Page 4 of Silver Claw

“If he’s allowed to live,” my mother said, “he’ll be banished.” She shuddered at the horror of that particular punishment. My mother and I knew it well.

“Power-hungry,” the detective said again. “He wants to rule the wolf world.”

He wasn’t wrong, and neither was my mother. Gavin Voss was a greedy, power-hungry bastard who was going to lose everything, because apparently, he couldn’t be satisfied with anything.

But why was he focusing on Jakeston? We were far from Colorado. We weren’t huge. And that made me uneasy. He was here for a reason.

My mother pushed back her chair and stood. “Let me help clean up, and then I’ll bounce. Nigel doesn’t know what to do with himself when I’m gone.”

“He was welcome to come with you,” I reminded her.

“I know.” She paused behind Zach’s chair to lean forward—though she didn’t need to lean far—to drop a kiss on the top of his head. “But some nights are just for family.”

Zach grinned. The spark of life and joy that Frederick Axton had tortured out of him was back full force. He was no longer the whipped, terrified, half-mad man I’d refused to put down when the council had ordered his death.

“Go on back to Shadowfield,” Lucy told her. “I have more help than I need cleaning up dinner dishes.” She beamed, but there was just a tiny shadow lurking in her bright eyes. Lucy was missing her shape-shifting serial killer boyfriend, Sam.

Sam Shannon. He’d changed his last name to Lucy’s a month earlier. He’d wanted to shed every last trace of the horrific family who’d raised him. I knew that wasn’t possible. His childhood would always be there, no matter how many different names he took on.

He was still killing. I had no doubt that at that moment, he was out tracking some blonde woman who was abusing her male child. If he hadn’t chosen that outlet for his madness, God only knew what horror he would have unleashed upon the world.

As a shapeshifter, Sam could do a hell of a lot of unleashing.

And Lucy loved him with all her heart and soul.

Sam was one of mine, just as Lucy, Max, Rick, Zach, Remy, and Joe were. We were Pack. Found family. Beyond friends. Silver Claw.

And I loved Sam, too.

My mother made her way around the table hugging everyone present, then hurried away, her mind already on getting back to her Nigel. Things were good for her for maybe the first time in her life, really, and I couldn’t have been happier for her. She deserved every good thing that came her way.

I started to reach for my coffee cup when my cell phone rang. And there wasmyheart and soul. My alpha, Jared. My breath caught and my stomach tightened, and I scooped my cell off the sideboard and strode into the living room to stare out the huge picture window as I answered his call.

“Hi,” I said, my voice a little hoarse. No matter how much time passed, he was always going to affect me—and my wolf—like nothing else ever had or ever would again.

“Kait,” he replied, a smile in his voice. “I hope I didn’t interrupt dinner.”

“We were just finishing up.” I took a deep breath. “I miss you, Alpha.”

“Accompany Susan back to Shadowfield,” he said. “It’s quiet tonight. My bed is cold without you.”

More than my stomach tightened at his words. “She already left,” I told him. “But there’s no reason I can’t follow her…” Then I frowned as something in the darkness outside the huge window caught my attention. It wasn’t a movement, exactly, but a feeling.

Something was out there.

“Kait?” The alpha’s voice went dark and careful. “Tell me.”

“I’m not sure.” Then a shadow moved, separated itself from the other shadows, and the hounds in the yard woke up and began baying, their deep voices somehow excited and lazy at the same time, and I knew without a doubt that the quiet was about to end. Joe was going to get the battle he craved.

“Uh-oh,” I muttered.

“On my way,” Jared said, and he was gone.

“Incoming,” I yelled, and two seconds later, the living room was filled with my people, eager and ready for a fight.

No one peered through the window to see what might be waiting. We burst out of the house to meet the trespassers. The enemy had come, and now we all felt it.

In the back of my mind—and probably in Jared’s—was the thought that the Iron Fang alpha had arrived, sneak-attacking me under the cover of darkness like the coward he was.