Page 3 of An Ancient Bond

Alive, but still alone.

I stilled as a dozen wolves ran past me, yipping and howling as they celebrated the moon. They were gone like a swarm of bees in seconds, their sounds lost on the wind, but my gut clenched as I heard something else. Suffering. A wolf in agony, and the Alpha commanding it to shift.

I broke into a jog, my bag rattling a warning, almost like a snake’s tail. Inside me, my own wolf raised a tired head and sniffed… then began howling.

Run, she urged. Run.

I dropped the bag and obeyed. Listening to my wolf was the only way I’d stayed alive this long alone in the wilderness. When her instincts said to climb a tree, I climbed, and escaped human hunters with guns. When she sent me clambering up a cliffside eight years before, the sight of the flash flood washing hundred-year-old pines away beneath me reminded me to always listen, to never question her wisdom.

Now she was practically baying for me to go faster.

I came out from under the trees into the clearing where the pack rituals took place at a dead run. I had less than a second to take in the scene. The Alpha was leaning over a wolf caught in mid-shift. The poor young shifter was a mess of parts—wolf and human—blended in a way that the moon never intended. He let out a soft howl and stared up at the full moon just as a cloud moved in front of it, his face slackening, blood pouring from his nose and ears.

He was dying.

“No!” I leaped for him, knocking the Alpha away as much as I could to lay my hand on the bloody mess that he was focusing on.

Alpha Samuel snarled at me, his waves of dominance beating at me like a flash flood of their own.

“Get back! You’re hurting him!”I bared my suddenly sharp teeth and slapped his hands away from the male, wrapping my own arms around him, prepared to fight my own Alpha if he didn’t let me hold him.A swell of sensation moved like electricity through me where my skin met the young male’s body, but I ignored it. I knew what that feeling meant, but it wouldn’t matter if Alpha Samuel didn’t let me do what was needed.

The Alpha began to shift, his teeth elongating, claws forming at the ends of his fingers, but I set my feet on the packed earth and prepared to fight him. I would lose, but I had to try.

“Annalise,” he growled. “Leave him!”

“Never! He’s mine!” I shouted, feeling my wolf take over completely, her connection to the moon all that could save him now.

All that could save us both, since this young male was my true mate, and if he died, I would follow.

3

Honoring the Moon

ANNALISE

Alpha Samuel went still as I let my change take me. I had always changed quickly, and my years living alone, often in wolf form, had made becoming my wolf second nature to me.

But I shifted faster now than I had ever before. My ragged clothes ripped at the seams as my bones broke, then reformed. Fur replaced bare skin, claws dug into the earth, and my teeth grew sharp. They needed to be, for what I had to do.

With a sharp glance at the Alpha, I lowered myself to my belly and allowed my fur to make contact with the young male’s mixture of skin and pelt. He groaned—in agony, it sounded like—but when I licked him to clear the blood away from his shoulder, he shivered and groaned again, the noise filled not with pain, but… longing?

I lapped the space there until it was clean skin, sensing that I would need to bite soon, and deeply. A hint of petrichor and sage rose from him, a soft scent that sank into my lungs even as I pulled back a bit to see if he was alert enough to ask for permission.

He was not. His eyes were closed, his breathing only shallow pants of pain.

Alpha Samuel murmured softly, “You are his true mate. Save his life. As his Alpha and yours, I grant my blessing to your union.” When I still hesitated, he went on. “Reb needs you, Annalise.”

I breathed in another lungful of his gentle scent, though his spilled blood was almost overpowering. It felt wrong, even with the Alpha’s blessing. This wasn’t how a claim was made; normally there was explicit, joyful consent given, and the initial bonding was always done in human form.

But my mate did not have time for that. I extended my open jaws, placed them carefully where his neck and shoulder met, and buried my sharp teeth in his soft flesh.

I felt the bond flare bright between us at the same moment that a cloud sailed away from the moon, allowing the cool, silvery light to cover us. I blinked as the male beside me shifted almost instantly, his patchy skin becoming thick, soft fur in one heartbeat, his body aligning perfectly into an enormous wolf in the next.

The moonlight seemed to sink into him, painting him a lustrous white. Was he a gray wolf? Our pack was almost all darker hues, chocolate browns and black, with occasional tips of silver.

But this wolf wasn’t gray. He was white as snow, except for the patches where his drying blood marred his coat. I’d never seen a white wolf, never heard of one, except in stories.

I huffed and reared back as his eyes opened wide. He had stunning blue eyes that shone up at the moon for only an instant before his head turned to me, and they caught mine.

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