The Wolf's Surrender - By Kendra Leigh Castle Page 0,50

would quell her rolling stomach before she retched. Her nose was still full of the scents of blood, and smoke, and burning. And every time she closed her eyes, all she saw was a whirling dance of shadows with gleaming eyes. But Jenner was here, watching over her. Just as he’d promised earlier, when they’d laughed over a silly video game and all of this had seemed surprisingly far away. Jenner’s presence was as strong as ever, and Mia used that to pull herself back.

As the blackness receded from her vision and she came around, she realized Jenner’s hands had been joined by another’s.

Jenner was on one side. And Kenyon, who had been allowed to stay in the room at his Alpha’s insistence, was on the other.

Mia sat up straighter in the large recliner she’d been settled in, pulling away from both of them. She shook from a cold that seemed to have permeated down to her very bones. It felt as though she would never be warm again.

“What happened?” Tomas, the Alpha of the Silverback, had shot to his feet from the small stool he’d positioned near her. Being the center of attention was unfamiliar, and incredibly unnerving. It was worse, however, when a powerful man she’d never met in her life had decided to try and run the show.

Mia wasn’t yet sure what to think of Tomas. The compact, bullish man was in his fifties, with a ring of brown hair on his head and a ruddy complexion. He seemed to think a lot more of himself than any of the Blackpaw thought of him, but he knew his power, and he didn’t seem to mind throwing his weight around. She wasn’t sure he was bad-tempered, but he was certainly intimidating.

Bane, who she had decided gave new meaning to the phrase “grace under fire,” took up a position right beside Tomas. She was glad not to have only those dark, glittering brown eyes to focus on.

“What did you see, Mia?” he asked. “Tell us everything.”

She did, in a shaking voice that grew stronger as she related the experience. The chills ebbed, but slowly, and although Jenner and Kenyon had retreated just a few paces away, she could tell that either of them would have been happy to warm her. The problem was, while she appreciated Kenyon’s efforts at playing the potential suitor, all she wanted was Jenner. And since even a fool could see it was going to create problems if she reached out only to him, she decided to suffer the misery by herself. Still shivering a little, Mia spoke about Jeff’s message to her.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Mia said. “It was already dark where I was, but these things were darker. Red eyes, like the last time we linked up this way. And I could tell they were hungry...waiting for something. Jeff is insane, and that’s scary enough, but these were much worse. I don’t know if they’re figments of his imagination, or if they’re...more. But he was very excited to show them to me.”

She broke out in fresh gooseflesh at the thought of it. “They were pulling me down, under. It felt like I was drowning.”

“Son of a bitch,” Tomas snapped. His vehemence seemed to surprise everyone.

“What?” Mia asked.

“Jeff was always much too interested in the darker places. I think it’s pretty obvious that whether these...shadows...are figments of his imagination or not, we have a problem on our hands. If it hasn’t already, it’s almost certainly going to draw—” All of a sudden, he seemed to remember that Mia was sitting there listening. His eyes snapped to her before returning to Bane. “I’d prefer to talk about this privately. This is business for pack leadership, no one else.”

Mia glowered. “Since I’m the one whose brain is connected to his, I’d say it concerns me even more than it does you. I’m staying.”

She saw Tomas bristle, and could swear his lip started to curl. But then, she shouldn’t be surprised. He’d done the same thing when he’d first laid eyes on her. Mia couldn’t quite figure where the animosity came from, except that it seemed very obvious, from the little he’d said before starting, that he placed a lot of value on werewolf lineage.

Lineage which neither she, nor most of the Blackpaw, had.

“I’m staying,” Mia repeated, more calmly now. “I’ll be a wolf soon enough, from what they tell me.”

Tomas’s smile was knifelike. “No. You haven’t even been through a change yet, have you?