Summers Wolf

Westervelt Wolves - 2

by

Rebecca Royce

For A and S-Thank you for letting Mommy have time to write this. Always live your dreams.

With great thanks as always to Ralph—the love of my life. How did I get so lucky? Mom and Dad, Sandi, Jessie, and my MIL Kathy.

A huge thank you thank you to editor Maria Rogers for being endlessly patient with me.

Chapter One

Death.

Someone inside her parents’ house was dead.

Summer Morrison shut the front door with a thud and covered her nose and mouth with her hands. She tried not to gag. The stench of rotten flesh permeated through her hands, into her nasal passages and then coursed around her bloodstream. Her heart pounded and her stomach churned as its contents threatened to make an undesired reappearance.

Whatever was dead hadn’t been that way very long or she would have smelled the putrid rot outside on the street. Even so, to her, inside the house, it smelled like it was days decayed. Her white wolf paced back and forth inside of her. The four-legged part of her wanted to shift. She felt the dry prickle of the change start in her eyes. She blinked to clear the sensation and quelled the urge. She couldn’t succumb to that now.

In three years, her wolf’s nose had never been wrong.

She needed information but her wolf wasn’t giving it to her. Who is dead?

I’m not telling you.

What did that mean? Since the day the shifter knowledge had been forced upon her, Summer had struggled with her inner canine to give her a moment’s silence. Now, when she needed to know the identity of the dead person, her wolf decided to play games.

Part of Summer, the sane human part, wanted to turn around and run out the front door. But if she’d wanted to cower or hide she should have turned around and run away the second she’d stepped in the house. She could go back to New York and her disastrous singing career. Maybe she could even talk her landlady into not throwing her out of her apartment for being so late in her rent. She shook her head. None of that was likely and besides she needed to focus on the situation at hand.

Her heart pounded in her chest, her pulse erratic, and she knew if she wasn’t careful she might hyperventilate. She concentrated on her breathing, it needed to stay even, and her footsteps, they needed to stay silent.

Shift.

No. Stop being pushy.

Whatever the danger was, it must be near. But she had no control of herself as a wolf. She couldn’t afford to lose her conscious reason. She needed to stay human.

Summer’s legs felt heavy, like she’d overexerted them. She knew it was her wolf trying to force the shift.

No. She gritted her teeth. Until she knew what was happening, she would stay on two feet.

She reached the living room door. Cracked open, she pushed it the rest of the way with her left hand as she slid her back up against the adjacent wall.

“Why don’t you come in and join us, Summer?”

A cold, masculine voice with an accent she would guess to be Southern Creole was not someone she was familiar with. She leapt an inch in the air and pushed her back closer to the wall, as if it could hide her from whoever was in that room. Her hands shook and she clasped them together.

The rancid smell of death was so powerful that she could taste it in her mouth as it flowed through the open living room door. She wanted to spit to remove the acidic burn from her tongue. Summer imagined the death-smell filling the house and attaching itself to the brightly painted yellow walls of her mother’s front entranceway. They’d never be able to clean it off. She knew there was something she should focus on, something other than strange musings, something that eluded her, but her wolf’s constant bid for control of their brain kept her consciousness fuzzy.

What hadn’t she realized yet?

Seconds passed and she still hadn’t moved. Her feet seemed frozen to the floor.

Let me handle this, please. Summer wasn’t used to her wolf begging.

Fear clogged her reason and before she could stop it, the white light that precipitated a shift to her wolf form surrounded her.

“Now, now, someone in Westervelt must have taught you better control than that. Have you learned nothing in three years?”

A man—the voice—stepped through the doorway into her line of sight. As if she was under his command, the white light stopped and her wolf quieted inside of her. It was as though his voice had incapacitated her animal side.

The stranger stood well over six feet. She’d guess perhaps as lengthy as six-foot-four or five. In any case, he dwarfed her five-foot-nothing frame. Dark brown hair—odd on a man whose wrinkled face told her he was possibly pushing seventy—capped his pallid face. A stubby, black mustache bristled below a ruddy, porcine nose and black-dot eyes completed his corn-fattened-hog appearance.

“My name, child, is Claudius Brouseax. I imagine you’ve heard of me. I’ll ask you again, and this will be the last time I do it nicely, please come in the living room.”

She didn’t think it was prudent to tell the huge man she’d never heard of him. Right at this moment, she wished she’d paid attention to her mother’s long explanations about her wolf heritage. But it was too late to do anything about that now.

He extended his hand in a formal gesture of invitation. She didn’t move. She couldn’t bring herself to walk into that room and see who lay dead in it, even though she already knew. Somewhere in her mind she had known from the moment she stepped into the house. She just didn’t seem to be able to access the information.

Claudius exhaled audibly. “Next time, my children will assist me with your cooperation.”

Summer heard growls in the living room and she swallowed hard.

How many?

She felt her wolf struggle to wake up from sleep. For a moment she could see through her canine eyes. The room looked fuzzy and distorted, like she was drunk. The sensation passed and Summer was back in control of her vision. Wow, her wolf must be really out of it to relinquish control that quickly.

Fifteen. Bad wolves, sick. Bad man. He did something, make me go to sleep. I can hardly keep my eyes open but I guess I can wake up when you call me even though everything looks strange and smells wrong.

Relief swept through her when her wolf answered, which was strange because usually Summer couldn’t stand canine interference. Today she couldn’t be more grateful for it.

Fifteen wolves in the living room.

She didn’t stand a chance, and if she tried to flee, they would catch her before she even made it to the door.

She walked past Claudius to freeze a few steps over the entryway. She gagged and swallowed the bile that rose in her throat.

The wolves had formed a circle around a dead person that lay next to a dead wolf. Blood stained the floor around the two bodies, and the idle part of Summer’s brain noted it was also all over the couches and the walls. Several of the wolves looked up when she entered but others continued what they were doing which seemed to be either licking the blood off the floor or nibbling on the body.

Summer stared at the eyes of the few wolves who acknowledged her. Flat and dead was the only way to describe the reflection. So different from the wolves in her sister’s pack. She could see no sign of the humans within. The few that had looked grew bored with her and returned to pacing around the body.

Glad she hadn’t vomited yet, she covered her mouth with her hand just in case. Sweat broke out on her body and her limbs felt as if they were made of water.

Shift. I will make it so you don’t see this.

No.

She couldn’t shift with fifteen wolves and Claudius present. It was important to know what happened around her. The bodies. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes from the bodies. Who were they? Why couldn’t she tell? It should be simple. She knew in the back of her head who was dead. But it was like prying open a box that had been crazy glued shut. She tugged and pulled but her consciousness refused to make order of the chaos around her.

Look at the body, identify who it was. One and one equaled two, but she couldn’t do the addition. She could look at the scene, but she couldn’t decipher what anything was.

I won’t let you know.

Summer heard strange whimpering noises, disquieted to realize they came from her throat. In some way, there was a disconnect happening to her. Her wolf’s interference kept her from seeing something important. What was it? She blinked and forced her consciousness back under her control.

Don’t look. Her wolf howled inside of her, desperate to come out.

Never good at following directions, Summer studied the figures in front of her. A man, late fifties, salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in a black Armani suit, his arm outstretched to the white wolf next to him, fingers pointed open like an immobilized spider. His eyes wide, dark-blue, light gone from them, lifeless. Summer sucked in her breath hard, and let it out with a sob.

She pushed her mind free, demanded that her wolf let her comprehend what she saw. The room suddenly looked brighter. She tilted her head to the side.

Oh no, Daddy.

A scream ripped from her mouth. It was her father’s dead, lifeless body strewn out before her. His throat ripped out, his chest torn open. He was dead. Her daddy. He’d held her on his shoulders until she was ten years old, even though it had hurt his back, just because she’d asked him to. He was dead. Gone from her life, forever. Destroyed by these monsters.

“No!’

Summer ran toward her father and slipped on the blood on the floor. Oh god, she had fallen in her father’s blood. Covered in the sticky liquid she bellowed. “Get away from him.” The wolves blinked in response. She panted.

There was something else too. Why couldn’t she think? What didn’t make sense? Her daddy was dead and so was that wolf. Who was the wolf on the floor next to him? White and small, she looked so similar to how Summer looked when she was in wolf form. Like a wall crumbling, the denial blocking Summer’s brain crashed to the floor.

“Please, no.” Her voice clogged, she didn’t know if she said the words out loud.

The wolf was her mother. Summer’s breath came in short gasps. She’d stood in the hall for ten minutes and smelled the rot and decay, and done nothing. She was such a coward, she should kill Claudius or at least attempt to. Her parents deserved that much. But she felt frozen to her spot.

“I know what I was sent here to do,” Claudius said as he exhaled. His voice sounded bored, dull.

Summer wanted to gouge out his eyes. Her fists clenched at her sides. She needed to stay in control. Fifteen wolves in the room meant she would end up dead on the floor next to her parents if she gave in to the need to attack.

“But I’m wondering if it’s worth it, letting you go, or if it wouldn’t be better to take you with us.” Claudius sniffed the air, his red pig-nose twitched back and forth three times. “Ah,” Claudius grinned and drool fell from the left side of his mouth. “You’re ovulating.”

“I want you dead, you disgusting pig. Somehow, I will see you dead.” Her hands shook at her sides. If she lived through this, she would see him gone from the earth and she would make sure it was a painful departure.

Claudius’ mouth raised in a half-moon smile. “We’re going to do a little experiment on you, Ms. Summer Morrison. But first, I’m going to deliver the message I was sent here to deliver. This,” Claudius pointed at the shells that once housed her parents’ souls. “It’s just the beginning. Kendrick wants his pack back, and what Kendrick wants, he gets.”

“Really?” Inside, Summer’s wolf howled in fury, desperate for vengeance. “Because it seemed to me he wanted Tristan to kill Ashlee and they beat the hell out of that plan.” Even if it had cost Summer everything she treasured, she was glad at that moment Ashlee had succeeded.

Claudius hissed through his teeth and stepped closer to her. “Your older sister may have stopped us from sending spells to the island of Westervelt, but we still have the power. Tristan has yet to find the missing unmated females. We will find them first. You will never be safe. There is no place we can’t get you. Not even on your little island.”

The wolves raised their heads to the sky and howled. Summer sat on her knees and covered her ears from the sound. The wolves were old and ill kept, their fur knotted and oily, smelling of filth and disease.

Bad wolves.

Claudius wasn’t done talking. “Tell Tristan he has one month to give the pack back to Kendrick or we will start killing a member of your pack every week. It might be someone you know, or an unmated female our seers find for us, but every week someone will die. And we will start with his son, your nephew, Braden, and then second we will take your niece, his daughter, Virginia. You see there is nothing about your pack that we don’t know.” Claudius stalked towards her and reached out to stroke the side of her face. The bile in Summer’s stomach rose. “You’ll have to go to the island and tell Tristan yourself. Since the birth of your niece, he and your sister never leave their hiding place. Cowardly behavior for an Alpha and his mate.”

“If they’re so easy to get to, why don’t you tell them yourself?” Summer’s voice sounded steady, which surprised her, but she was grateful for the ruse.

Claudius shook his head. “I can’t believe Cullen has left you alone all this time.”

At the sound of his name, the anger Summer held back exploded inside of her. Screw it, better to die than put up with more of this. She roared and leapt two feet into the air. If she’d been a wolf, Claudius would have been dead. Her hands outstretched like claws, she swung at his face, digging her fingernails into his pasty white skin.

A string of profanity escaped his fat mouth, but Summer focused entirely on her desire to gauge out his eyes. His giant arm knocked her onto the ground, the force of it snatching the wind from her lungs, and she wheezed as she tried to catch her breath. He planted a massive foot on top of her and pinned her to the floor.

Claudius turned his head but kept his eyes on Summer. “Shift, Marcus.”

One of the non-descript grey wolves stepped forward. His body contorted, writhed in apparent agony. His bones cracked as the wolf howled. Soon the sound of the howl changed, as it acquired a gurgle and then a choke. Summer forced her stomach to stay strong. She would not give these men the satisfaction of making a sound.

Everything about the man’s shift was wrong, the little she had seen her mother do it had been beautiful, and even three years earlier when it had been forced on her during Tristan’s Alpha ceremony, it had seemed natural, everyone bathed in white light, as if they were celestial creatures.

Marcus stood naked before her. His head drooped, his dull, brown eyes lifeless as he stared at her. His greasy, unwashed blond hair fell onto his face. Sweat and grime covered his body. Worst of all, his penis was totally erect.

“Kendrick tells me that a wolf-shifter can only be impregnated by her mate.” Claudius rolled his eyes. “This seemed to be true with your sister. Didn’t the human doctors tell her she was infertile? Now two babies in three years. But I think that is the stuff of fairy tales. I can smell how fertile you are. Marcus, get the girl with child.”

Claudius stepped backwards to the other and crossed his arms across his chest, amusement on his face.

Summer shook, not with terror but with fury. “You’re a sick pervert.”

He raised one eyebrow. “I am many things.”

Marcus shuffled forward and Summer knew she was left with no choice but to shift. The other wolves would devour her, but at least she would die without being raped. She closed her eyes to call the shift.

A roar filled the room and Summer’s eyes flew open. A large grey and black wolf crashed into Marcus’ body. The force of the impact slammed both the wolf and Marcus into the wall behind them. Marcus screamed, but only for a moment, as the wolf tore his throat to pieces.

Finished, the wolf turned around. The remaining fourteen feral wolves growled at him and moved into offensive stances, ready to attack. Ten wolves tore through the living room door and pounced on the crazed grey wolves. Claudius shouted something, but Summer couldn’t make it out over all the noise. He ran towards the open doorway, five wolves retreating with him.

Summer’s eyes widened. No way would she let the man responsible for her parents’ murder out of the room. She leapt up and threw herself onto Claudius. He swung around, her head connected with his portly elbow, and she fell to the floor. Stars formed in her eyes but she didn’t stop her assault. On the floor, she grabbed his leg and held on tight.

Shift?

If she shifted now, she would lose her hold on Claudius. No. She just needed to hold on, to keep him from leaving.

One of Claudius’ five attack wolves jumped on top of her, biting her arm hard. She screamed in pain as the wolf tried to pull the skin off of her body. She let go of Claudius, who took that opportunity to kick her in the head.

Amidst terrifying growls, the black and grey wolf suddenly circled close to her. He latched onto the neck of her attacker and dropped to the floor, gravity take them both to the ground. She grabbed her arm and it throbbed under fingers. Blood oozed from the wound letting Summer know how close the deranged wolf had been to achieving its goal. For one moment the black and grey wolf lifted its eyes to meet her gaze. She swallowed at the intensity she saw in them. Anger and hatred were there, that was for sure, but they weren’t directed at her. The emotion she saw momentarily visible in the wolf’s eyes was longing. She wanted to cry from the sheer intensity of it but then the wolf dropped his gaze to destroy the wolf that bit her. Fur and blood flew everywhere, coating the already damaged furniture.

Cullen. Her savior was Cullen.

Mate.

Cullen. She looked up to meet his stare. His wolf eyes solid, strong brown—different from his human blue ones. She was safe. Her mind whirled back to three years before when she’d heard his voice downstairs from her bedroom. He’d argued with her mother, she hadn’t been able to make out his words, and then he’d gone. She’d heard nothing from him since.

Now he had returned.

Summer had a moment to register that Claudius escaped the room before nausea took over and she vomited all over herself. Her head spun, her pulse pounded in her ears. She couldn’t seem to stop the nausea.

She leaned over to wretch again. Strong arms pulled her hair back from her head and rubbed her back.

Cullen. Her wolf sighed. Shift now?

Summer shook her head; she was too sick to shift.

“It’s okay, Summer, I’ve got you. This is almost over.” Cullen’s voice sounded strained. She realized this was the first time he’d ever spoken to her personally. She looked around the room. The remainder of the wolves had either fled or were being destroyed by the pack wolves who had arrived with Cullen.

She vomited again, officially destroying her mother’s favorite Persian rug. It wasn’t okay. Nothing would ever be okay again.

Around her, the growls of wolves filled the room like a B-movie soundtrack and once again the scent of death filled her nose. Another wave of nausea hit her.

“Come on, let’s go.” Cullen picked her up like she was a baby and strode from the room. She saw her mother’s yellow walls covered in the death smell she knew should be impossible to see and yet she recognized it crawling all over the paint like worms. Her stomach was empty, but it churned violently. Dumbbells collided in her head over and over.

This time she blacked out from the pain.

Chapter Two

Cullen held Summer’s unconscious figure tightly in his arms as he waited for the others to return to Westervelt’s private plane. It was his first time on the plane so it had taken him ten minutes of just searching through the damn thing to figure out how to dim the cabin lights. If she woke up to the glare of the standard fluorescents, it could worsen the concussion he was sure she’d received from the kick Claudius delivered to her head. Fury rose in his stomach at the memory. If he’d reacted just two seconds faster, the man would never have made contact with her. He closed his eyes for a moment to calm down. Revenge would come, even if it was served cold.

He held her head in his lap as her body lay across two seats, stoking her blonde hair while trying to ignore how foul she smelled. What did it say about him that he was still obsessed with her while she lay covered in blood, vomit, wolf-drool, and other disgusting substances he refused to let his nose examine too closely?

She moaned, and Cullen’s stomach rolled. Where the hell was the rest of team? If he’d been with them, the job would already be done. But he hadn’t wanted Summer to wake up to the sight of the pack removing her parents’ dead bodies, so he’d opted to bring her back to the plane instead.

Patience was not one of his virtues. He had used it up giving Summer space. He’d lived three hundred years in a blink of the eye, but the last three felt like an eternity.

The door to the cabin opened and his pack-mates entered. Azriel, who’d gotten his pilot’s license to fly the deathtrap they travelled in, entered first. He saluted with a grin on his face, and Cullen had to suppress the growl that wanted to explode from his chest. He would never understand how the Royal Six acted so perpetually jovial. Didn’t they understand that their way of life and perhaps their very existence was at risk?

Only Tristan, their Alpha—a strange fact for Cullen since he remembered when Tristan’s father had won his Alpha challenge—behaved as if he understood the severity of the times they lived in.

Summer moaned again, bringing Cullen’s attention to her. Her features, so dainty and perfectly carved, appeared strained. She furrowed her brow and Cullen ran his finger over the skin to smooth it out. She relaxed under his touch. Surprise coursed through him.

He admitted to himself he didn’t have a clue how to handle—let alone woo—his young mate. He’d promised her mother he would leave her alone for five years so she could have time to grow up from the young twenty she had been when they had first glimpsed each other and felt the mating bond. That was three years ago. Did he have to keep his word now that her mother was gone?

“I brought the extra clothes you wanted for her. Everything but her … ah … female undergarments.”

Cullen looked up. Gabriel Kane stood in front of him. He reached out and took the bag Gabriel offered him. He opened it and looked inside. Two pairs of shorts, two tee-shirts, white socks, and a pair of sneakers. Cullen exhaled loudly.

“Prince Gabriel, did you select these clothes for my mate yourself?”

Gabriel nodded. “Yes, that’s why I didn’t bring any underwear, I didn’t think you would want me handling your mate’s … intimate attire.”

Cullen forcibly held back his temper. The man was a royal, and Gabriel had done him a favor, but why on earth did he have to put up with this level of incompetence? “Then perhaps you can explain to me, your highness, why you picked out clothing that would be appropriate for say, oh, a weekend playing tennis in the summer when it is twenty-two degrees outside in the middle of winter?”

Gabriel looked down at the bag and then back at Cullen, his eyes huge. Damn, he’d gone too far again. He watched the prince, who looked exactly his age but was lifetimes younger, as he took a deep breath. When he held Cullen’s gaze, it wasn’t anger Cullen saw in them, but hurt. He wasn’t sure how to handle that emotion.

“I’m sorry, Cullen, I’d be happy to go back to the Morrison house and get clothes that would be more appropriate for your mate.” Gabriel held his voice steady. Cullen was impressed with the effort.

“There’s no need for that, I’m sure her sister will provide clothes she can wear when we return home.”

Gabriel nodded, relief evident on his face, but quickly replaced by a look of confusion. “Why? Why did Father order the Morrisons dead?”

Cullen shut his eyes and leaned his head against the back of the leather seat. Everyone wanted him to have answers, solutions to defeating their former Alpha, when he had long since ceased to have any. “It was always a matter of time, I suppose. Once our Alpha’s mate brought her father to IPAG, Victoria and Scott Morrison became part of the game. They were in play.”

He could remember that day vividly. They’d gone in search of a cure for Tristan’s, their current Alpha, psychosis. It had been the same delusions that caused nearly two thirds of their pack to kill their own mates thirty years earlier. This had led to mass suicides. Cullen closed his eyes at the image of his friends—dead, grief still evident in their eyes—strewn over the horizon of Westervelt. Although it had worked, the plan had been hastily put together and they were now looking at the long term results.

“We gave them far too many years without challenge. Thirty years to sit down in Mexico and plan and plot. Ashlee’s plan had better work better this time.”

Cullen nodded. He had very little confidence in the contorted plan their Alpha’s wife had come up with. It required a lot of building construction, a lot of time, and a lot of money. Building supplies and money they had in abundance. Time had just run out. But at least she’d planned.

“We’ll leave you alone with your mate. This door,” Gabriel crossed and pulled a sliding door out of a compartment Cullen hadn’t noticed, “slides shut.” Gabriel demonstrated how the door opened and closed several times as if once hadn’t been enough.

He could have argued with Gabriel’s logic. There was no need for privacy between them, but the truth was he could use a little distance between himself and the others. Too much time in the company of his pack made him feel overwhelmed with responsibilities. There was still so much to do, training-wise, to get them ready and now he had his mate to consider.

Gabriel turned to leave again, but Cullen stopped him. “You fought well today, Gabriel. You and the others. You were always an exceptional warrior. If your father did anything well, it was training you. And now you’ve done very well passing your knowledge to the others.”

Gabriel nodded, the light back in his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. “Why did he pick me? He made me the warrior, gave me the training, even more so than he did with Tristan who was always the strongest. What did he see in me?” The other shifter’s eyes had started to change to their wolf state.

Cullen sighed. So much for being impressed with Gabriel’s self-control. Visions of Gabriel and his brothers flashed into his mind. Bright young boys who made as much trouble as any pups ever had for the pack. Gabriel’s eyes, ten years old, stared up at him in the darkness of the memories he refused to give room for.

Why do I have to leave, Uncle Cullen? Why would father throw me out? Tears. So many tears, and begging Kendrick to let the boys be young.

He shook his head and steeled his eyes. “I am not your father, Gabriel, nor am I omniscient. I cannot presume to know why or how he made his decisions.”

Gabriel jerked like he’d been struck and turned on his heel, closing the door behind him.

“You certainly know how to clear a room.” Summer’s voice startled Cullen and he almost leapt out of his seat.

She tried to sit up but grabbed her head instead. Cullen eased her head back down onto his lap and stroked her hair again.

“How are you feeling, Summer?” Even saying her name brought waves of pleasure to his body.

“Well, my parents have been butchered. No, I’m sorry, correct that, gutted like fish. The disgusting pig kicked me in the head, and then I threw up all over myself before I passed out. I’d have to say, I’ve been better.”

Mate. Fix our mate.

Cullen blinked twice. He couldn’t remember the last time his wolf had given him a direct order of any kind. Three centuries of sharing a body with someone, even if that other entity was a wolf, and you figured out what the other entity wanted, and did it, without being told.

What?

You heard me, fix her.

I don’t know how to do that. Only females are capable of the medical magics.

Then make her more comfortable.

How do I do that?

Cullen’s wolf sighed in frustration. Ask her if she needs anything.

“Is there anything I can get you? Would you like me to dim the lights, or maybe some water?”

Summer moved her head slightly and she winced. “No, I think I just want to lay here and not move.” She raised her eyes to look at him, and Cullen thought he saw color rise on her cheeks. “Unless you’d like me off your lap.” She started to sit up.

“No.” He pushed her head down gently. Not only did Cullen not want Summer to move for her own comfort, he really liked her where she was.

She settled against him. “Are we on an airplane?”

“Yes.”

“And? Let’s try to have a conversation, okay?”

Cullen’s chest tightened when she smiled up at him. “Tristan bought the plane for the pack’s use about a year ago. We’re getting ready to take off from somewhere called Teteboro airport.”

Summer nodded and groaned. “Okay, I’m going to have to lay off the movements now. Will there be a doctor up there in Maine—I assume we’re going to Maine—who can look at my head?”

“Ashlee will treat you.”

“Ashlee?” Cullen winced at Summer’s shout.

“She’s a healer.”

“Oh, I forgot. She’s some sort of supreme baby-making, mystical person who becomes a wolf and leads the pack.”

“Regardless, she is your Alpha’s mate.” He wasn’t really sure how to respond to that. He was afraid he was about to step into some waters he would not be able to carefully tread out of. “I’m sure when you practice, you’ll have your own set of magical powers—we all do. Your mother was quite capable, and although Ashlee had a big power boost from Tristan’s aunts, you are sure to have your own unique abilities. Give it time.”

Cullen watched in horror as Summer’s eyes filled with tears. One slipped down her cheek before she blinked the others away.

“What makes you think I want any? I do just fine with my plain old human abilities. Someone once told me when they heard me sing it was like listening to the angels. Not that I’ll ever be doing that again. I think it’s safe to say all the song has left my soul.” Her voice shook, and then she closed her eyes in an apparent end to the conversation.

There had to be a way to reason himself out of his current situation with Summer. “Then don’t become a wolf. You can stay here and attempt to piece your life together by yourself.”

A silent sob shook Summer’s body. She moaned and grabbed her forehead with her right hand. She squeezed her left hand into a fist and tucked it under her chest.

His heart sank. “I seem to be saying all the wrong things to you right now.”

Cullen stared down at Summer’s picturesque face. This was the only conversation they had ever had together so of course he would screw it up. Her blonde hair was somehow more glorious than her mother’s was at the same age. This strange fact had to be because of the way it seemed to glow. When he had first seen her, in the daytime, it had looked like the sunlight itself had painted her blonde hair with its very hand until she radiated the rays. Given he had been about to sacrifice his life in Tristan’s Alpha challenge, it was amazing he’d managed coherent thought at all. Now in the faint light of evening, Summer’s hair held an aura of silver. It sparkled like the finest cut diamond.

All of this enhanced her blue eyes, aquamarine in truth, a shade of which he had never seen before. Her nose, small and perfectly upturned, sat between two high cheekbones, with a splash of freckles danced over its skin.

Summer sniffed. “Isn’t there something you’d like to say to me, Cullen?”

Oh no, what was it he was supposed to say?

Say sorry.

There went his wolf again, but maybe the canine had the right idea.

“I’m sorry I’ve upset you or in some way said something inadvertent to make you upset on this day, of all days, when you’ve just lost your parents.” The words of sympathy and apology clogged his throat and came out as if rusty with disuse.

Cullen usually spoke as little as possible. He found silence to be prudent given he tended to be offensive and rough. Keeping quiet made fewer people upset. He had hoped that with Summer, he might have some sort of connection which prevented him from being so provocative. Obviously, that wasn’t the case.

Would he have to spend the rest of his life being quiet? If it would keep Summer from being upset, he would do that. The thought shocked him as much as his stilted apology.

“Thank you, Cullen, but that’s not what I was talking about.” Summer groaned. “I want to sit up, help me.”

Cullen did as she asked, being particularly careful with her head. She kept her eyes closed during the ordeal. Once she was upright, he leaned her head back against the seat. He immediately missed the warmth of her body against his.

Recognizing the irony, the man of silence couldn’t stand that very event between them. He finally spoke. “Then what would you like me to tell you?” Cullen refused to play feminine mind games with her. Being mated with a woman didn’t necessarily mean that mate came with unlimited patience.

“I want you to tell me how you’re going to kill the people who did this to my family.”

“What?” Shock slammed into his chest like a ninja kick.

“You are an assassin right? In addition to being a wolf, you kill people for Tristan and my sister?”

“I have killed people, yes, for more people than just the Alpha, but…”

“That’s your job. Tristan or Ashlee tells you to kill people, and you do it for them?”

His gut burned with the admission. “If my Alpha ordered me to kill someone, I would do it.”

“Would you do it for me?” Summer’s eyes bored into his, a sharp, blue pinprick. He wished he could see beyond the cool detached stare. “If Tristan doesn’t order you to kill Claudius, will you do it if I ask you to?”

Cullen swallowed, and for the first time in his life, he feared a woman. “Summer, there is nothing I would not do for you.”

“Because I’m your mate?”

Cullen nodded his response as his mind reeled.

“Good, because I want him dead.” Summer closed her eyes. Moments later, her breathing became deep, indicating she had fallen asleep.

Cullen leaned his head back against his seat but he couldn’t get comfortable. He felt the low, gentle power of the plane’s engines and knew they’d be underway soon. He hated to fly, but that wasn’t what bothered him.

How was it in the two seconds she had seen him three years ago, Summer looked past everything else and into his very soul? Was that part of being a mated pair?

He was a killer, had always been one. Kendrick had known that. Tristan availed himself of his skills. He had one purpose in life and far be it for him to deny his services to his mate. That thought seemed to twist the knife in his gut. Why would it be any different if she asked it?

Inside of him, his wolf paced restlessly.

She’s upset. She didn’t mean that. She doesn’t know us yet.

But Cullen knew better. He’d been a killer for others, now he’d be Summer’s, and the fact gnawed at him.

Chapter Three

Summer became aware of a loud buzzing noise. Then the vibrations under her chair jangled her head. Her next solid realization—that she was on an airplane and couldn’t remember taking off, or where she was going—made her stomach turn. Then all the events rushed back, nearly knocking her back into black oblivion.

Her beloved parents were dead. She would never see them again. Never be able to tell them she was sorry or convince them they were wrong about her. Surprisingly, the tears did not start. All the grief-ridden information revolved around a sense of nothingness, a void.

She opened one eye to test her level of nausea. When she didn’t vomit, she risked the other eye. She blinked twice and held her breath for a moment. This didn’t look like any plane she’d ever been on. She couldn’t help but think that Air Force One must look similar. Leather couches, two recliners, and a swivel chair were arranged in a horseshoe around a low oak coffee table.

Cullen sat across from her, his feet on the couch, face turned to the window. His body lounged across three seats. Despite his relaxed position, tension radiated from him. His back was ramrod straight, prepared, as if he would attack at the slightest provocation.

His eyebrows pressed downwards, his jaw clenched, and she wondered what it was that had him so transfixed he hadn’t noticed she’d awoken. Summer suspected whatever he contemplated made him unhappy. Even if her potential concussion didn’t knock her off her feet, Cullen Murphy certainly could and she was glad for the moment to regain her equilibrium.

Next to Cullen, other men seemed small. Inconsequential. He took up space. His shoulders were broad and firm, his back steady and strong as if he could carry the weight of the world on his frame and not stagger from it. She stifled a sigh of appreciation.

His brown hair was military shaved. It had been longer the last time she’d seen him, with a slight curl. She couldn’t decide if she was disappointed with the new look. Dark, thick stubble coated his jaw where it met up with long, but trimmed sideburns.

But it was his blue eyes that were the most stunning part of Cullen’s face. She could see them reflected back at her in the glass in the window he gazed outwards from. Sunken low into his face, Cullen’s eyes pierced her very soul with their intensity. The sunlight captured them to their full advantage, and she felt like she could drown in their blue depths, live there, if it weren’t so dangerous to do so.

The first time she’d heard of Cullen had been in a discussion between Ashlee and their interim-Alpha, Michael. He had casually informed her older sister that Cullen was busy slaughtering the evil witch they needed to eliminate to save Ashlee’s mate Tristan. Nobody seemed the slightest bit surprised that it was Cullen who had killed the witch.

But when Summer had met him in person, her heart stopped. He was the most striking man she’d ever seen, and he was going to challenge Tristan in the Alpha fight, a battle Cullen was sure to lose because he wasn’t of the royal line. He’d been willing to sacrifice himself, die for the sake of his pack. And that plan had worked. Tristan had stopped balking at becoming their Alpha and Michael, who was strong in many ways but wrong for the job, had been replaced. She had thought she might spontaneously combust just watching the exchange, as her emotions had warred between the need to run and hide from his intensity and her extreme sexual desire to possess him, body and soul. Something had come awake deep inside that day.

Sure he’d noticed her too, her mother had started using words like ‘mate’ and ‘destiny’ but Cullen had never come to claim her, evidently less moved by their brief glimpses of each other than she was. Except one night when Summer had heard him downstairs arguing with her mother.

Want my mate. Her wolf practically growled the order to Summer. But the truth was, she had no idea how to go about ‘mating’ with Cullen Murphy. Didn’t know if she wanted to and the second it had been suggested, all she’d been able to see was that being with him would be the end of her own dreams. Not that she’d been particularly successful at achieving them when left to her own devices—she was obviously not starring in a Broadway show right now.

She almost groaned out loud when she felt one of her strange episodes starting. Would there never be a time when she wouldn’t have to endure the strange visions she’d always had but which had gotten so much worse since her wolf had been thrust upon her? Her eyes felt hazy, not a sensation she needed given her current precarious head trauma. She hoped she wouldn’t lose consciousness again.

She was immediately somewhere else. She looked around the room—it was dawn in someone’s bedroom. Cullen lay on top of the bed, shirtless with just thin cotton pajama pants covering his bottom half.

“I don’t know how you talked Tristan into giving us a vacation but I’m so glad that you did.”

In her vision state, Summer whirled around to see who he talked to.

“I have my ways.” Dear god, it was her own voice. This had never happened to her before. Her heart beat fast in her chest. What would happen if she saw herself? She never got the chance to find out as she was whisked back to the present and found herself sitting on the airplane again.

There was no way she was ever going on a vacation with Cullen. Her head injury must be somehow making her think she was having visions when she was, in fact, hallucinating. She swallowed. She could accept that explanation. Sort of.

Summer licked her dry lips. She needed to say something eventually so she went for the mundane. “How long ’til we land?”

His head whirled around, his blue eyes changed to dark brown wolf ones. Summer gasped and Cullen blinked several times. His eyes cleared back to their beautiful blue.

She looked down at her hands.

“What’s the matter?”

“Sorry, you just startled me. I guess I’ll have to get used to people going wolf all the time now.” Summer’s voice shook and she felt foolish. Unlike her, the others seemed to be comfortable with showing off their furry side.

“No, I’m afraid I was lost in thought and you took me by surprise. When that happens, I tend to go wolf but most of the pack can control themselves.” Color rose slightly in his cheeks before it vanished. Summer wondered if she’d imagined the whole thing. “That’s why I try to always be on alert.”

“You can’t possibly go through life on alert twenty-four hours a day.”

“As you saw, sometimes I am caught unawares.” He rose and Summer had to tip her head back to look at him as he moved towards her. “You’ve been asleep about half an hour. We will land in fifteen minutes. Then we’ll be in the car about ten minutes before we board the boat for Westervelt.”

“Are you still using that dingy old boat?” Her stomach pitched in anticipation of the boat ride.

Cullen shook his head. “We have a fleet now. One that goes back and forth to Westervelt and one that will bring the guests to the hotel/spa thing when it opens.”

Summer could picture the boats in her mind. Her mother had been working on several projects with Ashlee. This must have been one of them. The boats would be top of the line, decked out in the most modern conveniences. “So, no more Captain Joe and his weird looks and leering eyes?”

“Captain Joe was the one who betrayed Tristan and Rex to IPAG. We caught him giving information to Kendrick. He has been … neutralized.”

She didn’t have to guess what that meant. “How did you kill him?”

His eyes bored into hers for a moment and she saw some hidden emotion in their depths she couldn’t decipher. She turned her head to the side to look at him, which sent a jabbing pain into her temples. Cullen was at her side before she had even realized she’d flinched. It was almost nice.

He brushed her hair from her forehead. She shivered from the perceived tenderness. “Is there anything I can get you?” His voice sounded distant. He stared past her, almost through her.

“A new head?”

He raised one of his dark eyebrows. “No, I think the one you have will have to stay put. If you shift, it might help, it activates some of our healing abilities.”

“I’m not shifting.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Not ever again if I can help it.”

“Then I am wasting my time and yours.”

At the hard edge in his tone, she flinched. “Maybe so.”

You will shift when you are ready. I am here.

She rolled her eyes at her wolf. It was the same refrain the creature had been saying to her since they’d been forcibly introduced three years earlier.

Cullen cleared his throat. “Have you not done it since Tristan’s Alpha ceremony?” His voice sounded incredulous, and embarrassment overwhelmed her.

“No.”

“Then you don’t know it’s not always like that? The first shift is terrible. It’s a wonder anyone wants to do it again.”

Terrible? What an understatement. She’d refused every overture her mother made towards learning her wolf.

“That also answers the question that has been driving me crazy as to why you didn’t shift to protect yourself from Claudius.”

Her head whirled as she stared in his eyes. She’d thought they were blue, but now she could see green and grey too. Her pulse quickened, and she licked her lips. His gaze followed the movement of her tongue on her mouth before he reclaimed her eye contact. The blatant appreciation made her feel … powerful.

“How did you find me, Cullen? How did you know to come there, you and the others?”

He looked down for a second. When he glanced up, she had to suppress the urge to reach out and stroke his cheek. The need to touch him overwhelming.

Touch him. He will like it. Trust me.

No way. Her wolf had too much faith in him. He’d made it clear when he’d never come for her in the past three years how little he wanted her for his mate. She wouldn’t humiliate herself by acting like they actually meant anything to each other.

“Tristan felt it when your parents died. They were pack, when their souls left us, he knew. But we didn’t know if it had been violent, or if it was just that something had happened. A heart attack or a stroke for your father and then your mother followed. I didn’t think that was likely. Victoria, your mom, she would have called Ashlee first, would have sent you to us. I was sure of that. She’d promised me. So, we came as soon as possible.”

Cullen’s voice sounded like music to Summer. “Because we’re mates, you would know if I had died, right?”

“We are mates. That’s right. I hoped I would know. We haven’t performed the ceremony so I was unsure if my absolute knowledge of your death would still apply.”

That didn’t make any sense to her. He’d never come to find her, never showed the least bit of interest in knowing her. She’d obsessed about him for over a year before finally deciding she’d imagined the connection between them. And now, he claimed they had such a deep, spiritual connection he’d know if she were to die?

His eyes roamed her face. He opened his mouth as if to say something but the plane suddenly jerked in a bump of turbulence. Cullen squeezed his eyes shut and she laughed. His eyes popped open to stare at her.

“Are you laughing at me?”

She nodded. “I am.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re this big, tough guy who kills people at the drop of a hat but you’re scared of flying.”

He shook his head. “I’m not scared of flying. Its crashing that bothers me, and it’s only made worse by the fact that Prince Azriel is piloting this particular plane.”

“Sounds like an excuse to me.” She knew she shouldn’t be feeling so jovial. Her parents had not been dead twenty-four hours—but there was something about being with him that made her feel like her world hadn’t just fallen into a million small pieces.

The plane bumped again and Summer felt the pressure in her ears that indicated they had started their descent. She guessed there wouldn’t be any flight attendants walking around to tell them to fasten their seatbelts.

“Cullen, I think he’s descending, you might want to sit down and buckle your seatbelt.”

He looked around and then nodded. Although it felt like it took twice as long as it should have, Summer finally got her seatbelt attached. Cullen, having easily snapped his into place, watched her with a wary look in his eyes.

Finally, he cleared his throat. “Did you travel a lot as a child?”

Visions of her parents on vacations sprung to her mind, followed immediately by the way she’d last seen her parents, dead on the floor. Tears sprung to her eyes, which made her head pound. She grasped her head again. Oh god, she didn’t want the pain to continue. Neither the one in her head, nor the one in her heart.

How was she supposed to get through the day, a minute, knowing what had happened to them? She knew the answer to that. Revenge. Cullen would help her with that.

Want my mate.

Summer’s wolf startled her out of her miserable reverie. She looked up, Cullen eyes were far away, withdrawn as if he’d gone away again. Summer narrowed her eyes. She had no idea why she knew he did this when he was upset. His face was stoic, his eyes calm, but she knew he was deeply hurt.

She cleared her throat, needing to hear his voice again. To bring back the calm his deep baritone encased inside of her. “I know you didn’t mean to bring up my family and cause me pain.”

He nodded and a little light dawned in his eyes.

Her smile wobbled as she tried to ignore the desire that spread through her insides. She didn’t want to know the strange look that must have appeared on her face. He’d already made it clear with his three-year-vanishing-act how little it pleased him to be mated to her, and now he was going to think she made strange faces on a regular basis. Obligation had brought him to New Jersey to rescue her. She should be grateful but she wasn’t.

“I wish Tristan’s Alpha instincts could have brought you guys there to rescue my parents before they were killed.”

At the thought, she closed her eyes. They would be touching down any minute. Her head pounded hard and she couldn’t get comfortable. Cullen reached out to touch the side of her cheek, she tried to open her eyes to look at him but her head swirled and she fell asleep instead.

* * *

“Summer, can you hear me?” Familiar, bossy. She knew that voice. Ashlee, her older sister, talked to her in a low voice. Something warm wiped across her forehead. She opened one eye at Ashlee and groaned.

“You’re okay, now. Your headache should be gone and I cleaned you up so you’re no longer disgusting.”

Ashlee was right. Her head felt all right. The twelve piece band that had played inside of it earlier had gone away and now she just had blissful silence. Summer opened the other eye and tried to take in the room. Lights cast a soft glow on the dark beige walls that surrounded the bed she laid in. Two windows showed the deep velvet of the nighttime sky.

“How long have I been here?”

Lines of fatigue drew her sister’s usually fresh face down, not surprising considering the circumstances. Summer sat up slowly, glad the pain didn’t make a reappearance.

“About five hours. Cullen brought you to us as soon as you arrived on the island. He said you were unconscious since right before the plane landed.”

Ashlee crossed to a small wooden dresser and picked up a pitcher of liquid. She poured some into a cup and walked back to Summer. Glad to relieve her thirst, Summer took the cup and downed the water inside. The liquid cooled her scratchy throat. Looking around the room, Summer realized she must be in the Alpha’s suite of rooms at the Institute, Westervelt’s communal headquarters and living space.

“Where is, uh, Cullen?”

Ashlee sat on the bed next to Summer and rubbed her leg. “He left after I assured him you would be okay. He thought you might want some privacy. Tristan told him he’d be more than welcome to stay but he thought you might prefer if he were not here.”

Summer frowned. Why would he have thought something like that? Most of the plane trip was a blur to Summer. She remembered bits and pieces but she didn’t think she’d given Cullen any reason to assume she didn’t want him around.

Truthfully, it was Ashlee she would have preferred to be without.

“What were you even doing there?” So now the inevitable big-sister questions were going to start. “I thought you still weren’t speaking to them.”

“Mom called and said she wanted to try to begin what she called the healing process.”

Ashlee snorted. “Sounds like something Mom would say.”

Summer clenched her fists at Ashlee’s remark. Why did she always have to act like the expert on everything?

“So, I suppose this was inevitable.”

Ashlee’s eyes narrowed slightly. “What do you mean?”

“You brought this on them when you dragged Dad to Mexico and made Tristan’s father aware of all of us.” She hurled the words at her sister with deliberate cruelty.

As for Ashlee, Summer thought she looked like she’d gone two shades paler.

“You blame me for this?” A sob escaped Ashlee’s voice and tears spilled onto her cheeks.

Summer pushed the covers away and stood up. She turned from Ashlee. If her mother were still alive, she would have yelled at Summer for saying such things. She would have been right. But Summer figured she was past the point of being careful of Ashlee’s feelings.

She nodded, turning back to face Ashlee. “I do, I blame you. Tristan too. In fact, I hold everyone who agreed to your crazy plan to steal that witch from Mexico accountable. Mom and Dad would still be alive, still living life, if you hadn’t come up here and destroyed our lives.”

Ashlee’s eyes flared at Summer. “This has nothing to do with Mom and Dad, or their terrible deaths. No, this is about you still feeling resentful about your wolf and because you believe your wolf is the reason your precious singing career didn’t work out.”

Summer’s temper surged, and she knew all reason and good sense were gone. She was going to tell Ashlee what was on her mind now. “Because it was so goddamn easy for you. Oh, look, I’ve met a wolf in a zoo cage that happens to be able to shift into a human so I’m going to follow him up to some island off the coast of Maine! Oh and gee, after we have sex for the first time, he’s going to succumb to some sort of curse that will require me to completely disregard the personal safety of both my parents and my sister and ultimately get my parents killed.”

“Don’t forget the best part, Summer.” Ashlee’s voice held a hard edge and her eyes turned wolf. “I also made my baby sister acknowledge a part of herself she’d rather forget ever existed. My baby sister who always wanted to be so ‘normal,’ so ‘typical,’ because she was so happy living life with her head six feet under the sand.”

“What was wrong with normal, Ash? At least with normal, everyone lives, people don’t get gutted, wolves don’t eat at their flesh, destroy their bodies.”

Ashlee’s eyes turned back to her human shade, and she crossed her arms over chest as she started to shake. Summer turned away from Ashlee.

“Don’t turn around. If you have something to say, please do so.” Summer snorted at Ashlee’s formal tone. She must have picked the phraseology up from Tristan. Fine, if she wanted her to talk, she would give her an earful.

She opened her mouth to tell Ashlee what it had smelled like, how their Dad had gripped their mother’s fur, his head turned towards her as if she was the last thing he had seen in this world, the blood on the walls, the furniture, the way Claudius had smiled—but she never completed her sentence. Guilt gnawed at her stomach.

Why was she hurting Ashlee?

She looked at her sister. Ashlee had changed so much in three years it was hard to recognize her. Oh, she still had the same strawberry blonde hair, her eyes still shone green. Even after two children, she still had a figure to die for—flat stomach and no fat. But, everything else about Ashlee was different. Her outlook on life, her response to crises—it was like being with a stranger.

Summer cleared her throat. “I have to get out of here.”

“Where will you go?” Ashlee’s voice sounded hysterical. “I’m your sister. We just lost our parents. We’re family. We need to be together.”

“Family?” In spite of herself, Summer heard the bitter tone in her own voice. “Is that why I wasn’t invited to your wedding? Why you didn’t come down, not once, to introduce your children to me?”

Ashlee’s cheeks flushed. “I wanted to come but Tristan didn’t think it was safe for me or the children to leave here.”

Summer nodded, flooded by guilt again. “He’s right. Claudius has threatened that your children will be the first to die if Tristan doesn’t turn the pack over to Kendrick. Our parents were an example of how he could get to anyone, be anywhere. None of us are safe.”

Ashlee made a little shriek in her throat and gripped the headboard next to her. “He knows about the kids?”

“Evidently.”

“I didn’t invite you to the wedding because you weren’t speaking with Mom and Dad and I thought it would be awkward. We only had the wedding for Dad’s sake. It was literally only Mom and Dad and the pack here.” Ashlee delivered her answer and plopped down on the bed.

“Well, I wouldn’t want anything to be awkward for you, the good daughter.” Summer turned on her heel. She didn’t even have any shoes.

Her heart rate sped up and sweat broke out on her arms. She needed to get out of Ashlee’s guestroom, out of their entire apartment.

“Summer, are you okay?”

At the sound of Tristan’s voice, Summer spun around. He stood in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest.

Alpha.

Yes, Summer knew he was her alpha, the supreme leader of their pack.

Show him respect.

“Hello Tristan,” Summer concentrated on keeping her voice calm. “My Alpha. It’s lovely to see you again.”

“It’s good to see you too.” Tristan crossed into the room. “I can smell your fear. What are you afraid of?” Tall and dark, he dwarfed her sister and made Summer look like a child next to him. His eyes were permanently in their wolf state, a side effect since he’d taken over the Alpha position.

Don’t lie either. He’ll smell it.

“You, Ashlee, Claudius, me … I don’t know, you name it, I’m afraid of it right now.” Summer stammered. “I have to go. I can’t stay here.”

“You don’t have anywhere to go. Stay here.” Ashlee had risen off the bed and crossed to her. She placed a hand on Summer’s arm.

Summer shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I can’t.”

She couldn’t stand it any longer. She was surrounded by Ashlee’s scent here. Ashlee and Tristan and the babies. She’d been shut out of all their lives because she hadn’t wanted to be a wolf-shifter. Hadn’t been ready to throw herself into a river full of madness with no life preserver. There was no way she could open those doors now.

“I have to go.”

Summer turned and ran out of the room toward what she hoped was the front door of Tristan and Ashlee’s suite of rooms. Her bare feet hit the wooden floor in front of her. She had no idea where she was going.

“Where will you be?” Ashlee’s voice called after her into the hall.

“Maybe I’ll swim back to the mainland. We’re wolves right? We like the water.”

Chapter Four

A tap on his door stilled his fingers from the guitar strings. Cullen frowned. People never visited him. He stood from his seat on the floor, placed his guitar gently on the couch, and crossed the room to the entrance. He sniffed the air. The aroma of peaches and baby oil assailed his nose. Summer. As the delicious odor made the hair on his arms stand up, he tried not to groan.

She didn’t speak, just looked up at him. Dark smudges stained the skin beneath her eyes, her teeth chattered. He pulled her into the cabin, as he made note of the fact that she was barefoot and wore only the shorts and tee-shirt Gabriel had inappropriately packed for her.

“What are you doing out here? You don’t have a coat or shoes.” He shut the door behind her and loosened his grip on her arm.

Her teeth rattled and she crossed her arms over her chest. “I couldn’t stay with Ashlee. I’ll leave in the morning, find somewhere else to live off of this rock you call an island, but do you think I could sleep on your floor tonight?”

His mind whirled. He found it almost impossible to concentrate on what she said when she stood in front of him so obviously freezing. Goosebumps covered her skin and her nipples were hard and visible through her thin tee-shirt. He forced his gaze from the tantalizing view and made himself focus on the fact she was cold. He crossed to the couch and picked up a wool blanket. He wrapped her up in it, nearly coming out of his skin when his fingers brushed the flesh of her arm.

She stared up in his eyes and he shivered, but not from the cold. Having her there, in his cabin, made him feel mashed up inside. Her scent permeated the room, filling his head until he couldn’t breathe properly. He had the strangest urge to pick her up and rub her against the curtains, the bed, and the rug, so he could find her scent whenever he wanted to.

“So, is it okay, or not?” She continued to stare at him. He realized she’d asked him a question and he hadn’t answered it. She’d come to his home, through the freezing cold, wearing almost nothing, completely barefoot. Why did Ashlee let her leave this way?

“No, it’s not okay.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, then I’ll go.” She tried to turn but his arms held her steady, wrapped in the blanket.

“What are you talking about? Go where?” When another shiver wracked her slight body, electricity traveled up his arms.

“I asked you if I could stay tonight and you just said no.”

“I’m sorry, Summer.” It felt like a prayer, the way her name passed over his lips. “I seem to be having a conversation all by myself, in my own mind, and you can’t hear it. Of course you can stay. Here,” Cullen picked her up in his arms. He felt very gallant, not a sensation he was used to. It actually made him grin for a moment before he stopped himself. Summer didn’t need to see him beaming like an idiot. He placed her down on the couch and tucked the blanket in around her.

“I’m going to get you some warmer clothes. It’s drafty in here.” He walked into the bedroom and noticed his unmade bed. After he made her something to eat, he would clean up in here. She could spend the night in his room. As he pulled a sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants out of his drawers he heard her call after him. “It feels warm in here to me.”

“It’s not.” Although he was hot as hell, had been ever since she’d arrived.

Cullen returned to the living room and sat on the edge of couch by her feet, handing her the clothes. “When you’ve warmed up a little, put these on.”

“Thanks,” she said, taking the clothes.

He wanted to lean over and kiss the spot between her neck and her shoulder until she shivered not from the cold, but from the heat his mouth created in her body.

“It’s plenty warm in here. I’m just chilled. You have your shirt off for goodness sake. How cold could it be?”

He looked down at his bare chest. She was right. Did human girls find it rude for men to be shirtless in front of them in this day and age? It was so hard for him to remember sometimes.

“I’ll go dress myself, sorry.” He rose off the couch.

“I didn’t say you had to put on clothes.”

Was it his imagination or had her voice dropped an octave? It had taken on a husky tone, like she might sound when she first woke up in the morning. His groin throbbed hard. Our mate.

Yes, she was their mate. But that didn’t mean he would give into his primal urges and take her right there on the couch, without so much as a by-your-leave.

He had to change the subject before he behaved like a teenager and gave into the need to kiss her. “What was Ashlee thinking letting you run out there dressed like that?”

“I didn’t actually give Ashlee and Tristan a choice. I kind of just left.” Emotions played across Summer’s face and he wished he could read her mind.

“And Ashlee is not my keeper. I’m a year older than she was when she met Tristan, brought him home, mated him, rescued him from the spell, and started to lead the pack with him. She was my age when she had Braden.”

Cullen stared. He wasn’t even sure what to say to that. Did she think he thought her too young to make her own decisions?

“Do you like soup? I keep chicken noodle here.” He turned towards the kitchen.

“Why do you do that?”

He kept his back turned to her. After three hundred years, he could sometimes catch himself before he said the wrong thing. If he didn’t face her, she wouldn’t be able to see him struggle to find the right words.

“Why do I do what?” Had he kept his voice even? He wasn’t sure.

“You change the subject at your convenience. I just said something to you that warrants an answer and you totally ignored me.”

He whirled around. “I seem to have the same problem with you that I have with the rest of the world, which is an inability to say the right thing. Maybe I should rephrase that and say I have a unique attribute that allows me to find the one thing to say that is sure to piss off everyone around me. So, I opt to say nothing or to say innocuous things. Somehow, it still ends up being wrong. If I change the subject it is to spare your feelings, a gift I give no one else.”

Summer flung the blanket off and crossed to him. He opened his mouth to rebuke her stubbornness. She silenced him when she pushed her body against his and pressed her mouth gently to his lips.

For a moment, Cullen felt like time stopped. Her kiss was a feather’s touch. Nothing existed on the planet except Summer’s soft skin, sensual lips, and strong, steady heartbeat.

He wanted desperately to deepen the kiss, to plunge his tongue into her mouth over and over again. To show her with his mouth what he wanted to do to other places on her body. But, he couldn’t allow himself the pleasure. If he let himself that small amount, the flood gates that held his self-control at bay would slam open. Cullen would be lost to the intensity with Summer as collateral damage. He would have to mate her, and he knew Summer had no idea what that entailed. Maybe the physical act she could understand but she hadn’t spent enough time with the pack to see that mating was so much more than marriage. It was eternal. There was no way out. Not even death separated mates as one partner almost always followed the other immediately to death.

He couldn’t be responsible for inflicting himself on her for the rest of her life and beyond—not if he wasn’t exactly what she wanted. He wasn’t some young pup, just recently shifted with no baggage for his mate to digest. He had too many years—most of them filled with unspeakable acts he’d rather not remember he’d done—behind him.

When she pulled back from their kiss, he reluctantly let her.

Kiss her again.

Wow, his wolf had certainly rediscovered its ability to boss him around. But he wouldn’t relent this time. No, he knew he was right. She had to know him better, had to go into their mating with both eyes open. If he gave into his passion for her tonight, while she was vulnerable, she might let him off the hook, but he would never forgive himself.

Unlike his young pack mates, he knew better than to think that every mated pair lived in perfect harmony. Their souls belonged to each other, they might even share love. But it was still possible for one half of the pair to destroy the life of the other. He need not look any further than Mary Jo and Kendrick Kane, the parents of their Alpha.

Mary Jo had hidden the unmated females from the pack to save their lives from the evil schemes Kendrick had plotted out for them. In retaliation, Kendrick, a man Cullen would have sworn was his friend, killed his wife and didn’t follow her to the grave. If that was possible, Cullen couldn’t count on anything—including the surety of happily ever after with his destined bride.

If they didn’t mate, she would not have to follow him to the grave or share his burdens. He wasn’t sure how it worked; she might even take other lovers. But, it was better to not let himself follow that line of thought because then he might lose control of his temper and kill whoever he imagined her having sex with.

“Hello, still here.” Summer cleared her throat. “I don’t want you to hold back your thoughts from me. You must always tell me the truth and I will do the same for you.”

He nodded. At least that was one way to guarantee she got to know him. “Okay.”

Her hands fell to her sides and he missed their warmth on his bare arms. “I’m not hungry. I don’t want any soup.”

Soup? The talk of food seemed a lifetime ago.

She continued to talk. “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want you to kill Claudius.”

She didn’t?

“I want to kill him myself. I want you to teach me how.”

Cullen closed his eyes. The last thing he wanted to do in the universe was teach Summer Morrison how to become a killer. She hadn’t been born to do that. Her hands were clean, unscarred—like her soul.

He shook his head. “Out of the question. I can almost guarantee Tristan will order me to kill Claudius tomorrow. But if he doesn’t, I will take care of him myself. You will have nothing to do with it.”

Her eyes flared and he swore he saw flames dance inside of their aquamarine depths. “You don’t get to decide that. If I want to kill Claudius, I will do it. You can either help me or not.”

She stormed away from him to the window. Her back was strained, her stance wide. He wanted to go over and wrap his arms around her waist, tuck her body against his and make love to her until the horrors of the day left her and she no longer desired death or vengeance.

But he hadn’t earned that right yet.

He stepped an inch closer to her. If anyone understood boundaries, it was Cullen. “You think you could do that? Snuff out a man’s life, evil though he certainly is, and watch as he took his last breaths?”

She whirled around, putting several paces between them. “I think I could. He murdered my parents and he loved it. Besides, people do it all the time. How hard could it be? Destruction of our fellow humans is one of the basic disgusting things that is encoded in our DNA. You do it all the time.”

He shook his head. “Only when necessary.”

She huffed out a snort. “Fine. But you’ve done it enough and you’re still standing and walking around. You don’t seem destroyed by it. He took my parents lives. I want his.”

“This is grief talking.”

She stormed towards him. “You don’t know enough about me to make a statement like that.”

Tell her we know everything about her.

But he wouldn’t tell her that. She would laugh at him or worse demand he let her leave.

“If you believe nothing else, believe this: taking someone’s life, even if that person deserves it, changes you. If you must have him dead, and I don’t disagree that he needs to be removed from this planet, I will do the deed.”

Countless black marks marred his soul. One more would not make that much of a difference. And he would do anything for Summer. If she asked him to, he would break every moral and ethical rule in existence.

She looked up at the ceiling and shook her head. “I’m not going to relent on this, Cullen.”

“Then we will never agree, because neither will I.”

She’s exhausted. She needs sleep.

His wolf was right. Summer needed rest.

“Wait here.” He walked into his bedroom and quickly changed the sheets on his bed for clean ones. He pulled up the covers. After a minute, he decided it looked presentable and he returned to the living room.

Summer stood by the window again. She looked out into the night, her forehead pressed against the cool glass. “Isn’t death supposed to be easy for us? We’re animals.” She spoke without turning around.

“Do you know so little about your wolf after all of this time?”

She laughed but it was a cold sound and it brought no joy to Cullen’s heart to hear it. “She gets frustrated with me. I don’t often do what she wants.”

His lips twitched. “I try to fulfill the wishes of mine at least ninety percent of the time. He’s usually right.”

Summer turned around and leaned her back against the window. “I don’t even like mine. I make it a point to tune her out as much as possible.”

“Now that, Summer Morrison, makes me sad. Our wolf is a gift to us from fate. It’s a present so sought after that men kill, cheat, and destroy to possess it. Duplication of our canine half seems to be impossible. If we never know our wolves, we are never whole beings.”

Summer narrowed her eyes. “I’ll tell you what. I will learn to embrace my inner wolf. I will listen to it, follow its guidance, and even shift if you will teach me how to kill Claudius.”

Cullen considered the deal she proposed. It might pay to agree. Once Summer started to embrace her wolf, she wouldn’t want to kill Claudius. She would want Cullen to do it because that was the way the pack worked. The more comfortable she got with her four leggedness, the more she would crave the workings of the pack. If he agreed to her deal, it would solve two big problems for him. Summer would finally know herself completely, and Cullen wouldn’t have to worry about exposing her to the destructive side of life.

He nodded. “All right. Now,” he extended his hand. “You should go to bed. We have a lot of work to do tomorrow if I’m going to make a killer out of you.”

Summer raised an eyebrow. “Why do I feel like you’ve just manipulated me?”

“Because you’re a smart woman. I have done what you accuse me of. But you’d better learn that now.”

She shook her head. “I don’t understand. Learn what?”

He pulled her into his arms and pressed his mouth to hers. For a moment, he just enjoyed the softness of her lips.

“I’m always in control and I always win in a fight.”

Chapter Five

Summer ran down the long corridor, darkness chasing her steps. She couldn’t get caught. It was too important. Everything would be lost without him. But the truth was she still didn’t care one bit about pack politics. She wanted him back because he was hers.

She tripped, falling face first towards the ceramic floor. Her hands reached out and lessoned the impact. Still she cut her chin. It bled. Summer raised her head. She’d reached her destination.

Summer stood up and wiped her bloody chin with her hands before rubbing most of it off onto her jeans. Her eyes stared through the two-way mirror in front of her.

Her wolf howled inside of her.

Cullen was strapped to a table. Blue liquid poured into his veins through an intravenous tube.

He raised his head an inch and sniffed the air. Summer’s hand flew to her throat. He’d smelled her. She needed to get him out.

He pulled at his restraints, screaming with rage.

A man stepped out of the shadows of the room. She hadn’t seen or smelled him in the room before he’d appeared but she’d know him anywhere at sight. Claudius. He stared through the two-way mirror like he could see her.

“I told you she would come, Cullen. And now that she has we don’t need you anymore.” He raised his left hand and she stared at the gun in it. She ran to the hallway door and pushed on it, desperate to get in the room.

She heard the gun fire.

* * *

“Summer, wake up. You’re dreaming.”

Someone shook her gently. Her eyes flung open and she swung with her left hand desperate to make contact, to defend herself from the attack. Cullen ducked to avoid getting struck in the face by her fist.

“Okay, so you don’t wake up well.” Cullen’s voice sounded like gravel and she realized he must have been asleep too.

She sat up. “Sorry, I don’t usually wake up so crazed. I guess I had a bad dream.”

Cullen nodded. “You were screaming. I tried to wake you for two minutes before you roused.” He turned to leave the room.

“Where are you going?” Was that her voice that sounded frantic?

“Back to the living room.”

“Why?”

“To let you sleep.”

“I’m not sleeping after the dream I had.” She didn’t care if she sounded pathetic.

Cullen crossed to the bed and sat down on the edge. “What was the dream?”

Her body drifted towards the indentation he left on the mattress. “I was running down a hallway. It’s not someplace I’ve ever been but in the dream I knew where I was going and it was important that I get there. I arrived at a room and it had one of those two-way mirrors. I looked in and I saw you…”

Summer paused. She wasn’t sure she wanted to tell Cullen the rest of the dream. What did it mean that she’d heard Claudius kill him?

What happened next?

Summer jumped an inch on the bed. She stared at Cullen, her jaw slack. “Did you just say that in my head?”

Cullen nodded but didn’t open his mouth. I did.

“How did you do that?” Summer couldn’t get her head around the fact that Cullen had just spoken to her without using words. He had actually communicated with her in her mind.

You should be able to do it too. You’re pack, so technically everyone in the pack will be eventually able to talk to you this way. But, we’re mates, so it makes it easier for me to do it. You could do it too, if you want to.

Summer shook her head. “I don’t want to.” She pulled the covers up to her neck and leaned against the headboard.

He raised an eyebrow. I thought you were going to start embracing your wolf?

“This telepathy thing is related to my wolf?” Summer’s head whirled. She had told Cullen she would try to work on embracing her wolf in return for his teaching her to kill Claudius. She just hadn’t expected it to start so fast.

Do you know any non-shifters who can speak like this? Anything we do that is magical comes from our wolf-half.

She nodded. Cullen wanted her to try this telepathy. She closed her eyes and tried to send her thoughts to him. When her eyes opened, he stared at her blankly. He’d obviously not received any of the brain waves she’d tried to send his way.

Did you just try?

“Yes.” She threw the cover off of the bed and sat up next to Cullen as she swung her feet down. They dangled like she was a child, not reaching the floor.

I think you’re trying too hard. Your wolf will make sure you can do it. Finish telling me about the dream.

So her wolf had to be involved in the communication. Her four-legged compatriot was surprisingly silent. Why wasn’t her wolf thrilled to be let loose? Summer wondered if she’d ever understand the creature.

It stayed calm, not commenting on what she tried to do. Summer called to it several times and asked her to help her communicate with Cullen. But it didn’t answer.

She clenched her hands into fists. Would nothing ever be easy? She really wanted to show Cullen she could do this. The more she failed the more she was sure he would congratulate himself on having avoided mating her.

Suddenly, the words seemed to flow out of her, smooth and unfiltered. She didn’t feel like she stumbled or had to watch what she said. She could almost sigh with how easy it was.

You were locked in the room, strapped to a table. You smelled me and it seemed to make you angry I was there. Then Claudius entered. They were going to kill you, they’d used you as a trap to lure me. I heard a gun go off. That’s all.

She waited for Cullen’s reaction. He stared into the darkness of the bedroom, his face expressionless. She looked down at her hands. Had she offended him with her dream?

I’m sorry. I’m sure it’s just everything that’s happened. I was bound to dream about death and destruction.

Cullen shook his head. Have you had prophetic dreams before?

Summer jumped to her feet. “Prophetic dreams? That’s not what this was. It was just some stupid thing my imagination concocted.”

“I don’t think so. It runs in your family. Your mother had them when she was young, and your sister gets them regularly. Although she didn’t have one to show her what happened to your parents.”

His eyes stared off into the darkness of the hallway. He was so unreadable to her. She took a deep fortifying breath.

Did she dare reach out and stroke his arm? Little shivers rocked her body.

“Go back to bed,” Cullen urged. “You only slept about two hours. It’s not enough after what you’ve been through.”

She threw off his hand because she was afraid if she didn’t, she’d place it somewhere else on her body. “Let’s get something straight right now. I don’t like to be told what to do.”

Cullen laughed, one long sound but to Summer it was mirthless. “I’ve already gathered that. It doesn’t change what I said. I can’t let you do anything to harm yourself, ever. I just can’t. So, please, Summer, won’t you go back to bed?”

He sounded so reasonable. She felt like stomping her foot.

Listen to him.

Now her wolf decided to speak to her?

He’s our mate. We will take care of him, but right now let him take care of us.

She turned on her heel and walked back to the bed. As she climbed in, she felt a little bit like a disobedient child who finally decided to do what her parents wanted. “So you’re some sort of expert on the subject? Knowing what a person needs to do on the night after their parents die?”

He twisted his t-shirt in his hands. “Not an expert. When my parents were killed it was different. There was no time to rest or grieve.”

Summer’s head swirled. “Your parents are dead?”

“Look, I don’t even know why I brought it up. I’ll leave you alone now.” But Summer noticed that Cullen didn’t budge from where he stood.

She jumped up and let her eyes wander from the top of Cullen’s head to his feet. To her, he was everything a man should be. She swallowed. “Tell me.” She needed to know him as well as he knew her.

Without a word, Cullen closed the space between them and gently pushed her down to sit on the bed. She loved the feel of his body so close to hers. She wanted to reach up, pull his head down, and kiss him. But since Cullen hadn’t deepened the kiss she’d given him earlier, she wasn’t sure he was interested in her that way.

“If I tell you about my parents, will you then at least try to go to sleep?”

She screamed inside. “Stop bartering with me. I’m not a child you have to bribe to go to the dentist.”

He closed his eyes like they pained him. “I haven’t talked about this in two-hundred fifty years.”

“I’m sure once you get started it will just rush over your tongue. It’ll be like learning to walk, you never really forget how to do it.”

Internally, her wolf rolled her eyes. Summer couldn’t see the action but she could feel it. It felt like part of her own eyes moved.

That was dumb. If you can’t think of anything more clever to say than that, shift and I’ll communicate with him.

Even her wolf thought she was pathetic.

“All right.” Cullen sat on the bed next to her and lay down, his head braced on his arm against the headboard. He patted the bed next to him. Summer gladly joined him. Her fingers drummed lightly on her leg, and she tried to keep from shaking.

She deeply inhaled Cullen’s spicy male scent and tried to ignore that her panties got damp. Her wolf prowled around inside, desperate for Cullen’s touch. If she could smell him, he could smell her which meant he knew she’d just gotten wet. Heat rose in her cheeks.

He cleared his throat and reached over to take her hand in his. He gently stroked the top of her hand with his thumb. The simple act sent shivers up and down her spine. Cullen stared straight ahead.

“Things were different when I was a child. We didn’t live as we do now. My father was a fisherman. I didn’t even know we were wolf-shifters. I thought I was human. Had no reason to think otherwise.” He stopped speaking abruptly and pulled his hand away.

“Go on. So you thought you were human.” Summer had thought she was human too. Until Theo Kane arrived at her dorm room with her mother in tow and dragged her up to the island. That’s when she discovered she was really half wolf-shifter and everything she thought she knew about her life was false.

“My father and mother would go off sometimes for a week or two. They would leave us with my crazy grandfather. He would mutter about wolves and spells. It all seemed like make-believe stories.”

Summer felt herself being drawn into Cullen’s story. She could almost see him as a little boy, listening to his grandfather spin tales. “Us?”

“I had three younger sisters. Mary, Eloise, and the baby, Agatha.”

Summer moved so she could look at him more closely. “Did they all grow up, mate, and start aging?”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Ah, so you do know something about your wolf heritage. I thought you claimed ignorance on all levels?”

“I picked that up from my Mom before I forbade her to tell me anymore.” The memory slid into Summer’s consciousness. She had been twenty years old and terrified. Her mother had tried to explain to her about her wolf-shifter heritage and she refused to listen to it. Summer had stormed out of the house, dropped out of college, and moved out on her own. She’d never let her mother explain anything else about wolf-shifting or magical spells.

A tear slipped down her cheek. Before she could wipe it, Cullen’s calloused thumb brushed the moisture away.

Her voice shook. “So, yes, I know a wolf-shifter remains eternally thirty years old until they find and mate their soul mate at which point they start to age again. So they either wait eternally for their other half, or they commit ritual suicide to end their lives when they’ve had enough.”

Cullen nodded. “That’s right.”

“Did they?” She wanted to move on, hear his story, not focus on anything to do with her.

Cullen shook his head. “What?”

“Did Mary, Eloise, and Agatha grow up, mate, and give you a ton of great-great-great nieces and nephews running around or are they still waiting?”

“No to both scenarios.” Cullen’s voice lowered two octaves. “When I was ten my father came to me and told me I had to go away from home. That some men would be coming for me. He explained we were magical creatures, that we had been blessed with wolf-halves and it was time for me to join the pack and meet my wolf. It sounded like one of my grandfather’s crazy stories. I didn’t really believe it. But my mother started to get the house ready. It was a big deal that the royal family was coming to collect me personally. It was considered a sign of respect towards my father.”

“So we’re supposed to shift for the first time at ten?” Summer was intrigued. Why had she never let her mother explain any of this to her? All of the reasons seemed so remote now, so completely illegitimate.

“Thirteen, actually. But tradition held that the chosen youth would live with the royal for three years before their first shift. It established a sense of loyalty to the royal family so even if you lived hundreds of miles away you retained a sense of family with your Alpha and his family.”

“And that’s why everyone is still so loyal to Tristan to this day?”

“No. None of the current pack was alive back then. Michael and two of the Alpha guards are over two hundred years old, but things had changed by then. You see, my parents never got to see all their preparations come to fruition.”

Summer took a deep breath. She’d known his parents were killed, he’d said so, but she hadn’t expected his pain to mirror in her chest. His eyes glazed over into their wolf gaze. She reached out and touched the side of his face, desperately wanting his blue depths back. He didn’t blink.

His voice was a mix between man and wolf. “They came that night. Men with hoods over their faces on horseback. They knew what we were. A tall, burly man with red gloves woke me and dragged me outside. My parents were already out there, although I didn’t recognize them. They had shifted. My father was huge, his fur totally black. He fought back, attacked the horses. It was gallant, really. My mother defended the door to the house, or she tried to. By the time I got outside, she was mortally wounded. She was white, like you and your mother. It’s unusual, you know, to be totally white.”

“Why is it unusual?” She’d heard this but she didn’t understand why.

“It’s like having red hair. It’s just genetics. There aren’t that many pure white wolves. Most shifters are several shades of different colors. To be just one, it’s rare.”

She stroked the side of his face, ran her hands through his hair. She never should have made him talk about any of this. She felt his pain, deep inside her, as if it were her own. “Don’t tell me any more, Cullen. You don’t have to.”

“My mother looked up at me and whimpered. Then she died. They had torn her body to shreds with knives. She was missing one of her paws.” A shiver was the only outward sign he cared.

Even after almost three hundred years how did Cullen talk about this at all?

It’s his wolf. That’s why it’s in his eyes. We protect you. I tried to do that today when you saw your father, but you wouldn’t let me. Cullen doesn’t deny his. They just naturally co-exist. This would be too much for him, so his wolf takes some of the pain.

“Two more men came out holding the girls. Eloise and Agatha together. Mary, she was eight, she kicked and fought. But the two little ones just screamed. I tried to get to them, but the red-gloved man shoved a rusty knife into my stomach. Even then I didn’t want them to take my sisters. But I fell to my knees with the pain.”

“Okay, Cullen. You don’t have to relive this. I’m sorry. Please stop.” She wanted to comfort him but didn’t know how.

“My father turned around to see what had happened to me. One of the men on horseback cut off his head. They all kept chanting that we were abominations from god, spawns of the devil. I fell down on the ground. They figured me for dead, so they left me alone. One of the men held Agatha’s head in the bucket of water my mother used for the laundry. She was dead. Mary bit the man holding her. She would have been one feisty wolf. They dropped her and she ran. So with the same machete they had used to kill my father, a man on horseback chased her and took off her head. Eloise got away. She crawled over to me screaming. I could barely move, but I pulled the knife out of my gut.”

Summer could see it, could believe he did that. Ten years old, his blue eyes must have been huge on his face. She would bet he’d been scrawny with broad shoulders. She wasn’t sure why she could see him so clearly. But she was certain she was right.

“I took the knife they’d used on me. I crawled over to the man who’d carried me out. They were busy, laughing. One of them suggested they take Eloise back with them to dissect her after they killed her. I plunged the knife into his stomach. He screamed and went down. The others turned and saw me. Someone struck me with a knife in my side. The pain was so awful I fell down and blacked out. I never saw them kill Eloise.”

He blinked and looked at her for the first time since he’d started speaking. Shocking her, he reached out and cupped her cheek with his hand before he smiled.

How could he smile after what he’d just relived?

“How did you survive?”

“When I woke up, a woman stood over me. She sung a quiet tune and spoke words I didn’t know. I felt soothed and all of my pain was gone. She was our Alpha’s wife Lucinda, and she was a great healer. When they arrived I had been almost dead but she’d brought me back. She couldn’t save anyone else.”

Summer leaned over and kissed him on the cheek, thought she felt him shudder. “How long was it until you were okay?”

“I was never okay again. But I got through it—just as you will. I trained hard for three years with Kendrick and the others my age. We became very close, like brothers. When I finally shifted, Kendrick brought me out one night. There was a man there and even though I’d never seen his face before, I knew him. I could smell him. He was the man with the red gloves who had dragged me out of bed and stabbed me. They had him tied to a tree. Kendrick and his brothers released him. He ran, and I chased. Eventually, I caught him.”

She sat up and stared at him. “So you got vengeance, but you don’t want me to have any. How is that fair?”

“Because I know how that event changed me. It altered who I was even more than the death of my parents did. I don’t want to see that happen to you, Summer. You have the most beautiful soul. I wouldn’t want you to sully it with revenge.”

Summer opened her mouth to answer him when a huge boom filled the room. The cottage they were in started to shake.

Danger. Her wolf screamed for the shift. Cullen wrapped his arms around her rolled the two of them off the bed onto the floor. A moment later the shaking stopped.

Cullen jumped up and ran to the window.

“The Institute’s on fire.” As he ran for the door, he shifted into his wolf. Without thought, Summer followed him and assumed her wolf form as well. Cullen had been right. It was easy to shift after the first time. In fact, she hardly noticed she’d done it. It felt like riding a bike. She just knew what she was doing but she couldn’t get over how well she could hear and how sharp her sense of smell was. The wind was on her back, the grass beneath her feet, and she was a part of all of it.

The Institute was on fire, and Ashlee, Tristan, and the babies were in there. She wouldn’t lose all of her family in one day.

Chapter Six

Cullen ran hard towards the burning building. What the hell just happened? He turned around abruptly, checking to see that Summer was still behind him. Her white fur shone in the darkness like a beacon, and he would gladly follow it home if he could.

Keep going. I’m fine.

He loved that she could communicate telepathically now. Her voice in his head was like a caress of satin on his senses. It felt so intimate to communicate with her that way. Of course, it would probably be the only way they were ever going to be intimate, so he would take what he could get.

Cullen turned his attention back to the problem at hand as he rounded the corner and surveyed the scene in front of him. Flames tore through the Institute. It had only been rebuilt for two years ago and flawlessly done at that. Windows smashed open with the heat of fire reaching extraordinary levels. Black, thick smoke pooled from the open doorways and bright orange flames were visible through the destroyed windows.

Cullen could only hope everyone had gotten out.

He shifted into his human form and spun around. Summer had reached the clearing, still as a wolf. She sat, head raised, eyes wide as she stared at the blaze. She was safe. He would have preferred her to stayed back at his cabin, but he’d known it was a fruitless argument and had not brought it up

He hoped he didn’t live to regret not making her stay behind.

He quickly did a headcount. Cullen knew he was the only member of the pack who didn’t live in the newly built Institute. Twenty-seven others stood in the clearing staring at the blazing inferno, their mouth open in various states of horror.

Since the addition of Ashlee to their midst three years earlier there were a total of thirty-one shifters living on the island. Four were still missing. Cullen’s heart fell into his stomach as he realized the Alpha and his wife were among the missing. Who else? He whirled around again as Summer, who had shifted back to her human form, grabbed onto his arm. He made himself stare at her face but god did he want to have the time to admire her naked form. He swallowed and pushed his eyebrows down as he concentrated.

“Ashlee, Tristan and their children, plus Rex and Theo.” She’d somehow read his mind and known what information he needed. He rushed towards the front door, Summer at his heels.

He turned to face her as the approached the building, the heat almost unbearable from the outside of the building. It had to be nearly fatal in the interior.

“Stay here.” He hoped she would listen to orders.

She snorted. “Like hell.” So much for his brief inkling of hope.

He opened his mouth to retort as Rex and Ashlee stumbled through the front door. Rex held Ashlee up by her arm and Ashlee held her newest child, the baby Virginia, close to her chest. The child wailed and Cullen sighed with relief. If she could scream, she hadn’t inhaled too much of the deadly black smoke.

“Summer,” Ashlee gasped as Summer reached out to embrace her older sister. Rex let go of Ashlee’s arm and the two women almost fell over. Rex collapsed on the ground, Michael and Gabriel surrounded him.

Cullen rushed to Summer and her sister. “Ashlee are you hurt? What happened? Where is Tristan?” He watched as Summer reached out and took Virginia from Ashlee. She held the baby close up against her chest.

“They came for the children.” Ashlee gasped between words, struggled for air. She was going to need help and he was relieved to see Azriel approach with an oxygen tank.

“Who came for the children?” He needed information before he could let her rest.

“These creatures, I’ve never seen anything like them. I can’t describe it. Dark, creatures with wings. They broke through the windows of our suite.”

Flying demons. He’d not seen them in two hundred years. There was more to the death of his parents than he’d let Summer know. Looked like it was time to break his promise to Kendrick of secrecy. It didn’t make any sense that he’d kept quiet this long. Truth was, he just didn’t want to talk about it. These were stories he’d hoped to take to his grave. He was the only one left alive who knew them. Damn.

Ashlee continued to try to talk. “Tristan and Theo, they went after the creatures. One of them has Braden. Oh god,” Ashlee sobbed but her cries were subdued due to her lack of oxygen. She gripped onto her sister harder. “They took my baby, Summer. Those creatures took Braden. Tristan and Theo are still in there battling one of those things in the flames.”

Cullen’s eyes bore into Summer’s, he could see questions in hers. His mate was too intuitive by far. “Stay here.” Maybe this time she’d listen. “Take care of your sister.”

Before he could change his mind, he ran through the flames into the front door. He felt Gabriel behind him and he whirled around. The wall behind them wasn’t yet engulfed and Cullen pushed Gabriel into it. The acrid smell of the fire singed the inside of his nose.

“What do you think you’re doing, Prince Gabriel?” He knew the titles infuriated them but he needed to remind the man who he was and what his station in life required.

“My brothers are fighting and those creatures took my nephew, what the hell else do you think I’m doing? I wasn’t even in the building when it happened. I need to help.”

The flames around them made crackling noises and he could hear a groan from the steel which, Cullen suspected, started to melt from the heat. Cullen coughed once into his hand and restrained Gabriel again.

“They’re fine. If they’re fighting those creatures, they are protected from the flames. Don’t ask me to explain it to you right now. But you are part of the Royal Six and Tristan is your Alpha. You, Rex, Michael, and Azriel have to live through this. If Tristan and Rex perish it will be a great tragedy but one of you will have to be Alpha. The child is fine, for now. The creatures won’t kill him, at least not yet.” He yanked Gabriel from the wall and pushed him towards the front door. “Stay outside. I’m the only one who can fight them and win right now. If it is earthly possible, I will bring Tristan and Rex back alive.”

Gabriel nodded although Cullen could see defiance in his eyes. He waited a moment until he was certain Gabriel had followed orders before he turned and ran. He’d made it a few feet before he had to stop. The further he got into the building, the thicker the black smoke became. He needed to get low which made his decision to call the shift onto himself an easy one. For a moment white light engulfed him as his body took on his wolf shape.

Move fast. He hoped his wolf listened to him.

These are the creatures you and Kendrick eliminated two hundred years ago. How are they back?

If I had to guess, I would have to say Kendrick has brought them back.

His wolf made a harrumph noise. Bad wolf.

He is indeed.

The black smoke above their heads did nothing to improve Cullen’s sense of direction but at least he could smell the way. Tristan always smelled of the woods, most of the wolves on the island did, but he was Cullen’s Alpha, and Cullen felt as though he’d been genetically predesigned to always locate his Alpha, wherever the man was.

Cullen’s nose told him he was close. He rounded a corner into Rex’s part of the Institute. The doors were gone from their hinges and a bright blue light illuminated Rex’s bedroom. The blue light was one of the signature trademarks of the flying demons. If Tristan and Theo were still alive they’d be in there trying to get Braden back

As he entered the blue-lit room he saw that two of the flying demons floated in the room and one of them held Braden in his arms. The toddler wailed which brought relief to Cullen’s mind. He recalled suddenly that those held captive in the creatures’ arms were protected from the flames by whatever magic the demons possessed. Tristan and Theo each held onto the legs of the creatures. Cullen realized it was sheer force of will alone that allowed the two shifters to keep the hell-dimensioned entities from taking off into the sky.

He hadn’t seen flying demons in two centuries but they looked exactly the same. Black, scaled wings were the largest part of the creatures’ bodies spanning the length of the ceiling to the floor, almost eight feet. The un-winged part of the beast held a total height of no more than three feet from head to toe. Although it looked tiny, the creatures were as strong as anything Cullen had ever encountered. They could lift a dump truck. Not to mention its body was the most grotesque sight Cullen had ever seen in his entire lifetime.

Colored like a russet potato, the black scales on its wings were brown and slimy. He knew from personal experience that its face, a mixture between a lizard and a fish, melted every four minutes only to be re-grown moments later. The only time you could kill it was that very second before re-growth. That was the only moment it was vulnerable. But you still had to be careful, because one touch from a gland on the top of its hand and you would be permanently scarred by the acid it secreted. Not even a shifter could heal from that substance. He needed to make sure it didn’t end up on Braden’s skin.

Cullen leapt into the air, all four of his paws coming down on the demon who didn’t hold Braden.

Cullen! Tristan’s voice in his head.

Both of you on the other one. I’ll hold this one off until I can kill it. Just keep yours here. I can’t attack it the same way, it might harm Braden.

You know these creatures? Theo’s voice.

Cullen growled and tore at the neck portion of the spawn. He knew it wouldn’t kill it, but he needed to incapacitate it until its face disappeared then he could destroy it.

Working here. He snapped at Theo. He’d apologize to the royal later.

He tore, bit, and clobbered the creature. The demon swatted at Cullen but didn’t manage to touch him with his acid coated hands.

He needed to hang on long enough until the creature was forced to shed its face. From the twitching and grunting sounds he heard it start to make, he knew the face would be gone in a moment. Then he could tear it to pieces.

I want to destroy it. I want to see it die

Yes, so did Cullen. His wolf, usually the less blood thirsty of the two of them, craved the demon’s death as much as he did.

The creature let out a wail and Cullen attacked its head. He tore it into small pieces. When it stopped squirming beneath him, he knew he’d succeeded in eliminating it. He jumped off the carcass and spun around.

In the hallway behind them, he could hear the groans of the metal and the sounds of the fire that still raged in the rest of the building. As soon as he killed the second demon, and the creature’s magic disappeared from the room, they’d have to run like hell to escape the flames.

Cullen!

Tristan’s voice sounded desperate in his head. He whirled around. The demon had gained momentum and was up further in the air. Tristan and Theo screamed as they started to lose their grips on its legs.

Tristan, Theo—don’t let it touch you or Braden with the top side of its hands. They have an acid-secreting gland and it can burn in a way you’ll never recover from.

He’s getting away, Cullen, and he’s taking my son with him.

Tristan sounded desperate, not at all the calm, steadfast Alpha he’d come to know over the last three years. This was a father’s despair.

The creature lunged upwards one more time, pounding a hole in the ceiling and Tristan lost his grip. He fell to the floor with a thud. Theo grabbed harder onto the monster, getting his hands onto Braden as Cullen leaped onto the creature’s chest.

Braden threw his arms around his uncle and held on as Theo tugged on the creature. Cullen bit down on its leg to free the boy from his captor. The creature swung trying to get either of its attackers with his acid coated hand. Cullen whirled his wolf-head to the left when it came at him from the right. He was lucky. But, Cullen was horrified to see that Theo was not.

Theo let out a yell of pure agony and fell to the floor. He gripped the side of his face and rolled back and forth on the ground. The creature still had a grip on Braden but fortunately it held him with its palms. It would just take one slash with the topside of the hand and Braden was done for. A sudden thought struck him: those creatures wanted Braden alive, they’d been sent with instructions not to kill him. They were being far too careful for it to be anything else.

Cullen shifted out of his wolf form and grabbed Braden as Cullen let himself fall to the floor. It was a desperate move, but Cullen was not surprised it worked. The creature was already weakened so gravity and Cullen’s body weight succeeded in removing Braden from his grip.

He hit the floorboards hard, deliberately taking the fall on his back so he could keep Braden upright and unhurt. The wind knocked out of him, he was stunned for a moment, but conscious enough to see the flying demon take off to the sky.

Damn. They only had seconds to get out before the flames reached them. He had to get up. Braden screamed, now in the type of rage Cullen had only seen in young children

Finally free of the burden of the child on his chest, his lung capacity returned to him. He leapt up. Theo lay on the ground, unconscious, and Cullen could see the side of his face was blood red with layers of skin peeling away. They needed to get him out.

Cullen picked Theo up and swung him over his shoulder. He wouldn’t be crawling through the hallway as a wolf this time. He’d have to get through the fire on two legs.

He shot a glance over his shoulder and was relieved to find the Alpha right behind him. “Follow me.” He turned and ran towards the smoke.

Can you help me? He wasn’t used to asking his wolf for help but he didn’t want to die being a stubborn mule.

Let me in your eyes, I’ll direct you.

Cullen blinked and felt his wolf take over his sight. He sniffed the air. It was the best arrangement he could come up with. He had to stay in his two-legged form to carry Theo but he could see and smell as his wolf now.

He ran forward toward the black smoke and tried not to breathe. Several metal beams fell in front of him and he leaped into the air, barely making it over without burning himself.

Watch your step, my Alpha. It’s dangerous in here.

Cullen started to cough uncontrollably. His lungs burned but he didn’t have time to worry about that. He needed to get the prince out of the building, had to make sure his Alpha and the baby made it to safety, and even more importantly he had to get back to Summer.

He needed to see her look at him with kindness one more time before he told the pack the story behind how he knew about these creatures. Once he told his tale, he might never see anything but disgust in her eyes.

Chapter Seven

Summer exhaled the breath she didn’t know she held when Cullen emerged from the burning building. Ashlee slumped in Summer’s arms then pulled free of her embrace. She rushed towards Tristan, Virginia still in her arms, and threw one arm around Tristan and Braden while still gripping the baby in the other.

A tiny worm of jealousy snaked through Summer’s gut. She wanted to do the same with Cullen but they hadn’t gotten to that kind of level in their relationship. He’d probably scoff at her or worse yet, ignore her. Summer felt frozen to the ground. She needed to do something, she couldn’t just stay where she was.

She watched as Cullen laid Theo on the ground, then his body shook with the force of his cough. Summer blinked and her mind came back online. He was hurt.

She picked up one of the oxygen tanks, struggling with it as she ran towards him. It wasn’t until she got to him that she realized she had no idea how to use the thing. She knelt down and Cullen took the tank from her, slipping the mask onto his face. She tried not to notice that he was naked but it was next to impossible.

Sculptures could have created masterpieces based on Cullen’s physique. She blinked so she wouldn’t focus too much on his naked perfection.

She was also as nude as the day she was born and she really didn’t want to dwell on that. None of the shifters seemed at all bothered so it was obviously something they were used to. But not Summer. She would never feel comfortable baring it all in front of strangers.

Theo is very hurt.

His voice in her head made her heart stutter. It certainly was convenient considering the oxygen mask covered his face.

I can see that. Summer turned around and watched as Ashlee tended to him. I’m sure he’ll be fine. Ashlee is good at healing, right?

No. He will never heal. If he does not die from his injuries tonight, he will be forever scarred.

Cullen tried to stand up but fell back down.

“What do you think you’re doing? Don’t move.” She yelled out loud and it wasn’t until she heard the sound of her own voice that she even knew she had. She cleared her throat and looked around. Tristan’s eyes met her from across the clearing, but everyone else seemed preoccupied.

He’s wondering how long he can wait before he comes over here and demands answers from me. Cullen sounded tired.

Even with the oxygen mask on, Ashlee could see the concern on Cullen’s face. Little lines had formed next to his eyes. She reached out and smoothed them away and then gulped when she realized what she’d done.

Because you knew what those creatures were? The ones Ashlee saw?

Cullen took her hand in his and gave it a tight squeeze. Summer couldn’t help the small smile that formed on her face. She’d touched him and he hadn’t been upset about it.

Tristan may have me executed for this. In her mind Cullen’s voice was monotone, emotionless, as it had been when he told the story of his parents’ deaths. He’d be within his rights. I’ve kept this from him and before him, from Michael.

But why? No one was going to be executing Cullen. Not while she had breath in her body. They’d leave this stupid place and never return before she allowed it.

Because it was a terrible time in our pack’s history and I thought, or rather I hoped, since the demons were gone, no one ever needed to know about it.

So you’re motives weren’t malicious. Summer paused, unsure of how to approach the next question. Do you want to tell me what they were and how you know about them?

Cullen pulled the mask from his face, his eyes weary and tired. He shook his head. “No, but I suppose I should.”

“Cullen.” Tristan’s voice rang out like a bell, a pissed off bell, behind them. “Are you better now? Can you tell me what those things were that burned our home to the ground and why they came after my son?”

Summer put her hands on her hips. “Does he look like he’s better to you?”

Alpha! Summer’s wolf sounded terrified.

She shook her head. I don’t care.

Tristan’s eyes flared and she thought she heard him growl.

Lower your eyes, now. Her wolf pleaded with her for action. Summer begrudgingly obliged, but not before she shot Tristan a look that let him know what she thought of his antics. She didn’t know if Tristan could read eye hatred.

“I am well enough, my Alpha.” Was Summer mistaken or did she hear the slightest tinge of laughter in Cullen’s voice? She raised her gaze just high enough to catch his eye. They glimmered at her with an emotion Summer couldn’t identify that made butterflies move through her stomach. “But might we perhaps move this conversation elsewhere? The Institute is burning to the ground—again. It’s sure to draw attention from the mainland. I would suggest we go elsewhere, at least most of us, before that happens.”

Cullen pointed towards Tristan’s eyes. As Alpha of their pack, they were forever in wolf form. Summer realized Tristan must always have to cover his eyes when around regular humans. Tristan nodded and touched his eyes. “I lost my dark glasses in there.” He sighed, loudly which brought Ashlee and the children to his side. Ashlee wrapped her arms around Tristan’s waist and Summer felt a pang of longing.

Would she and Cullen ever have that kind of relationship? Was she foolish to even wish they could? Did they even have a relationship?

Cullen’s arm touched the small of her back and returned her to reality and out of her foolish daydreaming. Her parents were dead less than twenty-four hours, flying demons burned down The Institute, and she had to learn to handle and live with her wolf so Cullen would teach her how to enact revenge. There were lots of things she should be thinking about instead of Cullen and romance.

“Where did your mind go?” Cullen’s blue eyes bored into Summer’s, making her insides feel warm.

“Um…” Summer tried to think of something to say to Cullen but she couldn’t seem to help the all-consuming need to stare at Cullen’s sculpted form in the moonlight.

Her eyes felt dry, which she now knew meant they changed into their wolf form. She blinked to try to clear them but nothing happened. Her wolf eyes allowed her to see him so clearly. She took in a deep breath and realized she could decipher every aspect of his spicy scent. He smelled of dark roast coffee beans and apple cider. Mixed into his aroma were the trees, the fall breeze, and the woods at night. If it was possible, Summer thought she could smell the flavors of the moon itself on Cullen.

He is ours. It’s been enough time. Take him.

Her wolf sounded more dominant than Summer could ever remember hearing her before. Her pulse pounded in her ears.

“Summer?” Cullen’s eyes had gone wolf and his voice was low.

She looked around and noticed the others leaving the area. Where were they going? Did Cullen know the nature of her thoughts?

She stared at him. Damn. She could almost be certain he knew what she thought about. He could probably even smell her arousal. But instead of feeling embarrassed, Summer felt empowered.

Why did you never come for me, mate? Her voice sounded different to her own ears. Summer couldn’t tell who spoke, she or her wolf and she didn’t care. She paced around him in a circle. Her feet moved seemingly of their own volition.

What? Cullen’s voice sounded stunned, his head whipped around to stare at her. His eyebrows slanted downwards. It was a pretty good guess that she’d astonished him.

Why did you never come for me? Is it a hard question? What was there about me three years ago that you found so objectionable you opted to reject me?

“Summer, I think you’re confused.” The condescension in his voice made every hair on her body stand at attention. She could barely stand it. Moving forward, she shoved him hard. He actually took two steps backwards.

“Don’t talk to me like that.” She snarled at him. Somewhere inside she realized she wasn’t behaving in a reasonable manner. But screw that, he’d wanted her to embrace her wolf. Well, now he could meet her.

I never rejected you. This is insane. He took two steps back and looked down for a second. Was he actually being respectful or was he just trying to placate her?

I don’t know much about being a wolf. But I know what my wolf tells me. We both waited for you. For three years, I expected you to show up and you never did. That was your job, to come and get me. I was your mate.

Summer clenched her fists together to resist the urge to pound on him. He needed to know, to understand what that year had been like. She’d been thrown out of her house for dropping out of college to sing. She’d been completely abandoned by her mate. In the back of her mind, she knew that standing by a burning building was neither the time nor the place to have this long overdue conversation with him but everyone else had left.

She and Cullen were alone.

You are still my mate. Summer snorted at his remark.

Cullen paused and looked around at the ground. Finally, he stared at her and she could see his eyes had taken on a steel hardness of determination. I did come for you. I came to your house and your mother wouldn’t let me see you. She said you were twenty years old and too young for me. You had a life to lead, and she was sure you’d be back in school in a semester. She made me promise that I would leave you alone, completely alone, until you were twenty-five years old.

Cullen’s eyes looked wounded. The same little worry lines that had formed earlier were back around their edges but Summer felt none of the compulsion she’d earlier felt to smooth them or erase their existence.

And you listened to her? Did you ever stop to think what I might have wanted?

My relationship with your mother was always complicated. It might be fair to say it bordered on mutual abhorrence. He touched the top of his head with his hand as if he wanted to run his hands through hair that was too short for the act. I’ll admit to being nervous that if I didn’t agree to what she wanted, she could have soured you against me.

I don’t even know what I’m supposed to say to that. Some of her temper extinguished, Summer turned around and put some space between the two of them. Her eyes felt less dry, her wolf, after having said her peace, backed off.

“I broke my promise to her a couple of times.” His voice sounded hoarse and she turned around.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “What do you mean?”

He looked down. “I came and saw you sing every Thursday night for two months.”

Light rain started and she shivered. Her naked body was unused to the assault by the cold water, but she didn’t want to leave. The logical, unemotional part of her brain noted that the rain would put out the flames.

“I never smelled you, never knew you were there.” She shook her head. The situation was impossible—he was impossible.

“I took herbs to hide my scent, sat in the back of the club. It was called Tiny’s and it was in Greenwich Village. Most nights you wore a red, floor length skirt and a black halter tank top that showed way too much cleavage. It was hell. I could see you up there but I couldn’t touch you, couldn’t even talk to you.”

A sob started in Summer’s throat and she swallowed it. “You were the only person I know who came. My parents never did. It was their protest of my life choices. They thought I’d never make it, that I wasted my time. Ashlee cut me off completely. They were right. After that gig I never got another one. I started waiting tables and doing temp jobs to pay my rent.”

Cullen shook his head. “Your father was proud of you. He wrote me an e-mail once and told me he’d never known anyone with more gumption than you. With all the odds stacked against you, and you never gave up.”

She finally gave into the tears. As they poured down her face, she crouched on the ground. It was too much. She couldn’t take anymore. Cullen’s arms came around her and held her tight against his solid frame.

“Is that what you thought? That I rejected you too?” His voice was low and tight. His cheek pressed awkwardly against her head.

She nodded and sniffed. “You’re the great Cullen Murphy. The most respected member of the pack, the one everyone relies on to get the job done. What would you want with a girl who doesn’t even acknowledge her wolf?”

Cullen took her face in his hands and moved it until she met his eyes. Only inches apart Summer could feel his breath on her face. “That’s just the thing. I’m not that person or that wolf. You saw me for who I am. A killer. That’s what I am, what I’ve always been. I can’t saddle you with me. If we mate, you’ll always be with me. I don’t know what happens during the mating ritual, it’s a secret the mated pair takes with them to the grave, but I know that it connects them somehow. I can’t do that to you.” His grip on her tightened. “I saw you on that stage. You’re an angel.”

“Cullen, you’re such an idiot.” Summer shook her head.

“What?”

“You think fate would give you a mate who couldn’t handle you? I’m not an angel—far from it. I crave the death of those who killed my family. I want revenge. In general, I don’t get along well with people. I love my sister, but I find her holier-than-thou attitude repugnant. I hate it here. I say what I think, and I’m hardly ever polite.” She paused, really wanting him to hear her. “I may never be as great a wolf as you are, Cullen, but as a woman, I think you’ve met your match. And you’d better be prepared.”

She pulled his mouth to hers and kissed him hard. She wanted Cullen Murphy and she would have him. Whether he liked it or not.

Chapter Eight

Screw his better intentions, this time he would not pull away from her embrace. Maybe she was right. Maybe fate had chosen her for him because she could handle his darkness. He’d have to hope that was the case because the longer he kissed Summer the more he didn’t ever want to stop. Everyone who waited for them at the newly built hotel would have to learn the meaning of the word patience or they could all go to hell.

Our mate. I’m so pleased.

His wolf panted inside of him and he resisted the urge to pant on the outside. Summer hadn’t really embraced her wolf yet, she might find that odd.

All coherent thought rushed from Cullen’s mind as Summer pushed her body closer to his. With a grunt, he manipulated their bodies until he lay on top of her, her back pillowed on the soft grass. Somehow this seemed right to him. He’d always felt most comfortable outside, almost as if he was more part of nature than anything else.

Summer pulled her mouth from his and grinned in a way that could only be called sultry. “I don’t know what’s coming, Cullen. But with every part of me I know I want to be with you. Whatever it is, we’ll be better if we’re together.”

She might be wrong, but he was past the point of arguing. He pressed his lips to hers one more time before he decided to give up all his self-doubt and make love to his mate—the woman he’d waited three hundred years for, the one fate had picked out for him. He didn’t deserve to be happy, but he would make sure Summer was for the remainder of their days together.

Summer made a small noise of satisfaction in her throat when he kissed her and he felt momentary relief. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done this but he was glad she seemed to be enjoying his ministrations. She pulled her mouth away in order to kiss his neck. She was so gentle in her caresses, so tender, the need to do this slowly, do it right, filled him inside, and broke through the crazed sexual lust that had owned him for a moment. He pulled away, balancing himself on his hands as he leaned back on his knees to admire her perfection.

“Summer, I’ve been waiting for you my whole life. You are a vision of perfection. Beyond anything I could have ever dreamed.”

He was rewarded by the blush that crept to her cheeks and the gleam in her eyes before she averted her gaze.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” He caressed the side of her face with his hands. He would find a way to stop if she wanted him to.

“I’ve only done this a few times. Before I met you, it was always just kind of bland. After I met you, I couldn’t even stand to have other men touch me on the arm let alone anywhere else. I’m worried that I won’t measure up to your expectations.”

Cullen shook his head. “I have no expectations and believe me, it’s been a very long time since I’ve done this at all. I’m probably the one who is not going to get it right tonight.”

“So then we’ll practice?” The glint was back in her aquamarine eyes.

He couldn’t help the laugh that came to him. His heart pounded with desire and an emotion he was unfamiliar with but he might call hope. “As much and as often as you want.”

His hands shook as he reached out to caress her torso. She shivered and his body temperature raised another two degrees. He could feel the heat between them and he was afraid he might burn them both. Her breasts were small and firm. Her nipples hard and pink sat atop and he promised himself he’d pay them their due in a moment.

Moving of their own volition, his hands reached out and cupped both her breasts while his body moved to straddle hers more efficiently. Her skin was softer than any silk he’d ever felt on any of his travels and he wanted to move down and lick it. But he knew there’d be time for that later. For now, he wanted to move slowly.

She reached up and pulled his neck down until he kissed her. Each kiss getting hotter than the one before it. She moved beneath him restlessly, squirming. Each little movement sent electricity to his groin, which begged for him to hurry up and relieve the mounting pressure. He did his best to ignore its demands.

He wanted to memorize every part of her body with his hands and mouth. He leaned down to kiss a line down her chest, stopping again to fondle her breasts. She moaned and he squeezed them harder before he followed the path he’d begun and arrived with his mouth on her belly button. He spent a few minutes tonguing the small indent as his hands pushed and caressed her flat abdominal muscles and round hips. Summer might be small in stature, but as far as he was concerned, she was curved in all the right places.

“Cullen, please.” Summer’s small movements became more directed. Her hips finding and pushing against his groin.

“What’s your hurry? I want to know every part of you.”

He moved his hands to her breasts as his eyes roamed down her body until they reached the v-shaped patch of hair that covered her core. He stroked and played with the soft hair, carefully avoiding actually touching the tender flesh it covered.

“Are you teasing me?” Her eyes sparkled even as her voice shook.

“I am. But it’s only fair play since you can’t be in the room with me without me getting completely hard.”

He kept his fingers gentle and slow. “I wish you could see what you look like to me.”

“You won’t be seeing anything in a moment if you don’t stop torturing me because I will gouge out your eyes.”

That was his Summer, feisty and forthright. She was a woman who knew what she wanted and she was right, she was every bit his match. If it was possible, she might have been even more stubborn than he was.

“Okay, enough.” Summer grabbed his hard length in her hands. He thought he might spill his seed right there. “Two can play the teasing game.”

Was this really happening to him? Was this woman really being playful with him? His throat felt tight. He could have cried when she gave one long hard stroke up his shaft. “Summer, don’t do that again. Damn, it feels really good, baby, but I don’t know if I can hold out.”

Summer raised one eyebrow at him. “Is that to be my nickname then, baby?” She said the last word with a bit of a sneer. He groaned.

“Don’t like it?” She shook her head in response.

“How about goddess? Summer, my goddess, please don’t do that again.”

She nodded and giggled. “Okay, that one is better.” Finally, to his relief, she removed her hand from him and he felt like maybe he might actually make it inside of her before release.

He pushed down on top of her, their bodies entwined so it was hard for him to tell where she began and he ended. In one swift motion, he entered her, pleased beyond reason when she cried out in delight. She wrapped her legs around him and pulled him in tighter. But, gods, she was flexible.

If he’d thought the heat between them was intense before, it was nothing compared to the molten lava intensity he found inside of Summer. He closed his eyes for a second to regain control so he didn’t embarrass himself and ruin it by ending too quickly. Feeling safer, he pushed in and out of Summer’s hot womanly embrace. Every noise and movement she made drove him on. He could feel completion coming and he was desperate to hold it off. Summer was so tight, so warm, so welcoming. Had anything in his life ever prepared him for this?

She was his mate. She would always be his. He had waited three hundred years for this very moment and he would treasure every breath she took for the rest of their lives. Beneath him, Summer cried out his name as he felt her release take her. Her face in rapture was the most exquisite sight he’d ever seen. He followed her into oblivion.

Cullen wasn’t sure how long his brain collapsed. When he came to he realized there was a change happening to him. He looked up. He and Summer were both bathed in a warm white light. She reached up and stroked his face.

“What’s going to happen now?”

This was mating. The part that none of their kind ever discussed because it was so private, so eternal. Truthfully, Cullen had no idea.

“That’s okay, we’ll figure it out together.”

Had he spoken his thoughts out loud? How had she heard that?

“Because I can hear you in my head. I bet you could hear me too if you calmed down.” He laughed. She was right. A reassured sensation filled his body and he was overcome with the feeling that just was Summer. Pieces of Summer’s uniqueness, parts that could only be called her soul entered his body and lodged themselves in his very core. He knew he’d always be able to find them now.

For the first time in his life, he felt complete. As if he’d always been hollow and just now realized it as he filled with Summer’s warmth. He could see each piece of her clearly as it opened itself up to him through a translucent cord he could see but not touch. They flowed to each other through it, connected as strongly as if it had been made out of steel. Honesty—Summer was practically encoded with the inability to tell a lie. She was truthful from her head to her toes. Its color shone a bright orange, the kind you saw on small children at Halloween. Loyalty, trust, protectiveness—they each had their own colors wrapped around thousands more as the depths of who Summer was plunged into him with loving completion.

Finally, the last and thickest cord attached itself to him. He could see Summer was in love with him, had been since she’d seen him at the age of twenty. Even as her self-doubts and misunderstandings filled her, she hadn’t lost that love. It was like a thick steel rope that tied her to him. Not breakable or changeable but secure and unerring.

He was suddenly acutely aware that she must also be receiving his soul. Self-loathing washed over him and he closed his eyes for a moment. She’d given him all of the most beautiful gifts in the world, and he’d sent her over trash and destruction. He opened his mouth to speak but she covered it with her hand.

“I can see all of you now, Cullen. Not a bad part in there. I know you’re filled with unnecessary self-doubt. You think you’re not as good as you are. But I can see clearly. I have you inside of me. There’s no part of you that I would trade.”

Because he had to, he leaned down to kiss her as they floated together in the white light that was their love for each other.

“I haven’t lived three hundred years, Cullen. But I’ve waited for you my whole life too.”

No words could have sounded sweeter to him.

* * *

“So this is the hotel? Or is it a spa?” Cullen looked down at his mate and ran his hands through her hair for the hundredth time since they’d mated. She was dressed, much as he wished it was otherwise. She wore a pair of his sweatpants that she practically swam in and a plain white tee-shirt. In his life he’d never seen a more beautiful site.

Cullen laughed. “It’s both. The idea was that your father and some of his compatriots would offer their services here for basic plastic surgeries and luxury recoveries. It’s also a hotel. This is Maine. When it opens, people will come here to both undergo surgery and recuperate from it while they drink expensive cocktails. Or people may want to stay here while they ski in the winter, look at the leaves in the fall, hike in the spring, and canoe in the summer. Ashlee feels that between the staff we will need to help run the place and the vacations and surgeries we should be able to bring a large amount of our pack home. The others we’ll find a way to find.”

Summer shrugged. “Not my department. I can’t possibly imagine running a luxury hotel.” She paused for a second. “How is she going to make sure the right people see it?”

Cullen raised one eyebrow. “She and Tristan have concocted some way to place spells on the ads so they will feel absolutely compelled to come here whether they want to or not.”

“You sound skeptical.”

“At least she’s trying. But I will reserve judgment until I see if it works.”

He looked around the hotel that was supposed to save the pack. It was finally complete, although now that the Institute would need to be rebuilt, the plan would be delayed again. Truthfully, Cullen wished they’d come up with a new name. Kendrick had taken the name and used it in Mexico, named his evil laboratory ‘The Institute’ In mockery of the Westervelt home. Yes, it was time to move on from things of the past.

Maybe they’d all have to move into the hotel now. It was fortuitous that they weren’t due to open for another six months. Not Cullen’s problem. He’d always lived apart in his cabin and preferred it that way, but maybe he should start paying more attention.

The lobby was a mixture of greens and copper tones, with some slight touches of pink Ashlee and Summer’s mother had once called ‘accents.’ Whatever that meant. The pack was spread out in a circle. Theo was not there and Ashlee was also absent, as were the children. Tristan stood by the long winding staircase that led to the rooms above with his arms crossed. His face told Cullen he was mad. This wasn’t a surprise. Tristan didn’t like to be kept waiting, and he and Summer had been gone a long time.

Cullen felt his neck get flushed with embarrassment. He hoped it didn’t reach his face.

Tristan studied the two of them for a moment. His eyes moved back and forth from one to the other. Did his Alpha abilities mean he could see that he and Summer were now mated?

Tristan cleared his throat and Cullen noted his eyes were less hostile. “Thanks for finally joining us. Must have been a very important … conversation you two had.”

Gabriel opened his mouth but Tristan silenced him by raising his hand. Evidently, Tristan was going to leave the reason for their lateness alone. Cullen would be eternally grateful for that gesture.

Cullen moved to take his usual place in the circle, just to the left of the Royals. Twenty-nine sets of eyes watched him walk. For the first time in his life, he didn’t join the circle alone. Summer, in a gesture meant to garner notice, grabbed his hand and walked next to him. He watched as her eyes challenged anyone in the room to ask them where they’d been.

No one spoke a word.

“How is Prince Theo? Does he live?” He’d not thought one second about the fallen prince during the past few hours. Even though he knew he should feel badly about that, and without a doubt did care what happened to him, he didn’t feel the least bit sorry that he’d been otherwise focused.

“He fares very poorly.” Tristan matched Cullen’s formal speech. Most of the pack did that without even realizing. They’d all lived a very long time, seen dialects and customs change so frequently, they could speak almost any way they wanted. “We were hoping you might be able to help Ashlee and tell her what to do for him since you seem to have greater knowledge of these things.”

“Only luck and time can help Theo now. No ministrations of ours will save his life. Should he live, and I hope deeply that he does, he will never fully recover. He will always look burned where the creature touched him.” The grumbles that filled the room made his spine stiffen. He was always the bearer of bad news, always the messenger they wanted to kill.

“I am very sorry to hear that.” Tristan looked down. “My brother lays upstairs near death, struck down by a creature that attempted to kidnap my son and burned down my home. My wife is hysterical, shaken. I have never seen such things before nor read about them in myth. Yet, you Cullen, you knew what to do about them as if you were very familiar with them.”

Cullen nodded. “I am, my Alpha.”

“So tell me what the goddamn things are, why they came after Braden, and then you can explain why you never told me about them before.” Tristan had raised his voice so loud that some of the pack had taken subservient positions in their body language and gazes. But not Cullen, he knew better. Tristan wouldn’t take or believe that kind of behavior from him.

“They are called Flying Demons. I know how to kill them because I have before, unfortunately many times. I cannot know, but I’m reasonably certain, that they came after Braden because Kendrick sent them for him.” He paused.

“And?” Tristan prompted.

“Give him a minute.” Summer’s voice was hard. Cullen looked over at her. The blues of her eyes flared in anger. He could practically read her thoughts. She didn’t like the way Tristan handled her mate.

Not wanting to give Tristan a chance to respond to her, he finished his thought. “I didn’t tell you because I thought the problem long gone. Or rather I hoped it was and I thought it an unnecessary conversation.”

When Tristan finally spoke, his voice was deceptively calm. But Cullen had known him since he was a child and knew his calm was only a façade to hide the fury within. “You thought it at unnecessary conversation?”

He nodded. “I did.”

“You do realize that withholding information from the Alpha of this pack is punishable by death?” Tristan stepped forward, his wolf eyes furious and cold.

“I would beg for mercy, my Alpha. Not for me but for the sake of my mate who would also be condemned in such an action. She is your wife’s sister.” Saying the words was not as difficult for Cullen as he thought they would be. In his life he’d never used the word beg, but for Summer evidently it was easy.

“That’s enough.” Summer’s voice was as loud as Tristan’s had been moments earlier. All eyes were on her. “I’ve had as much as I’m going to take of this male display of testosterone. This has nothing to do with your wolves, only your egos. Ashlee might be content to watch you do it, but I am not.”

Tristan raised an eyebrow at Summer. “You have something you wish to add?”

She nodded. “I do. If Cullen did anything, it was mistakenly trying to protect the members of the pack from something he thought they couldn’t handle. I’m sure he can explain himself. But more importantly, Kendrick has the creatures and he sent them here. Its Kendrick we need to be focused on.”

When Cullen spoke, his voice was soft. “Do you have a plan for doing that?” He didn’t say ‘my love’ but Summer’s eyes shone like he had.

“I do.” She smiled. “Cullen is going to pretend to defect. He’s going to get in there and then he and I are going to kill Kendrick and Claudius and be rid of this whole mess once and for all.”

He was going to do what? He gaped at his mate, the love of his life, and knew he was in big trouble.

Chapter Nine

“What do you want him to do?” Tristan’s eyes bulged out of his head.

Summer took a step towards him. “Look, Kendrick and Claudius have done some serious things to me, to you, to all of you.” She turned; the pack’s eyes followed her as she moved. As much as she loved performing, public speaking was a much different matter. But she could feel Cullen’s self-confidence inside of her. You don’t care what they think of you, let them look, his soul seemed to be saying to her.

“If I understand this correctly, thirty-three years ago, Kendrick, your former Alpha and the father of Tristan and the Royal Six, came to you as a pack and wanted you to consent to being experimented on by the man who killed my parents, Claudius Brouseax.” She looked at Cullen for confirmation and he nodded. “You guys refused. So, to try to force your compliance, he found himself a witch who bespelled the mated male members of the pack to kill their mates.”

“That’s right.” Tristan interrupted her. “The men killed their mates. Afterwards, they awoke from their trance, realized what they’d done and then committed ritual suicide.”

“It’s part of the mating bond, I get that now. One-half of the pair cannot live a full life without their other half. The compulsion to end one’s existence and meet their other half in the next life would be almost impossible to resist. What I don’t understand is exactly why Kendrick thought this would make all of you want to be experimented on.”

Tristan shook his head. “I’ve never really understood it myself.”

Cullen cleared his throat. “I might. I know how his mind works. He must have figured he’d never get the consent of the whole pack. Mated men are stronger, more sure of themselves. By eliminating them from the equation, he had a pack of mostly younger, less secure members. He thought he could manipulate them by threatening to kill their future mates.”

Next to Tristan, Gabriel nodded. “But he didn’t count on our mother.”

Cullen laughed, his eyes shone brightly as he looked at Summer. “That’s right. Mary Jo did the unthinkable and betrayed her mate. She took the unmated females away in the middle of the night and cast a spell so no one could find them. Leaving Kendrick with thirty, angry, grieving young men who rose up against him instead of caving in. But we were all left alone without any women and no idea how to get them back.”

Summer knew this wasn’t entirely true. There had been two aunts who had suffered through the agony of being without their mates for thirty years to help keep the pack alive. They had transferred all of their power and wisdom to Ashlee before they committed suicide three years ago. But she had never met them and she was so sick of listening to the noble deeds of those who had passed that she thought she might gag on the boredom.

Not to mention that she wasn’t here to rehash the great love story of Tristan and Ashlee. She had her own future to think about now.

A future that would never include reconciling with her parents. That thought hit her mind like a flamethrower and for a moment she couldn’t breathe because of the heat that threatened to destroy her. Cullen put his hand gently on her arm and she felt his cooling presence within her soul.

When she could finally speak around the lump that formed in her throat, she continued. “Here’s my plan. Since my Cullen was Kendrick’s right hand man until the betrayal, I suggest he goes down to Mexico and pretends he hates you, hates this place, and he hates how the pack has changed.” She focused on Tristan. “He tells Kendrick that you’re a weak Alpha and that the pack is disintegrating under your leadership.” Summer saw anger flare in Tristan’s eyes. She decided she better hurry up and finish explaining her plan before Tristan exploded. “He gets Kendrick to take him in. Then he breaks me into the place, and we kill Claudius and Kendrick. No more demons. No more attempted deaths. We open the hotel free and clear of maniacal plots and mad scientists.”

That’s what her parents would have wanted. Summer couldn’t undo what had happened with her parents. There was no way to make any of that right. But she could finish the plans they laid out and ensure nothing bad ever happened again.

“What about all of the sick wolves they’ve created down there?” Azriel, the quietest of the brothers, asked. “None of this was their fault. They’re mental patients he’s abused. We need to do something for them.”

Summer shrugged. “I’ll set fire to the place before we leave. They won’t be able to hurt anybody.” She’d seen those mental patients in action. One of them had tried to rape her. Maybe, if she was given enough time, she would find her compassion again but for the moment she had none.

Azriel’s eyes got wide. “I didn’t mean you should kill them. I thought we could get them some help.” Summer rolled her eyes and then wished she hadn’t. The others didn’t need to know how bloodthirsty she felt. Az turned to Cullen. “Wow, she really is perfect for you.”

“Oh, I’m much meaner than he is.” Some low laughter met her statement and Summer tried to smile too. They all thought they knew Cullen so well but they didn’t. Next to her, he was a giant teddy bear.

Gabriel nodded his head and looked at Tristan. “It could work.”

She narrowed her eyes at the word could. “No. It will work.” Had she ever been this sure of herself before? She almost grinned at the thought. It was Cullen’s soul inside of her. Summer looked over at him expecting him to agree. The look on his face had her quietly gasping for air. He didn’t seem happy. In fact, the way his eyes flared and the strong, obvious bulging pulse in his neck told her he was downright furious.

“I didn’t say I would do it.” Cullen spoke to Tristan but stared at Summer. She gulped. His eyes flashed. What was his problem? It was a good plan. They needed to be proactive. It was imperative that they take the fight to Kendrick and stop letting him determine the rules of the game.

He won’t place us in danger. He’ll never agree to this. Her wolf, who had been contentedly quiet since the mating ceremony, spoke up to explain Cullen’s behavior. What did it say about Summer that she needed to rely on her four legged companion to understand her mate’s point of view?

“Gabriel can come with me. But not Summer. I won’t take my mate into danger.” Cullen’s eyes were all business, he looked hard, scary—the man she’d been fearful of, not the gentle lover whose soul she held with her own. Even like this she could feel her love for him swell up inside of her. The mating bond was such a funny thing. Cullen had waited three hundred years to find her. Fate had determined that he should live centuries alone before she came into his life. It was as if the universe knew who could love him perfectly. Summer felt grateful for his patience and endurance. She knew she’d love him forever, even when he acted like a mean, pompous jerk.

“I’m not staying here. If you leave me, I’ll follow on my own. If you send me back, I’ll just escape again.” She wasn’t lying or exaggerating. There was no way in hell he was going to leave her behind. Her plan required both of them. He glared at her but she glared right back.

Tristan turned to Gabriel who nodded. “All three of you will do this. Cullen will work out who goes in and who doesn’t but I think Summer is right. I think you’re going to need her on this.”

Cullen swore and Summer smiled. He spun around. “You’ll stay at a hotel in Cancun or I will lock you in the car.”

“Like hell I will.” Her eyes blazed. She could match him in this. He needed her, whether he knew it or not, and he needed someone to stand up to him. It was important that someone remind Cullen he wasn’t invincible and he wasn’t always in charge.

Cullen closed his eyes for a second. Summer didn’t want to imagine the argument he was having with his wolf. She knew his furry creature was on her side.

He is. But I’m not sure he should be.

Why is that? Summer felt incredulous. Her own wolf sided with Cullen?

Because.

That’s just plain ridiculous. I’m not going to be a liability to Cullen. Summer crossed her arms over her chest. A strange thought filled her mind. Can you communicate with Cullen’s wolf without my knowing it? Do the two of you have your own conversations?

Don’t be stupid. Summer’s wolf snorted.

Then how do you know he’s on my side?

Because I’m intuitive and I pay attention to behavior. Cullen would never indulge you on this by himself. His softer side comes from his other half.

Cullen sighed and Summer guessed he was finished with his internal discussion. When he spoke it was through gritted teeth. “Fine.” But Summer knew she hadn’t won the argument, he was just through disagreeing with her in front of the pack.

“Now,” Tristan sighed loudly. “Perhaps before it is lunchtime, you could tell us about the flying demons so we know how to fight them if they come back while you’re in Mexico pretending to betray us.” Summer didn’t like the way Tristan said the word pretending, as if it was possible Cullen might really do such a thing. For a second she imagined herself gouging out his eyes. Cullen’s voice brought her back to reality.

“They shed their faces every few minutes. During that time, they are vulnerable. Any other time, they’re vicious, deadly creatures. As Prince Theo found out.”

Tristan nodded. “And you know this how?”

“Do you know the story of how my parents were killed?”

Gabriel shook his head and snorted. “We’re talking about demons here, Cullen. Can we stick to that please?”

Tristan shook his head, ignoring Gabriel’s remark, and anger simmered in Summer’s stomach. Not one of his pack mates had ever taken the time to really know Cullen. As her beloved told the story of his parents’ murders and his coming to the pack, Summer took the time to watch the way he conducted himself. The pack members thought of Cullen as being akin to the bogeyman. Because she owned his soul, she knew how this hurt him. He hadn’t liked being the pack enforcer; Kendrick had used him that way.

He reached the end of the story, how he had chased down and killed his parent’s murderers and Tristan asked a question it hadn’t occurred to Summer to ask.

“How did my father get a hold of the men?”

“They all belonged to a group called ‘The Missionaries of God.’ Their mission, or so they claimed, was to rid the earth of so-called creatures of Satan. That included shifters, obviously those of the wolf variety, and all kinds as well.” Slight murmurs around the room told Summer she hadn’t been the only one to not know there were other kinds of shifters out there. “Witches—not all of them are as bad as the one who cast a spell on us thirty years ago. Wizards—slightly different from a witch. Vampires—you mostly find them hidden in caves and old European crypts. And skinwalkers—you’ll find them in the North American Southwest. The ‘Missionaries of God’ basically wiped out the vampires and the wizard population in Europe. Your grandfather, the Alpha at the time, wasn’t going to let that happen to us.” Summer watched Cullen gulp.

“And?” Tristan’s voice struck out like a sword, cutting through Cullen’s pause.

“So he told Kendrick to take care of it. I was only eleven, I hadn’t even shifted yet. But I remember them pouring through book after book on mystical endeavors. The women wanted nothing to do with it. I didn’t know it at the time, but they accidentally raised some particular demons. Kendrick thought one would be enough. But they come up in pairs. He raised them and he used them to track down and kill all the members of ‘The Missionaries.’”

“Bet they weren’t as easy to control as my father would have liked.” Gabriel scoffed.

“Exactly.” Cullen nodded. “First there were two, eventually there were two hundred. It was a disaster.”

“And yet the pack still let him be Alpha?” Summer’s voice sounded strained. She could feel the emotion radiating from Cullen.

“They never knew about the demons because I figured out how to kill them and eliminated them for Kendrick. I assumed they’d be gone forever but Kendrick must have raised them again.” Cullen looked at the floor.

“And that’s how you became the enforcer? Because you were the only one smart enough to figure out how to kill the creatures and were loyal enough to never tell the pack what Kendrick had done.” Tristan’s voice was soft, his eyes kind. Summer didn’t have to look at Cullen to know he wouldn’t like pity.

“They killed my family. I was grateful to him. I felt he was the only one with the guts to do what needed to be done.” Cullen paused. “I was very young.”

“Is there anything else I need to know?”

“A multitude of things.” Cullen laughed, but it was not joyful.

“Well?”

“There’s another wolf shifter pack living, I believe in New Orleans and I think they’re still in possession of your sister.”

“My what?” Tristan’s roar could have woken the dead and Summer couldn’t help but laugh out loud. Before long she’d be hysterical. Her mate really knew how to put on a show. Evidently she wasn’t the only one interested in the theater.

Cullen’s eyes glowed as they looked at her. He knew exactly what he’d done. Now everyone was going to be totally focused on the bombshell he’d just dropped. A sister? He’d just freed himself to make all his own plans as Tristan would be completely busy elsewhere.

Chapter Ten

Cullen’s consciousnesses returned and it felt like he’d been hit by a Mack-truck going sixty miles an hour. He blinked twice and tried to figure out what was different this time about how he’d woken up. He rubbed his eyes a few times before it occurred to him that he was completely warm and there was a waterfall of blonde hair covering his chest.

Summer.

She was what was different. A major change to his wake-up routine. Her soul embraced with his own, just as her body pressed up against his. Her features looked soft, untroubled. He knew that would change as soon as she woke up and reality returned. He wished he could let her sleep until she woke naturally, but there wasn’t time. They needed to collect Gabriel from where he bunked at the hotel and start their trek down to Mexico.

He smiled at the memory of Summer cracking up at his announcement of the missing princess. She’d laughed so hard and carried on until Tristan ended the meeting in disgust. At least Cullen had gotten what he’d wanted. Tristan would be focused on other things now and he would able to run his operation without Tristan micromanaging him. Eventually, he’d have to explain to Tristan about the sister and why he’d kept her existence a secret even after Ashlee’s return. But, in his opinion, there were more pressing matters at the moment that needed to be handled.

Her plan to take down Kendrick and Claudius might work, with a little tweaking. Kendrick would have known Tristan and the others would demand answers about the flying demons. That’s why he’d sent them. If Tristan behaved like a different kind of Alpha, the kind of Alpha his father had been, Cullen would be dead right now. Banishment was a second option for betrayal. If he could pull it off, if he could make Kendrick think Tristan had banished him from the island, they could all be rid of Kendrick once and for all.

It would be some kind of poetic justice that Kendrick be killed by the man he’d trained to be an assassin.

Summer’s foot connected with his shin, hard. “You’re thinking so hard, I can feel it in my bones.” Cullen pulled Summer tighter and smiled into her shoulder. He had to find a way to keep her from trying to go to the Institute and after Claudius. If he’d been certain she needed to be kept safe before the mating ritual, he was even more convinced of it now.

“What am I thinking about?” He bit her lightly on her shoulder and she yelped. She rolled over in his arms until she faced him. Their noses were inches apart. He could feel her warm breath on his mouth. He bridged the small gap of space between them and gave her a gentle kiss.

Something between a moan and a sigh sounded in her throat and sent waves of pleasure down his spine. She pulled her mouth from his.

“You weren’t thinking about that. If you’d been thinking about pleasurable things, it wouldn’t have hurt my head to have channeled into your thoughts.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. “You say that like it’s not a new gift and it doesn’t freak you out that you can do it.”

She shook her head. “It’s not a new gift. The telepathy might be new. The weird psychic dreams, they’re brand new. My ability to know what people are thinking, that I’ve always been able to do.”

Our mate is a very talented wolf. Cullen’s wolf wagged his tail in happiness and Cullen snorted. Summer made his wolf act like a puppy dog. His four-legged companion wanted to give her whatever she wanted whenever she wanted. Cullen did too but not when it came to compromising her safety.

Maybe he could just keep her nude and in bed permanently. The thought of the perfection of Summer’s naked form made his groin get hard. He recalled the way her nipples stiffened when she was excited and the little noises she made when she particularly liked something he had done to her body.

“I don’t have to be a mind reader to know what you’re thinking right now.” She reached down to stroke her hand up his rigid shaft and he sucked in his breath.

“Truth is I have no idea if we’ve time for this. It’s possible he could show up any minute.”

Her lips pressed firm against his neck. “Gabriel can wait. He’s a wolf. He’ll know what we’re doing if he gets close to the house and if he doesn’t have the good sense to wait outside quietly, I’ll kill him.”

She stroked him one more time and Cullen felt twelve years old. He wondered if he would be able to control himself from coming under her touch. “Summer, you’re going to destroy me.”

“I think you’ll survive.” Her eyes twinkled as she pulled back to look at him. “Tell me something, my Cullen, do you always wake up hard?”

He shook his head. “Today would be the first time in a very long time. I think it’s because I’m pressed up against your hot little body and surrounded by your addictive scent.”

Summer pulled the nightshirt she wore from her body exposing her breasts and the perfection of her nipples that had so enticed his memory earlier. Cullen needed no further invitation. He grabbed her left areola and gently pinched it with his fingers. When she gasped, he took the right one in his mouth and suckled it. He could taste the essence that was Summer alone and he wanted to lap it up like a puppy that finally found water after a dry spell.

Summer clawed at his scalp with her fingernails as she arched her head deep into the pillow behind her. He knew she liked what he did to her.

With her head flung backwards, she gave Cullen ample view of her neck. He wanted to mark her. It was a primitive urge and he knew it. He already owned her soul. Hell, he got to carry it around with him. He should feel satisfied with that. But it wasn’t enough. Unable to resist the urge he lifted his head from her breasts and bit down on her neck before he started sucking on it.

She squealed and pulled back from his mouth. “Did you just give me a hickey?”

He nodded as he stared into her blue eyes.

“Are you serious? You gave me a hickey?”

He nodded again. Was she going to get mad?

Might have been a dumb move. His wolf paced restlessly not liking the possible end to their lovemaking anymore that he did.

Thank you, like I needed you to tell me that right now.

Summer busted out laughing. For a second, Cullen felt stunned and then he too started to hoot. It was kind of ridiculous. What had possessed him to mark her? He had no idea but as he looked down at the red spot forming over the two small teeth marks where he had bitten her, he had to smile. He would like seeing the scar on her for a few days. He would love knowing he had put it there in a moment of pleasure.

Maybe it was some kind of primal instinct he hadn’t yet conquered. Perhaps all mates did this to one another. Although, he doubted it because he’d not seen any of the other women who had lived on the island scarred up by their mates. He guessed it was just something weird related to him.

“You know I’m going to have to repay in kind?”

“I know this about you. Yes.” He raised an eyebrow. Where was she going to do it? On his neck? He’d proudly wear her marking for everyone to see.

“But what you don’t realize is that I’m going to make you wait. You won’t know when I’m going to get you. It could be anytime or anywhere. I’m just going to bite down.”

Cullen propped himself on his elbows. “Are you threatening me?”

Summer nodded and he grinned. “That’s what I thought. You’re a gutsy little thing. First you take on Tristan in the pack meeting and now you threaten the boogeyman?”

She reached up to stroke his chest, which sent shivers down his spine. “You are no more the boogeyman than I am the tooth-fairy.”

Summer shifted her hips and, even though he wouldn’t have believed it possible, his erection got even harder. He could feel it straining against her stomach.

“Are you going to do something with that big boy or just tease me with it?” He loved the husky sound her voice took on when she thought she was being naughty.

“As my woman commands.”

He took a moment to thoroughly kiss her. She was wet, hot, and so ready for him. When he slid inside of her, she let out a sound that something between a moan and a plea. He smiled. Summer was nothing if not demonstrative.

They found their rhythm and Cullen couldn’t believe the perfection of it. Each one seemed to know how to please the other one. For two people who had known each other so little amount of time, they needed no words to communicate their desires.

Cullen felt her breath on his neck as she moved beneath him. He stared into her eyes, never wanting to lose eye contact with her. Summer’s eyes held all the there was in the world and the way she looked at him when he pleasured her was all the brightness he would ever need to fill the dark places in his soul.

He wished he could stop time and live in this moment with Summer forever. Cullen’s strokes became faster, harder and beneath him he could see Summer’s muscles clench in response.

What had he ever done to deserve this kind of happiness?

Cullen would swear he was burning up as their skin rubbed against each other causing even more friction in what was already an electric moment. Summer wrapped her legs around him more tightly and now it was his turn to groan.

He wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold on. He plunged in and out of her, loving every second as her tight sheath convulsed around him.

“That’s it, Summer. Come for me.”

He felt her shatter and moments later, he followed her into heaven.

* * *

The pounding on the door disturbed his happy reverie and he opened one eye.

“Is that Gabriel?” Summer groaned and rolled over. “Where are my clothes?”

“Top two drawers.” Cullen pointed towards his dresser. “I put your clothes away for you when you passed out last night. You don’t have much. Just a few things Ashlee sent over. We’ll take you shopping when this is all over.”

“I can take myself shopping.” Cullen suppressed the grin that threatened at the tone in her voice. He had to remember that Summer liked to be very independent. She’d left her home when her parents hadn’t supported her dream.

“Alright, then you can take me.” She rewarded him with a grin. Finally finding where his clothes had been thrown, he pulled on his boxer shorts and went to the door.

Gabriel stood on the other side, his brow raised. “Took you long enough.”

“Sorry. I’m an old man. I move slowly.”

Gabriel snorted. “When did you get a sense of humor?”

“Just because you’ve never known him doesn’t mean he didn’t have a sense of humor.” Summer stood in the doorway wearing jeans and a light blue tee-shirt that brought out her eyes. He couldn’t help the tingle on his skin that came every time she stood up for him or most especially when she called him ‘my Cullen,’ which he wasn’t even convinced she knew she did.

“Maybe that’s true.” Gabriel looked down at his feet for a moment. When he looked up, any insecurity Cullen had seen there before was gone. This was the Gabriel who was as hard as steel. “Az wants me to inject the two of you with these locater beacons.”

Gabriel held up a tool that looked something between a needle and laser gun.

“You want me to let you tag me with that thing like I’m a dog or a bird?”

Gabriel nodded. “I know. I objected to it too at first, but after Tristan went missing Az went out of his way to invent something that would allow us to locate our pack members if they vanish. This was the solution. It goes under the skin and that way, if we can’t reach you, we turn on the locater chip, and boom—Az can find where you are.”

Cullen shook his head. “What if I don’t want to be found?”

“You’ll have to take that up with the Alpha.”

“You’re going to find her, Gabriel. She’s in the north. It’s dark and cold. She’s been waiting.” Cullen whirled around to look at Summer. Her eyes were lost and vacant. A vision, and it was just like the one she’d had in her dream. In fact, he suspected she had them all the time and didn’t discuss it with anyone.

Gabriel looked confused. “What?”

“I’ll explain later. Don’t bring it up.” Gabriel nodded although Cullen could tell by the look in his eyes he wasn’t satisfied with waiting.

“I will take it up with Tristan. I am not letting you inject me with some gadget of Azriel’s making.”

Summer stepped forward, her eyes clear. She was obviously not going to remark on what had just happened. “Okay, I’m not afraid of needles.” Summer gave Cullen a pointed look and Cullen looked down. Was he being overly difficult? If she wasn’t against getting the injection, should he not be?

Gabriel injected Summer and she didn’t even flinch. She turned to Cullen. “I don’t want to be lost.”

“Alright, Gabriel, get me too.” He held out his arm and the roof started to shake. He had a moment to look up and realize what was happening. He spun around to Summer.

The room was filled with a bright red light and four flying demons came through the ceiling raining shards of concrete down as they broke through. A large chunk hit Gabriel in the head and he crumpled to the floor.

“Summer! Don’t let them touch you with the top of their hands, they might have secreted the acid!”

It was the last instruction he gave her before his entire body filled with fire. Oh gods, what were they doing to him? He shifted into his wolf form and his eyes closed. He tried to force them open but they wouldn’t comply.

What’s going on? His wolf was as confused as he was.

Summer? He called out telepathically but she didn’t answer him. Unable to open his eyes, he tried to rely on his scent. He could smell her. She was there with him. He growled out loud ferociously. The demons would not take her, not while he was still alive. A piercing pain lanced through his body from head to two.

What is that?

His wolf sniffed the air. A spell. A bad spell.

What are they spelling us to do? He sniffed the ground in front of him, focused on getting to Summer. She was two feet in front of him but her smell was being blocked by the rank, sour pickle smell of the demons. He gagged from it. Why wasn’t Summer answering? Damn it.

He felt himself lifted off the ground. He fought and struggled for escape. If he couldn’t see, he wouldn’t know when their faces dissolved. He’d have no idea when he could attack. If he got out of this, he was going to spend more time with his eyes closed practicing his skills.

A third jolt of power hit his body and Cullen lost consciousness. His last coherent thought was of Summer and how he’d kill anyone who hurt her.

Chapter Eleven

Summer had no idea how much time had passed but she still had fight in her and no intention of giving up. She struggled violently against the men who restrained her and one of them brutally twisted her leg. Growling, she tried to bite them but they were smart. They wore full body suits of some bite-proof material and had thick rubber gloves. Cullen could probably tear into them but she wasn’t that strong. Not even in her wolf-form which the son-of-a-bitch demons had spelled her into. But, her wolf was silent.

Remembrance of something Ashlee had told about Tristan’s ordeal nudged her brain. She was stuck in her wolf form, unable to shift, with the wolf-half unable to communicate. Her senses hadn’t even improved with the shift. She felt just the same as she did when she was human except she was furry.

Her mind flashed back to Cullen as she’d last seen him. He’d been unconscious the entire flight to Mexico. Well, she assumed it was Mexico. They’d flown south, and she’d watched the landscape change to jungle, finally landing at an institutional brick building in the middle of a clearing that Summer had to assume was the same one Ashlee had barely escaped from when she’d kidnapped the witch to save Tristan. One of the flying demons had taken Cullen away as they’d walked into the Institute. She’d been terrified the whole time they walked that the creature who held Cullen’s unconscious body in its claw-like hands, was going to touch him with the acid-secreting glands on those fearsome maws, horrified by the possibility that her mate could burned like Theo had been.

They’d zapped him with a strange instrument that emitted a glowing light before they’d all taken off and he wasn’t answering her telepathic attempts to communicate. She looked around the room where the four men who had taken her from the demons had brought her. To her right, there was a silver operating table with restraints falling to the floor from both of its long sides. Fluorescent lights gave the room a hard radiance. She could see the floor was stained with red and brown splotches; Summer didn’t want to analyze too closely what could have made those stains.

But it was the object in the center of the room that had her wishing she could scream. A large metallic cage with its back end pushed up against the wall stood out in front of her. Suddenly realizing that was her location, Summer started to struggle harder. No way would she be anyone’s victim. They weren’t sticking her in that cage without a fight.

She growled and opened her jaw wide, baring her teeth. The man holding her left paw flinched and she knew he was her target. Swinging her head around, she threw all the weight towards her skittish captor. She startled him and he let go with one of his hands. She bit down hard on the loose hand. Two thoughts struck her. One, biting someone was a strange sensation. Maybe if she’d had her wolf with her she wouldn’t have been so freaked out by the feeling. As a human being, she hadn’t consciously bit anyone since she’d been a toddler. The second thought was that it had worked. Her captors, in their worry for the man she’d bit, had loosened their hold on her.

She twisted in their arms and yelped when one of them in an attempt to hold onto her twisted her back leg. She fell to the floor and tried to jump up. Three of her legs responded, but the twisted one sent pain shooting up her spine. If she could get her teeth in the SOB who had caused the excruciating pain in her back leg, she’d kill him.

There were two choices. She could endeavor to kill all four people in the room and very likely wind up dead, which would cause Cullen endless amounts of pain until he could follow her, or she could run away. The idea of leaving the four of them here unharmed ate at her gut but not as much as potentially causing Cullen distress did.

For the moment, her choice was simple. She would flee the room. Hobbling as fast as she could on three legs, her retreat was blocked by the man who had twisted her leg. She narrowed her eyes and lunged forward on her front paws, rejoicing this time in the feeling of her canines connecting with his leg. He let out a wail that could only be described as agony and she bit down again, this time knocking him down with the effort.

He swung at her with his hands but she dodged his attempts to hit her. Instead, she plunged through the open door of the room and into the hallway. She really could have used some of her wolf senses at that moment. It was so unfair. She had no time to wallow in self-pity, not with at least four people chasing her down the hall. Their dreaded footsteps echoed behind her with every torture-filled step she took.

She had no idea where she was going. Cullen. She needed to find him and dug deep into her soul to find his courage and know-how. This situation would be nothing for him to handle. Hell, he wouldn’t be in this situation. The whole lot of them would have died in the room they’d tried to hold her captive. That settled it.

She wasn’t running anymore and she wasn’t dying either.

She stopped in the middle of the hall and swung around to look at her pursuers. The four men from the room came to an abrupt halt in front of her. One of them held a rope, tied at the end, and she knew immediately that they intended to get that around her neck like a leash and drag her back to the room with the cage. There was no way in hell that was happening.

When the first man moved forward, she examined him closely as she knew Cullen would do. He was small-statured, and had she been in her human form he would only have been a few inches taller than her five feet. Blond hair and pock-marked cheeks, his skin was splotchy like he spent too much time out in the sun. She also noted his hands shook. That she could use to her advantage.

“Here puppy-puppy.” His voice was infused with enough condescension that Summer wanted to gag or snarl. She wasn’t sure which but either way she knew she wanted to rip out his beady brown eyes.

She leapt at him first, aiming for his face. He ducked slightly and her front paws collided with his neck. She tore at it, at first disgusted with the feeling of her wolf claws making contract with his bare skin. But she quickly found she could handle the sensation if she focused on her goals. She needed to eliminate these men so she could find Cullen and escape. Anyone who got in her way was fair game. Besides, this man had been part of the group that had sent demons to kidnap her.

Whatever else she felt, on this matter she was justified.

Peripherally she became aware of one of the foolish men behind her as tried to grab onto her back. Letting go of the man beneath her, she knew he would bleed to death in moments. With a growl, she lunged at her next target. This one was tall and completely bald as if he shaved all of his hair off on a regular basis. No time to focus on that, she tore at his stomach. His arms wrapped around her neck and he squeezed. Summer felt her throat tighten up and she knew if she didn’t stop his attack he would strangle her to death.

She would not die today.

Pushing her back feet forward, despite the pain in the left one, she clawed at the bottom half of his body, trying her best to attack his most sensitive parts. Finally, she got one good kick into the region right near his testicles. He swore and loosened his grip on her neck, but didn’t let her go.

“Are you out of your mind, Jason?” Evidently the baldheaded man was called Jason. “Kendrick said she’s the most important part of the operation. Get your hands off her neck. If you kill her, he’ll skin you alive.”

“She tore into my gut, you asshole. I’m bleeding here.” True to his word, he dropped Summer to the ground. As Summer backed up, forcing herself to growl like she was a rabid wolf, her shaved-head attacker raised his hand off of his mid-section, covered in blood.

What would Cullen do in this situation? They were distracted. One guy down on the ground .injured, the other dead. Their callous attitude about their fallen comrade confirmed for Summer what she already knew—these were not particularly caring people. Two others remained standing. The one who assisted Jason was distracted. His long grey hair fell over his eyes hiding most of his face as he knelt on the ground and examined the other man’s wounds

She looked up to locate the fourth man, keeping the growl in her throat. It vibrated inside her body, and it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. If she was going to have to attack again she was at least going to have to seem scary. Even though it caused her a huge amount of pain, she crouched back on her hind legs, ready to pounce if she needed to.

Summer looked in his eyes, gratified to see his terror. Maybe there would be no need to kill him. Cullen was right. Ending that man’s life, as necessary as it had been, was going to haunt her when she had time to think about it. If she could avoid doing it a second time, she would. She crouched low to the floor and increased her growl as she stalked the fourth man. For a moment she was actually surprised she knew how to do what she was doing. She didn’t have her wolf with her, at least not consciously. But she’d seen Animal Planet and she knew what wolves did when they attacked. She’d also seen Cullen do it when he’d come to rescue her from Claudius.

In front of her the forth man shook, his eyes wide with fear. He opened his mouth like he might speak but no words came out. Fight or flee. She hoped it would be the latter but she was prepared for the first option. If she had to, she would kill him too.

The man backed up three paces before turning tail and taking off in a full throttle run. Summer silently sighed. That was a relief. Now she just needed to decide if she was going to remain here in the hallway and fight the last remaining healthy captor or if she was going to run away. She dug deep inside to where she held Cullen’s soul to look for some advice. When she found it, she smiled. Cullen would stay and finish everyone off, feeling slightly ill about it later. But he would expect her to run like the hounds of hell chased her.

Deciding she’d had enough death and destruction, one kill had practically sated her on the subject, she turned and ran. She put her nose to the floor. Could she smell as a wolf did? After a moment, she shook her head. No. She was stuck as a human in a wolf’s body like Tristan had been. Only Tristan had been able to call out telepathically and she couldn’t do that. Maybe Kendrick’s scientists improved the spell.

Which made her very unlucky.

Clearly, she was not leaving the Institute without Cullen. If she had to kill every person in there she would find him. Perhaps she needed to retreat and figure out a plan that could get them both out of there with less chance of death.

Panting, her tongue hanging out of her parted jaw, Summer made her way towards a staircase. Should she go up or down or was she already on the ground floor? She jumped a foot in the air as a sudden screeching alarm went off. Great, she could be pretty sure they were now alerted to her escape or almost-break-out as the case currently was.

She whirled around but didn’t see anyone running into the hallway to search for her. What was going on?

She barely had time to struggle when the bag came down around her body from behind.

“I’ve got you. I can prove it now.”

A woman’s voice. Summer couldn’t identify the speaker. She growled and tried to struggle but it was no use as she was scooted into some kind of container. She heard the bars clamp down and she knew she was stuck.

“It’s not your fault, whoever you are. They’re doing strange things to people here. They’ve made you a wolf. But we’re going to get you to America and then you’ll be safe. We’ll find a way to turn you back.”

Whoever it was who talked to her had a kind cadence to her voice. But there had obviously been some kind of mistake. She thought Summer was one of the wolves Kendrick and Claudius had created. Did she want to rescue her?

A scene overwhelmed her eyes. Summer blinked to try to clear the sensation but it was fruitless. She had no control of when she had these occurrences and no control over them either.

She could see the woman who held her. She knew it was her. Tall with straight dark hair and cheekbones a model would envy. She stood in the woods. It was snowing. She called out to someone but no one answered. After a moment, she shivered from the cold and turned as if she would walk away. A howl filled the quiet night and Summer’s whole body vibrated as she heard it. One of the Westervelt Wolves was in terrible pain. Tears filled Summer’s eyes. They were pack and Summer couldn’t escape the physical reaction of his pain. She wanted to help but she knew she wasn’t really there. This hadn’t even happened yet and the only person who could fix whatever was wrong was this woman who held her hostage now.

Summer’s head swam as she returned to the here and now. Two thoughts occurred to her. The first was that if she could still receive visions then her wolf-half must be somehow still inside of her even though she couldn’t access her. Summer took a deep breath and felt tension leave her muscles. She wasn’t all alone and her wolf wasn’t dead.

The second thought that occurred to her—and she wasn’t sure if it was her own or Cullen’s soul talking to her—was if this woman was pivotal to a member of the pack then Summer couldn’t kill her or let any harm fall to her. She was going to have to just go along with this situation and see where it took her.

Summer whimpered and the woman cooed.

Good gods, would she ever get a break?

Chapter Twelve

Cullen’s nose twitched. He knew the man was there. He could smell him. For the better part of his life, he had followed that scent like the man was a god. And as Alpha of his pack, he practically had been. But, no more. The aroma that was Kendrick Kane evoked no sense of loyalty in Cullen, just a deep-rooted awareness of betrayal and hatred the likes of which Cullen had not felt since he’d witnessed his family’s murders three centuries ago.

He knew Kendrick knew he was aware of his presence. The fact that the man refused to speak first was some kind of mind game, and petty though it might be, Cullen had no intention of acknowledging Kendrick’s attendance in the room first.

If he took a step back, he would have to acknowledge that in a sick, twisted way the whole thing was sort of amusing. Kendrick had certainly gone out of his way to create an inventive scene. Cullen, now restored to his human form, was strapped to a metal table. His arms above his head as if he might be crucified. A needle poked out of his left hand, currently unattached to an intravenous unit but ready for action should they decide to dose him with any number of horrifying substances.

His feet had been pushed apart and belted down in the same manner as his hands. Two steel bars covered his waist and neck, making it impossible for him to even raise himself up to look around. The lights dimmed just enough that he couldn’t entirely trust his eyesight and meant he was entirely reliant on his wolf senses to see him through whatever events were about to unfold.

When he’d passed out he’d been in his wolf form. Now he was back in his human state. So whatever spell they’d zapped him with they, evidently, could undo if they wanted to. He filed that piece of information away for later.

“You know I’m here, my old friend.”

So, Kendrick caved first. Another piece of this strange puzzle Cullen would eventually work out. His former Alpha would never have let him win even that small victory. He noted Kendrick’s voice sounded gravelly and strained.

“I do know you’re here. But I would never call you my friend, Kendrick.” Cullen’s throat felt dry and he cleared it. “Just the opposite.”

“Oh come now Cullen.” Kendrick took the opportunity to walk out of the shadows. “Is that any way to speak to your Alpha? The man who faithfully led you for years, cared for your welfare, taught you everything you know?”

Cullen strained against the restraint on his neck. “I’ll give you that, Kendrick. You did teach me quite a lot. But everything I know? Not hardly. I still have some tricks up my sleeve.”

Kendrick laughed, the sound a cold, hard noise that filled the room for seconds before it disappeared. Kendrick continued his slow pace towards Cullen. Strangely, Cullen had to hold back his grin. Kendrick had certainly picked up a flair for the dramatic these past thirty-three years.

“You don’t have anything up your sleeves right now, Cullen. You’re completely naked, strapped to my table. I’d say you’re entire existence hangs on my goodwill.”

But that was where Kendrick was wrong. His entire existence was filled with Summer. It didn’t matter what Kendrick did to him. He had Summer’s soul within his. He would always have her and even if Kendrick killed him, he would find her again in the next life. However, there was no way in hell he would bring up Summer to Kendrick right now.

“Okay, Kendrick. What would you have me to do to continue to earn your goodwill?”

Kendrick raised an eyebrow at him. An annoying trait that Cullen realized all of the Kanes did. It had always driven him crazy. “Come now Cullen…are you still going to pretend you came here to join me, then betray me?”

Cullen’s mouth dropped open.

“Yes, Cullen, you have a traitor in your midst. I know the whole plan your mate came up with last night.” Kendrick crossed his arm over his chest, a self-satisfied smile on his face. “Good news travels fast.”

Cullen’s pulse pounded in his neck, he could feel his blood pressure rising and he wanted to scream.

Do you need me? He was glad to hear his wolf’s voice.

Immensely, but I can’t shift on this table.

“Well, Kendrick, you certainly went through a huge amount of trouble to capture me. We were on our way down to you. You could have saved yourself the manpower and waited ‘til Gabriel and I got here.”

Kendrick’s face looked indulgent. Cullen wanted to spit on him. If the man got any closer, he just might let himself give into that impulse.

Kendrick shrugged. “I left Gabriel. Besides, he’ll be dead soon. I have no use for the dead.”

Cullen closed his eyes. “Hell Kendrick, he’s your son, how can you talk about him like that? How can you do the things you’ve done to your family?”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you, Cullen. I am your Alpha.”

“Not anymore. You’re nothing to me.”

Kendrick’s eyes turned wolf, his voice low he stalked to the table. “I am your Alpha.”

“You’re nothing. Your son Tristan is my Alpha. He is a worthy man and someday when you and I are both long dead, his son Braden will be the Alpha of the pack. Your days of having anything to do with Westervelt are over, old man.”

Kendrick still looked like he was thirty but by the way his eyebrows narrowed and he stroked the bottom of his chin Cullen could see the insult stung. His former Alpha’s face tightened in anger before he suppressed it.

“You have made a tactical error, my friend.”

Cullen snorted at Kendrick’s use of that phrase. They were not friends. “What’s that?”

“You assume I wanted you. You were just a bonus. You’re a pawn. You always have been.”

Cullen’s heart slammed against his ribcage as he realized the implication behind Kendrick’s words. “Summer? Why would you want Summer other than to torment me?”

“So full of yourself. So sure of your own worth. Do you think I went to all of this trouble to acquire you? I could have had you any time I wanted you. You’ve spent years stalking me and hiding outside my gates. A snap of my fingers and you are brought inside to me any time I feel like it.”

Cullen strained against his bonds. “I’ll ask it again, Kendrick. What do you want with Summer?”

“So attached already?” Kendrick laughed. “And you’ve only been mated for one day. Wow. I found the whole mating thing to be overrated. But fine, I’ll play nice, since you’re strapped to that table and not going anywhere. The Morrison family was always filled with visionaries. They have the gift of sight. Tristan’s mate’s abilities are impressive, but not on par with her mother’s. That is, until Victoria married that human and wrecked her natural talent. So disgusting what some wolves will do. I thought perhaps my grandchildren had inherited the gift but I worried that Tristan’s weakness would have destroyed it. But then I heard about Summer.”

I’m going to kill him.

Cullen and his wolf were for once in complete agreement. Just hearing the sick bastard say her name made him want to explode.

“I can see how this bothers you, Cullen. Such a pity you’ve grown so weak. But don’t worry, I will fix that.”

“Why do you think Summer is a seer? She doesn’t have the gift.” He could always lie with the best of them. He just hoped he was good enough at it this time.

Kendrick shook his head. His brown eyes, the same as his sons’ but cold and far crueler, glared at Cullen. “She’s had it for years. My sources tell me that even as a child she would say and do weird things. Sometimes she knew things she shouldn’t.”

“You’ve been checking on her? What, did you send people to her hometown to ask questions like some kind of newspaper reporter? Ha. You really have reached new levels of pathetic. Tell me, Kendrick, why do you need the spies and seers? Can’t find the missing women either, can you?”

Kendrick pounded his fists on the table and Cullen felt it vibrate beneath him. “I will find those women first if I have to torture your mate every day for the next sixty years, until she dies from old age. I will leave you strapped to this table for the entirety of the process where you can watch. You’ll feel it every time she screams. I’ll let her heal just enough that the next round of torture causes her more pain and there won’t be anything you can do about it. By the time I’m finished you’ll both be praying for death.”

Cullen could see Kendrick was losing control. “You must be desperate to have called back the Demons. You could never control them and I’m not going to eliminate the problem for you this time.”

“The demons and I have an understanding.”

“An understanding? Have you lost whatever brain cells you have left? You don’t have an understanding with those creatures. They destroy everything. That’s what they do. That’s all they do.” Cullen could hear the frantic edge to his voice. Why was he even bothering to reason with Kendrick? The day the man had turned the pack over to be cursed by a witch Kendrick had proven himself to be completely insane. But Cullen wanted him mad and distracted. Anything that might give him an edge over his former Alpha. Anger would make him careless and flawed. In those circumstances, Cullen might be able to escape. It was a long shot but it went against everything in Cullen to give up. Especially when it came to protecting Summer.

Kendrick shrugged. “Then let the demons destroy the humans. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Like I said before, the dead don’t interest me.”

“I don’t know why I’m surprised. You destroyed your own people.” Now maybe he’d get an answer from Kendrick as to why and how he could have done what he did thirty-three years earlier. How he could have betrayed them all to Claudius, turned them over to the witches’ curse, and betrayed them all in the worst possible way. Maybe he’d finally be able to understand how a man he’d considered his friend, mentor, and leader could have been so completely different than he seemed.

“I tried to give the pack everything. I came to them, I told them of my glorious plans that would finally give us power and allow us to come out of the shadows and the life of hiding ourselves away from human hunters and human judgment. But you all scoffed. As I recall, you objected with the loudest dissenters, my friend.”

Cullen roared. “You wanted to turn us over to be experimented on by some lunatic. I didn’t see you lining up to be poked with his needles and fed his drugs.”

“I offered all of you more power than you could ever imagine.”

Cullen slammed his palms on the top of the table, the only movement his restraints would allow him. He could feel the sweat trickle down his bare flesh. “We never wanted power. Our wolves, our healthy wolves, don’t want those things. For the first time in a century, we had place where no one bothered us. Our island was our sanctuary and your mate had to send the women from it in the middle of the night. They fled and we may never see them again, but I can guarantee you something, Kendrick Kane, your son, the one you tried to keep from finding his strength, is stronger than you ever were or ever could hope to be. Tristan will never allow you to find those women. He’ll burn you down to the ground first.” Cullen pulled on his restraints. “Why do you even want the women?”

“You’ve never had much foresight Cullen, have you? Claudius and I are going to break the mating bond constraints. He already did it once with me. I want the women so they can breed the next generation of my wolves. Perfectly bred, trained wolves who will never disobey and always follow my commands.”

Cullen swallowed hard. “You want to find these women so you can rape them and force them to breed for you?”

Cullen never got to hear what Kendrick would answer because the door flung open causing the whole room to vibrate.

“Kendrick, we have a problem.”

Cullen would know that voice anywhere. Claudius. The man who had come with Kendrick to the island to talk them into the scientific experiments. He was the scientist who felt he could harness the power of the wolf within them to create some sort of genetically altered army. He was the man who Kendrick had betrayed them all for. At the sound of his voice, Cullen wanted to break his shackles and rip off the man’s face.

“I told you I wasn’t to be disturbed for several hours. That’s all I asked for. A few hours to catch up with my right hand man, or wolf as the case may be, Cullen Murphy.” Cullen rolled his eyes. Kendrick was so self-satisfied. He really thought he was amusing. It was pathetic. Why had he ever thought the man was important?

Because he was our Alpha. He wasn’t a sick wolf then. I can smell his derangement. Kendrick was different.

Was Kendrick legitimately sick? Cullen hadn’t considered the possibility and didn’t really want to dwell on it now. Wolves had gotten sick before without destroying their entire pack. If the man had needed help, they would have assisted him. He believed that to his very core.

Next to Kendrick, Claudius panted like he was out of breath. It was kind of a funny image. Cullen had never seen an out of breath pig, but he would imagine that was exactly what one would look like. Although Cullen couldn’t turn his head completely to stare at him, he was suddenly struck by the fact that neither Kendrick nor Claudius had aged a day in thirty-three years. How was that possible? Claudius wasn’t a wolf. He should have aged as normal humans did. The second Kendrick gave up his Alpha status and was ousted from the pack he would have started aging again. Not to mention he had killed his own mate. That would have assured the aging process would continue. But neither man looked a day older than thirty.

Something is very wrong. He knew he didn’t need to tell this to his wolf but if felt good to share his misgivings.

Several things, I suspect.

“We’ve lost the girl.”

“You’ve what?” Cullen knew that tone well. In the past, he would have begged and cowed to not hear that pitch in Kendrick’s voice. Now he reveled in it. They’d lost the girl. That meant Summer had escaped. He tamped down on his joy. He wouldn’t give Kendrick a foothold.

“She got away.”

“How? The demons shot her up with the spell. She couldn’t even speak to her wolf or communicate telepathically. She was as weak as a baby rabbit.”

Cullen swallowed. Summer couldn’t communicate at all? How would she get help? Damn, he wanted off this table. He strained at his bonds, mentally cursing Kendrick.

“I wasn’t there, Kendrick. I gave her to four of my best men. They were just to do what you said and stick in her in the cage. But she bested them. Shawn said she was like a rabid wolf. She attacked them. One of them died and the other may be gone before the night is over.”

“Blah-blah-blah Claudius. I gave you instructions. I wanted you to see to her. Did you think she’d be a puppy? She’s a Westervelt Wolf and the mate of the most lethal wolf-shifter to ever walk the earth. How did she get out of the building?” Kendrick started to pace. “I wanted you to cage her, with as much force as necessary.

Claudius shook his head. “That’s part of the confusing part. We don’t know how she got out of the Institute. She just vanished.”

“Vanished? People do not just vanish.” Kendrick stormed towards the door. As he approached the threshold he called out behind him. “Watch Cullen. We don’t want any more vanishing acts.”

Cullen couldn’t have been more excited. His girl had gotten out. He shouldn’t have been surprised. She was remarkable in every possible way.

Claudius crossed to Cullen. “I’m not worried. She’ll be back for you.” Claudius crossed to the corner of the room and Cullen could hear him fiddling with something. When he returned he had an IV bag in his hand. He attached the bag to the needle reciprocal in Cullen’s arm. As immobile as Cullen currently was he had no means of stopping him. He could only watch as a bag full of blue liquid started to drip into through a tube and head towards his hand.

He had no idea what Cullen had just injected him with but he couldn’t imagine it was a good thing.

Claudius smiled and tilted his head to the left. “She’ll be back for you and when she comes we’ll have both of you again. Kendrick will have his right hand man, who is unable to disobey him, and I’ll have my seer and the first breeder for the group. You’ll both finally live useful lives.”

Cullen shook his head back and forth once. He gritted his teeth against the burn that had started in his hand from the blue liquid. “She’ll never come back. You’ll never catch her.”

“Ah, but you are truly in love. She would never desert you.”

“What have you given me?” It burned like hell. In a second he might scream out loud. He concentrated on his breathing.

“Just something to make you mad.”

Cullen raised an eyebrow. “What? Why would you want to make me mad?”

“You won’t be the same wolf when Summer returns. She’ll never want to look at you again.”

But then Claudius didn’t know Summer. Nothing would stop her. He just had to hope she was somehow stopped from coming back.

“What will I be if I’m not the same wolf?”

Claudius shrugged as he crossed to the other side of the room hidden in the shadows. “One of ours. You will be a puppet. The great Cullen Murphy, the man Kendrick trained to be the best killer in the world, reduced to a drone controlled by me.”

“Claudius, there are so many reasons why you are going to die. You killed Summer’s parents. For that, I will make your death painful. You played a huge role in the destruction of my pack, for that you will die slowly.”

Claudius had the audacity to laugh. “Oh, you are amusing Mr. Murphy. Quite amusing.”

But he wouldn’t always find him amusing. Cullen would guarantee it. Everything he’d said would come true. Cullen always won and always kept his word. Nothing had changed. Now he was just doubly motivated.

Chapter Thirteen

The woman talked incessantly but at least she seemed friendly and kind. If she behaved any other way, Summer would rip out her throat and she could easily accomplish the task since for some reason the woman trusted her enough to let her wander around the decrepit looking RV that had furnishings circa nineteen-seventy-two uncaged.

“So did I tell you my name is Faith?”

Oh, only about five hundred times, but Summer couldn’t blame her for her babbling. She wouldn’t have known what to do with a person she thought was a captive wolf-shifter either if she didn’t happen to be one herself. In fact, Summer had gone so far out of her way to behave and not cause the woman problems, she’d be surprised if Faith didn’t start to suspect she was actually a regular wolf and not a shifter at all.

Summer’s skin itched. She was in Mexico and the little bit of air conditioning Faith seemed to have in her makeshift trailer they were driving in was doing nothing to cool her down. She wanted out of her fur coat. She groaned and Faith looked up in the rear view mirror. While her face looked full of worry, her eyes were steel and calculating. It was obvious to Summer that Faith cared what happened to her, but she was not a woman to be disregarded.

She had somehow broken in and out of the Institute and stolen a wolf. Faith was obviously not just flighty, which had been Summer’s initial impression.

“I’m so sorry they did this to you. We’ll find someone to help. I promise. I don’t know who, but I promise we’ll find someone who can turn you back. We won’t let you end up like Andrew.”

Andrew? Who the hell was Andrew? Summer sighed. It was infuriating not being able to speak or communicate. Hell, even if she got a hold of a pen, she couldn’t write anything. Unless she held it in her mouth…

Summer was suddenly jolted out of her make-shift seat on the floor of the van. As she flew forward, she tried to protect her damaged paw and landed on her face for all of her efforts. Lifting her head, she realized she had practically landed in Faith’s lap. The other woman held her head, her face contorted in pain. All Summer could deduce from the increasingly bizarre situation was that Faith had somehow hit her head on the steering wheel which meant she hadn’t been wearing her seatbelt. What the hell had happened? Fear stung Summer’s stomach—had Kendrick’s Institute found them?

So far Summer wasn’t overly impressed with the other woman’s common sense. Who didn’t wear their seatbelt these days? Who sat in a trailer with an unrestrained wolf-shifter? How did she know Summer wasn’t going to hurt her?

Hell, there was so much about this situation Summer didn’t understand she shouldn’t be surprised at anything anymore.

“Summer, we’re coming in for you.” A familiar voice filtered in. Tristan? What the hell was the Alpha doing there? How had he found her? “We have the car surrounded. Whoever has you will pay.”

Faith sucked in her breath. She wished she could assure the other woman that they wouldn’t hurt her but beyond the fact she couldn’t speak, she wasn’t convinced Faith wasn’t in danger from her pack. They would probably assume she was an enemy and Summer couldn’t even speak telepathically to tell them she was just some crazy, babbling woman caught up in all of this.

Faith shook her head and stared at Summer. “I won’t let them take you back.”

Summer made a sound in her throat that was something in between a groan and a sigh. This couldn’t get any worse. Now Faith thought she was going to fight the wolves, who she thought were from the Institute, to save her.

Nope, Summer had enough. No one was fighting, no one was rescuing her, and she was getting out of the trailer all by herself. Summer turned, wincing at the pain in her leg, and walked to the door of the trailer. She scratched against it and rolled her eyes. She was scratching against the door like a dog. She hoped beyond hope that Tristan and whoever else was out there—since she couldn’t smell them thanks to Kendrick’s spell—would just open the door.

“No, no, no, friend.” If Summer could have rolled her eyes she would have when she heard Faith’s voice. “They’re bad men. They used magic to make the trailer stop. They’re the ones that hurt you.”

No the men outside were not bad. None of them were as good as Cullen but more and more she thought of them as family. They’d used magic to stop the van? Summer sucked in her breath. The only one out there who could do that kind of magic was Ashlee. That meant Ashlee was out there. Her sister. In her life, she’d never imagined she could be so excited to encounter her sister. Summer supposed Faith was trying to be calming so she couldn’t believe it when the other woman opened up the glove compartment and pulled out a gun.

Nope. She wasn’t going to let Faith, nice as she might be, shoot any member of her pack who had somehow showed up to rescue her. She leapt at Faith who shrieked before she dropped the gun. Summer clamped her teeth around the weapon.

“No you don’t understand, little wolf.”

Little wolf? How big did this woman think a wolf was supposed to be? Summer snorted. She’d been listening to the same discussion on her lack of height her whole life. As a wolf, she felt practically huge.

Summer patted the door again and this time it opened. Gabriel and Michael stood in front of Tristan. Gabriel’s head was bandaged.

“Move.” Tristan commanded.

Michael shook his head. “No, my Alpha. Not until we ascertain the situation is safe.”

Summer limped down the two steps of the trailer towards the crowd. It looked like the entire pack, with the exception of Theo, had turned out to rescue her. She still wasn’t clear on how they had found her and until one of them, probably her sister, found a way to bring back her wolf and her voice, she wasn’t going to be explaining anything.

Behind her, she felt Faith step outside of the trailer. “I won’t let you hurt her.”

The woman had guts. Maybe no sense, but a lot of fearlessness.

Tristan laughed and pushed through Gabriel and Michael’s blockade. “This?” He pointed to Faith. “This is who we rescued her from? This little woman?”

“Hey!” Ashlee’s voice sprung out from the crowd and Summer relaxed a little. “She could be extremely dangerous. “You don’t know anything about her, my liege.” The last words were said with such sarcasm, Summer wished she could laugh. “And women can be quite dangerous. Especially to those who underestimate them.”

To Summer’s shock Tristan nodded. “You’re quite right, little Ashlee.” He motioned his head toward Rex who had moved up to stand to his left. “Take the woman into custody.”

Faith stepped back. “You aren’t from the Institute are you? Look, I just want to help those poor people in there. They took Andrew. He wasn’t well but he never did anything to hurt anybody not in the twenty-eight years that I knew him. But when I found him, he was different, changed, animal-like somehow.” Summer could hear the emotion in Faith’s voice. The woman held herself together by a very thin thread. The others in the pack who still had access to their wolves could probably smell her distress. Tristan stepped backwards giving her space and Ashlee walked forward to his right.

Her sister caressed Tristan’s hand gently, never breaking eye contact with Faith. The others took their cue from their Alpha and shifted the way they stood into less aggressive positions.

Tristan spoke first. Summer noted that he very wisely wore his sunglasses disguising his wolf eyes. Unlike the others, as Alpha, Tristan could never hide his true self from the rest of the world. “You have a friend who has been made into a wolf? A sick wolf?”

“He’s dead. He didn’t live a week after I broke him out of there.”

Azriel stepped forward. “They must be drugging them up, making them addicted to something they give them, something that will cause a deadly withdrawal, my Alpha. This is the kind of thing Ashlee saw the last time we were at IPAG, when we came to find the witch.” Tristan nodded to Az but the Alpha never took his eyes off of Faith.

“I tried to get help, but my job forces me to be alone most of the time. Besides who would believe me if I started spouting off about men turning into wolves and strange experiments? They tossed him like he was so much garbage. When I found him…” Faith inhaled deeply and Summer seized the opportunity to move forward and rub against Ashlee. Maybe her sister would get the idea that she needed help.

Ashlee gasped and bent over to touch her hurt paw. “She’s injured.”

Tristan made a growling sound in his throat and the other male wolves followed suit, which caused Faith to back up. “Did you do this to her?”

Faith shook her head. “She was injured when I grabbed her and took her out of that terrible place.”

Tristan narrowed his eyes. “You’ve been inside and came out again?”

Faith nodded. “I find kidnapped victims and bring them home. It’s my job. I’m good at getting in places I’m not supposed to be.”

“I don’t smell Cullen in your vehicle. I take it you don’t have him too?”

Faith wrinkled her forehead. “I don’t know what that is. I don’t even know who she is and I’m getting the impression you people are wolves too. But not from that place?”

Tristan shook his head. “Very different wolves. What did you say your name is?”

Ashlee started to stroke Summer’s head which Summer was immensely grateful for. She never would have guessed she was the type of person to need human contact but being trapped like this was teaching her all sorts of new things about herself. “She hasn’t said, Tristan.”

Faith cleared her throat. “My name is Faith Anderson. Look, she obviously belongs with you. I’m just glad I got her out of there. I’ll leave her with you now.” Faith turned around.

“Wait.” Tristan called after her. His voice an order and as with most things Summer found true to be of Tristan, he was obeyed. Faith stopped moving. “I want to hear more of how you got in and out of that place.”

“Tristan.” Ashlee interrupted whatever it was Summer’s brother-in-law was going to say next. “I don’t think Summer can communicate. I’ve been trying to speak with her telepathically and I don’t even think she can hear me.” Her sister was right. Summer had no idea Ashlee was trying to speak with her. “I think she’s stuck like this.”

Tristan crossed to Summer and bent down to look at her. He took off his glasses and Summer heard Faith gasp. Tristan’s eyes would do that to anyone who wasn’t prepared for them. Summer looked up to see Faith struggling to get out of Gabriel’s grip.

Tristan followed her gaze and took in the scene. “There’s no need to restrain her Gabriel. I’m sure Ms. Anderson won’t leave until we tell her it’s alright.” Amazingly, Faith stopped struggling and Gabriel let her go. Even non-shifters were listening to Tristan now.

“We have nearly the whole pack here.” Tristan’s eyebrows curved downwards as he spoke. “It’s not ideal but we’re isolated out here. We’ll have warning if anyone comes along.”

Michael shook his head in confusion at Tristan’s words. “We’re not following you Tristan. What are you going to do?”

Summer would love to know that too. Her paw ached, she was hot, itchy, and sweaty, and she was dying to get to Cullen. Her heart ached as she let herself even think his name. Was he okay? Had they harmed him because of her disappearance? He needed her. She could feel that much in her soul. He’d lived too long without her and this was far too long a separation so early on in their mating. She wasn’t sure why she was so clear on this, except that she held his soul with her own and there were some things about Cullen that Summer just knew. The agony she felt at their parting was nothing to what he was suffering without her.

Tristan cocked his head to the side. “I’m going to call back her wolf from whatever spell they’ve placed on it and then I’m going to return her to her human form.”

Michael cleared his throat. “You’re going to do this here? In the middle of the jungle?”

Tristan nodded. “No time like the present. We need to know what happened, Summer can’t tell us, Cullen could be hurt somewhere and he’s not tagged so we can’t find him, and my wife is going to freak out if I don’t restore her sister immediately.”

Really? Ashlee was that upset about her absence? Something about that statement made her feel warm inside for a moment. She blinked. In her wolf form she couldn’t cry but that didn’t mean she wasn’t feeling the emotion or the need. In fact, she felt like she might explode from all the unexpressed tears she had inside of her.

Gabriel stepped forward. “What should we do with the girl?” He motioned his head towards Faith.

Tristan shrugged. “Leave her. Ashlee will wipe her memories before she leaves. It’ll be like the whole thing never happened.”

Behind her Faith startled. “Wipe my what?”

Tristan faced her, his eyes intense, his gaze intent. “Come to me, Summer. I call you and your wolf back to my pack.” Summer felt the air stir around her. Tristan called on powerful magic to help them. As the Alpha of the pack, he was the only male who could perform this kind of ceremony, with most mystical abilities belonging to the female members. Summer had only felt similar sensations once during Tristan’s Alpha ceremony three years earlier.

Summer felt a jolt of electricity fill her body. She jerked on the ground and felt herself start to pant. What was Tristan doing to her?

Tristan’s voice got louder, stronger and the temperature around her seemed to drop instantly. “Come back to me. I call all members of my pack within hearing distance to adhere to my call. Come back to me Summer. All members of my pack will answer my call.”

I am here.

Her wolf! She could hear her voice again. Even in her furry state, Summer had to swallow past the lump that formed in her throat.

He calls to us.

Yes he does. Return me to my human form. You are the magic within me. Put me back. You can undo whatever it is that they did.

Summer stiffened as the change came upon her. Her body vibrated. What had been painful her first time, now felt natural and easy. Her bones, muscles, and skin reshaped with no complaint, as if she were no more than a piece of clay being remolded into a different form. Behind her, she heard a scream of agony but she could not turn around to look as her body acquiesced to her Alpha’s command. She fell to the ground with a thud, her injured ankle giving out beneath her. In some corner of her mind, she noted that there were some benefits to being in her wolf form. She was protected from a great deal more pain that way.

“I don’t believe it.” Summer looked up from her position on the ground to see both Ashlee and Tristan staring with their mouths open behind her. She followed their gaze and sucked in her breath.

Where Faith had stood, was now a dark black wolf. The wolf howled and rolled on the ground, clearly in distress.

“She’s a wolf?” Summer looked up at Ashlee for assurance that she hadn’t cracked her head open when she fell and was now seeing things that weren’t there. Ashlee nodded, her mouth still shaped like an O.

“She’s one of our missing.” Tristan stepped forward away from Ashlee and Summer, toward the howling wolf. Summer could remember the feeling from three years earlier. It was excruciating to go through the first change. Summer didn’t envy the girl but she had other things to focus on.

“Ashlee, help me up.” Summer finally wrenched her sister’s attention away from the newly transformed wolf. She looked down at Summer, her eyes wide, then seemed to get hold of herself and focus on the task at hand.

“We need to fix your ankle, hold on.” Ashlee knelt down beside her and laid her hand gently on her ankle. Summer flinched at the pain but tried not to cry out. Ashlee closed her eyes and muttered some words Summer didn’t understand. She was really going to have to get her sister to teach her how to do some of the healing stuff. A wave of relief flooded her body and she realized her ankle no longer panged. She took a deep breath and stood up. The pain was gone, as if her injury never happened.

Ashlee crossed to a backpack on the ground and handed Summer a long sweatshirt. She smiled and put it on. Truth was, she wasn’t really used to the nakedness that came with the shifts. Especially without Cullen around.

“How did she shift?”

Summer watched as three of the pack members surrounded the wolf version of Faith. Everyone was trying to get her to calm down. She darted from right to left howling. Her ears stood straight back and her head flung from one shoulder to the next as she desperately looked for escape.

“Stop, Faith.” Tristan’s voice held authority. Faith whimpered and fell to the ground in obedience.

Ashlee turned to Summer, her arm around her waist. “I guess the same magic that called you back called Faith’s wolf out. He did order all members of his pack within earshot to stand at attendance to him.”

Summer nodded. “What are the odds?”

“This is nothing about odds, little sister. It’s about fate and magic. Who else would rescue you from Kendrick if not a member of our pack? Even if she didn’t know she was a member?”

Summer nodded. “Stop sounding so wise. You’ve only been at this three years.”

Ashlee laughed out loud and covered her grin with her hand. Tristan shot her a look that even Summer could read. Now was not the time for joviality. Summer agreed. She needed Cullen. But there were a few small things she had to tell Ashlee first.

“Where are your children?”

“Uncle Theo.”

Summer crossed her arms over her chest. “He’s well enough to babysit?”

Ashlee shrugged. “Well is a relative term but Tristan thought it would be good for him to spend a little time outside of his own head for a while. So he ordered him to take care of the children today. He was none too pleased.”

Summer nodded. She didn’t really get what Tristan had done but the man had just called back her wolf and given her back her human shape. She wasn’t going to argue with his decisions, at least for an hour or so.

“Ashlee, I’m sorry. I didn’t get it. I do now.” It was hard for Summer to apologize, had always been, but it needed to be said.

“What are you talking about?” Ashlee shook her head.

Summer sighed. “I wasn’t mated. I didn’t understand. I would do anything to get Cullen back right now. Even drag Dad down to Mexico. Mom was mated. She would have understood it too.”

“Summer, you and I have always been oil and water in some ways. But I love you. You’re my sister. No apologies between us, okay?”

“You came for me in Mexico even after all I said to you?”

Ashlee smiled, it was a sad smile but Summer could see her eyes sparkle. “You came to my ceremony when you didn’t even believe any of this was real. You’re my baby sister. And I couldn’t have kept Tristan from leaving the island, even if I wanted to. His sister-in-law and the pack’s eldest warrior, the man he idolized as a child, both get kidnapped by demons? I thought his head was going to explode.”

Summer watched as the scene in front of her with Faith continued to unfold. “Do you think we could get Tristan to turn her back?”

Ashlee nodded. “What did you have in mind?”

“I had a vision, a dream my first night on the island. In it, I was trying to rescue Cullen, and he wound up dead.”

Ashlee sucked in her breath. “Oh Summer, what are you going to do?”

Summer smiled. “I’m going to thank destiny for the pre-warning and go kick some butt. So I need that wolf over there to tell me how to break in. Think you could get your husband to bring her now?”

Chapter Fourteen

Cullen had long since ceased to listen to Claudius’ endless droning on about power and destiny. He was glad when he’d finally gotten to that place where the other man’s voice had become background noise, and the man had finally fallen silent about half an hour before. The blue liquid continued to pour into his veins but he felt no ill effects from it. His body seemed to be protecting him from whatever it was the liquid was supposed to do. It didn’t surprise him, not really. The longer a wolf-shifter lived, the better and faster they could heal. Claudius wouldn’t know that unless Kendrick had told him. The room they kept him in was windowless so he had no idea as to the time of day.

His arms tingled. Something was about to happen. Every hair on his body stood at attention which meant only one thing: his wolf senses had come on alert. Maybe it was a good idea to check in with his furry side.

Are you okay?

I’m annoyed at being stuck on this table. I want to kill the man with the pig face. But other than that, I am fine.

Claudius’s silence was a nice change. But it still bothered Cullen that he couldn’t identify what was about to happen. He tensed against the restraints. No luck. He was still stuck as ever.

This is a lesson in patience for us.

When had his wolf developed a sense of humor or a moral compass? Cullen groaned slightly.

Kendrick slammed into the room, his eyes red rimmed in anger, his breathing hard. “I don’t like this.” He slammed his fist down on one of the operating tables, knocking it over. “First the girl escapes. Just vanishes into midair. The cameras have no record of her going and now my wolf senses are pounding with anxiety but I can find no trace of anything wrong.”

So Cullen wasn’t the only one. Kendrick had always been strong and powerful. Cullen was somewhat disappointed to see he hadn’t lost his powers.

“Kendrick.” Cullen pulled the man’s attention in his direction. He hadn’t realized his throat was so dry until he heard the croak sound coming from his own voice.

Kendrick sneered. “If you need something, Cullen, you will have to submit to me first.”

Hell, he guessed he wouldn’t be getting any water anytime soon. But that wasn’t why he had bothered with his former Alpha.

“How could you do it? How could you betray Mary Jo like you did?” Truthfully, Kendrick’s betrayal of his mate had always been the part that bothered Cullen the most in the whole disastrous episode.

“I didn’t betray my mate. She disobeyed her Alpha and committed the worst kind of treason. She was killed. But I will follow her someday to the other side.”

Cullen closed his eyes. There had been no substantive answers from Kendrick thirty-three years ago and there were obviously none now. “How can you stand the pain of being away from her?”

It didn’t seem like two hundred fifty years since Kendrick had met Mary Jo. Two and a half centuries. They’d all been so young and the two had seemed so incredibly in love. What had happened? If he ever got out of his situation, Cullen was going to make sure it never happened to his relationship with Summer.

“You’d be surprised what you can endure when you’re the most powerful creature in the world.”

Cullen opened his eyes to stare at Kendrick. He sat across the room, a smug, self-satisfied half-smile formed on his lips. Was he serious?

“Is that what you are? The most powerful creature in the world?” Cullen tried to keep the sneer out of his voice but failed. “Most people don’t even know that we exist, let alone that you exist.”

Kendrick crossed to Cullen. “Not yet. But they will. When my army grows and the breeding program gets under way. Then they will all bow down to me. Humanity will know we are meant to own them.”

Cullen closed his eyes. The man had plans for world domination. Why was he not surprised? When goosebumps appeared on his arms, he opened his eyes wide. Something was about to happen. He just knew it. His ears were ringing and he could feel the sweat starting on the back of his neck. All signs to impending action. Then they’d see if Kendrick Kane was as all-powerful as he thought he was.

He just hoped Summer wasn’t the one leading the brigade.

* * *

“Tell me again why I’m helping you people after you turned me into a damn wolf,” Faith whispered behind Summer as they crawled through the most disgusting, pungent smelling sewer water she had ever encountered, even living in New York City and watching the sewer lid outside of her apartment explode at least once every few months.

She had to admit the layout of IPAG was impressive. It had been built to be entirely self-contained and everyone had seemed relieved to have been able to locate the start of the sewer system on the outskirts of the main building.

“We didn’t make you a wolf. You were already a wolf.” Summer rolled her eyes. She’d been having the same conversation with the woman for the last ten minutes and she suspected the newfound wolf had vented the same complaints to half of the pack.

Faith snorted. “How is that even possible?”

“Look,” she didn’t care that she sounded short. Her entire focus was on rescuing Cullen not explaining the history of Westervelt to Faith. Let Tristan do that, since he seemed to enjoy it. She liked the woman and she hoped later they’d be friends but at the moment there was just no time. “I know Tristan explained what happened thirty-three years ago. I’m not hashing through it again. I need to get Cullen out of here. You have your ax to grind with this place, too. Let’s get this done and then we’ll work the rest out.”

Faith sighed. “Fair enough.”

In all her life, Summer never imagined she’d be crawling through sewer water in the jungle trying to rescue the man who for all intents and purposes was her husband. She’d judged Ashlee so harshly for just this type of behavior. Now she wished she could ask her sister for advice. A heaping helping of humble pie sounded good right about now

But she was in a different sewer line, probably out of telepathic range so she’d have to make do on her own. Cullen would flip when he found out the entire pack, including the Alpha, had put themselves in danger to rescue him. He wouldn’t have believed anyone cared that much. She smiled as she imagined his face when he discovered just how admired he was. Her grin faded as she envisioned a much grizzlier scene.

A scene where she never gets the chance to tell Cullen how much he meant to his pack mates. One that despite her preparation and determination to do things differently than the vision, she was still too late and Cullen died.

She shook her head and reminded herself as she crawled through the sludge that she wasn’t having a vision, not the kind she was used to having anyway, but an ordinary run-of-the-mill anxiety attack. Determination was what called for in this situation. She needed to be strong. Beneath her hands, the slime felt squishy. She closed her mouth and tried not to breath. Too much more of this and she was going to start heaving. That wouldn’t be good for anyone.

Focus. Her Wolf sounded annoyed.

I’m trying. I’m just a human, you know.

You’re a shifter. Think of Cullen

She would get Cullen back. They would have their time together without Kendrick or Claudius or any other psychopath who might interfere in their lives. She’d been born to be with Cullen and she wasn’t ready to die.

“You crawled through all of this muck pulling me in that bag?” Summer was sure, even with the tremendous pain that had been throbbing in her paw, that she would have remembered the smell and the sheer amount of time it was taking to get through the sewer.

“No.” Faith sighed. “I’ll show you what I did with the cameras when we get in there. I set them on a loop so you and I simply snuck out the side door and got lucky.”

“Brilliant.”

Faith laughed. “Thanks.” She looked past Summer, squinting at something in the distance. “The opening that you’re going to push through is about five feet ahead. You’ll see it’s a grated gate. Shove hard or, if you want, let’s switch places and I’ll do it.”

Summer shook her head. She was small but she was tough. Walking up to the sewer gate, she pushed against its center, and it went flying, slamming into the wall across the room.

Up ahead stood a metal door with the words ‘Utility’ printed on it. This door took Summer a little more time but she managed to pull it from its hinges in a matter of moments.

“Maybe in your case I should have told you to go gently. Wow. Wonder woman.”

Summer smiled. “You’ll get used to your extra strength, too. Right after my change, I went home, twisted the top off of a pickle jar and broke the whole thing in half.”

“I’m going to need some help with all of this, I think.”

Summer nodded. “Help me get Cullen out of here and I’ll write you a handbook.” The air around them felt stale. Summer scanned the room. It was some sort of utility room. “Go do whatever it is you do to make the cameras go on loop, please.” She was glad she’d thought of the please at the end of her command. They’d all be screwed if Faith took off and left them here.

Faith nodded and Summer hoped she was as good at accomplishing this type of mission as she seemed to be. Fortifying herself with a deep breath, she let it out slowly. With her wolf returned to her, she could smell an amazing amount of detail about the Institute. The aroma of pain and sickness hit her nostrils first and she squinted, resisting the urge to cover her nose with her hand. That wouldn’t do any good. She needed to smell Cullen. There were hundreds of people in the Institute and she wasn’t all that good at using her wolf senses yet but Cullen’s scent, the familiar bouquet of home and safety found its way to her mind.

He wasn’t far. Summer walked to the hallway door and opened it quickly. It wasn’t locked and she preferred not to pull it from the wall which would have been a dead giveaway that something was going on. She glanced both directions to make sure she wasn’t spotted and was relieved to find it empty.

Ashlee? If her sister was in the building she should be able to hear her telepathically.

We’re here Summer. We just caught his scent and we’re moving into position.

Summer nodded and her shoulder slumped in relief. In her dream, she’d been alone. Now she had the entire pack with her. Did you manage to talk Tristan into staying behind?

Her sister snorted. Are you kidding? He said if I was going, he was going.

Maybe you should have stayed back, too.

The man who is responsible for all the woes of my pack, including the recent murder of our parents is here. Do you think I’m going to let you to have all the fun?

Summer walked into the hall, keeping her footsteps steady. Again, another improvement from her vision, she wasn’t running down the hall at a frantic pace. She made herself keep her speed slow and even.

There is nothing fun about taking a life. I’ve taken one, maybe two today. Cullen tried to warn me but I didn’t understand.

She got it now. Taking Claudius’ life might fill some part of her that needed revenge but the truth was it would also be something she would never be able to let go, whereas her need for retribution might waver in time.

Wow.

For the first time in her life she’d left her sister virtually speechless. She couldn’t remember the last time Ashlee had been reduced to one word answers.

Cullen’s scent grew stronger and she knew she’d soon be in his presence. Her heart fluttered. What had they been doing to him since she’d been taken? She desperately wanted to reach out and speak to him telepathically but she knew what he’d say if she did. He’d order her to turn around.

Not that she needed to follow his orders. He didn’t just get to command her around. He wasn’t the Alpha. But she didn’t want to argue with him either. No, all she wanted to do was eliminate anyone who got in her way. And get Cullen out of this horrid place then squeeze him until she was satisfied that he was really okay.

If he let her. He might be too busy wanting to strangle her for being part of his rescue.

The fluorescent lights above her head buzzed giving the hallway an even eerier feeling than it already had. Summer took a deep breath. She knew if she needed to, she could always let Tristan and Gabriel run the operation. But she wasn’t a coward—at least she was trying not to be one—and Cullen was her mate. No one would take away her joy in rescuing him.

She reached inside the pocket of the jacket she’d borrowed from Azriel and pulled out Faith’s gun. In her vision, she hadn’t been armed. Even though she’d detested taking her attacker’s life earlier in the day, if she had to, she’d go in shooting. Cullen was worth whatever distress it caused her. He’d do more than that for her.

As she turned the corner, she crouched down low. If her dream was to be believed, she was approaching an open window and didn’t want to be seen from the other side. Voices drifted from the room. Cullen wasn’t alone in the room with Claudius. Another person’s scent lingered in the air. Who was it?

It’s a bad, sick wolf. But not like the others. He wasn’t made that way.

Summer swallowed. Only one person qualified for that description. Kendrick Kane. Her mind whirled. She was in big trouble.

If Kendrick was in the room and she could smell him, the former Alpha of the Westervelt Wolves would certainly be able to smell her. Her plans for sneaking in undetected flew out the window.

The future might have changed from her original vision but it didn’t look like Fate would make this easy on them.

I think I am screwed. Kendrick is in the room too. Summer broadcast this thought to the whole pack. They all needed to know who they were up against.

Kendrick is mine. Tristan’s voice spoke of finality and even though she was sure the other pack mates would object to Tristan placing himself in any more danger, his statement warranted no argument or response. We’re in place, Summer. Go in. Nothing has changed.

From inside the room, Cullen swore and roared. Her heart slammed against her chest. Her man needed her.

She narrowed her eyes and stood, making herself visible through the window. Without a second thought, she pushed open the door. Both pig-faced Claudius and Kendrick faced the door as if they’d anticipated her arrival. She’d been right, Kendrick had smelled her.

“What did I tell you, Cullen? Your mate would never leave you here. And now that she’s back, she’s ours.”

Summer had hoped never to hear Claudius voice again but she found she wasn’t bothered by it. A strange feeling of calm entered her body. It was similar to the foggy feeling she got when she was about to have a vision but different. She shook her head. Now was not the time to have a new ability present itself. There was too much at stake.

Let me do this for you. Summer’s wolf pushed into her thoughts.

Do what?

You never let me protect you. You keep me away, even now. But I’m part of you Summer. I always was and I always will be. Cullen is my mate, too. I would save him for you, if you will let me.

“Summer, what are you doing here? Get out. Run.” Cullen’s voice barely penetrated the fog that took over her mind. Was now the time to trust? To finally let her wolf take control and steer the events? She wished she had time to consider but Cullen was strapped to a table with an IV in his arm, doing gods knew what to him.

Do it. Her wolf squealed with delight before a strange prickle sensation crossed her skin. She looked at the floor, her vision getting sharper. She looked up and smiled. Now she understood.

She was still a human but now her wolf was in charge.

Cullen sucked in his breath. “Summer, your eyes. What are you doing?”

“Saving you, darling.” She grinned as she raised Faith’s gun and fired.

Chapter Fifteen

The firing gun exploded through the room and Cullen’s ears rang. For a moment he wondered if he was deaf.

Summer’s eyes had just turned wolf but she remained in her human form. How was she able to do that? It had taken him one hundred years to gain that much control over his wolf to half-shift. She was barely able to make the regular change into her wolf body without freaking out. His eyes widened. Wow, he was proud of her. He needed off of this table. Of their own volition, his hands curled into fists. If he didn’t get out of his restraints soon he was going to spontaneously combust.

In horror, Cullen watched, mouth gaping open as Claudius fell to the floor. Summer had done it. She’d shot and killed the man who had murdered her parents. She cocked her head to the side as if she examined a piece of fine artwork and not just ended a life. She took a step forward until she stood over the body, keeping her gun trained on Kendrick.

Cullen moved his gaze to the other man. The former Alpha had moved since she’d raised the gun, and now his mouth hung open, his eyes huge.

Kendrick narrowed his eyes. “You can half-shift?” Cullen snorted. Leave it to the other man to focus on that and not the death of his friend of thirty years.

“Tristan is going to kill you.” Summer’s voice sounded so reserved, so calm, so un-Summer. Cullen could scarcely believe what happened around him.

“Or you could untie me, Kendrick, and we’ll see which one of us is actually stronger.” He hoped Kendrick would take his bait. He was useless strapped to the table with the IV in his arm.

Kendrick’s eyes flared. “You never could fight me, Cullen. I’m a Kane. You’re nothing.”

“So cut my restraints and be done with me.” Cullen paused. This needed to go over perfectly. “Unless you’re afraid.”

Maybe it was cliché but Cullen didn’t care. They were old fashioned men, born of another time and just as he would never tolerate anyone calling him a coward, he had a pretty strong feeling that Kendrick wouldn’t abide it either.

Cullen had to suppress his grin when Kendrick stomped over to the table and started removing his restraints. He just needed his right hand free.

If we kill him, our Alpha will be angry that we didn’t let him do it.

Internally, Cullen shrugged. Let him be angry.

After hours attached to the table, finally being released made his head and neck feel loose but he had no time to revel in the sensation. He needed his hands freed. Kendrick moved quickly but it felt like it took forever. Finally, the other man pulled out his IV tube and unhooked his hands.

His hands free, he reached up and squeezed Kendrick’s neck. His former Alpha tried to jump back but Cullen was faster.

In his life, he had never felt so strong. Maybe the adrenaline-producing drugs Claudius had pumped into his veins had done something after all. With his legs still strapped to the table Cullen lifted Kendrick over his head with just the strength of his right arm.

It would be so easy to break his neck. One quick snap and all problems related to Kendrick Kane would end. He could protect his mate and end his Alpha’s problems with one snap or a tighter squeeze. Summer ran to the edge of the bed and pulled off the restraints still holding his legs in place.

“Tristan will be here any minute.” Her voice rang with the sound of her half-shift. Her eyes wolf, her body human, his Summer hadn’t returned to herself yet.

“They’re obviously delayed and I’m enjoying myself” He really was. Kendrick was so weak, he still held him by the neck with his right hand. Next to him, Summer sniffed the air.

“You smell like yourself but altered. Did you eat something strange or take some kind of drug?” She had no inflection to her voice. Cullen wondered if in her current state she could feel any emotions. He’d never tried to feel much of anything when he’d been in that dual state himself, his whole focus had been on not vomiting from the influx of extrasensory sensation into his brain.

He tried to focus on what she said and ignore the strangeness in her voice and the sheer joy that holding Kendrick’s life in his hand caused him. His arms and legs tingled while his heart pounded everywhere. He could even feel his pulse in his teeth. He felt wonderful, powerful, unbeatable and eternal. It was like the universe had opened up to him and he finally knew how a shifter was supposed to be. No one could stop him.

When you think those thoughts, I disappear.

What? Whose voice was that? He shook his head. Something was wrong. Kendrick started to laugh. Why was the man laughing? He had him by the throat. He could end his life at any moment.

“That’s right, Cullen Murphy. Feel the anger. It’s extraordinary isn’t it? Claudius is gone but it’s his gift to us.” Kendrick’s voice was strained from the pressure on his neck, his eyes were wide, his pupils huge.

Something Kendrick said rang warning bells in his head. He closed his eyes, not letting go of Kendrick’s neck. What had his former Alpha just said that killed the glorious high he’d just had moments earlier?

The touch of a hand on his arm made him jump and open his eyes. Summer stood before him, her eyes back to their normal gorgeous blue. All trace of the wolf was gone. Why was he relieved?

“Cullen, what’s going on? What’s wrong with you? Your smell is changing more and more every second.” Her voice sounded frantic.

He took a deep breath and tried to steady himself. Kendrick’s feet hung off of the floor. It would feel so good to kill him.

“Go ahead, do it.” Kendrick sounded completely sincere. “You’ll just take over where I leave off. My dream will still come to pass.”

“Cullen.” Tristan’s voice had him turning his head to the left. When had the others arrived? He took a quick head count. Nearly the entire pack was in the room with them. How had he not noticed? “Something isn’t right Cullen. Something has been done to you here.” Cullen heard Tristan take an audible breath. “Let my father down. I will finish him and we will fix you. Do it for your mate. I have the feeling that you won’t come back if you don’t.”

“Please.” Summer’s eyes bored into his, sparkling with unshed tears, pleading with him not to lose himself.

Let go.

Claudius had told him he was making him angry with the drug he gave him. He hadn’t exaggerated. Was this what had happened with Kendrick? Had Claudius made him sick? He had no time to dwell on the questions, he needed to make a decision. His legs burned like someone banged on them. Gods, what should he do?

Every pore in his body wanted Cullen dead, screamed at him to do it. He turned his head to stare at Summer. One lone tear fell from her right eye as she blinked the other one away.

“Take him, my Alpha.” Cullen dropped Kendrick. His former Alpha crashed to the floor with a bang.

Tristan leapt from the floor shifting into his wolf form in mid-air, a highly impressive feat Cullen wasn’t sure he himself could have performed, and slammed into his father. The two rolled on the ground, growls emitting from both their throats. Kendrick shifted into his wolf form. Virtually identical in fur and body, it was hard to tell the difference between the two except by scent.

Kendrick smelled sick. Cullen hoped beyond hope that he didn’t emit a scent like that.

The entire pack moved into attack formation, ready to fight for the Alpha. Cullen’s head started to clear and he pulled Summer into his arms. She made a slight sobbing noise and planted a soft kiss into his shoulder blade.

Across the room, he heard Ashlee suck in her breath when Tristan took a hard hit from his father.

A wave of nausea struck him hard and he shivered as he tried not to puke. Whatever they’d pumped into him had almost made him lose his mind and now he was going to go through withdrawal from it. The whole thing seemed very fast but he didn’t have a clue what had been forced into his body. Did Kendrick have to take the stuff every day? Could they save him from it?

Kendrick let out a yowl at a high frequency that seemed out of place for his fight. It wasn’t pain or aggression. What the hell was the devious son-of-a-bitch doing? Cullen jumped down off the table just as ten flying demons swept through the ceiling into the room.

“Oh hell.” Summer shouted.

“Literally.” Cullen pushed her to the ground and covered her with his body. “Everybody down.” There was no time to explain to everyone how to kill the creatures. “Don’t let them touch you with the upper part of their hands, they’ve probably secreted the acid. That’s what happened to Theo.”

His pack mates hit the floor but Tristan continued to fight with his father. The demons encircled the pair. There was no way in hell he was going to let those creatures get his Alpha.

“Stay down.” He hoped Summer heard him as he shifted into his wolf form and leapt into the fight between Kendrick and Tristan.

He bit down on Kendrick and the demons shrieked. A loud, powerful sound that made his ears ring and his head pound. Kendrick snarled and backed up, drool coming out of his mouth.

My Alpha, remove yourself from this. I would not have you hurt by the demons.

Fighting his father was a matter of honor, but Cullen wouldn’t let Tristan be hurt by the creatures Kendrick had let loose on the earth again.

I am not a coward. Cullen could hear that Tristan’s teeth were clenched even in their telepathy.

Farthest thing from it. But this is not a fair fight nor is it the showdown with Kendrick you deserve. Kendrick had stacked the odds. They would have their battle but this was not it. One of the demons swept down and picked up Kendrick, taking him out of reach of the fight at hand. The other demons began to swirl like vultures. They were going to pick the room’s occupants off one by one. Cullen had seen them in this formation before. It was deadly. But Cullen wasn’t afraid as he’d been when he last saw them like this. He’d been young then. Three hundred years had given him know-how and now he was going to use it.

One of the demons let out a roar and Cullen narrowed his eyes. Gabriel, Azriel, Michael, Rex, protect your Alpha. Why did he have to tell these boys to do everything? Had they not been paying attention for the last century?

Gabriel and Michael grabbed Tristan by all four of his legs and dragged him to the door. The string of profanity escaping Tristan telepathically gave Cullen a momentary smile. He looked up at Kendrick, who floated above the room cradled in the arms of one of the demons like a baby.

He leapt up and grabbed Kendrick by the leg. He wasn’t leaving this easily. The man had threatened his life, nearly destroyed the pack, and most importantly had the gall to attempt to kidnap and abuse his mate.

“Cullen, let him go.” Summer’s voice rang through the room.

He shook his head. I can’t Summer. It has to end here.

“You cannot beat me, Cullen. I am eternal.”

“You’re eternal? Hah.” Cullen bit down on his leg. Kendrick let out a screeching sound and the demons flapped their wings and dove. Cullen knew what was going to happen as it happened. He let go of Kendrick’s leg and dove on top of Summer. Screw catching Kendrick. Those demons weren’t getting their hands on his woman again.

He pressed all of his weight on top of Summer’s warm body as the demons dove and hissed. Kendrick made another screech and the demons took off airborne again.

This isn’t over Kendrick. Wherever you go, I will find you and we will finish this.

The demons screeched in their strange sing-song language and took off to the sky, collapsing part of the ceiling with them as they went. He shifted back into his human form. He’d shifted way too many times in the last few minutes, he was going to lose consciousness if he wasn’t careful.

“Stop knocking me over. I can help you. I killed Claudius for goodness sake.”

Cullen loved the feeling of Summer beneath his body. “About that…”

“I’m fine. Don’t obsess. I did it to save you, not exact revenge. I’d kill more than him for you.”

Fate had certainly picked out a woman who could match him in temperament. He leaned down to kiss her again.

“Ah … guys.” Cullen’s head shot up to stare at a woman he didn’t know who stood in the doorway.

“Faith?” Summer knew her, which was a relief.

“All of the captive wolves are escaping.”

Cullen closed his eyes for a second. This was bad, very bad. Gods knew how many psychotic wolves were being released onto society to destroy until they died from the lack of whatever it was Claudius had given them here. Kendrick was free and, at least temporarily controlling an army of demons. His former Alpha was likely to go through some kind of withdrawal too. And he also couldn’t forget the Westervelt pack had a traitor in its midst.

He frowned and Summer smoothed out the lines on his face.

“We’re going to live in constant danger.” Summer deserved nothing but the truth from him.

“It will never be dull, my Cullen.”

He smiled and kissed her deeply. It would be never be dull and for the first time in his life he knew he couldn’t lose. As long as he had Summer, his gorgeous white wolf, he was unstoppable.

Summer laughed. “We’re unstoppable together.”

“You read minds now?”

Summer raised one eyebrow and stood, offering him her hand as she rose. “I am a woman of many talents and my wolf is stronger than even I knew.”

Cullen nodded as they walked towards the exit. “I will never underestimate my Summer’s wolf.”

He smiled. He’d waited eternity and she was beyond worth it. Her soul throbbed inside of him as he took her body in his arms and kissed her. He was hers and for the first time ever he looked forward to the future. Whatever may come their way.

The End

Content

Summers Wolf
Westervelt Wolves - 2
by
Rebecca Royce

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen