Page 1 of Fae Devoted
Prologue
Wolf shifter JacobTucker crept toward the perimeter of the rebels’ compound, his muzzle low and his paws silent. He waded under a starless sky through the field of overgrown weeds, staying downwind. Each step brought him closer to a voice he hadn’t heard in decades but immediately recognized.
“I do not…harm…females.” His brother’s words sounded strained and shallow, as though spoken through a constricted windpipe.
It had been less than twenty-four hours since Tucker discovered that Jeremiah Grayson was involved with the Athair; a group of rebel Fae Touched hellbent on destroying the fragile peace between the magical community and the larger human populace.
Tucker froze, his ears pricking as a melodious voice answered his twin.
Shit, shit, shit.
He’d been holding onto the slim hope that recent events pointing to a full-blooded Fae leading the insurgents and residing in Earth’s realm were a fantastical rumor. But the tone of the being speaking was so pure it could only belong to a Sídhe. An Elven Lord who hadn’t returned to Faery centuries ago with the rest of his kind.
A series of thumps punctuated Jeremiah’s pronouncement as if a heavy body was hit hard, then skidded or rolled across the farmhouse’s gravel driveway. Tucker’s vision went red, and his pulse pounded, but he forced himself to remain unmoved.His brother was a traitor to the Fae Touched species and didn’t deserve sympathy.
Tucker dropped to a forward crawl as he neared the end of the natural cover surrounding the renegades’ hideout, the fur on his belly scraping the uneven ground. His smoke-colored pelt blended into the night’s deep shadows and kept his presence well-hidden. He stilled at the outer edge of the unlit clearing and waited for Samuel Walker to order the attack through the magical bond his Alpha held with every member of the pack.
To conceal the yellow glint of his eyes in the dark, Tucker took in the scene through half-closed lids and tried to ignore Jeremiah’s struggle to regain his feet. His twin had been thrown across the yard by a Fae with pointed ears, a willowy frame, and platinum hair that hung to his waist.
James Reed, the wolf shifter Tucker and the others came to the farmhouse to rescue, faced the Elven Lord with defiance. His hands were shackled in front of him, his canines overlapping his bottom lip despite the poisonous iron in the steel cuffs hindering his ability to shift. The region’s vampire prince had sent James to infiltrate the Ferwyn outcast pack—without Alpha Walker’s prior approval.
The Sídhe held his slender wrist close to James’ mouth as though expecting him to drink from his vein. Ferwyn didn’t require blood to survive like the Dádhe race. And unlike humans who were highly susceptible to a vampire’s blood manipulation, shifters were impervious to all but an Alpha’s compulsion. So, what purpose did consumption serve?
“Or I can force you to with a single spoken word and have you thank me for it afterward,” the Fae said. “Choose, wolf. Dignity or denial?”
“Neither, asshole!” Jeremiah charged out of the darkness and tackled the pureblood to the ground.
Seconds later, his brother went flying.
The spell the Sídhe unleashed on Jeremiah scoured over Tucker’s gray fur, raising his hackles. The cloying scent of lilacs heightened as the Fae curled his long fingers into a loose fist. Jeremiah’s spine arched in conjunction with the motion. His face turned bright red, then a sickly shade of purple, the scar gracing his cheek blanching stark white. A scar his twin didn’t have the last time Tucker saw him and one that shouldn’t be possible with a Ferwyn’s accelerated healing.
His muscles quivered watching Jeremiah fight for each breath, and Tucker couldn’t block the urgent plea riding his emotions as he reached for the link with Samuel.
If the attack came too soon, they could lose the opportunity to stop the Fae. He couldn’t place a single life above the thousands that would be lost if the rebellion incited a species war. Even if the life saved was his brother’s.
His Alpha answered came swiftly, aggression laced with compassion flowing through the pack bonds he held with Samuel made the order clear…go. Tucker’s wolf’s powerful muscles bunched and then stretched as he launched into the open.
James took advantage of the Fae’s focus on Jeremiah, eliminating the only other threat in the vicinity—an outcast guard. A blazing stream of flames from Carter Jenkins, their team’s covert battle witch, hit the Fae in the stomach, catching him by surprise and disrupting the killing spell.
Tucker ate the distance between him and his twin, then placed himself in front of a wheezing Jeremiah, his attention locked on the Elven Lord.
“Your brother is mine, wolf,” the Fae threatened while casting the protection of a mini cyclone around his ethereal form. “Yield now, and I’ll allow you the honor of serving beside him instead of dying where you stand.”
The magic of a nearby Ferwyn male converting to wolf form raced across Tucker’s flesh, the touch familiar and welcome. Jeremiah’s gray, identical to Tucker’s, took a fighting stance beside him. They bared their teeth in unison, telling the arrogant Lord that it’d be a cold day in hell before the Texas-born twins bowed their heads to a Fae.
Chapter 1
Tucker slammed thecommander’s office door behind him, in part to ensure their privacy against the enhanced hearing of the nearby Guard warriors gearing for duty—and defuse a fraction of his mounting frustration.
“No additional information on your brother’s whereabouts, I take it?” Samuel Walker, leader of the East South Central’s Ferwyn Clan and Alpha of the local Mud Island pack, looked up from the papers spread on his desk. As Clan príoh, Samuel was already the most dominant wolf shifter in four states. His royal appointment to Commander of the Guard elevated him to the third highest-ranking official in the entire Fae Touched region. Second only to the ESC’s ruling vampire queen and her heir, Prince Myles.
As Clan Walker’s beta and the commander’s first lieutenant, Tucker was his second in command.
“None,” he answered, striding back and forth across the limited width of the room.
“We’ll find him before he turns feral.” Samuel’s steady amber gaze held the same promise as his words. “But it’ll be more difficult if he’s already left the territory.”
It’d been a week since they caught Tucker’s sole sibling, Jeremiah Grayson, inside Clan Walker territory. Seven days since they challenged the Elven Lord at an old farmhouse in Mississippi and lost. One hundred and sixty hours since Jeremiah slipped away without explaining his betrayal of the magical community to Tucker or anyone else.
