“I’m Kat.”
Her big guy didn’t have a chance to answer as Trevor chose that moment to appear at their side, leaning in close and messing up the mood.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Trevor said, an expression halfway between amused and pissed. “But what the hell were those things, what the hell did you do to them, and how the hell did you know how to do it?”
Kat opened her mouth to answer, but then closed it again as everything around her started to get fuzzy. Wow, she really was out of it. Taking a breath, she tried to settle herself, only partially succeeding. Her vision cleared a bit but stayed dim at the edges.
“Those were simulacrum—or sims for short,” she said softly, looking from Trevor to the rest of his pack mates. “Magical constructs that follow simple instructions imbued into them with an empowered token. When I destroyed the stones, I removed the intent and purpose that powered them. As for how I knew how to do that, or how I knew how to break through the bind rune outside, it’s simple. I’m a witch.”
She would have said more—a lot more—about how she’d gotten to this point in her life, how she’d ended up at the SWAT compound, and why she’d felt the irresistible need to come save Connor’s life, but unfortunately, at that particular moment, the dizziness reappeared with a vengeance. She swayed, and slumped into Connor’s arms, her eyes fluttering closed.
Any more answers would have to wait until she’d had a nap.
Hungry for more wolves?
Read on for a sneak peek of
The Last Wolf
by Maria Vale, available now from Sourcebooks Casablanca
Prologue
Titnore Woods, 1668
This would be Ælfrida’s fourth and last attempt. The Pack at Essex had refused, as had Anglia. Even the tiny remnants of the Pack at Gyrwe had sent her away empty-handed. Now staring at the strong and plentiful wolves of Wessex, her heart sank. She’d even caught sight of a pup staring at her from under a dead oak, the first she’d seen in England in over a decade.
Her own Mercia Pack hadn’t had a pup since Halwende, and he was almost an adult. As she waited to be announced, subordinate wolves circled Mercia’s Alpha, sniffing her curiously and gathering her scent to take back to the dominants. Others, still in skin, watched from a distance.
“Ælfrida, Alpha of Mercia. Wessex þu wilcumaþ swa beódgæst.”
Ælfrida, Alpha of Mercia. Wessex welcomes you as table guest.
She’d made sure her wolves had learned the English of humans years ago. It was ridiculous to pretend that the Packs were still the top predators. That title belonged to humans now, and Ælfrida studied them as carefully as deer studied her.
“Greetings, Wulfric, Alpha of Wessex, and many thanks for your hospitality.”
“Sprecest þu ne Englisc?” the huge man growled, though that was one of the ambiguities of the Old Tongue: it sounded growled, whether one meant it to or not.
“This is English, Wessex.” She brushed her hand against her breeches, feeling scaly bits of fur there. “Is Seolfer here?”
“Seolfer? Min nidling?”
“Yes, your nidling.” She was distracted momentarily by the scabrous clumps in her hands. Sniffing her palms to be sure, she wiped them against a tree trunk. These wolves might look well fed, but some, at least, had mange. Maybe all was not well in Wessex. Maybe Wulfric would listen to her.
For now, though, the old Alpha scowled.
“Ic þearf wealhstod,” she said, even though she actually didn’t need a translator. Ælfrida was an Alpha who issued commands and was obeyed. This bluntness had not served her well when dealing with the other Alphas, and Ælfrida hoped that Seolfer would know how to translate that bluntness into something the conceited oaf Wulfric might find more acceptable. Besides, she liked the young woman and had looked forward to seeing her again.
“Seolfer!” Wulfric yelled without bothering to look.
The woman who emerged from behind Wulfric’s lodge had dark-blond hair, typical of silvers when they were in skin. A runt, she was destined to life as a nidling, a bond servant to her Alpha pair.
Many moons ago, looking for something more than a life of endless submission, Seolfer had made a desperate run all the way to Pack Caledonia. Unfortunately, wolves tolerate neither weakness nor strangers, especially not with resources so strained. Caledonia, Essex, Northumbria, Strathclyde: all of them had sent her away with nothing but a bite to her pastern.
Then she arrived at the Forest of Dean and planted her short legs and shook her shredded hide and challenged the famously fierce and powerful Alpha of Mercia for a place in the Pack. Ælfrida took one look at the runt and laughed. Then took her in. Not because she had any room for weakness, but because she saw in Seolfer a kind of strength that Packs almost never had: the courage to face the unknown.
The runt was, as wolves say, strong of marrow.
Unfortunately, the great Forest of Dean was falling fast to the humans’ rapacious desires for lumber and grazing and iron, and with her Pack on the edge of starvation, Ælfrida had sent Seolfer back to Wulfric. She knew what waited for the girl, but submission was better than death—at least that’s what Ælfrida told herself.
Seolfer said nothing; her head was bowed low.
“How are you, Seolfer?”
“As you see, Alpha.”
“Hmm. I don’t need you to translate. I need you to make what I say palatable to the old fart. Gea?”
The Seolfer that Ælfrida had known would have laughed, but not this one. She just nodded and bent her head lower, trying to avoid Ælfrida’s attempt to catch her eye. She didn’t have much time, so Ælfrida coughed a little and started her set speech. “The time of the wolves in this country is over. It is now the time of the humans.”
She waited for the girl to translate. Wolves, both wild and in skin, came close to listen to the rugged cadences of the Old Tongue. Ælfrida wrinkled her nose and sniffed; even human, she could smell the sick sweetness of rot. Something was definitely wrong in Wessex.
“The land in Mercia is dying, and with it, our Pack. It is the same everywhere: Anglia and Sussex and Gyrwe.”
“It is not the same here,” interrupted Wulfric, looking at Seolfer to translate, but Ælfrida waved her off.
“How can you say that? When I was last here, just fifty years ago.” Seolfer stumbled over the word year, and Ælfrida waited for her to translate it into six hundred moons, a span Wulfric would understand. “The last time I was here,” she started again, “I ran into a tree to avoid a deer. Now there are neither. The same is true of Mercia, which is why I have arranged for a boat to take my Pack to the Colonies. I am asking you to join your bloodlines with ours. Make a truly great Pack in the New World.”