Dark Wolf (Spirit Wild) - By Kate Douglas Page 0,74
about him?”
He shook his head. “No. She was afraid of him. She divorced him before I was born; didn’t tell him she was pregnant. She changed her name and hid from him, kept my birth secret. I grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, a place she figured he’d never look for her. She never told me anything, only that my father was a dangerous man and she wanted to keep me safe. I was Sebastian Roberts, not Xenakis, though she did put his name on the birth certificate. That and the fact he was my father. Everything else was fictitious. My whole life was fiction.”
How sad, she thought. Her own childhood had been so amazing. Filled with love, with minds totally open and honest to each other. “Was Roberts her real name?”
“No. I think she was Romanian. Her real surname was Lupei. Angela Lupei. I found it in her records. I knew her as Angie Roberts.”
Lupei? That name sounded so familiar. She parted her lips to speak.
Alex’s frantic cry slammed into her mind.
Lily! Help. We’re being attacked!
“Something’s after Alex and Annie! C’mon.” Lily shoved to her feet, opened the sliding door to the deck, and shifted the minute she was outside. She could hear growling on the hill above and Annie’s frightened yips. She linked to her dad, but he’d already shifted and was leaping from the far end of the deck even as she hit the thick grass beneath.
Energy around her shifted, and she knew Sebastian had called magic for his wolf and then Tinker came flying out of his house with Annie’s mom Lisa right behind.
Others raced to join them, Annie’s brothers, Ricky and Mike, Luc and Tia Stone—all the members of the pack who lived here in the valley coming from all directions; Stefan and Xandi charged off the deck together, and two of their healers, Adam and Liana, ran out of the woods, all of them headed toward the fight taking place on the low hill just above their valley.
Lily and Anton raced ahead of the pack, and it took them less than a minute to cross the meadow and reach the fight. A massive wolf had Annie cornered against a fallen pine, but he bled from a ragged gash across his muzzle and another across his throat.
Alex was bleeding from a wound to his neck, but the wolf he faced was favoring his front leg, and one ear was torn almost completely away. Lily sensed more strange wolves in the forest, but she couldn’t be sure how many were out there or why they hadn’t joined their packmates in the attack.
Anton reached the fight first, but the two rogue wolves must have realized they were outnumbered. Spinning away, they raced into the forest with Anton chasing.
Lily shifted and went straight to Annie, who’d collapsed in a heap and lay on the torn ground. Alex limped a few steps closer and stood there, breathing heavily, head down, blood running from the deep tear at the back of his neck. Stefan and Xandi arrived and paused to converse silently with their son. Then they spun away and followed Anton in pursuit of the rogues.
Adam and Liana, both healers, arrived together and shifted to help Annie and Alex. Annie’s parents, Tinker and Lisa, skidded to a stop beside their daughter, but Adam already knelt at her head, his hands against her bloody shoulder.
Tinker and Lisa paced, both of them agitated and growling. Then Tinker’s hackles went up, and his growl sounded like thunder as Sebastian raced into the meadow. Lily shook her head. “He’s okay, Tink. He’s with me.”
Tinker’s hackles went down, but he glared at Sebastian with his ears flat to his skull, wary of an unknown among the pack in a time of danger. Alex stood alone, panting, his head down, his wounds still bleeding. His thoughts were a cauldron of anger and fear, worry about Annie, and frustration that they should have been attacked here on private property.
Mostly, Lily sensed his anger at himself for failing to protect her.
Adam’s mate Liana left Annie’s side and took over with Alex, settling him with her hands, pushing him gently to the ground. He lay down, but his gaze never left Annie, and he stretched his muzzle across the torn grass as if trying to reach her. Lily glanced at Sebastian, who stood off to one side, still in wolf form watching the activity. “Adam and Liana are healers,” she said to him. “They go inside and repair injuries