A War of Hearts and Fate: A Wolf Shifter, Fated Mates Standalone Romance
1. Kate
Run.
Hearing my brother’s plea, my eyes snap open.
I gasp for breath as my back springs off my bed. It’s dark, in the middle of the night, but the glow of the waxing gibbous moon shining through the opened window makes it easy for me to search every square inch of my bedroom.
Trez isn’t here.
My chest sinks, and the ache behind my breast plate rapidly returns as I relive the memorial service we had for him two days ago. An unbearable sob threatens to rip from my throat, but I swallow the lump, knowing I have nothing left inside to give.
His ashes are still sitting in the middle of my father’s dining room table a mile away. I wanted the urn, but Dick denied my request, saying the alpha’s son deserved to be honored by being on display; not stashed away in the small, two-bedroom cabin Trez and I have shared since moving out of Dick’s house two years ago.
My brother wouldn’t have wanted to be Father’s centerpiece, nor appreciated his remains being used as a trophy to gawk at during each meal.
My stomach rolls, the whiskey I’ve drunk over the past three days needing to purge. It’s not like I can get drunk. Believe me, I tried. My shifter blood has burned through the good effects, leaving liquid sloshing around and making me nauseous.
The best I got was a strong buzz kicking, and that’s only because I guzzled one hundred and twenty proof straight from the bottle.
I wouldn’t have hidden my brother’s ashes. I would have scattered them along the Oregon coastline, though I could never tell my father that plan. He would slaughter me himself if he discovered we’ve ventured south, across the Canadian border.
Three days.
Three agonizing days since I learned a hunter near the Canadian border had shot my brother in his wolf shifter form with a longbow. Why he was so close to Washington State is a mystery to me. We’ve only ever trekked that way together.
What’s even more mysterious is it happened at the hands of a human. Wolf shifters have incredibly keen hearing. My brother would’ve been able to hear the hunter nocking the bow. We also have a large range of smell. Trez would have known how many people were within a half-mile radius.
It makes little sense that he wouldn’t have picked up on a hunter within three hundred feet or fewer from him. The theory of the hunter being cloaked in deer piss to camouflage their scent? That’s a dead giveaway to a shifter. The amount hunters spray on themselves is overpowering to our senses and reeks, not to mention Trez would’ve had to have been hit with a silver arrow.
Most humans don’t know shifters exist and live among them, but there is a small population of monster hunters who think we’re an abomination. Dick didn’t claim they were responsible, so why would a regular hunter use a silver arrow?
That’s another question I don’t have the answer to, but what’s odder is that Trez was with Henrik, our pack’s beta. Trez hated our father’s second-in-command more than he hated Dick, so I find it hard to believe my brother would go on a hunt with him.
Of course, my alpha didn’t say it was a silver arrow either, and perhaps I shouldn’t assume it was. Wolf shifters can be killed, but we heal so quickly that most wounds aren’t fatal. Silver severely weakens us, which is why monster hunters use it. A shot through the heart or between our eyes can kill us. Getting beheaded is obviously fatal. If we’re weakened enough and lose too much blood before our healing abilities kick in, we can also die.
Any scenario is possible, but Dick wasn’t forthcoming with the details, claiming it was too hard for him to talk about so soon after the tragedy.
I call bullshit, not to mention Trez’s body wasn’t returned to the pack before he was cremated. On top of that, Dick had a memorial service less than twenty-four hours after telling the pack.
It was so much to process, but my brother had been acting strange for the past two weeks. He wouldn’t tell me what was wrong either. Every time I asked, he played it off like I imagined something that wasn’t there. I knew I hadn’t. I knew my brother better than he knew himself.
He was my best friend, my littermate. We’ve had each other’s backs since we were pups. Not that I remember anything from our first shift into our wolves, but I know it deep in my gut, the same as I knew Trez was keeping a secret from me.
Something big.
We didn’t have secrets. We knew everything about each other, so for him to keep me in the dark after twenty years riled not only my human side but my wolf too. I wanted to teach him who the stronger wolf was, while I also wanted to ram my knee into his gut.
I was on the verge of starting a fight with him six nights ago when he finally admitted he was withholding information from me. The struggle I saw in his brown eyes was the only reason I held back. He asked me to give him a few days. Then he’d tell me everything. Trez said he just needed to go for a run to clear his head first. I expected him to return the next day, and when he didn’t, I figured he needed more time in his wolf form to get his head straight.
Trez loved to run alone in the forest and along the coastline. I was the same way, so I understood. He needed space and time to process whatever was going on in his head.
Neither of us has felt the pull to run with our pack. We enjoyed each other’s company just as much as we needed to be around the other, but that wasn’t the same with the other shifters in the Marked Crest pack.
Our father is the alpha, so from time to time, Trez and I have had to play our part. We participated in all the things we were expected to do, but we never volunteered to do more. There were times I wanted to leave the pack to start our own. The problem was we were just two wolf shifters who had been raised in a pack to believe females weren’t and would never be the alpha wolf.
The wolf side of me snarled at that thought. I’ve been itching for a long time to bare my canines at Dick while my wolf’s paw was pressed against his chest, forcing him to submit. We don’t have a good father-daughter relationship. It takes more effort on his part to force me into submission than it does the rest of his shifters.
In hindsight, I wish I’d had the courage to leave two years ago when Trez and I were eighteen. We could have formed our own pack hoping to find lone wolves that wanted to join. We’re sociable creatures, even if neither of us cared for the shifters in our own pack. We get along with others just fine, and we prefer a warmer climate during the coldest weeks of winter.
For the last five years, we’ve gone on solo hunts for up to six weeks at a time. Dick didn’t know we crossed the border. It was forbidden within our pack. We could go anywhere in British Columbia, but we weren’t allowed in other provinces. Our father said it was because we were the alpha’s children, and he couldn’t take the risk.
The United States was strictly off-limits, which was why we traveled south all those years ago. There was a pull neither Trez nor I understood, so we chalked it up to defiance. Our dad was the alpha. It was natural for us to prove our dominance; me more so than Trez, but he wasn’t weak. He would’ve made a powerful beta, and I swear he was born to be one. I also know I was born to be an alpha, but that’ll never happen in the Marked Crest pack.
If we’d left, Trez would still be alive.
Run, Kate.
I stop breathing as a cold shiver races down my spine.
Trez?My brother’s name rolls through my head in slow motion just before the beast inside me perks her ears.
It’s impossible.
My grief is playing tricks on me. It’s why I can still feel him. It’s why when my alpha told the pack what happened, I called him a liar in front of everyone.
I’d know if something happened to my brother. I’d know if he was dead. We’ve always had a connection to each other that we didn’t share with anyone else in our pack. That was a secret we kept between us.
To my knowledge, no other wolf in our pack could feel another wolf on a deeper level than the sense of smell or hearing them nearby. They couldn’t communicate telepathically either, though Trez and I could only speak to one another in our heads during the phase of the full moon.
I glance out the window again. We’re still two nights shy of the full moon, but there’s also a lunar eclipse scheduled, and weird things always occurred with us when they’ve appeared over the years. We can hear the other in our heads for days leading up to a total lunar eclipse.
Does that mean I’m hearing him now?
Are you alive?I ask in my head while searching for the link we share. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I’d do anything to bring him back. I’d trade places with him if I could. I need Trez to be alive more than I need my next breath. Can you hear me?
Run, he chokes out. Go to Kane. Now, Kate.