Moon Child (The Year of the Wolf #2) - Serena Akeroyd Page 0,50

rasped, understanding everything like it was programmed into my head. “Are you scared?”

“Of the Rainford alpha?” She shook her head, a sensation of amusement whispering through her at the mere idea of that. “Eli is stronger than him. The wolves are howling his lack of a threat loud and clear.” Her lip was sucked between her teeth, and she gnawed down on it. “But for Daniel? Yes. I’m scared.”

I strode over to her, grabbed her shoulder and squeezed her. “We won’t let him be taken away.”

“What does it matter to you, Lara?” she demanded warily, her scowl loaded with distrust. “This isn’t your world, your life, is it?”

Maybe I should have been offended, but I wasn’t. Couldn’t be. I knew she was still on edge after being asleep for so long, and whatever I’d channeled into her, it had been crazy powerful.

Enough for me to feel like I’d had a load removed from my shoulders, to the point where I felt a lightness of spirit that I hadn’t felt since I was a child. I’d heard the whispers before, but I’d never been able to relinquish them, to verbalize them.

Until Sabina.

As a result, whatever she’d channeled, whatever she’d felt, it was magnetized to her now.

We were tied in ways she could never understand, would never be able to comprehend.

And the reason I knew that?

Now she was awake, the gates had been opened between us, and the only way I could prove myself to her was to reveal what I’d learned the second she’d transformed back into her human form.

I looked into her, saw her wolf, nestled deep in her soul, and I reached for the creature with my mind, urging it to see me, to accept me. To encompass me.

And the second the beast recognized me as her sister?

She dove through our ties, our blood links, the power we’d shared that afternoon, and soared toward me on a wave of electrical current that came with no reason or rhyme.

Daniel’s head popped up from amid the covers, and when I turned to face him, I felt his bewilderment, but even more, when the howls started falling once more like torrential rain, I understood them.

Enemy.

Hunger.

Anger.

Challenge.

“Kali Sara!” Sabina gasped, her eyes wide as she gaped down at me.

All the way down.

Because even though I was as big a wolf as ever there was, I was no longer five-feet-eight in my bare heels.

I was a she-wolf.

A she-wolf that was twinned with Sabina, powered by her—a clone, a parasite.

A symbiote.

And, as always, I was a freak.

But this time, I had a purpose.

As I stared at my sister, at a boy who’d been raised in the same environment of fear as I had, as we had, I knew exactly what I had to do—protect him.

Give him what we’d never had.

Security.

With fangs or with words, either way, I’d make sure the boy stayed with Sabina.

Ten

Todd

Behind me, there were twenty-four wolves. A standard council.

Just to my left, there was my beta, Nancy Delacroix, and to my right, my enforcer, James Cossac.

We flew through the woods, eating up the miles of territory that was between us and the Highbanks pack as if it was walking distance, but the run felt good.

Right.

Just.

The Rainford pack had feared the Rainford family for too long, and just under two years ago, I’d eradicated the last of them. Had whipped the bastard who’d reigned over us like we were dogs and he held the leash, and shown him what it meant to be challenged and to lose.

I was now the alpha.

Somehow, as impossible as it seemed, I ruled over a pack.

I was a nobody. A nothing. My grandparents were immigrants from South Korea, for God’s sake. We’d slipped into the pack and stayed there by the skin of our teeth. I had second generation woes, and nothing to back it up—until the old alpha had killed my father.

That was when my life had changed.

Forever.

And it affected me every day, because the grief never died, pain tore through me on the regular, outrage with it.

My beast was as furious now as it had been back when my father had first passed over, promptly followed by my mom. I’d used the conflicting emotions of fear and hurt and horror to fight back against the man who’d oppressed so many of us, and I refused to stop now.

We’d sent Daniel out into the human world where he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone, where he could learn to grow into human society and become at one with