Page 1 of Redeemed Wolf (Grim Wilds #4)

Chapter 1

Silas

The wind shifted, bringing with it the scent of damp soil, moss, and in the distance, rain. Closer, though, the scent we’d been waiting for: fresh game. Sweat and musk on its pelt, blood pumping in veins, hot and coppery. Our stomach was already full, but this hunt wasn’t about sating our hunger. It was about something far more complex than our base instincts. Politics, social etiquette. Those were human motivations, but for now, there was only wolf.

And I was grateful to lose myself to the beast. Then it was easier to ignore the voices inside my head repeating every word my bitter pack had uttered to me over the past several years. That I would never be good enough. The complaints when I made the wrong decision about our winter’s food supply or allocation of funds, the pushback I received when I asked someone to pitch in to help with housing repairs.

“ You’ll never be half the Alpha Thorn was ,” Samson, one of the alphas from Overlands, had said with a sneer. Good, I thought bitterly. I guess that made me less than half a piece of shit.

Focus , my beast snipped at me, urging me to quiet my mind.

My wolf kept low to the ground, hidden in the shadow of a wide cedar tree. He kept perfectly stiff, even as the breeze tugged at our fur. Even as the doe moved slowly into view.

He was far more patient than I was. I knew better than to rush him. Not that he would listen. It was his turn at the wheel, and as much as I didn’t like to admit it, he was the superior hunter. Saliva pooled beneath our tongue; he could almost taste the red meat. The muscles in our haunches twitched, and he held our breath. Anticipation itched at me as we waited… waited…

This was easier to do as a pack, working together to take down a larger beast, but there was no way my pack would’ve helped with this, knowing what I intended to do with it…

A twig snapped behind us and to the right, under someone’s boot, and the deer whipped her head up, her ears swiveling, nostrils flaring, muscles coiled as she prepared to bolt from the threat.

Before the deer could run, we exploded from the undergrowth with a burst of energy, our heart pounding. The deer flinched back and took off, trying to deke through a narrow gap between trees, but she didn’t make it before our teeth found her throat. She reared, thrashing, but it was too late. Her blood poured into our mouth and down our chest, coating our fur crimson, and my wolf dug our claws into the loam to find purchase, being dragged forward. Even as her life drained from her body, she continued to kick, until she was heaving for every breath. Her pulse slowed. Thud, thud… thud .

Adrenaline made us stronger, and while she fought well, there was no escape for her today. She sagged to her knees, panting. My wolf finally let go, shaking the stress free from our body as the deer tipped to her side and finally lay still.

We looked over our shoulder at the man who was leaning against a tree, arms crossed over his chest. He was wearing combat boots, jeans, and a black leather jacket, and even though he looked out of place in the woods, even a human could sense the predator that lurked beneath his playboy charm. “This isn’t your land, you know,” Tristan said, narrowing his eyes at me. “You’re about five miles too far west.” He pointed to the left, as if I didn’t know which direction home was.

My wolf’s reply was a sneeze, then he moved back and let me take my skin. Muscle and sinew stretched, joints popped, and with a groan, I rose from a crouch in my skin. I scowled, looking down at myself. “Dammit,” I grumbled, wiping at the blood over my chin and chest, but it was no use. This wasn’t coming off without a dip in the creek, and that water was cold this time of year.

Tristan was making a face, grimacing at the mess I’d made, and I scoffed. “What? I’d like to see you bring down a deer by yourself without spilling a little blood.”

He waved me off dismissively. “Nah, I’m too pretty for hunting. That’s Jude’s job.”

“Then what are you doing out here?” I asked.

He pushed off from the tree and came to stand in front of me, staring down at the carcass. “I caught a whiff of your stench and decided to find out what you were up to. Poaching, apparently.”

“To be fair, the deer would’ve wandered into my neck of the woods eventually, and you don’t actually own the forest, so it’s not technically poaching. Let’s call it a gift, from my pack to yours.” I forced myself to smile, but it felt strained, unnatural. Hell, my wolf was better at this too. Polite social interactions weren’t my forte. I preferred sarcasm and inappropriate flirting.

Tristan raised a blond brow, his blue eyes icy. “You’re gifting us our own deer?”

Heaving a sigh, I gestured down at the animal. “Don’t suppose you want to help me carry it back to your camp?”

“Not a chance,” he said without blinking, before he turned and walked away.

I sighed again, my wolf mirroring the sound in my head like an echo. This was exhausting. Things were so much easier when I was in my fur. When we were hunting, the emotions were so much easier to manage. It was all hunt, kill, eat, fuck, sleep. It wasn’t until I took my skin that human emotions like guilt and regret and longing sank their claws into me. That was when shit got more complicated.

Regardless of whether or not I was poaching, I knew I could pick this deer up and take it back home to my own pack. Tristan wouldn’t stop me. I was Alpha of the Overlands pack, and they were my responsibility, and as Beta of the Grim Wilds pack, I knew Tristan understood that. He was all talk.

The truth was, though, my pack didn’t need this meat. We had plenty of hunters and hardly any children to feed, and honestly, most of us just preferred to run to the grocery store or order pizza. Grim Wilds, however, was some kind of backwoods pack in the middle of nowhere. Just a handful of shifters (plus one human), living in a collection of rough-built cabins. I honestly had no idea how they managed to scrabble out an existence at all.

Between fighting off rival packs to vengeful hyenas and government soldiers, they just refused to be kept down. Everyone loved a good underdog story, I guess.

It made zero sense to me, but even through the bitter resentment I felt, I still found myself crouching to pick up the carcass. I draped it over my shoulders, wincing as my skin got even grosser. I simply wasn’t going to look my best today, but as tempted as I was to give up and head home, I didn’t. Instead, I followed Tristan’s path back to his camp. I’d meant what I said about it being a gift. Or maybe more like a bribe.

Gods, I hate myself so much right now , I thought, groveling to these nobodies .

Liar , my wolf said snidely, throwing some serious side-eye my way. He knew me better than anyone, and he knew how I really felt.

Beneath the disgust, the resentment, the determination to feel anything else, there was a lingering sense of awe for this pack that seemed determined to not just survive, but to thrive.

While I stomped through the bush, branches slapping my bare thighs on the way by, I thought of the Grim Wilds pack’s dynamic. I couldn’t really figure out what exactly about it drew me in. Maybe it was because their Alpha, Shan, was everything my own Alpha had never been. He was kind and fair, and while he instilled loyalty, it wasn’t through the use of threats or violence.

My eyes strayed down to where my own body bore the scars of my ex-Alpha’s brutality.

Thorn had been vicious and cruel, and for some reason, I’d gotten it in my head that if I could challenge him to leadership, beat him in a fight according to our pack’s laws, that I would run things differently.

Well… needless to say, I hadn’t won, but it was close. The fight had been over quickly, lasting all of two minutes, but neither of us came out of it unharmed. Thorn ended up with a limp from where I’d torn up his leg, but my injuries were far more severe, leaving me scarred for life. His claws had gone so deep that even with my increased healing, there was no coming back from it unscathed. He’d left me there, bleeding out, overnight. And when I was still breathing the next morning, he’d laughed. Laughed! He decided it would be a fitting punishment to keep me as his Beta, forced into servitude for the rest of my days, a constant symbol to anyone else who might’ve considered making a play for Alpha.

When I saw my opportunity to have Shan take care of him for me, of course I took it. Tristan might have sneered at my lack of pack loyalty, but I thought we could agree, we were all better off without him.

I’d taken over as the Overlands Alpha, undisputed, but that didn’t mean things were better. Under Thorn’s rule, the alphas had his permission—hell, encouragement —to be abusive to their mates, and that had drawn in a certain type of shifter. It had infected us, spread until it was a large part of what made the pack. They followed me out of fear, out of habit, a learned resentment for authority, but whenever I tried to suggest there was another way of doing things, I was met with distrust, and ultimately, disobedience.

When I’d dreamed of being Alpha, it was nothing like this. My pack didn’t need me as their Alpha, and they sure as hell didn’t want me. It was no wonder the pack despised me, since they saw me as too weak to finish the job myself. I couldn’t even blame them.

And when Shan and his pack came to ask for my help last year, and I’d seen what a real pack looked like, it had kindled something new inside me. Something… surprising. It felt an awful lot like camaraderie. Like friendship.

So, as much as I would deny it if asked, my wolf and I agreed about one thing. I would be willing to give up my place as Alpha if it meant following someone like Shan.

But would they ever accept someone like me?

I saw a brightening through the trees ahead, and my pace increased to a jog. I could hear children laughing, and an involuntary smile broke out on my lips. The kids were fun to have around. Mal was the oldest, destined to be Alpha after his father one day. His little brother Wynn was a hellion, always getting into trouble, but Tristan’s son Pax seemed to balance him out. The two of them were inseparable. Pax had a destiny of his own playing out, as the pack’s next shaman, gifted with foresight and who knew what else. For now, he was being trained by Vesta, but she was older than any of us knew and seemed to be wasting away by the day.

The most recent addition to the pack was a sweet little girl, Jesse. She was Jude’s daughter, and she was already crawling around, trying her best to keep up with the boys. The whole pack was so full of life and energy, and no matter how I tried to resist, I couldn’t help but be drawn in.

But when I stepped through the trees into the clearing, the laughter died off as eyes turned my way. I swore the temperature dropped ten degrees. Even my wolf shivered. Brrr .

My stomach dropped straight down to my toes. This was going to be an uphill battle. They weren’t going to let me into their little club, not for one deer. I needed something bigger to show them that I’d changed.

Tristan met my eyes from across the camp. His arms were crossed, a scowl twisting his mouth as he leaned in to whisper something to Jude, standing at his side. Jude was by far the most intimidating of their pack, even more so since he mated with a fragile human. He saw protecting his mate as a full-time job, and he’d long ago decided that I was threat number one.

At whatever Tristan was saying, Jude looked my way, his eyes flashing green, his teeth sharp as his lip curled up. Well, shit. This isn’t going as well as I’d hoped .

I could feel their distrustful gazes searing into me, and even as my skin crawled with a warning about walking into a den of wary predators, the yearning to earn their respect won out. It was an unfamiliar emotion, this need to belong to something, and I wasn’t entirely sure I liked it.

I slapped a smile on and sauntered across the clearing as if all their shitty attitudes washed right over me, like water off a duck’s back.

Not a duck. Wolf.

It’s just an expression , I told my beast. Always so literal.

“Howdy, boys,” I said, hefting the deer off my shoulders and dropping it at their feet with a heavy thud. “Dinner is served.”

They both looked down at it, matching frowns on their faces. “The least you can do is cook it,” Tristan said, smirking.

“Great idea,” Shan interrupted, stepping out from his cabin and joining us. “Jude, why don’t you start field dressing the deer, and Tristan, you can make a salad.”

“Wha—” he started to argue, but Shan cut him a glare, and Tristan’s jaw clamped shut with a click, before he stomped toward the kitchen building in a huff. Jude didn’t argue, but I couldn’t miss the way his eyes tightened at the corners as he reached down and grabbed the carcass in one hand, dragging it back out to the woods to clean it.

“What about me? What should I do?” I asked.

“You are going to come with me. We need to talk.” His tone was light enough, but there was a heavy weight to it that pressed down on my shoulders, tempting me to bare my neck to him. I might’ve had the role of Alpha in my pack, but he embodied it in a way I never could.

He slapped a hand on my shoulder and steered me down the dirt road, away from camp.