Page 1 of Fated to the Wolf Cowboy
Tricia
Chapter 1
The wind whipped through the streets of New York City as howls broke out around Central Park.
Trackers.
It was another round up.
I hovered on the edge of the park, not daring to venture any deeper into Pack territory. Heavy paws pounded against the ground. I was close enough to hear them and felt the vibrations even through the sidewalk.
They were close and getting closer.
I walked a little faster and tried to control my breathing, knowing there was nothing I could do about the pounding of my heart in my chest. They’d hear it. They’d know.
At the next alley, I turned abruptly and took off running. There were others there, homeless, drug addicts, those less fortunate or lost to a world that would happily ignore them. I didn’t think there were any of my kind though. We didn’t come here. The overwhelming stench of trash and human body odor were too off putting for our sensitive noses.
I pulled a handkerchief over my nose and mouth, but it provided little help.
Staying in my skin was essential. The trackers were less likely to find me this way. I’d been in my skin for months now and it was weighing heavily on my inner wolf. But it made me feel safer.
They couldn’t run here in wolf form, which I knew would make them stronger. It wasn’t safe for any of the wolf shifters living in the city to be out in their fur, especially in the middle of the day. And even trackers’ senses dulled in human form.
I was safe, but I didn’t feel safe.
It wasn’t likely they were after me anyway, but the possibility was there and that was enough to scare the shit out of me.
Rumors were growing that they weren’t just tracking down the Raglan experiments anymore. As if those who had been unfortunate enough to be captured right off the streets hadn’t suffered enough by that evil human faction.
We should be helping them, grateful they had been returned to us at all. But no one knew for sure what had been done to them. There had been genetic experiments involved, or at least that was what the rumors said.
People were afraid of them. That shouldn’t mean we hunt them down and kill them like animals. I truly believed we were evolving beyond that point. I needed to believe it, but I couldn’t keep my head buried in the sand until they came for me next.
Once a group of people cave to the fears of the unknown, it’s not long before they begin to fear others that are different too. And now they were actively hunting witches.
I could not take it anymore. I just couldn’t sit here and wait for them to come for me. It was making me paranoid. Every second of every day my ears were on full alert, the hair on the back of my neck permanently stood up, and I just knew they were going to come for me next.
I didn’t stop in the alley, and I didn’t look back. I kept my head down and pulled my hoodie tightly over my head.
In the last three months I’d had to move seven times to stay low and off radar of the trackers. At first it was just a precaution. My friend Aleah had laughed and told me I was being an idiot.
“We were born this way, Tricia. They know that. We aren’t some monsters like the experiments,” she’d say.
Aleah was a witch too. She’d turned up dead, tossed away in a dumpster outside her apartment a few weeks ago. The local human police found her. She’d been a Jane Doe to them, no investigation, just another product of the streets, and therefore disposed of unceremoniously. Morris hadn’t even stepped in to identify her or anything.
Something was going on around here. I was still processing it all and my anxiety had spiked significantly since.
But I knew the stories. While my dad hadn’t entirely abandoned me, mostly because he needed me to take care of his sorry ass, he had reminded me of what an abomination I was throughout my entire life.
Even as a kid he’d tell me, “Be smart, Tricia. Keep your freak powers to yourself.”
And I’d heard all the old tales. Hell, there were certain kinds of witches that some Packs still killed when their powers emerged, even if they were just little pups. It was barbaric.
My witch powers were pretty benign. Aside from being the weird kid who liked to make friends with the animals, most didn’t think much of it. When the Raglan experiments began showing back up, a list was generated of all the witches in the New York Pack.
We were supposed to be more evolved now, more tolerant. Even the humans were making an effort in thatdepartment. So, the list was announced as a way to protect my kind.
I’d begged my father not to put my name on the list, but he’d done it anyway. I was certain they’d offered him some money or something to report me, and he would have snatched it up and turned in his own mother for it. I was glad my mother had died young and didn’t have to see the monster he’d become.
