Lost Lycan's Mate
Awakening of the Wolf Within
Pain exploded through my shoulder and a scream ripped through my throat. I tried to sit up, but I was held down by several pairs of hands.
“Relax, Cleo. They are only stitching your wound. It will all be over in a minute.” The soothing voice came from Grey, another one of my father’s lead wolves. It flooded over me and I fell back into unconsciousness.
When I awoke again, it was because I heard yelling outside the medicine hut.
“She almost died, Coda!” Grey shouted. “How could you leave her by herself?”
“I thought she was safe! We swept the area. I didn’t know that half the rogues had stayed behind.”
“You should have stayed with her.”
“What does it matter now? She’s fine. You should be more worried about the ly…” The rest of the sentence faded out as darkness consumed me once again.
When my eyes opened again, it was nighttime. The hut was lit by two small candles.
I groaned and shifted, hissing at the pain in my shoulder.
I looked down to see that my chest and injured shoulder were wrapped in white bandages. When I sat up, pain rushed to my head.
The pounding of a headache throbbed in my skull. It took me a moment before I could stand, and I hobbled outside. Grey was sitting on the ground with his back against the side of the hut.
“Grey?”
He sprang to his feet, relief flooding his features when he saw me. “Cleo! You’re finally awake. You’ve been falling in and out of consciousness. How do you feel?”
“Like shit.” I leaned up against the hut. “Where’s my dad?”
“Hunting. The rogues weren’t the only ones in our territory, Cleo. Something much worse is out there. Coda was going to go after them, but he needed to bring you here immediately. The other pack members lost them.”
“Those wolves were watching me when I was attacked,” I murmured, more to myself than anything, but Grey still replied.
“How many?”
“Four, from what I saw. There could be more.”
He cursed. “Stay here, Cleo. We thought there were only one or two. This is bad. I need to alert your father.”
“What? No. I’m not staying here.”
He shook his head. “It’s too dangerous, and you’re injured.”
“I took out two rogues by myself! I—”
“No!” he barked, making me jump back in surprise. Black flooded his irises before they returned to their usual green color. “These aren’t just werewolves, Cleo.”
“All the more reason I should come, then. You need all the help you can get.”
“Not you, Cleo. Stay here. I mean it.” Before I could say another word, he leapt into the air and fluidly turned into his wolf, leaving me alone.
“Fine, I’ll just find them myself,” I muttered, and I pushed myself off the hut wall. I had to walk slowly. Every muscle in my body ached.
The cold winter air nipped at my face, biting at my ears and my mostly bare torso.
One foot after the next, I made slow progress deeper into the forest, listening for any signs of the rest of the pack.
I wasn’t sure what it was, but I felt a pull westward. I followed my hunch and headed down the trail further into the forest.
My teeth were chattering violently by the time I could make out voices.
Shuffling my bare, frozen feet across the ground, I pulled myself up the rock formation and leaned against the trunk of a decaying tree.
The leaves were rustling in the wind, and it was hard to make out the voices clearly.
I could see everything, though, thanks to the brightly shining full moon. My father was standing in front of the pack, and Coda stood a few steps behind him.
They were in human form, while the rest of the pack had stayed in their wolf pelts. Standing before them to my right was the tall and muscular body of a man who held himself proudly and challengingly.
Eight wolves stood behind him. I guessed they were his pack.
It was a normal-sized group for a rogue party, but that was considerably smaller than a normal pack. My pack, with its forty-one members, was considered small.
“Why are you here?” my father demanded, his voice carrying through the forest.
The leader spoke. “We were hunting the rogues. They ransacked our food supply. They had to be punished.”
My father cut to the chase. “They’re dead now. So get off my territory.”
The male laughed, but there was nothing friendly about it.
“There is something else in your territory that belongs to me, Alpha.” Although he used my father’s title, it didn’t sound very respectful. “I won’t be leaving without it.”
“We took nothing from you.”
“I never said you did,” the leader countered. “But nevertheless, I want what is mine.”
Maybe something about the way he said the last word made my father understand.
“You think your mate is among us.” My father’s voice was flat.
“I know she is. I can smell her right now.”
My father took a step forward, his alpha taking over. Even from my hiding spot I could feel the weight of his overwhelming presence pressing down on me. “Get off my land, lycan. She will not be going anywhere with you.”
My blood froze.
Lycan.
So that’s why these wolves had looked different. Lycans were the purest form of werewolves, more animal than human when their wild side took over. They were ruthless, unpredictable, and dangerous.
I had thought the lycans were all dead. The Hunters of my pack had killed them in droves, to what I thought was extinction over generations.
Unlike warriors, Hunters had a special venom for killing enemies. They were the most powerful of the pack, and my father was the deadliest Hunter of all.
My mother had been killed by a lycan, and my father had killed the last of them in return. So why were there any lycans still alive?
“You know who it is,” the lycan mused. “Bring her out to me, Hunter, and we will leave.”
My father growled. “You will never walk out of here alive with her.”
I wondered who my father would protect so fiercely that he would risk a bloodbath with these lycans.
The lycan bristled, aggression leaking from him. “It’s my right to take her. You know what mates are to us.”
“Be on your way if you don’t want a fight,” my father warned him.
The rest of the pack moved closer to my father, bracing themselves for battle.
The group of lycans stepped forward in response. “My mate, Hunter. Or heads will roll.”
My father stood his ground. “No.”
I scrambled from my position, trying to get down to where my father was as quickly as possible.
I wanted to be there to help them fight. If these wolves were truly lycans, our pack could be reduced considerably. I wasn’t going to be on the sidelines if they fought.
“You are a fool to risk the lives of your pack for a single female,” the lycan barked.
“You are risking the lives of your own pack for the same,” my dad replied.
“I’m offering a truce if you give me what I am owed.”
“I owe you nothing,” my father snarled and ducked down into a fighting stance. His claws extended from his fingers.
“Last chance,” the lycan warned. The wolves behind him growled and bared their teeth.
Fear raced through me. The thought of losing both my parents to lycans was terrifying. A burst of adrenaline coursed through me, and I ran more swiftly than I ever had in my life.
My father was the strongest wolf I had ever known, but a lycan was serious, and a pack of lycans fighting for a mate was deadly.
I couldn’t lose my father. He was the only family I had left.
“Over my dead body,” my father said.
The wolves behind both alphas bunched their muscles, readying themselves to spring at the opposing side.
I don’t know what I was thinking—okay, I wasn’t thinking at all—when a battle cry burst from my lips and I launched myself from the trees and tackled the lycan away from my father.
“Leave my pack alone!” I shouted as we collided with the ground.
The lycan twisted under me and jumped up, lifting me by the back of my neck. The feel of it was strangely familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why, and I was struggling too hard to get out of his grip to think about much more than breaking free.
He cocked his head and examined me like I was a strange specimen. Then a feral grin spread across his mouth. “Well, look at that. She came to me.”
With his mouth so close to my face, the nightmare came rushing back like a tidal wave.
Mate.
It was him. The man who’d tried to drown me in my dreams.
He was real.
“No!” I screamed.
Something deep within me tore through my body. It came from nowhere and took me over completely. An inhuman growl ripped from my throat.
My body convulsed and the lycan dropped me to the ground. I hunched over, coughing in ragged fits as I tried to fight whatever was happening.
My father tried to lunge at the lycan, but before I could stop myself I snapped my head up, baring my teeth at him.
“Stay away from him!” I snarled with a voice that sounded foreign.
I wasn’t sure who was more surprised by my reaction, my father or me. He froze in place, staring at me with wide eyes.
“Cleo?”
Then I was convulsing again, like there was a beast inside of me threatening to rip its way out.
I closed my eyes and curled into a ball. “Daddy,” I whimpered, my voice now my own again. “What’s happening to me?”
My father stood stock still, staring in horror as the lycan crouched down next to me and leaned in close.
“It’s okay, pup,” he crooned, his lips brushing my ear the same way they had in my nightmare. “It’s just your wolf.”
He dragged a finger down my spine and a chill broke out all over my skin.
My wolf? “But I—I thought I didn’t have one!” I cried.
The sob quickly turned into a scream of pain as sharp claws punched through my fingers. My blood felt like it was on fire.
A roar tore through me and suddenly I was on my feet, staggering between my father and the lycan.
I spread out my arms. “Stay away.” I wasn’t sure who I was speaking to. I think it was both of them.
“Coda!” my father snapped. “Take her back. Keep her contained while I kill this lycan.”
“No!” I didn’t know where this defiance came from or why I cared what happened to the lycan, but I growled at my father, showing him my teeth.
“Is that your pup, Hunter?” the lycan laughed wickedly.
My father didn’t reply, which proved to be answer enough.
“Oh my. The Goddess surely does have a sense of humor, doesn’t she? I suppose it really is true that she keeps the balance. You killed my father, and I am rewarded with your daughter. It’s almost poetic, really.”
“You won’t be rewarded with anything,” my father growled back, “especially not my daughter. Leave now and don’t come back. She won’t be going anywhere with you, ever.”
The lycan looked at me, seeing the confusion on my face as I tried to piece things together, which was difficult with my wolf trying to shed my human skin.
“All right, Hunter, I’ll leave. For now,” he finally replied, tearing his eyes away from me. “But in three days’ time, I will return for the girl. If you still wish to fight me, then very well, a fight we will have.”
He turned away, signaling to his pack members, and they turned as well, following him into the forest and away from my pack.
The wolf within me clawed at my insides, trying to escape and run after the lycan.
After my mate.
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