Page 1 of Protection of the Pack

Chapter 1

Deathwasthebestthing that ever happened to me. Okay, so I didn’t actuallydie, but it was a damned near thing. I planned my funeral, I quit my job, I was in a freaking hospice. The end was nigh, the light at the end of the tunnel was shining down on me. It was … terrifying. Turns out I wasn’t ready to die.

I got lucky. My best friend, Jess, was my salvation. She broke some rules, busted me out of the hospice – and the rest, as they say, is history. Sure, I’m a werewolf now, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Even so, it was hard to feel anything warm and fuzzy as I looked at the man who had caused my near-death experience. James hadn’t known that Jess would save me. He had slept with me and condemned me to death, all the while making me fall a little in love with him. Bloody succubus.

And here he was, on the floor in front of me, looking up at me with angry eyes. Everything in his defiant body language said a clear ‘fuck you’. I glared back. Of the two of us, I had far more right to feel hard done by. He’d nearlykilledme, for God’s sake, and I’d loved him. Or I thought I had. Now all I felt was bitter and disillusioned. I hadn’t been his first victim – but I would be his last.

James had left a trail of broken hearts and dead bodies in his wake. I’d managed to account for nineteen women who’d had organ failure after dating him. Nineteen. And those were just the ones I’d found out about. Consequently, I didn’t feel any remorse about the karma that was about to kick his ass. Karma’s name is Esme; she’s my wolf, and she loves killing things.

It turns out being a werewolf isn’t at all likeUnderworldorVan Helsing. I should know; after I got turned into one, I binge-watched a bunch of movies to see if any of them are accurate. None of them are, not a one.

Vampires are real, except they’re called vampyrs. Werewolves are real, too, except it’s just like having your own personal wolf inside your head. When you shift, there’s no walking on hind legs or having jaws like a crocodile, you just become a huge wolf with extra strength, speed and a side of super-fast healing.

Esme and I have a deal: I drive when we’re on two legs, and she drives when we’re on four. It works for us. She has a ruthlessness that I’ll never match because my human morality gets in the way, but Esme sees things in black and white. She never hesitates. Which is good because, as much as I hated James for what he’d done to me and all the other girls before me,Icouldn’t deal with him. But Esme? She’d make mincemeat out of him, and I’d hold her handbag for her while she did it.

This was, of course, another test set by my pack. Since I’d become alpha, the weeks had been filled with test after test after test. My second, Manners, had dealt with as many of them as he could, but now the pack needed to see Esme and me in action.

I turned my thoughts inward.Ready for some violence?I asked Esme lightly.

I felt her delight rise up.Always,she responded eagerly.

It’s time to show them that we’re not all mouth and no trousers.

All mouth and no trousers?she repeated dubiously, sending me an image of myself butt-naked with a Joker-esque grin on my face.

I managed not to snort with laughter.It means we need to show them that we mean business. We’re not just braggarts – we can back up what we say with action.

So, violence?Her excitement thrummed through us.

Yeah, in this case violence. But don’t give me nightmares,I half-commanded, half-pleaded. I love Esme. She’s tough and honest, and never beats around the bush. She’s also incredibly violent and has a very skewed moral compass. But being a wolf, it’s not like she’s had the chance to read Aristotle.

Lord Samuel had told me that most werewolves struggle, the human side battling the wolf side that is always raging for dominance and control. Esme and I have none of that; she’s my sister from another mister, and I trust her completely. How could I not? We share one body and one heart, but two very different minds. We have no secrets from each other. She is more than my wolf; she’s literally the other half of me that I didn’t know was missing.

Who says you need a man to complete you? Not me. It turns out I just need a wolf.

Esme’s eagerness had me rising from my chair – it was time to get our hands dirty. As I started undoing the buttons of my shirt, I felt the excitement in the room ratchet up. It wasn’t because of my striptease but because they knew what it meant. Finally the members of my pack were going to see me change. They’d been trying to force me into a change for the last few weeks because they wanted to know how quickly I could shift, but I’d resisted their juvenile attempts to provoke me.

The fact is that Esme and I are different to other werewolves. For starters, we can communicate not just in flashes of images or feelings, but with actual clear-as-day words. It gives us a huge advantage. Whether it’s that, or that I was made Other by a magical artifact rather than by another wolf, we can also change in seconds. The strongest werewolves take a minute or two, and five minutes for a shift is perfectly normal, but Esme and I transform in a heartbeat. I’d pored over every text I could find in Lord Samuel’s library and everything I read suggested that our change was the fastest seen in centuries.

For good or ill, Esme and I are different – and my pack was about to learn a little more about their new alpha. I calmly finished undressing. I’ve never been body conscious because I’m the girl you love to hate. Willowy and model-like, I am blessed with modest curves and a toned tummy.

My gaze fixed on James. He’d seen it all before lots of times when he’d been my boyfriend and I’d naïvely thought he might bethe one.

I didn’t know how the pack had found out about him, but they had. The Other is a tough-ass magical realm and it demands justice. I could have turned him over to the Connection and had him arrested and tried. The Connection is judge, jury and, all too often, executioner; it is the political power, the law maker and the police all in one very scary organisation. But if I turned James over to the proper authorities, I’d losemyauthority – what little I had.

Manners was standing with his broad arms folded, slate-grey eyes glaring. Everything about his body language screamed belligerence. He is my protector, he’s constantly ready for a fight, and the pack knows it. But now it was my turn to show them all, including Manners, that Esme and I didn’t need a protector.

Let it rip,I murmured, and I felt pleasure roll over us as we embraced our Other form. Suddenly we were standing on four legs and looking around. Esme took front and centre and I relaxed into the passenger seat for the ride.

The colours around us were dull and muted, like everything was painted with a watery palette. We didn’t need our heightened hearing to catch the gasps from the pack; amazement and sudden anxiety pervaded the room like a scent. Esme laughed darkly in the confines of our mind. She likes to shock, and I’m growing to like it too.

She prowled forward menacingly, head low, teeth bared. James was still sprawled on the floor. His hands were bound behind him but that hardly seemed sporting. He was scum, but my morality demanded that we level the playing field a little – it wouldn’t do for him to be perceived as a victim when he was anything but. James was a dangerous predator, but we could handle him.

Esme doesn’t understand my need to be fair but she does respect it. With a dexterous move that was both human and wolf, we swiped through his bindings and freed his limbs. He scrambled to his feet as though the extra height would protect him.

We could hear his wrathful heart hammering away, its beat loud and rapid. Esme filtered through the extraneous noises and muted the ones we didn’t need as we focused on James. He had nearly killed me. You’d think death by sex would be a great way to go, but he’d drained the life from me gradually, leaving me confused and panicking, feeling unending lethargy and not knowing why. My death had been the scariest time of my life, but I’d come out the other side a little harder, a lot faster and even more determined than ever.

When Emory, Prime Elite and King of the Dragons, had found out about my succubus boyfriend James, he’d dug deeper and discovered a string of corpses. James may have been charming, but he was also a serial killer. He’d broken the rules of the Other realm by dating us, shagging us, making us believe he loved us and then killing us.

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