Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 62782 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 314(@200wpm)___ 251(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62782 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 314(@200wpm)___ 251(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
“If you called to lecture me over my child rearing skills, you can go fuck yourself.”
“You’re such a dick when your wolf needs to run. It won’t kill you to shift more than once a month, you know.”
“It’s unnecessary.”
“Perhaps, but it’s also unnatural to always hold back.”
“I’m too busy to run the woods whenever I feel like it,” I bite back. “Tell Rey I said to not waste her breath about school. I’ll see you…”
“Hello? You still there?”
“Fucking hell.”
“What? What is it?”
I squat beside two bodies that must have come from the abandoned campsite. Still slightly warm but no longer living. I’d been so busy suppressing my wolf lately, I didn’t even scent their death. I’m not admitting that to Judd. He’d really ride my ass then.
“Call Sheriff Bell.”
“Why? Someone hurt?”
I drag my stare over the mangled, naked bodies of both a male and a female. Their necks have been torn to shreds, both of them brutalized from head to toe. The woman’s pants and underwear have been ripped down her legs, stuck around her boots. If I had to guess, she’s been sexually assaulted. Not sure about the man.
“Two bodies. Quarter mile west of Red Hake Campgrounds, block five. Last campsite at the end of the road. My truck’s there. Tell him to send the coroner too.”
“Holy shit. What killed them?”
“Could be a bear or a mountain lion.”
“Or…”
“Unless bears have taking up fucking their victims, I wouldn’t count on it being pure beast.”
Which means one of us.
A wolf shifter.
Part man, part animal.
A memory tickles the back of my mind, but it’s fleeting whenever I try and grasp on to it. Choosing to focus on what’s in front of me, I consider if this killer is a wolf shifter. The mystery of it all, though, is we’re the only ones of our kind in the state of Maine. Even regular non-shifting wolves were eradicated through these parts. I’d think I’d be able to smell another pack or a loner, but I don’t catch a whiff of anything but death.
“Goddammit,” Judd snarls. “Like with Remy?”
The scene is an exact replica. No lingering scents. No murder weapons. Just carnage and gore, evidence of a violent attack.
“Exactly the same.” I pause, waiting to see if I feel Remy tied and focused to our bond. Nothing. “Don’t mention this to Finnick. He can’t keep his mouth shut.”
“Who would he tell?”
Remy.
The kid is too fragile lately to throw this bomb at him.
“Remy can’t know,” I mutter. “He won’t handle it well.”
Sheriff Jaxson Bell’s brown eyes are wide as he takes in the murder scene. I won’t delude myself into thinking it was anything but. His deputy, Brie Larson, turns her head, visibly shuddering.
“Of all the years on the job,” Jax says, “I’ve never seen anything so…gruesome.”
A decade ago, the situation with Remy’s family would have been under Jax’s father, Dean Bell’s jurisdiction since he was the sheriff back then. If we’d reported it. But since we claimed little Remy and refused to let the system take him, we buried his family and called him ours. Kept him off the grid and under our protection. In a small town like Brigs Ferry Bay, just over the Red Hake River, southwest of the Beacon Island National Forest, I can imagine they’ve not seen much action other than a few parking tickets or jaywalking. Based on Jax’s heart rate thudding so loudly I can practically feel it in my bones, I’d say this is the most horrifying thing he’s ever encountered.
“Bears?” Brie croaks out, shooting me a questioning look.
I scrub a palm over my face. “Definitely not. Someone wanted it to look that way, though.” I gesture at the woman’s corpse. “Bears don’t rape their victims.”
No one in the state of Maine aside from my small pack knows supernatural beings exist. I’m not about to open up a can of worms and let the sheriff and his deputy know that I think we might be looking at someone like myself. A shifter. He’s already green around the gills. A statement like that would probably make him pass out.
“Who could do something like this?” Brie asks, her voice shaky. “It’s so…brutal.”
My mind threatens to rip open, letting the emotions of my father’s death flood through me. The past is done. No changing it now. Eighteen years ago, I left home after Dad’s death, desperate to escape it all. It took everything in me to close that door of my life. I was alone for several years, evading my kind for as long as I could. Eventually, I sought out a place I could disappear to and be forgotten forever. A place where wolf shifters and real wolves didn’t roam. Beacon Island. Safe and quiet and free from violence. Along the way, I picked up stragglers, all lone wolf shifters who were once human, bitten, and turned against their will—who needed direction and family and a life to call their own. I hadn’t expected to form a pack, but it’s exactly what I’d ended up doing. I guess I was always meant to be an Alpha.