WOLF CHILD: A PNR RH Romance (The Year of the Wolf Book 1) Read online

  WOLF CHILD

  The Year of the Wolf: ONE

  Serena Akeroyd

  Contents

  Playlist

  Wolf Child

  Prologue

  1. Ethan

  2. Austin

  3. Austin

  4. Ethan

  5. Sabina

  6. Sabina

  7. Austin

  8. Sabina

  9. Sabina

  10. Eli

  11. Sabina

  12. Ethan

  13. Austin

  14. Sabina

  15. Ethan

  16. Ethan

  17. Eli

  18. Sabina

  Epilogue

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  Also By Serena Akeroyd

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2020 by Serena Akeroyd

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Playlist

  Set the scene for the story with the music that inspired me…

  SPOTIFY:

  https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4BwUmZJoEGIjxUetkt3UD8

  Wolf child (.n.) a human transformed by an alpha’s bite into a wolf shifter

  Prologue

  Lidai

  “Why do you weep, child?”

  The female jolted at my question, and I knew why.

  I spoke to my children once in their lives, and here I was, communicating when I wasn’t supposed to, but her grief called to me. As did her idiocy.

  So many mistakes… I’d made them, too, in my long life. They were powerful enough to eat me up inside, terrible enough to make me regret not just the bad, but the good also.

  Having traveled along the path of this one’s life with her, I understood her grief.

  Two sons abandoned.

  One mate lost.

  Such a waste.

  “I miss him, Mother. I miss him so badly.” She gasped again, a keening cry escaping her, as if she couldn’t contain her grief. “And the worst thing is, I miss Paul too. My soul aches for them both.”

  Of course it did.

  Her first mate had strengthened her, but he’d never achieved the balance an omega needed. That was why I’d sent her the second mate. To soften her Paul’s rough edges, to bring an equilibrium she’d been lacking, and to be the light in the dark.

  I’d just never foreseen the dark swallowing the light.

  That was my fault.

  It was my sacred duty to attach mates to one another. To bring them together.

  To shape their futures for the best of the community.

  Yet I’d failed.

  I blew out a breath, which had the wind dancing around the circle where the child lay sobbing.

  “I know you’re punishing me,” she whispered. “I should be dead by now.”

  She should.

  That was no word of a lie.

  Both her mates had passed, and normally, that would sever her life. Yet live she did. But it wasn’t for a punishment.

  She had a purpose. Her children served a greater role in this world than she could ever imagine.

  “I’m not punishing you. I’m making sure your child is strong enough to live without you.”

  “Another punishment,” she rasped, evidently not listening to me. “He has no mate. You didn’t give him one because of me, because of what I did.”

  I had, but that wasn’t for her to know.

  Staring at her, watching her as I watched over all my children, I thought about her distress, about all the mistakes I’d made, the ones that led to the errors she’d wrought.

  To err is human, they said. To forgive, divine.

  But who forgave the divine?

  My eyes burned with tears, and I could feel the storm clouds growing heavier around me, swelling with rain that was on the brink of falling. But neither rain nor tears would cleanse us of our mutual foolishness.

  When a shard of sunlight breached the clouds, piercing the circle in which I stood and had been standing for thousands of years, it was a moment of revelation.

  We could both have our time again, and in doing so, she could serve her children as she’d never been able to in this life.

  “What would you do to right the wrongs you’ve made, Merinda?”

  She gulped. “Anything.”

  “Do you truly mean that?”

  Her eyes were bright red, her cheeks puffy as she scrubbed at them. But not unlike that ray of light which she was now pooled in, hope danced around her like the wind did the circle. “I mean it. With all my being.”

  “You won’t always like what you must do, what might happen—”

  “Anything, Mother. Anything.”

  I thought about it, thought about how we could right our wrongs, then I whispered, “This is what you must do, child…”

  One

  Ethan

  Weirdly enough, it was the whimper I heard first. So soft, that it should have escaped my attention. So gentle that, over the noise of the carnival, I should never have been able to hear it, and yet hear it I did.

  I tilted my head to the side as I looked at Austin, wondering if he’d heard it too. If a man’s ears could be cocked like that of a wolf’s, then his were alert. Just as I knew mine would be.

  We stared at one another, squinting and narrow-eyed, as we tried to place where the sound was located.

  Unfortunately for us, we were standing beside a hotdog stand. The scent of beef and pork sausages, as well as relish, mustard, and other condiments, scorched our olfactory senses while also messing with our others, because there was a long line and we had been waiting in it for a while.

  Beside us, there were three kinds of rides, most of them with kids squawking at something, and on the opposite side, there was one of those old-fashioned shooting ranges with water pistols that you had to aim at moving targets. The water rushed in our ears as though we were swimming through it, making that whimper and the scream that followed all the harder to hear.

  As shifters, we were always hungry. That was pretty much par for the course. We burned through eight thousand calories a day, and that had to be made up somehow. Though we often thanked the Mother for providing us with the miracle that was protein and whey shakes, nothing beat meat. Especially not for a wolf.

  Ignoring our grumbling bellies, we both stalked off, letting our place in line be eaten up by the people behind us. I mourned it only for a second, because my hunger wasn’t more important than the girl who’d just cried out.

  Grass crunched underfoot as we crossed the carnival. There was trash everywhere, messing with our senses even further. Tracking anything in this mess would be impossible, even if we were looking for the worst kinds of scent—blood.

  As we rounded a large area that was set aside for bumper cars, I heard it again, a whimper, and this time, the scent of blood hit me. It wasn’t just a tiny cut, wasn’t even something that could be healed with stitches.

  This was a gushing, gaping wound that bled from the heart.

  I didn’t wait to see if Austin was there at my side, didn’t wait to see if he had my back. I ran off, letting my nose lead as that thickly metallic scent overtook everything, making me see red as the blood poured from the poor woman’s body.

  When I approached a stall selling candy, I found her at the back. She was small in stature, but there was a hint of maturity about her face that told
me she wasn’t a child. Her bones were definitely fragile, and the outfit she wore—a kind of gauzy piece that made me think of fortune tellers—was saturated with blood. I saw her scarf covering her throat, and I realized that was where the wound lay.

  Austin skidded to a halt at my side, and when he did, he dropped to his knees and deftly tugged the fabric out of the way. With the barrier gone, we both saw for ourselves exactly what we were up against.

  This was no ordinary attack.

  This wasn’t a woman who’d been assaulted and stabbed in exchange for her purse.

  She’d been bitten.

  My mouth dried at what that meant, and even though I didn’t have to, even though I could feel the moon’s sluggish crawl through the night sky, I looked up, tipping my head back so I could see the full moon.

  “We need to get her out of here,” I rasped, when I heard the odd gasps escaping her mouth.

  I’d never changed a human into one of my kind. We weren’t supposed to. It was forbidden. Only pack alphas were given that opportunity, and even then, it wasn’t something they did frequently. Usually only mates were allowed to be changed, but that was after being part of the pack for a few years.

  Extending someone this gift wasn’t something we did often, but the woman’s choice had been torn from her.

  As had her carotid.

  I gnawed my bottom lip as I peered around the back of the tent. We were in the area that was for the workers. People wandered around from stall to stall, buying snacks here, playing a game there, but it was all happening at the front, not the back.

  Even as I wondered why the carnival worker hadn’t come out from her stall to see what was going on, because there must have been a helluva racket, I heard noises coming from within—a hushing sound, a soft giggle, some moans.

  Whoever was in there was making out with someone.

  My brow furrowed at that, but who was I to question someone’s inability to hear another person having their throat ripped out while they were doing the nasty?

  Even though the candy stall worker was evidently busy, I could hear movement coming from the stand behind us.

  I reached down, grabbed my brother’s shoulder, and muttered, “Someone’s coming out.”

  “I hear them,” he replied, his tone as loaded with urgency as mine was.

  Though this wasn’t our mess, it was our pack’s, and we were duty bound to help the female. Of course, that went beyond just our duty to the pack. It was basic human decency.

  If this was any other night, if this was any other time of the month, she’d have just perished and there wouldn’t have been a damn thing we could do to save her.

  But it wasn’t just any other night.

  It was a full moon. The second full moon in the month, which meant it was a blue moon, which… crap. That was the only time you could turn a human into a shifter with an alpha’s bite. An alpha I couldn’t even scent thanks to all the detritus in the area. Dammit to hell!

  The motives behind this attack were beyond questionable. Why go to the extent of converting someone, if you didn’t give a damn about them? Why leave them to drain out on their own? The woman had to be terrified, and the fear I saw in her eyes was only a fraction of the outright horror I knew she had to be feeling inside.

  Crouching down and trying not to wince as I heard the odd little sounds that came from her throat where air escaped—I wasn’t exactly squeamish, but even that made my stomach churn—I reached over and rubbed my fingers over her bloody forehead.

  “All will be well, sweetheart.”

  Her eyes fluttered wider, transmitting more of her fear. She rocked her head to the side, barely moving a scant inch before she conceded defeat and stopped moving period, the pain evidently too much.

  “You’re not going to die,” I crooned, trying to ease her pain, her discomfort. She didn’t understand, couldn’t and wouldn’t until it happened, and when it did, she needed to be far from here. “We have to move you,” I whispered. “We have to give you some breathing room.” Away from other humans.

  I didn’t say that last part, didn’t want her to be even more scared than she’d been before. Because the last thing I needed her to know was that the second she shifted, every single person in the vicinity was under threat.

  That first shift was a bastard.

  The wolf wanted blood, meat. It was like the human side needed vengeance for what it had been through when its body transformed.

  After that initial attack, after the ‘sacrifice’ was found and both wolf and human were at peace, they’d pass out for days. Sometimes even a week.

  In both cases, they needed to be watched over.

  Needed to be shielded.

  When I shuffled the small woman into my arms, Austin was at my side, helping me get her comfortable without causing her more pain than strictly necessary. I winced, hearing more of the faint grunts that were just loaded with her agony.

  Guilt filled me, but I shoved it aside. This was for her own benefit.

  When she’d bled out fully, that was when she’d transform, and I could tell from her sluggish breaths and the dull throb of her heart that the pivotal moment was upon us.

  With her now in my arms, Austin and I took off at a fast pace. Faster than a human would ever be able to compete with, faster even than some might be able to register, but we had no choice. Just running in this manner put us in danger of exposure, but what alternative did we have?

  We were in a carnival, for God’s sake.

  The last place a rabid, newly transformed wolf needed to be was around so many people. So many scents, so much…

  Dear Mother, just thinking about it broke me out in a sweat more than the run itself did.

  As we raced away from the commons where the carnival was being held, we veered onto pack territory. The pack actually owned most of Highbanks, everything from Main Street out into the other five major avenues in the shopping district. Only a few acres didn’t belong to us, and they were farms that had been managed by the same human families for centuries.

  As for the rest, it was ours, just the pack’s, so running into a forest that belonged to us wasn’t a big ask, but finding something that the wolf wouldn’t consider prey was another matter entirely.

  My senses were loaded down with the scent of her blood. My nose was clogged with it, and all I could hear was her dying breaths. I didn’t have it in me to scan for any stags that might be in the vicinity, nor did I have it in me to wonder if there were any other kinds of smaller beasts that might suit the ravenous hunger that was about to overtake the small female.

  Wincing at the thought, I rushed through hundreds of trees, ignoring the scraping of branches and the loam underfoot that was crumpled by our weight. We registered the smaller prey—rabbits and the like—who popped out of their burrows to see who and what was making all the noise, but they dove back under the second they scented what we truly were.

  Only when we were deep in the forest, surrounded by thousands of trees on all sides, did we slow to a halt. As always, Austin and I were on the same track. We were twins, and twin shifters that were born, not transformed, always had a more unusual connection than most could even begin to comprehend.

  He was my other half.

  The other part of me.

  Sure, we had our own thoughts, opinions, and autonomous responses, but where things of this nature came into play? It was like two minds working as one.

  Because fall was approaching, the trees were turning. The leaves were dying, and the branches were sparser than they would have been just three weeks ago. Through those bare canopies, I could see the night sky, the blue moon’s glow hitting us. Carefully, I placed the woman on the ground.

  She barely weighed anything, and that had nothing to do with my strength either. She wasn’t a good candidate for a shifter, and that added to my concern. Not only were we helping her without aid from the pack, but we were going into this without her being strong enough for the change.

 
It would be so easy to shift, to call on our brethren, but if we did that, we might trigger the awakening wolf inside the strange female, and that was the last thing we could afford. The creature was already going to awaken furious and starving, but if we cornered it too? If it awoke fearing for its safety? We were beyond screwed.

  Eli

  The moon had a potent scent that night. It was always that way when it was a blue moon.

  Blue moons were iconic in all facets of human culture, but to the supernaturals? Blue moons were magical beyond a non-supe’s comprehension. They were moments of power and spirituality, which I experienced more than most as alpha of my pack.

  Tipping my head back, I inhaled deeply, appreciating the heady aroma of magic in the air. Some said blue moons thinned the veil, creating a gateway between this realm and the next. I’d never believed that, though I, more than many, was aware of exactly what they enabled to manifest.

  “Eli? It’s time.”

  The omega’s voice was soft, polite. She was always that way. Her duty was to the pack, not to me. Politeness was all I merited from her for that reason. She tended to the emotional wellbeing of our community, and it was going to be difficult over the next few days without her.

  My mouth tightened as I turned around to face her. As expected, she was the only one of the council who was on her feet, the rest were on their knees as my position demanded.

  Casting a glance over Merinda’s face, I saw no expression, no concern or even fear, but I felt it for her.

  “You should wait,” I rasped. “You shouldn’t push this.”