Wolf God

Ten miles outside of Deerhaven, Michigan, Present Day

Samantha

“You from around here?” The young man behind the counter eyed me as he rang up my items.

The little gas station stank of cheap cologne and lemon air fresheners—that, and familiarity. The soft drone of country music piping over the speaker stirred memories of drinking cheap beer down by the river. High school in Deerhaven: the start of a lot of poor decisions and a shitstorm of consequences.

I slid a fifty across the glass-topped counter. “Not anymore.”

“Didn’t think so. You look like you’re from the city.” His gaze drifted to the newspapers stacked in front of the checkout.

I picked one up and grimaced at the headline: Magic Side Rebuilds After Wolf God Wreaks Havoc on Chicago.

“Glad those sorts of things don’t happen up here,” the man said, his eyes on the image of smoke rising from the burned-out skeletons of Dockside, the neighborhood of Magic Side that our pack controlled.

Magic Side was a magical suburb of Chicago, hidden from human eyes on an island in Lake Michigan. It was home to all kinds of Magica—supernatural people—vampires, sorcerers, demons, and werewolves like me. Most of the shifter communities outside of Chicago looked down on us city folk with suspicion. What kind of werewolf would trade living in the wilderness for the concrete urban jungle?

I’d thought the same once. Then the Deerhaven alpha drove me out, and the Dockside pack had taken me in—no questions asked.

They were my family now.

The newspaper photo didn’t capture half the truth of what had been done to my home. It didn’t show the corpses strewn through the streets of my neighborhood, or the brilliant magical wards that had shone like solar flares across the night sky. And it didn’t show the feral faces of the werewolves the Dark God had forced to do his killing—werewolves who’d once been my friends and neighbors.

Just seeing the Dark God’s name in print sent pinpricks down my spine. In their wake, they left an all-too-familiar knot of dread. I closed my eyes and reminded myself that I’d never have to see him again. Savannah had stopped him in the end.

Bing. The cash register slid open.

“You going to pay for that paper?” the attendant asked sharply, jolting me back to the present.

“No.” I tossed the shitty excuse for a local paper down, and he wrinkled his nose in irritation.

“Shootings, sorcerers, and monsters… I don’t know why anyone would choose to live in the city,” the attendant muttered.

Because this town is hell itself.

I gathered my paltry gas station dinner as a burly man walked through the front door. His magical signature smelled like moldering earth with undertones of honeysuckle. The whole pack in Deerhaven had this scent, though it was stronger on the males. I used to find it comforting, but now it was sickly sweet and brought back bad memories.

I braced myself for the moment of recognition, but he just stepped around me as I shoved through the glass door with my head down.

As it swung shut, I heard him ask the attendant. “Who’s the mutt? I got a hint of Deerhaven scent.” Disdain and malice practically dripped off his tongue.

“Local girl come crawling back from the city.”

“Magic Side should keep its trash, though I wouldn’t mind having a fuck with her before shipping her back.”

My fists clenched around the Styrofoam coffee cup and lukewarm burrito in my hand, and I took a quick glance at the jackass. Six feet tall, two hundred pounds, he was muscular but soft, with a beer belly protruding over his waistband. I could probably drop him in ten seconds.

The wolf within me stirred, then lazily retired. Not worth it, Sam.

I cast a death glare at the prick and headed to my truck. Deerhaven brought out the worst in me. I’d need to keep this trip as short as possible.

Ten minutes later, I pulled onto my mom’s street. The pack still hadn’t repaved it after last winter or repaired any damage from the blizzard.

“What’s the point in paying pack dues if nothing ever gets fixed?” I muttered as I parked out front of my mom’s off-white mobile home. The sun had faded the green trim around it, and weeds were breaking through the concrete drive and sidewalk.

I glanced at the manila folder on the passenger seat: ten pages of dirt on the local alpha. It might just be my mom’s ticket out of this hellhole—for good this time.

Shivers skated down my spine, and for a moment, I froze. Was someone watching?

I scanned the street. No one stood in the shadows, and no curtains were moving in the windows. It was just my imagination once again.

Since returning from the Dreamlands, the uncanny feeling of being watched had become part of my daily life. I always checked, but there was never anyone there. It was probably just PTSD from nearly dying.

I rolled my shoulders and scratched the scar on my shoulder—another new nervous habit. Tucking the manila envelope under my arm, I grabbed my stuff and climbed out of the truck.

A door creaked, followed by my mom’s gentle voice: “Samantha?”

I tossed the remnants of my burrito in a metal bin, then bounded up the stairs into my mom’s outstretched arms and squeezed her tightly. “Hi, Mom.”

“Hi, Sugar,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to my hair. “It’s good to see you.”

She smelled of primrose and the garden, and her warm embrace immediately eased the tension I hadn’t realized I was feeling.

“How are you?” I held her at arm’s length, taking in her frail form.

Once graceful, she’d withered away these past two years. When the potion master in Dockside assured me that there wasn’t a problem with the medication, I’d had to come to terms with Mom’s new reality. Her sickness was progressing, and she couldn’t live on her own much longer.

Werewolves weren’t supposed to get sick that way. We healed from almost anything.

Out of instinct, I touched my shoulder. The Dark God had clawed me there, and while the wound had healed, the attack had left scars that burned whenever I thought of him.

“I’m good.” She smiled faintly. “Things are good here.”

A lie. There was nothing good here besides her.

She ushered me inside. Despite her illness, Mom still managed to keep a tidy house. A brown vase of sunflowers brightened the dingy beige kitchen.

As soon as the door shut, Mom began pestering me about every detail of my life. Work. Roller Derby. Lovers.

“No, Mom, there’s nobody,” I said for the third time.

“Well, it’s only a matter of time before you meet your mate.”

Bitterness tightened my throat. How could she believe that after my father had abandoned her when she’d been pregnant with me?

“I know, Mom.” I smiled hopefully, a practiced reflection of her face. “Fates willing.”

My mother only saw what she wanted to believe, and I didn’t blame her. It was her way of holding on to hope when everyone else in life had shit on her.

The sick thing was that I’d told everyone in Magic Side that my parents had been fated—revisionist history that was easier for me to believe outside of Deerhaven.

I took a seat at the small dining table and set the bottle of her meds down. “I want you to come live with me in Magic Side.”

Her expression froze, and I caught the scents of her shock and fear. The ability to smell emotions was one benefit of being a shifter, or downside, depending on the situation.

She looked away. “Sam, I…I can’t. You know that I can’t leave.”

“You can’t, or you won’t?” My words came out more harshly than I’d intended, but maybe that’s what she needed. “You shouldn’t live in fear because of something I did a decade ago.”

Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “This is my home, darling. My pack, my friends are here. I can’t abandon them. Besides, Wyland will never let me leave.”

Heat crept along my jaw at the alpha’s name.

“That’s about to change.” I slid the manilla folder onto the table and tapped it as I said, “This is your ticket out of this hellhole. You can come live with me in Magic Side, where I can take care of you. We have the best doctors and potion masters there. I’m sure we can find a cure—”

My mom slammed her palm down on the table. “Samantha, stop. This is absurd. I don’t want to know what’s inside that folder, but I’m guessing it’s blackmail. Do you know what Wyland will do if you put him in a corner?”

I leaned back in the metal chair. “He’ll try to save his ass.”

She shook her head. “You may know Brent intimately, but Wyland is a different breed.”

I flinched. Brent was the abusive bastard I’d been supposed to marry a decade ago—and Wyland’s son. The coward might be a different breed, but he was just as evil as his father.

I had terrible taste in men.

My mother began compulsively tidying the house. “Wyland is proud and vicious. He’d sooner take the whole pack down than submit. I can’t allow that to happen to my friends.”

The chair scraped across the linoleum floor as I bolted to my feet. “These so-called friends, where are they? Why haven’t they done anything to help you?”

The only sound was her washing pots that had been soaking in the sink. Her silence was all too familiar, and it meant the conversation was over.

She’ll come around. She has to.

I shouldered my bag and headed to my old bedroom. Climbing gear and roller skates hung from hooks, and drooping posters of derby girls were still taped to my walls. I tried pushing one back in place, but it just curled back down.

There’d been a time when living here had been normal—comfortable, even. But that wasn’t because things had been good. I just hadn’t had anything to measure them against. And Brent, that bastard piece of shit, had torn my heart out.

That was when I’d learned that no matter what anyone promised, I was on my own.

My wolf stirred in my chest as old anger simmered, and I had to resist the urge to extend my claws. We were both a lot more vicious now than we’d been back then.

The box spring squeaked as I stretched out on the bed and stared at the cracks in the ceiling. How many nights had I laid awake, shattered and afraid, wondering how many more cracks it would take before I broke?

I sat up and ran my hand through my hair. The truth was, I’d probably still be stuck in Deerhaven if that POS Brent hadn’t done those things to me.

Now it was my turn to get my mom out.

I dropped to my knees to stash the manila folder in the hidey-hole beneath my bed, but there were dozens of boxes in the way. “What the hell is all this shit?” I asked the silence.

I opened the largest and found my collection of Barbies and dolls. One wore a giant golden crown and a blue dress bedecked with sparkles and puffy taffeta sleeves. Princess Irrelevant, waiting for her prince to come rescue her.

Fates, I really played with these?

I scoffed and closed the box. The next had dozens of books. Rapunzel, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast. Nothing but fairy tales.

I shoved the junk away and pried up the loose floorboard. The hidey-hole beneath was empty except for a few chamber spiders. I slipped the folder in and covered the hidden panel with all the traces of the foolish little girl I’d once been.

It was time for us to cut ties with this place.

The first thing I needed to do was get a measure of Wyland. Hopefully, it had been long enough that his feelings toward me had changed. Probably not, but there was only one way to find out.

It was just past nine on a Friday night, which meant he’d be drunk and watching the fights at the Barn with everyone else in town. Unfortunately, it was probably the best mood I was going to find him in. Grabbing my leather jacket, I headed for the door.

Time to hunt down the alpha.