Chapter One
“Power-hungry bastard,” I muttered.
My mother reached across the dinner table to pat my hand. “Things have been nice and quiet since you moved to Huntersburg. You needed the downtime.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “and it would have lasted a little longer if not for the damn Colorado alpha screwing things up.”
She nodded. “He’s definitely harshing our mellow.”
Joe cracked his knuckles and stopped behind Max’s chair, his gaze going from the love of his life to the little bit of food left on the love of his life’s plate. “Quiet is boring. I’m in the mood for a good old-fashioned fight or twelve. Gavin Voss doesn’t know who he’s messing with.”
“Just because you’re now a vampire doesn’t mean you have to fight all the time,” Max grumbled, glaring up at Joe.
He stumbled a little over the word “vampire,” but honestly, he was doing much better with it than I ever expected him to.
Joe softened immediately, and a smile lit his subtly changed face. “Finish your dinner,” he said.
“Um, I’m not a child?” But Max picked up his fork and stabbed a small piece of perfectly cooked steak while Joe watched longingly.
Not being able to eat was the biggest regret he had about becoming a vampire. He’d wanted me to transform his vulnerable human self into a wolf, but I’d refused. Then he’d nearly died, and Bastien, the vampire county master, had saved him by turning him.
And really, Joe was happy with that, though he sorely missed Lucy’s delicious food.
He’d tried to eat once and had to run outside to vomit it back up immediately.
Bastien had assured him—and me—that he would soon lose his memory of food as a good thing.
He would get to the point where the only food that made him hungry and happy was blood.
He wasn’t craving food, not really. He was simply remembering that food had been so very pleasurable and comforting.
But eventually, he would forget.
“Quiet is overrated,” Zach said, giving me a wink when I looked at him. “I’m with Joe. We could use a little action. I’m feeling rusty.”
I snorted. “It’s been two months since we moved to Huntersburg. You two are acting like it’s been two years since you got your asses kicked.”
Joe forgot about food at that insult. “You mean since we were kicking ass.”
Police detective Rick Moreno leaned back in his chair. “Power-hungry alpha coming for us and a bloodthirsty pack eager for him to get here. I have a feeling you’ll soon get your fill of battles, Joe.”
I couldn’t help but smile as I glanced around the overflowing table at them all. My pack. My people. My family.
As though she knew what I was thinking, Lucy grinned. “We’re the Silver Claw Pack,” she said, proud that she’d been the one to give us that name. “No matter what comes, we’ll handle it. We’ll protect Silverwood. Right?”
“Damn right,” I agreed.
“Besides,” Max said, after dabbing at his lips with his napkin, “it’s not exactly quiet, not with all the activity at the office.”
The office wasn’t quiet, but it was a different sort of noise. Clients came in to request a housecleaning, sure their houses were haunted. Most of the time, they were right. But it rarely went beyond a visit to a home to help a spirit cross over.
But Gavin Voss, the Iron Fang alpha of Ironridge, Colorado, was definitely causing some issues.
So far, he’d mostly just been irritating.
Feeling us out, planting the occasional warrior to spy, things like that.
He’d never said what he wanted, so we could only assume he had, for some reason we didn’t understand, decided to come all the way from Colorado to try to take over Jakeston.
And that meant taking out the wolf alphas who ruled it.
Remy Simon drained his beer, then thumped the bottle down on the table. “You know a fight is coming,” he said, satisfaction in his voice. “And a big one. Voss wants Jared’s pack. He even wants your pack,” he said to me. “Not because you have a pack full of wolves, but because you’re an alpha.”
I nodded. “He wants Silverwood, and he wants Shadowfield.”
“More than that,” Rick said, “he wants to take out the alphas who will keep him from expanding his territory.”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” my mother said.
As always, the very thought pissed me off. “Jared and I will destroy him, and Jared will take his territory. He’s been warned.”
“Bastard doesn’t listen real good,” Remy said. “But he’ll learn his lesson.”
“If he’s allowed to live,” my mother said, “he’ll be banished.” She shuddered at the horror of that particular punishment. My mother and I knew it well.
“Power-hungry,” the detective said again. “He wants to rule the wolf world.”
He wasn’t wrong, and neither was my mother. Gavin Voss was a greedy, power-hungry bastard who was going to lose everything, because apparently, he couldn’t be satisfied with anything.
But why was he focusing on Jakeston? We were far from Colorado. We weren’t huge. And that made me uneasy. He was here for a reason.
My mother pushed back her chair and stood. “Let me help clean up, and then I’ll bounce. Nigel doesn’t know what to do with himself when I’m gone.”
“He was welcome to come with you,” I reminded her.
“I know.” She paused behind Zach’s chair to lean forward—though she didn’t need to lean far—to drop a kiss on the top of his head. “But some nights are just for family.”
Zach grinned. The spark of life and joy that Frederick Axton had tortured out of him was back full force. He was no longer the whipped, terrified, half-mad man I’d refused to put down when the council had ordered his death.
“Go on back to Shadowfield,” Lucy told her. “I have more help than I need cleaning up dinner dishes.” She beamed, but there was just a tiny shadow lurking in her bright eyes. Lucy was missing her shape-shifting serial killer boyfriend, Sam.
Sam Shannon. He’d changed his last name to Lucy’s a month earlier. He’d wanted to shed every last trace of the horrific family who’d raised him. I knew that wasn’t possible. His childhood would always be there, no matter how many different names he took on.
He was still killing. I had no doubt that at that moment, he was out tracking some blonde woman who was abusing her male child. If he hadn’t chosen that outlet for his madness, God only knew what horror he would have unleashed upon the world.
As a shapeshifter, Sam could do a hell of a lot of unleashing.
And Lucy loved him with all her heart and soul.
Sam was one of mine, just as Lucy, Max, Rick, Zach, Remy, and Joe were. We were Pack. Found family. Beyond friends. Silver Claw.
And I loved Sam, too.
My mother made her way around the table hugging everyone present, then hurried away, her mind already on getting back to her Nigel. Things were good for her for maybe the first time in her life, really, and I couldn’t have been happier for her. She deserved every good thing that came her way.
I started to reach for my coffee cup when my cell phone rang. And there was my heart and soul. My alpha, Jared. My breath caught and my stomach tightened, and I scooped my cell off the sideboard and strode into the living room to stare out the huge picture window as I answered his call.
“Hi,” I said, my voice a little hoarse. No matter how much time passed, he was always going to affect me—and my wolf—like nothing else ever had or ever would again.
“Kait,” he replied, a smile in his voice. “I hope I didn’t interrupt dinner.”
“We were just finishing up.” I took a deep breath. “I miss you, Alpha.”
“Accompany Susan back to Shadowfield,” he said. “It’s quiet tonight. My bed is cold without you.”
More than my stomach tightened at his words. “She already left,” I told him. “But there’s no reason I can’t follow her…” Then I frowned as something in the darkness outside the huge window caught my attention. It wasn’t a movement, exactly, but a feeling.
Something was out there.
“Kait?” The alpha’s voice went dark and careful. “Tell me.”
“I’m not sure.” Then a shadow moved, separated itself from the other shadows, and the hounds in the yard woke up and began baying, their deep voices somehow excited and lazy at the same time, and I knew without a doubt that the quiet was about to end. Joe was going to get the battle he craved.
“Uh-oh,” I muttered.
“On my way,” Jared said, and he was gone.
“Incoming,” I yelled, and two seconds later, the living room was filled with my people, eager and ready for a fight.
No one peered through the window to see what might be waiting. We burst out of the house to meet the trespassers. The enemy had come, and now we all felt it.
In the back of my mind—and probably in Jared’s—was the thought that the Iron Fang alpha had arrived, sneak-attacking me under the cover of darkness like the coward he was.
But it wasn’t Gavin Voss.
A woman came at us, and I counted four people at her back. That was good. My four would take care of them while I concentrated on the woman. She ran straight toward me, fast and quiet with a blade in one hand and her other hand up, as though to tell me to stop even though she never hesitated.
I would have thought it hugely weird had I not recognized the familiar sign of magic. She was about to hit me with something more deadly than even the blade she carried.
That was okay. I had my own magic, and I had my own blade.
The night was abruptly filled with roars and metal and rage and blood, and the slice of moon watched it all with a tolerant and slightly dim light.
Maybe she was tired of all the blood and violence, because she hid behind a cloud, and if not for the lights I’d installed around the grounds, we’d have fought in near total darkness.
Country life was dark.
The attacker’s men pulled mine away, leading them into the woods that surrounded the house, and abruptly, it was just the woman and me.
The sounds of fighting grew soft and distant.
Even the hounds had quieted, slinking off to hide under the porch or in their shelters, their instinct for survival greater than their need to bray and howl and watch.
The woman halted suddenly, surprising me. “Wait,” she said.
Apparently, she wanted to talk. It never occurred to me that she might give me trouble.
I had too much power. Too much magic. I was a wolf, and I was a shapeshifter.
I had an angel’s scream that could cause everything around me to fall dead.
I could send streams of powerful, killing magic from my hands to decimate the enemy.
I could absorb magic from other people. I had a demon’s blade. I had my inner psycho.
I was unstoppable, unbeatable, unkillable.
It was sweet and a little funny that even with all my strengths, Jared and my people still worried about me. All I worried about was them.
My wolf could feel the alpha rushing through the night, grim and full of purpose, rage, and a tiny bit of fear.
But I had no doubt my pack and I would litter the ground with the bodies of our attackers before Jared reached us—and I would show the woman why she should have been more careful.
She was maybe an inch or so taller than my own five feet ten inches, confidence in every line of her slender body. Dressed simply in a long-sleeved black T-shirt, black pants, and black boots, the red, brown, and dark blonde strands of her long hair were the most colorful things about her.
She didn’t think I could take her. She didn’t believe that I, with all my various powers and gifts, was a real threat.
And that meant only one thing.
She didn’t know me at all.