Charmed Wolf by Aimee Easterling (best ereader for pdf TXT) 📕

I rolled over onto my hands and knees, finding deep moss where I’d thought there was a mattress. My head pounded complaint at the motion. There was a strange emptiness and lightness in my gut.

Because I’d severed my tethers to the pack and to Rune. The memory slapped me harder than Erskine’s words had.

There was no time to waste.

Already, the aroma of persimmon was floating away from me. I’d danced through it, with it...then I’d broken the connection. If I wanted to use the remnant still clinging to my skin, I needed to act fast.

Only...Erskine’s nose swept into my bleary vision until we were almost touching. “Is that what Butch really thinks? Were you lying? I understand mortals can lie.”

I didn’t have to ask what Erskine was referring to. Back when I’d made my pit stop on the way to pack central, I’d shared Rune’s deepest fears in an effort to gain his brother’s assistance. Of course Erskine would demand the rest of the story now that he possessed human lips.

Rather than answering, I asked the question I’d wanted to throw at Erskine ever since I realized he was Rune’s brother. “I met you before I met Butch. But you stayed close to me because of his connection. How is that possible?”

Erskine’s shoulder found its way under my floundering fingers. His strength drew me upright as he replied. “Time flows strangely in Faery. Yes, I knew you were Butch’s. Yes, that’s why I carried you back and forth when you asked me to. I want to be his brother, even if he doesn’t want to be mine.”

He set me on my feet, took a step back, then his voice turned petulant. “Now will you tell me why Butch holds me at arm’s length?”

Erskine had leaned me up against one of the standing stones and I started working my way along them to my destination. At the same time, I put Erskine out of his misery. Or, I guess, added to his misery.

“Your brother thinks you set him up a decade ago by pretending to be bullied. He thinks you preferred staying in a burning tree rather than accepting his help afterwards. Ever since, he’s assumed his wolf is prone to flying out of control and that all fae are evil. That’s on you.”

Despite the fact Erskine was my sole ally here, my voice had grown hard. Rune’s pain felt like my pain. I couldn’t prevent my words from coming out as a snap.

A wolf would have snapped back, but Erskine instead wilted. His shoulders rounded and his head bowed until he almost resembled the boy he must have been in Rune’s memories.

“Then you and Butch owe me nothing. Instead, I owe him.”

“Or, perhaps,” I suggested, “neither of you owes the other anything. You’re brothers. Being present in each other’s lives is apology enough. Just a thought.”

As I spoke, my fingers scrabbled behind me. Seeking the door only Rune could open. The one Erskine needed dealt with so he’d no longer be stuck Between.

And, there was the doorknob. At last.

Unfortunately, the final hint of persimmon had seeped out of my pores while I was hunting. But I knew where the last dregs would linger. Under my chin, where Rune had bit me.

For the second time, I ripped off the scab. Smearing persimmon-scented blood on my fingers, I reached for the door knob.

Then I opened up the door.

I HALF EXPECTED ERSKINE to stop me. Or to wrench my arm behind my back and pretend he was forcing me forward to get on the Queen’s good side.

But something about our conversation must have shifted his loyalties. Because Erskine stood back and watched as I walked through the portal into another world.

He watched...as I tripped over nothing and fell through a cold, whirling nothing. Which meant that, rather than arriving with knives out, I landed in the Unseelie Court on my hands and knees.

Thankfully, the Court was too busy to notice my fumbled arrival. Pulling myself to my feet, I noted that the land of Faery looked exactly like I’d expected...and nothing like I’d expected. It was loud and bright and colorful, full of beings both beautiful and cruel.

And all of their gazes were glued to a massive silver mirror. As a result, what should have resembled a medieval banquet hall was more akin to a sports bar.

“Three on the blond chick!” someone yelled. He looked like the most beautiful human I’d ever seen...and at the same time, like he wasn’t at all human. His fingers, I noted, ended in claws.

“Her?” the hairy beast beside him snorted. This one bore little semblance of humanity, although he did stand upright on two legs. “She won’t last thirty seconds. I put my odds on the kid.”

I craned my neck, trying to make out the flickers of movement on the mirror. That was clearly what these beings were betting on. But there were too many bodies between me and the mirror to be sure.

Then I lost track of the game—or whatever it was. Because the Queen’s elegant neck turned her perfectly chiseled face toward me.

She was entirely human...but more than human. I recognized her the moment our gazes met. Not because of the throne made of twisted gold wire and studded with gemstones. Nor because of the equally elaborate crown starting at her forehead and shooting up a foot above her head.

Instead, I recognized her because she looked like the shared parts of Erskine and Rune.

Her smile, though, was something entirely different. Cold and evil. Like the water in the Guardian’s creek when she was displeased with my actions.

“Well,” the Queen murmured, “what has the unicorn dragged in?”

The hall fell silent. Hundreds of eyes—red, yellow, brown, blue, and amethyst—bored into me. Bodies swayed sideways...and I could finally see the game on the screen.

Only, it wasn’t a game. The mirror instead broadcast a scene I was intimately familiar with. The forest of Clan Whelan. Wolves, so many wolves, all