“Get’ em, Max,” his mother ordered while punching a blond in the face. Several times.
“Take that, you cheating scum. The rights to the hoard belong to the Crimson Claw!”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Not that stupid game again.
Howling and barking joined the chorus, a familiar refrain from the battle song the pack had recently adopted, straight from the video game they embraced as their new field of play—Arrow Sins & Siege.
Idiots.
Seeing her, Max grinned and waved before his younger brother knocked him over and claimed victory in the name of the barbarian savages of Winterwind—more silly game references.
“Stay down, Max.” Flint nodded to her. “Hey, Riley. You’re late.” Before he could say anything more, a blast of water hit him in the face and knocked him flat. He tried to rise, only to be tackled by two rowdy dires and the water mage, all of them laughing as they held him down. Then Max whaled on him. Typical brothers.
She growled under her breath, ignored the morons playing at war, and trotted past them toward her cabin.Max better not have screwed with anything in my personal quarters.
Shifting on the move back into her clothed, human form, she entered the back of her comfy one-bedroom cabin and glanced around, pleased to find it undisturbed.
Located between Packwood and Ashford in Northern Washington, Noblewood (population 542) boasted the largest lycan town in the Pacific Northwest and sat at the nexus of three packs.
Noblewood existed mostly off the grid. They did get the occasional lost tourist making a wrong turn off a hiking trail in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, but only those with some affinity for magic ever made it through the many spells and totems protecting the town.
Known for their arts and crafts, her pack dealt with the city dires, liaising from Seattle, to sell their goods and used those funds to keep the town alive. Since lycans tended toward creative endeavors and lived for hundreds of years, Noblewood had been thriving under the current pack’s leadership. Forty years of peace and prosperity had filled Noblewood’s coffers, minds, and hearts.
Life had been just about perfect until they’d uncovered that blasted artifact. Now the Wildridge pack kept hinting at a civil war while the Raven’s Eye dires nipped at her alpha’s heels, warning of unrest.
So when Max, the alpha’s heir and her favorite cousin, had gone missing a few weeks ago, she’d been sent to bring him back. Berserker for the Crimson Claw pack, Riley was used to cleaning up messes. But her efforts usually resulted in the offender permanently disappearing, which hadn’t been an option when dealing with blasted vampires.
But hey, Max was back, fighting with his family and clearly on the mend, so she needed to do her best to stop thinking about how to avenge her cousin on beings even the gods avoided.
Freaking bloodsuckers.Her curses echoed in the empty cabin, and she grabbed a rag to wipe away the gathering dust and cobwebs that seemed to appear overnight. Well, technically, it had been a good two months since she’d last cleaned the place. Constantly on the go with all the dysfunction lately, she hadn’t had much time to herself at all. And cleaning was at the very bottom of her list of things to do.
Riley hated cleaning as much as she hated the drama always building around her pack. As the head of the lycans in the Northwest, the Crimson Claw had a duty to protect. And as one of the few berserkers, not only in the pack, but in existence, she had a duty to serve her kind as well, those at home and in the city.
She’d do it, but she wouldn’t like it.
Riley much preferred the dark forests and quiet mountains to the bright lights and crowded streets of Seattle. She winced when the howling started and mentally added,and I really dislike the loud theatrics of drunk dires and mages too.
She sighed. Maybe she shouldn’t have hurried home after scouting that mess in Olympia after all.
* * *
Kraftof the Night Bloode studied the tableau of violence, never so happy as he was when in the middle of a battle. Or in his case, high above the field in an evergreen, spying on the combatants twenty feet below.
Fur flew. Growls and roars filled the air. Sweet blood dotted the once-pristine white snow gathered on the ground, with more falling from storm clouds that continued to gather overhead, obscuring all but a few beams of moonlight.
The winter blossomed like a fragrant flower, lush and icy cold in its beauty. He watched water droplets of breath linger in the air over the fighting lycans and warring mages.
Though he didn’t need to breathe, Kraft exhaled and watched proof of his existence crystalize in the air before him. A sure sign of life from what many considered the undead.
He snorted. As if he was anywhere close to being a zombie.
Clearly, the lycans fighting in their brutish, overly large direwolf forms were doing more damage to each other than their pack members in human skin, but those in human shape weren’t doing too badly themselves. He liked that they kept it fresh, not going for the straightforward kill with easily ripped human flesh and frail bones.
Then he frowned. They weren’t going for the kill at all. Merely... playing?
One of them said something about a hoard and the Crimson Claw—a name he recognized as the lead lycan pack in the Pacific Northwest. And the lycan doing all that yapping?
Just the prey he’d been sent to find.
