Heartsong (Green Creek 3)

But he didn’t come for me.

He stood protectively over the witch, eyes bright in the looming darkness.

“Well,” the witch said, flat on his back in the road. “This is going better than I expected. I’m still alive, so that’s a plus. Mark, would you please get your fucking dog junk out of my face?”

The brown wolf sat on him, looking rather pleased with himself before he caught me watching. He snapped his jaws at me but didn’t move.

The witch wheezed. “You… fucking… dick.”

A sound from behind me.

I looked back over my shoulder.

Alpha Wells—Shannon—was gone. But in her place stood two wolves.

One pure white.

One pure black.

The white wolf had red eyes.

The black wolf did too. But there was violet swirling within them, like he was… like he could be—

My shift melted away beyond my control.

They took a step toward me in unison, shoulders brushing. The white wolf was smaller than the black but emanated such power that I could barely breathe. It felt almost regal, like this wolf was royalty.

But it was the black wolf that held my attention the most. Its eyes never left mine as it walked toward me, claws clicking on the pavement.

This wolf was different.

This wolf was more.

My eyes stung, and I didn’t know why. My hands shook.

I heard a whisper in my head, faint but undeniable.

It said packpackpack.

“Who are you?” I said in a broken voice. “What do you want with me?”

The Alphas stopped a good twenty feet away. As I watched, they began to shift. The white wolf became a blond man, younger than I expected. He was strong and slender, the red fading from his eyes until they were blue, blue, blue.

But the other wolf.

Oh god, the other wolf….

His skin was tan. His eyes and hair were dark. He was big, so big that I thought he would fill up the entire world. He popped his neck side to side as the black hair receded, as the fangs slid back up into his gums.

A single tear slid down his cheek. He didn’t wipe it away. It hung on the curve of his jaw for a moment before it splashed onto the road.

“Hello, Robbie,” the man said. His voice was deep, the words slow and filled with so much blue that I could barely breathe. But there was green in them too, green relief that was like the forest around us was in full bloom. “I know you’re scared. I know you have questions. And I will do my best to answer all of them. But we have to go while there’s still time. I need you to trust me.”

I was in a daze. The wolves from my dreams were here in front of me. I didn’t know if I was awake. “Who the hell are you people?”

The man nodded. The other Alpha at his side gripped his hand, mouth a thin line. The big man was an all-encompassing presence, but the other one…

The other one was dangerous.