BloodForged

By Dan Wolfe

"I'm not a werewolf. Werewolves wish they were as cool as me."

Being the alpha of a pack can be a full-time job. Add in your only sixteen, still juggling school, keeping the pack's secret from the humans around you, and oh yeah, courting your mate-to-be Amarice, it can be a downright headache. Which is why all Kellen Masters wante

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fallen Warrior Publishing
• Release date: Jul 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9780648576631

Book preview

1.

HAD I KNOWN just a few hours earlier my life would change forever, that the prehistoric monsters who once enslaved my people would ruin my Friday night, I probably wouldn’t have wasted the afternoon worrying about my relationship with Amarice.

Or the fight with Lucy.

Or even what the hell I was going to do with both of them and just simply enjoyed the surf.

But hey, shoulda, coulda, woulda, right?

Surfing is like pizza. Even bad pizza is still pizza. So preoccupied or not, I was enjoying myself. The sun on my back, the salt in the air, the happy little buzz of adrenaline firing through my veins as the wave began to crest. . .

I pushed forward, leaning toward the front of my shortboard. There’s a moment right before you catch a wave when time seems to slow, giving you all the time in the world as you paddle to find the rhythm you need. Too fast and you wipe out, too slow and you miss it, but time it right and you balance on the edge of eternity. That’s where everything grows quiet for me, and a single heartbeat stretches to infinity. I lived for that space in between—right before the world rights itself and the ocean rockets you forward. This is where the rush lived; it was addictive, and it was mine. There’s honestly nothing else like it in the world, and it was as close to flying as I’d ever come.

Salt water kissed my face as my board dipped and I pushed up in a clean movement that was second nature. I landed smoothly, adjusted my front foot, and inched forward, resettling my weight. The shortboard was new; I’d blown my old one on the reef last month. For the past four weeks, I’d used Owen’s spare. He had four. He didn’t need four, mind you, he just had four. His were good, but it wasn’t the same as having your own.

I sliced along the wave, the wind in my face, the barrel at my back. I’d grown up surfing; most of us locals had. You learned to surf before you could crawl out here, and like all surfers, the beach was as familiar to me as my own skin. A second home, a safe haven when things got crappy, and today had been crap. The heat made it worse. Australian summers were no joke, I’d damn near burned my ass on the metal bench eating lunch at school.

But that was then, this was now. I continued to ride the wave, losing myself in the moment. Past and future expectations faded away as if the water had the power to dissolve them all. The wave wasn’t huge, decent enough, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered up here. Only the now, only the connection with the surf.

Water sprayed up into my face. Instinctively, I closed my eyes, wiping it away as I shifted the weight on my back foot, angling the board down to keep the ride going.

At least, that was the plan.

The board flipped out from under me because I’d broken a cardinal rule of surfing—never assume one board is like another. This one certainly wasn’t. My weight was off by few centimeters, so instead of slicing downward in a clean line, I hurtled into the water below.

The cold caught me, saltwater stealing across my tongue, more familiar than even my earliest memory.

Son of a—

A face swam toward me out the corner of my eye, pale skin, long hair floating around her. I turned, startled—nothing.

What?

Shaking myself, I swam upward, breaking the surface with a gasp and hauling myself back up onto the board.

Well, that just happened, I muttered, lying back to stare up at the sky and catch my breath. The late afternoon sun was nice, nothing like the punishing heat from earlier.

Must’ve been a seal, maybe?

That, or I’m losing it.

I mean, it sure as hell wasn’t a mermaid.

The wipe out was one of the reasons Owen and I had chosen the small cove up from our regular spot. The waves weren’t as big here, which was good when it came to testing out a new board. Non-surfers think a board is a board. It’s not. It’s like a car or a bike; you get used to your own—the size, the shape, the way it handles. This new board was faster than my last, quicker to turn. I’d need a few sessions to lock down the differences before it became second nature.

Tomorrow the guys and I planned on hitting the beach early at our usual spot, which was north of the main beach of our town, Brookshore. Our small town was one of many that littered the east coast, all grouped together to form a district called the Central Coast. We were just an hour north of Sydney. Our beaches, like the others in the Central Coast were a huge tourist attraction. Not as big as some of the more popular ones down in the city, like Bondi, but in summer the main beach was packed. Us locals all moved either north or south if we wanted to surf in peace. The guys and I preferred the north. It was a little harder to get to, but it was quieter. Today, I wanted even more space while I tested the board, so Owen and I trekked the extra few kilometers up past our spot to the cove. It was Friday afternoon, and we had a few hours to kill before the others joined us, so, why not make the most of it, right?

Yo, Kel, you okay? Owen called, paddling over.

Yeah, I muttered, sitting up and turning in the water to face him. The same green-brown eyes stared back at me. Side-by-side, I could see why people thought we were brothers and not cousins. I had more freckles, and my shoulders were slightly wider than his, but otherwise, we were very similar.

Handy when you’re out of clean clothes.

It was only us out here. Apparently, hell had frozen over because Dale passed on the offer to join us, which in all my sixteen years had never happened.

Owen sensed my train of thought, asking, What do you think he’s up to?

I shrugged, praying it was nothing that’d come back to bite us in the ass later. No idea.

To be honest, I should have pushed our youngest packmate to find out exactly what this errand of his was. He’d been so cagey all day, and for Dale, major red flag. He was many things: hot-tempered, rash, outspoken, but never cagey. He did have a nose for trouble, though, so yeah, I should have pushed.

But honestly—I just needed a break.

For once, the D-Man was going to have to look out for himself.

Please, I prayed to the Mother. Please let him keep the drama to a minimum. Even for a day.

I’d take a day.

Still sensing me and that I so didn’t want to talk about Dale, Owen changed the subject, motioning to the new board. So, other than the wipeout, how does she go?

Sharing a bond that was borderline telepathic had its perks, don’t get me wrong, but mostly it was just a pain in the ass. I mean, it was fun as a kid, but now we were getting older. . . well, you get it.

What even was privacy anymore?

Our parents had taught us how to manage it, how to shield and keep each other out. But when it’s two am, and your subconscious is in control and your dreams are running rampant, well, again—you get it. Praise the Mother we only shared feelings and not actual thoughts. For four teenage boys, no matter how close we were, there were some things I did not need the guys seeing and vice versa.

I flicked my hair back out of my eyes. Owen’s was long enough to tie back, but mine was at that frustrating length where it could go half up, half down, which looked absolutely ridiculous. I was growing it out, but it was taking forever. Thankfully, the salt water helped tame it, curls framing my face in a similar fashion to Amarice’s. My curls were due to the salt, hers, however, all-natural, baby.

I grinned. Yeah, good. Good choice.

Owen winked, all too happy with himself, happy since he’d recommended the board. No one would ever accuse my cousin of being modest. It helped that he worked in the surf shop on Main Street. Not only did he score an awesome discount but also first dibs on new arrivals.

He glanced behind him, at the new set coming in. Lying down, he started to paddle. Thought you’d like it, he said. Then he was off, chasing his own wave.

I did like it. My last board was blue with black veins running through it. It looked sick. When Owen put this one aside, I wasn’t so sure. Burnt orange and white weren’t really my colors, but the more I handled it, the more it was growing on me.

I watched as he rode his own green and white shortboard along the coast. The wave was smaller than mine, and he had to pump the water to get the extra kick. Unlike me, he didn’t wipe out and fall off. Instead, he turned the board, killing the ride and facing the open water, posing for the briefest of moments before dropping back onto the board and paddling back.

You okay there? Didn’t strain an ab, did you?

He snorted, pulling up beside me. Yeah, yeah. So, how’re things with Amarice? His eyes held an unmistakable glint they always did when he spoke about her. I pretended not to notice. One day she’d be my mate and his alpha. So, for the time being, I let it go, I mean, what could I say? She was beautiful, and strong, and fierce, and could probably run laps around all four of us in the brains department. Could I blame O for being a little smitten? Hell, no.

I just wished I was.

It didn’t really make sense. Amarice was everything someone would want in a mate. Did I mention she was beautiful, strong, fierce, and smart? Because she was.

But for some reason, while parts of me were on board, like mostly the downstairs parts, the rest just. . . wasn’t. I kept telling myself it would come, kept chalking it up to the fact it was an arrangement, that I’d had no say in the matter. But I was starting to wonder if that was true. I mean, my parents wouldn’t force me to go through with it if push came to shove.

And so far, I hadn’t shoved, I hadn’t put up much of a fight at all, really. I mean, I had eyes. Downstairs parts were on board, remember?

So why the hell wasn’t I as into this, then? I should be screaming my thanks to the Mother, because no way would Am look at me twice if I wasn’t an alpha.

What’s wrong with me?

Yesterday’s argument with Lucy came rolling back, the accusation needling something inside me that I didn’t understand, something I was pretty sure was the reason I kept holding back.

I know you’re not into her, Kel, why can’t you just admit it?

You don’t know what you’re talking about, Luce.

She’d glared at me then, and something in her eyes had sent my blood cold.

Anger flared. I can’t keep having this conversation, Lucy. I’m happy with Amarice, it’s a done deal. So, drop it, yeah? I’m serious.

She’d just stared, blue eyes narrowed, lips pressed into the thinnest line. She’d shaken her head, muttered something under her breath too low for even my hearing to catch and stormed off. She hadn’t been around at lunch, and as the day dragged, guilt gnawed at my gut. We’d both apologized after school, but the heat of things left unsaid still lingered.

Lucy might have been like us, but SkyHunters were about as far from SwiftClaws as you could get. They just didn’t have the same cultural expectations as us, and never would. They didn’t have alphas, they didn’t have a stricter hierarchy to adhere to. They were just one huge family unit that had more freedoms than I would ever know.

I mean, she got to choose whoever she wanted to date.

For the hundredth time, I couldn’t help but think that all this wouldn’t even be an issue if we all lived in a larger city like Sydney or Melbourne where our bloodlines co-existed but otherwise kept to themselves. But Brookshore wasn’t a large city, it was a small coastal town with only our two families sharing the territory. Our parents were friends. Doctor Avan, Lucy’s dad was our family doctor, and my dad was their family lawyer. I mean, we’d known each other since we were in diapers.

Which was probably why she was my best friend. I loved the guys, don’t get me wrong, but we all needed a little space at times, yeah? Something for ourselves. Dale had his cars, Noah had his creative writing, and Owen had. . . well, maybe not all of us needed alone time. But either way, Lucy was my safe harbor when I needed someone other than the pack to talk too. Always had been, hoped she always would be. But if she kept pushing this thing with Amarice. . .

Owen sensed my annoyance, sighing. Lucy?

I would have laughed if it was even remotely funny. All I could do was nod. O, she’s killing me, man.

What’s she said now?

I didn’t have to respond; I just gave him a look. It had nothing to do with our bond, but a lifetime of growing up together.

We had an interesting family dynamic; our dads were cousins, and our mothers twins. They were all part of their own pack, while we were our own. It wasn’t something that happened consciously, but rather, just the way SwiftClaws were. Young Swifties—not to be confused with a certain singer—weren’t bonded to their parents at birth. Instead, we got to choose. Owen, Noah, and I were five when the bond formed. Yeah, it was mostly proximity, but you still had to like the people you were hanging out with, otherwise, no dice. To be fair, when you’re basically out of diapers, it’s not like you know that many people, so pack bonds were more often than not, a family thing. But still, others could always join later. That’s how it’d been for Dale when his family moved to town two years later. We were seven at the time and him six. It had taken all of a week before he’d bonded with us, and it had been the four of us ever since.

Soon to be five if I could get the rest of me on board with Amarice.

Owen continued to wait for me to explain. I quickly rehashed the main points of the fight with Lucy yesterday. He rolled his eyes. I was close to Noah and Dale, but I hardly ever needed to explain myself to O; he always just knew.

The twins were even tighter. They had our pack-bond, the twin-bond, and a lifetime of living together. At this point, I was surprised they bothered speaking at all.

Noah, like a lot of twins, was the polar opposite of his brother; quieter, self-contained. He even thought before he spoke, something I was pretty sure Owen had never done in his entire life. There was no filter between his brain and that large mouth. Not that he couldn’t be sly about it when he wanted to be, he just didn’t have the patience for it most of the time. Right now, he chose the usual direct route because he knew that even though Lucy and I almost never fought, something about Amarice rubbed the other girl the wrong way. This wasn’t the first time Lucy had been vocal in her attempts to get me to admit I wasn’t really happy with the arrangement or my parents meddling, despite my clear stance that I actually was, I doubted it would be the last.

I mean, I really wasn’t lying, I wasn’t unhappy. So, my heart didn’t race, or I didn’t get butterflies in my stomach every time Amarice and I were together, so what? Surely, that would come. After all, we’d only just been allowed to start hanging out without parental supervision. Talk about a bomance (boner-romance according to Dale) killer with your folks in the next room.

I just wish Lucy saw that. She damn well saw everything else.

She’s determined, I’ll give her that, Owen said.

I shrugged. She just doesn’t believe I’m happy with Amarice.

He snorted. "Has she seen Amarice?"

I snortled (another Daleism—meshing snort and chuckle). I’d explained at the time that was actually chortle, but he’d simply replied with "Oh, excuse me, I didn’t realize this was a scene from Sense and Sensibility." I think we were all so shocked he’d heard of Jane Austen, we let him have it.

I skimmed my hands across the water as I looked down into the blue beneath us. In Lucy’s defense, I don’t think Am’s really her type.

Owen grinned along with me. You know, anyone else but Lucy, and that’d be kinda—

O, I growled. I could not think of Lucy like that. She might turn a lot of heads in town, but she was basically my sister. She hung out with us, surfed with us, hell, she even gamed with us in Owen’s basement most weekends. You so did not look at your sister like that.

Owen scooped up some water and washed his face, still grinning. Yeah, yeah, he said, sobering, look, she just doesn’t get it, dude—that it’s an alpha thing—and that it’s on you to secure your place. She just cares about you.

I sighed. I know, O, the song’s just getting real old, real fast, though.

I hear that.

What more was there to say? We both knew I was going to take over from Dad at some point. He and Mom were the alphas too. It wasn’t a hereditary thing, but it had a habit of happening that way. I was the alpha of my pack, and someday I would be the alpha of the region, and that meant I needed a mate. Amarice was from a good SwiftClaw bloodline. Her family and their pack lived a town over. She was the perfect match, and it would expand our territory. Our parents had organized it when we were ten and I’d had five years to come to terms with the notion of what that meant. If I was honest, at first, yeah okay, it annoyed me. But then I met Amarice, and well, Owen was right—I had eyes. Not that it was just that. She really was everything you could ask for in a mate. Okay, she had a temper and could be a bit of a handful at times, but who couldn’t? She had Dale eating out of the palm of her hand, and anyone who could keep him in line was worth their weight in gold.

So now we courted, and in a few years we would get married. That was it; nothing I could do would change that. From fifteen, our parents had insisted we start hanging out to form a bond.

If it wasn’t already obvious, bonds are a big thing for us.

Anyway, you can see for yourself, I said.

Meaning?

Meaning, Amarice is coming down tonight with her folks, I told her about the night surf. Lucy will be there too, her way of apologizing. So, you can see them for yourself.

The night swim was another reason I hadn’t pushed Dale. No way would he resist that.

Oh joy, Owen drawled.

I grinned, but it faded just as fast as a sudden need to check my phone pulsed through me.

Noah.

Owen shifted, lying back down on his board without a word to start back for the shore. I followed, paddling fast to catch up, a small wave coming by to help us along. By the time we’d made it to the shore, my stomach was in knots.

Something was wrong.

Noah’s unease rolled through me in a faint wave that pushed me forward faster. Picking up our boards, we jogged up the sand to where our stuff was, eager to find out what exactly had happened.

O was right beside me when I grabbed my phone, the screen lighting up to show two texts. One from Amarice, the other from our packmate.

I read his first.

So, I ran into Amarice. She saw me walking through town and got her folks to drop her off with me. She wants me to take her to meet you guys, so umm, where are you all and can you come meet us?

The cove was too far, besides Noah had sent the text in a group thread. I looked up at Owen. He nodded without me having to voice it. Noah was anxious, probably because of Amarice. I didn’t like that. She was dominant, like, really dominant. I’d held off saying anything because it was needed. The guys had to respect her, or it was just going to be a problem in the future. But I also expected her to earn their respect, not demand it.

Water dripped onto my phone as I opened up Amarice’s text next.

Hey Kel, I just ran into No in town. We’re heading to the beach, come meet us!

I couldn’t be sure of the context of the message, but it didn’t feel like she’d upset him.

What was going on?

Owen had already pulled on his white tee, the bottom soaking up the water from his board shorts. He reached for his shoes, a wave of worry echoing from him to me. Noah was the gentlest of all of us. He’d known we were out surfing, that was why he used the bond. In situations like this, yeah, it was handy.

It was also too early for the night surf. Better to go to them, grab some food and then decide where to go. I quickly typed back the same response to each of them:

We’re coming. We’ll meet you at the entrance to the main beach.

I pulled on my own black tee and scooped up the rest. It would be quicker to run barefoot.

Owen was already waiting.

I gave him a nod. Let’s go.

His eyes had lost the easiness from earlier, replaced with a stoic seriousness that spoke volumes. Stoic Owen was rare, only ever coming out if someone threatened the pack.

Or he was stuck on a math equation.

With nothing else to say, we started running down the shore, back towards the main beach, where two not-so-human teenagers would be waiting for us. I grumbled, annoyed, worried, and stupidly unaware that this was going to be the least of my problems in just a few short hours.

But hey, shoulda, coulda, woulda, right?

2.

LUCY WAS THE first person we ran into heading for Noah, because of course she was.

Why me? I muttered. The last thing I needed was Luce getting a whiff something was going down between Amarice and the pack.

Well, too late for that now.

I steeled myself as we slowed to a jog, rearranging my surfboard and towel under my arm. Lucy sat with a couple of girls from class about twenty meters from the main beach. Further down, a large group of kids from school were chilling on the sand along with the usual Friday-nighters kicking off the weekend.

Lucy appeared deep in conversation, but she’d clocked us ages ago. A SkyHunters sight was no joke. So, when we were close enough that the other girls spotted us, she finally looked up, her smile forced and not reaching her eyes.

Clearly, I wasn’t the only one still prickly.

The two girls with her were Diana and Carmen, human friends for when she wanted to do girl stuff. Out of all of us, she was the only one to befriend humans.

Well, no, her older brother, Parker had a few he hung around with, but he didn’t count because I’m pretty sure they didn’t actually like him either. Being an asshat had that effect on people.

I never understood why Lucy’s parents stayed in Brookshore and didn’t relocate down to Sydney where there were a ton of SkyHunter families. As it was, the Avan’s were the only ones of their bloodline in the territory. In a lot of ways, it was the worst for Lucy. She was the youngest of three, and the only girl on top of it. We’d made her an honorary pack member, a fact that irked Parker to no end, but none of us wanted to go shopping for clothes or talk about boys.

Owen and I stopped in front of the girls. Noah’s thread pulsed heavy in my mind, my chest squeezing tight at the phantom waves of stress and anxiety and sadness coming from him. He was just up ahead, near the steps to the boulevard. I sent back my own pulse that said, pack, close, safe, hoping it would ease some of the tension in my cousin.

Ladies, I said with a mock bow trying to make light of it. Lucy wouldn’t have said anything about the fight, so I’d do her a solid and keep it that way. Carmen, a short girl with fair hair and freckles rolled her eyes, while Diana giggled. Diana was the polar opposite of Lucy in every way. Dark to Lucy’s light, short to her tall, curves to Luce’s more athletic frame. Currently, her dark skin had a sheen of sweat that made her body glisten, drawing your eye to that body that was very, very