Ruined Wolf: A Paranormal Why Choose Romance (Claimed by the Sea Wolves Series Book 2)

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Ididn’t know how long I drove, or to be honest, even which roads I travelled down. My mind shut down completely, keeping the fury and gutting agony of her betrayal at bay, as well as the searing grief at the news of Jaxon’s death. I shut it all out, closed down, and just drove. The wheels crunched over gravel, and I pulled the truck to a stop in a small car park some way off a main road. I turned off the engine and stared ahead of me as silence fell. I was completely numb, and somewhere, a faint voice told me it was more than likely I was in shock. In a weirdly detached way, I began to remember what to do if someone was in shock—keep them warm and safe, and find some way of bringing them back to reality. What if I didn’t want to come back? Our family had already been fractured. Nova’s arrival had seemed to bring us all closer for a while, but now she had ripped us apart, shattering our unit in a way I never could have predicted.

I looked down at my hands in my lap. They were shaking. Back to reality. Slowly, like I was moving through a dream, I began to remove my clothing, folding each item and leaving them on the passenger seat of the truck. Once naked, I pushed the door open, then turned and locked the truck, stashing the keys under the rear wheel arch. I leaned back against the door, ignoring the cold sensation of the metal against my spine, and gazed off into the trees.

I shifted without thinking, my human consciousness rolling back in my head to allow my wolf to take the reins. He wasn’t detached, and I felt his emotions flow over me—hurt, confusion, anger, and disbelief. In surprise, I realised he wasn’t ready to write Nova off just yet. He could sense that there was more to this, but right now, we both needed to clear our head. We walked down the path that led into the trees, increasing our speed to a gentle trot, and then careening off the path and into the forest. He sped up, and I relinquished any control, letting him run where he wanted. I didn’t want to be here, I didn’t want to think or feel, and giving myself up to my more primal side took the pain away.

There was always a slight risk with this though. The temptation for the wolf to permanently take control was strongly frowned upon. A shifter could get lost in his most primal nature without that spark of humanity to bring him back. Right now, I didn’t care. I had spent so much time trying to be a good, caring, decent human being, and what had it brought me? My parents died when I was too young to really remember them, my brother abandoned me and then died, and Nova pretended she had feelings for me only to choose every single brother over me then rip us all apart. No. I was done.

I gave myself up to it, no longer aware of anything save the damp, rich scent of the forest around us, the sound of the birds, the chill in the air, and the growing wind that ruffled our fur. I felt our feet hitting the ground over and over as we raced through the trees, claws sinking into moss and bark as we leaped and climbed over dense roots. Our heart raced and chest heaved with the physical exertion, and even my wolf thought of nothing but the primal sensation of physical impressions and just being alive.

The terrain changed under our feet, becoming hard, solid rock, and we climbed higher among the trees until we stood on a crest of rock over a clearing, the trees like some towering columns in an ancient and long forgotten cathedral.

My wolf sucked in the cold air, filling his lungs, and then with a sudden release that shook my core, he howled his grief and anguish to the sky. Emotion crashed through me. Every memory of Jaxon and Nova tore through me like knives, slashing at my soul, and inside my wolf’s mind, I howled with him, screaming to the island until I had nothing left within me. We collapsed, staring into the shadows between the trees. If I had been in human form, I believe I would have wept as rage became grief and utter heartbreak.

I have no idea how long we lay here. The sky darkened overhead with ominous clouds rolling in from the sea, and we watched, detached, as droplets of rain hit the rock just in front of our nose. When the rain became heavy enough that I could feel it seeping through our fur, I finally dragged myself up. My wolf had retreated inside, his own grief spent, and I regained control. Sense and awareness returned. I needed to get back and see if Maverick needed anything or just... so I didn’t stay out here forever.

My limbs felt heavy as I made my way back down the cluster of rocks we’d raced up, and with a sinking heart, I realised where I was. Somehow, I’d driven across the island, and now I stood before Standing Bear Rock. I padded forward and slipped underneath, taking shelter from the worsening precipitation. I breathed in, as though I’d still be able to scent her here, and memories flashed through my mind of her soft skin and golden eyes, and the way she whispered my name.

Pain reverberated through me once more. I had been such a fool. At least I had already started to accept she would never be mine before her betrayal had been discovered. I couldn’t imagine what Maverick and Lucas were going through. I needed to get back. My brothers would need me, even if they didn’t realise or accept that they did. They shouldn’t have to be alone in this. Nova had never been my mate, and Jaxon had abandoned us months ago, but Maverick and Lucas were still there, still family, and we needed to stick together now more than ever, or I was afraid we would lose each other for good.

I turned away from my memories and began to trot through the trees. I didn’t have the energy or the motivation to race back, just placing one foot in front of the other. The heavens seemed to open, and the rain began to cascade down in sheets, soaking me despite the canopy of the trees. Spring was in full bloom, and the leaves were back, but they didn’t provide the thick cover they would in a few months, so I was drenched when I got to the truck. I shifted back but hesitated instead of climbing into the truck. I stood there, my bare feet pinched by sharp gravel, and tipped my head back, letting the rain shower down onto my skin. Each droplet hit me like a needle, and a thousand of them stung my skin as I let the cold water stream over my body as though I could simply wash the pain away.

I blinked as the water dripped into my eyes and shook my head, trying to shake some of the water from my hair. Enough was enough. I needed to go home.

The rain lashed against the windscreen, and I had the wipers on full blast, but I could still see the tops of the trees swaying like crazy as I pulled into the driveway leading to our cabin. It could almost be night, though normally it wouldn’t have been this dark until much later, but the storm clouds were black, and very little light was getting through. I slammed the truck door, locked it, and then made my way up the cabin steps, squinting against the torrential rain and wind. There was something on the air, something ominous, and my wolf felt it strongly. He snarled and whimpered in my head as I pushed through the front door and stood dripping in the entrance hall.

The house felt strangely quiet. I pulled off my soaked jacket, hanging it on a peg by the door.

“Maverick?” I called. “Lucas?” Nothing. I quickly stuck my head into the sitting room and the kitchen, but the lights were off, and the place was empty. It felt chilly and weirdly echoey. I kicked off my boots and jogged upstairs. My brothers weren’t in their rooms either. I sighed. Clearly they had left after me, and it struck me that they might be looking for me.

I took out my mobile and rang Maverick. The call went straight to voicemail, as did Lucas’s. Weird. I wondered if the storm was having an effect on the signal. There wasn’t much I could do except wait for them to get home. I stripped off my clothes and headed into my bathroom for a long, hot shower and some clean, dry clothes.

I felt much more human when I headed back out into the hallway with the intention of hitting the kitchen to get something cooking. If they were out in that storm, I figured they’d appreciate something hot and filling when they returned, but as I stepped into the hall, my eyes drifted up towards the closed door that stood at the end. I drifted towards it, my hand reaching into my trouser pocket for my keys.

Maverick had kept this door locked for months, but he’d never said why. I guessed it had something to do with his way of dealing with Jaxon’s disappearance.

When my brother hadn’t returned home that night, we hadn’t been worried. A few days later, we’d become concerned, but he’d never once contacted us. As our worries grew, we started looking into the possibility that something had happened to him. The day Maverick locked the bedroom door was the day we discovered he’d left of his own accord, disappearing after he reached the mainland. I’d managed to track his mobile for a while and his credit cards as he made his way south, but then they’d disappeared too. A fake call to the credit card company had determined he’d closed the accounts himself. No foul play, just a man who’d wanted to disappear.

I unlocked the door and stepped inside, flicking on the light. A layer of dust covered everything, but other than that, nothing had changed. I sat down on the bed, looking around at his desk and the long stretches of bookcases full of informational hardbacks and battered paperbacks. Jaxon had always preferred a more academic life. As I’d begun to realise he probably didn’t plan on coming back, I’d started to think more about him as a person rather than my brother and future alpha, and I’d realised that maybe Jaxon hadn’t wanted to be alpha.

He’d accepted his duty with honour, but when I’d thought about it, I’d realised how much he’d dreamed of going off to university, travelling, and studying. He’d have been a serious and responsible alpha, there was no doubt of that, but as I sat and considered it, I realised that despite Maverick having his own dreams destroyed by taking the position, he would make a far better alpha than Jaxon ever would have. Maverick was a natural leader, which was fairly odd for a second born child, but it was true. People listened to him, and more than that, he listened to them. He was fair and rarely judgemental. He was a good man, and I knew he’d lead this pack well, even better than Ethan. I just hoped he’d be able to find happiness while he did it, especially now that Nova was probably gone.

Ethan would have shipped her back to High Rocks Pack, I was sure of it. I cringed at the thought, but then I remembered that everything she’d told us had been lies. The tragic past and the abuse she had suffered could have all been faked, playing on our protective natures to get us to take her in. I felt the irritation rise within me as I thought about how easily she’d conned us all, just to get close to the alpha, even as Maverick’s mate. She’d done bloody well, even seducing Jaxon. She’d lived with him in the city, not a day’s journey from here, and yet he’d still never returned. He’d gone south, I knew that from his phone records, but he’d come back north, on his way home. Had she seduced him on purpose, stopped him from coming back, and kept him out of the way while her father planned to take the pack? Ethan was a strong alpha, but leadership was usually taken by force, and Ethan would be easier to defeat in a challenge than Jaxon would have been, young and at the peak of his strength.

When Maverick had stepped up, she needed to weaken him too. My thoughts began to churn in my mind, spinning out of control, each one more ludicrous than the last, but I followed them all, still trying to make sense of everything. If keeping Jaxon out of the way had been her assignment, then maybe Maverick had been her second? And then Lucas too? What if she was more than a spy? What if she’d been sent to weaken my brothers or even... a thought struck me, and I growled loudly. What if Jaxon hadn’t been sick? What if she’d killed him so she could come to Desolation and take care of Maverick too? She had both of my brothers under her thumb, and they were vulnerable. She might not be able to shift, but that would keep them off their guard.

She didn’t seem like a threat, but she could have easily slit their throats in their sleep...

Something snapped inside me. The control I thought I’d manage to wrestle back once my body had been exhausted dissipated, and rage and grief surged through me, filling every vein and cell as it had before.

I snarled, launched myself off the bed, and grabbed the lamp on the bedside table, hurling it at the mirror that hung on the wall by Jaxon’s desk. I didn’t know whether or not I’d thought the sound of smashing glass would have helped me calm down, but it had the opposite effect on me. I lost it completely, my fury taking over. I screamed and lunged forward, grabbing one of the heavy wooden bookcases and dragging it over. It crashed forward, smashing against the wooden chest at the foot of the bed and scattering books all over the floor.

I crossed to the desk. The memory of Jaxon sitting there with his books and his journal filled me with mountains of grief. I never showed any interest in his hobbies, and now, I never could. I grabbed the desk with both hands, feeling the cool wood under my fingertips, and shoved it across the room, tipping it up so the computer crashed to the ground, the screen shattering on impact. The drawers slid straight out, spilling their contents over the floor, and I kicked at the books and papers in sheer fury.

Adrenaline coursed through me, and all my control was long gone. I moved around the room, ripping books from the shelves and hurling them at the walls. The desk chair met a similar fate, leaving huge dents in the wall and smashing to pieces as it hit the floor with force. My anger seemed to come from somewhere both deep down inside me, a darkness I didn’t know I possessed, but also from somewhere else, like a primal, external source was taking over my body, and all I could do was watch helplessly as I smashed everything I could get my hands on.

When the frenzy finally faded, I stood alone in the middle of my brother’s room, staring at the devastation I had wrought in my temper. My chest rose and fell rapidly, and my pulse raced as my body finally began to calm, and then a wave of grief swept over me. It was over. Jaxon was gone, and I would never see him again. I choked as a sob rose in my throat, and there, in the darkness and chaos, I sank down onto the floor, my head in my hands.

My whole body shook with sorrow, and I finally wept for my family, for Jaxon, and for Nova.

Night had well and truly fallen when my sobs finally faded, and exhaustion swept through me. I was calm again, save for the regret at what I’d done.

I wiped my face and got to my feet. I took a shaky breath, steadying myself, and then began to try and put things to right, lifting the bookcases back into place and then tipping the desk up onto its legs. One of the drawers had been hanging out, and when I stood the desk back up, it slipped out the rest of the way and crashed to the ground with a splintering sound. I leaned down to pick it up, and then hesitated.

The contents had more or less spilled out, leaving only a few pens and paper clips, but the front of the drawer had been damaged and was hanging off, revealing something strange. I picked the drawer up off the floor and set in on the bed. Sitting down next to it, I pried the front of the drawer away to reveal a secondary compartment in the bottom. I tipped the drawer up, and a couple of manila files slipped out from inside. I picked one up and opened it, then started to flip through it. There were dozens of printouts of bank statements, small business accounts, and emails between Ethan and a sales manager discussing the sales negotiations for a serious chunk of land on Desolation. Notes in Jaxon’s handwriting described how the pack land had originally been held in trust, but had gradually been transferred into Ethan’s name several years ago. Plus, there were also copies of the land deeds both before and after the transfer had taken place. My heart thudded in my chest.

“Fuck... She was right.” I flipped through the rest of the papers, finding more and more evidence that all pointed to the fact that Ethan was planning to sell the majority of the pack lands out from under us, all save the actual villages and towns. Not only that, but he was planning to sell to a fucking logging company who made it very clear that they intended to strip the land of whatever resources they could.

I laid the file on the bed, my heart racing as I was hardly able to catch my breath. “Shit,” I breathed. “He knew. Jaxon knew... and Nova was right all along.”

Hope flared in my chest despite the shocking discovery. She hadn’t lied about this. What she had told us about Ethan being up to something had been true. So what else had been? I knew my heart was clutching at straws, but I didn’t care. Nova had said she was convinced Jaxon had been trying to protect us, so it followed that he’d must have had a plan. I just had to figure out what it was so we could stop Ethan, and for that, I needed help.

I picked up the drawer once again, tipping it back and forth to make sure there was nothing else left, but there was. A sealed white envelope slid out, sticking a little and needing to be shaken loose. It fell into my hand, and my brother’s writing practically shined at me from the paper.

Maverick, Lucas, and Asher.

I went to slide my finger under the flap then stopped. It was addressed to all of us. I needed to find my brothers before I opened it. If Jaxon had something to say to us, then we needed to hear it together, and then the three of us needed to get Nova back and discover what the hell was really going on.