Fate Succumbs Read online

  Fate Succumbs

  Timber Wolves Trilogy :

  Book 3

  A novel by

  Tammy Blackwell

  Copyright © 2012

  Smashwords Edition

  All rights held by the author.

  Just in case the boys turning into wild animals under the light of the full moon didn’t make it obvious, this is a work of fiction. All characters and events exist only in the mind of the writer. Any resemblance to real life is a figment of your imagination.

  Cover Design: Victoria Faye (www.victoriafaye.com)

  For the Beta Fish.

  You make me better.

  Chapter 1

  “I can’t do push-ups.” Sweat slid down my neck, clinging to the top of my shirt. It was only eight in the morning, but it was also August in Kansas’s Cimarron National Grassland. “In case you forgot, my hand hasn’t been fully functional since I jerked it through a pair of handcuffs.”

  “Of course you can,” Liam said, pouring a bottle of water over his head. “You’re a Shifter.”

  “Which means I’ll have use of my hand tomorrow.”

  “Fine. If you can’t handle it, do them one-handed.”

  For two weeks I had been roaming across the United States in a car with Liam Cole. During our road trip from Hades, he only spoke to inquire on the state of my bladder (which is exactly how he phrased it); offer up some more Tylenol or Advil (the only medicine I was taking for my shattered hand); or ask me what I wanted from the latest drive-thru window (where he always ordered a cheeseless triple cheeseburger). Now, the morning before the full moon, he was suddenly a chatterbox, with every single word used solely to antagonize me. I could tell I was being baited, and it should have stopped me from trying to do them two-handed. Unfortunately, I’ve never met a challenge I didn’t like.

  There was a chance the residents of Timber, Kentucky, heard my scream.

  As if the physical torture and snide comments weren’t enough, Liam also felt the need to enrich my brain with a tedious lesson in Shifter Basics.

  “And how do you react if you run into a member of the Chase Pack tonight?”

  I willed my eyes not to roll. “I drop my head and expose my throat in submission since this is their territory and I have no desire to take it over,” I said for the fifth time.

  “It’s not going to be easy,” he assured me, also for the fifth time. “You’re going to have to override your instinctive response to exert your dominance.”

  “I know.”

  “But if you don’t, it could get ugly. You might be able to take another Shifter in a one-on-one match, but if you Challenge someone, the whole pack will come.”

  “I know.”

  “The Chase Pack normally doesn’t come over to this side of the park, but you need to be prepared just in case.”

  “I know.”

  And to think, just weeks ago I wanted to learn more about the Shifter world.

  “We’ve been over this,” I said, grabbing yet another granola bar from the backseat of the car. It was the last one in our third box of the day. “I promise I’ll follow your lead, stay on this side of the park, and treat any other Shifter I come across with the utmost respect. Seriously, Liam, I’m not going to flake out on you. I don’t want someone snitching my location to the Alpha Pack any more than you do.” Because God only knew what they would do to me when they found me. Well, I guess God wasn’t the only one. I mean, I had it pretty much figured out since they tried to chop off my head with an actual guillotine.

  “Good,” he said. “Now let’s go over the landmarks you need to be on the lookout for again.”

  There were oh-so-many reasons to be excited as the light of day began to fade from the sky.

  In the Cimarron, there aren’t a whole lot of places to strip naked and wait for your body to rip itself apart so it can reform in the shape of a wolf, but we found a large turtle-shaped rock which would offer up a reasonable amount of privacy. As we were heading over Liam said, “Remember to pull the energy from the ground as you Change.”

  I stopped at the edge of the rock. “What?”

  “Make a conscious effort to pull the energy from the ground. It’ll make the Change quicker.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Energy transference.”

  I thought about it, searched the recesses of my memory, and… “I have no idea what that is.”

  Liam looked towards the setting sun with obvious annoyance. “I thought you said you understood the science behind the Change.”

  “I do, but Dr. Smith’s book never said anything about energy transference or pulling stuff from the ground.”

  “Dr. Smith…” Realization flashed in Liam’s eyes. “You have Dad’s book?”

  This was not going to be a comfortable conversation.

  “Alex gave it to me,” I said. It had been a Christmas present. Alex knew I would have a million questions about the whole Shifter thing once I discovered he was a werewolf, so he gave me the one book in the world that explained the science of what happened to the body during the Change. It talked about bone reconstruction, cellular regeneration, and nerve remapping, but never delved into the stimulus for those transformations. “I was going to give it back, but then…” But then Alex died in my arms after a horrible accident. It still caused me physical pain to think about, and I knew it couldn’t be any easier for his brother to hear, so I just shrugged off the end of the sentence. “I’ve been taking really good care of it. You can have it back.”

  Liam did a kind of head bob thing which could have been interpreted in a myriad of ways. “When you’re Changing,” he said, switching back to the original subject, “imagine you’re pulling strength from the ground and air into your body. We steal energy from our surroundings during the transformation. Mentally opening yourself up to those energies relaxes your body and makes the Change easier.”

  As far as logic went, it was pretty sound. “Thanks,” I said as I stepped around to my side of the rock.

  “Scout.” I stopped, if for no other reason than it was the first time he ever called me by my name. “Good luck.”

  ***

  A year ago, I was a normal girl living what I thought was a normal life. That all changed when Liam and Alex Cole moved to my hometown of Timber, Kentucky. Alex, Liam’s younger brother, was the living embodiment of perfection - smart, funny, and so hot you worried about spontaneously combusting in his presence. It took me all of five seconds to fall head-over-heels, which wasn’t surprising. Everyone loved Alex. The shocker was that he loved me back.

  Alex was the one to introduce me to the world of Shifters and Seers, but I soon realized I had been living smack dab in the middle of it my whole life. Thanks to skills I learned from watching too much Veronica Mars, I discovered Jase, my step-brother, and Charlie, his cousin who I’d loved since my idea of quality TV included a singing purple dinosaur, were also also Shifters. Not only that, but my best friend, Talley, was a Seer who could See a person’s thoughts and feelings with a touch.

  Finding out everyone I trusted made it a daily practice to keep elephant-sized secrets from me wasn’t one of my better moments. I may have done a bit of property damage as a result.

  In April, Alex died in a horrible accident. I was devastated and heartbroken, not to mention sporting some major injuries of my own. I thought things couldn’t get any more complicated.

  I thought wrong.

  Thirty days after Alex’s death my world changed again. That night I became a Shifter, Changing into a wolf under the light of the full moon.

  It shouldn’t have been possible. For one thing, I’m a girl. For another, my father isn’t a Shifter. Since the ability to Change is passed from father to son, my newfound abili
ties were met with some not so pleasant feelings, most of which came from me.

  At that moment, crouched down in Middle of Nowhere, Kansas, I welcomed the Change for the first time. It wasn’t just because I was going to get the use of my hand back thanks to the Change’s tendency to heal injuries - although that was a big, shiny gold star bonus - but I yearned to be wild and free. I was tired of being pinned in with only the crappy thoughts in my head to keep me company. Human Scout was more than ready to hand over the reins to Wolf Scout.

  Maybe that’s why the Change went more quickly than ever before. Or maybe it’s just one of those things that gets better with practice. It could have been that Liam was right and the whole pulling energy out of the ground thing worked, but I didn’t want to jump to any crazy conclusions.

  Once I emerged from behind the rock I found myself staring into the eyes of a gray wolf. Not just any gray wolf, my gray wolf.

  Being trapped in a car with his scent for hours on end hadn’t dulled its impact on Wolf Scout. Her nose kept nuzzling into his neck, confirming he was really there. There was a period of time when Human Scout had questioned the gray wolf’s existence, but Wolf Scout never doubted. But she had never seen more than a glimpse, had never been able to actually touch him.

  The part of my brain that was still human, the part that used logic instead of instinct, knew this was the same Liam who hated cheese and was completely unfamiliar with the concept of smiling. Wolf Scout didn’t care. She only knew him as the friend who had always been there for her when she was in need, as the one who came to her rescue time and time again.

  Liam nipped at me, and I nipped back. Then, he was off. I caught up with him quickly, but only because he let me. We ran together, our sides rubbing against one another as we went. Eventually, Human Scout faded out completely; leaving Wolf Scout at peace with the one person on earth she trusted above all others.

  Chapter 2

  Before, when I was just a naive teenage girl who knew nothing of the real world where magic was possible, I paid little attention to dreams. I rarely had any and thought people who wanted to analyze them or believed they were passageways to something mystical were idiotic. That all changed once I became involved with Alex.

  Although he was a Shifter and male, Alex had a few Seer abilities. While he couldn’t do the whole non-verbal, in-the-brain communication thing Seers are capable of, he could Dream Walk. He had developed the ability as a child, although it only ever showed him one thing: Me. Once we finally connected in the real world, I started participating in those dreams. For months I dreamt of a place on the lake with a rocky patch of beach shadowed by a cliff. In April, I found myself at that very spot. It was the place where Alex and I had our first date, and where we were attacked by my brother and Charlie.

  It was the place where Alex died.

  After that night, I continued to dream of our spot on the lake. In those dreams, Alex was there. I could see him, feel him, and taste him; he could hold me in his arms and help me sort out my plethora of problems. Those dreams kept me going when my heart was in shambles and during my incarceration by the Alpha Pack. But since my escape those beautiful dreams were gone, just like everything else in my life.

  That, however, didn’t mean my nights were dreamless. I slept very little those first few weeks, but when I did I was rarely alone.

  Most nights featured Jase, my step-brother, who I loved like the twin people believed him to be. Those sleep-induced mini-movies weren’t dreams so much as memories. He would stand in front of the Alphas, head held high, and testify against me. The next morning I would wake with the words, “She’s not my sister,” echoing in my ears. It would take hours for the betrayal and pain to loosen their hold on my lungs enough for me to breathe normally. On the other nights, I found myself with Travis, a now dead member of the Alpha Pack. The most disturbing of those dreams were the ones where everything seemed normal. I would be sitting in class or trolling the aisles of Wal-Mart and there he would be. He would walk towards me, his mouth curved up slightly as if to say, “Oh, hello friend.” I would try to get away, to run, but he was always just around the corner, or blocking my way.

  The day after the full moon, my dream took me to a restaurant. It was the fancy kind with actual cloth table cloths and napkins. I could hear and feel other people, but I couldn’t see them. All I could see was the Texan with blue eyes and dishwater blond hair who sat across from me.

  “Scout,” he said by way of greeting.

  I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. I tried to open my mouth, but it wouldn’t budge. An attempt to get up and leave was also unsuccessful. I was trapped.

  “It’s been a while. I haven’t seen you since…” A quirk of the lips. “Well, you know.”

  Tears were hot against my cheeks. I wanted to sob, but none of my muscles worked.

  “How does it feel to kill someone?” He leaned closer, no more false amusement on his face. His eyes were hard and accusing. “Did you like it? Did you like the feel of the gun in your hand? Did you enjoy watching me die?”

  I tried to shake my head, but it still wouldn’t move.

  “You did, didn’t you? You murdered me, and you liked it.” He wasn’t yelling or raging, which made it worse. The calm accusations, the absolute certainty he was right in his voice. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, that I was truly sorry. That I would take it all back if I could.

  When I woke it wasn’t sudden, although my heart did pound frantically in my chest. The guilt weighed heavy in my stomach and clogged up my throat.

  No wonder Charlie zombied out on me, I thought. When I shot Travis it was a situation of kill or be killed. There is no doubt in my mind I did the right thing, the only thing that could be done, and yet I couldn’t shake these dreams or mend the rip in my soul that ending another life caused. How much worse had it been for Charlie who didn’t have the small comfort of knowing it was self-defense? How much worse would I feel if I thought I killed Travis in a fit of rage?

  I found Liam sprawled across the other bed when I finally sat upright. Of course, an argument could be made he was actually comatose instead of merely asleep. The motel was one of those places which had been standing since 1950 and hadn’t found the need or money for any updates since. I tried to be quiet as I went about my business, but with ancient plumbing and doors in dire need of WD40, it was basically impossible. Yet, when I emerged from the bathroom, as clean as one can be when the water smells of rust and they only own three outfits, Liam was still in the same position, his eyes closed against the afternoon sun.

  I rummaged through the multiple fast food bags littering the room, feeling more than a little like a victorious hunter when I discovered an uneaten sausage biscuit hidden in their depths. With nothing else to do, I sat down, devoured my kill, and watched Liam.

  There was a time when I thought Liam was just a bigger, angrier version of Alex. Upon closer inspection, I realized they looked quite different. I mean, anyone who saw them would know without a doubt they were brothers, but they could hardly pass as twins. Liam’s hair was starting to grow out, making the red tint absent in Alex’s shaggy brown mane, more evident. Their bone structure was similar, but Liam’s jaw was more pronounced and boasted a line of stubble. And while their eyes were the exact same shade, Liam’s were shaped differently and his lashes, while not as thick, were much longer.

  Alex was beautiful. Liam could never be called beautiful. It was much too tame a word. Handsome didn’t seem right either. Arresting. That was the word to describe Liam’s look. He was arresting.

  He was also awake.

  “Scout?”

  I’m not sure when I got up out of the chair and moved onto the edge of his bed, but that was where I was. And that was certainly my now unbroken hand stretched out, frozen just inches from his face.

  “I’m hungry,” I said, as if it made the whole Creeper Scout thing okay.

  Liam sat up, rubbing his face. I found my way back to the chair as quickly as possible, which
for a Shifter the day after the full moon means really freaking fast.

  “Want to order some pizzas?”

  “Sounds perfect!” I was doing that really fast, high-pitched talking thing girls do. I wanted to slap myself. Liam looked as if he might volunteer to do the deed for me.

  After much discussion, some of it actually done in a normal, non-spastic voice, we ordered two large pizzas, an order of breadsticks, two orders of wings, and something they called a s’mores pizza, which I had reservations about. Liam sat some cash on the dresser once the order was placed and disappeared into the shower.

  I gleefully passed the time by watching the Cartoon Network. When Liam had control of the TV, which was anytime he was around a TV, we watched The Weather Channel nonstop. An obsession with weather patterns was apparently a Cole thing, because Alex was always Johnny-on-the-spot with the forecast, although, it could have just been because he spent so much time with his brother. I can’t even pretend to care about high pressure systems or rotating storms, but after a couple of days with Liam I was able to talk dew points with the best of them.

  I was watching a new show - the premise had something to do with talking appliances and a suicidal microwave oven - when the pizza guy came knocking.

  “That’ll be fifty-seven even,” the guy said without looking up. He was really overweight and somehow managed to balance all the food on a fat roll with one hand while he held the receipt in the other. I wasn’t sure what the proper etiquette was when it came to grabbing your dinner off a guy’s stomach. I started to reach for it, but chickened out at the last minute when it became obvious I might have to actually touch some part of him. He apparently saw me going in, thought I had it, and let go.

  If I was a normal girl, the food would have hit the floor.

  If I was thinking, the food would have hit the floor.