Page 115 of The Wolf in My Tavern

Wait? What the fuck was that about. He is a wolf, and his lips did not even move. “How the fuck do I get back?”

“Yes! He is in the pack bond!” Arlo says, also not moving his lips.

“Shifters really talk with their minds. I thought that was just a story.”

Arlo yips and comes over to nuzzle against me, his tail wagging with approval.

My tail is also wagging… What the fuck is wrong with my beast getting all perky?

Drake comes over to greet me next, nuzzling me before giving me a playful shove.

“Time to train, whelp,” Gray says, although his tail is likewise beating from side to side.

Then he charges me and knocks me flying.

I roll straight to my feet and charge him back.

Which is when I discover I know fuck all about fighting as a wolf.

By the time Gray is done with me, dusk is falling, and every muscle in my body twitches with fatigue. I can now shift to all three forms, although the transition to bipedal beast is clumsy, and his size varies depending on how much Gray has riled me up. As Gray is swift to point out, while powerful, my beast is not always the best form for close combat or speed, and if I am to reach my true potential, I must master all forms.

We ride the horses to the next village and leave them with the farmer, who is delighted by his bounty.

Then we take off into the forest as wolves, running through the rest of the evening and into the night, bound for the Halket clan.

As we run, my mind is cast back to that pivotal night when I joined my father in his secret work for the underground rebellion.

I seemed so innocent back then, on the cusp of understanding.

I didn’t know I would rescue Ada that night, nor how important she would go on to become.

A life stretches before me, but it will be desolate without her.

The jubilation of shifting is bittersweet. But for the first time since Ada was snatched from the courtyard, I find some small measure of hope.

Chapter Forty-Two

Ada

Lizbeth and I are taken to the Canis pack’s den, though I am barely conscious for much of it, as we are bound and swinging from the jaws of a wolf shifter, journeying through forest pathways.

A narrow fissure in the side of a craggy outcrop gives way to a dark stone passage that soon opens into a cavern with a rocky ceiling crowded with clinging plants and vines. Sunlight spills down onto the stony floor, and onto the shifter male who awaits our arrival.

Rufus, the Canis pack leader.

The room is quiet except for the passage of the shifters who bring us to the towering alpha.

Dropped to the floor, I groggily rise while helping Lizbeth up, as her wrists are bound at her lower back—they are taking no chances with her, it would seem. I get the impression she would not hesitate to attack if she should get free.

I am new to this world and the relationships between the various factions and packs save the little I have gleaned from conversations. But one glance at Rufus—the man allegedly responsible for Gray’s father’s death—and I know that he is scum.

His smile has an oily quality that makes me shudder. As one might expect for a pack leader, he is a powerful male. Wearing only a pair of hide pants, there is no mistaking his musculature. Perhaps he is a little shorter than Gray but he is broader in the chest in his human form. He eyes me with the interest of one perusing a tasty snack. With golden blond hair and deep blue eyes, he is younger than I imagined a tyrant to be, and beautiful in a way that almost seems pretty.

Yet his lips are cruel and his gaze is cold. I can believe this man keeps women and children hostage so their mates will do his bidding, and that all the other terrible things I have heard about him are likewise true.

He steps right up to me. “Well, well. You’re a pretty little thing, aren’t you?” He dares to capture a lock of my dark hair, running it through his fingertips before I can snatch it away.

“Do not touch me,” I hiss.

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