Page 39 of The Sacred Wolf

I stumbled mid-pounce, utterly confounded by what he’d just said. I shook my head as if to clear my obviously clogged ears. “You have no mate, no pups!”

“No mate, not really,” he agreed. “But one beautiful pup.”

We stared at each other. His tail swept the bloody floor, unable to contain his joy.

“Yara,” I moaned. “Her sickness.”

Images of Yara’s fits flew through my mind like a movie on fast-forward. Her visions. The holes in her memory. The way she’d freed Damien so willingly. Oh, Leto, help us, no! That would mean…

“You’re Sebastian’s father.” I accidentally allowed the impossible thought to escape.

Damien’s cackle resonated in my skull, and his wolf straightened, the faux deference thrown off as quickly as the suit jacket from which he’d shifted.

“That can’t be.” I stamped my paw on the floor. “Yara would never! She loves Max.”

“Oh, Yara, Yara, Yara!” Damien’s glee was putrid. He practically pranced with self-gratification. “What she didn’t know, couldn’t hurt her. Or could it?”

His laughter turned maniacal in my head. Bile filled my mouth, and I had no choice but to open my jaws and let it all pour out and splash the tile. Coughing, I looked up at a being a thousand times more evil than I’d ever imagined.

“By Holy Leto’s name, you’re telling the truth, aren’t you? You wanted to turn your Beta bloodline into an Alpha bloodline.”

“Look who’s finally using her brain cells,” he hissed. “What little your mother left you with anyway. I swear I’ve never met two more silly, selfish bitches. Such a shame she didn’t get to you see you grow up.”

Chapter Nineteen

I leaped at Damien and sank my fangs into his throat, hungry to taste his blood on my tongue. My mind flooded with thoughts of my mother’s agony, the betrayal she must have felt when the midwolf’s claws ripped her apart and she left this world wondering what would happen to her babies. My wrath swirled within me, winds of fury tightening like a tornado. I longed to feel his bones shatter in my jaws and hear the final gurgle as I ended him.

“Enough, filthy female!”

A voice that rasped like glass on asphalt filled my mind. Before I could close my jaws, a one-two punch of concrete spiked with rebar knocked me loose. It was Damien’s backup band coming to his defense. Their whipcord strength plowed into my side sending me sliding across the floor, my claws screeching.

Up close, I realized that my former assessment of their appearance had been charitable. There were two, one taller and broader with an ebony coat patched with scabrous lesions. This was the one whose voice had just violated my mind. The other was smaller, the scars across his chestnut flank looking like he’d been dragged through barbed wire.

Didn’t these shifters get chances to heal? It made no sense.

“Stay out of it,” I warned. “This doesn’t involve you.”

Damien advanced slowly with a predatory slink behind his twin skeletons.

“I’ll kill you both with him if I have to!” I was a boiling avalanche of hatred sliding down a mountain to devour everything in sight. “But I’m giving you the chance to leave.”

“You know,” Damien’s putrid thoughts filled me, a limning rot that turned my stomach. “Reminding me you are the Alpha may have been a mistake.”

I threw myself forward, but the ebony wolf blocked my path. “You’ll have to go through me first wretch.”

His words left my mind raw and deepening my rage. “Wretch? How dare you? I’m an Alpha Heir, born of centuries of my bloodline. Who the hell are you?” I snapped the air between us. “Come out, Damien!” I fumed at the gray wolf standing behind his zombie-apocalypse protectors like a coward. “Stop hiding behind these bags of bones.”

“When I kill you,” Damien continued, ignoring me, “I will have defeated the Bronx’s true Alpha, given your father’s ignominious defeat by your sister, who is herself just the spare.”

The ebony wolf ignored my warning. “Let’s see what you can do against this bag of bones,” he rasped, re-engaging like some inexorable wolf-Terminator and bounding at me head-on.

I pulled back onto my haunches like a coiled spring and vaulted so hard that I flew off him, sending him slamming into the wall. Powered by the torrent of rage that lit my every pore to the tips of my bristling white fur, I crashed into Damien, rolling him, and us, through the gleaming doors of the lobby and into the darkened theater—our spines, shoulders, and hips hammering against the unyielding seat frames as we tumbled down the aisle.

“Hey, what the—!” Evan shouted, jumping up, his tall frame silhouetted against the cozy image of The Shop Around the Corner on the screen. He whirled just as our carousel of violence banged its way toward him. His eyes widened and flashed an even icier shade of blue.

Evan shifted, his charcoal gray wolf bounding toward me, but just as he was about to reach us, the ebony wolf leaped over us and met him mid-air. They clashed, snarling, front paws wrapped around each other, fangs flashing as they wrestled, muzzles seeking throats.

No! He’s not ready! My mind screamed, frantic for me to help my friend, but Damien’s jaws lashed at me, and my attention snapped back to him. I shoved upward with all four paws, and he just missed, catching my ear and slicing it, sending a rainbow of blood spatter across the seats. Pain laced through me, but I barely felt it through the terror that washed over me as the background screaming finally registered.

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