The atmosphere was tense between us as we crept out of Torin’s bedroom, but there was way more to worry about than our mess of a relationship. The pack lands were under attack. We didn’t know how or why, but it was clear that something was very wrong.
“Where did everyone go?” Jaxson muttered, guiding me out into the hall. We still couldn’t see anything, and there was no sound of life in the corridor.
“Why were you out of pack lands anyway?” I asked, staying near him.
“I left to run an errand in town,” he murmured. “And as I said, when I drove up, everything went dark.”
Great. So neither of us knew a fucking thing except the world had gone dark when it wasn’t supposed to. “I think this might indeed be my fault,” I admitted.
I’d been trying my best to ignore the deep, panicked part of me that knew I’d done this by calling the Shadow Beast. Could it really be a coincidence that the light had fled minutes after I’d said his name?
But, seriously, what the fuck? I’d heard other people curse and call out to him. It was like a figure of speech, right? Not a literal invitation to pop his ass Earthside and shake shit up.
“It’s not your fault, Meers,” Jaxson replied, almost instinctively defending me. I didn’t bother to argue since we were now outside, the fresh icy air slapping us in the face, and we could finally see a little in front of us.
Out here was a source of light I couldn’t identify, but it was enough for our shifter vision to kick in. “This is not like nightfall,” I breathed. “It’s like a shadow has blocked out the sun completely.”
A shadow.
Mother fucking fucker.
“I can scent pack over here,” Jaxson said, and for once, those words were a relief.
He led me around the side of the house, toward the front entrance with its circular driveway. Jaxson’s fancy blue sports car was awkwardly parked there, driver’s side door still open like he’d exited in a rush. And right behind it was…
“The fuck…” Jaxson muttered, seeing them at the same time as me. “They weren’t here when I arrived.” His hands trembled as his voice wolfed out.
Hundreds of pack members were out in front of the pack house, statue still, staring up at the sky. At a tiny point of midnight shimmer to be more accurate. Shimmer that was the source of light.
Jaxson angled his body in front of mine. “It’s magic.”
We might have been shifters, but that wasn’t really magic. We shared our souls with beasts, and they lent us their energy and senses, giving us extra abilities. Magic, like waving wands and casting spells, was the stuff of legend.
No supernatural creatures we knew about could do this.
“Stay behind me,” Jaxson said, creeping closer to the pack.
No way did he get to order me around, so I moved forward at my own pace, by his side. When we reached the front of the group, where Torin and Victor stood, I could really see the spot of darkly shimmering mist. A mist that every single shifter stared at.
It was about eight feet tall, flickering gently in the night air; a portal of midnight glitter that shouldn’t have been visible against the black backdrop, but it was.
“Mera,” Jaxson hissed, pulling me to a stop. “Don’t move a muscle.”
I jerked my arm free. “Muscles move whether I want them to or not. You really shouldn’t have slept through biology.”
He glared at me. “Not the fucking time, Sunny. Not. The. Time.”
I smiled sweetly, hoping that it wasn’t so dark that he would miss the murder in my eyes. “If you call me ‘Sunny’ one more time, there will only be one functioning member of this pack remainin—”
My threat was cut off by an icy rush of air. So cold that even with a shifter metabolism, I shivered uncontrollably, my skin covered in goosebumps.
“That’s why I said not to move,” Jaxson murmured so low, I could barely hear him. “That sparkly mist is hiding something.”
The icy air ramped up, and maybe it was that I was staring directly into the shimmering darkness, but I saw the exact moment the shadows abandoned their master, revealing a being that could only be described as beyond this world.
My mouth went dry as I stared, frozen by more than the arctic winds.
He was touched by light. The only light that currently existed in the world. Raven hair tousled in curls atop his head—a hairstyle that could have made him appear angelic, but there was nothing further from the truth.
He was breathtakingly scary and perfectly sinful.
Maybe it was his intimidating height, well over a foot taller than me, or maybe it was the way his eyes were beams of red and gold, flickering between the two with an intensity that had me wanting to start running and never stop.
I didn’t move, though, unable to tear my gaze from him, devouring each detail like it’d be on the most important test I’d ever take. He had a cut jaw and high cheekbones, lending him to an ethnicity that could never be defined, because it did not exist on the earthly plane. His clothing was exactly what I’d expect a human to wear: dark pants, heavy-soled boots, and a form-fitting black shirt. But the body below them was impressive to the point of impossible.
And I was almost certain his muscled arms were inked as well, tattoos peeking out from the edge of his shirt. They should have been hard to see in the night-like light, on skin that was the darkest shade of bronze in existence, but they glowed softly, adding one more impossible to this… creature.
He stepped toward me, his focus intense, while flickers of inky smoke swirled lovingly around his perfection. I couldn’t tear my eyes from that face carved from gods and sin, wrapped in bronze skin and depthless eyes.
I stared into a nightmare-spattered dream. And it scared the absolute fuck out of me.
“Mera!” Jaxson shouted as all the shifters around us collapsed, like they’d been released from the magnetic hold of this being.
At the same time, the shadows withdrew, retreating from the pack lands as they tunneled back into him, until once again, the world was filled with midday light.
“What the fuck is happening?” Victor roared, having finally returned to his full senses.
His eyes darted around, trying to figure out exactly who was to blame for his sudden appearance in the front of the pack house. When his gaze landed on the smoke-laced male, he blinked more than once, his anger dying off.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
The shadow dude paid no attention to the alpha, his eyes locked on me. I had no fucking idea why he was staring me down like I was the last ice cream on a summer’s day, but it was completely unnerving.
“Who are you to trespass on pack lands?” Dean asked, slightly braver—or stupider—than his alpha. “Speak now or face the highest of repercussions.”
The man’s lips tilted up, full, plump lips that again should have made this angel-faced god look sweet. They did not.
His smile was dark and sinister, his eyes filled with flames.
Flames so legit that for a second, I almost expected to feel heat wash across the pack lands. There was no denying any longer who stood before us…
“Shadow Beast,” I whispered.
For this, I was rewarded with a smile. “At your service, pup.”
Fuck me sideways with a spoon. His voice was deep and rumbly with just a hint of Scottish accent. Gasps rang out around the pack lands, and many of the shifters fell to their knees before him, bowing low.
Not Victor, though, the arrogant fuck. “What do you want?” he asked, sounding confident, but I caught the tremble of his hands. Not a surprise since standing before us was our deity. Worshipped by our kind.
The being who’d created shifters and to whom we owed a shit ton of allegiance.
Shadow Beast stepped closer to me, ignoring all the others. “You did something tonight, didn’t you, little wolf?”
I swallowed hard. “I called you?”
He shook his head. “I was already looking for you when the call came through.” He tilted his head back, tongue darting out. “Your energy tastes like the one who touched the Shadow Realm earlier.”
My throat was so dry that when I tried to speak, nothing more than a croak emerged. “No.”
Shadow Beast narrowed his eyes on me. “No?”
The heat of him was stronger now, most of the shifters shuffling back, leaving me alone.
“I didn’t touch the Shadow Realm.” I thankfully sounded more confident this time. “You have the wrong shifter.”
What did I have to lose by lying? He was probably going to kill me either way.
He stepped closer again, and I tried to run, but my feet were planted to the ground like useless tree stumps. The closer he got, the more I had to reassess his height… Fuck, he was over eight feet.
Except… As he leaned down, his height reduced until he was once again a head taller than me. Eight feet to six-and-a-half feet in an instant. Did he just morph his height at will?
I stilled as he leaned over, running his nose along my cheek. Not touching, but I felt his energy as if he’d caressed my entire body in that one stroke. “Smells like bullshit,” he murmured close to my ear, and before I could react, he wrapped huge-as-fuck hands around me and hauled me up and over his shoulder.
This snapped me out of my stunned immobility, and I screamed and fought against his hold. The asshole made a grumbling sound before a strike of pain rocketed across my skin, an electrical zap akin to a stun gun.
“Stay still and this won’t hurt,” he warned, whatever dark humor he’d been rocking earlier disappearing. “Fight me, and I’ll make you wish that you’d died during your first shift.”
“Choices, choices,” I shot back, falling into my usual response to big bullies. “However will I decide?”
He stopped moving, lifting me fully as if I weighed ten pounds, holding me so he could see my face clearly. “A shifter with a death wish. Never thought I’d see the day.”
I smiled. I was very good at a sweet tilt of my lips, all while my eyes were telling them to go fuck themselves. “You seem a little slow on the uptake, and I’m sure it’s been a while since you were around anything other than your hand and some demon minions, but it’s frowned upon to steal people.”
As the flames in his eyes flared to life, I was zapped again, this time dialed up to level ten as I screamed.
“Stop!” Victor bellowed. “You cannot touch my shifters like this. There are laws and you’re breaking them.”
The electrical pain died off as I huffed in and out, trying to catch my breath—would I survive if he did that again?
“You think to challenge me?” Shadow Beast asked, finally looking at the alpha. “You mortals worship me, have offered me every conceivable tribute, and yet you would deny me this one shifter?”
I tilted my head to see Victor. “Seriously?” I huffed. “Do you think it should only be Torma pack that gets to torture me?”
Shadow Beast and I were both glaring down the fucktard of an alpha now.
Victor cleared his throat. “There are rules,” he repeated. “And if this shifter is valuable, I expect to be compensated.”
Ah, yes. Now it all made sense. He wasn’t worried about my health or safety. He just saw an opportunity to make a deal with a powerful entity.
“Dad!” Torin snapped, speaking for the first time. “She’s my true mate and I get to decide her fate. No one else.”
Victor nodded, his expression one of jubilation. “Yes, right! True mate bonds exist above all other rules… Even your claim on the mongrel bitch. You can’t take her without her mate’s permission.”
The Shadow Beast’s chest was rumbling. The others might not have noticed because it was subtle, but I felt the deep fury he was rocking.
Victor was about to meet his maker—literally—and I couldn’t feel anything except a sense of satisfaction after the many years of living under his horrid rule.
Just thinking about that had my chest rumbling as well, and when I met the Shadow Beast’s eyes, I shrugged. “You might be a scary bastard, but I fucking hate this pack.”
His pain had lasted a few seconds, while this pack’s had been a lifetime.
“He rejected me,” I added, “so there’s no tie you need to worry about. My mate did not accept the bond.” Making his claim null and void.
“Mera!” Jaxson yelled, sounding panicked and furious. My name was a warning to shut up, but I’d never been good at heeding those. I did flip him off, though.
Torin let out a rumbling howl, his features shifting as he partly wolfed out. “I didn’t even have time to think about the bond,” he argued. “Maybe I would have changed my mind before I fully severed the bond.”
I snorted, twisting my face toward the scariest fucker in the world. “I’m ready to go with you now,” I said. “Anything to avoid staying here with this pack of weak-ass bitches.”
More howls filled the air at my insult. Torma was so used to being the “strongest” pack that anyone thinking they were weak was the worst slur of all.
Shadow Beast cocked his head, staring at me again, almost as if I’d surprised him in more ways than one. Personally, I enjoyed surprising demon creatures—it was one of my strongest skillsets.
With a shake of his head, he dropped me back over his shoulder, striding away from the pack. I couldn’t see the direction we were heading, but I had a very clear view of the inky smoke swirling around us, coating his lower half almost completely. As it reached his heavily muscled shoulder, my body also started to disappear into the darkness.
I was about to be engulfed in shadow and I couldn’t even be upset about it—I was way too freaked out for that.
“Sunny,” Jaxson called, his voice hoarse. “Fight him.”
I chuckled, the smoke caressing my arms in cool strokes. “I couldn’t even fight you bastards when we were kids. You think I can fight the creature of darkness?”
Shadow Beast snarled. “Darkness is not my calling card, mutt. You would do well to remember that.”
Mutt. Charming.
It kind of was charming in his almost-Scottish accent.
“Stop them!” Victor shouted, sending his wolves after the Shadow Beast, even as he remained behind in relative safety.
Or so he thought.
We stopped moving, the beast turning as flames licked up and across his arms, the heat so intense that I actually wondered if I was going to burn alive. Those flames obeyed the will of their creator, flinging from his fingertips and engulfing Victor completely.
“Only a weak alpha sends his pack out to do his job,” Shadow Beast murmured. “Torma is too strong for one such as you to control it any longer.”
Victor’s screams as he burned to death would be heard across Torma, followed by his son’s howls as he lost control and shifted into his wolf, trying to get to his father. Jaxson held his clawing, fighting best friend back, and the pair of them were the last thing I saw as the Shadow Beast stepped into darkness—or… shadows? And we both disappeared.
