Forceful Justice (97 page)

The crystal glowed hot at this point. “Please stop!” Elsa screamed at the top of her lungs, as Zamir's claw tore into Theo's flesh, sending blonde fur everywhere. “I can't take this anymore. I don't know what you want. I don't know what to do.”

“There's nothing to do, my dear,” Freja said. “Except die. You could do that favor for me.”

If Elsa didn't do something soon, she would witness the wild and crazy Zamir, in all his strength, tear apart the one person she ever truly loved. She watched his violent claw rip apart Theo's flesh and his angry teeth sink into his neck. After a few second, Theo's lion form lay there silent, lifeless. Zamir turned to Freja, ready to eat her now, and it was clear to Elsa that Freja was deathly afraid of Zamir. He lunched at her, and shaking, Freja held up her wand. “Not so fast, Dark Prince. If you touch me, she dies,” and Zamir looked over at her, his eyes almost busted with a radioactive green at this point. Zamir didn't want to hurt Elsa, and Freja could kill her in a single snap of the wrist, so fighting Freja meant killing Elsa.

The crystal continued to glow red and hot, burning through the table. Elsa tried to use the spell one more time. But she was losing energy fast. “Dark solitudes.awful wells.” Nothing happened, and Elsa sank further into a darkness in her mind, her eyelids getting heavy, losing focus. “Heavenly contemplation.dwells.” Again, nothing.

“My heart.the heat.leave me.” She trailed off, nearly unconsciousness. As she approached the breaking point in her journey, the point at which she truly had given up all hope, floating in mid-air by a magical blue wire, her true love dead at her feet, murdered by the shifter with whom she shared some mysterious, inexplicable great passion she would never fully understand, as he tried to save her, there was one thought that emerged from the depths of her grief. She spoke it aloud.

“Ok, you win, God. I love them both. I made a mistake. I don't have the answers. That's the truth.” And with that, she dropped her head, ready for anything, accepting her fate as it might come, given the circumstances. The crystal, as it lay on the wooden floor, suddenly glowed to life, brighter than anything, and a red and ruby light flooded the room. Far away in her mind, Elsa could hear Freja scream as the blue wire wrapped itself around her own neck, slicing off her head like an angry Medusa, sending it rolling across the floor. Elsa fell to the floor, her energy returning as the crystal's red hue brought Theo back to life. Elsa could see his chest, now in human form, move ever so slightly. She grabbed his hand and spoke the only words she could think to say.

“Theo,” she said, breathing heavily, “I'm back.”

CHAPTER 49

Elsa rushed outside to find Zamir, afraid something had happened to him. At the edge of the forest, she could see him standing there, the same mysterious expression on his face, simultaneously evil and passionate, even in his wolf form. He took one look at her before entering into the forest silently. Elsa wondered if she had broken his heart, or whether he cared at all. The emotions oscillated between anger and jealousy. She stood there with Theo and Augustus, feeling more alone than she ever had. But looking back at Theo, she realized she could finally form her relationship with him, however damaged it may be.

CHAPTER 50

The days and months after Theo's fight with Zamir were hard. He struggled to recover from his injuries, as he fought the only creature in existence who was stronger than he was. Elsa did everything she could to nurse him back to health, and after much apologizing on his part for trying to kill her, they started a new life together. Augustus watched over Elsa for a few days, but told her he needed to venture back into the forest, to find his brother and his friend. Elsa understood and wished him luck. Augustus, along with Elsa and Theo, was finally free of the Forbidden Forest, and he decided it was important for him to make peace with his past. He knew the Forest would let him be as long as he stayed honest, told the truth, and didn't try to be someone he wasn't. All these lessons he learned from Elsa's epiphany, and she knew he would be all right. He knew Dorien was out there, in the forest, and he wanted to make sure he had not captured Niklas and Kirbleitz. Augustus knew had an obligation to save them, find them, and show them the way out of the forest. He wanted to teach them what Elsa and all of them had learned.

Elsa and Theo continued to make a life together, in the aftermath of all that had happened. He loved her with all his heart, but he knew her situation--that the moment she tried to choose him over Zamir was the moment the forest would pull all of them back into its clutches. So Elsa remained faithful to Theo, but still occasionally wondered about Zamir and whether he would ever come back to her

Theo and Elsa finally would get the chance to consummate the love that burned between their hearts so long ago. Elsa could see through her own nature that Zamir was waiting for her, somewhere in the distance, and even though she tried to communicate with him during the day, she only managed to talk to him at night in her dreams. Maybe one day he would return to her, and when that day came, she would decide what to do about the two men whom she truly loved, the two men who completed each half of her divided soul. She laid the crystal on her nightstand, fearful but excited for the possibility that it would, in the not so distant future, come sparkling to life.

ALPHA WOLF’S CALLING

Hannah Heat

Copyright 2015 Hannah Heat

All rights reserved.

Hannah Heat

Alpha Wolf’s Calling:

(BBW Paranormal Shapeshifter Romance)

First Edition

Book design by Hannah Heat

Cover Image Copyright 2015, used under a Creative Commons Attribution License: https://www.flickr.com/photos/wunluv/4491802711/

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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CHAPTER LIST

PROLOGUE

PART ONE: PROTECTING INNOCENCE

PART TWO: INTO THE FOREST

PART THREE: THE BLACK WOLF

PART FOUR:THE PROPHECY REVEALED

PART FIVE: A NEW LIFE

BONUS STORY: WATCHED BY WARLOCKS

ABOUT HANNAH

MORE FROM HANNAH

PART ONE - PROTECTING INNOCENCE

PROLOGUE

As a child growing up in a Bavarian village, Elsa Gutz learned about the area surrounding her home town through various paranormal myths her parents told her at night before bed. Her father, a stern man who showed his love the best he could, informed Elsa and her sister that their village was surrounded by a forest she must never enter, because the place was full of witches, warlocks, and werewolves. These magical creatures used to actually be normal people, with lives and families, he told her.

“Like with mommies and daddies?”

“Yes,” her father told her. “And brothers and sisters, too.” He plopped Elsa down onto her bed, covering her and her sister with a blanket.

“What happened to them?”

“They entered the Forbidden Forest, which their parents told them not to go into. Just like I'm telling you. The Forest lies far on the edge of town, where you must never go.”

The 6-year old Elsa grimaced, her toddler imagination painting tragic pictures of kids her age waddling into the forest, their parents chasing after them, crying and screaming.

“Did they ever come back?” Elsa asked, groping for some happy ending.

“No, never. The forest ate them, swallowed them up whole, like a hungry demon. But one local blacksmith, furious at his wife for allowing his children to even get close to the forest, vowed to get them back. He got a pick ax and ventured deep into the forest, and he didn't return for days.”

“Did he ever find his kids?”

“Oh, yes, he returned. The villagers asked him if he ever found his children, expecting to say they were gone forever. But to their surprise, he had found them, hidden in clearing between some trees, dancing and sinking naked around a fire pit, the moonlight shining through the trees. He tried bringing them back, but they told him they didn't want to go. His children's fate hurt the blacksmith worse than if they had died. They were lost, evil, gimps of the forest. The blacksmith could not make them normal children again. And he came back with a large bite out of his thigh--from a werewolf, who had driven him out of the forest, away from his children, who were now lost forever.”

Elsa squeezed her big sister's hand, as they listened to their father every night tell stories like this. Before falling asleep, in the space between her dreams and wake, Elsa thought she could see some werewolves outside her window in the forest near her family's humble cabin home. She chalked up the faint images of green eyes, staring at her from the recesses of the woods, as her mind playing tricks on her.

But in the back of her thoughts, even though she grew older and knew the time for children's games had passed, she still wondered if it all had been more than just a dream.

Maybe, just maybe, the stories were true.

CHAPTER 1

A throng of bearded men, wearing sad and somber robes, stood circling some unknown misfortune on the edge of town, near the border between a small, secluded Bavarian village and the wild, chaotic forest which surrounded it from all sides. Further back, the rest of townspeople, every last one of them, stood staring at the unforeseen developments of the night. Earlier, during religious service, young Priscilla entered the town hall, interrupting Father O'Grady's sermon.

“She's back!” Priscilla squealed, and the entire congregation looked up from their Bibles. Father O'Grady looked up from his spectacles, a rosy-faced, white-haired man no taller than five feet.

“Who is back, my child?”

“Lili and Ennis!” Priscilla said, breathless, as she turned and rushed back into the airy night, the autumnal cold creeping through the open doors. Father O'Grady slapped his Bible closed and pushed his little body down from the altar, approaching the open door. The rest of the townspeople followed--old women with their ailing husbands who walked on canes, young mothers with babes suckling at their bosom, mischievous teenage boys picking at their female crushes.

On this overcast and wintry evening, the entire congregation followed Priscilla out of the church hall, into the dusky evening, as she led them to the scene discovered at the edge of the forest. The minister ran to the front of the line which formed quickly, so that the rest of the town was pushed back into a confused crowd near the center of the town.

Father O'Grady came close to the three people who lay in the grass in the darkness near the forest, his hands shaking but controlled by the courage of his warm heart. He reached down and touched the shoulder of the woman wrapped in a red shawl, trembling from fight.

“Miss, are you okay?” Her black head raised up to reveal Lili's face, and the entire crowd sighed with shock and relief. She had returned home. “My dearest Lili, you've returned to us. We're so glad you're safe. You gave us quite the scare,” he said, trying to keep his cool. Father O'Grady's eyes were perpetually twinkling with the inner goodness of the man whom many might come to associate with alms giving and a white, curly beard. He picked Lili up by her shoulders. “My, my. You are still in one piece.” He looked down, along with the rest of the crowd, to see young Ennis smiling up at them. “Happy Goodness!” Father O'Grady squealed, picking up Ennis by his armpits and planting a forceful kiss on his tiny cheek. “He's back, too.” Father O'Grady's tears streamed down his face as he studied the young toddler, who stared back at him with a curious blankness, as Ennis then ran his tiny index finger along the damp trail on Father O'Grady's cheek.

“Why do you cry, sir?” his little voice said, elf-like and magical.

Father O'Grady smiled from ear to ear. “Because you're home, little one! We missed you so,” he said, burying the boy in his bear-like chest, taking in his heartbeat with his own. The boy pushed back, squirming to get out of Father O'Grady's hands. Ennis jumped down onto the ground, his feet curiously bare, and ran into the crowd of people. “My sir, where are you going?” Father O'Grady called back, before returning his attention to the young woman at his face. He helped her up by the small of her hand, and she smiled back at him. “Miss Lili, did you go off and become a hero for your son?”