The War Within

The Wolf That Won't Come

The girl in the mirror felt empty.

Karen Lindsay White curled her hands around the edge of the cold bathroom sink and looked into her own eyes. She was twenty years old. Twenty years of existing in a body that would never shift into the one thing it's supposed to become.

Shift.

Her father had taught her to command the transformation when she was twelve. Her grandfather had shown it to her when she was nine by flicking his wrist and transforming into a silver-furred beast the size of a horse.

Shift, damn you.

Her muscles didn't ripple. Her bones didn't crack and split. The wolf inside her, the one every White was supposed to have, the inheritance carved into her blood since before written history, didn't even stir.

Karen exhaled shakily and turned on the faucet, splashing cold water against her face. The clock on her phone read 6:47 AM. She'd been standing there for twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes of demanding a shift. Two years late, she thought. Twenty-four moons have passed since my eighteenth birthday and I'm still just . . . . . . flesh.

She pressed her palm flat against the mirror, hard enough that her human strength should have cracked glass.

On the wall, a calendar marked time in red X's. Two years' worth. She'd started marking them on her eighteenth birthday, a desperate attempt to track . . . what? The moment her body would finally cooperate? Her grandfather's shaking hand had written a note beneath it in his worsening script.

Patience, cub. The wolf comes when the wolf is needed.

Karen snorted. Patience. She'd been patient for two years. Two long, agonizing years of watching every other werewolf her age shift effortlessly like it was second nature.

She was twenty years old. She was the heir to the White pack.

And she can't shift.

The photograph caught the light on the nightstand.

An old one. Yellowed edges. Karen's twelve-year-old self grinned up at her, gap-toothed and sunburned, her arms looped around a dark-haired boy her age. He was grinning too, dirt smudged across his cheek, with something small and white in his cupped hands like it was made of glass.

She didn't remember his name.

She didn't remember where they met. The details had eroded away over time, but she still remembered how he'd held that rabbit. He remembered the way his voice shook when he whispered, "It's okay, little guy, I've got you," in a voice that made her twelve-year-old heart skip.

She traced her fingertip over his shadow on the glass, then flipped the photograph face-down.

The walk across campus was supposed to be peaceful.

A group of students passed her by the student union. One of them paused near her, and she caught the twitch of his nostrils as he took a silent sniff. He looked away, then back at her, his expression one of pity.

Karen's jaw tightened.

They always know. They can always smell the wolf in me, the dormant thing inside my ribs or the fact that it's never come.

A car alarm screamed somewhere four blocks away and she flinched. Her super-hearing had made it sound like a gunshot in her skull. She could smell the coffee brewing in the union café from fifty yards away. She could feel the pressure changes in the air as it rained.

Her body had all the inner features of a werewolf.

All the senses, the instincts, the hunger.

Yet, her wolf has refused to wake up.

The Gilded Page was a warm, snug little place.

Karen let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding as she stepped inside. The bookstore-cafe hybrid was her sanctuary, old wooden shelves filled with used paperbacks, the comforting hiss of the espresso machine, the smell of coffee and aging paper and cinnamon from the pastries Carissa was pulling out of the oven.

"Finally," Carissa Miles drawled from behind the counter. Her dark curls had escaped the chaotic bun she'd worn them in and she stood behind the counter, waiting. "I was beginning to think you jumped in the river."

"Tempting." Karen set her bag on the hook by the door. "But the water's too cold for a dramatic exit."

Carissa's sharp eyes softened. Everyone knew about Karen's problem, it wasn't the kind of secret you could keep in a pack of supernatural wolves with superhuman senses.

She slid a mug of black coffee across the counter to Karen. "Margaret wants you on Local History. Someone returned a box of pamphlets yesterday and she's convinced it's a fire hazard disguised as nostalgia."

Karen snorted. Margaret, their human boss, had no idea her employees were werewolves. She just thought Carissa was "intense" and Karen was "moody."

"Local History," Karen echoed in sarcasm. "Fascinating."

"That's the spirit." Carissa winked. "Try not to fall asleep in the stacks."

The Local History section was tucked in the far corner of the bookstore, where sunlight barely penetrated the heavy curtains. Karen knelt on the floor, pulling pamphlets and old newspapers from a cardboard box that smelled like someone's damp basement.

Most of it was junk, but her fingers brushed against something else.

A pamphlet, thin and staple-bound. Picture of a stylized shield on the front with the words

Verona Falls: A City Under Protection.

She flipped it open.

On the inside, a photograph of a tactical team in black gear, helmets covering their faces, rifles held at precise angles. The caption read: "Vanguard operators maintain peace in the Verona Falls sector."

Vanguard.

She'd heard the name murmured in the pack before. At dinners, her grandfather's grim face would tighten when he spoke of The Vanguard. The name always sent a shiver down her spine. "The Vanguard is getting bolder," he'd said last week. "They killed two of our sentries."

But she'd never seen them.

She narrowed her eyes at the picture. One of the men in it stood slightly apart from the others. He was taller, leaner. There was something familiar about the way he carried himself.

She shook her head. You're imagining things.

She shoved the pamphlet back in the box and stood, brushing the dust off her jeans.

The bell above the front door chimed. Lunch rush was starting.

The parking lot behind The Gilded Page was nearly empty.

Karen fumbled for her keys, the rain starting to fall in thin, cold needles against her bare arms. She'd forgotten her jacket inside. Of course, she had. Because today wasn't already miserable enough.

Her super-hearing caught the sound of boots on wet pavement before her eyes even focused on the figures approaching.

There were three sets of footsteps. Two were easy, the third was measured. Deliberate. The man leading the pack of two enforcers that followed him seemed to take up more space than he should have. Gideon Sterling, known across the pack as the Ice Prince, stepped out from between two parked cars, and the temperature seemed to drop by ten degrees.

Beautiful in the way a sharpened knife was beautiful. Tall, pale blonde hair falling in waves from a sharp face. Black coat that probably cost more than her rent. Eyes the color of winter sky, unsmiling. Behind him, two enforcers hovered like shadows.

"Karen White." Gideon's voice was smooth silk over steel. "Two years overdue for your inheritance. Tell me, does Grandfather still pretend you're not a liability?"

Karen didn't flinch.

"Gideon." She kept her voice flat. "Still compensating for something?"

His smile didn't reach his eyes.

He stepped closer, close enough that she could smell the expensive cologne he wore like armor. "The pack is going to need a new Alpha soon. "Arthur is dying, Karen. I've seen him. The cough, the cane, the blood in his handkerchiefs. He can barely stand." He tilted his head, studying her like a specimen under glass. "When he falls, the strongest wolf takes the throne. Not the bloodline. The strongest. And you, Karen, are the weakest wolf I've ever met."

He paused, letting the words sink in.

"What exactly are you going to bring to that fight?" His voice dropped to a mockery of sympathy. "A pulse?"

The enforcers chuckled.

Karen's hands shook. She couldn't stop them. But she met his gaze and held it.

"My grandfather chose his heir fifteen years ago." Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "Take it up with him."

Gideon's smile widened. "Heir means nothing if the wolf never comes. You know that. I'm not your enemy, Karen. I'm the only one honest enough to tell you that you're running out of time."

He walked past her, close enough that his coat brushed her shoulder, and the two enforcers followed.

"When Arthur falls," Gideon called over his shoulder, "the real wolves will come out to play. What will you do then, little dormouse? Hide behind Liam's teeth?"

His laughter faded into the rain.

Karen stood alone in the parking lot, her breath coming in too-fast gasps, her hands shaking so hard that she dropped her keys.

He's right, she thought, bending to pick them up from the puddle beside her. God help me, he's right.

She didn't mean to drive to the hardware store.

But somehow, twenty minutes later, her beat-up sedan rolled to a stop in front of a small shop on the edge of downtown. Walker & Sons Hardware, the sign read.

Karen sat in the driver's seat for a long moment, rain tapping against her windshield.

She had planned on making a trip to the hardware store over the weekend, but Liam had fixed the plumbing. There was no reason to be here anymore, but somehow she'd ended up in the parking lot.

She pushed open the door and a bell jingled above her head. The store smelled of sawdust and metal and something else.

Behind the counter, a young man was cleaning grease off his hands with a red rag, dark hair falling across his forehead. Soft grey eyes. Faded jeans over a plain T-shirt, he was holding a half-asleep tabby kitten in the crook of his arm.

He looked up at her, eyes meeting hers, and smiled.

A soft, genuine smile that crinkled his cheeks. The kind that made her want to smile back.

"Hey," he said. "You look like you just fought a war and lost."

Karen blinked at him. She should leave. She should apologize and go home and cry into her pillow like she did most night.

"I... I actually don't need hardware," she said.

The young man set the cat down and it climbed his shoulder. "Well then you're in the wrong place," he said. "But you look like you need a cup of tea."

He gestured to a battered kettle sitting on a hot plate behind the counter, a mug that said World's Okayest Employee sitting next to it.

"You don't know me," she said.

"Nope." He shrugged, already filling the kettle. "But my dad always said . . . . . ."

Something shifted behind his eyes. A flash of pain, quick as a knife, then gone.

"He said the people who walk into hardware stores without needing hardware are usually the ones who need something else."

Karen stood there, rain dripping from her hair onto the worn wooden floor.

The kitten mewed from his shoulder and Karen walked to the stool he had pulled out for her and sat down.

I don't know why I came here, she thought as he poured hot water into the mug.

I don't know his name yet.

But for the first time in two years, the wolf inside me isn't completely silent.

It's listening.