Chapter Eight
I could barely focus on the housecleaning because my head was so full of what-ifs. If I couldn’t have my magic, I wanted my shapeshifter. It made me feel less weak, even if I couldn’t use it to hurt Anika Draper.
It wouldn’t matter so much that I couldn’t shift into her. My shapeshifter would make me stronger, just as my wolf did. Shifted or not, I would be better able to deal with damage, quicker to heal, and much, much stronger than if I weren’t a shapeshifter.
Because shapeshifters were stronger even than wolves. They just were, and that didn’t bother me to admit. Both shifters would give me a much better chance of coming out on top when the siphoner and I tangled again.
The night of cleaning houses went smoothly.
There were no huge complications, for once.
No assholes or monstrous killers or powerful spirits—simply insubstantial ghosts stuck for various and easily resolved reasons.
I severed their tethers so they could cross over, and in record time, Sam and I were headed home to Huntersburg.
Joe had left half an hour earlier, because dawn would soon be upon us and it’d take him a little while to get to Huntersburg. He hated it, but that was one of the trade-offs for not dying. He understood and was coming to accept his limitations, though they still pissed him off.
Sam surprised me by staying with me the entire time.
I could have taken time to pull into an empty parking lot to test my shapeshifter, but I wanted to get the night’s jobs done first. Shapeshifting wasn’t difficult for me to do when I was in a battle and flying high on adrenaline, but I’d never attempted to shapeshift just for the hell of it.
And unlike my wolf, my shapeshifter somewhat depleted my energy. I didn’t want to spend the rest of the night exhausted when I dealt with the ghosts and the homeowners—who, unfortunately, were sometimes harder to handle than the tethered spirits.
I also still wasn’t totally back to my full strength. I could feel it, though I didn’t want to admit it to anyone. And it wasn’t only because my magic was gone. I still felt sore, flinching, ginger in my movements. I simply wasn’t entirely healed from what Anika had done to me.
My deep fear was that I never would be.
But finally, the jobs were completed, the ghosts had cooperated, the homeowners had been polite, and I was on my way home. Dawn was chasing away the night.
I was eager to pet my dog, eat a huge meal, see if I still had my shapeshifter, and sleep. Unfortunately but not surprisingly, things didn’t go as planned.
Shocker.
Lucy called when we were still half an hour away from Huntersburg.
“Kait,” she yelled, before I had a chance to say a word. “Wolves are attacking Silverwood. Where are you?”
In the background, I heard the hounds braying, Ash barking, and glass breaking. There were thumps, too, as though the attacking wolves were flinging themselves against my house.
“Get into the safe room with Joe,” I said, keeping my voice calm despite my panic. “I’m on my way.”
“I’m heading there now with Ash,” she said. “Remy picked up his car and left early. I’ll call him and Zach.” She ended the call.
“Fuck,” Sam yelled, slapping the dashboard. “Kick it, Kait.”
I called Jared, because I had no doubt who was attacking Silverwood. He didn’t answer, and I wasn’t really surprised. Jared was likely fighting some of the same pack I was about to battle, and he would be shifted into his wolf.
And that was okay. We could handle the attackers.
I called Zach.
“Lucy just called,” he answered. “I was already on my way to the house. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Be careful,” I told him. “Sam and I will be there as soon as we can.”
“Lucy couldn’t get Remy,” he said. “Want me to call him?”
“No. Just get to Silverwood. I’ll call Remy.” The boogeyman would always answer when I called, because he knew I would only ever call him if bad things were happening.
He took the call. “Kait,” he said, his voice smooth and almost soft. “I just left you a few hours ago. You in trouble already?” Funny how a note of hope crept into his voice.
I didn’t ask him what he was doing. “Silverwood is being attacked by Voss’s fucking wolves,” I said. “Lucy’s there alone.”
“I can be there in twenty minutes. Fifteen if I try real hard. Did you call Zach?”
“Lucy did. He’s going to get there before either of us.” I hesitated. “He won’t have backup, Remy.”
He ended the call without another word, and I knew he’d get there in fifteen minutes.
Probably less, knowing Remy. “Dammit,” I muttered.
I for damn sure didn’t want to be the last one to the fight.
I swerved off the highway, parked the car, and had shifted almost before the door slammed shut behind me.
My wolf would get me there a hell of a lot faster than the car.
I didn’t have to see him to know that Sam was running as well. He wanted to get to Lucy. Wolf shifters were more dangerous when they shifted. Shapeshifters were dangerous all the time—they were always changing.
Shapeshifters who could shift into animals were stronger than shapeshifters who could only shift into people, like Sam.
One-on-one, a shapeshifter could overpower and outrun a wolf, and disguise made him hard to find and harder to kill. But wolves had their own advantages. Endurance, tracking, pack-bonds, territory magic, moon power, claws, teeth, and the kind of animal instinct no stolen face could fake.
And I would always feel more pride in my wolf than in my shapeshifter, whether it was gone or not.
I ran through the woods, thrilled to be free to run. Winter was slinking off to hide, washed away by the joyful spring rains. I looked forward to the last of the piles of snow melting away, replaced by sunshine, warmth, and bright colors.
My wolf wanted to run through the deep woods of my land and not see barren trees and dull brown. She wanted fresh green grass, wildflowers, and small, scurrying animals. She wanted sunshine.
I wanted to run with my alpha.
Even before I reached my land, I could feel the fight. I could smell the strange wolves, and blood, and fury. I worried about Zach. He was an amazing fighter. He was a hunter, and he was magnificent in a fight.
But he was human.
Facing off against a bunch of wolves alone, he would be slaughtered.
Fear made me even faster, and when I burst into the clearing at the front of my house, I’d worked my wolf into a frenzy of rage. Sam had made it there before me, but not by much.
There were around a dozen wolves still fighting. Sam was tearing into them and also attempting to protect Zach, who currently didn’t appear in need of protection. He seemed to get more powerful with each battle.
And there were times, because of his enslavement to the now-dead former master vampire of the county, that I wondered if I was right in believing him fully human.
He obviously wasn’t a vampire, but there was something magical about him that was likely not present before he’d been taken. If it had been, he wouldn’t have been taken. Not alive, anyway.
I was upon the trespassing wolves before they realized I was there, and just like that, I remembered something I’d forgotten when I’d lost the fight with the siphoner.
I was not just a wolf.
I was Alpha.
And it didn’t matter that my magic was gone. I went into that fight like the alpha I was, and every wolf there felt it. Even though I wasn’t their alpha, they hesitated, and their fight became just a little more tentative.
Still, their abrupt desperation lent them an extra something, and they weren’t going to go easy. They also weren’t going to run. Their alpha had given them an order, and they would carry it out.
Remy roared up in his car, eager to get in on the fight. He’d have been upset if we’d killed them all before he had a chance to lend a hand.
Some days it seemed like my life was one fight after another, and if I hadn’t liked to fight, I imagined that would have been a pretty depressing life.
I regretted that I’d lost the magic, but I had what mattered. And there wasn’t going to be a better time to see if my shapeshifter was still with me.
If I’d been slow at shifting, I would never have tried it while the battle was hot. But I was not slow, and with a roar, I called my shapeshifter.
But my shapeshifter didn’t come.
There was no time to acknowledge the disappointment.
I could have fought the rest of the battle with my demon blade, but I fought as my wolf. No matter what, my wolf was always going to be the biggest and best part of me. And I would almost always choose her to fight other wolves.
When the fight was over, Voss’s wolves were spread across the ground, some of them unconscious, and some of them too injured to hold onto their shifts. A couple of them were dead.
Both Remy and Zach were wounded. Sam and I were the only two whose injuries didn’t matter, because they weren’t anything we couldn’t heal from quickly.
I wiped blood from my face with the back of my hand. “Do you need Doc Hayes?”
Remy cleaned his blade on his shirt before shoving it into the sheath at his hip. “I’m going to need some more stitches,” he growled, glaring at the wolves littering the yard. “Motherfuckers.”
He’d already been injured by the Pocket thugs. But that was Remy’s life.
Zach was injured as well, but he didn’t look quite as torn up as Remy. “They’re rough,” he said, “even for wolves. Why are they sneak-attacking Silverwood, Kait? If their alpha wants the territory, why doesn’t he do what alphas do and challenge you to fight for it?”
But I couldn’t have guessed.
Sam started toward the house. “I’ll check on Lucy.”
“I’ll get dressed,” I told Remy and Zach as we walked across the yard, “and then I’ll ask Ben to make a house call.” I also needed to go fetch my car.
But before I reached the porch, I stopped, lifted my nose to the air, then slowly turned to face the woods at the right side of the house. “Sam,” I said quietly.
He was at my side instantly. Remy and Zach, as well, but they were already injured. They didn’t need another fight before they’d healed from the last one.
We were weaker, and as I saw several huge, naked men step out of the trees, I understood the reason for the initial attack.
The Iron Fang alpha had come to Silverwood.