CHAPTER TWO || JEREMY
I t was just after midnight, give or take, when I caught the scent of freshly spilled blood. I froze, my ears flattening back against my skull on instinct. All of my senses went on high alert.
The surrounding forest was brighter than it would have been in my human form.
It seemed almost lit from within. The dense trees were a mix of grays and blues, ghostly in the moonlight.
Somehow the forest felt both vividly real and ephemeral at the same time, like a dream poised on the edge of full lucidity.
The forest was eerily silent. Even the insects had frozen into stillness.
That was never a good sign. I was deep in the heart of the Cascade Mountain Range, at least a dozen miles from the nearest town.
There should have been some ambient noise.
Small mammals rustling in the underbrush, snakes slithering, or insects buzzing.
Something. But even the wind had gone still, as if waiting for some unspeakable danger to pass.
I waited, but nothing moved. Wolves have an exceptional ability to detect motion compared to humans.
But the subtle inner sense that not even regular wolves possess told me something deeply unnatural had recently passed through.
A predator that didn’t belong to the natural order.
I had always figured that inner sense—which Emma, the elder for my former pack, called “true seeing,” even though no actual sight was involved—was similar to human intuition, though stronger and more complete.
An unmistakable certainty that settled deep in the gut.
Then again, I couldn’t be sure it was the same. I wasn’t human and never had been.
After several long moments, the forest let out the breath it had been holding, and the sound returned. Insects buzzed again. The wind resumed, rustling the tallest branches overhead. The sensation of wrongness lingered, but even that faded fast.
Whatever had caused the disturbance was gone.
But the scent of blood remained, overpowering the petrichor of wet earth from the last good rain.
Because the threat might still be near, I didn’t run.
A lone wolf—even an alpha—isn’t invincible.
Many of the strange creatures that populate the forest will give chase if you run.
And if they catch you alone, you won’t stand a chance.
It’s a lesson every wolf in my old pack learned.
Those who didn’t rarely lasted long enough to repeat their mistakes.
I moved steadily toward the scent, weaving between the trees. My paws barely made a sound on the earth, though my wolf form was far larger than any ordinary wolf had a right to be.
There, between two trees, I saw it.
A deer lay on the ground, bathed in silver moonlight from a gap in the canopy.
A ghastly wound split its side, and blood—black to my vision—pooled around it, soaking into the soil.
But the creature was still alive, valiantly struggling to breathe.
I could practically taste its pain, an unpleasant, chalky-metallic flavor filling my mouth.
Its eyes widened in alarm as I stepped from the trees.
It tried to move, legs kicking uselessly, but found no purchase on the ground. An ordinary wolf might not have felt pity—it was prey—but I was as much man as wolf, and its suffering turned my stomach. No creature should suffer if there’s another choice.
I paused beside it, then shifted into human form.
Unlike in most stories, shifting isn’t painful or slow.
The magic in our veins makes it effortless and swift.
It feels like the relief of stretching a long-still limb.
Returning to my human form felt like pulling on warm clothes fresh from the dryer.
Shifting back into wolf form after too long as a man felt just as right. Both bodies belonged to me equally.
“It’s alright,” I said, my voice thicker than it should’ve been from disuse. It had been a very long time since I’d last spoken. “I won’t hurt you.”
The deer’s wide eyes tracked me, and it let out a low sound of agony—somewhere between a gasp and a moan.
The sound was almost human. Whatever had done this hadn’t fed on the deer.
Hadn’t even bothered to kill it. Say what you will about earthly predators, but most at least try to kill their prey first. Animals rarely kill for sport.
That’s the domain of humans—and monsters.
I reached out and slowly placed my hand on the deer’s neck, right where the skull met the spine. There’s an energy center there—a nexus of life force—that connects to a creature’s subtle body, the part more spirit than flesh but still bound to the physical so long as the heart beats.
The center opened to me at once. I didn’t need to try to feel its pain. It was right there—searing and consuming. Shock had set in, but even that couldn’t dull the agony. Every breath felt like fire.
Tears sprang to my eyes. I let them fall.
The toxic ideas of masculinity that plague human males don’t apply to wolves.
We are as we are. Always. Mixed with the pain, panic had taken hold.
The deer, though not capable of complex thought, knew it was about to die.
The fear of the unknown, standing at death’s threshold, is universal. Nearly all creatures feel it.
“I’m here,” I whispered hoarsely. “You’re not alone. I’m with you. It’s okay to let go. It’s okay to give in to peace. There will be no more pain, I swear it.”
Steeling myself, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then I opened to the connection, letting the creature’s suffering pour into me like a tidal wave.
I bit back a moan of agony.
Every part of me rebelled against the pain that tore through my body. My throat closed. My stomach heaved. I thought I might vomit. I wanted to. My vision grayed. For a long, terrible moment, it felt as if my flesh had been flayed from half my body. Exactly what the deer had felt.
Taking its pain into myself transformed it—but that didn’t say much. It wasn’t as intense for me, but it was still bad.
Then came the relief, flooding back through the connection.
The deer let out a long, soft breath—almost a sigh. Its eyes met mine. For an instant, it knew what I had done. I felt its gratitude, mingled with its release.
Moments later, it stopped breathing.
Biting back another moan, I shifted into wolf form.
Just like that, the pain vanished. Banished by the shift. The relief was so complete that, even in wolf form, I could have wept.
I stayed beside the deer for a long time, listening to the forest and letting relief wash over me in waves.
Life and death are an endless dance of nature. But suffering doesn’t need to be. What I’d done was worth it. But it wouldn’t undo my mistakes. Nothing would.
A year ago, I had savagely attacked a human man—James—giving him the wolf bite against his will, with no warning. Without ever speaking to him.
It wasn’t an excuse, but he had reminded me so strongly of Ian, my former mate.
The man I had loved so completely, so desperately, with my entire heart and soul, that losing him had shattered something good and bright inside me.
Grief had twisted me into a monster—every bit as bad as the kind my former pack hunted in this very forest.
When I’d seen James grieving his father at the shores of Elizabeth Lake, so utterly bereft and alone, I’d recognized my own pain in him.
But worse than that—if I had to be honest with myself, and a year of solitude with only the ever-watchful trees for company made it hard to lie in any meaningful way—it had never really been about James at all.
He had been a life raft in a turbulent sea, and I had been drowning in grief. I had clung to him to save myself. That was all there was to it. I had been selfish. Maybe even cruel.
I’d like to say I had acted in the heat of the moment, but that wasn’t true either.
I had stalked James, waiting for the right time.
I had forced Reed, my second-in-command, and the twins—my best trackers—to help me, even though they had all tried to talk me out of my madness.
I had become so convinced this human stranger could be my salvation—so overcome by the idea he was the one —that I had been cold, calm, and calculated in my actions.
And if I hadn’t been stopped—first by the vampire who saved him, who turned out to be James’s true mate, and then by James himself—I would have tried again. I would have done anything to rid myself of my own suffering, even if that meant causing it to an innocent man.
The wolves in my pack were supposed to be guardians shielding humans and other creatures from the unnatural things that slithered into this plane. But that night, I had betrayed my people, my teachings, and the very core of who I was. I had betrayed who I had always been.
Ian wouldn’t have recognized me in the creature who had tried to rip an innocent man’s humanity away from him for no reason other than selfishness. He would never have fallen in love with that man. I knew that too.
James wasn’t the one either. He wasn’t my true mate.
Not even close. And I had known that, deep down, from the first words out of his mouth.
I felt the wrongness of what I had done, even then.
I suppose I owed the vampire a debt of gratitude.
After all, James would have hated me for as long as one of us lived.
And I would have hated myself in time, even worse than I already did.
I did three good things that night. First, I let them both go with no further violence.
Second, I declared that Reed—my best friend since childhood—was acting as alpha.
Even though he couldn’t truly be alpha unless I was dead or defeated, the wolves would look to him for leadership.
And that was enough. They weren’t on their own.
Reed would probably do a better job with the pack anyway.
He was more even-tempered than I. And far less likely to get his people killed.
Last, I left.
I went into the woods, and I didn’t come back. When the sun came up and there was no moonlight to maintain my shift, I slept in human form. When the moon rose again, I spent my time as a wolf.
I might have stayed there, beside the deer, for hours.
But then I felt it. A strange… pull.
Right in the center of my chest, as though an invisible rope was tied directly to my core and pulled taut. A wordless urge gripped me, compelling me to run.
I moved before I even intended to stand. I walked at a quick lope for several steps, then faster and faster, until the dark trees whipped past me in a blur. The urge in my chest pulled me north for miles.
Werewolves run much faster than regular wolves.
Any hapless campers who might have foolishly ventured this deep into the forest would have seen a blur, my paws barely making a noise as they bit into the damp soil.
But the only witnesses were the trees and the moonlight overhead, patches of which lit the ground silver where the canopy parted enough to allow light through.
Time fell away from me, and for a merciful stretch I didn’t think at all—not even to be alarmed at the strange compulsion gripping me so totally. There was no fear. Only the barest sliver of anticipation that swelled with each passing moment until my chest was full of it.
I stopped at the edge of a clearing, dozens of miles north. Several trees had fallen long ago. The smell of wet earth and bark was stronger here, but there was something else as well.
Another scent, riding the wind. The smell of new growth in the first light of dawn. If a scent could be green, somehow, this one was. It brought back the memory of the first time I shifted, when I was thirteen.
My older sister, Lindsey, had been waiting for me, already in wolf form. The pack was gathered and watching in silence. Ian and Reed were both at my back, still more boys than men, just like me—gangly limbs and anxious, worried I couldn’t do it.
But then I did.
I’d wanted to weep. If I’d been in human form, I would have, right there in front of my pack.
That feeling of coming home to myself, of total belonging, was so absolute that not even teenage pride could have held it in.
A wordless beauty that drew its power from its simplicity and completeness. This scent brought all of that back.
Now, acting on instinct, I shifted again, stepping out of the wolf and rising as a man. I straightened, feeling the caress of the cool wind on my suddenly too-hot skin. Wonders were waiting in the clearing.
The promise of… something.
Something so much like that moment of true belonging, when I shifted for the first time. I knew it. And all I had to do was take a single step forward, and it would be mine for the taking, whatever it turned out to be.
I sucked in a deep breath.
The scent was becoming stronger, drawing nearer. And for the first time in a year, I felt a flicker of hope slice through me. Then I stepped out of the trees and into the clearing.