The Half-Wolf's Choice

Chapter 5: A Bitten Werewolf

*Cayden*

“The search party is out looking,” Catherine came and told me.

I collapsed into my chair by my desk. Until we had a solid lead to go on, it was better for me to be here. It would be even better if Catherine weren’t here with me. I could sense an argument coming on once more.

“But if you ask me…” Catherine began again.

“I didn’t,” I reminded her.

“...Then I think we should drop this search entirely,” she continued like I hadn’t spoken. If we can’t find this half-breed, then it only solves an issue for us. The problem basically took itself out.”

I snarled at her, “She isn’t a problem.”

“She’s a mongrel half-breed that can’t possibly be a fated mate to a pureblood Alpha,” Catherine snapped. “How long does our line go back? Centuries? And you think the Moon would dilute it like this now? This is insanity. No, and if she’s gone then we don’t even have to worry about it.”

“This is not up for debate, Catherine!” I growled at her. “Alice is mine. Nothing else matters in comparison. Just find her!”

It wasn’t an edict, not yet. But there had definitely been a bit of a tinge to my voice that hadn’t been there before. Catherine wouldn’t move yet, though. There was no immediate danger and no edict. And she was my little sister.

Catherine leveled me with a look.

“Were you the one who bit her?” she asked, her voice challenging and rebellious.

I bit back a snarl. For a moment I struggled with myself.

“No,” I got out through gritted teeth. “You know I didn’t.”

I had left her to fight the rest of the battle that I had abandoned when Alice had been bitten as an accessory in the fight. Catherine knew that I hadn’t been the one to bite her. There was a specific reason for this line of questioning.

“Then she isn’t yours,” Catherine answered simply. “She belongs to the wolf that bit her. You know that.”

Catherine spoke of one of the most ancient of their laws. It was one of the oldest, one of the most sacred. It was the one that I would have to fight through tooth and claw.

But there was no point in arguing this further with her. I would only prove her point when I reminded her of the other laws that followed. And I didn’t have the energy for this kind of confrontation right now. Not while Alice was somewhere out there, taken by someone.

“Just make sure that she’s found,” I ordered, the tone of an edict lacing through my words.

Catherine pursed her lips, but nodded and turned to leave the room.

I groaned once I was alone, tilting my head back. This had just become so complicated. It must have been the wolf that bit her that took her, there was no way any other wolf would even know that she had turned to bother with her yet.

And this was a very thought out plan. They had wolfsbane to mask their scent. They had no idea of knowing that she would have been home at that time of day, or that she would come out of her apartment again at that time.

They were watching her. And for how long exactly were they watching her? Probably since the moment that she had been bitten. That made sense. Which meant they had also seen me at her place. This was coming to a fight no matter which way I looked at it. There was no other option.

There was a knock at the door not long after that.

“Come in,” I called.

“Alpha,” one of the wolves spoke as soon as he came in. “We found something. A place that she could have been taken to. There’s just one thing.”

“What is it?” I snarl.

“The place belongs to Silas,” he said.

I felt my blood run cold. I was right. He had been the one to take her. The gall he had to trespass on my turf once again and the thought of his slimy hands on her had my blood boiling.

“Let’s finish this,” I told him calmly. “Tell the others. We’re leaving now.”

*Alice*

“You . . . bit me?” I tasted how strange the words felt on my tongue. But that was just what it was, a strange reality. There was no way that I could deny that this was reality any longer.

No hallucination could go on this long. And besides, I was sure it wasn’t that any longer.

I glanced around the room, at the people behind Silas that he had gestured to. They were all fit, built and toughened. There were faint scars on almost all of them, and more than just a few. I flexed my leg, would I have a scar there too?

But it was more than just the sight of them, too. I could smell them. They smelled like Cayden, like Silas. Like something more than human. I remembered what humans smelled like, I could tell the difference now when I was in a room full of . . . not humans.

The humans had been plain, duller. A unique scent to each of them, to be sure. But nothing wild about them, nothing that smelled like the forest.

But these wolves here, now, it was clear that was what they were.

“Are all of you . . . werewolves?” And just like the word ‘bit’, this word was strange on my tongue, too.

“We are. And so are you,” Silas said, his voice soft.

“Because of what you did to me?” I asked him, feeling a tinge of fear for the first time. It was also the first time I didn’t deny it outloud.

“Yes” Silas began again. “Specifically because It was the night of a full moon. And because I bit you during a full moon, you’re a werewolf now. And with that, part of my pack. By law, by right, by Mother Moon’s might.”

But the way he said the last part, I could hear there was something akin to hunger in his voice. He relished this, this animalistic way of living, of domination and control over others.

But I wanted nothing to do with any of this. I belonged to no one.

“How do I undo it?” I asked him.

Silas looked at me like I was the crazy one. His features became cold.

“It can’t be undone,” he said simply, trying to keep his voice devoid of emotion. But I had been married to Richard, and I could tell when anger was building just beneath the surface. When there was something deadly lurking beneath a charming demeanor

“I want nothing to do with any of this insanity,” I told him firmly. “I want to be let go. I want to be human and live a normal human life. I am not an animal and I refuse to be one”

A flash of anger passed over his face, unbothered with restraining himself. It was clear that he was done being charming. He had tried that, and it clearly hadn’t worked.

“Your home is here with us,” Silas spoke, his voice vibrating with anger. “You belong to me, and there is nothing you can do about that. No matter where you go or how much you deny it; your blood and bones know that you are mine.”

So this was his true self coming out. The man that had kidnapped me, that had ordered me bound and a bag put over my head.

And then, even though I knew this man in front of me was someone else, hell, a different species even, I could only see Richard. Richard as he had demanded I go back up to my apartment and pack my things up like a good little girl and come home with him.

There is nothing you can do about it. I rankled against his words.

“A half-breed like you should be so grateful,” he spat at me. “So lucky that I was willing to go through so much trouble to get you out of enemy territory and back here to mine. Do you know how many other Alphas would have just left you to die as an Omega?”

Territory. Cayden had used that term, too. I had been in Cayden’s territory, and he had brought me here. Just where was ‘here’? I needed to get away from him.

This man thought of me as nothing more than a lesser half-breed. As someone to be grateful for even being alive, thanks to him.

I tried to keep myself calm, to focus on getting out. But the more the man in front of me spoke, the more and more he sounded like Richard, demanding, taking. Willing to drag me back away from the new life I had created for myself and into the little box that he wanted me in.

Never again. Not Richard, and definitely not the man standing in front of me. Not when I was stronger now, when I was no longer the weak little woman from before, that just anyone could walk over.

The man in front of me had made me stronger, but he would not beat me into submission.

I felt my teeth lengthen, my claws sharped, and I knew my eyes had changed the way they had in my apartment. I felt bestial power build within me like a rising dam.

I roared at him.

And I saw Silas take a step back from me. The other wolves flinched, a few of them reaching for their heads, shaking as though they suffered from the sound of a high pitched scream.

Silas turned to look at his wolves, some of their eyes were yellow, some had claws come out.

“A coerced half-change,” Silas murmured as his stunned gaze swept through his wolves with both concern and intrigue, and then back to me. “How curious.”

In the blink of an eye he had my face in his hands. He tilted my head and examined me like I was a rare specimen, an artifact of great mystery and intrigue.

I was going to bite his hand but his eyes shone bright crimson again and the wolf in me was muffled out, kicked into the far corners of my mind. My fangs became blunt again and my claws were once again ordinary human nails.

With a single look he had quelled my power.

“It’s time we leave,” he said to the large man next to him. “Get the others on the phone and tell them-”

He didn’t have much time to say anything else, none of us did. Because the next moment, the sound of howls filled the air from outside.