2. Asher

ASHER

C old rage spread from my chest and into my blood. I had been deceived.

Roaring my fury, I returned to my wolf form, my blood hot in my veins. I was an idiot. I should have suspected something was strange the minute the statue spoke to me. Now I'd confessed my secrets and the secrets of my pack to some stranger.

Now, my only course of action was to kill them.

I leaped onto the base of the statue and pounced with claws and teeth. The statue was made of bronze, but it was no match for my wrath. The torso of the statue broke off at the hip as I threw myself at it.

I believed the pretender was in the statue's chest, but as I tore into the cavity and wrenched it open, all that met me was emptiness. A tight sob sounded behind me, and as I turned around, I caught the scent of the pretender. I'd been too blinded by anger to scent them properly. I abandoned the ruins of the statue's chest and climbed onto what was left of Holo's hips.

The pretender, a woman by the sound of her, scrambled down the leg as I forced the metal hips to bulge open. I followed her down, my jaws snapping at blonde hair. When the leg grew tight, I bent the metal apart and forced the opening wider.

She screamed and dashed through a crack in the leg. As I followed her, I saw her rushing to get to her feet. I recognized her, though I didn't know her name. My men had told me that Connor Salcedo had cast out the woman who was once his chosen mate, but I never understood why. Now I had a better idea. She wasn't shifting now, but if she could, she would have to get away from me. Connor must have kicked her out because she was damaged goods. Well, what did it matter now? She had to die for knowing my secrets.

I sauntered toward her. A pix fluttered around me, brightening their wings to try and distract me, but I closed my eyes against the dazzling display. I had the pretender's scent, and what was even better, I heard her panting. That was all I needed to find her.

I sprinted in the direction she was heading and leaped. She cried out as she hit the dirt, and in seconds, I had her pinned beneath me. I opened my mouth wide and sunk my teeth into her. Blood rushed into my mouth as she screamed. I pulled back, the coppery tasting liquid dripping from my fangs. I'd gotten her shoulder, though I'd been hoping for her neck. The next time, I wouldn't miss.

I opened my mouth to bite through muscle, vein, artery, and bone, but I froze when I felt her body shift strangely beneath me.

I hopped back on instinct and watched in shock as her bones popped and moved unnaturally beneath skin that was sprouting hair along her arms. Her screams had become strangled gasps and pants, and her clothes ripped and tore as the changes overtook her trembling body. She was experiencing her first shift. That was why her movements were so jerky and slow. She would be in terrible pain. But that didn't make sense. She was young, but not more than two or three years younger than me. This shift should have occurred long ago.

Sudden understanding cut through my confusion, and I returned to my human form. I couldn't kill her while she was helpless. It wouldn't be right. There wasn't a shifter worth their fur who would attack her now. We all knew intimately how important this time was. My bite must have somehow spurred it on.

I should have left or turned away to give her some privacy, but I couldn't take my eyes off her. When the transformation was complete, she stood on four trembling legs.

My eyes widened. Her wolf form was breathtaking. Her fur was as dark as the night sky, with hints of a golden inner coat along her mane and haunches.

She shook off the remainder of her torn clothing and nearly lost her balance. The sight was adorable. So much so that I almost cracked a smile. That only shocked me further.

The she-wolf looked at me with eyes that glowed like cerulean gems, then took a few hesitant steps toward me. Maybe she wasn't in her right mind after her shift, but she seemed to forget that I'd attacked her. Blood seeped from her shoulder where I'd bit her. Stinging guilt rushed through me, and before I could stop myself, I slowly reached a hand toward her. She sniffed the air delicately, as if she were scenting for danger. After a moment, she inched closer and stretched out to sniff my hand.

But in the moment that her nose would have touched the tips of my fingers, I noticed a mark on my inner wrist. I turned my hand, expecting to find a splotch of blood or dirt. What I saw instead was something so much worse.

The crimson circle was filled with intricate, swirling designs of the same color. I'd never seen this design before, yet I knew what it was. Something in me recognized it. This sort of mark was only meant to be a legend. A story about fated mates.

I jerked my hand back, and she yelped in surprise, retreating toward what remained of the statue's torso. The crimson circle hadn't been there before, which could only mean I was now tethered to this girl by an invisible mating bond. I tried to rub off the mark, but it stayed put, shimmering in the darkness as if to mock me. My uncle had told me that when fated mates unite, the mark appears somewhere that is easy to access by the tongue, like the hand or inner elbow. But it wasn't supposed to be real. It wasn't supposed to happen to a man like me.

I heard her sniffing at the ruins of the statue and wished I could go back in time, wished I could be on the mainland as far away from this situation as possible. I couldn't kill her now even if I wanted to. The desire to protect her was so strong, I wanted to take her, this pretender, this new wolf from the enemy pack, back to my home. This woman would leave this place with my secrets, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Fuck me. I never should have come here. After what my father had done, I should have known that Holo would curse me further instead of helping me. My father had hurt her deeply. That had been the only way he'd been able to steal complete control of the shifting schedule of the Dagger pack. He spent more time in his wolf form than anyone else because he loved not having to think of losing my brother and mother, to deal with the grief of it.

With this power that he had taken from Holo, he selfishly forced all of us to stay in our wolf forms for days at a time. It was only through a lot of convincing that he "allowed" us to be human again, so things could get done around the compound. He had lost sight of what it meant to be an alpha and care for his pack. I couldn't even blame his madness on the curse. Grief had caused him to lose his mind years before he ever met Holo.

That carelessness had gotten my father killed, and now Edgar had the power. I'd visited Kestrel after my father died, and she confirmed that Edgar was in control of the curse. She also told me that the power would stay with Edgar until he died or stepped down as alpha. Unless I killed him, the curse would dissipate, and our ability to shift into our human forms would go with it. We'd become feral.

I couldn't let that happen. Our only advantage was that Edgar was unaware of the curse. If he wanted to, he could bind all of us to our wolf forms permanently, make us feral, and wipe out my pack. We were the Wilcox pack's only threat on Isle Royale, and if Edgar knew he had that sort of power over us, he wouldn't hesitate to use it. That was why it was so important for me to get control of this situation.

I'd come to beg the goddess for some relief. Instead I'd ended up bound to a stranger who hadn't even been able to shift until now. It was already Wednesday in the first week of April. I only had four weeks before Connor ascended to alpha.

I was pulled from my thoughts when I spotted her from the corner of my eye, chasing her tail like a pup. As I watched, she became distracted by a moth before she could catch her tail. The moth fluttered a few inches above the ground, and she tried to pounce on it with her front paws. It was like she hadn't noticed that she was hurt.

Her happiness was as cute as it was contagious. Again, I found myself wanting to laugh at her antics. My wolf pawed inside me, wanting to come out and play with her. My hands ached with the desire to bury my fingers in all that thick fur. But the light mood didn't fit with the storm brewing in my mind or the dread building in my stomach.

"Stop playing around," I told her. "We need to talk."

She did stop, and her ears were cocked toward me, but she didn't seem eager to listen. What a defiant wolf. But I couldn't really hold that against her, could I? It was her first shift, after all. Of course she wanted to spend as much time in this new form as possible.

Wait. Why was I making excuses for this stranger? Was the mark working its magic on me already?

"Come on," I said, gentler this time but still firm. "We have a huge problem now, and we need to think this through. You can play later."

It took a bit more encouragement from me, but eventually, she gave in. Shifting into her human form took much less time, though it wasn't as quick as it would be once she got the hang of switching between her forms. She stood from her crouch. The moment she realized she was naked, her face turned beet-red, and she whirled around. This was likely her first time being naked in front of another wolf before. Of course she'd be self-conscious.

That thought did something strange to me. I was probably the only man who'd ever seen her like this. It filled me with a kind of satisfaction I couldn't push away. Just because she was beautiful—smooth, lightly tanned skin, long hair that spiraled at the ends and glowed gold in the moonlight, with freckles that spread across her nose and spilled over her shoulders and upper back—didn't mean I had to make this more awkward than it needed to be.

But there was an attraction there that was annoyingly impossible to ignore. My body wanted her badly, but that had to be from the mate mark. I could overcome the urge to touch her, to pull her into my arms. It would probably help us both if I gave her something to cover herself.

I found my shirt, which was still intact after my shift, and tossed it to her.

She caught it and pressed it to her chest with a tiny, strangely polite, "thank you." She started to pull it over her head, only to hiss in pain, her hand pressed to her shoulder. It came away slick with blood.

I hesitated. My instinct was to rush to her and clean her wound with my tongue. Instead, I forced myself to step back. Encouraging the bond would only make it harder to resist. Feeling guilty for hurting her would do the same.

"Talk," I demanded. "What were you doing in the statue?"

She mumbled something back as she resigned herself to holding the shirt over her chest. It covered as far as the top of her thighs. It would take nothing for me to tear away the thin shirt and take her in my arms. The impulse to do so only put me on edge.

"What did you say?" I asked.

"I said, what does it matter now that you've destroyed it?" she snapped. "It's none of your business anyway."

I frowned at her. "It is my business." I held up my right wrist. "You know what this is?"

She scowled at me. I got the impression she thought I was making fun of her. "It's a tattoo," she said.

"No, it isn't. You've got the same one on your wrist."

It was clear she as skeptical, but she paled when she found the mirror of the same mark on her left wrist. She tried to rub it away like I had, but it stayed in place.

"What the hell is this?" she demanded. "What did you do?"

"What did I do?" I scoffed despite the guilt churning in my gut. "I wouldn't have gone after you at all if you weren't pretending to be a goddess."

She raised her chin. "Then, you should have finished the job."

"You—" I cut myself off. She had spirit, I could give her that much. I pinched the bridge of my nose and took a deep breath. When I felt more in control, I said, "It doesn't matter whose fault this is." I pointed to her wrist. "That is a fated mark. It means the gods have selected us as mates. We mate at their pleasure."

She snorted. "In your dreams."

Again, I bit back my response. "What I'm telling you is that we're tethered by god magic now. I couldn't kill you even if I wanted to."

The skeptical look in her stormy-gray eyes was almost as enchanting as it was irritating. "I don't believe a word you're saying."

"Then, come on. Try to hurt me."

"Fine." She looked around for something and decided on a rock. As she crouched, I noticed she moved very gracefully, and her posture was effortlessly perfect. I guess that was to be expected from someone who used to live in high-wolf society.

She grabbed a pointed rock and started to throw it, but her arm stiffened before she could complete the throw. The rock flew awkwardly and landed in the grass far away from me.

The horror on her face gave me no satisfaction. In fact, it only worsened my anxiety. This was going to cause all sorts of hell for me, for the future of my pack. I couldn't stomach how bad this would be.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and we looked toward the sound.

"It's late," I said. "There's a storm coming. I'm heading home, and I suggest you do the same. We'll deal with this… some other time."

She didn't say anything or acknowledge me at all, but I knew she was listening. I turned from her and shifted back to my wolf form to outrun the rain. My heart burned in my chest, but the pain had nothing to do with the run. Everything in me screamed at me to go back, that I couldn't leave her by herself, injured and unprotected. But what the hell could I do? There was no way I could take her home with me.

I cringed at the thought of having to explain the presence of a female wolf from the Wilcox pack to my people. No. It was better to let her find her own way home. So, I pushed myself to run harder even when I felt the urge to turn around. The soon I got back home, the better.

Forty-five minutes later, I entered my territory just as the first drops of rain started to fall. The familiar sight of my pack's wood cabins gave me some comfort, but my heart was still racing even when I reached my cabin. The scent of the chamomile tea I'd made that morning made me desperate to have another cup, but I'd spent a lot of time as a human today, and I'd need to wait another hour before I could shift again.

That thought was quickly followed by another. I had been in my human form for over half an hour while talking to that woman. I racked my brain for some kind of explanation. The only thing that made sense was the god magic in the fated mark. With it flowing in my system, it must've kept me from shifting. That was the only reasoning that made sense.

I hopped onto the mattress and curled up near the head of the bed. As I settled in, a lance of lightning brightened the sky, followed by a booming clap of thunder. I winced. Despite how exhausting the last hour had been, I hoped she had gotten home all right. Maybe I should have followed her just to make sure…

I stopped the thought there. How much of an idiot would I have to be to wander on to enemy territory alone, just to make sure she got home safe? No, I'd made the right choice, no matter how much that little voice in the back of head insisted I'd done the wrong thing.