When Knight started gurgling, evidently getting pissed off with all the racket from the woods, Sabina shifted. When I saw her naked self in bed, I didn’t even blink as she leaped up and on wobbly feet, made it around to where a bassinet was sitting, pride of place.
Within seconds, Knight was in her arms, and she held him so close to her chest that I didn’t know where he began and she ended. As her lips brushed over the crown of his head, she whispered, “What happened, Lara? I don’t remember—”
What could I say to that? “I don’t know, sister. Not really.” More howls shot up, and I groaned under my breath. “I wish they’d stop that,” I groused.
“Someone’s here. Someone’s coming. Someone the pack doesn’t approve of.”
“They mentioned someone called the Rainford alpha.”
Daniel whimpered at my words and started ruffling the covers so he could hide beneath them.
Sabina sighed wearily. “It was a matter of time before he’d find out.”
“Find out what?”
“Until last year, Daniel belonged to the Rainford pack. Not the Highbanks.”
“You’re the Highbanks pack, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” She ran a hand over Knight’s head, cupping him tightly and holding him marginally closer. “His parents…died.” Why did I get the feeling she was only telling me half the story? “He was cast out of the pack and was left to fend for himself, until I brought him here. Until I brought him home.”
Cast out? Well, didn’t that sound positively biblical? The thought had me frowning. “I thought he was related to one of your men. A son or something.”
She shook her head. “No. Wolf shifters can only have a child with their mates.”
“So what’s the problem? Why does it matter if you took Daniel in?”
“Because he was cast out for a reason, Lara,” she whispered, turning to stare out the window. A puddle of moonlight filtered in through the glass, and as I looked, the moon seemed to grow ever larger, until it felt as if it was a massive orb with the power of the sun.
“What reason was that?”
“His father was like Eli—an alpha. But he treated his pack terribly, and as a result, someone challenged him. When he died, his mate died, and Daniel was left on his own. They’re not supposed to take those children in—”
“But you’re not a shifter, are you? You’re human, and you know what it feels like to be with an aggressive father,” I rasped, understanding everything like it was programmed into my head. “Are you scared?”
“Of the Rainford alpha?” She shook her head, a sensation of amusement whispering through her at the mere idea of that. “Eli is stronger than him. The wolves are howling his lack of a threat loud and clear.” Her lip was sucked between her teeth, and she gnawed down on it. “But for Daniel? Yes. I’m scared.”
I strode over to her, grabbed her shoulder and squeezed her. “We won’t let him be taken away.”
“What does it matter to you, Lara?” she demanded warily, her scowl loaded with distrust. “This isn’t your world, your life, is it?”
Maybe I should have been offended, but I wasn’t. Couldn’t be. I knew she was still on edge after being asleep for so long, and whatever I’d channeled into her, it had been crazy powerful.
Enough for me to feel like I’d had a load removed from my shoulders, to the point where I felt a lightness of spirit that I hadn’t felt since I was a child. I’d heard the whispers before, but I’d never been able to relinquish them, to verbalize them.
Until Sabina.
As a result, whatever she’d channeled, whatever she’d felt, it was magnetized to her now.
We were tied in ways she could never understand, would never be able to comprehend.
And the reason I knew that?
Now she was awake, the gates had been opened between us, and the only way I could prove myself to her was to reveal what I’d learned the second she’d transformed back into her human form.
I looked into her, saw her wolf, nestled deep in her soul, and I reached for the creature with my mind, urging it to see me, to accept me. To encompass me.
And the second the beast recognized me as her sister?
She dove through our ties, our blood links, the power we’d shared that afternoon, and soared toward me on a wave of electrical current that came with no reason or rhyme.
Daniel’s head popped up from amid the covers, and when I turned to face him, I felt his bewilderment, but even more, when the howls started falling once more like torrential rain, I understood them.
Enemy.
Hunger.
Anger.
Challenge.
“Kali Sara!” Sabina gasped, her eyes wide as she gaped down at me.
All the way down.
Because even though I was as big a wolf as ever there was, I was no longer five-feet-eight in my bare heels.
I was a she-wolf.
A she-wolf that was twinned with Sabina, powered by her—a clone, a parasite.
A symbiote.
And, as always, I was a freak.
But this time, I had a purpose.
As I stared at my sister, at a boy who’d been raised in the same environment of fear as I had, as we had, I knew exactly what I had to do—protect him.
Give him what we’d never had.
Security.
With fangs or with words, either way, I’d make sure the boy stayed with Sabina.
Ten
Todd
Behind me, there were twenty-four wolves. A standard council.
Just to my left, there was my beta, Nancy Delacroix, and to my right, my enforcer, James Cossac.
We flew through the woods, eating up the miles of territory that was between us and the Highbanks pack as if it was walking distance, but the run felt good.
Right.
Just.
The Rainford pack had feared the Rainford family for too long, and just under two years ago, I’d eradicated the last of them. Had whipped the bastard who’d reigned over us like we were dogs and he held the leash, and shown him what it meant to be challenged and to lose.
I was now the alpha.
Somehow, as impossible as it seemed, I ruled over a pack.
I was a nobody. A nothing. My grandparents were immigrants from South Korea, for God’s sake. We’d slipped into the pack and stayed there by the skin of our teeth. I had second generation woes, and nothing to back it up—until the old alpha had killed my father.
That was when my life had changed.
Forever.
And it affected me every day, because the grief never died, pain tore through me on the regular, outrage with it.
My beast was as furious now as it had been back when my father had first passed over, promptly followed by my mom. I’d used the conflicting emotions of fear and hurt and horror to fight back against the man who’d oppressed so many of us, and I refused to stop now.
We’d sent Daniel out into the human world where he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone, where he could learn to grow into human society and become at one with his future.
Everyone knew that was what happened to the children of ex-alphas. It was how they were punished too.
I’d done nothing wrong.
But the Highbanks pack had to best me. Had to make us look bad.
I sped up, my power filtering through me, turbocharged by the moon’s rays as they fed me and nourished me. When we broke the territorial line, we all howled, singing our presence for the other pack to know.
I had no desire to slip in and slip out. No desire whatsoever. I wanted my arrival to be a statement.
I wanted them to know I was here.
Our howls were met with an otherworldly siren song that was unlike anything I’d heard before.
There’d been rumors, of course. Rumors of strange wolves in the forests around Highbanks, but there were always fairy tales, weren’t there? Always stories about our kind and the forests.
I was as American as Nancy a
nd James, but I had a childhood of Korean stories to feed and nourish my ghoulish side. I’d come forewarned, prepared for what I’d heard from scouts who ran along the borderlines between our land and theirs.
News of larger than usual natural wolves, ones whose howls were impossible to understand, as if they spoke another language entirely.
This situation had been unrolling ever since the Highbanks alpha had met his mate.
The omega was just as strange, it was said. The humans who were neither on our side or theirs, spoke of the alpha’s woman’s kindness and how, since her arrival, the many businesses the pack managed had changed. The council had been turned over, replaced with lesser ranking folk, and the businesses were now manned by those same people.
All in all, it had boded well.
A pack that dealt with equality, just as ours did.
I wanted no trouble with them, and I knew they’d want no trouble with me. We dealt with things on our own up here. Each pack was twinned with another, usually on the opposite side of the country. It was how we let our kids spread their wings, and sometimes, we’d call them in for back up. But in this instance, there’d been no need for that. And apparently, vice versa, as we all rubbed along well enough together.
I should have known it would go to shit.
I barely felt the thirty miles we’d been running since we’d shifted on our pack land and merged onto theirs, but each passing yard proved how unkempt my territory was. A belief that was confirmed when I saw the packhouse in the distance, and there was simply no denying just how wealthy the Highbanks pack was.
For centuries, the Rainfords had been running the pack into the ground. Padding their own accounts while leaving their people to suffer and go hungry. I was changing that, but it was slow going, and damn if it wouldn’t be easier if I had the kind of funds Eli Highbanks had at his disposal.
Either side of me, I could feel the forest closing in as wolves that weren’t mine began to run with us.
That they sensed our lack of aggression was the only reason we weren’t in a fight right now.
We were here for the kid. Nothing more, nothing less. We had no reason to fight, no reason to come here on a suicide mission.
I tried to transmit that in a howl, but the sentiment was lost. My beast was just pissed at the presence of some kind of creature that was like me but not. Who was natural but somehow turbocharged.
And that wasn’t the only thing that was turbocharged. I could feel their totem’s power from across the way, and it seemed to sink into the ground, making each step I took feel heavier, like my paws were weighted down with concrete.
I’d think it was in an effort to slow me down, but that was impossible.
It was more a case of my body responding to the somnolent power of their totem.
The Rainfords had stopped using their circle, had stopped even calling on the totem for pack meetings. It had taken me three months to clear the circle once more, to be able to even access the obelisk.
No one in my pack, not since Gray Rainford, Daniel’s grandfather, had communed with the totem. Observed a covenant there. The Rainfords had done their damnedest to tear us apart from our roots, to keep us under their power…
I was clawing those roots back, but I realized what a way we had to go.
To feel the power, the sheer essence of a totem that was activated, that hadn’t been lost to the annals of time was astounding, and I wasn’t the only one feeling its influence.
Behind me, I could sense my council staggering to a halt as the Mother’s presence penetrated our being.
It wasn’t soothing or energizing, just like a reawakening. Like, after hours of shallow breathing, suddenly being able to gulp in air.
It was so strong that even I had to take a breath, and as I did, I wasn’t surprised when the wolves made an appearance.
I felt their power too, sensed their ties to the totem, even though I didn’t particularly understand how that was possible, and as they circled us, I couldn’t even find it in me to care.
Peering up at the heavy full moon, I howled, seeking Eli Highbanks’ presence, and when he replied, when his snarl sounded close by, I stopped fighting the totem’s power, and instead, embraced it.
Sitting back on my haunches while the upper echelons of my pack did the same, some even going as far as to lie down, I waited until Eli was running toward us.
Having met him before after I’d become alpha, I was unsurprised by his size, but what did surprise me? The two matching bookends that were beside him. To the left and the right. Where his beta and enforcer would be.
The sight of the trio, no council at their back, had my ears pricking up high, as I called on my senses to figure out if this was a set up, but when I sensed nothing, no subterfuge, I slipped out of my wolfskin and back into my human self.
My clothes were in shreds, but that came as no surprise, and I twisted around, easily showing the Highbanks that I meant them no harm as I gave them my back, and laid my hands down and gently palpated them, telling my people to stay calm. To stay as wolves.
When I twisted around, I saw the alpha, beta, and enforcer had shifted, and I recognized the twins more in this form than the other.
What I only just figured out was that, somehow, Eli was related to them. It wasn’t like we had cousins, so I didn’t know how that was possible, but before I could comment on their similarities, Eli snapped, “You dare approach my land without an invitation?”
I could feel his dominance. It was like a wave that had my people on the ground cringing in the face of it—even my beta. But then, I hadn’t picked Nancy for her strength. I’d picked her for her wisdom.
I was well aware that of us all, I was the only one who didn’t cower in the face of Eli’s dominance.
Nor did I cringe as he stalked toward me, aggression in every line of his naked body.
That he wanted to hurt me was clear, but that I wasn’t afraid of him registered a scant second before he breached the circle of wolves that surrounded us.
“You have something that belongs to us,” I told him calmly.
“He doesn’t belong to you,” one of the twins ground out, and from the wisps of power curling around him, I knew he was the beta. “He belongs to no one after you cast him out.”
“Evidently, you think he’s yours. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be protecting him,” I replied, straightening my shoulders. “We were well within our rights to cast him out. His father was an evil man, arrogant and cruel, and his child was going to be the same. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. At least this way, he’ll learn decency and won’t be complicit in the same moral turpitude that his father was—”
“He was eight years old when you threw him out, Rainford,” Eli snapped.
I merely cast him a glance. “My name is not Rainford. My name is Choi. Soon, after my fifth anniversary, the pack will be renamed as is the way of our people.”
The enforcer tipped his head to the side. “You come in peace, so why did you illegally enter our land?”
I moved my hands, placating them all as I replied, “I have no desire for further bloodshed. What I spilled to reach this position is more than I ever wanted to spill, but I had no alternative.
“Neither does Daniel Rainford. He must answer for his father’s crimes.”
“And you have to know that I’ve brought him under my roof for a reason. You can’t honestly expect me to let him go, to relinquish him to you so that you can cast him out again and return him to human society?” Eli growled, his shoulders bunching with aggression. “You’re insane if you think that. He’s ten now, and he shifted a year ago, Choi. He’s already a shifter, and if you send him back into that world with no pack to guide him, you’ll be creating the monster you’re trying to avoid.”
“It’s within our rights—”
The wolves parted like they were the waves and he commanded them as he surged forward, not stopping until he was in my face.
“He isn’t my son. He isn�
��t my blood. But I choose him,” Eli spat, enunciating each word. “He isn’t my heir. He isn’t my pack’s future. But I choose him.”
His phrasing had me tensing, because even though the child was of no importance to him, he still claimed him. Those hard words were proof that he had no need to fight for Daniel, but need or not, he would.
Outrage whipped my insides. “You can’t just adopt him.”
“Why can’t I? He needs a family, and my woman loves him like he’s ours.”
“She does,” the beta rasped. “We all do. He’s a good kid.”
“I met his father. He was a real fucker, and I’m glad you sliced him from throat to gut, Choi, but the way forward,” the enforcer insisted, neither he nor his twin having moved an inch in the face of Eli’s sudden surge of aggression, “isn’t to make Daniel pay for his father’s sins.”
“I’m a son. My father’s life was robbed from him by Kingsley Rainford. Don’t I deserve justice? The justice that is pack-given?” I ground out, and for the first time, I broke free of the totem’s sway over me. “I’ve broken no rules, no laws. Challenges and their legalities have been set in stone for centuries—”
“What kind of justice is it that sees a small kid tossed out on his ass and forced to deal with the humans?” Eli ground out.
My fists balled at my side, but even as the desire to smack the shit out of the sanctimonious prick hit me, even as I wondered if he knew how it goddamn felt to lose both parents thanks to a cruel leader, the wind whispered between the trees and began to swirl around us all.
Many scents bombarded us with the trickle of air flow. Everything from the pungent earthliness of the natural wolves, to the strange ‘otherness’ of the supernaturals. Eli and his advisors scented of dominance, and all around me, I could scent the essence of my pack, each of them weaker than leaders ought to be, but good. Pure of heart. They scented lesser, and I knew the Highbanks pack might judge us for it, but we were strong where it counted.
And then, from out of nowhere, I scented them.
Moon Child: A PNR Shifter Romance (The Year of the Wolf Book 2) Page 13
