It was common knowledge that he didn’t plan on leading the pack forever. He had a dream of settling down on a patch of wooded land far away from the heart of the pack, living alone with Sarah while his hand-picked successor took over for him. When Maddox was still in the Cage, it seemed as if Terrence had resigned himself to being Alpha forever. Now that Maddox was free and fully bonded to Evangeline, it was only a matter of time before Maddox challenged his father for the top spot.
Until then, Terrence was the Alpha and all the shifters in their pack knew it. He cleared his throat, the harsh sound instantly snaring the attention of every last one of them.
His golden eyes gleamed. His grizzled face twisted in a furious sneer. And when he snarled, “Looks like we have a Nightwalker problem,” you could’ve heard a pin drop.
Colt was stunned. Their pack was made up of mainly predatory shifters. Wolves, bears, lions… they were always the problem.
What the hell?
2
After the pack meeting broke up, Colt decided to leave his truck at his parents’ home.
His wolf needed to run.
Ever since he put his paw down about not taking a mate, he had been forced to keep one hell of a leash on his beastly half. With his head full of everything they discussed during the meet, he decided he could risk shifting shapes if only to burn off some of the rage coursing through him.
Four bodies in less than two weeks. That’s what Terrence told the assembled pack council. All human. All local.
All their problem now.
Nightwalkers were draining their victims and leaving them near enough to pack land that his Alpha had—rightly, in Colt’s opinion—no choice but to interpret that as an open threat, if not an outright invitation to war.
Fucking corpses.
He wasn’t a big fan of the turned vampires. True, he wasn’t a big fan of all the non-shifters, but Nightwalkers were right up there with witches in his opinion.
Colt’s hatred of witches was legendary. Most of the witches in the area—and that didn’t include his Bumptown anymore because, well, hatred—regarded him as an enemy. Not because he ever acted on his dislike, but because his temper and his stubborn nature meant he never hid it, either.
When he was younger, it had to do with their magic. He just couldn’t understand how, with one flick of a finger or a wave of a hand, a witch could cancel out his brute strength, inch-long canines, and razor-sharp claws.
Right after the almost-fatal car crash, when the truck carrying Maddox and Evangeline toward their honeymoon careened off the mountain, Maddox got thrown into the Cage. Every time Colt visited his brother over the last three years, he was only reminded that witches were a traitor to other Paras.
The paranormal prison was warded. Witches. The glass partition separating the brothers in the visitors’ room was enchanted to be Para-proof. Witches. The covens were even responsible for the silver collars used to leash the shifters locked inside. Even after Maddox was freed, the ring of ruined skin remained, the terrible scars a memento of his time forced into the silver collar.
Fucking witches.
Then Priscilla had ruined Maddox’s life, broken Evangeline, and tried to murder Colt when he confronted her. The lone witch was twisted, obsessed with the idea that she could use her witchcraft to create a bond with Maddox. Cilla thought magic could trump fate; with enough diamonds, she could get rid of her competition and make herself Maddox’s mate instead.
He had hundreds of reasons to hate witches, and his family wondered why he just couldn’t accept one as a mate?
He might’ve been able to get over his knee jerk reaction about falling in lust at first sight with a stranger—he was a shifter and, unfortunately, finding his mate had long been a possibility even if he’d never actually looked—but a witch?
No.
No.
Not even one as kind and as sweet and as caring as his.
Now, when it came to Nightwalkers, he wasn’t alone in his dislike. Of all the different types of paranormals—shifters, vamps, phantoms, witches, and othersiders—Nightwalkers were universally despised. They were dead, though they didn’t appear that way except for their strangely silver eyes and their pale skin. As a whole, the turned race of vampires were vicious and cruel, their lusts only tempered by their blood-drinking and, if they could find one, their betrothed.
Not many people wanted to tie themselves to a Nightwalker unless they liked to be used as a pincushion. A Nightwalker could offer pleasure with its bite, but there was a cost. Non-Nightwalkers could grow addicted to the high a Nightwalker could offer, becoming a Donor who existed solely to give blood and wait for their next fix. A Donor only loved the feeling, never the corpse; they could never be a vampire’s blood-bonded mate.
In the past, most Nightwalkers were solitary by nature, only relying on the humans they could feed from. Since Paras were forced out into the open, individual Para quirks were more tolerated. Sure, the drinking had to be done behind closed doors, but nowadays there were synthetic blood shops and blood banks even in mixed towns.
There were even a couple of Nightwalkers living in his Bumptown; not many, since there was definitely something in their make-up that made them more reclusive than other Paras.
They settled together in a corner referred to as Little Transylvania. Though Colt was abso-fucking-lutely positive that the vamps in his Bumptown didn’t have anything to do with the bodies, he decided to run past their hidden corner and sniff around after he made it back to the Bumptown.