Wolf, Shifted by Rebecca Ethington
Nova
“Areyou sure she’s the right one?”
The voice was garbled as it echoed through the tin can that some guy was clearly talking through. The voice shook as my body bounced, as the world began to return.
“I’m sure,” a female responded, the voice just as garbled and echoey. Except this one I recognized. That woman from the alley.
My mind was slowly waking up, everything spinning a bit less as my body was rocked and bounced around. Everything ached, even my wolf was whimpering. Whatever they had given me had knocked her out as well. Which was probably for the better.
“We’ve been monitoring her for years, Percy, do you really think Grey would send us out to get her if he wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure?” The woman’s voice was even more irritated than she had been in the alley.
“No, he wouldn’t,” the first guy, Percy, said and I was knocked to the side again.
What was this? Were they planning on interrogating me on a carousel? I forced my eyes open, everything spinning as I blinked to a swath of black fabric, little lines of light peeking in where the fabric had worn thin.
Great, so this was a full-on kidnapping. I had a bag over my head that had clearly been used before, I had been drugged and thrown in the back of a car. My wolf was knocked out, and one shift of my weight revealed that not only were my knife and phone gone, but my hands had been zip tied behind my back.
“You need to be more trusting, Percy. I would hate to have to report you,” the woman said, the seat I had been placed on shifting, not from the motion of the car, but from her. She was sitting right next to me. That would mean that Percy was driving.
My wolf was still drowsy, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t still try to fight my way out of this. Headbutt to the girl, kick the guy in the head. Shift and run.
Impossible? Sure. Especially considering how big of a risk shifting was. But I was stupid and cocky enough to try it. I just needed my wolf to wake up.
“I am trusting. He sent me on this mission, didn’t he, Kat?” Percy snapped and turned a corner abruptly which sent the woman, Kat, into me. She laughed riotously as her scent filled me.
My wolf must be waking up. I could smell both of them now. Percy smelled like dirt and moss, but he wasn’t the only other male in the car.
“As much as I love the childish banter, it is not you two that I was sent to monitor,” a third voice drawled. He sounded bored and... slimy. The heavy scent of his musk hit moments after he spoke, the horny redhead.
Well, that explained the slimy.
“Sorry, Hank,” the two said together, both of them fully submitting to him.
With how quick they reacted I would have assumed him to be the Alpha, I could smell the strength on him. Okay, that was going to make the whole ‘escaping from my kidnappers thing’ that much harder. Thankfully most of the dizziness had left, and my strength was returning, so at least I would have a fighting chance.
“Just stop your squabbling so we can finish the job,” Hank said, his voice nearly drowned by the tires as we turned again, the smooth sound of asphalt replaced by the crunch of dirt and gravel. Rocks picked up and hit the undercarriage of the car as we bounced around.
My wolf perked up at the noise, at the tone in Hank's voice as he talked about ‘finishing the job’. Yeah, that sounded like a mob boss murder speech if I’ve ever heard one.
If they thought I was just going to let them shoot me in the head at the end of a dirt road they had another thing coming.
Headbutt to Kat, face kick to Percy, I still hadn’t figured out what to do with Hank. Maybe I could still kick him in the balls. That always seemed to work, not that I had tried it on wolves, but there was a first time for everything.
No point in waiting now. I shifted as the car bounced, preparing to launch myself at Kat when Hank cut me off.
“She’s awake,” Hank finished, and the car slowed, leather squeaking as they all shifted their weight.
“Oh, why didn’t you tell us you had rejoined us, Nova?” Kat hissed, her voice back to that high pitched taunt as she leaned in and let her hand slide down my thigh. I was sure she expected me to jerk away, but I stayed still, watching the light move through my hood as my wolf began to snarl.
I may be able to deal with Kat, but my wolf was having none of it.
“Because she was hoping for information,” Hank drawled in that slimy voice of his. “A woman after my own heart.”
“Keep dreaming, slime ball,” I snapped, shifting my weight to lean toward him. Or, at least, where I thought he was.
“Trust me when I say you’ll be in my dreams for days, Nova.”
I growled at him, pressing against the zip ties and shuffling my feet to check for more zip ties. They had only restrained my hands. Good. That was going to make all of this easier.
“Do you really want to try me? You say you know what I am. Do you want to test that theory?” I didn’t know if I was facing the right direction, so I growled a little louder, just in case.
“Trust me, little wolf, you don’t want to try it. I like to play with my food,” Hank hissed with a voice that twisted in my gut before someone pulled the hood off my head. I furiously blinked away the bright sunshine to reveal the redhead grinning at me from the passenger seat, my hood in his hand.
“You’re right, Kat, he’s going to like her,” Hank said, smiling with a grin as greasy as his voice as he let the hood fall onto his lap. “And if he doesn't, maybe I’ll have a go.”
“No one is ‘having a go’, least of all you. That is unless you want me to kick your balls into your throat,” I snapped, pulling my hands apart in an attempt to break the zip ties, just as I had been taught. They didn’t budge.
“Don’t bother trying to break those,” Kat said, crossing her legs where she sat on the bench seat next to me, pointing her stiletto at me. “We got them off a witch for this purpose. We didn’t want to risk losing you before we got a chance to talk to you.”
She leaned against the door, smiling as I tried the zip ties again. Even Hank chuckled and sat back.
“Back to pretending you want to talk to me?” I snarled, still fiddling with the zip ties as they cut into my skin. Of course I’m stuck with the bad guys who actually tell the truth about stuff. “Is that a fancy way of saying ‘take me to your alpha so he can kill me.’? You do remember that you drugged me and kidnapped me, right?”
“For our safety as well as yours. You were about to shift.” Hank was dead serious now, his eyes flashing as if to warm me not to do it again. “We wouldn’t be able to talk to you if you shifted.”
“You wouldn’t have legs anymore if I shifted.”
Hank chuckled and I twisted to him, snarling in warning. He just smiled and licked his lips. Okay, yeah, that was super gross. My wolf growled, the sound rumbling in my chest and he licked his lips again.
Excuse me while I gag.
“It’s a Moon Year and Mr. Dillon has requested your presence,” Kat said, picking at her nails as though she had missed the whole exchange.
She had said that before, but I had been stabbed and drugged only moments after so I didn’t have time for it to register. Now I did, and suddenly Mr. Horndog in the front seat was not the worst of my problems.
A Moon Year.
Every few years all of the Alphas, pups, and the unmated wolves in each pack would come together. The Alphas would submit to the High Alpha, the ‘pups’ or the wolves who had come of age in the last year would shift for the first time, and any unmated wolves would party it up for the months that all the pups underwent training in the hope of finding their fated mate. It lasted for months, and all ended with the High Alpha coaxing the wolves out of the pups for the first time and overseeing the first shift.
You weren’t supposed to be able to shift for the first time without an Alpha’s help. You would risk going mad, or severing the connection with your wolf. Well, unless you were me. Another thing that made me an anomaly and a wanted criminal.
I had learned about Moon Year from Hiss a few years ago when their older sister went for her first shift. It was something that my father had conveniently left out of his lessons. I had years of lessons on how to take down wolves, which clearly did me a whole lot of good, but nothing on what being part of a pack was actually like.
I had been too young when everything happened… when we went into hiding.
“Wait. So, the High Alpha has requested my presence at the Moon Year celebration. You know, when everyone is supposed to shift and show off how cool their wolf is. And none of you see anything wrong with that? He does know…” I grit my teeth as my wolf snarled, I couldn’t bring myself to finish.
“That you and your father were the lone survivors of a pack massacre? Yes, he knows.” Kat leaned in, smiling with a glint in her eyes that made her look as deranged as Hank.
Didn’t think I would meet anyone that would actually seem excited to meet me. But, I guess there was a special brand of stupid for everyone.
“Survivors,” I laughed, “that’s an interesting way to phrase it.”
Kat shrugged, smiling. “Would you prefer the stories that the others told? That it was you who started the massacre. That you killed them all?”
Screams and blood flashed in my memory and I grit my teeth, forcing everything away and my wolf into submission.
Calm.
“I didn’t kill them.” I could barely get the words out through my quickly elongating teeth.
“We know,” Hank twisted in his seat to face me, his voice disinterested even though his wolf was peering at me. “Do you really think we would have kept you alive if we had thought for a second that your wolf was responsible. Your name was cleared years ago, we’ve been looking for you so we could bring you back. So we could bring you home.”
He smiled, and not in that greasy grimace from earlier, an actual smile. They were both smiling, and I was sure they wanted me to cry or celebrate, or scream thanks with what he had just said, but I just sat there as though I had been turned into a potato.
“Cleared?” My heart felt numb, everything felt heavy as I gasped the word.
“Yes,” Hank nodded, his smile still in place as he turned back to the road. “You did hide yourself very well, Nova. It took a while for us to find you.”
I blinked at him. God, I wanted to believe him. My wolf was stirring, my heart pounding, my mind already going to what it would be like to be part of a pack and not running from one...
“You said you found me two years ago. If my name was cleared, then why wait?” I spat, turning to Kat who had said those exact words not too long ago.
“Feisty. Smart. Clever. Yes, he is going to like you,” Hank said, the slime in his voice making a return as he smiled at me.
“You keep saying that like I am going to be offered up like some renegade bride.” My wolf was back to snarling. She hated that idea as much as I did. Percy jerked in the driver’s seat, sending us swerving a bit.
“First, we had to monitor you to make sure you weren’t the feral murderer everyone claimed. You weren’t. Congratulations.” Kat smiled brightly, throwing her hands in the air as though she had confetti. I just stared at her; girl had some mood swings. “And, you aren’t going to be offered up as some bride. That’s not how this works. Everyone is here in hopes of finding their fated mate, maybe you will find yours. Maybe it will be Mr. Dillon.”
Maybe I would chop off his dick before he gets a chance to ask. I just smiled at her, which thankfully seemed to pacify her. I wasn’t about to jump on the celebratory bandwagon just yet. My father had hidden me for a reason. He had taught me to restrain my shift for a reason. He had told me to stay away from Greyson Dillon for a reason.
Something about this was rotten, and it wasn’t just the smell that was coming off of Kat.
“Luckily, we found you just in time,” Kat said, and for the first time I think she actually gave me a genuine smile.
“In time for the Moon Year?” That didn’t seem like good luck to me, but Kat just smiled and pulled my switchblade out of her pocket, swinging it open easily enough that I could tell she had practice. “Or in time for you to kill me?”
She rolled her eyes and yanked me forward, pulling me to the side so she could get at my hands easier.
“I’m just following orders, honey. You don’t disobey Greyson Dillon,” she hissed in my ear just as I felt the cold metal against my wrist. With a snap the zip tie released and she pressed me back against my seat.
“Just do what he says and you’ll be fine. After all, he is the High Alpha,” she said as she handed back my knife and my phone, which had thirty-two new text messages. Hiss must be worried sick.
I just stared at her, rubbing my wrists as the car turned another sharp corner. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that ‘doing what someone says’ was not my strong suit.
“Yeah, okay,” I mumbled, her smile faltering before she turned toward the front of the car and the massive estate that was peeking through the trees.
The warm brown of sandstone bricks towered over the trees in turrets and arched windows that stood taller than I was. Hundreds of windows gleamed in the bright sun, making the whole building glow, warm and welcoming.
The building was huge, five stories high and at least twice as long. It looked as though it had been built in the early 1800s as some school, or maybe an estate for a rich aristocrat with way too much money to burn.
My father had told me a story once of the first vampires in the United States, how they came over from Europe with gobs of money and built houses like this so they could hide away in forests and sneak women out of the cities.
Vampires had been hunted by the wolves to near extinction, and if I had to guess this house was some Alpha’s bounty from a vampire fight.
The house seemed to get bigger the closer we got, everything becoming more alive as we zoomed by hundreds of cars parked alongside the dirt road. All of them were expensive and shiny as the packs came together to brag about wealth and wolf size. And here I was, being dragged there in a ripped shirt, holey sneakers, and a jacket I grabbed out of a dumpster.
Trendy.
Banners displaying a Crescent Moon hung from old lamp posts as the dirt road opened up into a massive clearing, the road swooping around in a wide arch before the estate like it was some fancy restaurant.
At least five valets were already rushing to our car before Percy had even pulled it to a stop.
“Welcome to the Crescent Moon estate,” one of the valets said, opening my door with a flourish. I stepped out, Kat already waiting for me. She and Hank were at my sides as I stared up at the building. The thing was huge, and if this was any other scenario I would think I was going in to meet some prince and get swept off my feet.
Like hell if I was going to let that happen.
“Welcome back to society,” Hank said, holding out his arm to escort me up the stairs.
‘Welcome to hell,’ my wolf corrected him as he led me toward the massive wood and iron doors.
My wolf didn’t speak much, but when she did, she tended to be right.