Maura was staring at him. Jack could feel her eyes on the side of his face, and it was annoying. No matter how hard he tried to listen to the math teacher, having her eyes bore into his soul was a distraction.
She had only said hi to him in the hallway earlier that day. He hadn’t been lying to Everly. But it had been the way that she’d said it that made him hesitate to assure his girlfriend that everything was fine. It was still hard for him to believe that Maura was a witch, but he knew that Everly thought she was, and as long as she felt like Maura was a threat, it was going to be hard for him to just tell her that everything was fine.As soon as class was over, Jack gathered up his books and briskly walked toward the door, hoping that he could get out of there before Maura had a chance to say anything to him, but she was a quick little witch, and within a few seconds of him leaving his chair, he felt a tug on his arm. “Hey, Jack!” Maura’s sEverly couldn’t believe her own eyes. Was Jack actually kissing that bitch Maura?Logically, she knew he would never choose to do that, that it had to be some sort of a trick on her part. She was a f*cking witch after all. But still, as soon as she saw the situation in the hallway, after she’d given up on meeting him at her locker, as they normally did every day after school, and had gone off looking for him, she hadn’t stopped to think about why it had happened.She’d just turned around and bolted.She didn’t even know how she’d planned to get home since the buses were already gone, and Jack was her usual ride to her house.But then, now that she was capable of shifting, she could move a lot faster. How long would it take her to just run home?It turned out, it didn’t even matter. She wouldn’t have to find out. As she pushed through the doors of the school, she saw a familiar form waiting for her on
“Jack,” Everly said, the image of him kissing Maura coming back to her immediately, the second she laid eyes on him.“Everly!” he said, rushing over to her. She backed away, running into Slate, before he could touch her. “Listen, you know that I would never, ever kiss her. She kissed me. I didn’t even want to talk to her.”“What’s the matter, Grey?” Slate said, sounding a little cockier than he should’ve been considering that he hadn’t actually won anything. “Did you get caught with your pants down?”Jack glared over her shoulder at the other wolf shifter. “Stay out of this, Slate!” he said. “This doesn’t concern you! The fact that you just happened to be standing around outside of the school, waiting to swoop in and snatch Everly up the moment she ran out of the school is pretty good evidence that you and Maura set this up.”Slate came around beside
“The council is at our house?” Jack repeated, staring at his sister. He could hardly believe his ears. How in the hell had they found out so quickly about the pictures? Maura had threatened to tell them, but surely she hadn’t done so already. Would she give up on her plan to seduce him and win him over so quickly?He turned and looked at Slate, glaring at him, unable to speak.“Hey, don’t look at me, asshole,” the Nachtwolf said, wiping the blood that was flowing from his nose from where Jack had just punched him on the back of his hand. “Why the hell would I tell them anything? You were there when I convinced my dad not to say anything.”“I don’t know that you personally told them, but I think that it was someone from your pack, bunch of jackasses.”“Bullshit. It had to be one of your f*ckers who isn’t loyal to you.” Slate folded his arms and glared at Jack, and he wanted to punc
When Jack gave her the word, Everly turned around and ran for the door, headed out into the street as fast as her legs would carry her, not sure where she was headed after that but knowing she needed to get as far away from his house and the council members as possible.It had been a mistake going there. They should’ve known that. What could the council members possibly want that was good? To have a discussion with her about how three of them had killed her mother eleven years ago, and it was one of the most fun activities they’d ever taken part in, so they’d very much like to do it again? Everly felt stupid for ever even considering coming to talk to them like civilized people. They weren’t even people.But then… neither was she. Not anymore.But she didn’t want to shift at the moment because if she did, she’d lose her clothes, and if she lost her clothes, eventually, when she shifted back into her human form, she&rsqu
“How far are we going to go?” Everly asked Slate as he continued to ride his bike through the forest. It was difficult going, cutting between trees and watching out for fallen logs and other debris that could potentially tip them over. Even though they were going slower than they would be going if they were on the road, they still were traveling faster than they would’ve been if they were in their wolf forms.“We’ll keep going this direction for a while,” Slate said, shouting above the roar of the engine.Everly wished that they had the mind-link so that they could talk to one another, but they weren’t in the same pack, so they had to yell to be heard. At least they weren’t traveling fast enough for the wind to be a factor.The further she got away from home, the more uncomfortable she got. This just didn’t feel right. Not only was she traveling away from Jack, but she was also leaving her dad, and he would have no
A pack of Nachtwolves crashed through the windows of the living room, dining room, and other rooms of the house. At the same time, members of Jack’s pack came pouring in from the back of the house and up from the basement, which they’d accessed from the back yard via the sliding glass door. He learned all of this from mind-link messages. He didn’t have that capability from the Nachtwolves, but Bridge was in the front yard and told him what she’d seen as she was running to them to help.The council members didn’t have superpowers. They were just regular wolves, so it wasn’t as if they could hold off the dozens and dozens of wolves that were coming at them. No, they would certainly be kept in check by two packs who didn’t want to let them out of the house to pursue Everly.Granite shifted back into his human form, having no qualms about standing there completely naked in front of all of them. “Well, I see that it isn’t ju
Slate drove on for what seemed like several hours. Everly wondered how much gas he had in his motorcycle and whether they might run out and not be able to get back home.But they were wolves, so they could always run back home eventually, right?She did have her phone. So she hoped she’d be able to call her father at some point. Would they be able to get a signal this deep in the woods?It was getting dark. Part of it was because of the woods. They were so tall here, in the shadows of the mountains, which they’d begun to creep up a bit the further they went, the tops of the trees easily blocked out the beams of the sun as it began to fade over the edge of the horizon.“Shouldn’t you turn your headlight on?” Everly asked Slate once it got so dark she was having trouble seeing. Now that she was a wolf shifter, she could see better than she could before, but it was still getting harder for her to see into the darkness around them.
With the council members locked in the jail cells, Jack was ready to go try and find Victor, but he was also nervous. “What about Jim?” he asked his dad.“Slate’s mom went to talk to him,” Victor replied. “Why don’t you let your mom and I take care of that. You need to go find Everly and get her as far away from here as possible. We’ll tell the school that both of you have mono. They’ll believe that. You have good grades. Jamie can write you excuses.”Jack nodded—that was a good way to get them dismissed for the last week of school before the end of the year, but they would have to figure all of this out before the spring semester. He knew how important it was to Everly that she graduate from high school with good grades so that she could go to a good college. It wouldn’t matter to her that she would be the Luna of his pack and had a guaranteed job and plenty of money for the rest of her life.Or
Everly carefully made her way down the stairs toward Jack’s living room, holding on tight to the railing. The heels she was wearing were a lot higher than what she was used to, but Alyson insisted she should wear them because they looked perfect with the sapphire blue dress she was wearing. While Everly loved the tight, strapless, sequined dress, she wasn’t sure that the silver heels looked all that great.They’d look a lot worse if she fell down the stairs and broke her neck because of them…. But then, she was a shifter now, so her coordination should be better.That didn’t make her feel any less shaky on the shoes.When she got about three-fourths of the way down, she heard a loud exhale and managed to pull her eyes away from the next step long enough to look at Jack.Her heart skipped a beat, seeing him standing there by the front door with a pink corsage in his hand, wearing a perfectly-fitted suit with a tie that matched her dress. His eyes were wide, and his mouth was slightly a
Pain radiated throughout Jack’s chest and back as he felt himself slowly being dragged back to reality. His thoughts were cloudy as he tried to remember exactly what had happened. The last thing he remembered, he was running through the forest toward the sounds of fighting, looking for Everly.The next thing he knew, he was lying on the ground, blood everywhere, trying to breathe through the most unbelievable pain he’d ever experienced in his entire life.“Come on, Jack!” he heard a somewhat familiar voice telling him. “Go ahead and open your eyes, Jack. Let us know that you can hear us.”It was a struggle, but the realization that he didn’t know where Everly was or if she was okay made him will his eyes open. Blinking a few times, Jack looked at the concerned faces around him and tried to piece everything together.He was surrounded by people who looked like they were about to cry, except for Jamie, the healer. She was concerned, but not tearful.He’d seen Everly, though, so he force
Not long ago, watching Jack die wouldn’t have been that big of a deal to Slate. In fact, he probably would’ve just shrugged about it and made some remarks like, “Too bad. He was so young.” But now that he realized that Alyson was his fated mate, Slate felt compelled to find someone to help the guy he’d wanted to tear limb from limb all by himself only a few days ago.Tearing through the woods, he used his mind-link capability to reach out to anyone from his pack to see if they knew where any healers were. Unfortunately, everyone was either too far away to hear him or they were too busy to respond.He darted through a thick wooded area and came around a large pine tree to see a wide meadow full of velvety green grass glowing in the silvery moonlight.And on the other side of it, he saw a familiar wolf loping along, following his nose.It wasn’t one of the healers he was looking for, though.No, it was someone who shouldn&rs
The smile on Everly’s face was there despite the pain at seeing Lexi show up right behind Maura as she was in the process of tormenting her. Maura might’ve thought it was fun prolonging her death, but just like the villain in every James Bond movie, she was about to find out what happened when you didn’t kill your enemy right away.“What’s wrong with your face, Everly?” Maura had asked her, but Everly didn’t get a chance to answer before it was Maura’s face that was suddenly messed up.Lexi hit her from behind with a strong beam of magic. It was so powerful that Everly could actually see it glowing and lighting up the forest. When it hit the cheerleader in the back, Maura’s eyes bulged, and her body stiffened, her back arching as she tried to figure out exactly what was happening and how to make the pain stop.Immediately, the agony that had been coursing through Everly’s body faded as Maura was too dis
Hands would’ve been a great thing to have at the moment, but Everly only had paws. She looked around and saw that her dad had the backpack, so theoretically, she could go shift and get dressed quickly, but her back hurt so bad, she didn’t know if she could get all of that done.Jim was already trying to stop the blood that was flowing like a river out of Jack’s chest and back. “I’m so sorry,” he kept saying. “I was just trying to protect you, Everly.”She couldn’t respond to her father, what with him being a human and her being a wolf, but she knew it wasn’t on purpose.That wouldn’t matter if Jack died.Behind her, she heard the sound of rocks and tree branches sliding down the side of the ravine as Alyson and Slate came flying down behind them.“What happened?” Alyson asked, using the mind-link. “We thought we heard—” Her eyes landed on Jack and her countenance
Every inch of Everly’s body ached, but she knew she had to push herself up off of the ground and get out of there.If that wolf were to come back, he would kill her, and she’d fought too hard to die now.Pushing up off of the ground, Everly tried to get her feet beneath her. The ache in her back was blindingly painful. She thought she might pass out from the pain. Could she have injured her spine when she hit that tree trunk upon her descent?She didn’t know, but she had to ignore the pain and move.Everly took a few careful steps, trying to get her bearings. She knew that Jack and her mother were up on top of the hill. But it was so far away from where she was now, she couldn’t even hear them fighting.Climbing back up the steep ravine would be nearly impossible in her current state.Instead, she’d need to find another way to walk to get back to someone who could help her.If only she had her cell phone&
The black wolf Jack was fighting was strong, and though he had spent a lot of time training and sparing with other wolves in his pack… he’d never actually fought anyone with the intent to kill them.But… at the moment, he had no choice. If he didn’t try to kill the wolf that was scratching at him with his long claws, trying to knock Jack backward so that he could sink his long fangs into his neck, then that wolf would finish him off without a second thought, and Jack couldn’t let that happen.Next to him, Slate didn’t seem to have any problem whatsoever going in for a kill shot. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack could see Slate knock the smaller male he was fighting onto his backside and then chomp down on the sensitive area between his neck and shoulder. Within a few seconds, the wolf stopped moving, and Slate stood up, looking for the next wolf to take on.Jack didn’t have time to survey the area as he needed to pin this
Running through the forest with Jack on one side and her mother on the other, Everly felt a nervous tension building inside of her. Knowing that Jack and her mother had vowed to protect her was one thing, but that didn’t mean that she wouldn’t end up in a situation where she’d be forced to protect herself.And she was pretty sure she wasn’t capable of that.After all, she wasn’t exactly an athletic human to begin with. Now that she was a wolf, that hadn’t changed. These other shifters had been training for this their whole lives, so they knew exactly what to do while they were fighting. And the werewolves were so vicious, they instinctively knew exactly what to do to make sure that they could handle anyone who was stupid enough to challenge them.But Everly felt just about as vulnerable as her dad. At least he had brought a gun. He was riding on her mother’s back right now, and Everly made a point not to look directly into Jim
“He was at the party?” Everly repeated what Su said. “Slate was at the party where you were turned into a werewolf?”Su’s head bobbed up and down again. “That’s right. He was with the guy that bit me.”“You’re sure it wasn’t him though, right?” Everly asked as she felt Jack tense up beside her.“Oh, yeah. I’m sure it wasn’t him. But still… it’s weird to see someone who knows about all of this. He was with the guy when he was telling me about what happened and telling me that I was in huge trouble and I was going to have to do something.”Everly couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Slate had gone through this before. “Slate!” she shouted, and he looked up.His eyes flickered to Everly’s face, and then they went to Su’s, and they widened. Even from across the yard, Everly could read his lips, “Oh, shit.”