Big Bad Betrayal (Werewolves of Wall Street #6)

Prologue

Oma thinks I'm asleep, which is the only reason I hear her order a child’s murder.

As a seeress for the Adalwulf pack, I’m called to use my power for the good of the pack. But on this cold, dark night, I wish I could live as a normal girl. Then I wouldn’t be overhearing Oma, the seeress, plot with the high priest of the Moonborn, the Warden.

I’m curled up in an overstuffed armchair in her quarters, where I’d passed out with an aching head after she put me through a grueling afternoon and evening of training.

I woke when the Warden entered, my body coming alert, wary in the presence of a predator, but pretended to be asleep, remaining still and keeping my breath slow.

I work hard to make myself invisible here in the Adalwulf castle.

It helps me avoid verbal or physical abuse at the hands of Odin or Aiden.

They hate anything they can’t control–and no one can control the Sight.

Deep down, they fear and resent our witch-muddied bloodline, even though Oma and I are prized possessions as their pack’s veilwalkers–the Seeresses who can see beyond the veils of reality into the future.

“I had a vision,” Oma tells the Warden.

I can’t see him, but I can sense his aura.

It’s grey and thick and oily like putrid smoke.

In man form, he’s big and burly, a brutal enforcer.

He’s always in war paint–his ice-blue eyes framed in a band of black.

It’s supposed to evoke his wolf’s distinct markings.

I think he looks like a raccoon. His long, white-blond hair worn with a drastic side-part, makes him look like a mad wizard.

Right now, he’s probably taking Oma’s measure.

Normally, she would offer her visions up directly to Odin, so the fact that she called the Warden in here and is speaking to him in hushed tones means there’s subterfuge going on.

My skin prickles with warning. Knowledge is power, and secrets are the most powerful of all. I learned that early in my seeress training.

“You need to kill the wolf without ears,” Oma murmurs.

“What did you see?” The Warden’s voice always sounds harsh. Cold and hungry for violence, never sated.

“It is not for you to interpret the visions,” Oma says in the authoritative voice she uses when working with the big egos of dangerous wolves. “I am the Seeress.”

“And I don’t take orders from you.” His voice is as cold as his eyes, and I have to stop myself from reflexively curling into a tighter ball.

I hear Oma pace around the small antechamber to her bedroom.

Unlike the wolves who prowl this mansion, her movements are loud and uneven.

We’re in the medieval stone behemoth built in the crook of the Adalwulf pack’s pine forest, nestled at the foot of a mountain beside a crystalline lake.

There’s electricity and hot water, but Oma insists on living in the dark ages, lighting candles and using the fire for heat.

She says fire contains magic, so we must keep it close.

I hear the sound of Oma’s teapot boiling, and she pours two cups of tea. The scent of lavender and lemon balm nips at my nose. She’s stalling. She always pours tea when she’s debating her next course of action.

Oma’s ancient–she won’t tell me exactly how old, but I think it’s over one hundred.

She and Odin, the alpha of the Adalwulf pack, are magically bound by a powerful spell.

Oma draws power from Odin’s body, giving her an unnaturally long life.

By sharing in his alpha magic, all of her visions are of and for the pack’s well-being.

She siphons some of his alpha power, as she did from his father before him.

He will be the last alpha she serves, though. When he dies, so will she.

The fire pops and crackles in the grate.

“I won’t drink your witch's brew,” the Warden says.

“I have no reason to poison you.” A touch of condescension in Oma’s tone.

A bluff, a challenge. Oma has plenty of poisons in her apothecary.

My first chores revolved around tending, picking, drying, and storing the powerful plant medicine.

I wouldn’t put it past her to put something in the Warden’s tea, to make him more pliable. She’s done it to me plenty of times.

Another long silence. This is how you play pack politics: slowly, using silence to shift the power to your side. It’s not easy when you’re the lone woman among arrogant alphas–cruel wolves who’d rather kill first and never ask questions.

A chair scrapes across the stone, the sound startling me. I stifle my gasp. It’s nothing, I tell myself. Just Oma is settling into a seat at her table.

There’s so much tension, it’s hard for me to breathe.

“I had a vision of a wolf without ears breaking the stone altar. Desecrating the bond of magic shared by the Moonborn and the Adalwulfs. The dais itself cracked in half, and the pup straddled the broken halves. He was bathed in moonlight. He wore the mantle of the Adalwulf alpha.”

The clink of china and a slurping sound tell me Oma’s sipping her tea.

“You think it’s the deaf pup born from the Blood Heir Alpha Rites.”

Goosebumps inexplicably race across my skin. Every nerve in my body charges, like I’ve been asleep for all of my life until this moment.

It takes all my concentration not to bolt upright, wide-eyed and ready.

Everything in the pack revolves around the Adalwulf alpha. His power is propped up by the cult of the Moonborn.

Hundreds of years ago, the Grandmothers’ Coven made a pact with the Adalwulfs.

The pack provided protection to the coven in the new world, and in exchange, the coven offered up and bound their most powerful veilwalker to the Adalwulf pack to serve as Seeress.

Over the years, the veilwalkers and the wolves bred together to become the Moonborn.

The Alpha Rites–the sex ceremony in which the alpha females are stripped naked and blindfolded, bound with vines to the ceremonial stone to be bred by the alpha or several powerful alpha males–ensures the most powerful pup becomes alpha.

Oma’s vision means the end to all that. And it all revolves around a deaf pup. Is that why Oma wants to kill him, “the wolf with no ears”?

Pain stabs my head, a return of my headache from earlier. I hear whispers from beyond the veil. The Grandmothers speak to me, and they have much to say. Trouble is, they’re all clamoring at once–I can’t distinguish any message.

“Yes, the one we swapped for Aiden.”

Swapped for Aiden! Swapped. For. Aiden.

Oh, sweet moon goddess. This is a revelation. Aiden isn’t really Odin’s son? The pup he raised as his own? The pup meant to rule the pack?

Suddenly, Oma’s vision makes sense. She’s taught me how to interpret the visions and signs we receive. The symbols the Moon Goddess uses to make things clear.

The Moonborn leaders didn’t want to face Odin’s wrath if they presented him with a deaf infant after conducting the Blood Heir Alpha Rites.

They must have told him Aiden was the first child born from the rite, swapping out the true firstborn, who was deaf.

Now, with the vision of that child being the true heir to the pack, Oma must destroy the threat to Odin’s “son” Aiden before her lies are uncovered.

The whispers in my ears grow louder and more tangled.

“You told everyone the boy was dead,” the Warden grates.

“And you let his mother bargain for his life. Track him down and destroy the threat.”

My stomach clenches into a knot. I hate this part of being a seeress–choosing who lives and who dies. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it. I don’t know if I’ll be able to become as hard and brutal as Oma.

A horrible sound echoes through the room. It takes me a moment to realize it’s laughter. The Warden is laughing. “You fucked up,” he says to Oma. “You thought you’d cover it up, but it didn’t work, and now you want me to fix it, or you’ll suffer Odin’s wrath.”

“We both will,” Oma’s tone is cool. “Or don’t you remember the part you played?”

I strain my ears, wanting to know what the Warden did that makes him fall silent when Oma reminds him, but neither of them explains.

“Find the wolf with no ears and kill him,” Oma repeats.

“Again, I don’t take orders from you. But I’ll kill the pup.”

I hear the door open and close, but otherwise, the Warden moves silently.

Oma’s cup clinks in the saucer, and she sighs. “How much of that did you hear?”

Keeping secrets from Oma is a game I hope to win one day. Unfortunately, it seems the woman can fish anything out of my head. I sit up and rub my eyes against the candlelight. “All of it.”

“You think I’m being too harsh? Ordering the death of a pup?”

Yep, she plucked the thought right out of my head. “I know you see beyond the veil and judge accordingly.”

Oma hacks up a laugh. “An evasive answer if I ever heard one. Well done.”

She’s the one who taught me “seeress speak” or the art of saying nothing yet still sounding wise. I’m good enough to fool most wolves but not her and probably not the most alpha wolves like the Warden or Odin. It’s a skill I’ll need to master before I’m the seeress for real.

“Ask the spirits then and see for yourself.” Her black eyes bore into me. Ask, she orders silently, and I hear it like a booming voice in my head. A compulsion.

So I center myself and open up my senses to the beyond. This is what it means to be a veilwalker, though I’m apparently stronger than most. Lucky me.

Is the boy a threat? I ask in my head.

The answer is immediate. A flood of images that rush through my head too quickly for me to see while every muscle in my body tightens. My breath is stifled like I’m being choked.

He wields destruction. He will bring an end to the Moonborn.

An end to the Moonborn, the cult at the heart of our pack.

I am Moonborn. All my life, I’ve been taught to uphold the sect’s traditions.

My position as future Seeress, all my training revolves around the Moonborn’s service to the Adalwulf pack.

Someday I will be bound to Aiden in a bonding ritual the way Oma is bound to Odin.

If the cult is gone, my entire world would be destroyed.

Oma won’t allow that to happen.

I gasp when the spirits release me.

Oma is still watching me with her usual piercing stare, but I can sense that she’s pleased with me. “Did you see?”

I nod because even though I didn’t see the vision clearly, I heard the message, loud and clear.

“Then you know why I summoned the Warden. You may never speak of this night.” The look she gives me tells me death would be my reward if I do.

I bow my head. “You know I won’t.” Even though my head swims with all the secrets. The false heir. The wolf with no ears.

The destruction of the Moonborn and probably our entire pack.

“Good. Go to bed.”

I untuck my legs and stand, feeling the pins and needles attack my sleeping feet. I curtsey. “Goodnight, Oma.”

She rests her hand on the top of my head, sending a moon blessing down through my crown. “Sleep.”

I rush out of the room, running through the dark corridors to reach the stairs to the dim tower where they make me stay.

I crawl into bed without brushing my teeth, trying to ignore the whispering voices warning me of the wolf with no ears who would destroy us all.