This Dark Wolf (Soul Bitten Shifter #1) - Everly Frost Page 0,101

up above us, and it starts to rain.

Turning my face up, I welcome the water dripping across my face and hair, down my chest and back.

Iyana and Danika hover at my side. “We should get back to the tower,” Danika says.

I shake my head. “I need some space.”

Back home, I would have run through the mountain forest, let my feelings wash away in the wind. Here, I’m surrounded by walls. Buildings, damn elevators, walls everywhere.

I meet their worried eyes. “I’ll be okay, but I can’t go back to the tower right now.”

“Then we’ll stay with you,” Iyana says.

“No.” I give her another firm shake of my head. “Please. I’ll be fine. I’ll see you back there soon.”

I spin on my heel and take off across the parking lot before they can try to talk me out of it. Behind the parking lot is the long park that extends along the edge of the river. I head straight for it at a sprint, my boots squelching in the wet grass when I reach it and veer left.

Sunrise is still at least an hour away and the night is now at its darkest. I release my wolf, confident that humans can’t see her, and send her to scout ahead of me.

Rain splatters my face and chest. Trees line the side of the park closest to the river, giving me the illusion of being back on the mountain. My cut stings, a physical pain that I focus on to distract myself from my deep sense of failure.

I never saw it coming. Dawson’s distraction. Those two supernaturals. Helen said that a war between shifters would draw in other supernaturals—bounty hunters, assassins, and the like. It looks like it already has—and they’re aligning themselves with Baxter Griffin. She didn’t want Tristan to put me in the middle of it, but here I am. Right in the middle of it.

Finally slowing, I stop near the edge of the river beside a tall tree. My wolf returns to my side. The city lights glow behind me and across the river while fat raindrops fall from the branches above me onto my head.

“Little one,” a voice growls behind me.

I spin to the white wolf, my wolf also whirling as his powerful energy latches on to her, forcing her to remain where she is.

He appears several paces from me, materializing out of the dark, his teeth glowing white, his eyes fiery red. Unlike the last time he took hold of my wolf, he doesn’t release her immediately, his energy remaining curled around her chest.

His burning gaze takes in my human form, from my dripping red hair to my muddy boots. He snarls. “Your human form explains much to me.”

My wolf whines, turning her head to me. He’s gripping her chest too tightly—I feel the pressure as if he’s squeezing my human body too.

I grit my teeth and slow my speech, growling each word. “Let. Me. Go.”

The white wolf tips his head at me, the blaze in his eyes becoming cold. “You’re mine, but you continue to elude me. I’ll let you go when I’m ready.”

“Yours?” I spit. “Everyone seems to think that I belong to them. They claim me and then they reject me. Over and over.”

“Tell me how you manage to hide from me, and I’ll let you go,” he says.

“I haven’t been hiding from you—”

“Oh, but you have been. I can’t sense you unless your wolf takes separate form. And then you are a burst of energy that ripples across my senses, demanding that I come find you.”

I start to speak and then stop. The first time he found me—claimed to have been made aware of my existence for the first time—was the first night I released my wolf outside of Hidden House. I haven’t released her again until tonight.

I choose my response carefully. “You can only sense my wolf when she takes this form?”

He begins to pace, his big paws leaving no marks on the muddy ground, no pawprints.

“Tell me why!” he shouts.

I suddenly remember Helen asking Tristan for answers about me. She told him that my power was nothing she’d seen before. That my energy is wolf, but not wolf. And, most importantly, she said my human soul is masking an essence she couldn’t identify.

I allow myself to smile, refusing to give away the pain the white wolf is causing me as his grip tightens. “My human soul protects me from you.”

He jumps forward, baring his teeth at me. “Your human soul is a shell.