Chapter One
His balls hurt … again.
Carlo groaned, trying his hardest not to cup the aching home of his future children as tinkering laughter filled the air.
Rosemary’s fucking baby.
Arturo’s greatest treasure, his granddaughter and heir to the Moretti and Lombardi Packs, Isadora was no longer growing from the wealth of life magic within her. Silva and Ash had done their job by stopping the now three-year-old from aging quicker than her body could handle. However, that didn’t stop her from maintaining what she’d already received.
Carlo scanned the space around him and had to look much higher than he expected. In a flash, the intelligent beyond her years, six-year-old-sized, born alpha female was perched on a bookcase and launched herself at him between blinks. He was lucky to leap out of the way in time but slammed into a coffee table, stubbing his little toe.
He counted the ways he wanted to rip up the fucking world and burn it to ashes as the worst pain he’d ever felt brought tears to his eyes and a bellow from his throat. Isadora giggled, slid in for another crotch punch, and raced off.
“That’s twenty points!”
Carlo was going to kill Silva; he was already plotting the many ways she would die. Not really, but it was a fun thought. The Fae Queen was determined to corrupt Isadora any way she could—it didn’t matter what it was. Carlo, for one, was done playing battered babysitter. He rolled his shoulders, trying the ease the ever-present ache between his legs. Isadora, thankfully, had switched to playing with her grandfather, making the wolf laugh at something Carlo couldn’t see.
Just to hear Arturo, a violent, unfeeling bastard to his core—the only chink in his armor being those closest to him—laugh with no care … It was awe-inspiring. The world around them was changing. There were more than just shifters and mages. Encantado was now home to Fae, had the Ales—one of the oldest mage bloodlines and the new leader of the Trinity Council—in Kalinda, and the Norns lived in the Chaos Realm.
He didn’t give a shit that Heath called it the In Between. That horrible, cold, and vicious place would always be the Chaos Realm to Carlo. A shiver raced up his spine, and he ran his hands through the cool, thick strands of his hair.
Wailing pulsed in his head, a piercing call clanging against his skull until he gritted his teeth.
Don’t listen.
Try as he might, he couldn’t ignore the memory of that sound. The way it ripped at him, pulled at his mind until he fractured and split to save him. How he lost himself to the screeching. The taunting laughter whispering to him about his failures every time.
The Fury is coming.
No!
Carlo couldn’t think about that, the way it had destroyed his mind, twisting him until he was nothing more than a bumbling idiot only able to attack on command.
At Ottavio’s command, his own fucking brother.
There were two ways to create a wolf shifter. They either were Born wolves or created through a bite—a Made wolf. A Born wolf didn’t have to fear their first shift. It was like breathing for them. The moon was their sanctuary, and they didn’t have to wait for a full one to enjoy it. For those who were turned like Carlo was by Arturo, they had to hope they were strong enough to survive the initial bite, and then their first shift on the next full moon. Most didn’t survive. Out of a hundred Made, maybe twenty-five became a wolf. Carlo’s transformation had gone smoothly, or so everyone thought, until that first shift. Dark, twisting Chaos had come in, pulsing through his veins in greedy need until he’d splintered apart.
It never should have happened. The Chaos had no place in a shifter’s transformation. It should have been nothing but his human body rebelling the change to his very cells as he became something more. Faster, stronger, living for much longer than humans could hope for. Except, it seemed, he’d received an extra dose of something, and it nearly made his long life unimaginable.
Carlo growled, pushing away thoughts of the hell he suffered. Instead, he focused more on his surroundings. Sucking in a deep, information-rich breath, he focused on what he could. Now that he was free from watching over Isadora, he could get some work done. Not that he didn’t love the child—he did, just like everyone else—but she had a viciousness about her only Eiravel and Cynes seemed to be able to handle.
Snort.
Yeah, Dominic