Heart of the Wolf (The Heart Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  “I’m not going to hurt you. Let’s go inside. We can discuss this over dinner.”

  “No. We’re not discussing anything.”

  “What’s your plan then? You going to run away? Did you forget we are on an island?”

  “I’ll find someone else.”

  “There’s no one here who will help you get home. I’m the only one who can arrange that.”

  “Then arrange it.” I closed my eyes. I couldn’t stand to look at him any longer. “Take me home.”

  “I will. I promise we’ll go home as soon as you’re my mate.”

  There went that word again. Mate. I didn’t hesitate. I bit down on his hand as hard as I could.

  He let go of me in surprise, and I took off running back toward where our plane landed.

  “What are you doing, Hope?” Justin yelled after. “There’s nowhere to run.”

  I ran as hard as I could, but I saw nothing. No evidence of the plane or any other people. I walked down to the shore and lay down on the warm sand. I wished I was dreaming, but I knew I wasn’t that lucky. My best friend had just deserted me in the middle of nowhere with her brother—who turned out to be crazy, in addition to being a creep.

  I felt him lie down next to me, but I refused to look at him. I knew I should be afraid of him, but I was more annoyed. “Can you just be honest with me?”

  “Of course.” He grabbed my hand, but I pulled it away. He didn’t try again.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “You know how I feel about you. We discussed this on the plane.”

  “I know you aren’t this desperate, so it has to be more than that.”

  He laughed. “Desperate?”

  “To create this elaborate ruse to get me to a deserted island? I know for a fact there are a hundred girls back home who would sleep with you in a second.”

  “But those girls aren’t you.” He kicked off his flip flops.

  “Where are we?” If I was stuck here I might as well get some answers.

  “Kekry Island.”

  “Now you admit it’s real?”

  “Yes. It’s always been real. It’s here to help people like us.”

  “Like us?” I wondered where he was going with this particular line of thought.

  “People who need some time away to ease into mating. It’s private and—”

  “We aren’t easing into mating. We aren’t easing into dating, or having sex, or anything else either. After this I want nothing to do with your family. I want to forget the last four years of my life.”

  “That’s impossible. You know it as well as I do.”

  “It’s very possible. Nothing is impossible.” At least I needed to believe that. I wasn’t staying on this island, and I certainly wasn’t getting involved with Justin.

  “I decided I wanted you. My father approved. I’ve spent four years waiting for you to realize the same thing and come of age. You came of age, but you’re still blind to our destiny.” He sat up. “And it’s all because of Clayton.”

  “Ignoring the whole coming of age thing, what does Clayton have to do with this? Does everyone know I crushed on him?”

  “Crushed. Past tense?” He turned so he was looking directly at me.

  “I’m over him.”

  “Now that’s welcome news.”

  “I’m not into you. I hate all of you, him included because he obviously knew what I was in for when I got on the plane.”

  “This was his idea, you know.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.” I was annoyed at Clayton, but he didn’t care enough about me to put me in this situation.

  “Don’t get me wrong, I readily agreed, but he thought it was for the best.”

  “That’s why he was messing with me right before the stupid meeting.” I dug my feet into the sand.

  “Messing with you?” Justin paled. “What did he do?”

  “Nothing worth repeating. He just…he purposely made me get all stupid around him. I never realized it before, but he did that fairly often. I was so busy being annoyed at your flirting, I never noticed the way he made fun of me.”

  “I shouldn’t relish the fact you’re mad at him, but I do.” He leaned back on his elbows.

  “So I’ve been through enough already. Please, take me home.”

  “The only home I can offer you right now is our bungalow.”

  “I’m not going in there.”

  “What are you afraid of?” He moved above me, his hands pressing down in the sand on either side of my body. “That you’ll actually want to be with me?”

  I pushed at his arm, but he wouldn’t budge. “Leave me alone. I’m never going to want to be with you.”

  “You’re attracted to me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You are. I can sense it. I’ve always sensed it.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to come up with a plan. I got nothing. “Please move. I can’t sit up until you do.”

  “That’s kind of the point.”

  “I need space.”

  “The whole point of this island is to have no space.”

  “Right now I want to throw up.”

  He moved off me. “Are you okay?”

  “No. I’m not okay. I just found out the last four years of my life have been based on lies. I’m stranded and really want to go home. I’m not okay at all.”

  “You need to eat. It’s been hours.”

  “Stop pretending to care. I know you don’t.” I got up and started walking away. That turned out to be a mistake. I was immediately light headed.

  “I do care.” He put a hand on my arm.

  I stepped away.

  “You look like you might pass out. Eat. Think of it this way, how can you run if you can’t stand up?”

  “I’m not stepping foot inside a house with you.”

  “We can get served on the deck.”

  “Get served?”

  “Yes, I told you there was staff.”

  And we’d be interacting with staff. That was the best news I’d gotten all day. “I’ll have a little something to eat, but only because you’re right. I can’t run without it.”

  He grinned and held out his arm. “Come on, let me help you get back.”

  “I can do it on my own.” I felt ready to collapse, but that didn’t mean I was accepting his help.

  “Ok, but if you start to fall over I’m catching you.”

  “Good to know.”

  “What do you want to eat?”

  “I get a choice?” My stomach growled.

  “Of course you do. This isn’t prison.”

  “It is though. Maybe not in the traditional sense, but I am here against my will. Tell yourself what you want, but this is illegal. You kidnapped me.”

  “This island doesn’t exist.” He walked right beside me.

  “Yes, it does.” I was walking on it, wasn’t I?

  “I mean to the rest of the world. Not even in the supernatural world. The Society would have a fit if they knew about it.”

  “The Society?”

  “Forget it. Don’t worry about it. This island is off the grid. Completely.”

  “Yet Mirabella’s phone worked.” That was keeping my hope alive. Someone else’s phone might work too.

  “She talked to my dad when she was in Fiji. We know the coordinates here. So did her pilot.”

  “I should have realized this job was too good to be true.” I wrapped my arms around myself. I thought over every interaction I’d had with their family, every little thing, trying to find a clue I’d missed. The Wellingtons were psycho crazies. Mirabella wasn’t really my friend. She’d left me on an island with her brother. He claimed I couldn’t leave unless I mated with him. Mated. And, oh yeah, they both didn’t think they were human. And I was the idiot who got on that plane without telling anyone where I was going. My own parents didn’t even know.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Hope. You couldn’t have predicted this.”

  I spun around
. “I hate you.”

  “Sometimes we hate the ones we love.”

  “I don’t love you.”

  “You do, underneath that anger.”

  “No.” There were many other things I wanted to say, but I didn’t have the strength. I would play nice and eat a meal, then I would plan my escape. If I went down, it was going to be fighting.

  Six

  Carter

  A mating island? I stared at Asher with my mouth hanging open. "You can't be serious."

  "That's not the official name, of course, but that's what they’re using it for now. For a couple of million bucks you get a private island and all the time you need to convince the girl of your dreams to mate with you." He pulled down two large backpacks from a set of hooks behind one of the hammocks.

  "But what's with the ‘convince’ the girl thing? That's code for force. Why spend the money when they can do that anywhere?" I knew I sounded cold, but I liked to call a spade a spade. An evil deed isn’t suddenly okay just because it’s done in a serene setting.

  "You know absolutely nothing about your people, do you?"

  "I know plenty." I’d done all the research I could on wolf shifters once I figured out that I was one. At first I thought I was a freak of nature. Eventually I learned there were lots more like me out there, and a multitude of other supernatural creatures as well.

  "You know that Kenai wolves can only carry on the Kenai gene if they mate with a human? And not just any human, one who has some magic in their blood, and you know how rare that is nowadays. Add in that you can’t mate through force, and you can see why there are so few left.” He opened a bench and started pulling out supplies.

  “A Kenai wolf?” I repeated the unfamiliar name and walked over to where he sorted flashlights, binoculars, canteens, and some unmarked canisters.

  “They descend from the extinct Kenai Peninsula wolves, and they are the only wolf species with the ability to manipulate magic. I told you, you know nothing about your people.”

  “My people? You think I’m a Kenai wolf?” That was news to me. Everything I knew about my true nature I’d learned on my own. Was there even more to know?

  "I don't think. I know. At least Alastair says you are. Don't think he'd get something like that wrong."

  “A wolf that can manipulate magic? I can’t do that.” I could sense magic, but that was something else entirely. Wasn’t it?

  “Probably because no one taught you. Doesn’t mean you can’t.” He started distributing the gear into the two backpacks.

  “Ok, setting that aside for a moment, let me get this straight, a wolf brings the girl to an island and suddenly she wants to mate with him?"

  "She can’t leave until she does."

  "So it’s still forced; he can do that anywhere. Seems a bit drastic to drag her to the middle of nowhere.” I was playing it cool, but inside my anger was threatening to boil over. How many girls had been hurt that way? I wasn’t exactly sure what my mission was, but the wolves’ game was over. I’d blow up the island if I had to.

  "I don't really get it, but it's a thing with them now." Asher slung a backpack on his back and handed me the other. “It’s only for members from the big families.”

  "It's horrible. Those poor girls.” My wolf howled inside.

  "Yes, it's quite awful, but that’s not the half of it.”

  "There’s more?” Was there another reason to hate these creatures? I pushed aside the thought that technically I might be one of them. It didn’t matter; I’d never treat a girl that way. I’d rather spend my life alone.

  "The leading Kenai wolf families are in deep with an arms deals. They are talking about a merger which could mean destruction like we’ve never seen before.”

  “What kind of arms deals?” Supernaturals got up to all sorts of trouble, but arms deals weren’t usually part of the issue. We fought with claws and magic more often than guns.

  “Let me preface this by saying, there’s a reason the king can’t get involved on this one. The Kenai have traditionally aligned with their enemies.”

  “Gotcha. But what kind of deal?” I was still trying to wrap my head around why any wolves were involved in arms deals.

  “You know how I told you the Kenai can manipulate magic?”

  “Yes.” That part was a little bit hard to forget.

  “They are using the magic on weapons.”

  “What kind of weapons are we talking about?” I slung my backpack on.

  He shifted his weight from foot to foot. "They want to rid the earth of humans. They blame them for the non-shifter Kenai Peninsula wolves going extinct.”

  "So this isn't about saving the girls?” Clearly weapons were a big deal, but so was innocent human girls being brought to a secluded island.

  “Well, there’s one girl involved right now, and we can save her. But there are millions more who might die if we don't get to the bottom of this and find out exactly who’s involved. That’s where you come in."

  “How do I come in?” I still wasn’t seeing the connection beyond what I was.

  "You have to infiltrate." He started back down the spiral stairs.

  I followed him, still trying to understand what kind of situation I was getting myself into. "Infiltrate the island? How am I supposed to do that exactly?” I would do it, no question, but I needed somewhere to start.

  "They only hire Kenai wolves to work there. It’s part of keeping the island secure and secretive, although clearly the secret is out. You have an interview with the wolf that runs the island. He’s the eldest son of the Wellington family. They are the ones behind the merger.”

  “I have an interview? For what?” I didn’t realize going undercover to a job interview was part of the deal.

  “We have all your credentials, so you are a shoe-in for the position."

  "I only signed on a few hours ago, how could you have credentials for me?”

  "We've known you were coming for weeks. Alastair was sure you'd join." He crossed the domed room and opened the door.

  I wasn’t sure what to think about that. Was everything about my potential a lie? Was I recruited only because of my lineage? If it was really my lineage. “What if he’s wrong, and I’m not a Kenai wolf? Have you thought of that?”

  “You are Kenai. Alastair says he’s seen you manipulate magic.”

  “I can sense magic. That’s different.”

  “And you think regular wolves can do that?” He laughed. “You really were raised outside a pack.”

  “I don’t know what wolves can do.” I didn’t lie about my upbringing. It hadn’t held me back before, but my lack of knowledge might lead me into trouble this time.

  “Exactly.”

  “But won’t I have to prove I can use magic?” It wasn’t that I was scared, I wasn’t. I could handle whatever I was going to face. I couldn’t fail. That meant we had to think everything through before we did it.

  “You’ll either have to learn or explain you don’t know. They know you were raised outside of a pack, otherwise they’d already know you, but that’s not what you have to worry about.” Instead of crossing back through the gym, he turned to the left and headed down a dark hallway.

  “And what do I have to worry about then?”

  “How much do you know about medicine?” He used his thumb print to get us into another room. This one was empty, and he walked straight through it to yet another door.

  “Medicine? As in what you take when you are sick?”

  “As in taking care of the sick.”

  “I know nothing beyond basic first aid.”

  “Well, I hope you’re good at faking it.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Your credentials are as a doctor. It’s the only opening they had.” He pushed open a door, and we stepped out into the bright light of the morning.

  Outside? So much for seeing my new room. “A doctor? I have to pretend to be a doctor?”

  “Yes. I’m sure you can pull it off. Otherwise you would
n’t have been brought onto the team.”

  I was glad one of us was confident.

  Asher opened the driver’s side door of a black pick-up truck.

  “Are we leaving already?”

  “Yes. We have no time to lose.”

  I got into the passenger side as he started up the truck. He pulled out of the enclosed parking area.

  “Where are we headed right now? I assume I’m going into this interview alone?”

  “You are. I’ll be staying close, and I’ll be following as soon as you get on the plane.”

  “As I get on a plane with the purpose of providing some sort of medical service?”

  “The intel says Clayton Wellington wants a doctor on that island. We’re giving him his doctor.”

  “I hope I don’t get anyone killed.” I had many strengths, but doing anything beyond the most basic forms of first aid was beyond my reach. I healed freakishly fast—the same way most shifters did- which meant worrying about that sort of thing wasn’t worth the time. Of course some shifters got sick, but not in the way humans did.

  “I hope you don’t either, but people are going to die if we can’t pull off this mission. Lots of people.”

  He knew how to get to me. He knew I had a weakness for protecting humans, and he could use that to mobilize me. I couldn’t let this go now without doing everything in my power to stop it. Whatever it really was. I still wasn’t convinced it was an arms deal in the traditional sense. There was something else going on, and I was going to have to get to the bottom of it.

  We drove to another airstrip about fifteen miles away. The Rangers appeared to have several bases all in a relatively small area. Which reminded me.

  “Where are we?” I asked Asher as he parked at the air strip.

  “An airstrip. We left headquarters and…”

  “I mean geographically.”

  “I don’t know.” He parked in the field a little way down from a plane.

  “How can you not know where headquarters is?” Either he was lying, or the Rangers were even crazier than I thought.

  “It’s safer that way. There is less of a chance of us giving out the information.”

  “Less of a chance, you mean impossible?”

  “Yes. Impossible.”