Page 1 of Ensnared by the Pack: The Complete Series (Destined Realms #3)
AUDREY
Tonight, my wolf would awaken. It would. Fifth time was the charm, right?
I glanced up, checking the time. The full moon was almost perfectly framed by the large hole in the thick canopy of branches and leaves surrounding the pack’s sacred grove, indicating it was only a few minutes until midnight and then— Then! Then I’d become a real shifter.
I nervously ran my hands down the front of my simple white dress. I’d bought the dress on my eighteenth birthday, eager to become an adult in my pack, ready to meet the animal half of my soul even though I knew I’d have to wait ten months before the summer solstice to join the others who’d turned eighteen that year for our first shift.
Except that solstice had come and gone, and my wolf still hadn’t woken.
A part of me wished our pack was like the other packs, born with our animal natures fully awake, shifting around six or seven years old whenever we wanted and not needing to wait until our eighteenth birthday. But then I would have had sixteen or seventeen years of being the laughingstock of my pack and not just five.
Instead, centuries ago, the then pack alpha paid a witch to halt our transformation until we were eighteen. It was a way to protect ourselves from being discovered by the humans and it had made us a significant pack in North America. We’d been able to build our own village out in the open instead of hiding away from the humans and gain influence and prosperity in a world that would have hunted us down if they’d known the truth.
Then a little over twenty-five years ago, Michael had tried to exterminate every human on the planet — as well as all of us hidden supernatural beings — and Gabriel made a deal with every super in hiding to join the fight.
The deal had turned the tide of the war, and the need to hide, to avoid children losing control and shifting in front of a human, no longer mattered. The world knew about shifters and vampires and demons and angels. We were the heroes that had helped save humanity, and now we were the pack that couldn’t shift until we were adults.
And I was the girl who couldn’t shift at all.
But this year would be different. I could feel it.
This was my year.
The full moon was a good sign. Those who awakened under the full moon were said to be stronger, more connected with their wolves.
This year my wolf would awaken and I’d become an adult and get the hell out of this town. Not that I technically wasn’t an adult at twenty-two — at least according to the humans — but as far as pack law was concerned, I was still a child.
On top of that, once my wolf wakened, I wouldn’t look like a target to every supernatural being I came across the moment I left pack land, since while my essence told every super who saw me that I was a shifter, it also told them I was so weak I was practically human.
Merrick, our pack’s alpha, wouldn’t be able to use any of that as an excuse to keep me here any longer. Although I had a bad feeling he’d find some other excuse. No money, no family, no something I’d never been able to have in the first place. I was free labor, and according to him I owed him for taking me in when my father killed himself thirteen years ago.
He always told me he could have let someone else take me, but no, my father had been a valued member of the pack even after he’d come back from the war broken and haunted by the things he’d experienced, and Merrick had been obligated to take care of family .
That, of course, had been a lie, but I’d been too young to realize the truth until it was too late. Not that I’d have been able to do anything about it.
No one defied the alpha, especially someone who was still considered a child.
Joan and Shea, with their perfectly coifed blond locks, stepped into the sacred clearing with their younger siblings who’d turned eighteen a few months ago, and a chill rushed through me as my pulse picked up.
I inched back toward the deeper shadows of the grove where the pale moonlight didn’t reach and tried to make myself look smaller, even though I knew I wouldn’t be able to hide from their enhanced night vision unless I was in complete shadow. But it was the best I could do. I had to be here for the ceremony so I couldn’t just run away.
Hopefully they wouldn’t notice me and everything would be fine. They were here for their siblings, not me. But their attention instantly jumped to me as if they’d been looking for me and it didn’t matter if I made myself smaller or not.
Joan sneered, catching me trying to will myself invisible, and my pulse pounded faster. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes when I couldn’t just flee, I managed to hide in the shadows and not be noticed, but I should have known they’d search me out. I was guaranteed to be here. I was tonight’s amusement. And now I looked like prey. Prey that Joan had been toying with for years.
She’d had her eye on Sterling, Merrick’s son and my sort of — definitely unwanted — brother since we were little. She’d been furious when I’d moved into his house, her tormenting reaching new heights that had often sent me to the nurse’s office until she’d realized I’d actually become Sterling’s slave. Then they’d joined forces, honing their skills to make my accidents look more like accidents and learning that waiting for an attack elicited as big or bigger a reaction than actually being attacked.
God, I should have just run when I’d started fantasizing about it years ago.
I certainly should have done it after the first summer solstice when I didn’t shift.
I should have stolen what I could have easily carried so I could pawn it in the next town over and taken the bus as far away from here as possible, like to Union City. That was on the other side of the country and had a whole vibrant supernatural quarter. Surely the wolf pack there would take me in. I’d become damn good at cooking and cleaning, so I at least had a few useful skills.
Except it didn’t matter where I went, Merrick would find me. As soon as it came out that I was a shifter who couldn’t shift he’d know where I was because there wasn’t anyone else out there like me. And yeah, I’d spent the last five years back in my old high school’s library at their one remaining clunky student computer, searching the internet for anything that might tell me why I couldn’t shift.
“Every time you show up you just prove the rumors true,” Shae snickered with a wicked gleam in her eyes that made my pulse race even faster because she knew I couldn’t refuse the ritual until I actually shifted. “You’re just a mutt. Not even shifter enough to have a wolf. Your mom fucked a human and your dad was too stupid to know the truth.”
Except I had proof that wasn’t the reason I couldn’t shift. There wasn’t such a thing as a half shifter. Children of human-shifter pairings were either shifters with the ability to shift and the essence of a shifter, or human with the essence of a human. There was no in between like me.
Joan barked a shrill laugh, and her younger sister and Shae’s younger brother joined in.
“Stupid must run in the family,” Joan cackled, her voice rising and drawing the attention of the two dozen others in the grove. Not that she needed to speak up. Shifters had excellent senses — smell, sight, and hearing — once their animal-soul had awakened. “You’re never going to shift.”
“I think we should change the ritual this year,” Sterling purred as he slunk out of the shadows and drew up close behind me, making me jump. His ferocious power rolled over me, threatening to dominate me and force me to my knees in submission just by being near me, and I realized he’d fully suppressed his power to sneak up and surprise me. “I think we should make the mutt run when she doesn’t shift.”