Page 37 of In the Mouth of the Wolf

She made a small sound and barreled through the door, disappearing into the dark and snow.

The vampyr started to chase her but I tackled him from the side, slamming him into the reception desk. His head smacked satisfyingly against the hard wood, and his body relaxed.

“Go, alpha. Find your omega. We’ll take care of him.”

I looked back at the beta shifters who had stepped in, ready to fight against our mortal enemy as he threatened one of our kind.

Nodding my thanks, I took off into the woods after her.

Night fell early during the winter months in Wisconsin, and while I might not have had the ability to fully shift, I still carried enough wolfish traits to follow her trail through the darkness. I called Archer while I trudged through the snow, trying to stay on top of her scent.

“Is everything okay?”

“No!” I replied, panting heavily. “The fiancé… he’s a vampyr, and…”

Thick growls interrupted my sentence, and someone snarled in the background. Most likely Cam.

“We’re on our way,” Archer said quickly.

“That’s not it! Marlowe shifted. Completely. Her wolf took off. We have to find her.”

None of the pack could respond, the news stunning them into silence. Archer finally spoke, his voice thick. “There are human farmers in the area that would shoot a wolf on sight.”

My heart leapt into my throat. “Then you better hurry down here.”

After hanging up I stopped and howled, hoping she might reply. The woods were quiet, save for the far-off sound of traffic from I-94.

“Fuck,” I cursed.

Marlowe was one in a million. She was beautiful, smart, funny, but could also be the key to helping our whole species regain our connection to our inner beasts. Archer must be salivating as much at the prospect of bonding to her as he was about studying her.

But mostly, I just wanted to protect her, and that longing charged through our pack’s bond. There was no telling how far she could run or where she would be when she shifted back. She’d be naked and alone in the middle of the woods, facing below-freezing temperatures. Dazed, confused, with the memories of Mike’s true identity and his betrayal still coursing through her.

I growled at the thought of it. All this time, she’d been unwittingly choosing a fucking bloodsucker over us.

Vampyrs and shifters had known of each other for centuries, but we never really interacted much, choosing our own paths to keep under the humans’ radar.

But then the Great War happened.

No one knew what had sparked it, but one day around a hundred years ago, battles had broken out between our two peoples all around the world, some lasting for months. When it ended, we fell into an uneasy truce and avoided each other whenever possible.

Luckily that was pretty easy considering we tended to settle in very different climates - shifters in the north and vamps in the south.

Human lore got one big thing wrong about vampyrs – they didn’t hide from sunlight; they reveled in it. Shifters ran hot, desiring the cold of the north and of long winters to keep from overheating. Vampyrs were similar to reptiles, however. Their blood ran cold, and they needed the sun to live comfortably.

Their societies also differed from ours with how we formed groups. Shifters had packs. An alpha pack with an omega was often seen as the ideal, but packs that mixed alphas and betas, or were comprised of only betas, also existed and formed families and households.

Vampyrs, on the other hand, could only sire male children, and as such, had developed a practice of creating groups called “servaglios,” wherein they would recruit several human females to serve as their concubines. The Lunessa was considered the main female, his wife for all intents and purposes.

Omegas would wither away in a servaglio. They needed several males to tend to them during their heats. A male who couldn’t devote himself fully to an omega would leave her in pain, physically and emotionally.

And what would a vampyr even want with a shifter anyway? Could an omega and a vampyr even conceive?

The idea enraged me. Marlowe had smelled and looked like sex when she found me. Knowing a vampyr had tasted her, filled her, held her and loved on her…

I shoved back those thoughts. I would take those frustrations out on him if I ever saw him again. But not my Marlowe, not my sunny California. She didn’t even know whatshetruly was. How would she have known her fiancé wasn’t human, either?

Her neck had been bite free, at least. That was one thing vampyrs and shifters had in common – we formed bonds through bites. But while shifters bonded only to form a pack, vampyrs could bond with countless humans to turn them into their submissive thralls. It made it easier for them to feed.

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