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

  “The blue moon is a portent. It would be churlish to ignore it.” Merinda’s crinkled face was filled with a peace I didn’t share. Her eyes were tired, not from lack of sleep, but from age, and her wrinkles were layered on top of more wrinkles…so there was no denying her age. No denying that she’d lived a long life and deserved to rest.

  But…

  “The pack needs you.”

  She smiled at that. “The pack always needs us. However, you will find your omega in the upcoming days. You know that’s how it works.”

  There was no one else whom I could imagine becoming the omega. Our pack was strong, healthy, but there was no omega within the ranks, other than the one I was looking at now.

  We had four hundred members, and over a hundred and eighty of them were female. Half of that number were of childbearing age. A pack’s strength was founded on its female population, because for every ten boys that were born to a shifter couple, only three girl children ever saw the light of day. We had to even up our numbers by transforming humans, but we’d been blessed with a large quantity of naturally born female wolves.

  Some might say we were lucky, blessed even, but I saw no reason or rhyme as to why we were so fortunate.

  Omegas were always female and were usually mated to the alpha of the pack. Of all the females among my people, I knew of none who could slip into Merinda’s role. None who had the patience or the temerity to take her place.

  She reached up to cup my chin. “Fret not, child. All will be well.”

  Clamping down on the words I wished to speak, I shook my head instead.

  How could it be well?

  How could anything be well?

  “I need to be with your father,” she whispered. “It’s my time.”

  “Mother,” I rasped. “You’re still needed here.”

  “No. You shall see. My sacrifice will not be in vain.”

  Losing Father two years ago had been hard enough, but to lose my mother too? I understood her suffering and her choice as a leader. But as a son?

  I’d never understand.

  Because she was, in her own way, as stubborn as me, I didn’t argue. I just grabbed her hand and squeezed. I had been a late child for my parents, and I mourned that lost time, even as I helped guide her up to the totem.

  We were in the Highbanks’ forest, right in the center where the council always gathered. Hundreds, maybe thousands of years earlier, one of my ancestors had carved a totem pole and placed it here. We still worshipped the same Mother, still believed in the same deity and the same practices, but we were different. This was the new millennium, after all, not the past one.

  In a concentric circle, the highest ranks within the council supplicated themselves before me and the totem. Only I had the right to stand. Not even the omega could, unless…

  The new and old millennium were about to coalesce in a way I’d never envisaged.

  Two weeks ago, when she’d spoken to me of the rite she wanted to fulfill this evening, I’d thought she was joking, but she’d swiftly shown me otherwise.

  Her blood would spill tonight, and all for a ceremony that might not even work.

  As we approached the altar, I rasped, “This isn’t necessary. I’ll find another mate.”

  She sighed. “Your mate is the pack’s omega. This is vital, my son. Without a mate, you aren’t whole. Without an omega, the pack is lost. You know this as well as I do.”

  We weren’t born knowing who our mates were, but at thirteen, when we were of age, each of us had a ceremony at this very totem and learned if our mate was out there.

  As the next alpha, my mate was important to the pack, not just for myself. When I’d learned I didn’t have one, we’d been reeling ever since.

  Thirty-two years of reeling was wearisome, but it hadn’t been a problem, not with my mother still living.

  “It might not work,” I whispered, even as I helped her stand in the totem’s shadow.

  Four wolves were carved into the totem that soared dozens of feet into the sky. The trunk as large as three men, it was an impressive sight, but at its base, there was a kind of pedestal where a single person could stand.

  It was stained red with blood, for any ceremony that took place here required a sacrifice.

  My mother’s sacrifice would be her life.

  Her life so I could find my mate.

  “The totem never fails us, my son,” she said huskily, and it hurt me to hear the delight in her voice.

  She wanted to die.

  No mate outlived the other for long. I’d known each day I had with her was a blessing, but I’d never thought she’d seek this route. Had never imagined—

  Her soft, wrinkled hand reached up to rub over my scowl. “All will be well, child. It’s my time. Your father needs me.”

  The words had me almost choking on my misery, but I stepped back when she pushed at my shoulder.

  The totem stood in a clearing with a twenty-foot wide perimeter. It was clear of the leaves and debris that were prevalent in the rest of the forest. It had always amazed me as a child to notice how not even a single leaf or ant could cross the circular barrier.

  As far as we knew, there was no magic that could craft such a force field, and it had always been considered the Mother’s blessing on this holiest of places.

  All around me, I felt the council’s expectations, their grief, their excitement, their fear. Only in the circle could I sense this. Normally, it was cut off from me and the omega handled it. For that reason, I spent as little time here as I physically could. Ceremonies and rites were one thing I couldn’t avoid, however. Without me to complete the circle, the ritual wouldn’t work.

  Gnawing on the inside of my cheek, I stared at my mother as she reached within the folds of her coat and retrieved a knife.

  The sight of it glinting in the moonlight made me close my eyes, but I did as she’d asked, did as she’d begged—I made no move to stop her.

  “Mother, in the light of the moon, I gift you my blood. I return my powers to you, and I present my son. He seeks a mate, an omega, one who will help the children of the Highbanks pack flourish for another five centuries. I gift you all that I am, all that I have been and could ever be, and hope you honor my sacrifice and gift my child the mate he needs to reign over his people.”

  Raising a hand to cover my eyes, I heard her gasp and knew she’d sliced into her flesh. I could scent the blood spilling from her, hear the horrendous gurgles as she made the sacrifice on my behalf.

  As the blood coated the foot of the totem, a wind whipped from out of nowhere. The howling sound whispered throughout the rows of the council, and I felt myself being caught up in its gust. It wasn’t strong enough to knock me off my feet, but was powerful enough for me to feel its lash against my skin.

  I counted down, waiting for the wind to drop, and when it finally did, I ran toward my mother, who had crumpled against the totem. She fell to her knees, the bones colliding with the shiny pedestal with a cracking noise that made me wince on her behalf. As she slumped against the carved wolf I remembered stroking as a child during my first rite, I leaped forward and dragged her against me.

  Tears wet my eyes, blurring my vision as I stared down at her, looked at her beloved face as she smiled at me. Smiled. I shuddered, missing her already as she bled out in my arms.

  “He’s there, Eli,” she whispered. “Waiting on me. Oh, Mother, how I missed him.”

  “Go to him, Mom,” I whispered back, holding her tighter in my grasp. “Be free and be happy.”

  My cheeks were hot with trailing tears, and when she stiffened, I felt like howling out my rage and grief.

  How long I rocked her, I couldn’t say, but when I heard my council shuffling around, when I was torn from the fog of my loss, I sought control, for an alpha couldn’t act without it, and carefully, with the utmost respect and all the love I felt for her, I placed her body back on the pedestal.

  It was ruby red and glinting with her blood, but as I shuf
fled her limp form onto it, I waited for the Mother to accept her into her embrace.

  When light flared at the tip of the totem, I braced myself for what was about to happen. I’d read the same tomes my mother had, knew of this only because of what she’d shown me. The totem wasn’t used for this anymore, wasn’t supposed to—

  A gasp shot up around the council at my back as the totem burst into flames. It burned hotly, enough to sear my skin and melt it, but I didn’t fret. This was how it was supposed to be.

  As wrong as it was, this was right.

  My mother’s body was caught in the flames, and I watched her burn for a second before I could take no more and closed my eyes.

  The scent revolted me—burning fat and roasting flesh. How I didn’t vomit, I’d never know, but when the wind whipped into being once more and the heat from the fire disappeared, I looked upon the totem.

  She was no longer there. Not even the dust of her remains was left behind. And the totem? The fire was no more, but the wood was charred black, rich and gleaming with red hot embers. As though my mother’s death, the fire, had breathed new life into it.

  Maybe it had, like vineyard owners set fire to vines every season to replenish the soil for the next year. All I knew was that the sacrifice was too great and my loss too huge for me to appreciate it.

  Unable to take another moment of this pain, I shifted, turning into the baser creature who could mourn but whose nature was earthier.

  The second I shifted, I howled my grief, the melancholic sound reverberating around the clearing. In response to my shift, the totem turbocharged my power, forcing the council to transform too.

  I ran before they could follow.

  Tonight was not the time for a pack run.

  I needed space, I needed to hunt, I needed to shore my connection with this land.

  Alone.

  Two

  Austin

  “Did you hear that?”

  Uneasily, I blinked at my brother. “Yeah. I heard it.”

  “We can’t leave her,” he rasped, peering around us as though the alpha was in this very clearing with us.

  “No. We can’t.” I bit my bottom lip. “He isn’t beckoning us.”

  A sharp moan escaped the woman, forcing our attention her way. I stared down at her, at the rippling skin that looked as though she had worms under the top layer of epidermis, and at the sheer agony on her face.

  I could only imagine what she’d gone through as she crossed over. I couldn’t begin to understand the pain she’d been in, but what I knew was this—that pain would be nothing compared to what she’d endure now.

  “When do we shift?” I whispered over her low, agonized grunts.

  “We shift when she does. Not a moment sooner,” Ethan muttered, then he reached up and rubbed his chest. “Do you feel that?”

  “Feel what?”

  He wriggled his shoulders. “Like something’s…”

  When his words waned, I peered around the area, trying to figure out exactly what he was sensing. We were alone, and there was no one nearby except for trees and a few rabbits, potentially a couple of stags and some foxes. There were leaves everywhere, branches that had been torn from their trees, thanks to the high winds we’d been having the past few weeks, and that was pretty much it.

  When I scented the area with purpose, not just mindlessly, I could smell the stench of a fungus that was flourishing nearby, some shit, and…mostly, the blue moon was what filtered through everything.

  Just when my mouth popped open to ask him what was wrong, I felt it. My jaw clenched at the chasm inside me. It opened up from out of nowhere, slicing into my soul so quickly and so ferociously, that though I hadn’t been cut with a knife, it sure as hell felt like metal had torn into my skin, tearing me apart.

  “What is it?” I demanded, gasping the words at him.

  “I don’t know,” he whispered, and in his eyes, there was fear of the same chasm I was experiencing.

  “It hurts,” I rasped.

  “I know.”

  Both of us dropped to our knees, in tune to the female’s agonized cries, our heads bowed as we processed what was happening to us. I had no idea what we must have looked like—I didn’t give a damn either.

  This was a living nightmare. That was how it felt. Then, she screamed. A hoarse, horrified screech that morphed into a howl which snatched my attention away from my own personal misery and drew it to her.

  She was half shifted, and I winced at the sight. That was always painful. We usually fell into a half shift at time of great duress or stress. It was like we were distracted during the shift, so we were tugged in both directions.

  Her bones cracked and crunched as her back arched at an inhuman angle, and her fingers tore at the ground, ripping into the earth with claws that were pure beast.

  Her skin had stopped writhing, but now, there was fur sprouting out of each pore, and with another howl, one that saw her jaw elongating, her nose morphing into a flatter, more angled snout, she popped out—the she-wolf.

  From a noise that was loud enough to pierce anyone’s ear drums, to the sight of the prettiest she-wolf I’d seen in all my life. I gaped at her, aware that my brother was doing the same.

  Unable to stop myself, I shifted too. When Ethan followed, I ignored him and moved closer, sniffing around her as she sat there panting, her tongue lolling out of her mouth as though she were utterly exhausted.

  Nudging her with my snout, I was surprised when she didn’t snarl at me, when she only released a low keen that was loaded with her distress. Though the beast felt less in this form, we were still empathetic creatures, and I hurt for her. Truly, I did.

  Softly, I nuzzled into her, trying to impart my sympathy, and when she nuzzled back, a feeling of elation whirled around inside me.

  As Ethan approached, she didn’t tense up, just stared at him before her knees seemed to collapse out from under her. She slid forward, then slammed into the ground. When she rolled onto her side, tongue still lolling, I whined at her.

  She was supposed to get up, go on a rampage.

  Why wasn’t she doing that?

  When Ethan whined too, rubbing his nose along the length of her body, snuffling as he tried to scent what was wrong, I felt his concern like it was my own.

  When she just stayed there, panting like she’d been running for days on end, and then eventually closed her eyes and began to doze, I shot him a look, then shifted back.

  The power in the air that came from the shift had her tensing a little, but not enough to awaken. When I saw Ethan staring at me, I whispered, “Why isn’t she hunting?”

  “We need to get her to the alpha.”

  “He wanted to be left alone. His howl told us that.”

  “He’ll go home at some point,” Ethan muttered, running a hand over his head. Gnawing on his bottom lip, he stared down at her, studying her as intently as I was.

  “We might get blamed for this,” I pointed out warily.

  “If we do, we do. Our scent isn’t on her.”

  “No, but if we carry her to the alpha’s house it will be. Plus, our scent is on her. There’s no escaping it.” Rubbing the back of my neck, I mumbled, “But we don’t have a choice, do we? She needs him.”

  Ethan pulled a face. “Don’t we all?”

  Bending down, I began to shuffle her into my arms. Ethan helped by tipping her slightly onto me, then bracing me as I hefted her upright. We were strong, stronger than the average human, but shifter she-wolves weighed a helluva lot. As deadweight? Sheesh.

  Not wanting to associate the beautiful silver wolf with the word ‘dead,’ we began the trek through the woods toward the alpha’s home.

  Eli lived in the big house, just off Highbanks forest. It was a mansion, somewhere even a rich human would want to live with all its swanky rooms, but essentially, it was the home to all the pack. Eli owned it, but it belonged to all of us.

  So did this female now.

  She was ours, even if she di
dn’t want to be. Even if one of us had forced her to be like this.

  I had to admit, she scented good. Different. Kind of flowery, and that was saying something because she’d just been tossing around in a bunch of leaves. It was a wonder she didn’t stink of something else. But nothing marred her beautiful silver coat.

  As we stepped through the forest, over fallen branches and the like, I relied on my senses and on my brother to keep me traveling in the right direction, because I couldn’t stop looking at her.

  Something about her, her scent, the feel of her in my arms, the beauty of her gold-tipped silver coat, kept that awful ache inside me at bay.

  That pain hadn’t disappeared, but my mind was focused elsewhere, on this new she-wolf who was going to be a part of our pack.

  We were silent on our walk, which was unusual. Especially when it took forty minutes to get there. By silent agreement, we didn’t run, not wanting to disturb her too much, but I was relieved by the time we made it to the alpha’s den because her breathing had changed, turned raspy almost.

  Tucking her closer to my chest, hoping the heat would help her, we crossed the drive to the estate. It was long, a mile down to the road that would eventually lead to the highway. In the distance, I could hear all the people in the den.

  Their voices were only at a conversational volume, but to me, even at this distance, they were like whispers. I could hear every word and what I heard was enough to explain the distress I was in. Mother, that we were all in.

  The omega had passed over.

  That was why the alpha had howled. Why he’d sought solace in his other form.

  Shooting my twin a look, I muttered, “He won’t be here for a while.”

  “Do we take her to our place?” he replied warily, well aware that we weren’t flavor of the month with the council.

  Eli liked us. We were good at what we did. But the council considered us mischief makers. Mostly because our duty was to watch over them and make sure they were sticking to the Mother’s path.

  They’d just love to throw this at us. An unapproved transformation? We could lose everything if the council saw us with the she-wolf.