Page 2 of The Sacred Wolf

“Not yet.” I turned and trotted back to my side of the Alpha Family’s padded, sound-proof training room. Every time Evan and I made use of this private space on the Plaza’s penthouse level, which was several times daily, I had to remind myself not to read too much into the fact that I was still considered part of the Alpha Family. Because maybe I wasn’t. Maybe this was just the only training room in Manhattan where Sebastian could be sure no one would walk in on the female who’d dumped him wrestling with a strange, no-rank male who wouldn’t hide his love of movies.

Unlike Sebastian.

I wondered if that added to his jealousy—knowing Evan and I shared an interest Sebastian wouldn’t admit that he shared with me. Even when we were sitting in the fancy movie theatre he’d bought for me. I didn’t like that about him, but I understood. Alphas had their pride, but Alpha Heirs had even more. And that was probably why I’d found Sebastian more mate-worthy when I’d assumed he was Manhattan’s future Beta. Now he just reminded me of my sister—never laughing, never relaxing, never letting the mask slip around anyone who might pose even the slightest threat to their ability to keep getting whatever they wanted whenever they wanted it.

Would I be like that? If Damian hadn’t switched Kiana and me while our father lay weeping across our mother’s torn body, would I also be an insufferable bore incapable of having fun or expressing emotion? If I claimed my birthright, would I have to give up everything I loved about myself and learn how to be Kiana the same way Evan was learning how to be a wolf? Who would teach me? Certainly not her, and my father, well, who knew if he was even—

Evan slammed into my hindquarters, knocking me into a spin that whirled me around to face him. His blue eyes widened with the realization that he’d once again made a potentially fatal mistake. Snarling, I drove my muzzle into the side of his neck, forcing him flat on his belly as I grabbed a mouthful of scruff and gave it a good shake like… well, like a mother wolf.

Mortified, I spit him out and backed away. Training Evan was not unlike training a ten-year-old pup with selective hearing and zero focus, but Evan was not a pup. He was a grown male, two years older than me, who had once been my first silly schoolgirl crush. Hell, he’d been my first kiss when I turned eighteen. So why did his mom jokes hit a little too close to home? Why was there a part of me that did look at Evan and think mine on some primal level? Just one of many things it would have been nice for Leto to explain in a little more detail when she summoned Kiana and me to… wherever that field of wildflowers was.

If that had ever even happened. The vision had felt so real in the moment, but now… a month later… I wasn’t so sure I hadn’t just hallucinated the whole thing while my sister’s teeth were cutting off my air supply. The only scrap of evidence I had for believing that the Goddess of Wolves had actually called Kiana and me into her meadow to scold us for not getting along with each other was that when we’d both come, my twin had asked—

“What the hell was that?” Evan pushed up onto one hand and two knees, rubbing his slobbery neck. The look in his human eyes suggested that he didn’t find the mom jokes funny anymore either. “Elyse?”

Chapter Two

My flesh and bones frantically shifted back into human formation, and I could feel my human cheeks flaming before my fur had fully receded. I ducked my head to hide behind the veil of blond hair tumbling from my scalp, but I could still the saliva dripping off the fingers he now held in front of his freaked-out face.

“I don’t know,” I mumbled. “It just happened.”

“Okayyy.” Evan said slowly, wiping his wet hand down the length of my arm. “But you do know you’re not really my mom, right? Though she’d love to pull that trick.”

I lifted my head to glare at him, wishing I could still pin back my ears. Or growl.

Bite him, my wolf prompted now that she was back inside. Maybe it’ll fix him.

He doesn’t need fixing, I snapped, and my eyebrows must have furrowed dangerously because Evan shrank back as if expecting me to pounce on his human neck.

He belongs with his own kind.

You’re the one who made him ours!

I didn’t know what I was doing.

I believed her. How could she have known? No wolf had turned a human into a shifter since… well, no one knew exactly when it happened last, but the Old Stories claimed it had been over a thousand years. None of those stories explained why the power eventually faded, but in my vision on the bridge, Leto claimed it had something to do with her sons, Chann and Marrak, not being able to get along. And then she claimed that if Kiana and I could get along, we would be able to save our kind from “the trouble that comes for us all.”

So… we’re doomed.

Looks like it!

My sister and I hadn’t spoken since the night she tried to murder our father and I dropped the bomb on her that her beloved “Uncle” Damian had murdered our mother. Apparently, she’d already known for years that we’d been switched us at birth so she could be the Alpha—and had no problem with it—but she’d remained blissfully ignorant to the fact that Damian had used his Beta mental powers to coerce the midwolf into ripping my mother open with her claws to get me—no, Kiana—out safely. And she was still blissfully ignorant to all the details of that event because she never gave me a chance to explain. She ran away.

Who knows if she even believes me?

I could understand why she wouldn’t want to. I had lived with the guilt of being the violently delivered pup since our father told us the whole story when we turned thirteen—right before he moved us out of the penthouse apartment we all shared and into separate apartments on the next floor down. Now I realized that probably hadn’t been Father’s decision but the next step in Damian’s divide-and-conquer scheme. He needed more opportunities to be alone with Kiana to fill her head with lies.

We should’ve killed him when we had the chance.

Next time. If Sebastian doesn’t get there first.

Maybe you could do it together. Like a date…

A smile quirked my lips, imagining that scene. Hunting down the disgusting male who had murdered my mother and coerced Sebastian’s fragile mother Yara into setting him free while Max and Mateo were dealing with the fall out of the subway massacre and Sebastian and I were dealing with my twin on the bridge. I could picture Sebastian’s gorgeous gray wolf holding that living, breathing, struggling, screaming snake down while I ripped his quivering stomach wide open—

“Elyse!” Evan snapped his fingers in front of my nose.

I blinked as my friend leaned forward to squint at my face. “What? Stop that!”

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