Prologue

PROLOGUE

R ed wolf Kira Westwood had just turned eight years old and celebrated her birthday by staying overnight at her girlfriend's home, who was also her age and homeschooled, except Sally was a gray wolf. Kira's own family lived only a couple of blocks away. They'd had a blast while running in the woods that evening with Sally's twin brother and her parents as wolves, and then having a pizza party. They'd watched their favorite movies, and then the girls talked most of the night before finally falling asleep, making for the perfect birthday sleepover.

That morning, Kira had eggs and toast with Sally. Sally's twin brother had gone out to meet up with his friends. Sally's dad had gone off to work, and her mother, who had a cake baking business out of her home, was busy making cakes for an upcoming birthday party and a wedding. So Kira said goodbye to Sally and her mother and headed home.

She was tired and hoped her parents weren't going to push her to go someplace she didn't want to go. She was ready to chill on the couch and watch TV the rest of the day. But she hadn't made it a block before a white van pulled up next to her. Wary, she glanced in its direction. As soon as she did, a guy with a short haircut—wearing black pants and a black T-shirt with a skull on it—got out of the van. Before she realized what he was up to—she smelled his anxiety right away—he grabbed her arm and yanked her toward the van. Her heart racing, she screamed and kicked and hit him like her parents had always told her to do if anyone ever tried to grab her. As much as she wanted to, Kira couldn't bite him, or she would chance turning him into a wolf shifter like her.

"Shut her up," the driver of the van said, and she knew she was in terrible trouble. She wasn't big enough to fight off one husky man, let alone two.

Her blood ran cold. Going against everything she'd always been taught she knew she didn't have any choice. She bit the man's arm hard. He was holding her wrist tightly and there was no yanking free of his iron grip so she figured it might be the only way to escape them. Maybe she hadn't turned him, but she tasted his blood in her mouth. Once the bite registered in his brain, he cursed a blue streak and immediately lost hold of her. She scrambled to get out of the van and fell to her knees on the pavement. Terrified he would grab her again, she got to her feet and dashed back toward her friend's house, terrified, screaming and shouting. She hoped someone would witness the van and record the license plate.

What she couldn't believe was the van kicked into reverse and shot backward toward her. The vehicle was just about in reach when she dashed up her friend's walkway. She pounded on the door, screaming and crying. She was so panicked that she just knew the man was going to grab her again and shut her up for good.

The van just sat there for a moment, and she figured the man she had bitten would grab her again if she didn't get inside any second now, figuring she had just gone to a random house and no one was home to save her. "Sally! Come on, come on! Open the door!"

He yanked the van's panel door open, and she screamed, "Help me!" Everyone in the neighborhood was probably working or running errands. She didn't see any other cars on the street, so she didn't believe anyone would come to her rescue.

Sally suddenly opened the door, frowning, her mouth hanging agape. "What…?"

Out of time to explain anything, Kira jumped inside, slammed the door, and locked it. "They tried to kidnap me. I bit one of the men. I had to." Tears filled her eyes and ran in rivulets down her cheeks.

They peered out the window and the van peeled off down the street. The girls ran outside and memorized the license plate number and then tore inside and Sally got her mom. "Mom! Mom! Men tried to kidnap Kira!"

It would have been easy just to report them to the police, but not after Kira bit the one man. She was so upset, knowing her mom and dad would be distraught that she might have turned him. He might not shift for a while, but they couldn't leave things as they were.

Sally's mom asked, "Did you turn wolf?"

"No," Kira said, then realized what she was getting at. She could only turn someone if she had been a wolf. She gave a sigh of relief.

But her mom got on the phone to call Kira's parents and then she called her husband right away instead of the police. They were part of a small wolf pack, none of them in law enforcement—baker, butcher, construction workers, a chef, and a nurse. What made them the perfect people for the job to deal with the kidnappers was that they were all wolves with a common driving goal—protecting their kind and maintaining their secrecy. They took care of their own. She thought they might have worried the men would try to grab her again since she had seen their faces, now that it wasn't an issue that she had bitten the one guy.

Everyone who could leave their jobs for the emergency mission did. Kira's mom was a nurse, and her father was a chef, and both arrived at Sally's house to coordinate the effort. Several men were armed with guns and drove in their own vehicles, headed the way the van had gone. Since Kira knew the van the best and which man she'd bitten, she had to go along with her mother. Sally stayed home with hers.

"This is a learning experience," her mom said. "If we bite someone as a wolf, we have to either take them into the pack or eliminate them. But you bit him as a human. Still, we're concerned they could come back for you or come after Sally, and the police might never catch them or they might get off. We can't let that happen."

"I'm so sorry," Kira said through her tears.

"No, darling. Oh, sweetheart. You did what you had to do. We're so proud of you. We always told you not to bite anyone, but in this situation, you were human. They could have killed you and that was the only way for you to save yourself. You had to do what you did. Even if you'd managed to shift into your wolf, we would have been behind you all the way. Your dad and I would have done the same thing at your age if we had been in your shoes. Even if we were grownups, given your situation."

Kira still thought her dad, or even the other wolves in the pack, might feel differently. They all had to leave their jobs to deal with this and she could imagine they would be mad about it.

"Are you okay?" her mom asked. "They didn't hurt you, did they?"

"Bruises on my arms. But I'm okay otherwise." Then Kira saw the van up ahead. "There it is!"

"Okay." Kira's mother called her dad on Bluetooth. "The van is traveling north on Live Oak. They just turned right onto Pine Street."

"Are you far enough away from them?" her dad asked.

"Yes. There's another car between us. It just turned off, but another car pulled in front of me, so there's still a car between us and the van," her mother said.

"I'm near your location. I'm going to call Rutherford to let him know where the van is."

Rutherford, who owned his own butcher shop, was their pack leader.

"The van just drove into a driveway. Four-ten Pine Street," she said.

"I'm right behind you. Just park on the street a few houses down from there. I'm parking behind you."

"Alright, dear."

Her dad ended the call and Kira knew he was calling the pack leader to coordinate everyone's efforts. She was scared, worried that the men might try to get her again or hurt her parents or the others in their pack.

She glanced out the back window. But her dad was staying in his car while Kira and her mom stayed in hers, watching the house as the men climbed out of the van, shaking their heads. The driver shoved his finger at the chest of the man Kira had bitten, pushing him back.

"Which man did you bite?" her mom asked.

"The one in the black pants, black sneakers, and shirt with a skull on it. The other man was the driver." Kira could still taste the man's copperish blood in her mouth, smell his body odor—he'd been drinking beers and hadn't bathed recently, his skin sweaty and his black hair greasy. He'd eaten chili filled with onions—which she'd also smelled on his breath.

The van had smelled of discarded fast food hamburger sacks and greasy fries all over the front seats and the back.

The men walked into the one-story house covered in green siding and sporting a gray roof. Big windows were covered in blinds. The neighborhood was older, established, the vegetation—trees and shrubs—overgrown.

Then a black pickup pulled into the driveway behind the van and parked, effectively blocking it in. Kira recognized it was Rutherford's truck. He got out of the vehicle and then she saw other vehicles pull up and park in front of the house.

That's when her dad left his car and came up to the passenger's side window. "Which man did you bite?" he asked Kira.

"The man wearing black pants, black sneakers, and a shirt that had a skull and crossbones on it. He had black hair and a beard and mustache."

"We'll get him, honey. Don't you worry."

Her father didn't sound angry with her either. But what were they going to do with the two men?

Five of the pack members, including her father, went to the door of the house and Rutherford knocked on it.

The driver of the van opened the front door of the house, and Rutherford and the other men shoved their way into the house. Then the door slammed shut.

"What's going to happen?" Kira knew that if her father and the others killed the two kidnappers, they could eventually all be caught and tried for murder. She didn't want any of them to be in trouble for "taking care" of these criminals.

"It depends on how the kidnappers react."

It seemed to take forever before Kira's dad came out of the house. "It's done. Go home. I'll follow you there."

It wasn't until they arrived at home that her dad hugged Kira and her mom hugged her again. He told her what had happened. She had to know. It was the wolf's way. "They committed suicide. Evidence was all over the place, indicating they had kidnapped other children, and none of the kids had ever returned home. So you did what was right. The men felt such remorse that they hanged themselves."

Kira didn't believe they would do it. For all her youth, she recognized what her father was telling her. They had helped them find death.

Shortly after they arrived home, Rutherford showed up to speak to them. He was a kindly gentleman of sixty in human years, a gray wolf with graying hair, but he was strong and capable and would probably run their pack for several more decades.

They all sat in the living room and Rutherford said, "We can't know how terrified you truly were without having been in your place, but what you did was the right thing. From all the evidence we found in the house—for over a decade, those two men had kidnapped children, and they were never punished for it. They felt so badly for their sins, knew they were going to prison, and decided to hang themselves."

"You helped them." Kira was known to be tenacious at times.

Rutherford cast her a hint of a smile. "They might have needed a little persuasion. Not that they didn't deserve it."

"But will anyone find out you were all involved?" That was what concerned Kira the most.

"They left suicide notes. Both wrote their own. They confessed to the kidnappings they had committed. With their confessions, the police will be busy looking into cold cases that they had never been able to solve," Rutherford said. "Okay, I'm headed back to my shop before my mate sends out the police looking for me. Just know this, you not only saved yourself, you saved other potential victims." Then he patted her on the head and left the house with her father.

That's when Kira decided she wanted to do something when she grew up where she could protect their people and others who might be harmed by men like these.