West of Destiny (Book 5 of The Claimed Series) (Sample)

Chapter 4

Lucy

My heart hammered in my chest, threatening to crack open my ribs. After it had sunk to my toes, the erratic beat made it nearly impossible to catch my breath. Zach…he didn’t sound right. Even through the mindlink, I could feel his sadness, his despair.

Since I had only gotten home a little over an hour ago after being gone for most of the day, I decided I would have to sneak out my bedroom window. My mother and father were certain to be keeping an eye out on me, especially Dad. He was none too pleased when I walked into the house earlier with Mom in tow, and he looked about ready to whoop some Alpha ass. The thin, unsmiling line of his mouth told me that my mother had blabbed about what happened, and he was looking pretty vicious for someone who spent most of his time mending people’s broken bodies. His face resembled that of an enforcer or warrior, not a doctor. I hadn’t been able to bear the look. It was so foreign on my father’s usually kind face that I hurried to my room before I fell apart again.

I quietly opened my window, wincing when it made an almost-audible screech and then looked over at my door. All was silent, and I hoped Mom and Dad had already gone to bed for the night. They usually went to sleep by ten and rose early, but today had been such a shitshow, I didn’t know if that would affect their regularly programmed sleep schedule.

As I hung from the overhanging eave of the house, I swung forward a few times before my foot caught the lowest branch of the tree in my backyard. I grabbed it with my ankles and reached out with my right hand, catching the branch so I’d have a better grip before climbing down to the ground. I had snuck out this way many times before growing up. After-hours had been some of the best times to see Zach when his father couldn’t interrupt us with some idiotic reason to keep us apart. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him.

I dropped softly to the ground for the last two feet and moved quickly off toward the trees, making sure to look back every couple of steps to see that I wasn’t being watched or followed. The lights were off in the house, so I was pretty sure my parents were asleep—or at least already in bed.

It usually took me a good thirty minutes to get to the waterfall that was our secret rendezvous point, and I was tempted to shift to make the length of the journey shorter, but I wasn’t certain if I would meet the overnight patrol and figured if they saw who I was in human form, they wouldn’t immediately think I was some intruder that had slipped past their checkpoints on the perimeters of the territory.

I almost wished I had brought my cell phone with me, if only to use the flashlight function, but it had almost been dead by the time I had gotten back home, and I had set it to charge on my nightstand overnight. It was just as well. Knowing my luck, it would go off and give me a mini heart attack and I’d fall and break a foot. I made sure to keep my mind open in case Zach tried to contact me through the pack link.

Pack link. It should have been the mate link, but that opportunity was surely almost dead and buried.

Happy birthday to me.

I sighed and trudged onward.

You almost there?

Zach.

Almost, I shot back at him quickly. Another ten minutes or so.

Good. I’m about twenty minutes out myself. I’ll see you soon.

For the last time? Maybe. If he was to reject me, I didn’t know if I’d be able to stay in the pack, watch him get mated to someone else. An Alpha needed an heir, after all.

No. I knew I’d never be able to handle that. If it came to rejection, I could always go to my Aunt Jess’ pack and live there. It was in Oregon, so not too far from my parents if they wanted to come visit me. I surely wouldn’t be able to step foot on Arrowhead land again if things went badly tonight.

It was just after 11 PM by the time I could finally hear the waterfall off in the distance. The sound seemed harsher to my heightened senses, and I wondered if anxiety could induce sharper hearing. If it did, I would probably be able to hear crickets a mile off. I was one ball of tension that needed to release with the assurance that everything was going to be just fine.

Eventually, I stood at the cliff’s edge and watched the water as it fell over the cliff on the other side of the ravine. Looking down, my eyes sharpened, and I could see the rapid movement of the raging river heading downstream in the direction of the ocean many miles to our west.

For a split second, I was tempting to jump and let the water wash me far away. It was surely a death sentence if I succumbed to that urge, but for some reason, I wanted it to carry me far, far away so I could escape whatever it was that was about to happen. I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew that whatever Zach said, I wasn’t going to like it.

“Lucy?”

My whole body stilled. I could hear the trepidation in his voice and wanted to flee. Maybe over the cliff, maybe off in some other direction in the woods. Just run away until I didn’t hear the words he was saying, the one’s I knew I didn’t want to hear come out of his mouth. They were too final, would cut too deep.

Tear out my ever-loving soul.

Still, I shifted in place to turn around. Zach’s usually tanned face looked ashen, the deep set of his mouth stern. It was like he was being forced to stand there and go through with this, and of course he was. He’d been given the Alpha Command, and from the looks of it, his father hadn’t relented any.

“I—” He stopped, and I could see his throat roll with a hard swallow, like there was a lump there, brutal and unforgiving. I felt a similar stone rise in my own throat and felt the need to retch. My stomach was in knots.

This was my birthday, a day I was supposed to be happy to be alive. I should have been marked and mated by now, but instead, I was standing at the edge of a cliff and looking at my true mate, who looked like he was about to lose himself to tears. I could concur. I didn’t want to hear his words, but I knew I had to.

“What did your father say?” I asked quietly, voice just above a whisper. If Zach hadn’t been a shifter, I doubt he would have heard me, and I couldn’t force my voice to be any louder.

“He…he won’t budge,” Zach told me, his eyes averted and vision planted to the ground a few feet in front of me. He couldn’t look at me, and I knew—intrinsically knew—it was all over for us. We were meant to be, but couldn’t happen.

Life sucks and then you die. I now understood what it meant, and I had always been more of a glass-half-full kind of girl before this.

“He says I have to mate with another girl, a female from a neighboring pack. Emerald Pack to the east.”

Tears brimmed quickly and spilled over as I lost all my breath. “I… Did you speak with this neighboring Alpha? Tell him you already had a mate—had me?”

He nodded, and I let out a sob. Zach looked like he wanted to reach for me and leaned forward, his hand starting to extend toward me until…

Until he pulled it back.

“I’m so f*****g sorry, Luce,” he said. “I have to do this. I have less than an hour, and if I don’t, I’ll die. Painfully. No matter what I do, we can’t have each other.”

I was quiet for a moment before speaking my mind. “I hate your father.”

He gave me a sad smile. “I do, too.”

There was silence between us as I felt the pain wash over me. It was only a hint of what I would have to endure, I was certain.

“The pain will kill me,” I told him. He shook his head vehemently in return.

“No, it won’t.” He sounded convinced. I wasn’t so assured. “You’re strong, Lulu. Stronger than anyone I know. Promise me you’ll find happiness, even if it’s somewhere else, somewhere far away. I…I think I can live with that even if I feel right now that I can’t live without you. Promise me.”

His voice was urgent. All I could do was shake my head and cry, tears trickling from my eyes so fast—like they’d never stop coming. My body would wither from lack of water and I’d still be there, head down, body shaking, leaking out every drop of fluid I had in me through my tear ducts.

“I’m sorry,” I said finally after taking a gulp of much-needed air. My throat had constricted to the point it was hard to breathe. “I can’t promise that, Zach. Not now. This… The grief is too new, too painful. I feel like my heart is about to burst.”

He moved forward, and I hiccoughed, struggling for oxygen.

This was it.

“You have to. For me.”

I looked up at him in disbelief. My eyes narrowed. “Do it if you must!” I was suddenly shouting. In rage. In defiance. “Do it and get it over with. I can’t stand here in limbo. Do it and be done!”

He straightened his back and stood frozen. I had never shouted at him before, and I think it shocked him. But it was the only way for me to get through it—with anger. No other emotion was at potent as that one was right now, in this moment.

“f*****g do it, Zach!” It was my last desperate plea.

He took a deep breath as his lips trembled. “I, Zachary Greenwood, future Alpha of Arrowhead Pack, reject you, Lucinda Wallace. I negate the true bond—”

I didn’t hear anymore. Couldn’t over what happened next. Pain sliced through me, rocking me backward on my heels. My knees almost gave out with the shock of it, and I clutched at my gut before my hand moved up to my heart.

It ached. Everything ached, and I whimpered a little before lifting my head to him, looking him dead in the eyes.

“Thank you,” I whispered before I let the agony consume me. My foot moved backward until I was falling suddenly over the cliff to my certain doom.

I didn’t want another mate, didn’t want to leave my parents. I just wanted to feel no pain, and this was the only way I thought I could achieve it.

I heard a yell, though it wasn’t my own. The whole time my body plummeted toward the water, I was silent. It was as if I’d gone temporarily mute. The pain was still there, and it made breathing difficult, but I closed my eyes and looked down, the sting of the wind making my cheeks feel like sleet was pelting unforgivingly against me. Holding my breath, I plunged beneath the surface of the cold water and waited for my lungs to give out and liquid to fill them.

But that was the problem with death. Sometimes if didn’t want to come easy, and the body’s first reaction was to survive. Survive at any cost.

Just as I thought my lungs would burst with the need for air, my head popped up above the water, and I took a deep, necessary breath. The only thing I could hear was the water, and I floated along with the current, my body hitting hard, jagged rocks every few feet.

I felt ribs crack and a bone in my shoulder become displaced from its socket. There was so much pain that after a while, I didn’t feel anything anymore except for the chill of the river. It was freezing, and my teeth chattered. That was when I wasn’t trying to gulp life-saving air into my body to keep it alive.

I wanted to die.

My body fought to live.

At some point, I think I passed out, and everything went dark.

When I awoke, I heard noises. Footsteps along rocky, crumbling shale, and a voice calling out to someone. I was laid on my stomach and could barely move a muscle, I was so tired. When warm hands touched my skin and turned my head, I smelled the scent of pine needles and opened my eyes slowly.

Soft, soulful brown eyes under a mane of thick black hair looked down at me. I didn’t know who the man was or even where I was, but only one word came to mind when I saw him.

“Reject…” I whispered before falling back into the abyss of unconsciousness. 

West

I almost wasn’t in time. I was too slow.

It turned out that the little female that we’d found along the riverbank wasn’t a rogue, just like the head enforcer had surmised. She didn’t belong to our pack, but she was a shifter that had probably fallen or gotten lost in the woods. She was suffering from broken bones and a little internal bleeding from being bashed about on the rocks, and now she was being cared for in the pack hospital by doctors who had been working for the past twelve hours to save her.

Her recovery time would be slow, as she was also suffering from a bit of malnutrition. She was merely skin and bones, but now that she was getting some fluids and nutrients into her, her prognosis was a bit better. After she was awake, she would meet with Paul and discuss how she’d come across Destiny Pack’s borders. It wasn’t easy to get to, but it did happen from time to time.

My guess? Hunters or rogues had pushed her away from wherever she was and she’d either jumped or fell into the river from the north or northeast. There wasn’t another pack for many miles to our west, so it only made sense if she had come from the east by way of the river.

“You always were the ever-reluctant knight in shining fur, bro.” Paul sat down next to me outside the small pack hospital on the rickety old bench that should have been replaced probably a decade ago. We were simple folk, and until something completely broke to the point of not being able to be salvaged, we pretty much kept it around.

I suspected that the old bench would be firewood within a couple of months. I just hoped it didn’t take out some poor, unsuspecting shifter with it when it finally collapsed.

“Doc Denario said she should be fine if she makes it through the night,” I informed Paul, ignoring his furry hero-complex remark. He was forever nagging me about acting too tough but being too soft when it came to the unfortunate folks who came across the property in less-than-ideal shape. This incident had only reaffirmed his idea that I had some sort of hidden agenda about saving people. Or—well, shifters of my sort, anyway. If the beast had been a rogue, I would have had no problem killing it myself.

Rogues were feral, living mostly in wolf form and forgetting the humanity they were born with. They became brutal the more time passed and couldn’t be reasoned with. They were a threat, and I wasn’t about to become soft on account of the fact that they were hurt or suffering. Put them out of their misery, I would—and do it gladly.

“That’s good,” Paul noted almost absently. “Then we can find out what happened. If hunters are near, we need to know about them. Any sign of foreign scents besides our little invalid in there?”

I shook my head. “Not even a trace, but then again with the rain last night and this morning—”

He interrupted with a sigh. “Yeah. It would have been difficult to tell after all that, but we had to make the effort. I’d feel like I was letting people down if we didn’t at least try to get a whiff of what the patrollers have been moaning about. If word got out and the pack saw I’m not doing anything—”

“You’d lose their trust, I know.”

Paul and I had been best friends for so long that we often finished each other’s sentences. It was like we were some old, married couple instead of friends from diapers. Even Cass made fun of us every once in a while. All in good fun, of course.

“You should probably head out later again, at any rate,” Paul concluded. “You only did a sweep of half the perimeter before you came across the stray in there. I’d like you to double back a couple of miles and make sure you didn’t miss anything along the river. Just in case.”

I nodded, agreeing. Not that I could go against a direct command, and this was about as close as Paul had ever gotten to giving me an Alpha Command. We had an unspoken agreement. He didn’t use it on me if I simply did what he asked. Or directed.

“I’ll head out in a bit,” I vouched, heaving a sigh before standing up from the unwieldy deathtrap of a bench. It shifted as I stood, and the imbalance of weight rocked Paul to standing as well.

“Take the same group with you,” he instructed me. “They’ve all had a good night’s sleep and, with the exception of you, are still raring to go. You look dead on your feet, dude.”

I’d only had a few hours of shuteye, and they were restless ones at that. I didn’t like the fact that there were strangers about and I’d kept my ass planted in a chair in the waiting room of the hospital, drifting off every once in a while as the doctor tried to save the trespasser’s life.

I was about to walk off when Paul stopped me again. “West, bro?”

“Yeah?” I stood still. It was almost as if I knew what was coming.

“You should, uh—you should probably think of going to The Claiming next year.” Before I could object, he was talking again. “I mean, you can’t let Carla and her rejection keep you in some kind of f****d-up mate limbo. She rejected you five years ago, man, and even if The Counsel pretty much leaves us alone all the way out here in the wilderness, they’re bound to start wondering why you’re still unmated in their books.”

The Counsel. Them and their stupid f*****g mating books. The Counsel kept ledgers of the different packs and their mates—particularly those men and the few females with higher ranking in the packs. Alpha, Beta, Delta—the list went on, though they didn’t much care for the Omega-ranked wolves. Being Beta, I was probably being looked at with some scrutiny.

“No,” I spat out, irritated. “I’d at least like to see if I get a second chance mate within the next few years before being marched off to some iconoclastic ritual where I’m forced to play ‘catch the she-wolf’. It’s barbaric, if you ask me.”

Paul nodded and smiled. “It is a bit” he agreed. “But it’s where I met Cass, so it can’t be all that bad. And it is sort of fun to stalk your female for a bit. Especially in the wild.”

Paul had been lucky and had found Cassidy within a few seconds of the annual ritual starting. Once he let the arbiter of The Claiming know that they were true mates, they were pardoned from having to compete, mostly on account of him being of Alpha blood.

But maybe he was right. Maybe if I went to one of these shitshows they hosted each year, I would find a second chance at happiness and finally put the past where it belonged.

In the motherfucking past.

Not bitter at all—not me.

Yeah, right.

φ φ φ

The group headed to the southwest just a little after lunch. We had all eaten in the impromptu mess hall that we used for group functions. It was located in the bottom—many considered it the basement—of the packhouse that boasted a large kitchen. Some of the mated enforcers had opted to eat at home before heading out, but for the most part, we were grouped in the loud cafeteria eating together.

No new scents were abound, and the night before had been blissfully dry. The ground was still soft beneath my feet, but at least it wasn’t the mud from twenty-four hours ago. It made hiking and shifting a little less like mud-wrestling, or one of those obstacle courses that were all the rage nowadays. Tough Mudder? Was that the name of it? If those humans that partook in the messy event knew how much harder it was in the real outdoors, it wouldn’t be so popular, I was sure.

The soil along the river was, of course, a little less than ideal with its constant mushiness, but most kept away from it since it would have been easier to flee if we ran into any unwanted visitors. After yesterday’s discovery along its banks, we figured we’d smell any intruders before we saw them. There were too many hills and slopes along the riverbed, some of them jutting to over twenty feet above the rapidly moving water, and at those times, we were forced to split up, some of us sticking to higher ground while others nearly lost their footing—and in some cases, shoes—in the mud nearest the water.

Tough Mudder this, bitches.

The fragrance of new blooms and pine needles was getting stronger, so I assumed we were coming to the less unforgiving terrain near the meadow that went on for about a mile due south of the central community of Destiny Pack. I had always found the area quite pretty and relaxing, sometimes taking a day off to myself to lie back in the tall grass and just stare at the sky. It was a little brain downtime, and I treasured those moments above all else these days. It was too far away for a nice daytrip for most wolves, and so it was left vacant, for the most part, except for the few daring or adventurous enough to take on the task of getting there, making a day of it and then hoofing it back to the center of town. I know that when I went, I made sure to leave early and start heading back by mid-afternoon. Walking back in the dark was a pain in the ass.

Wildflowers were usually most prominent, along with some Queen Ann’s Lace. Brown-eyed Susans, buttercups, and daisies with the occasional crop of daffodils were most common, though there were some wild roses that popped up on occasion. This was why the scent of them surprised me so much. It was very strong to my sensitive nose, and I wondered if some of their seed had drifted closer to the river with some of the wilder windstorms we’d had last spring. It made sense, but usually I had only found them on the rare occasion, and when I did, they were farther away from the water, closer to the trees to the north.

“Smell that?” an enforcer muttered from beside me. His body had gone tense, his nose lifting into the air.

“What? Roses?”

He gave me a look like I needed to have my head examined.

Well maybe, but not right now, bro.

“No,” he replied. “I smell shifter. Not Destiny Pack, but not rogue smell either.”

“Fuck.” I grimaced. “Don’t tell me we have another wanderer on the fringes that got lost. Are we hosting some f*****g function or something I didn’t know about?”

Those rarely—if ever—happened, so I was pretty certain we had another lost little pup idling about our land and in trouble.

“Blood, too,” the enforcer announced suddenly. “Not much, but enough.”

Fuck. Just what we needed. Another damn mouth to feed and a broken body to mend.

“Move along,” I directed him. “The wind’s ahead of us, so whatever it is, it’ll be due east. Along the bank again, most likely.”

The wind didn’t shift the whole time we walked, creeping closer to the river and scenting the breeze to find the direction from whence it came. It had only gotten stronger, along with the scent of wild roses with a hint of wildflower. The wildflowers were probably just north of us, but I could still scent them anyway as I was attuned to their fragrance in general.

“Look!” the enforcer—Jeff? Jake?—pointed down to the water’s edge. “See that?”

I did. Ripped clothing with some white skin poking through. If my eyes weren’t deceiving me, I could see bloody scratches along the bruised ribs. Whenever this person had come to this place, it hadn’t been too long ago. The abrasions and cuts looked pretty fresh and hadn’t had a chance to heal yet.

The body wasn’t tall, so I assumed it was another female, possibly younger, and most definitely injured beyond being able to move of her own volition. I stalked over to the bank and took in more of the foreign wolf. The scent of roses overwhelmed the other fragrances that clamored for attention. Fresh-running water, the daisies from the meadow. Even the bitter taste of blood that usually irritated me and made me bite back bile was muted against the heavy odor of the mystery source of the bloom.

Only it wasn’t so mysterious when I kneeled down and put a hand out to touch the interloper. The scent was coming from her.

I rolled the young woman’s neck gently in my hands, and her eyes slid open slowly, like she was too exhausted to move any faster. Looking up at me, she uttered only one word.

“Reject...”

Her eyes slid closed again, and I stumbled back until my ass was planted in the mud. I didn’t care, and my breathing came in fast, heavy pants.

What did she mean? Could she tell I had been rejected, or was it some sort of explanation about how she’d come to be laying on the bank, bruised, some of her bones bent at angles that shouldn’t have been possible in either wolf or human form.

When I had regained my bearings, I kneeled down again and pushed my arms up under her body before hauling her up into a bridal carry.

“You guys keep moving and tracking,” I ordered the rest of the enforcers. “Mindlink me with any news of foreign scents. I’ve got another stray wolf to save, apparently.”

The rest of this book can be found on Am azon under my name R.K. Knightly, same title now!!!