he stands at the window, but he relaxes when Iyana and Danika appear.

  Iyana looks like she’s prepared for war, wearing her leather boots over tight black pants and a black shirt, her outfit complete with a weapons belt sporting daggers and—I’m surprised to see—her handguns.

  Both women head right for me, Iyana skirting around the pool of sunlight pouring through the window while Danika strides right through it.

  I meet them halfway, accepting their hugs, pulling Iyana safely to the far side of the living area, which is darker.

  Neither of my friends appears well rested.

  “We were worried about you,” Danika says, squeezing me hard and making my eyes burn with tears.

  Iyana kisses my cheek and whispers, “Do I need to kill him for you?”

  I pull them both tighter, a group hug that I don’t want to end. “You’re the best friends I could ever hope for. But no, you can rest assured, Tristan doesn’t need killing today.”

  “Good.” Iyana breathes out a sigh of relief. “Because I’d hate to kill the man who saved my life.”

  She’s come a long way from the woman who nearly crumbled at the possibility that Tristan wasn’t the good guy she thought he was. When we finally break apart, Tristan stands with his arms folded across his chest, looking every bit the alpha. I bite my lip to hide my smile that he’s chosen to locate himself directly in the sunlight. He’s wise not to underestimate Iyana.

  Or Danika, for that matter.

  Our hug revealed that she’s carrying a pistol at her hip beneath her long tank top, which shows off the tattoo of a hawk’s wing that covers her left shoulder and bicep.

  “Tessa and I are heading out to see our territory today,” Tristan says. “You’re welcome to come with us.”

  Our territory? My eyes narrow, but I let it pass.

  Iyana huffs at him. “You know I can’t come out into the sunlight.”

  Tristan shrugs. “Then Tessa can take you out tonight when she goes on patrol. She’ll need backup.”

  Iyana’s scowl fades. “I’ll be there.”

  Danika is more relaxed. “I’ll watch over you both today. I’ve been dying to take to the sky. I’m assuming I don’t need to be worried about other airborne shifters.”

  “As long as you stay directly above us, you’ll be safe,” Tristan says. “Remember not to fly above the forests. They belong to witches, who won’t take kindly to your presence.”

  “Noted,” she says.

  “Then let’s go.” Tristan strides straight for Iyana and swipes the security card right out of her hand as he passes by.

  “Hey!” she objects, her jaw dropping at how fast he moved. “We need that.”

  “You don’t,” he says to Iyana, passing the card to me. “Tessa’s staying with you from now on, so you have no need to come to my floor. But she needs a way to see me if there’s an emergency.” He pauses. “Unless, of course, you were planning on coming up here to visit me, Iyana?”

  Iyana grins madly and her blue-gray eyes pop with her smile. “You wish, wolf man.”

  Tristan strides onward to the elevator and I’m left holding a security pass that I would have killed for yesterday. I quickly deposit it into my pocket, grab my duffel bag, and join the others in the elevator.

  To my surprise, Tristan presses the button for the roof. “You don’t need a pass to access the roof, so you can head on up there anytime you need,” he says to Danika.

  Her hazel eyes are bright with anticipation. As soon as we exit the elevator into a small room with a transparent door, she begins stripping off, dropping her clothing into a pile in the corner.

  Tristan averts his eyes and holds open the door for her. She runs through it, sprints right up to the edge of the building, and leaps off it.

  My breath catches, my heart leaping into my throat when she jumps. She transforms mid-leap and I let out my held breath. Her hawk is a gorgeous honey color with bronze-tipped feathers and a massive wingspan. She soars into the wind and upward, circling the building. Her eyesight will allow her to spot us from up high and follow us.

  Back in the elevator, Iyana tells me that she and Danika are living on the tenth floor now—she asked Jace to move them yesterday. When the doors open at the tenth floor, she takes my bag with her. “See you tonight, Tessa.” She gestures quickly before the doors close. “Seventh door on the right.”

  Alone again, Tristan leans against the other side of the elevator, seemingly prepared to continue in silence. When Danika and Iyana arrived, he t
old them we were heading out to see our territory today. Not his territory. I see my opportunity to ask him about it now that we’re alone.

  “Our territory?” I ask.

  He stiffens but relaxes as his gaze passes from my topknot to my boots, lingering on my curves. “A slip of the tongue.”

  I ‘hmm’ lightly, sensing that I have to accept his answer for now. He said that we can sense each other’s strongest emotions, but not the feelings we cage. Right now, he’s a blank slate.

  When we reach the garage, Tristan is all business. “Don’t worry about encountering humans,” he says. “The floors that are leased to businesses have their own elevators. The security pass I gave you will also allow you to come and go from this building.”

  Jace waits for us at the side of the garage, next to the door with the exit sign above it. He appears as badly rested as Iyana and Danika. Unlike them, he doesn’t relax when he sees us, the tension remaining in his shoulders and narrowed eyes.

  “Tristan.” He growls. “What the hell? You were unreachable for twenty-four hours. The pack nearly lost their shit.”

  Tristan grips Jace’s shoulders, facing off with him, and I’m once again reminded of how much like an alpha Jace is, how equally matched both men are. Except that Tristan is reining in his wrath for once.

  “Thank you for keeping them calm. I know it can’t have been easy.” He is unyielding. “But it was important.”

  Jace’s fierce glare transfers to me, his scowl deepening before his expression suddenly clears and his eyes widen. He steps back quickly, shaking Tristan off. “What. The. Fuck?”

  I’m not entirely sure what looks different about me today that has startled Jace so much. Maybe I should have taken more than a quick glance at myself in the mirror. I know I feel different, the most in control, the calmest, I’ve felt in my life.

  Jace’s focus flicks rapidly from me to Tristan, back and forth, until he squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head like an angry wolf, and backs away until he bumps into the wall. The thud he makes when he hits the wall is so fierce that I wince.

  “You’re breathing in unison,” Jace growls without opening his eyes. “You’re reflecting each other’s emotions. Fuck, it’s making my head spin.”

  I consider Jace warily. Danika and Iyana aren’t wolf shifters, so that must be why they didn’t react the way Jace is.

  Tristan is unmoved by Jace’s reaction. “Tessa and I resolved our differences.”

  “By tempting death,” Jace snarls, fists clenching as he opens his eyes. He jabs the wall at his side, an angry tap-tap. “Nobody survives The Melding. You could have died.”

  “It was the only way,” Tristan says, still calm, but his chin is raised, his focus narrowing.

  Jace launches himself off the wall, a threatening tower of muscle, his head lowered, eyes shifting to his wolf’s, claws extending. “Because fucking each other would have been a chore?”

  Tristan retaliates, fast and aggressive. He launches himself forward, grabs Jace’s swinging fist, twists, and wrenches Jace’s arm behind his back. Forcing Jace to his knees, Tristan drops the weight of his knee onto Jace’s spine, making him curl forward, completely submissive. “Do not disrespect us, Jace. We’re melded and that’s the end of it.”

  Jace thumps his free fist against the concrete. “You’re determined to kill yourself before your time! You forget there are wolves you’re going to leave behind.”

  Tristan exhales into the ensuing silence before he releases Jace and steps back. I steer clear of both men, knowing this is something Tristan needs to deal with himself.

  He waits for Jace to rise to his feet before he levels his gaze with Jace’s. “I’m showing Tessa around the city today. I need you to watch everything here. Can you do that? Or do we have a problem?”

  The muscle in Jace’s jaw clenches, but he gives a firm nod. “I can do that.”

  Tristan spins on his heel, strides to the exit, and holds it open for me. Jace squares his shoulders, his expression blank as I pass him by. I want to reassure him, but I’m not sure how. Anything I say will sound trite.

  But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t question Tristan about his choice to spend the day with me instead of with his pack.

  As soon as we exit the building onto the busy street outside, I reach for Tristan’s arm and level my gaze with his. “Should you be with your pack right now?”

  “I’m right where I need to be,” he replies, breaking my gaze to survey the sidewalk and the oncoming traffic. He ignores the traffic lights and the crosswalk to our left, drawing me across the road when the traffic eases. “My pack will be fine. Sometimes they don’t appreciate what’s best for them.”

  I tug him to a stop beside one of the white pillars at the side of the square. “Jace is worried about you. I don’t know what it’s like to have a pack that cares for me, but don’t underestimate his loyalty to you.”

  Tristan’s glare is fiercer than I was expecting, his eyebrows drawing down. I sense his inner turmoil, his darkness, before he closes himself off. Even though we’re connected now, we can’t sense each other’s innermost thoughts or the parts of ourselves that we choose to keep secret. For some reason, my comment has ignited a conflict inside him that is deep enough that he’s put up a wall.

  “Tristan?”

  “That’s close enough, Tessa,” he says.

  I sigh. He means I’ve got as close to him as he’s going to let me.

  “There are some things you don’t want to know about me.” He raises his gaze from my hand on his arm to my eyes. His own are partially shifted, so suddenly aggressive that I carefully uncurl my fingers.

  If he’d looked at me like this yesterday, I would have thought he was about to end me. Today… the faintest sense of anticipation rises inside me. Tristan’s aggression is a weapon that I can use.

  “Okay,” I murmur, reminding myself that I’m here for a purpose: to end Baxter Griffin, Peter Nash, and my half-brother. If I take out Cody Griffin at the same time, all the better. “Show me your city.”

  We spend most of the morning and early afternoon walking the streets. Tristan takes me to the northernmost bridge first, pointing out all of the weak spots, explaining how difficult it is to protect the border of his territory because of the ease with which vehicles can pass across the bridges. We walk along the wide tree-lined park beside the river, all the way to the South Waterfront before we head farther west, then up through Goose Hill toward the Northwest District.

  Tristan tells me that his pack used to be so large that they once lived in both Southwest Portland and up through Cedar Mill, but he had to pull everyone in a year ago because they didn’t have the numbers to defend the bridges anymore.

  “My pack would be safer farther west,” he says. “But then we’d leave the bridges vulnerable and Baxter would take control of them. After that, it would only be a matter of time before he backed me into a corner.”

  “How many wolves are in your pack now?” I ask.

  “We used to be a pack of a thousand wolves,” he says. “Now I have one hundred.”

  One thousand wolves is a lot. One hundred is not. The Highland packs have around five hundred wolves each and Baxter Griffin has close to a thousand. Tristan is severely outnumbered.

  Every now and then, I glance upward, knowing that Danika is following high above us, even if I can’t see her. I also keep alert for any sign of the white wolf. I haven’t been outside the tower since I saw him, but I’m wary of another surprise encounter—especially when I’m with Tristan. I don’t have any hard and fast answers about whether or not the white wolf is the three-headed wolf that Tristan said is coming for him, but for now, that’s my best theory.

  I also don’t know how the white wolf is connected to me. It’s a question that burns at the back of my mind, but I have to put it aside. Right now, all of my energy and attention needs to be focused on where I stand with Tristan.

  We grab some food along the way before we stop at the edge of
Forest Park. The lush forest calls to me, begging me to explore its secret places. I rise onto the balls of my feet, itching to run, but Tristan takes hold of my arm.

  “The forests are out of bounds,” he says, disappointing me. “The most powerful coven was led by a witch named Mother Serena. She and her entire coven were wiped out several years ago. I don’t know who or what took them down, but the other covens are still fighting over her territory. Once they resolve their issues, I’ll be able to negotiate with the winner to access the forest again. Until then, we can’t run or shelter in the forests. We don’t want to get caught up in their war.”

  I should be tired, but I’m buzzing by the time we return to the clock tower and reenter the elevator.

  “I want to patrol the central bridge for the next few nights,” I say. “It’s the quickest route from the Eastern Lowland to your home here. I know my half-brother. He’s lazy. If he’s going to attack again, he’ll enter via that bridge.”

  “If you’re ready,” Tristan says.

  I sense his uncertainty. When I was confronted with Dawson’s violent treatment of Carly and Becca after Tristan brought them to Hidden House, I nearly had a panic attack. It hasn’t even been a week since then, but a lot has changed. “I’m certain.”

  Tristan leans against the other side of the elevator. “I need you to come with me to the pack meeting this evening when I let everyone know what’s going on. Iyana and Danika will show you where that is.” The corner of his mouth rises into a fleeting smile. “It could be better if you’re wearing something a little more intimidating when you get there.”

  I cast a quick glance at my jeans and flannel shirt. “This is all I have.”

  Tristan shrugs, as if it doesn’t matter.

  The doors open to the tenth floor and I step outside.

  Tristan gives me a formal nod before the elevator closes again.

  I stare at the doors, resisting the urge to use the security card in my pocket already. Freedom is an unfamiliar feeling after the last two months of not-quite-captivity.