Initiation (Wolf Blood Academy Book 1) by RaShelle Workman (best book club books for discussion txt) 📕

InitiationWolf Blood Academy

RaShelle Workman

Copyright © 2020 by RaShelle Workman

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover by: Crooked Sixpence Book Covers

Edited by: Debbie Davis and Jen Hendricks

For Jacob.

Thanks for the long talks about what became the Shade Rasa. You’re the most amazing to infinity and beyond plus one.

Contents

Introduction

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Also by RaShelle Workman

About the Author

Introduction

♥ Can love alter destiny? ♥

The Wolf Blood Academy gave me an ultimatum. Attend and take my place in the pack or my family suffers the consequences.

One bite changed my whole life. Until that fateful moment, no one told me I descended from an ancient legacy of wolves.

Determined to keep my family safe, I enter the Wolf Blood Academy, but acceptance isn’t official until I pass their initiation. A series of challenges meant to discover my rank among the classes. With my genetics, the tests should be easy, but I haven’t had years of training like the others.

Even with my focus on surviving, that isn’t enough to keep me away from Wyatt Wright. He’s beyond gorgeous and so tempting. I crave him.

But everything in me says I need to stay away.

Prove myself. I will do anything for my family, even become the enemy so I can take them down from the inside.

Unless Wyatt takes me down first.

Maybe that won’t be a bad thing.

Can love alter one's destiny? I guess I’m about to find out. ♥

Prologue

In my wildest dreams, I never imagined being hunted by wolves or, more specifically, one wolf. Yet as I balanced on the edge of a cliff overlooking the river raging far below, my eyes locked on the Alpha. A thunderbolt of longing shot through my veins. There was a connection between us—something animalistic and uncontrollable and… beautiful. My heart longed to be with him, but an unknown yet more substantial part of my humanity fought against those feelings. Shut them down, so the longing was only an insignificant ache.

“It’s alright, Diana,” he said, his voice low and sensual. His hands stretched in front of him. He hadn’t shifted into his wolf, but I still felt a physical wave of desire.

He’s everything, the little lost part of myself whispered. In the same instant, I pushed that away. He was the enemy. I growled. I was more than a wolf’s mate, more than the effing link between us. I was an Alpha too. If he wanted me, he would have to prove himself first. With that promise embedded in my heart, I turned away and leaped.

Chapter One

Wyatt

“It looks like we’ve got a low-level lupangus on our hands,” my father said, yelling over the sheets of rain pouring down on us. He stood in front of the lupangus monster, his back to it, and the peculiar Shade Rasa forest. That seemed like a bad idea. His soldiers—his fellow pack members—were shifted into their wolves. They padded back and forth, a barrier between my father and the monster, protecting him. Every once in a while, they would growl and snap at the menacing creature as water streamed off their faces and fur.

I was still in my human form, standing in an open field with the others in my pack. Beyond cold, the rain caused my white tee to stick to my body like a second skin. I barely noticed. My eyes flicked from my father to the monster. The thing stood more than fifteen feet tall and on four legs. It looked like a cross between a gray wolf and a king cobra, its body covered in fur and patchy scales like it had a disease. A long-tail flicked up and down, causing the ground to shake each time it hit. The lupangus’s face was kind of awesome though, with snake eyes and a wolf face, and two enormous fangs curving on either side of its snout. The thing hissed, flicking its forked tongue between its teeth. Tasting, I thought but guessed it couldn’t get much except water.

There was still some light in the sky, but the rain made it difficult to see clearly—like looking at a fuzzy picture. This was my first time coming into contact with one of the Shade Rasa monsters up close and in real life. At the Academy, I only studied their bones and saw pictures in books, but this? I shuddered.

“The lupangus’s strengths are venom, speed, and strength,” my father said, interrupting my thoughts. “It has a soft underside. Focus on that, but watch out for the venom. Even a tiny drop can render you paralyzed for hours.”

“Super,” Nick said, mostly to himself.

I only heard him because we stood shoulder to shoulder. A quick look at my second revealed a tense rain-splattered face, but he didn’t flinch. My friend was a fighter, the same as me.

The others mumbled comments. None that I caught.

We were on the outskirts of the predatory forest, but only a small portion. The thicket spanned three thousand acres from Alaska to New Mexico. Here in Wyoming, it cut my home state in half.

My father wiped his face before checking his watch. He pushed a button. “You have ten minutes.” He moved past me with a look that said I better not shame him and so much more. But I’d long since decided I didn’t give a flying crap what my dad thought.

I glanced at the guys. All but Logan had been part of my pack since we started at the Wolf Blood Academy. We were all eighteen, excluding Nick. He was nearly twenty.

Spreading out, the five of us shifted into our wolves.

It hasn’t moved since we cornered it, Logan said, his voice filling my mind.

That’s