Prologue
Grim
The gavel rang in my ears, the same gavel that made my wolf salivate. It was the only sound that would get my wolf to move anymore. That gavel meant an impending mission from the acting alpha.
Each time the gavel hit the pulpit in the abandoned church, the howls and snarls began. Our brothers’ growls would drive my wolf’s lust for blood that much greater. This church across the street from the Iron Fang bar had been our meeting place since Locke bought the land on this side of town, and it fully represented what we thought of our prior beliefs.
Dead and dying.
My claws elongated, scratching the pew in front of me. The shifters here were all so damn happy to find a place to rest their weary souls, but not me.
This was a dead end. This was where all rogues went when they had nowhere else to turn. The rogues weren’t necessarily evil, but they weren’t good, either. We were the gray. We were the in-between. The shifters that didn’t belong out in the forest, eating dead carcasses, because we had lost ourselves and were mostly known as rabids. We were the rogues transitioning, and that meant we didn’t belong in a pack, tribe, or pride.
We were all the misfits that no one wanted, especially our mates.
The gavel hit the wooden pulpit again, making me cringe. I dared not let others see the squint in my eyes as my wolf amped up our hearing to listen to the latest task. These tasks, these missions, as Locke liked to say, were to keep us busy. To ease our troubled animals, since no mate was coming to calm us.
Because they abandoned us.
The shifters all sat in neat little rows, some drinking cans of human alcohol that barely touched the minds they wanted to fog. We all still healed quickly, just not as fast as if we were in a formal pack.
“Settle down.” Locke set the gavel down more gently this time, his eyes darting toward me.
The hushed understanding Locke gave me stirred my wolf. My wolf didn’t trust anyone, and he barely trusted Locke because, at one time, he trustedher. And look where that got me.
Locke was different, though; we had an understanding. Promises that if things went wrong, we would be there for one other. We had each other’s backs.
“We’ve got a hit on a warehouse,” Locke said. The shifters in the room slapped their hands together, some howling, others growling at the impending blood that would be shed. That was our favorite—to let our frustration and aggression out—even if it was in our human forms.
Once you go rogue, controlling your animal without an acting alpha was difficult. We had to keep our animals inside, never letting them see the sun. It was to protect not only each other but any humans around. If an animal burst through its human side, which it inevitably would, they would be uncontrollable, and they would really go rogue, or rabid as we now called them.
Once you went rabid, there was no going back, and actions were taken to see to it you never saw the sun again.
You were put out of your misery, put down, the proper euthanization, anyway you wanted to call it. There had been a few. The bear that I put down several years ago had to have been the worst. The fight in him was strong, and it took three of us to pin him until I slit his neck with my knife.
Feeling the heat of the bodies surrounding me made me snarl; the shifters backed away, scooting down the torn padded seat. I wasn’t far from going rabid; it had been far too long keeping my wolf inside. My wolf was so deprived of touch, compassion, and interaction with anyone that he had shut down completely. There was no speaking to my wolf. My wolf was a pure animal now, with no way to bring him back to the light.
“This came in just this morning, a note stating there are both humans and shifters in a warehouse by the loading docks on Ocean Ave.”
Once Locke and I moved here and slowly gathered other rogues like us, we began getting letters. All were anonymous, with a circle around measuring scales of judgment. On one end laid a feather, and on the other sat coins. We continued to get the same letter over and over, speaking of women needing help with exact coordinates to their locations.
Locke took it upon himself to gather a group, and we all set out to see if that first letter could be true.
That one dark night changed everything for us once we realized what we were meant to do. For the rest of our brief lives before we went rabid, we were to rescue and protect the innocent because no one had looked out for us.
That was the night we all took a vote; Locke became our acting alpha. We continued to receive letters and worked on the tasks given to us because what else were we supposed to do? We all lived in this small human town we had officially taken over. We tried to live ordinary lives amongst humans. But even the humans knew we were dangerous and stayed away.
It was for the best. They all needed to stay the hell away from us.
Especially me.
The cops were afraid of us; they let us do what we pleased as long as we didn’t cause issues. In reality, we kept the streets cleaner; we didn’t put up with anybody’s shit.
We were the black knights of the town. The humans would never know what good deeds we’d accomplished.
The gavel hit once again. My mind had already zoned out too many times today for my liking. My time was fading fast. The wolf inside shifted our deep blue eyes to his black. Locke put a hand on my shoulder, which made my wolf stiffen. He grabbed his wrist. A resounding crack sounded as we twisted it. Locke swore, pulling himself from our grip.
“Easy there,” Locke murmured.
