Alpha Ascendant (Wolf Rampant, #3) E-Book

Aimee Easterling

• Herausgeber: Aimee Easterling
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Can Terra choose between her mate and her adopted daughter? 

Ember is a bloodling, a werewolf born in lupine rather than in human form. The wolf pup is the perfect blend of rainbows and chaos, bound to bring a smile to everyone's face. But Terra soon begins to wonder whether it's truly in Ember's best interests to raise her adopted daughter as a wolf. 

As a bloodling himself, her mate Wolfie adamantly opposes the idea of forcing a shift on their ward before her time. But when Wolfie is called away and Ember's sadistic biological father demands his daughter's return, Terra is faced with a difficult decision. 

By werewolf law, a shifter has come of age and can make her own choices after her first transformation. But while forcing Ember's shift prematurely would allow Terra to keep the pup out of the hands of her biological father, the act might drive Wolfie out of both of their lives forever. 

Alpha Ascendant is the engrossing finale of the Wolf Rampant trilogy that begins with Shiftless and continues with Pack Princess. 

Wolf Rampant trilogy: 
1. Shiftless 
2. Pack Princess 
3. Alpha Ascendant

Leseprobe

Alpha Ascendant

Wolf Rampant, Volume 3

Aimee Easterling

Published by Wetknee Books, 2015.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

ALPHA ASCENDANT

First edition. September 8, 2015.

Copyright © 2015 Aimee Easterling.

ISBN: 978-1524297435

Written by Aimee Easterling.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

Half Wolf

 

For my long-suffering husband, who knew it wasn't the end of the world when we couldn't decide on the pressure tank and the hot water heater.

Chapter 1

Charred remnants of the pack’s former compound stood like ominous sentinels in the springtime dusk. Beneath my feet, a thick layer of ash muffled my footsteps but the sound of voices drew me deeper into the burnt-out timbers.

“No, dude, I’m pretty sure she went that way.”

Blaze, the most youthful yahoo, sounded just as jittery as I felt. Our young-adult pack members had headed over the mountain an hour earlier in search of the fire-proof lockbox Wolfie hoped might have survived last winter’s flames. And, against my better judgment, I’d allowed Ember to tag along. After all, it was next to impossible to deny the precocious wolf pup anything.

Now I regretted my lax parenting. Because it sounded very much like Ember had been mislaid.

“Do you think she might have fallen down a hole somewhere?” Keith asked, focusing my own worries on images too horrific for words. Our beloved wolfling impaled on a shattered floor joist, unconscious from blood loss. Or perhaps she’d hit her head while plummeting to the ground, so her brain was now swelling dangerously within her tender skull. I shivered...and heard a similar sentiment expressed in my fifteen-year-old nephew’s voice.

I couldn’t spare much sympathy for the teenager, though. Not when a tiny wolf pup was unaccounted for within a conglomeration of burnt-out trailers that might as well have been a mine field.

In human years, Ember would be around nine years old, just about ready for fourth grade. Definitely not ready to be set loose unattended in an area where one false step would see you falling through the floor or bringing down the walls around your ears.

I’d been slowly pacing forward as I listened, so I was close enough now to make out the forms of each yahoo as I stepped up behind them. In addition to Keith and Blaze, the slightly older Glen and the new-recruit David were both present. Fen was too female to be a true yahoo, but she’d stepped into the role of older-and-wiser guide after the yahoos’ previous ringleader had died in battle the winter before.

“She didn’t fall down a hole,” the alpha-in-training told my nephew firmly. The boy’s shoulders relaxed at her words...and so did everyone else’s. Despite her youth, Fen had that ability to assume control in such a manner that the shifters around her felt buoyed up rather than trodden down, and I felt momentarily jealous of the ease with which she assumed command. I was still struggling to find that happy middle ground between being a pushover alpha and turning into the overbearing taskmaster my father had been. Maybe I needed to take lessons from Fen.

“I’m sure she’s just playing hide and seek,” the female yahoo continued. “But if we don’t find the pesky little puppy before Wolfie and company get back, we’ll all be in the dog house. So, Glen, you look in what used to be the computer room. Keith can take the common areas, Blaze can hit the sleeping chambers, and David and I will walk the perimeter. When you find her, holler. And get a leash on the rascal so she stays found!”

The male yahoos chuckled at Fen’s final admonition, and I couldn’t help doing the same. My laugh was really just an extra-loud exhale, but Fen’s eyes still met mine from the other side of the charred studs, her eyebrows raising in question. I shook my head subtly—no, the young woman was doing a fine job and I didn’t feel any need to take over the search.

I did feel a need to hunt down my ward as quickly as possible, though. So I headed to the one part of the compound that Fen hadn’t included in her game plan—the atrium at the center of the rectangle of mobile homes.

When I’d first walked into Wolfie’s pack compound eight months earlier, this central area had contained a greenhouse brimming with life. The clan’s resident gardeners, Galena and Quetzalli, had proven themselves pros at teasing armloads of produce out of a small space and I’d watched in awe as the pair babied fig trees and grapevines like the children they’d never have.

Now the clear plastic roof had melted into piles of hardened goo beneath my feet and only the burnt-over metal hulk of a wheelbarrow remained as evidence of the former paradise. So even though Galena was my closest ally within the pack (besides Wolfie, of course), I was glad that the shifter had chosen to stay in Haven rather than following us back to this demolished compound. There was no need for my friend to see all of her hard work turned to ashes.

“Ember, are you there?” I called softly. The words were more for my own sake than to draw the puppy closer since her lupine nose and ears would certainly be aware of my presence if she was nearby. Given how roundly our pack had spoiled Ember during her five short months of life, Fen was probably right that the little bloodling was just teasing us with her absence. At least I’d choose to hope that was the case rather than allowing the images of possible pain and suffering to fill my mind.

My wolf rose beneath my skin as my heart rate accelerated, and I let my lupine half flare our nostrils to take in the scents swirling around us. The fire had gone out long enough ago that all I could smell was salt melting out of burnt combustibles due to last night’s rain. The ash continued to deaden sounds and the compound seemed strangely silent for all that it currently hosted six adult shifters and one lost wolfling.

And perhaps the ash muffled scents as well, since I hadn’t been able to smell the yahoos as I approached. If so, then the absence of Ember’s diagnostic odor of pine needles and peppermint was merely a side effect of the fire, not a sign that the pup had wandered off on her own into the night. I chose to hope that was the case.

Together, my wolf and I picked a careful path through the treacherous atrium, my human eyes doing their best to take in what little light remained in the sky. Once, my foot hit something hard and I stumbled, falling to one knee before catching myself with both hands against the earth. “I know you think this is fun,” I muttered beneath my breath, not sure if I was speaking to Ember or to the world at large. “But we’re all worried and it’s past your bedtime.”

As if our beloved wolfling actually had any set rules to pin her down. The bundle of fur had won the heart of every member of our merged clan in short order, dissolving Wolfie’s pack of misfits  into Haven’s hidebound shifters in a way I’d been unable to accomplish even after weeks of painstaking manipulation. And now that we were all wrapped around her little paw, Ember tended to get whatever she wanted—slumber parties with all and sundry, the tastiest tidbits off everyone’s plates, or half a dozen worried werewolves hunting her through a burnt-out compound.

Close, my wolf said simply. I paused, trying to pick up on the sound my animal half must have heard to alert her to the wolf pup’s presence.

Nothing. Are you sure? I countered. My lupine companion was nearly always right about these things, but I still could sense neither hide nor hair of our spoiled pup.

The air is too quiet, my wolf responded, making me smile. Ember was a force of nature, sure. But even she couldn’t impact wind patterns.

Then a small, furry body was falling from who knows where onto my back, scrabbling to cling to my shoulders with sharp little claws. Her wet puppy nose inserted itself into my left ear, and I giggled in an entirely un-alpha-like fashion.

“Ember Wilder-Young,” I said sternly, raising my voice enough that I was sure the yahoos would hear me from whichever part of the compound they were currently searching. “Don’t you know better than to wander off all alone and climb around on rotten wall studs? You should be ashamed of yourself!”

But even as I spoke, I was lifting the bloodling off my shoulder and cupping her in my arms. She was warm and soft and smelled faintly of unwashed dog. And, yes, of pine needles and peppermint—the combined aromas of her mother and father. Neither of whom I hoped to ever see again.

But Justin’s and Sarah’s genes had somehow created this perfect little pup, who was as adorable as she was mischievous. So how could I regret any of the trouble her parents had caused in the process of introducing Ember into our lives?

The wolfling in question began to wriggle in my arms, bored already with my embrace. So I tucked her body firmly beneath one arm pit and used the other hand to unearth a collar and leash from my pants’ pocket, clipping the former around the bloodling’s neck. Our resident wolf pup’s mind was as human as anyone else’s, despite her inability to lose her fur for another decade plus. But we’d long since realized that Ember required restraints just like the animal she appeared to be...at least, she did if the adults around her wanted to retain their sanity.

“Found her?” David’s voice rose above the burnt-out walls, and I called back an affirmative. In response, the yahoos began converging on us from all directions, but I didn’t wait for them to arrive. Instead, when Ember leapt to the ground and pulled against her tether, I decided that the pup had discovered something she wanted me to see. And, as usual, I was game to follow wherever the wolfling led.

So when Wolfie, Dale, and Oscar showed up to collect us an hour later, the yahoos and I were carefully disinterring fig roots from beneath cracked paving stones. Ember had curled herself into David’s arms, but an occasional yip alerted us to the potential for damaging new green shoots that burst out of the seemingly dead tree. It appeared Fen wasn’t the only young woman with budding leadership potential.

I passed the charred piece of wheelbarrow metal (now turned into a digging stick) over to Blaze and allowed the yahoo to take my place as Wolfie stepped out of the shadows. Then I slipped into my mate’s arms as if I were a ship entering safe harbor after long months at sea. We hadn’t seen each other for two hours—the separation felt like an eternity.

“Keith found your lockbox,” I told Wolfie, turning my face upwards for a kiss.

The bloodling alpha obliged my unspoken request, the wolf behind his eyes greeting mine with the same joy I felt at his presence. “And I see you found something to bring back to Galena as well,” my mate rumbled once our wolves set us free. “Any problems?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” I replied, shooting a chastening glance at Ember. I could have sworn the pup winked back at me before returning her attention to the fig excavation.

The tree was clear of the soil now and was being wrapped in Keith’s damp shirt, the kid continuing to take every opportunity to show off his abs in front of Fen. My nephew’s physique had improved markedly over the last eight months, the shift to wolf form and the seemingly endless physical activity young lupines partook of building muscles that changed his aspect from gawky teenager to young man.

But the female yahoo was clearly unimpressed by his abs. Instead, I saw Fen’s hand slip subtly into David’s, their fingers entwining for a split second before she rounded up the troops. “No way we’re putting our precious tree in the trunk,” she berated Blaze. “Here, hand it to me. I’ll hold it on my lap.”

Car doors slammed as the yahoos piled into one of the two cars parked beside the compound. “Do you want us to take Ember?” David asked, hesitating before he slipped into the last remaining seat.

“No, we’ll bring her in our car,” I said, accepting the wolfling back into my arms. She’d somehow managed to gnaw off her collar in the few minutes she’d been out of my sight, and Wolfie tucked the puppy under his shirt rather than slipping another restraint around her neck. With a wolfling head slipping out the top hole of his shirt to join his own, my mate opened the other vehicle’s door and stood back so I could get in.

The compound had nearly faded into the darkness now, and I could almost imagine it was still the vibrant pack home that had once stood in place of the current disaster area. I could imagine that Tia was cooking the pack dinner in the kitchen, the yahoos playing cards nearby and snatching snacks from under the older werewolf’s knife.

Had my father and Wolfie’s brother not stepped in to turn all of our lives upside down, I would likely have moved into this very compound months ago. By now, I’d be busy carving out my own niche within what outsiders considered a pack of misfits but what I knew was really a piece of paradise.

In that alternative world, I wouldn’t be struggling to find my footing as co-leader of a reluctantly merged pack. I wouldn’t be learning to share power with an alpha who I knew in my heart could do a better job on his own. And I wouldn’t lie awake at night pondering outside-the-box solutions in an effort to keep every member of our combined clan happy and healthy.

But I also wouldn’t have a soft little wolfling crawling over the gear shift and into my lap. Fen would never have found a potential mate with whom she could share surreptitious finger touches, and my teenage cousin Iris wouldn’t be able to live in her parents’ home without worrying about being drawn into a forced marriage.

No, when it came right down to it, I wouldn’t change a single thing about the past. So when Wolfie said “Let’s go home” without a hint of the melancholy I currently felt in his voice, I couldn’t help smiling in reply.

Yes, it was time to return to Haven, the community I’d run away from a decade before. It was time to go home.

Chapter 2

“Ethan called,” my stepmother Cricket informed me, passing the news (and the mashed potatoes) down the long table that was loaded with food and lined with shifters.

Over the last half hour, the dining hall had filled with excited chattering and laughter as we settled into a weekly community dinner. In fact, the number of bodies present barely fit within the largest room of the dairy-barn-turned-bachelor-quarters that the yahoos had taken over after moving into Haven, clear proof of the event’s success.

I was proud of the sight since this was exactly the type of scene I’d hoped for when I’d first begun merging our two disparate clans together. But we’d achieved our goal in a different way than I’d originally imagined.

Since my father had ruled Haven with an iron fist, I’d initially thought it would be necessary to do the same in order to bring my unruly relatives around to my point of view. To that end, I’d considered making community dinners a mandatory part of pack life. But Wolfie—older and wiser in the ways of pack leadership—had talked me out of the decree.

Instead, we’d turned the yahoos loose on the project, and they’d risen to the occasion with their usual vim and vigor. Under Fen’s capable leadership, the young adults had quickly made their weekly dinners so delicious that even my most hidebound relatives began trickling in to join us after a week or two. Nowadays, nearly everyone attended voluntarily, and young-adult shifters who had grown up in Haven had even begun moving into the spare rooms being built out of what had once been animal stalls around back. The Barn, as the building had been dubbed, had become Haven’s entertainment central for young and old alike.

Not that there weren’t flareups between the two packs, of course. Which is why it took me so long to parse Cricket’s words. I’d been monitoring the attendees, hoping that the dissension I sensed at one end of the long table wouldn’t escalate into outright violence. Yes, I was micromanaging to some extent. But wouldn’t we all be happier if none of my cousins got into a knock-down, drag-out fight with the yahoos like they did last week? Wouldn’t it be better to nip any issues in the bud before a minor disagreement turned into a brawl?

“Your brother,” Cricket elaborated, reaching over to place her cool hand over mine and bringing my attention back to the shifter beside me. “School’s out for the summer, and Ethan wants to go to Australia with a friend instead of coming home. What do you think?”

It felt strange for the woman who had mothered me during most of my childhood ask for my opinion about her own son. But I knew what Cricket was really asking. Was it safe for Ethan—who was only three-quarters werewolf by blood and who had never developed the ability to shift into lupine form—to return home to Haven at last? Was our merged clan stable enough now to protect a pack mate who my less kind relatives had dubbed “meat” and who my father had sent away to boarding school for his own protection?

Yes. Yes, we were. If there was any point to this slow-but-sure campaign to pull my relatives into the twenty-first century, it was to ensure that unconventional pack members like Ethan could consider our village the Haven it was meant to be. Together, Wolfie and I would help my brother fit in as well here as he did in the human world and we’d keep him safe from any unruly shifters who got their tails in a twist over his heritage.

So, I answered both Cricket’s spoken and unspoken questions at the same time. “Ethan should definitely come home for the summer,” I said reassuringly. “When were you thinking of going to pick him up?”

“I wasn’t,” my stepmother replied, neatly turning the tables on me. “Actually, I thought you might do the honors.”

Now my attention was finally dragged fully away from Glen, who I was pretty sure was pouring gravy into the pocket of the next shifter down the line. “Me?” I backpedaled. “No, I don’t think that’s a good idea. If you don’t want to go, we could send Tia or some of the yahoos....”

Actually, I was just being polite with my evasions. In reality, Cricket’s suggested course of action was a very, very bad idea. What I really wanted to say was: “No way am I going to pick up that ornery little brat.”

The trouble was that, during our shared childhood, Ethan had been Haven’s heir apparent and my father’s beloved right-hand boy. He was the most spoiled four-year-old I’d seen either before or since, and I’d royally detested the kid who held all of the power I craved within his sticky little fists.

Which is why I hadn’t inquired too deeply into my brother’s well-being after Cricket informed me that Ethan was happy at boarding school and wanted to stay on. The truth was, I was willing to do whatever it took to make my only remaining sibling happy...but I had hoped to do so from a healthy distance.

No, I didn’t want to spend five hours in the car with someone who I’d never met in my adult life. And who I didn’t particularly want to meet again either.

“Yes, you,” Cricket said firmly, ignoring my trepidation. My stepmother was such a quiet shifter that it wasn’t until these infrequent flare-ups that you remembered her backbone was made of steel. (Metaphorically only—or at least, so I assumed.) “It’s high time you and your brother got to know one another as adults.”

“He’s not an adult,” I mumbled under my breath. Although, now that I did the math, I guessed my sibling had attained his majority in werewolf parlance during the preceding winter. At a baker’s dozen years younger than me, Ethan would now be fifteen, the same age as Keith and past the time of his first shift (if he’d been able to change shapes, that is). For the sake of comparison, my brother-in-law Dale had recently let his son move into the Barn for the summer, and Keith seemed to have grown into the responsibility of that independence admirably. So who was I to say that Ethan was any less of an adult than my fast-growing nephew?

“Do you want me to come along?” Wolfie asked now, his low rumble breaking into what I had assumed was a private conversation between myself and my stepmother. But that was one of the things I loved most about my mate—his wolf always had mine at the forefront of his thoughts, so my current trepidation wouldn’t have gone unnoticed. The bloodling must have been paying attention to our conversation all along, but Wolfie only stepped in when he thought I really needed help. And, as usual, I completely agreed with his assessment of the current situation.

Still, I was trying not to lean so much on my co-alpha. And my stepmother was right in one respect, at least—if Ethan was going to return home for the summer, I’d have to get to know him eventually. So I shook my head rather than taking Wolfie up on his kind offer, I grabbed Ember before she could nose dive into the bowl of green beans, and I assumed the mantle of power that my mate always donned so effortlessly.

“No, that’s okay,” I told him. “I’ll talk Keith into coming along to keep me awake on the drive, and I’ll bring this rascal too so you can enjoy a day of peace. We’ll go pick up Ethan tomorrow.”

***

“NO WAY IN HELL I’M coming home with you.”

“Language, Ethan,” the headmaster chastened. But the older man eyed me consideringly as he spoke, clearly not willing to relinquish his charge into the dubious care of a sister who aroused such ire in one of his students.

The current scene wasn’t at all the reception I’d expected. Sure, I had reservations about getting to know my kid brother again after eleven years spent apart. But I’d assumed Ethan would leap at the chance to return to Haven, whether or not he shared my insecurities about our problematic relationship.

What I hadn’t expected was a punk whose hair style and stance promised that he was tougher than anyone else in the room. Ethan probably would’ve been wearing a leather jacket if the school uniform code had allowed it, and I wasn’t entirely sure the full-arm tattoos were even legal for someone under the age of eighteen. When it came right down to it, my inner wolf was amused to see what our kid brother had turned into...but my human half was appalled.

Figuring out what had prompted Ethan to don such an extreme new image would have to wait though. For now, the issue was talking the troubled teenager into coming home so Cricket wouldn’t look at me and my empty car with that disappointed expression on her kindly face. I could stand up to a lot of things, but distressing my stepmother always did me in.

So I did my best to allay my brother’s concerns by explaining recent changes to our childhood home. “Haven isn’t the same as it once was,” I said, speaking carefully so as not to give away too much in front of the headmaster. But I could tell that my use of the pack home’s title had only made the older man wonder whether I lived in a cult compound and was dragging his student into a dangerous situation.

Which begged the question—why was the authority figure present at this meeting in the first place? Did Ethan expect me to simply command him to leave the way our father might have done? Was his headmaster here as a failsafe in case things went terribly wrong?

Actually, as I peered into the kid’s scared eyes, I figured that’s exactly what my relative must have predicted. So, despite my memories of Ethan as a bratty little despot, I forced myself to soften toward him. Averting my gaze, I gifted my brother with the werewolf gesture of relinquishing control.

Even though he possessed no inner beast of his own, Ethan had clearly spent enough time among shifters to fully understand what I was trying to say without words. Sure enough, when I glanced back in his direction, I saw the tension in his jaw ease as one eyebrow raised quizzically.

“Maybe we could take a walk and talk about it?” I said, the sentence rising at the end in an auditory question mark as I attempted to capitalize on Ethan’s loosening stance. “Our nephew Keith is waiting in the car with, um, Ember.”

No way I’d be able to explain my wolf-pup niece in front of this stern headmaster who had been adamant about a no-pets-on-campus policy. But I hoped the little bloodling would be able to work her magic on my brother and would prevent me from going home to my stepmother empty-handed.

“It’s your decision, of course,” I added. “But I’m hoping you’ll give me a chance to at least try to talk you into it.”

Ethan was silent for long enough that I was pretty sure he was rejecting my offer, and in the end he only spoke after the principal gave him a verbal nudge. “Well, Ethan, what do you say? Are you comfortable taking a walk with your...sister?”

The older man eyed me cautiously once again, and I wished that the alpha nature of my wolf hadn’t begun making nearby humans more wary around me in recent months. In response, I did my best to look small and insignificant—something I’d had no trouble with while my lupine half was sound asleep. But I could tell the astute educator wasn’t buying into my deception.

“I guess,” Ethan said at last. He jumped out of his seat and was out the door before I even had time to open my mouth, so I simply shot the headmaster an apologetic glance before following in the teenager’s footsteps.

Outside, the sun pounded down on a broad parking lot, barren save for half a dozen vehicles scattered across the expanse of pavement. Ethan had never seen my car before, but he was making a beeline in its direction nonetheless. My sibling should have lacked a werewolf nose, but I couldn’t see any other way for him to pick my vehicle out of the lineup since Keith and Ember were nowhere to be seen.