Page 33 of The Night Calling

SHANE

When Raika ranfrom me in the forest, I had been so stunned by her action, it took me a few seconds to react, and then it was too late. I tried going after her, but by the time I was close enough to call her, I had seen one of the patrols in the forest, and I hid.

Raika had slipped through my fingers.

Conri had told her and the others that I had left them. That I had been so afraid of confronting him that I had tucked my tail between my legs and fled.

By the moon, and they believed it? Didn’t Raika know me better?

Truth was, she didn’t. I might have paid attention to her for most of my life, mostly when she wasn’t aware of it, but she had never paid attention to me. And if she had, what she would have seen? A cocky alpha heir with a golden spoon in his mouth.

Because that was what I let everyone see, what I let them believe.

Because that was what my father expected from me.

My father, Franc, had been a difficult man. He had been raised to be a firm and fair alpha, but he had become so much more. He had been respected by our people … and feared.

Wolf shifters usually had red-hot tempers, but my father had won the prize for it. He yelled at others and made them feel inferior and inadequate.

He'd been the opposite of his mate, Petra, my dear mother, who had been sweetness incarnate. I had heard before that opposites attracted, and it couldn’t be truer. Where he was a violent storm, she was the calm after.

She often said my father wasn’t a bad man. He was too passionate about his beliefs, and when people crossed him, he had no patience for it. And he had raised me to be the same. When I was little and showed more of my mother’s side, he punished me. He didn’t beat me because my mother wouldn't allow it, but it came close.

Once, he locked me in my room and left me alone and without food or water for an entire day. My mother cried and begged to him to take the punishment back.

Another time, he broke my favorite toy right in front of me.

Then, he once threatened to punish Tyren and Minsi instead …

So I learned. If I wanted him to leave me alone, to leave my siblings alone, I had to be like him.

At least on the outside.

My mother hated to see me changing like that, even if she knew it was a facade, and she often said that it was temporary. One day, I would be alpha and I could be whoever and however I wanted. I just had to endure until then.

Even if he was a bastard most of the time, I hadn’t wished for my father to die. I didn’t want to become alpha so young.

But even that was taken from me when the Nightmist witches kidnapped me.

Because if it had depended on me, I would have fought Conri. I would have challenged him. I would have killed him and taken care of my pack.

That was the past. I couldn’t change that.

But I was going to change the future.

I went back to the Jeep hidden outside the barrier, put my clothes on, and drove to the nearest wolf pack to the south.

Because I had been raised to be alpha, I had had other classes the rest of the kids in school didn’t, like politics and wolf affairs. I knew that our pack was the only one this far north in Canada, but there were five wolf packs directly south from us, and none of them had the same magical lands that we did.

I arrived at the first pack, Boldridge, and was told to turn around. The alpha wouldn’t even see me. The second and the third packs, Wildtail and Warhide, let me in and talk to their alphas, but apparently they were at war with each other again. I had heard a powerful vampire coven had to step in to stop the war— Lord Drake and his vampires from DuMoir Castle. And if this war between the packs continued, Drake would bring his vampires to deal with it.

I had been told, when I was living in DuMoir Castle, that the previous lord and the coven’s founder had helped many supernaturals in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and ever since, any trouble that arose and disturbed the human world or spilled into another supernatural group, he and his vampires intervened. To maintain the peace.

It sounded noble but also entitled. Who had put the vampires in charge?

But I digressed. During my time with DuMoir Castle, they had been nothing short of honorable, helpful, and friendly.

I drove to the fourth pack, my hopes already waning. This one, Ironfang, had always been a little reclusive. They lived on a mountain and most of their houses were inside the mountain, in a series of mazes and tunnels that formed a huge underground town.