In all my dreams of being surrounded by wolves, which had haunted me since the murder of my parents, never once had those wolves been mechanical
monsters.
It turned out that reality was more terrifying than nightmares, who knew? Except perhaps the shifters had known all along that single skins had beasts
hidden within them as well, even if they only ever showed one face.
The back of my throat was sticky with sweat in the sweltering heat of the Justice Chamber, and my heart thundered. My Charms and Anthony formed a defensive circle around me, when Moon pushed his brother behind him. The wind from Mischief’s violently beating wings gusted across my cheeks like breath.
The mechanical wolves growled.
I moved, as they prowled closer. Their eyes glowed, just like Moon’s, yet freakishly wrong. They wore loosely over their bronze backs the white pelts of the real murdered Alphas, as if they were wolves try
Jeremy Lennon strode across the pasture, holding the rim of his Stetson against the wind. The heels of his brown leather cowboy boots dug into the frozen ground, each step punctuated with murderous intent. He’d read the note scrawled in his packmaster’s hand an hour ago, yet he still seethed with anger. He’d never contemplated disobeying a direct order before, but there was a first time for everything.Not unless provoked, Maverick’s orders had read. During active wartime, no less. What a load of horseshit.When Jeremy reached the stables, he tore open the doors. The cold mountain air seared through his lungs, mixing with the familiar scent of manure and fresh hay. The soft purrs of several sleeping horses filled the small space. Jeremy spied Silver in the third stall down. In the glowing orange of the heat lamps, the silvery threads of the white Arabian’s coat shimmered. At the sight of Jeremy, the horse’s tail lifted high and proud
Dr. Elizabeth “Isabella” Beaumont had been waiting for this moment, and she’d be damned if she missed this chance. Isabella leaned against the wall of her cell, feigning sleep, the tattered blanket they’d given her draped over her legs.Tonight, she would set herself free.The sounds of shouting above the dungeons rang overhead. Whatever had caused the emergency throughout the Missoula Grey Wolf subpack had drawn the attention of every guard.Her breath swirled as she released a slow sigh. The air in the dungeons bordered on freezing. She’d never been more thankful that she was a werewolf than at this moment. Had she been one of the many humans she’d treated over the years, without the benefit of her wolf heating her from the inside out, she would have died from hypothermia days ago.The hurried voices of the last two guards trailed off as they pounded out of the dungeons.Now was her chance.Isabella pulled
The fur of her tail prickled. No. She couldn’t go back to a cell. She was innocent, though she knew they’d never believe her. She was a Rogue, an outcast. According to pack wolves like them, not to be trusted. It was the unfortunate way of their world.The commander’s voice chilled her. “Spread out and cover more ground. We can’t let this one go.”The other wolves obeyed, leaving the commander in the middle of the clearing. Her heart sank further as each wolf prowled in a different direction, lessening her chances for an easy escape.With his back still turned to her, she watched the commander’s wide shoulders rise and fall. For a moment, he leaned his weight against his horse before he removed his Stetson. Setting it on the horse’s saddle, he ran a hand through his short hair, leaving it slightly ruffled. It was pale brown in color, almost dirty blond.He must have decided to shift and search like the men he&
Jeremy crossed his arms over his chest as he stared at the naked she-wolf holding Silver’s reins. “We can add horse thief to your growing list of violations.”He’d sensed a pair of eyes on him from the bushes moments ago. He had caught an unfamiliar scent, but then he’d passed it off as his own sense of paranoia. It was only when he’d paused while leaving the clearing and heard Silver huff that he trusted his initial impression. He should have known better by now. His time as high commander had honed his instincts into a lethal weapon. Not to mention that working a ranch the size of the Grey Wolves’ lands tended to teach a cowboy to trust his gut. Jeremy’s intuition rarely proved wrong.And neither did Silver’s noises. The horse always made that same huffing sound when he’d found a new loyal subject from whom to demand attention. Silver was the worst kind of bleeding heart. Friend to all and foe to none, as lo
Minutes seemed to stretch into hours as they slowly drew nearer to each other. Just when Jeremy felt certain he couldn’t take the torture a second longer, that he would close the gap between their lips and kiss her, the rustling of the vampire drawing closer to them once again broke the silence. They both froze, the spellbetween them instantly broken. He felt the terrified thrum of her heartbeat against his chest. So many creatures had prowled through the forest tonight, Jeremy hoped it was enough to mask their scents.The bloodsucker lingered for a moment, then pivoted north. It must have decided to follow a different scent. After several minutes, when Jeremy felt certain the immediate threat had disappeared, he whispered, “It’s gone.”He pushed into a plank position and lifted himself off her. Like a bat out of hell, she tore from the bushes, brushing the mixture of dirt and snow from her behind. He tried not to notice how her ro
Three things occurred to Isabella as she watched the vampire charge the alpha wolf as if in slow motion. The first was that, based on those bloodstained fangs diving toward them, vampires were far more lethal than stories had led her to believe. As a Rogue who’d grown up in the countryside of the Sunshine State, she hadn’t had occasion to encounter many. Aside from being in New Orleans, they were more common in the northern parts of the country, and they tended to keep to big cities with high human population density—the sort of places where she’d never spent a day in her life.The second revelation she had was that not only was she without an ounce of fighting ability to fend off this creature, but she wasn’t athletic. She was soft and feminine, and running without a proper sports bra was unworkable. That was certainly an annoyance, but it had never occurred to her as a survival problem. Until now that she stood frozen in place.The t
Isabella scrambled toward him, allowing her medical training to take over. She checked his pulse, measuring the beats and feeling them quickly dropping. The rise and fall of his chest seemed weak. His lips were slightly bluish around the edges. Placing her ear to his chest cavity, she listened to the sound of his labored breathing.From the looks of it, the knife had pierced the pleural space of his chest cavity, causing a steady stream of air and blood to flood in. The gravity and pressure had created a tension pneumothorax—a collapsed lung. With only one functioning lung, the air supply in his blood was dropping, causing his pulse to slow, and he was going into shock.If the blood continued to pool in his lungs, his prognosis was grave. He could die within minutes if the condition continued to deteriorate. Faster than even the most powerful of wolves could heal. She used both hands to hoist him onto his left side.Blood drenched the snow beneath them. Sh
At five years old, Jeremy learned that lies shaped reality. It was the first night his father, or the man he would one day call his father, had brought him to Wolf Pack Run, the main Grey Wolf ranch, days after his mother’s death. That evening, around a campfire with the whole of the pack in attendance, James Lennon, then high commander of the Grey Wolf armies, had stood in the flickering orange glow of the flames and announced he had a son that he hadn’t known existed.That son was Jeremy.As Jeremy had stood with James by his side, the massive man’s hand wrapped around his tiny shoulders as if James were his father, as if he were proud of him, Jeremy had looked out at the faces of the Grey Wolf pack. Their expressions had been filled with affection, as if they’d found a long-lost family member in him. Every one of the pack members believed in him, wanted him, loved him. And in that moment, Jeremy had wanted James’s words to be true so ba
In all my dreams of being surrounded by wolves, which had haunted me since the murder of my parents, never once had those wolves been mechanicalmonsters.It turned out that reality was more terrifying than nightmares, who knew? Except perhaps the shifters had known all along that single skins had beastshidden within them as well, even if they only ever showed one face.The back of my throat was sticky with sweat in the sweltering heat of the Justice Chamber, and my heart thundered. My Charms and Anthony formed a defensive circle around me, when Moon pushed his brother behind him. The wind from Mischief’s violently beating wings gusted across my cheeks like breath.The mechanical wolves growled.I moved, as they prowled closer. Their eyes glowed, just like Moon’s, yet freakishly wrong. They wore loosely over their bronze backs the white pelts of the real murdered Alphas, as if they were wolves try
I hunched my shoulders, staring blankly back at where the House of Heights had once stood and the terrible visions from the past that Siobhanny had shown me.Now, there was only rubble with the bones of beams and floorboards jutting out.I glowered at mangled remains of the metal cage from the Discipline Cellar.Holy hell, my Charms had witnessed the atrocities committed by my ancestors. How could they be lying here with me snuggled on the lawns? How could Jeremy be running his gloved hand up and down with teasing touches between my tits, until I thought that I’d growl at him just to caress my aching nubs, for the sake of Hecate?“I’m not the same as them,” I said in a small voice. “I’m not my great-grandmother or my mother.”I could sense that my guys had stilled but I didn’t dare look over at them. “Oh, but you are, sorceres
Trapped beneath the heights sea of the ceiling in the Discipline Cellar, I stared wildly, as it bulged above Siobhanny’s head, then birthed a gilded angel whosewings beat with furious magic.Holy hell, it was Mischief in truly godly form who hovered above Siobhanny. I realized that I’d never seen him acting the archduke before and sparking with righteous rage.It was scorching-hot.Yet why had he held back when we’d been fighting? And how much was it costing him to rescue us now? Unless, you know, he had more of a plan than to fright Siobhanny into letting us go?My jerremy wrenched at the shackles around King, battling against the dark magic that bound him and hissing at its sting. King twisted in his chains to dodge the dripping heights, when Jeremy and Moon snatched up paddles to hold over his shoulders and protect him.Yep, I didn’t miss the irony of the
I stepped alone into the middle of a war. Only, there was no rattle of gunfire, boom of explosions, or thunder of tanks. Instead, there was an eerie red that swallowed the world like it’d been transformed to Mars, which consumed even the sky. My own red cocooned itself around me, as if it could protect me from the jerremy shadows in this past memory that washed over the ancient woodsand the banks of the Thames.Huh, that was what it was like to know that you’d only been a kid playing with your powers because these shadows that stormed with fury were my jerremy shadows at their most terrifying.They were the jerremy tide and boy, were they not being controlled.I paled, pressing the heels of my hands against my eyes like that would end the horror of the scene, but when I pulled my hands away again, nothing had changed: my great-grandmother was still alone on the hill beside the Thames, decimating the werewolves.S
Dazed, I stared at the smoldering bed and scorched walls of my bedroom, which had now been transformed into a battleground.I clutched Zhen, as he hugged my throat. He growled at Siobhanny, even though she was still hiding from sight.Siobhanny was the essence of the House of Heights and every Wolve Winner who’d come before me. She wouldn’t kill one of the Wolve Winner line, right? Unless, I’d pissed off my ancestors enough with my modernization of their customs because let’s face it: their traditions sucked.My uncle had often faced opposition when he’d modernized his company.But then, he’d never risked burning.I watched as my Charms warily prowled to their feet. Anthony draggedMischief to the corner of the room, since his burst of flight had exhausted him.Moon held out his hand to me, helping me to my
I was a Wolve Winner, sprawled in bed with three Claimed werewolves, an angel, and a god. But honestly, all I cared about was the guy I loved who laynext to me like he’d been cursed under a wicked sorceres’s spell.And I was the sorceres who’d poisoned him.Except, this wasn’t a fairy tale because in a fairy tale, Moon would awake on a kiss.I pressed my mouth more firmly to Moon’s mouth like this kiss would count as our first one, and it’d stir him back to life. Although, I knew that it wouldn’t count as our first kiss because Moon couldn’t feel it, and it had no magical powers to awaken him.I still imagined Moon’s arms raising to clasp around my throat, as his amber eyes fluttered open to stare into mine with love, loyalty, and wonder at our kiss, when his tongue pushed up to press between my parted mouth with equal de
In a sorcereses’ house that moved like it was made of no more than cards and any motherent could fall, I was held firm in the cool arms of a mage, when a wolve nuzzled at my shoulder. The Ambbuttador and Alex might not be mine in the way that my Charms were, but I could feel my connection to them through myshadows.How could I keep either safe from my aunt whose rage was tearing apart the House of Seasons? The ceiling warped, caving in, and I shrieked.“When you were born, I made a promise to your mum because she’d already lost a child.” Isabella levitated go to me.My mother had lost a child?I’d never known that but then, I guessed that I’d been too young to tell, before my parents had been killed.Yet why had my uncle never told me?My chest ached at the thought. Had it been a brother or a sister? Did they die in the womb, at birth, or after? Would t
This wasn’t a cloud but the floor of the Clocktower in the House of Seasons, when I was looking out through the glbutt clockface onto the city below. I must have a bitch of a concussion, although I also had a feeling that maybe angel duty would’ve been easier than whatever Isabella had planned.Still: yey life…I groaned, rubbing my sore temples, as I shoved myself onto my knees. The room swam, and I swayed with dizziness.I was going to hurl.“Ah, you’re awake, sleepyhead. Did you have sweet dreams of sinful shifters?” My head shot up at Isabella’s voice from across the room, then I bent over again, as lights flashed in front of my eyes. Isabella tutted. “No puking in my fabulous house. My Alpha has been working hard today, and with your constant screaming about wolve rights, it’d be mean of you to give him another chore. Unless you get off on the ide
I didn’t know that I’d be able to experience my Charms’ pain like it was my own, but when Lyall savaged Moon’s throat right over my own Wolve Bite,severing my Claim, I howled.Agony swept through me — Moon’s own, entwining around mine — when my shadows trembled with it. I dropped to my knees on the marble bathroom floor, cradling my arms around my head.Then suddenly, Moon’s heights tugged at my red. I lowered my arms, until my look met Moon’s, even though Lyall was still licking over her bite, savoring his blood with a smug satisfaction that filled me with a shuddering urge to kick her butt.King and Jeremy prowled closer, growling.Then, despite the fact that Moon was naked apart from his collar, bitten, and shaking, he lifted his chin, which in any other Alpha would’ve looked like he was offering his throat submissively.Yet in Moon…?