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Chapter One
“This cannot be the end,” I said. “I will not allow it!”
In her nearly one hundred years of life, Pat Bonner had seen things that made the strongest of men fold. She had raised Alpha wolves from mere pups. She had loved and lost more times than any of us could fathom. Through it all, she had been the glue that held Wild Lake together. Today, though, as she sat at my brother’s bedside, I saw true fear in her eyes.
“I don’t understand,” I said. I pressed a hand to Jarred’s head. He was ice cold. That might have been a comfort if he were fully human. But we shifters ran hot. Whatever was happening to him had sapped nearly every ounce of strength from him.
“He recognizes you,” Pat said. “That’s something. There have been days where I’m not even sure he knows who he is let alone any of the rest of us.”
“He was getting better when I saw him last,” I said. “He went through the worst of his spell withdrawal on the boat on the way over.”
Pat pulled the covers up to Jarred’s chin. “This isn’t spell withdrawal, Tempest,” she said. “It’s something much worse.”
“Where are my parents?” I asked.
“Come with me,” she said. She smoothed Jarred’s hair back and whispered something to him. His eyes stayed glassy and fixed. His only sign of life was the steady but ragged rise and fall of his chest.
“We shouldn’t leave him,” I said. Pat took my hand.
“He’ll stay like that for hours. Days. We can try to get him to take some broth in a little while. But there’s nothing else to be done for him right now.”
I followed Pat down the hall. She turned to me at the foot of the stairs. “You need to prepare yourself,” she said.
I felt as though I had to will my heart to beat. This couldn’t be real. It had to be a nightmare. A fever dream. This was Wild Lake. The largest wolf shifter territory in the Midwest. Generations of powerful Alphas had raised their packs here in harmony. We’d survived the last shifter war intact. How could sickness bring the packs down now?
Pat began to climb the stairs. Her steps were heavy and deliberate.
“Have you been doing this yourself?” I asked in horror, imagining her climbing these stairs dozens of times a day. She could get around, but at her advanced age it took its toll.
Pat didn’t answer. She waited for me at the top of the stairs. With black-hearted dread, I followed her up.
She pointed to the room at the end of the hallway. It was the suite my father had built for her. That she had so far refused to use.
“Go on in,” she said. “I’ll give you a few minutes alone with them.”
Them.
A childlike superstition came over me. Maybe if I didn’t open that bedroom door, I could pretend what was behind it wasn’t there. But then I heard a woman’s voice. A cry of pain that cut through me like a sword.
I don’t remember opening the door. In an instant, I was at my mother’s bedside.
She looked far worse than my brother did. Her once-lustrous hair hung in strings. Pat was in her nineties, but somehow my mother looked even older. Her eyes had clouded over. I knew at once she was going blind.
“Mama,” I said, trying to keep the alarm out of my voice. “It’s Tempest. I’m here. I’ve come home.”
My mother’s lips were moving. She was saying something, but no sound came out. I leaned in, trying to hear her whisper.
“Tem.” My father’s hoarse croak cut through me. He was seated in a chair in the darkest corner of the room. Only his silver wolf eyes were visible. I rose. He seemed caught in mid-shift. My father’s hands and feet had turned to paws. His ears were pointed and his fangs dropped. But the rest of him was human…more or less.
“Daddy,” I said. “What happened? What is this?”
He erupted in a dry, hacking cough. “You shouldn’t have come,” he said. “Tem, run. Get away from us.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I said, dropping to my knees in front of his chair. “You need help. Tell me what you know.”
“She got sick,” he said. “Started out she couldn’t shift. Then her heart…I can’t hear her heart anymore.”
My blood ran cold. My mother and father were fated mates. Their hearts had beat in tandem since the moment they mated.
