Claimed (The Lair of the Wolven #1) by J.R. Ward

“Peter.”

She approached the remains slowly. The dead man’s eyes were open in his pasty face, and as she stared down at him, it was unclear what he had died of.

Well, murder. Yes. But what had killed him? And who?

Looking him up and down—she saw no clues to the former. But the latter was answered. Words had been scratched deeply into a cleared stretch of dirt in the bed of pine needles.

You always Do the Right Thing

Scribbled, messy, cap’d in some places. Like it mattered.

Rick had done the killing on purpose here. Right in the place where she had found that wolf and called the WSP’s vet in the veil. This was the exact spot—she was certain because of the orientation of trees, everything burned into her memory from lying nose-to-nose with the animal as he’d suffered.

Crouching down, she saw a trail of blood out of one of Peter’s ears. And that was when it clicked.

Now she knew why the water had been running back at the barn.

Like a rat who had eaten RatX, Kaput, or d-Con, Peter had been seeking water. Before he had collapsed.

From the poison.

Lydia rubbed her face.

And when she dropped her hand and looked up—“Grandfather?”

In the shadows between the pines, standing in the darkness, the ghostly apparition of her isoisä was staring at her, his mouth moving as if he were trying to speak across the dimensions that separated them.

Lydia rose to her feet and took a step forward. “I need you, Grandfather. What do I do? Where do I go?”

She put her hands out as her eyes flooded with tears. “Please … don’t go. For once, stay and help me.”



Daniel coughed so hard, his eyes watered—and as a result, Mr. Personality’s hard face, as it dominated his diminishing corridor of vision, became wavy and indistinct. But Daniel had bigger problems to worry about. He was struggling to breathe, gasping and gurgling for air, so he heaved himself over onto his side and tried to clear his mouth out of the blood that seemed to be golf-sprinkling up his esophagus.

When he was finally able to catch some oxygen, he opened eyes that he’d been unaware of closing—

And there was his former roommate, still right up close.

The man smiled from his crouching position. “You know, I’m usually a good shot, but I think I didn’t take my emotions into account as I pulled my trigger.” That expression faded. “I didn’t want to play it like this, not with you. I got a little loyalty to you, my guy. I really do. Did. Whatever.”

Daniel moaned. “Lydia …”

“What? Oh, the woman?”

“Save … Lydia.”

Mr. Personality frowned. “She’s too far into this, mate. Sorry.”

“Kill me now. Do … whatever. Just … save … her. You owe me.”

Eyes so pale, they were almost all white, moved away. “I didn’t ask you to do what you did all those years ago.”

“Owe. Me.”

“I can’t protect her against Blade. I’m sorry.”

Daniel struggled to get up. Tried to breathe. Willed himself to stay alive so he could—

“And Lydia’s got to go.” Mr. Personality pointed the barrel of his gun into Daniel’s face. “Yes, you did your part. You brought me here. But only because I followed you. More important, she knows waaaaaaaay too much to let live—”

The attack was so fast and so powerful, the other man didn’t see it coming—and all Daniel caught was a blur of gray and brown fur.

Confused, he managed to lift his head.

A gray wolf with a silver stripe down its back had tackled Daniel’s former roommate and was ripping into his throat. The man was fighting back as much as he could, struggling to get his gun up, punching and kicking. But the vicious animal was too much for him, those fangs flashing, the growling and snarling the kind of thing nightmares were made of.

And it didn’t take long. Blood spurted from that jugular, speckling the wolf’s jowls, chest, front paws—and as soon as that red rush started, there was no question who was going to win.

As the gun got thrown, and the human started to lose strength, the wolf straddled the body and went to town: Clothes shredded, skin ripped free of muscles, muscles torn off of bones, bones snapped and spit out or swallowed.

Daniel watched it all. And when it was over, when the wolf stepped off and licked its chops—and then looked at Daniel, all he could do was laugh inside.

After all this, after everything he’d done in secret for the U.S. government … he was going to die as Alpo. Out in the woods.

The wolf took a step toward him. And another.

“Have at me,” he said hoarsely. “Have—”

The wolf let out a howl of pain and listed to the side. Then fell over.

What happened next … Daniel couldn’t comprehend. And not just because he was bleeding to death internally.

As the guard in the black uniform returned—the same one Daniel had killed once and then seen the sheriff take out, with the same features and eyes and weapons—the wolf started to convulse.

And then it writhed in the pine needles, clawing at the earth, paws thrashing, hind legs kicking—

But that wasn’t all it did.

The transformation was inexplicable. The fur began to recede into the pores it came out of, and then paws morphed, becoming hands, becoming feet, human hands, human feet. The chest and lupine stomach likewise distended, extended … changed … becoming a human chest, a human abdominal cavity … a human pelvis.