Page 1 of Wanted By the Wolves

Prologue: Nova

Age Fifteen

The howling of wolves rips me from sleep.

Ferals. Too close to the village.

I shoot out of bed, stubbing my toe on the wooden bedpost as I race down the hall, half hopping as I curse.

My grandmother is in the cabin’s living room, peeking out the curtains. In the darkness, her white nightgown shines in the light of the waning moon. The image is haunting. The feral wolves’ dark song makes the ghostly scene even more chilling. My heart pounds, terror rippling up my spine.

Her braid whips around as she turns, silver eyes shining with fear. “There are many. You must flee,” she says, voice trembling.

I swallow around the lump in my throat, frozen in shock. This day was always coming, but I’m not ready. I’ll never be ready.

Grabbing her book of spells from its place in the kitchen, Grandmother Natalia hastily flips through the pages until she finds what she’s after. She rips out the page, muttering an apology to the gods. “Use this to suppress your heat when it comes.”

“H-How?” I stutter.

Grandmother is a healer wolf, with the ability to harness magic beyond just shifting, but there are very few wolves like her.I’m definitely not one of them.

“This is only a tea. It won’t require any spell work,” she says reassuringly as she folds the page and tucks it into a backpack she grabs from a hook by the door. It’s our bug-out bag, packed for the eventuality of another feral attack. I hate that we need it. “Get to water near a cave. Don’t go into the city if you can help it. If you must, wear the binder and cloak your scent. Take to your animal, but make sure you shift to your human regularly. You must not lose yourself to your wolf.”

Her words are clipped as she gives last-minute instructions, but I can barely understand them over the pounding in my ears.I blink, and she’s ushering me back down the hall to my room. She’s long past the shifter age of being physically strong, already having passed her one hundred thirtieth year. Still, her spirit is so fierce it’s easy to forget.

She’s so much better at this than I am. I want to hide under the covers, pretend this isn’t happening.She tosses clothes at me, and my quick shifter reflexes are the only reason I can catch them. My brain is foggy, my hands shaking.

“Nova.” The warning in her voice snaps me out of it.

I tug off my nightgown and hop into thick jeans, layering myself in sweaters before adding a thick sheepskin coat. By the time my boots are laced, shrieks have joined the haunting howls.

The ferals have reached the village.

The blast of gunshots mixes with the snarling sound of wolves fighting. The village alphas won’t make it, not with that many wolves. This isn’t a lone feral. It’s a pack of moon-mad shifters who are completely lost to their beasts.

The stinging in my nose and throat betrays my urge to cry.

My grandmother pulls me into her arms, and I hug her back, trying to memorize this moment and make it last. She smells ofcinnamon and sugar mixed with strong nettle tea. It’s the warm, comforting smell of my childhood pack home.

That wasbefore.Before my parents died. Before I knew she wasn’t my grandmother. Before the ferals wiped through the territory like a plague.

Pulling a jar from the pack, she hastily rubs an ashy mixture into my exposed skin. “Run, child. There is no time to fear.” She pushes away from me, urging me to the window.

I grab her wrinkled hand and find her silver eyes. “Come with me. We can?—”

Her smile is full of so much sadness it stops my words. She doesn’t even have to say it. We both know she is too old to run. She won’t survive winter nights in the North Forest, not with ferals chasing us.

It doesn’t make it any easier. I try to push back. “I can stay with you, fight,” I insist.

She shakes her head, and it’s full of determination. “You must survive. You may be the last of our kind.”

With the stubbornness only an elder can pass off, she herds me out the back window. She follows on a leap-shift, turning into a small white wolf.

Down the hill, the moon madness is spreading in the village as the alphas battle against a pack of twenty or more ferals. The fierce snarls and shrieks accompany a scene of chaos and death. Neighbors turn on one another. Sane wolves fall to the moon madness. Everything left of my home will be gone after tonight.My heart breaks at the sight.

A harrowing breeze blows down from the mountains, sending flutters of snow and a whistling wind into the village below our cabin at the top of a hill.

One of the ferals sniffs the air, and his head snaps in our direction.

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