Wolf Moon

by Jayne Hawke

  Contents

  Wolf Moon

  Copyright

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  Wolf Howl

  Wolf Moon

  Wolf Ridge 1

  By

  Jayne Hawke

  Copyright Jayne Hawke (2019) ©. All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are purely from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is fictionalised and coincidental.

  Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.

  Cover art by Ravven.

  1

  It all started off as a perfectly normal Friday night. My best friend and housemate, Jake, was off at some college party. I was home baking and rewatching Supernatural for the millionth time. The second batch of blueberry muffins was coming together nicely, and I took a moment for a dance break around the kitchen. Jake didn’t much approve of my eclectic taste. I could picture him shaking his head at me while I shimmied around the kitchen table to Queen.

  The music switched over to an electronic song by Zayde Wolf, and I returned to my muffin batter, moving my hips to the beat while the mixer did its thing. It was a good night. Sure, it wasn’t exciting, but it made me happy. Baking was something I’d loved since I was a little girl. It was something I did with my mom before she was killed.

  I was singing my heart out to Kaleo when I heard it. Someone rattled the door knob to the front door. A glance at the clock told me it was far too early for Jake to be drunkenly trying to get in. He still at the party trying to screw his latest interest. He’d already worked his way through every girl in town; aside from me, that was. Not that I was bitter or anything.

  Turning the music down, I stepped away from the muffin batter to listen. I could just have been hearing things after all. No. There it was again. A distinct rattling of the doorknob. Our apartment was in a secure building with fancy keys. It couldn’t have been some addict rocking up off the street. I reached out and grabbed one of my knives and slowly walked towards the hallway, where I watched the front door.

  The rattling went away. I remained motionless, listening. Something clicked and scraped against the door, and then the lock snick’d open. The fucker had picked the lock, which meant they definitely weren’t some addict who got lost. I gripped my knife tighter and prepared for war.

  We knew this day would come. Jake had found out he was three-quarters fae when he was five years old. We had been waiting for his father’s enemies to hunt him down from that day. It had been nineteen long years of waiting. I slowed my breathing and grabbed a second knife. Fae weren’t easy to kill. Luckily for them, we were prepared for just this moment. I had knives dotted around the apartment for quick and easy access. Guns would draw too much attention.

  The door slowly swung open, and a full-blooded fae stepped in. He was silent. I wouldn’t have known he was there if I hadn’t seen him with my own eyes. His eyes met mine, and he sneered.

  “Human.”

  He said it as though I were some filth on the bottom of his shoe. I was going to show him why you shouldn’t underestimate your enemies.

  I smiled brightly.

  “You could have just knocked.”

  He took a step towards me, and his friend stepped through the doorway behind him. He was a touch over six foot with short ink-black hair so dark it had a blue sheen to it. If I’d have seen him on the street in his designer jeans and t-shirt, I wouldn’t have paid much attention. He looked like some model here on a quiet vacation in the mountains. The fae were all lean with powerful muscle and sharp teeth. Fortunately for me, the Earth plane inhibited their magic. Jake’s mom had said that there were strict rules around using their magic on the Earth plane and that there were dire consequences for those who broke said rules.

  “Where is he?” The fae continued to approach slowly, his eyes never leaving mine.

  He moved with a slow, careful motion as though he were sneaking up on a jumpy bunny. His eyes never left mine, and I wondered what exactly his magic was. Would meeting the cold stare put me under his spell?

  “Who?” I asked innocently.

  I stepped forward and continued to smile sweetly. They already underestimated me. I was just a little human. If they knew me it at all, it was as a low-level mercenary who did the tiny jobs no one else would stoop to. A girl’s got to pay the bills, after all. His friend had closed the door behind him, stopping any neighbours from seeing what was about to go down.

  “The prince’s bastard son.”

  I pursed my lips and tapped my chin, putting on an exaggerated thinking expression. Of course, I’d known from the moment they’d picked the lock they were here for Jake. I was just playing with them because I could. Baking was fun, but it had been a while since I’d kicked some ass.

  “No idea.”

  The fae lunged at me. I side-stepped and slashed at his stomach as he stepped past me. My dad had insisted that I start martial arts training as soon as I could walk. When the news broke about Jake’s heritage, his mom started training us both in weapons, too. She was a mercenary, and we were trained to follow in her footsteps and defend ourselves if we needed to. She knew that the day would come where the fae started trying to kill Jake for what, or more precisely who he was. His father was a fae prince, and their magic got a little complicated when it came to their royalty.

  I moved into the fae’s space and proceeded to slash his abdomen with my knives while driving him back against the wall. I needed to slit his throat before his friend joined the fray. I had twenty years’ experience, but they could have had ten times that. My luck was going to run out at some point, and I needed to shed as much blood as possible before that happened. Right now, I was taking them by surprise; that advantage would only get me so far. The fae was fast and strong. He lashed out with his fists, which collided with my ribs. I pushed the pain away in my mind and plunged my knife into his unguarded throat. One down.

  His friend was standing by the front door with his arms crossed and a grin on his face. I’d expected him to look a little grim, or at least be ready to take me on himself. Suspicion flooded me and I waited to see what I’d missed. Was this just a distraction while they took Jake?

  “I’ve been waiting for that asshole to be killed. Oh, and sorry about your car,” he said with a little shrug, the grin never left his face.

  I narrowed my eyes.

  “What did you do to my car?”

  He shrugged again, and his grin turned into a self-satisfied smirk.

  “You’ll be walking to work for a while.”

  With that, he casually stepped out of the door and sauntered away. The bod
y nearby phased out, returning to the fae lands with a little puff of glitter. I was pretty sure the glitter was their weird sense of humour. It was going to be hanging around the apartment for months. When a fae died, their magic returned to the fae lands, and it took their bodies with it.

  I raced out of the door and ignored the elevator in favour of running down the stairs. My old Mustang was unreliable, but I loved her. She was my baby, and I’d saved up for over two years to buy her. Those jerks had better not have left so much as a scratch on her.

  My breath was coming short and harsh as I ran down the final flight of steps. I ran nearly every day, but those stairs were very different to the trails in the forest. I slowed down to fill my lungs with air in case there were more of them in the lobby. I stepped out into the white space of the lobby where the soft silver moonlight filled the space, giving it an almost ethereal air. I paused, looking around, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Holding tightly onto my knives, I edged out into the simple white space and looked around for the trap. There was no one in sight.

  I jogged across the lobby and stepped out into the cool spring night looking around for more fae. Not a single one was around. They knew Jake wasn’t with me, so there was no reason to lure me outside. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Someone was watching me. I remembered that I was there because they’d made a comment about my poor old Mustang. I ran over to my car and found it exactly as I’d left it. I was peering in through the back window checking for a bomb or something when I heard the claws clicking against the tarmac.

  Turning around to face whatever was coming at me, I saw a pair of dark gold eyes coming through the darkness. A large wolf was stalking towards me. It was far bigger than your average natural wolf, meaning it was a loup garou (a wolf shifter or werewolf to humans). Suddenly, it was no longer slowly stalking towards me. Its lips curled back and it leapt at me. I tried to step around it, but it twisted in the air and crashed into my chest, pinning me to the floor. My instincts kicked in. I wasn’t going to go out like that. I slashed at it and tried to sink my blade between its ribs, but I kept hitting bone. They hadn’t taught me how to slip your knife between a garou’s ribs in martial arts classes. It, however, found muscle as it sank its teeth deep into my shoulder.

  I kicked and thrashed, stabbing at it with everything I had. I gave up trying to find a nice spot between its ribs and just kept digging my knife in wherever I could, desperate to get it off me. The weight of it bore down on me, keeping me pinned against the rough, hard tarmac. My chest was slowly being crushed, each breath was more difficult than the last.

  Hot blood ran down my wrists. Panic was beginning to rise in me. The scent of hot dog filled my nostrils, and fur was starting to coat my tongue. I continued to hack and slash while it snarled at me. It finally got off me and pulled back. For one brief moment, I thought I was free, but it lunged back in and sank its teeth deep into my calf. The pain blinded me, and I gasped. The damn thing remained standing there, watching me. Even in the darkness, I could see it healing from the injuries I’d inflicted. Blood matted its coat, but the wounds beneath were slowly knitting together. It edged back closer to me. I didn’t know why it was standing there looking at me, but I wasn’t going to argue. I saw my chance to end it and drove my knife into its eye. It yowled and shot off into the woods, leaving me exhausted and coated in blood.

  I leaned back to catch my breath and looked up to see the blood moon. That damn wolf had just turned me into a garou.

  2

  I got up and looked down at myself. My favourite yoga pants were ruined. The great big holes in them combined with the blood that would never wash out meant they were going straight in the trash. My Firefly T-shirt hadn’t fared any better. Groaning, I lay back down on the tarmac for a moment and allowed myself to catch my breath and catch up with everything that had happened. It wasn’t every day that you get attacked by a rogue garou. Jake’s mom had trained us as mercenaries like she was, but I was just a human, so I hadn’t been given much opportunity to really put it into practise. I sighed as I pushed myself back up onto my feet. Not only was a coated in blood, but I also reeked of dog. Wolf. Whatever.

  Turning around, I stalked back to the building and hoped I didn’t see anyone else. That would lead to far too many questions that I didn’t want to answer. It was already the worst night I’d had in a long time, possibly ever. I mean, I wasn’t even human any more. It hadn’t sunk in yet.

  Thankfully, it was that gloriously peaceful time of night where everyone that was going out was already out, and the rest of us introverts were safely tucked up inside. Normal humans had no idea about the supernatural world that went on all around them. I was a sort of normal human up until five or ten minutes ago. Now I was going to turn furry on the next full moon. I’d have to figure out the pack thing, and register with the council. I sighed and bashed the elevator button a few times. Garou were usually born. Unlike the werewolf myths, they couldn’t turn someone whenever they felt like it. Their magic, and it was magic not a weird virus (they get really upset if you try and say it’s a virus), only worked that way on blood moons.

  That meant that the rogue had chosen me. They must have been someone with a bit of pull to get the fae involved. Or at least someone with a great deal of money. The fae weren’t very easy to coerce into anything. The myths about their making deals very similar to the devil weren’t far off the truth. They were wily, difficult, and didn’t really like the other forms of supernatural. I chewed on my bottom lip as I bashed the elevator button a few more times. The damn thing was going at a snail’s pace, and I really needed a shower. The real question wasn’t who had turned me, but why me? I wasn’t anyone special. I was just a human. Sure, I kicked ass and worked as a merc, but only a low level one. Most of the jobs I took with Jake involved dropping letters off to prissy witches and other small errands no one else on the job boards would take.

  It could have been a grudge thing, but that would mean that I’d upset someone that badly. No, I didn’t know of anyone willing to drop what I guessed was a five-figure sum on the fae to make this happen. They’d also have to know a rogue garou, and they weren’t very common or easy to control. It wasn’t adding up.

  The elevator finally arrived. I stepped inside and closed my eyes. I was going to be a mockery on the Grimoire - that is, the social media network for supernaturals. When it had first been created, they’d tried to keep humans out, but hackers were too determined to see what was hiding in there. So, they tweaked it, allowing humans to join while hiding the real stuff away in private groups. At first glance it looked like a place for furries, Wiccans, and such to hang out. I’d only been allowed back into the real groups thanks to my ties to Jake and the fact we worked as mercs. Being turned into a garou by a rogue was such a stupid newbie mistake. I couldn’t believe it had happened to me.

  I re-opened my eyes when the elevator opened. The building around me was far nicer than anything I’d be able to afford on my own. The pale cream tiles looked expensive, and the heavy wooden door to my apartment was something for which I was eternally grateful. The interior wasn’t anything special. Jake covered two thirds of the rent; my job as a trainee baker didn’t pay much of anything. Buying a couple of new geek tees every other month was as far as my spare money went. Jake was good to me, though, and I’d sworn to pay back every penny as soon as I could. I hated being poor, but I was determined to fulfil my dream of becoming a baker to the stars.

  My mind returned to the Grimoire. They were the biggest gossip mill, which was both useful and a nightmare, depending on which end of the gossip you were on. I didn’t have to tell the Grimoire what had happened; well, not immediately, anyway. Sure, they’d hear about it, somehow. Wolf Ridge was a small town, but there were enough supernaturals around that word would spread. I dragged my fingers through my hair, trying to get my head around the fact I was now a garou. I wasn’t human any more. My life was never going to be the same. It felt surreal, as though my mind had go
tten confused and I’d gotten myself too wrapped up in an episode of Supernatural.

  I realised I’d have to deal with the council. All new supernaturals, no matter how they came about, had to register with them. I rested my head against my front door and groaned. It was supposed to be a fun night making muffins and watching TV. I should have gone to the stupid party Jake had invited me to. The problem was, I was an introvert. I didn’t have much energy to put into being around people. The parties he went to were full of loud jocks and college students, not my crowd at all. I much preferred staying in, watching Netflix, and baking. I had to save up my peopling points for my time spent serving customers at work. Thankfully, I didn’t have to do too much of that now.

  Would I even be able to keep my position as a baker now? Garou had normal jobs, I thought. I hoped.

  The scalding hot water swirled down the drain a dark pink. I was coated in blood, a reasonable bit of it mine. The rogue had really sunk their teeth in, no doubt to make absolutely sure I turned. I tilted my face back and began washing my hair while I tried to think. My head was spinning. I needed to eat and turn the temperature down, but there was something soothing and cathartic about burning the dirt away.

  I’d have to text Jake when I got out of the shower. That wasn’t going to be a fun conversation. Fae and garou didn’t really see eye to eye. Jake didn’t associate with other fae, given he was in hiding, but there was still a risk he’d treat me differently now. My heart broke a little at the thought. We’d been best friends since we were toddlers, and that had become something much more in our teenage years. We hadn’t hidden that fact from each other, but Jake refused to act on it as he feared the assassins after him would target me too and use our relationship as leverage against him. I understood his reasoning, but I was still bitter about it.

  I squeezed my eyes closed. Being a garou made everything so much more complicated. None of the supernatural groups really got along all that well with the others. The garou and shifters weren’t too bad, likely because they both turned into animals and had limited magic. Shifters covered everything but wolves. All garou were wolves. I wasn’t entirely sure where the distinction had come in, all I knew was that the quickest way to anger a garou off was to call them a werewolf. I was going to have to walk those lines now.