Rebecca Royce: Summer’s Wolf

Shift. I will make it so you don’t see this.

No.

She couldn’t shift with fifteen wolves and Claudius present. It was important to know what happened around her. The bodies. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes from the bodies. Who were they? Why couldn’t she tell? It should be simple. She knew in the back of her head who was dead. But it was like prying open a box that had been crazy glued shut. She tugged and pulled but her consciousness refused to make order of the chaos around her.

Look at the body, identify who it was. One and one equaled two, but she couldn’t do the addition. She could look at the scene, but she couldn’t decipher what anything was.

I won’t let you know .

Summer heard strange whimpering noises, disquieted to realize they came from her throat. In some way, there was a disconnect happening to her. Her wolf’s interference kept her from seeing something important. What was it? She blinked and forced her consciousness back under her control.

Don’t look . Her wolf howled inside of her, desperate to come out.

Never good at following directions, Summer studied the figures in front of her. A man, late fifties, salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in a black Armani suit, his arm outstretched to the white wolf next to him, fingers pointed open like an immobilized spider. His eyes wide, dark-blue, light gone from them, lifeless. Summer sucked in her breath hard, and let it out with a sob.

She pushed her mind free, demanded that her wolf let her comprehend what she saw. The room suddenly looked brighter. She tilted her head to the side.

Oh no, Daddy .

A scream ripped from her mouth. It was her father’s dead, lifeless body strewn out before her. His throat ripped out, his chest torn open. He was dead. Her daddy. He’d held her on his shoulders until she was ten years old, even though it had hurt his back, just because she’d asked him to. He was dead. Gone from her life, forever. Destroyed by these monsters.

“No!’

Summer ran toward her father and slipped on the blood on the floor. Oh god, she had fallen in her father’s blood. Covered in the sticky liquid she bellowed. “Get away from him.” The wolves blinked in response. She panted.

There was something else too. Why couldn’t she think? What didn’t make sense? Her daddy was dead and so was that wolf. Who was the wolf on the floor next to him? White and small, she looked so similar to how Summer looked when she was in wolf form. Like a wall crumbling, the denial blocking Summer’s brain crashed to the floor.

“Please, no.” Her voice clogged, she didn’t know if she said the words out loud.

The wolf was her mother. Summer’s breath came in short gasps. She’d stood in the hall for ten minutes and smelled the rot and decay, and done nothing. She was such a coward, she should kill Claudius or at least attempt to. Her parents deserved that much. But she felt frozen to her spot.

“I know what I was sent here to do,” Claudius said as he exhaled. His voice sounded bored, dull.

Summer wanted to gouge out his eyes. Her fists clenched at her sides. She needed to stay in control. Fifteen wolves in the room meant she would end up dead on the floor next to her parents if she gave in to the need to attack.

“But I’m wondering if it’s worth it, letting you go, or if it wouldn’t be better to take you with us.” Claudius sniffed the air, his red pig-nose twitched back and forth three times. “Ah,” Claudius grinned and drool fell from the left side of his mouth. “You’re ovulating.”

“I want you dead, you disgusting pig. Somehow, I will see you dead.” Her hands shook at her sides. If she lived through this, she would see him gone from the earth and she would make sure it was a painful departure.

Claudius’ mouth raised in a half-moon smile. “We’re going to do a little experiment on you, Ms. Summer Morrison. But first, I’m going to deliver the message I was sent here to deliver. This,” Claudius pointed at the shells that once housed her parents’ souls. “It’s just the beginning. Kendrick wants his pack back, and what Kendrick wants, he gets.”

“Really?” Inside, Summer’s wolf howled in fury, desperate for vengeance. “Because it seemed to me he wanted Tristan to kill Ashlee and they beat the hell out of that plan.” Even if it had cost Summer everything she treasured, she was glad at that moment Ashlee had succeeded.

Claudius hissed through his teeth and stepped closer to her. “Your older sister may have stopped us from sending spells to the island of Westervelt, but we still have the power. Tristan has yet to find the missing unmated females. We will find them first. You will never be safe. There is no place we can’t get you. Not even on your little island.”

The wolves raised their heads to the sky and howled. Summer sat on her knees and covered her ears from the sound. The wolves were old and ill kept, their fur knotted and oily, smelling of filth and disease.

Bad wolves .

Claudius wasn’t done talking. “Tell Tristan he has one month to give the pack back to Kendrick or we will start killing a member of your pack every week. It might be someone you know, or an unmated female our seers find for us, but every week someone will die. And we will start with his son, your nephew, Braden, and then second we will take your niece, his daughter, Virginia. You see there is nothing about your pack that we don’t know.” Claudius stalked towards her and reached out to stroke the side of her face. The bile in Summer’s stomach rose. “You’ll have to go to the island and tell Tristan yourself. Since the birth of your niece, he and your sister never leave their hiding place. Cowardly behavior for an Alpha and his mate.”

“If they’re so easy to get to, why don’t you tell them yourself?” Summer’s voice sounded steady, which surprised her, but she was grateful for the ruse.

Claudius shook his head. “I can’t believe Cullen has left you alone all this time.”

At the sound of his name, the anger Summer held back exploded inside of her. Screw it, better to die than put up with more of this. She roared and leapt two feet into the air. If she’d been a wolf, Claudius would have been dead. Her hands outstretched like claws, she swung at his face, digging her fingernails into his pasty white skin.

A string of profanity escaped his fat mouth, but Summer focused entirely on her desire to gauge out his eyes. His giant arm knocked her onto the ground, the force of it snatching the wind from her lungs, and she wheezed as she tried to catch her breath. He planted a massive foot on top of her and pinned her to the floor.

Claudius turned his head but kept his eyes on Summer. “Shift, Marcus.”

One of the non-descript grey wolves stepped forward. His body contorted, writhed in apparent agony. His bones cracked as the wolf howled. Soon the sound of the howl changed, as it acquired a gurgle and then a choke. Summer forced her stomach to stay strong. She would not give these men the satisfaction of making a sound.

Everything about the man’s shift was wrong, the little she had seen her mother do it had been beautiful, and even three years earlier when it had been forced on her during Tristan’s Alpha ceremony, it had seemed natural, everyone bathed in white light, as if they were celestial creatures.

Marcus stood naked before her. His head drooped, his dull, brown eyes lifeless as he stared at her. His greasy, unwashed blond hair fell onto his face. Sweat and grime covered his body. Worst of all, his penis was totally erect.

“Kendrick tells me that a wolf-shifter can only be impregnated by her mate.” Claudius rolled his eyes. “This seemed to be true with your sister. Didn’t the human doctors tell her she was infertile? Now two babies in three years. But I think that is the stuff of fairy tales. I can smell how fertile you are. Marcus, get the girl with child.”