Shattered Wolf

With every mile we moved away from the overcrowded downtown of Gatlinburg and closer to the pack neighborhood, my heart beat more erratically. Despite my protests, Mom had encouraged me to hang out with Heather, one of PawPaw’s pack members, tonight, but I was sure she hadn’t meant for me to stay out until after one in the morning. It worried me that she hadn’t linked with me to check if I was okay. Lately, her silence had been saying more than her words since…well, since Dad died. Dad. How I missed him. The familiar swirls of anger tightened my chest, and I took a deep breath to cleanse my mind. Thankfully, the grief was nowhere as intense as it had been right after his death. On instinct, I played Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major in my head to calm the brewing storm within. Though I was twenty and an adult, my pack, the silver wolves, had always stayed isolated from humans and other supernaturals, including other wolf shifters, to keep our existence secret. Genetically, we were descended from an angel, and our angel blood made us more powerful than other wolf shifters, especially during a full moon. We’d been hunted and killed over our heritage. For that reason, pack members worried whenever any of us stayed away longer than expected, as Heather and I had done tonight. As of very recently, we were no longer hiding from other supernaturals, but secrecy was ingrained in us. Change took time, and I took my mother’s silence as frustration. It’d be best if I contacted her now so she could vent before we arrived. We’re on our way back, I sent through our link. Silence. Even the bond seemed muted, as if she were asleep, which was odd. Maybe she’d shut down our connection—but that didn’t feel right, either. Normally, it would still be warm. Well, I’d soon find out what was going on. Great. I dreaded arriving at PawPaw and Nana’s. It would come in handy if I could link with my grandparents, but I wasn’t part of their pack, so we couldn’t. I was a silver wolf, after all, and had planned to stay with their pack for only a short time while I grieved my father and worked through my anger surrounding his death. I didn’t want those negative emotions to take over my life. As time passed, the plan had changed. Back at home, Mom had only grown angrier. Not needing her rage to fuel mine, I’d stayed with my grandparents’ pack longer and longer. Then Mom had shown up here, and we’d started working through our issues. Heading home was finally imminent. Wherever home was. Our silver wolf pack had been shuffled around ever since they had come into the picture. My cousins. Sterlyn—our new alpha—and her twin brother, Cyrus. My father had died protecting them, and I’d left to work through my grief about that. My rage had tried to control me, but letting it do so hadn’t been fair. Dad had chosen to protect them with his life, and he’d done it out of love. I should respect that. He deserved that. I hadn’t meant to leave the pack before all sorts of other attacks had descended on them. By the time I’d realized more of my pack members were dying, they’d moved from our home to a new location. “Hey!” Heather exclaimed as she snapped her fingers at me from the driver’s seat of her beat-up Ford truck. Her light blonde hair swayed across her shoulders. “None of this. You were actually fun tonight, and I refuse to let you change just because we’re heading home.” I laid my head on the headrest and tilted my face toward the window. My auburn hair hung in shining strands around my face, and my blue eyes were so bright, they seemed to glow, even though my wolf wasn’t surging forward. My olive complexion helped with that illusion. My reflection mocked me. Outwardly, I looked confident, but I struggled to be comfortable around anyone outside my pack, especially humans. “You laced my rum and Coke with wolfsbane, so yeah, I wasn’t completely myself.” “Oh, don’t worry, Jewel.” She rolled her light brown eyes. “You weren’t the life of the party. But at least you smiled from time to time, and you weren’t hiding in the corner of the bar behind the holiday tree…much.” A laugh escaped, surprising me. I rolled my head toward Heather and said, “Yeah, okay. It’s just that Mom—” “Wanted you to go out and have fun!” Heather interjected, and focused on the road. The smooth ride became jerky as she turned onto the one-lane dirt road that led to my grandparents’ pack neighborhood. “She asked me to take you into town and make you forget about all the crazy since she…” “Couldn’t.” I would have rather had Mom take me out. She was my best friend—well, ever since Dad had passed. Mom and I had always been close, but I’d been Daddy’s little girl. Until I wasn’t. Pain stabbed my heart, and I felt wrong for having laughed just a few minutes ago. “Hey, she can’t help that her insane ex lives close enough that if she ventures too far, he’ll find out she’s here.” She shook her head and wrinkled her nose. “That sounds horribly soap opera-ish when I say it out loud.” I hadn’t heard the full story about Mom and her almost-chosen mate from a neighboring pack, but I knew it hadn’t ended well. Apparently, she’d met Dad the morning before she and her ex had been meant to complete their bond. One look at Dad, and her world had tilted…or so she’d said. I didn’t know all the details, but the ex had said that if she didn’t follow through on her promise to him, she’d better never show her face around this pack again. The neighborhood of two-story log cabins appeared, and the hairs on my arms rose. All the lights were off, which wasn’t a big deal, but it was an adjustment after being in Gatlinburg with the holiday decorations lighting up downtown. Also, the two households at the beginning of the neighborhood were full of night owls. At this time of night, their lights were usually still on, even though wolf shifters didn’t need light to see in the dark. We used them to help us blend in with humans. Mom? I linked again. Something was off. Maybe I should have linked with her throughout the night. Our pack link had cooled marginally and was almost the same temperature as my pack bond with the silver wolves, who were too far away for me to connect with. It felt like she was out of range. My blood turned cold. “Can you link with anyone?” I didn’t hide the concern wafting through me. My gut screamed that something was horribly wrong. Heather rolled her eyes. “You’re overthinking things, as usual.” She exhaled as her eyes glowed, and then her face fell. “No one is answering me.” Her brows furrowed as she turned off the truck. “It’s like everyone is asleep.”