Page 36 of The Awakened Wolf

“Are you okay?” I squeezed his hand with as much reassurance as I could muster.

“Yep. All good.” His return squeeze barely registered it was so soft.

“Breathe, Evan. You know I love you for you. The real you. I’ll never ask you not to be him. No matter what the others say. Okay?”

“I know, Elyse.” His squeeze this time was stronger. “Thanks.”

“Today,” the Elder Wolf recited. “We honor our most sacred and ancient rite. The blood of the gods runs in our veins. Their power fortifies our bones. In our gratitude, we pass this glorious gift to new generations.

We unite the strong.

We forsake the weak.

We punish the nonbeliever.

We live by the grace of the moon.

In this way we honor Halo and Leto’s blessing with claw and fang.

With this knowledge, I ask Evan, ‘Do you freely give your blood, bone, and seed to your mate, Elyse?’

He nodded, having practiced this with me in advance, though he couldn’t hide his trembling from me. It was radiating up my arm as we clasped hands. “So do I offer all I am, all I have, and all I can create, into her.”

The end of the plank I was walking drew nearer and everything grew progressively hazier, the Elder Wolf’s voice growing distant as she repeated her question to me.

“… freely give your blood, bone, and womb to your mate, Evan?”

I took a breath. At least, my mouth opened, but whatever musculature was supposed to suck in atmosphere was stuck. I considered the possibility that I might rather asphyxiate than proceed.

A pounding like a battering ram shook the heavy doors at the north end of the room and all heads spun, including mine, and there were a few nervous shouts. Evan threw himself in front of me, his eyes locked on the rattling doors.

Was it Odin? Had he come to finish us all off? How had he found us? No one knew this location except the attendees. My heart had been running a marathon for the past six hours as it was. Now it felt like it would explode.

“Bar the doors!” Kiana shouted, waving to members of the Bronx security squad. “You over there. Get the females and pups out of the way.”

A howl, deep and bone-shattering, tore through my mind, and I buckled. My grip on Evan was the only thing that kept me standing. It was the same wolf who’d howled when we’d kissed.

“Stop!” I shouted, pushing away from Evan, who grabbed my wrist as I tried to run for the doors. “Stop. Open the doors. It’s not him. Open the doors!”

No one listened. Every male in the room turned to face the door, their chests heaving, a breath away from shifting. My mating ceremony was about to become a sortie. I wrenched my wrist from Evan’s grasp and pelted for the door, my massive skirt bunched in both hands.

Kiana leaped after me, but I kept one step ahead. The doors exploded inward, almost slamming into me as I came to a screeching halt. Sebastian stumbled into the room, his dark eyes wild behind his gold-rimmed glasses, his newsboy cap askew. My heart seized around our handful of memories even as Kiana’s hand seized my elbow and all but threw me behind her.

The protective growl that rattled from Sebastian’s human throat cut straight to my core, but the snarl that ripped from Kiana’s hit me right where I’d always hurt the worst. My desperate wolf urged me forward, but I felt myself taking an uncertain step backward instead. If Sebastian’s wolf had howled in protest when I kissed Evan, then he might not be here with the purest intentions…

Footsteps echoed from the hall beyond, and a moment later, Atlas rounded the corner into the room, waistcoat twisted and blazer torn at one arm. “I tried to stop him, Alpha Kiana,” Atlas gasped, his normally kind face contorted with frustration. “I’m sorry.”

“You couldn’t be expected to stop an Alpha Heir single-handed.” Kiana shook her head and snorted with disgust. “Do you ever let a mating ceremony finish, Sebastian of Manhattan?”

Sebastian’s eyes flashed. “Not if it’s with the wrong person.”

Kiana’s head jerked to one side as if he’d struck her, but the set of her jaw told me her fangs were sprouting. The memory of her cold, cruel claws closed around my heart, ripping the pages from my book, shattering my DVDs into pieces. Everything I loved, she found a way to destroy. Even our own father.

A brand-new terror possessed my wolf—and me. What if Kiana bit him? What if she took his wolf as she’d taken our father’s? This was obviously preferable to killing all of him, but if he were human, and I were still wolf, we could mate all day long, and there would never be pups.

Inconceivable, my wolf snarled, shoving her fangs into my mouth so fast I tasted blood.

But before I could mingle it with my sister’s, Sebastian took a step back and swept off his cap. His dark untamed curls swung in front of his smoldering golden-brown eyes as he bowed his head in deference to my twin. My fangs shrank back, leaving plenty of room for my aching tongue to form a protest, but my dry lips clung to each other the way they’d been longing to cling to Sebastian’s.

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