Shattered Wolf

2

She took a right onto the road that led straight to the pack neighborhood and passed the first three cabins before turning into my grandparents’ driveway. PawPaw’s pack consisted of about two hundred individuals living in a neighborhood with sixty homes. They were spread across the mountainside overlooking Gatlinburg, isolated while blending in with other developments of touristy seasonal cabins. It was hard to see every house from this position, which was why PawPaw’s home was near the start of the neighborhood. If any threats came, he would be one of the first to respond.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Raccoons scurried, and deer meandered by through the eastern red cedar, American beech, and yellow birch trees. With it being early December, most of the leaves had fallen. I focused on my supernatural hearing. Apart from a bear ambling a few miles away, all was quiet.

I cranked down the window so I could sniff. Before leaving the safety of the vehicle, we needed to ensure that no one strange was lurking nearby.

“What are—” Heather began.

I placed a finger in front of my lips. If someone was here, they would’ve heard us pull up. Stealth wasn’t an option, but I needed to listen and smell for anything that might explain what was causing this oddity. The musky scents of shifters saturated the air, as expected. I also detected the faint smell of humans—their scent lacked any defining qualities, such as the sweetness of vampires, the herbal scent of witches, or the floral fragrance of angels.

Why had humans been here? That was odd. Though the scent was faint, I could tell there’d been a large number of them.

I opened the passenger door, and it creaked loudly.

“And you told me to be quiet,” Heather huffed. “Should we be getting out?”

Ignoring the first comment, I addressed the latter. “No one is nearby.” Since the moon was slightly more than three-quarters full, my wolf was stronger than a normal shifter’s. The angel who had fathered the first silver wolves had been the guardian of the moon, so our angelic powers were tied to it. The fuller the moon, the larger and stronger we were, while during a new moon, we had the same strength as any other wolf shifter.

I only took charge when I had to, and this situation surely fit the bill. If PawPaw’s pack was in danger, we needed to act before things got worse. I couldn’t fathom what had caused the pack to shut down communication with Heather or why humans were involved.

“Come on,” I murmured, and ran toward the cabin. The bedrooms were located on the cabin’s left side, on both the top and bottom floors, and the living room and kitchen were on the right side of the main floor. As I rushed up the five steps to the covered porch and past the two rocking chairs, my hands started to shake. I forced them to hold steady and removed the key from my pocket, focusing on the cool metal, needing something to ground me.

Family was everything. Dad had instilled that in me, and the thought that the only remaining blood I had could be in harm’s way nearly paralyzed me.

Inhaling, I used the calming technique Dad had taught me.

I went to slip the key into the lock, and the door swung open. My pulse pounded as I stepped inside and gazed around. From its place on the left wall, the television flickered with the sound muted, but that was normal. PawPaw liked to sit on the couch and watch TV until he fell asleep. The gray blanket Nana had knit him lay crumpled on the hardwood floor, but that was the only thing that looked out of sorts. Smell, on the other hand…

I detected a few unfamiliar scents.

Humans.

Nana’s yarn and crochet needles sat on the loveseat. She normally placed them on the wooden coffee table where PawPaw kept his remote.

“Jewel, what’s…what’s going on?” Heather’s voice broke as she walked up behind me. “Where are my alpha and his mate?”

That was exactly what I was attempting to determine. “I don’t know. Let’s go to your house.”

“Yeah, okay.” Heather spun on her heel and rushed out the door. Her brown leather cowgirl boots crunched over the gravel as she ran to the right and up the hill toward her family’s place next door.

I hurried after her, not wanting us to split up. Though no one was nearby, as far as I could tell, the threat could always come back. Since she and I couldn’t pack link, we had no way of communicating other than with our cell phones. Cells just weren’t as convenient as linking with your mind.

Being shifters, we didn’t breathe hard as we hiked up the steep hill that led us deeper into the neighborhood. Heather’s door had been left wide open. We hurried into her living room, but nothing seemed out of place. Not even the television had been left on. When I looked into the kitchen on the right, I noticed her mother’s teal kettle sitting on the stove and a cup with a tea bag in it on the counter. I walked past the black recliner centered in front of their flatscreen TV and into the kitchen. The tea bag was dry, and I lifted the lid of the teapot to find it full.

A lump formed in my throat.

I stuck my finger into the pot. The water was lukewarm, meaning whatever happened had gone down anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour ago. That was still a significant range, but at least it hadn’t been shortly after we had left at six.

A slightly metallic scent hung in the air, but at a glance, nothing else stuck out to hint at what had happened.

“Heather, your mom’s tea.” Somehow, the words had made it past my lips.

“That’s good,” Heather said, sounding hopeful. “Maybe they had last-minute pack business to take care of and didn’t want us to come looking for them. They could all be in the garden enjoying the moonlight or the training fields.”

However, when she joined me in the kitchen, her usual tan complexion paled, and she raced back into the living room. “Mom! Dad! Sean!” She opened the door to her parents’ bedroom, then slammed it before taking off up the stairs in the corner of the living room.

This was the first time I’d ever heard her sound like she wanted to find her older brother. The two of them were usually at each other’s throats since he was poised to take over the pack when PawPaw passed. He was a rule follower and believed in boundaries, whereas Heather liked to skirt the line and get into trouble.

I stayed put, certain she would find nothing, and searched the room for any clues. I walked the perimeter, taking in every nook and cranny. At the corner where the kitchen met the living room, the faint stench of blood tickled my nose again. Something had to be here.

Bending down, I examined the edge of the doorframe. There. A spot of blood on the bottom corner where the cabinets abutted the wall. Bile churned in my stomach.

Someone had been injured.

I squatted and lowered my head, smelling the blood. I wished I could tell if the drop was shifter or human, but our blood smelled the same.

Heather pounded down the stairs, and I straightened. I wasn’t necessarily trying to hide what I’d found, but Heather was reactive. If she suspected that her family had been injured, she would become even more irrational. She was already screaming for family members we both knew she wouldn’t find, especially since Sean had his own cabin. Besides, her parents’ scents weren’t strong enough for them to be inside or even close by.

“No one’s here,” she squeaked from the bottom of the stairs.

I needed to get her out of there and keep her calm while I planned our next moves.

“Let’s head back to PawPaw’s.” I wanted to have a thorough look there to see if we missed anything.

Heather rubbed her arms and glanced over her shoulder. “Yeah, okay.”

We hurried back down the hill. The coldness of December usually didn’t bother me, but iciness crept into my bones. Moving faster with the descent, we were back in my grandparents’ home within a minute. I removed my cell phone, ready to take the final measure.

As I punched in his number, I prayed to the gods for PawPaw to answer his damn phone.