CHAPTER 1 #2
“Yup. Lucky us. This should make the ceremony interesting. Maybe my curiosity over what the hell they’re doing here will distract me away from my anxiety.”
I turned toward her. “We can still leave.”
She shook her head, a familiar, stubborn expression settling over her features.
“Nope. I’m seeing this through. Just promise me that you’ll be here to pick up the pieces if it all goes sideways on me.
” Her gaze went back out the window, toward the Kolbecks.
“And if one of them ends up being my mate, you’ll help me feign my own death to get out of it. ”
“Done,” I said, grinning.
With that, we climbed out of the truck.
This year’s summer bonding ceremony was taking place on our pack’s land, in a clearing half a mile deep in the dense woods of northern New Hampshire.
The cars parked around us had license plates from as far away as Florida.
All of the Eastern Seaboard packs were invited.
By the size of the crowd, it looked like every one had members in attendance.
People talked loudly and animatedly, jostled their friends, and smiled jovially in greeting at wolves they didn’t know.
Even those at war with each other would keep the peace on a day so sacred to our kind.
Three other ceremonies were scheduled to take place across the country, one in the Midwest, one in the South, and another out on the West Coast. It was the same across the globe.
In the fields of Europe, the forests of Russia, the jungles of South America, and the savannas of Africa, werewolves gathered on the eve of the summer solstice to seek out their mates in a ritual so old, we’d lost the story of its origin.
The crowd around us compressed at the trailhead that led to the clearing.
We stood nearly shoulder to shoulder with wolves we had never met as we paced beneath the towering pines.
I’d run this path so many times in both human and wolf form that I knew each and every rock and just when to leap to keep from getting tripped up by tree roots.
That familiarity was a comfort to me now, surrounded by so many strangers.
Inside the truck, the world had been muted.
Now that we were outside, I was on the brink of being carried away by it all.
The rhythmic pounding of hundreds of heartbeats filled my ears.
The buzz of conversation was damn near deafening.
By instinct, I strained to catch the smaller noises: fabric shifting and sliding over skin; the distant slam of a car door; an army of footfalls marching together toward the same goal.
Beneath the smell of cotton and denim, hints of musk and fur tickled my nose, tinged with sharper notes of fear, excitement, and worry.
Gia and I weren’t the only ones running the emotional gauntlet this afternoon.
I glanced heavenward, praying to the Goddess that she would see Gia through this.
That one of these wolves was good enough for her. And that it wasn’t one of the Kolbecks.
I strained so hard to pick up on my surroundings that the shield guarding my metaphysical power loosened. A woman nearby snapped her head around and looked straight at me.
Gia leaned in, her shoulder brushing mine. “Put a lid on it, will you? I don’t want to fight anyone today.”
“Sorry,” I muttered, working to cage it back in.
“She’s just nervous,” Gia said to the woman. Her accompanying smile had bite to it, telling this stranger that if she wanted to push the matter, Gia was ready.
Wisely, the woman looked away. She was on our pack’s territory. If a fight broke out among the crowd, our alpha would be more apt to blame an outsider than one of his own wolves.
Power began to break like waves across my psyche as we neared the clearing where the ceremony would be held.
The magic of shifters gathered en masse was electric, intoxicating.
I shivered as it seeped into me, filling me with a vibrant, frenetic energy.
The bars on the cage around my own power rattled ominously.
I wanted to run. I wanted to shift. Throw back my head and howl.
Gia reached out and grabbed my hand, anchoring me in my human form. I looked over at her and mouthed Thanks.
She gave me a feral smile, close to the edge herself. “Think anyone will wolf out?”
“Oh, yeah. I saw a few kids in the crowd, probably here to support older siblings. No way they’ll keep their shit together through the ceremony.”
She closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath. “I love this feeling.”
“Me too.”
I glanced around us, trying to take it all in.
Not three paces behind and to the right were Michael and Nathaniel Kolbeck.
They looked… perturbed. Highly uncomfortable.
Michael wore a contemplative frown and kept checking over his suit for invading dust particles.
Nathaniel rolled his heavy shoulders like he was trying to shake free of something.
Clearly, not everyone was enjoying the power build as much as we were.
I elbowed Gia. She opened her eyes and looked at me in question. I gave her that subtle head nod in their direction that says Look over there, but be discreet about it.
“What?” she yelled as she craned her head around.
“For fuck’s sake,” I hissed. “A little louder, please, I don’t think they heard you in New Jersey.”
“We heard you in Jersey!” someone shouted from twenty feet ahead of us.
“Thank you, peanut gallery!” Gia shot back.
Several people nearby laughed at the exchange.
Shifters. Can’t get away with anything around us.
Gia leaned closer to me as we walked on, dropping her voice so low that only I would catch it this time. “My bad.”
“They look like their skin is crawling,” I said, mimicking her tone.
“Must not be used to this many of us in one place.”