Lord of the Wolfyn - By Jessica Andersen Page 0,52

Put me back in my body so I can save her and fulfill my oath.

For a second, nothing happened. Then an inner voice boomed, Will you sacrifice your future to do it? The voice wasn’t his own, wasn’t his father’s, wasn’t anything he had ever heard before. It was deep, powerful and terrifying, and he thought it came from the realm of the gods, or perhaps the Abyss. It was that all-encompassing.

“Yes,” Dayn whispered, somehow forcing the word from between his corpse’s cold lips. “Absolutely yes.” This was his lesson, his warning—he had started to be the selfish man again in trying to take Reda with him. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again. “I swear it.”

Power flared suddenly, wrapping around him, yanking him from his distant perch and thrusting him into his dying body. Only it wasn’t dying anymore. Magic washed through him, bathing his body and kick-starting his heart, which flopped for a few moments within his chest, but then took on its native, life-giving rhythm.

Pain! It hit him like a new vortex, sucking him down and threatening to send him flying once more above the agony of it all. But he dug in and gutted it out, sending all the magic he could muster toward his birthright powers. His gums burned; his secondary canines sharpened and extended, piercing the tender flesh and descending to touch the inside of his lower lip. Warmth flowed through him, knitting bones, healing flesh and organs and beating back the pain. Faster, faster, he chanted inwardly. Hurry!

Lacking his bird’s-eye view, he was forced to crack his eyelids and peer through blurry eyes to see Kenar, now in human form, standing over Reda, who was on her knees, forced there by her human-form guards while the two wolf forms stood back, bristling. Dayn knew all four, knew they would follow their alpha’s orders without question. And he dreaded the empty, soulless look in Kenar’s eyes as he stared down at her.

“I claim the rights of a guest,” she said, lifting her chin to glare at Kenar, face white and drawn. “You have to grant me shelter and safety. It’s tradition.”

The alpha’s eyes didn’t even flicker. “That would have worked on my sire, or even my softhearted whore of a sister, but not on me. I’m pack law now, not a bunch of moldy old traditions that lured a witch and her creatures to come into our realm and attack us. And my law says there are no guests anymore. There are only the wolfyn and their enemies.” He turned away, tossing over his shoulder, “Kill her.”

Reda screamed as the guards dragged her to her feet.

“Hold!” Dayn bellowed, lunging to his feet and yanking his short sword with one hand, his crossbow with the other. He swept the crowd and snarled, showing his blood drinker’s fangs.

Reda’s face lit and she gave a low, glad cry. “Dayn!”

The wolfyn flinched back, ears flat and lips pulling back in snarls of their own. All but Kenar, who rounded on him, eyes lighting with cruel joy. “Bloodsucker,” he hissed. “Back for more?”

The bastard had left him partly alive on purpose, testing to see if he would heal.

Not letting his hand shake at what he was about to do, Dayn pointed his sword at the alpha’s throat. “I claim the Right of Challenge.”

Reda’s eyes widened and her lips shaped the words Right of Challenge, though no sound emerged.

Kenar barked a laugh. “Bullshit. A bloodsucker can’t challenge to lead the pack. Only a wolfyn has wolfyn rights.”

“I know.” Dayn looked at Reda, and said, “Remember this if you remember nothing else good about me—I’m sorry for everything.” Because what happened next would destroy the slim chance they’d had at a future. Just like the voice had said.

Exhaling against the sudden stab of pain brought by the knowledge, he did the something he had avoided since his first blood moon, when he had realized what his parents’ spell had really done to him when it sent him to the wolfyn realm.

He called on his other magic. And changed.

Chapter 10

Reda’s scream was buried beneath the tumult that arose from the wolfyn as Dayn’s form blurred, widened, shifted, shortened…and then crystallized into a huge wolfyn.

Dayn was a wolfyn. Oh, God. No. This isn’t possible. It’s not happening. But shaking her head didn’t clear the sight, and she was beyond thinking any of this was a dream. Or, in this case, a nightmare.

Its—his—fur was dark, nearly black, which made the reddish shoulder patch and