“Zev!” Dyna shouted.
He groaned at how shrill it sounded in his ears, clutching his aching head. She called him again, and he raised a hand to show he was fine.
“He almost went mad, did you see?” Kenlan said.
Their disgust and hatred pressed into him. They wanted him gone.
“Rubbish,”his father’s last words came to him.“Don’t surrender, Zev. When you surrender, the Madness sets in. A mad wolf becomes a feral wolf. And when you become feral—you’re dead.”
No Alpha would suffer a mad wolf to live.
Zev looked up at Owyn who watched him with cold calculation, clawed hand poised to strike.
“The Madness was always meant to claim him,” Kenlan sneered. “He’s anOther.”
The word was like a curse from the Gods. Since Zev had been old enough to understand his mother’s scorn, he realized he was different.
Something … else.
An Other, the Pack whispered whenever he passed. He didn’t understand what they meant until he had his first full moon shift. Werewolves had one form, but he had two: the wolf—and the Other.
“It was a mistake to let him be reared,” Kenlan told Owyn. “We bore witness to the outcome. You should have broken his neck that day!”
The Pack agreed in rumbling growls.
“Now you question me, brother?” Owyn bared his teeth. His Alpha power demanding subjugation filtered through Zev’s senses and he nearly keeled over. The men dropped to one knee all at once.
Kenlan hunched forward, straining under Owyn’s might. “No, Alpha,” he grunted.
Owyn glowered down his nose at Zev. “You’re on the brink of Madness. I may as well kill you now, but my brother seeks that satisfaction. I ask again, do you wish for death?”
Zev glanced over his shoulder at Dyna, her face marred in tears.
Do you wish for death?
Not yet.
She needed him. As long as she did, he would fight to go on. Keeping her safe was all that kept him from sinking into the oblivion of his mind.
“I will fight.” He nodded at Cassiel to take her away. She shouldn’t witness what was about to happen if Kenlan won.
“No!” Dyna tried to reach him, but the Prince yanked her back.
She fought him angrily, kicking and flailing. Cassiel swept her off her feet, struggling to restrain her squirming form in his arms. In their scuffle, the journal fell, unnoticed in the mud. The Prince crouched, his wings expanding wide, then he shot into the sky.
Zev remained prostrated, listening to the flutter of wings fade with Dyna’s cries over the treetops.
Kenlan’s mocking laugh rang in the glade. “I’ll hang your bloody pelt on my wall, Other. It’ll be the last thing she sees before I rip out her pretty neck.”
Rage pumped through Zev’s veins. That was all he needed to let go of his restraint.
As the last of the twilight vanished, the men tossed aside their clothes and they shapeshifted. The ripple of their change tugged on Zev’s wolf. The Pack wolves were massive and powerful, all with variants of dark fur. They stood at about the height of his shoulder, snarling and growling, their sharp teeth glistening. Kenlan dropped on all fours, becoming a dark gray wolf with a pale patch on his chest.
“Shift,” Owyn ordered, before shapeshifting himself and standing beside his brother. Their sizes were drastically different. While Kenlan was smaller, the Alpha was powerful in girth and height.
Zev pulled off his tunic and let it drop over the journal. The ache came, as his body reformed itself, and he rose as his wolf.
The wolves backed away as all of them raised their heads to look at him, including the Alpha. It had been some time since Zev had shifted with them. He hadn’t realized how large he’d grown.
