And the second the beast recognized me as her sister?

She dove through our ties, our blood links, the power we’d shared that afternoon, and soared toward me on a wave of electrical current that came with no reason or rhyme.

Daniel’s head popped up from amid the covers, and when I turned to face him, I felt his bewilderment, but even more, when the howls started falling once more like torrential rain, I understood them.

Enemy.

Hunger.

Anger.

Challenge.

“Kali Sara!” Sabina gasped, her eyes wide as she gaped down at me.

All the way down.

Because even though I was as big a wolf as ever there was, I was no longer five-feet-eight in my bare heels.

I was a she-wolf.

A she-wolf that was twinned with Sabina, powered by her—a clone, a parasite.

A symbiote.

And, as always, I was a freak.

But this time, I had a purpose.

As I stared at my sister, at a boy who’d been raised in the same environment of fear as I had, as we had, I knew exactly what I had to do—protect him.

Give him what we’d never had.

Security.

With fangs or with words, either way, I’d make sure the boy stayed with Sabina.

Ten

Todd

Behind me, there were twenty-four wolves. A standard council.

Just to my left, there was my beta, Nancy Delacroix, and to my right, my enforcer, James Cossac.

We flew through the woods, eating up the miles of territory that was between us and the Highbanks pack as if it was walking distance, but the run felt good.

Right.

Just.

The Rainford pack had feared the Rainford family for too long, and just under two years ago, I’d eradicated the last of them. Had whipped the bastard who’d reigned over us like we were dogs and he held the leash, and shown him what it meant to be challenged and to lose.

I was now the alpha.

Somehow, as impossible as it seemed, I ruled over a pack.

I was a nobody. A nothing. My grandparents were immigrants from South Korea, for God’s sake. We’d slipped into the pack and stayed there by the skin of our teeth. I had second generation woes, and nothing to back it up—until the old alpha had killed my father.

That was when my life had changed.

Forever.

And it affected me every day, because the grief never died, pain tore through me on the regular, outrage with it.

My beast was as furious now as it had been back when my father had first passed over, promptly followed by my mom. I’d used the conflicting emotions of fear and hurt and horror to fight back against the man who’d oppressed so many of us, and I refused to stop now.

We’d sent Daniel out into the human world where he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone, where he could learn to grow into human society and become at one with his future.

Everyone knew that was what happened to the children of ex-alphas. It was how they were punished too.

I’d done nothing wrong.

But the Highbanks pack had to best me. Had to make us look bad.

I sped up, my power filtering through me, turbocharged by the moon’s rays as they fed me and nourished me. When we broke the territorial line, we all howled, singing our presence for the other pack to know.

I had no desire to slip in and slip out. No desire whatsoever. I wanted my arrival to be a statement.

I wanted them to know I was here.

Our howls were met with an otherworldly siren song that was unlike anything I’d heard before.

There’d been rumors, of course. Rumors of strange wolves in the forests around Highbanks, but there were always fairy tales, weren’t there? Always stories about our kind and the forests.

I was as American as Nancy and James, but I had a childhood of Korean stories to feed and nourish my ghoulish side. I’d come forewarned, prepared for what I’d heard from scouts who ran along the borderlines between our land and theirs.

News of larger than usual natural wolves, ones whose howls were impossible to understand, as if they spoke another language entirely.

This situation had been unrolling ever since the Highbanks alpha had met his mate.

The omega was just as strange, it was said. The humans who were neither on our side or theirs, spoke of the alpha’s woman’s kindness and how, since her arrival, the many businesses the pack managed had changed. The council had been turned over, replaced with lesser ranking folk, and the businesses were now manned by those same people.

All in all, it had boded well.

A pack that dealt with equality, just as ours did.

I wanted no trouble with them, and I knew they’d want no trouble with me. We dealt with things on our own up here. Each pack was twinned with another, usually on the opposite side of the country. It was how we let our kids spread their wings, and sometimes, we’d call them in for back up. But in this instance, there’d been no need for that. And apparently, vice versa, as we all rubbed along well enough together.

I should have known it would go to shit.

I barely felt the thirty miles we’d been running since we’d shifted on our pack land and merged onto theirs, but each passing yard proved how unkempt my territory was. A belief that was confirmed when I saw the packhouse in the distance, and there was simply no denying just how wealthy the Highbanks pack was.

For centuries, the Rainfords had been running the pack into the ground. Padding their own accounts while leaving their people to suffer and go hungry. I was changing that, but it was slow going, and damn if it wouldn’t be easier if I had the kind of funds Eli Highbanks had at his disposal.

Either side of me, I could feel the forest closing in as wolves that weren’t mine began to run with us.

That they sensed our lack of aggression was the only reason we weren’t in a fight right now.

We were here for the kid. Nothing more, nothing less. We had no reason to fight, no reason to come here on a suicide mission.

I tried to transmit that in a howl, but the sentiment was lost. My beast was just pissed at the presence of some kind of creature that was like me but not. Who was natural but somehow turbocharged.

And that wasn’t the only thing that was turbocharged. I could feel their totem’s power from across the way, and it seemed to sink into the ground, making each step I took feel heavier, like my paws were weighted down with concrete.

I’d think it was in an effort to slow me down, but that was impossible.

It was more a case of my body responding to the somnolent power of their totem.

The Rainfords had stopped using their circle, had stopped even calling on the totem for pack meetings. It had taken me three months to clear the circle once more, to be able to even access the obelisk.

No one in my pack, not since Gray Rainford, Daniel’s grandfather, had communed with the totem. Observed a covenant there. The Rainfords had done their damnedest to tear us apart from our roots, to keep us under their power…

I was clawing those roots back, but I realized what a way we had to go.

To feel the power, the sheer essence of a totem that was activated, that hadn’t been lost to the annals of time was astounding, and I wasn’t the only one feeling its influence.

Behind me, I could sense my council staggering to a halt as the Mother’s presence penetrated our being.

It wasn’t soothing or energizing, just like a reawakening. Like, after hours of shallow breathing, suddenly being able to gulp in air.