Page 64 of The Awakened Wolf

When we reached each other, I threw my arms around his shoulders. I knew he could smell the change in me. His eyes were sad, and he nuzzled me, but we couldn’t talk. Kiana and Sebastian seemed to speak with one another, but all I heard were the growls and yips of dogs. Tears filled my eyes as Sebastian swam us toward the shore, where the base of the tower holding the tram cables rose from the rocks.

As we drew near, three figures emerged. A man whose face was in shadow, but who’s size and cloak said it all. As did the two giant wolves standing on either side of him.

Odin.

Chapter Twenty-Five

I clung to Sebastian’s neck as he treaded water ten yards from shore. My sister paddled beside us, and the two growled back and forth, but it was gibberish to me. I would have sobbed in frustration if I weren’t so preoccupied with the massive hole growing inside of me. My consciousness was shouting into the void, calling for my wolf in anguish, but she didn’t reply.

She was gone.

The other half of me.

A truer sister, in many ways, than my own twin. In her place was an echo of the shape of her, cold and still. Thoughts of my father filled my mind, the understanding instant and terrible. No wonder he struggled to fight the infection in his lungs. My ankle continued to bleed, heat leaching from me along with my life force. But I almost wanted it, without her. My will to fight, to want to heal and go on, was fading.

“Come,” Odin’s voice boomed across the water with such force it ruffled the surface. “Son of my Most Loyal Servant.”

His single eye fell on Sebastian, and I buried my face in my mate’s sopping mane. My stomach roiled at the cavernous hole in the demigod’s skull, now uncovered, where his other eye once gleamed.

“Bring me the Marks,” he called, “and take your father’s place among my priests, so that we might restore order across the nations.”

Sebastian growled, the sound ending in a vicious snap, but Odin merely threw back his head and laughed.

“I knew you wouldn’t perish,” he said. “It was necessary to impress the strength of your own Beta powers upon you. I could taste the delicious cloud of your fear from across the river. Powers such as these are your rightful inheritance, given the loss of your father to the Cleansing. But to claim them, you’ll have to be cleansed yourself.”

At this, my sister rumbled, the sound a low hum of clarity. I flashed back to Damien’s howl as her fangs sank into his right shoulder. She’d stripped him of his wolf before flinging him into the Turtle Pond, where he’d died—a fragile human—of his injuries.

My ankle throbbed harder. I swallowed against the image of East River microbes making their way into my bloodstream. Sepsis looked like a pretty shitty death on that hospital TV show Evan made me watch while we were stuck in Manhattan. Cold washed over my soul, deeper than the chill of the water. I’d never imagined that kind of death, medicalized, stippled with pins and tubes…

I shook it off. I needed to be the one to speak now. “This cleansing,” I said. “Do you refer to what the Mark of Marrak can do?”

Odin swept a hand backward across his eye—eyes—eye. Then he flung his fingers toward the heavens. My stomach churned. I wished his weirdo religious rituals drew less attention to his face crater.

“Blessed be the Bite,” he intoned, “that purified my flesh in the waters of my mother’s womb. Though my uncle sought to harm her, he set me free from my father’s curse.”

Sebastian met my eyes, questioning, and I shook my head, equally mystified. There were so many gaps in our Old Stories though. Was he saying that Marrak had bitten his pregnant mother and rendered him human? Is that what he was so cranky about?

His good eye locked on Kiana. “And now the one who bears his Mark shall likewise cleanse all who bow before the One and Only Throne.”

Kiana’s defiant snarl was more like a roar, but Odin’s laughter thundered across the quiet river. For the first time it occurred to me that it wasn’t just quiet, it was silent. Wouldn’t the Roosevelt Island tram crashing into the river have drawn first responders? Or at least shouts and screams from pedestrians along the waterfront? But there was nothing. Only Odin’s voice and the lapping of water filling the night air.

There was only one explanation for the city’s uncharacteristic lack of interest—Odin had Beta powers too. We had guessed as much already, after the press conference, but now I knew it had to be true. I guessed not having a wolf didn’t mean as much to a demi-god as it did to my father. Or me. Odin had gotten to keep something.

The thought made me reconsider how lucky I’d been to be rescued by Sebastian. Maybe slipping beneath the waves now would be doing everyone a favor. Because I had no business tangling with a demi-god with unprecedented Beta powers before I lost my wolf. Now I was just an anchor dragging Sebastian down.

My sister snarled again, and Odin’s voice turned from boom to whip, cracking across the water. “You will do as you are told, Daughter of Marrak, for you have left your pack unattended.” He swept one arm toward Manhattan and the distant Bronx. “A single thought from me will send my army through your doors. All will perish.”

My heart pounded but there was no comforting snarl from my wolf, reassuring me that together, she and I could tackle anything. Kiana’s eyes turned to me, wide with alarm that needed no translator. I knew I had to do something. I couldn’t fight, but maybe I could keep Odin talking to give us time to think of something.

“So, Great One,” I began, trying not to retch as I kissed up to this murderous, Swiss-cheese-headed asshole. “If we understand…. you’ll let any shifter who receives Kiana’s bite live?”

“Yes,” Odin said, his grin squeezing his face hole nearly shut. “If they receive her bite and bow before the One and Only Throne. They may live.”

Of course. “And you sit upon that throne?” I asked.

“Yes. It will be a new era for our kind. Gone will be the Days of Division. The Era of Alphas has ended, and the Order of Odin will begin, but only those who humble themselves as humans shall know my peace.”

“Peace?” I scoffed. “Is that what you call inciting riots against us? Raiding our homes? Ravaging us with disease? You’ve promised the humans you will destroy us, and now you want us to believe you only wish to humble us and rule over us? Why not come to us first? Weren’t we all brothers and sisters before the divide? How can you hold a history against us now that we never even knew existed?”

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