Page 1 of A Gathering Storm
CHAPTER 1
DECLAN
The wind tastes of rebellion tonight.
I feel it before I see them—three packs converging on sacred ground, their hatred for each other bleeding into the salt-thick air like poison. My wolf stirs beneath my skin, recognizing the challenge in their very presence, every instinct screaming that this gathering holds the seeds of war. They come because they must, bound by laws older than memory, but submission has never sat easy on predator souls. Not when territory lines blur and old grudges fester like infected wounds.
The very atmosphere crackles with suppressed violence. Each breath carries the metallic bite of barely contained aggression, the musk of wolves pressed too close, instincts straining against the forced proximity. The wolf within paces restlessly, wanting to answer their unspoken challenges with fang and claw, to remind them exactly who holds dominion over these windswept cliffs.
Storm clouds mass overhead, pregnant with violence that mirrors what's building below. The air pressure drops with each passing minute, making everyone's temper shorter, their control more tenuous. Lightning sparks in the distance, still silent butgrowing closer, and I taste ozone on the wind—nature's own warning of the tempest to come.
The stone circle waits for me, weathered sentinels that have witnessed a thousand clan gatherings, a thousand barely leashed conflicts. Ancient granite towers pierce the sky like accusatory fingers, each one carved with runes so old their meanings have been lost to all but the island's eldest bloodlines. Their surfaces catch the moonlight wrong tonight, carved symbols pulsing with an inner radiance that speaks of anticipation or warning—I can never tell which anymore. The boundaries between blessing and curse blurred long ago in MacRae history.
My boots strike the clifftop path in measured beats. Each step is deliberate and unhurried, letting the sound echo off the stones in a rhythm that speaks of absolute authority. Let them wait. Let them remember who holds this fractured peace together with bloodied hands and strength of will alone. Let them feel their wolves cower at the approach of something older, more dangerous than their petty territorial disputes.
The Northshore pack clusters near the eastern stones, all bristling fur and bared teeth despite their human skins. Young wolves mostly—Graeme at their head, twenty-three and drunk on his own strength, too green to understand that power without wisdom is just violence waiting to happen. His pack brothers mirror his aggressive stance, shoulders squared, eyes bright with the kind of reckless hunger that gets entire bloodlines wiped out. Their scent carries aggression sharp enough to cut, tinged with the sulfur-sweet stench of barely controlled rage.
I can smell their individual stories on the wind—testosterone and inexperience, the lingering musk of females they've claimed without understanding the responsibility that comes with such bonds. They're predators playing at being alphas, mistaking brutality for leadership.
The Southcove pack holds the western arc, positioning themselves as far from their rivals as the circle allows. Older, more cunning, but their eyes burn just as hot when they track their enemies' movements. The blood feud between these two packs runs three generations deep—something about territory lines and a female who chose wrong. Or right, depending on who tells the story. Bodies buried in shallow graves, children raised on stories of betrayal, each generation adding fresh grievances to an already festering wound.
Their matriarch, Elena Southcove, watches me with calculating eyes that have seen too much blood spilled in the name of honor. She's survived more than one challenge to her leadership, and the scars on her throat tell the story of how close those battles came to ending differently. Her pack arranges itself with military precision—the seasoned fighters at the front, the young ones protected in the rear, everyone ready to move at her slightest gesture.
The Eastmoor pack keeps to the shadows between stones, watching everything with the patience of hunters who know when to wait and when to strike. They're the wild card tonight. Always have been. Their alpha, Connor Eastmoor, leans against granite that's older than Christianity on these islands, seemingly relaxed but every line of his body screaming predator at rest. His wolves mirror his deceptive calm—loose limbs, easy stances, eyes that never stop moving. They're the ones who'll decide which way this gathering turns, and they know it.
I step into the circle's heart, and the very air stills.
The carved runes flare brighter—old magic recognizing older blood, responding to the storm-sense that runs through MacRae veins like liquid lightning. The ground beneath my feet seems to pulse with each heartbeat, as if the earth itself acknowledges my presence. My father stood here when the Mainland War threatened to spill onto our shores. His father before him,during the Spanish Flu when we nearly lost everything to disease and desperation. MacRae alphas stretching back to when these stones were raised and the first laws carved into their faces with claw and ceremony, each generation adding their own blood to the sacred foundation.
"You came." My voice carries without effort, pitched to reach every ear, every barely controlled beast straining against human skin. The words seem to echo off the standing stones, multiplying and growing stronger with each reflection. "Good. The old laws still bind us, even when we'd rather tear each other apart."
The assembled wolves stir restlessly, some dropping their gazes in automatic submission, others bristling at the reminder of bonds they never chose. I can smell their individual responses—fear from the younger ones, resentment from those who remember when their own bloodlines held more power, calculation from the leaders weighing their options.
Graeme Northshore moves forward, and Christ, the boy practically vibrates with challenge. His pack brothers mirror his movement—a wall of young muscle and misplaced pride, all of them too young to remember what unchecked violence costs. They smell of leather and motor oil, of late nights spent racing stolen cars and picking fights with mainland tourists. Modern wolves who've forgotten that strength without wisdom is just another word for suicide.
"The old laws." He tastes the words like something rotten, his upper lip curling back just enough to flash canine teeth that are too sharp, too long for purely human mouths. "Laws that let you play king while our territories shrink. While humans inch closer to discovering what we are."
The accusation lands exactly where he aims it, striking the doubt I've been carrying for months like a physical blow. The survey teams spotted near Seal Point last Tuesday, theirequipment too sophisticated for simple ecological research. The government contracts for ‘environmental impact studies’ that edge too close to our hunting grounds, asking questions about wildlife patterns that hit uncomfortably close to the truth. Some of our purebred brothers—dragons, wolves and bears—were hunted to extinction centuries before. There are questions that are getting harder to deflect with misdirection and careful lies.
I can feel the weight of every watching eye, every predator judging whether my measured responses make me wise or weak. The scent of uncertainty ripples through the gathering, mixed with the sharp tang of opportunity as lesser alphas sense potential weakness in their betters.
"Those survey markers…" someone from Southcove starts, voice tight with barely controlled panic.
"Threaten us all," I finish, not letting the sentence become a rallying cry for division. My words cut through the building tension like a blade, sharp and final. "Which is why we need...”
"Unity?" Graeme barks a laugh that's more wolf than human, the sound harsh and grating against the sacred stones. "That's your answer to everything, MacRae. Unite. Pretend we're not enemies forced to share borders we'd rather paint with each other's blood."
The truth of it burns. We are enemies—territorial predators crammed together on an island too small for our combined appetites, held in check only by the knowledge that exposure means extinction. The Northshore and Southcove feud alone has claimed seventeen lives in my lifetime, bodies that had to be hidden, deaths that had to be explained away as accidents or disappearances.
The Southcove wolves snarl at that, hackles rising beneath human skin in response to the provocation. I can smell their fury spike, hot and metallic, mixing with the ozone of the approaching storm. One of them, barely sixteen by the look ofher with that gangly teenage awkwardness still clinging to her frame, lets her eyes flash amber—a deliberate challenge that has Northshore wolves stepping forward with answering growls rumbling in their chests.
The girl's scent carries the sharp-sweet edge of first heat approaching, hormones and inexperience making her reckless. Her alpha should have left her home, but Elena Southcove brought her entire pack as a show of strength. Now that decision threatens to cost all of us blood on sacred ground.
The circle's about to explode. I can feel it building like pressure in my bones, the way the air goes still and electric before lightning strikes. Claws extend from fingertips across the gathering, teeth elongate in human mouths, and the sound of fabric straining against expanding muscle fills the night air.
"Enough." The word drops like a stone into churning water, carrying power that makes the ancient runes flare brighter. I don't raise my voice. I don't need to. The storm-sense in my blood responds to emotion, and my authority rides the wind itself, pressing against every wolf present with invisible weight. "Spill blood on sacred ground, and you’ll answer to me."
The threat hangs in the air between us, backed by generations of MacRae dominance and the very stones that surround us. But I can see the calculation in Graeme's eyes, the way he weighs tradition against ambition and finds the old ways wanting.
