Highland Wolf Pact: Blood Reign: A Scottish Werewolf Shifter Romance
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Authors: Selena Kitt
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PLUS EXCLUSIVE to Newsletter Subscribers:
MOXIE
By Selena Kitt
High school senior, Moxie, agrees to be moral support for her friend, Patches, who is totally enamored with a college boy, so she says yes to a double date, even though she has to lie to her parents to do it. But Moxie wasn’t counting on lying about her age to get into an x-rated movie, and she definitely wasn’t counting on her date’s Roman hands and Russian fingers, or the fact that the pants she’s borrowed from Patches are several sizes too small. By the end of the night, Moxie finds herself in far more trouble than she bargained for!
Bridget was an orphan raised by wulvers in a secluded wilderness temple to be its priestess and guardian, but now the outside world has found her and her world will be changed forever. Being suddenly swept up in ancient prophecies and ancestral blood feuds is bad enough, but fighting off the desire ignited in her heart by the proud and arrogant wulver warrior, Griffith, the only man who has ever defeated her in battle, may prove to be her greatest battle yet…
When you’re the son of the wulver pack leader, and your father isn’t about to roll over and show you his belly, life is tough enough. But when you’re the Red Wulver, future King of the Blood Reign Prophecy, it’s hard to know your own heart, let alone who to trust while trying to be the liberator of your people. Just as you finally take your fate into your own hands you’ve got your father, the pack leader, hot on your trail and you run headlong into a deadly ancient enemy you never even knew you had.
And in the midst of the chaos you crash into the aggravating, infuriating and impossibly beguiling, Bridget, the one obstacle in your path you’re not sure you want to overcome…
HIGHLAND WOLF PACT: Blood Reign
By Selena Kitt
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Year of Our Lord 1525
Scotland
Outside the Wulver Den - MacFalon Land
Griff could smell them, not far behind.
Gaining.
He couldn’t let that happen.
He signaled his men, using a low grunt and a soft growl. Rory MacFalon heard him and followed his hand signal, breaking right through the trees. The forest cover was thick and the horses didn’t always find their footing, but the path they’d tracked through the woods—their own shortcut—was perfect for this purpose. Griff grinned—to an outsider, it would have looked like a snarl, his snout long, teeth drawn back—as he watched Rory slow in the underbrush, awaiting his next command.
They were going to make it. He could feel it, something instinctual.
He barked an order to Garaith, who gave a nod with his big, shaggy black head, giving Griff a grin that also looked much like a snarl, and he, too, broke off and joined Rory on the side of the path. The rest of his pack of wulver warriors—half-men, half-wolves, wearing full Scots armor and riding horses through the MacFalon forest—followed Griff’s lead as he pulled his giant war horse aside, waving them past. They knew the shortcut as well as he did—they’d helped him create it.
“Cam!” Griff called to one of his teammates, who brought up the rear of the pack. Cam slowed his horse, surprised when Griff tossed him the giant rack of buck antlers he was carrying. “Take them to the safe area. Lead the team! Go!”
Horse hooves thundered through the forest. If the other two packs didn’t know where the shortcut was, they would now. But it didn’t matter, because Griff knew they were going to win.
He barked orders to Rory and Garaith to follow him. They needed more space than they had in the woods to end this thing properly. The two wulvers fell in behind him. Griff dug the heels of his boots into Uri’s side, leaning over his powerful neck as the horse tore up the path and broke through the trees. His team, he noted with satisfaction, was already corralled in the “safe” area. There were wulver women gathered at the mouth of their den, watching with bright eyes as the warriors burst into the field.
Griff gave a war whoop, turning his mount to face the other two oncoming teams. He directed Rory and Garaith toward the first—both had already drawn their swords. They were wooden, just training swords, a fact that bothered Griff a great deal, but his father had insisted. His mother had protested as well—and he could understand a woman’s protest, that someone might get hurt—but his father, Raife, was the pack’s leader, and some day, Griff would take his place. Wasn’t it about time they were allowed to use real swords? Even if it was just for this, the Great Hunt. It only happened once a year, after all.
Two dozen wulver warriors charged into the clearing, and Griff heard the women squeal and yelp as swords began to clash. Rory and Garaith were his best fighters by far, and they could hold their own against any of the rest. He saw them fighting off a dozen menacing pack members, while Griff himself took on the other dozen or so that had begun to circle.
Not that he let that stop him.
Griff swung his sword expertly. They all had wooden swords, so it was a fair fight. Not that twelve against one was fair, exactly, but it was what he’d planned. The antlers—their prize—and the rest of his men were safe. He had his two best fighters—who had already bested half the other pack—and he didn’t doubt his own ability for a moment.
Even when he was surrounded. And he was. He’d bested three of them already, but there were more, and they circled him. Griff’s horse pawed the ground, nervous, but he kept Uri under control, swinging his sword at all comers. And they came. Wulver after wulver, snarling and swinging, snapping their jaws and howling. Griff didn’t hesitate. Three more wulvers had to fall back because his sword had slipped through and, wooden or not, dented their breast-plates—a “kill” shot.
He could hear the other wulvers, spectators, howling their approval. The women especially. They were all excited to watch the men compete. He knew his mother was among them, watching—with breath held, wringing her hands, no doubt. Sibyl might be married to the pack leader, but she’d never gotten used to or really understood the wulver warrior’s constant training. She was human, and a woman. He could forgive her that.
Not that he was winning for her—or any of the wulver women he saw jumping up and down and clapping as he bested another of the rival team. Griff won because it was part of him. Winning was everything. To him, losing didn’t mean just losing. Losing meant death. He didn’t care if it was a wooden sword to his breast plate or an actual arrow whizzing by his head. It was all death.
He didn’t even realize it was over until he saw Rory and Garaith, who had taken down the last of the other team, dismounting and charging across the field toward him. Griff howled in triumph, sliding off his horse and clapping his teammates on the back. He shook his head, much like a dog who shakes off when it comes out of a lake, and heard all the girls sigh and exclaim as his features transformed from wolf to human once again. Many of the wulver women looked at him hungrily, giving him those appreciative, over-the-shoulder glances that meant they were open to... well, anything. He’d likely take one, or maybe two or three, of them up on that later. But for now, he was too interested in basking in the glory.
“We did it!” Garaith yelled, giving Griff a one-armed squeeze.
From the “safe” zone, Griff’s teammates roared their approval. Rory threw back his dark head and howled, too, although Griff saw he was quick to change from wulver-warrior back to human as his mother rushed across the field to hug him. Kirstin was followed by her husband, Donal—The MacFalon. It was their land the wulvers’ den resided on. They both congratulated their wulver-warrior son on a job well done, and Rory stood there grinning like a fool. Griff wondered if the grin plastered to his own face looked just as ridiculous.
Even Griff’s bested pack-mates congratulated him, albeit a little grudgingly, on a good win. Griff saw his mother, her red hair starting to be streaked at the temples with a few gray strands, standing near the entrance of their den, watching. She was smiling, but it was a strained smile. She hated the fighting, he knew. He gave her a wink, grinning, and her smile brightened just a little.
Beside her, Garaith’s mother, Laina, her white-blonde hair braided behind her like his mother’s, waved to her son. There was no hesitation in Laina about her son’s warrior ways. She was wulver through and through, and appreciated her son’s prowess on the battlefield—training exercise or not. That made him think of his uncle, Darrow—Garaith’s father—who had been overseeing the Great Hunt, along with Darrow’s brother, Raife. Darrow was Raife’s second in command. The last he’d seen them, Griff had been leading his pack, holding the antlers high, and riding hard to get back to the safe zone.
Then Griff couldn’t see anyone because he was being surrounded again, this time by well-wishers who clapped him on the back and wulver women who kissed his cheek and rubbed up against him as close as they could get. Griff enjoyed the attention, although he didn’t exactly bask in it. Winning had been a foregone conclusion as far as he was concerned.
“What in the gory hell did you think you were doing?” Raife’s voice thundered through the clearing as he galloped up on his charger. Their pack leader could command anything, whether it was one man, a room full of people, or an entire army. Just the sound of his voice booming over the field got everyone’s attention. Griff sighed inwardly, if not outwardly, glancing up to see his father’s horse pulling up short of the crowd. Darrow was close behind. “Is that what you think leading looks like? You fall back to hold off the enemy, and sacrifice yourself?”
“I won, didn’t I?” Griff shot back, feeling his cheeks go hot as he met his father’s dark gaze. He heard some murmurs in the crowd, and knew what they were looking at. Any time Griff got angry, they told him his eyes would flash red. Literally. It had been that way since he was a baby, his mother said. There was something in the wulver lore about a prophecy, and a “red wulver,”—which he was, when he changed to wolf—a big, red wolf. He couldn’t hide his coloring, but the red eyes he’d learned to control over the years. Somehow, though, his father always managed to bring out the worst in him.
“I beat them all!”
“Winning isn’t everything!” Raife snapped. “A pack leader has more to think about than just winning! A stunt like that can cost a pack their leader. And a leaderless pack is a dead pack!”
Griff blinked at his father, feeling heat spreading to his chest. So mayhaps it had been a little reckless. Mayhaps his plan, while successful, had endangered not only him, but Rory and Garaith as well. He felt a little guilty about that. But they’d done all right, even by themselves, hadn’t they?
“It’s just a game,” Griff grumbled, and knew he was attempting to deflect his own public shaming when he tossed his chipped, splintering wooden sword to the grass. “These aren’t even real weapons!”
“It’s never just a game!” Raife roared. “A pack leader—ANY wulver warrior—can never afford to think of training as a game. The pack we live in is the last of our kind. We are the last of the wulvers. Most humans would kill the last of us out of fear alone.”
I should jus’ take ye on right now, ol’ man.
Raife wasn’t really old, not in human or wulver years. He could lead their pack for another thirty or forty, if he wanted to. More’s the pity, because Griff felt ready to lead now. He felt it in every fiber of his being, all the way to his bones.
Griff glared at his father, seeing his jaw harden. Had he guessed what Griff was thinking?
“You want this?” Raife’s voice lowered as he leaned into his horse, toward his son. So he had guessed. The heat filling Griff’s face intensified and he tried to control it. His father’s eyes weren’t red, they were wulver blue—all wulvers had blue eyes—but they got dark as a bottomless ocean when he was angry. And he was angry now. “Come get it. By law, you can challenge me any time to take the lead.”
Griff felt the urge to challenge him tingling in his limbs, pricking him like a thousand little needles all over his body. The hair on the back of his neck stood up and he felt a growl building in his throat. He wouldn’t be able to control it in a minute and he wondered who would win if he challenged his father now. There were no guarantees, but he thought he just might win.
Then he glanced over at his uncle, sitting on a horse beside Raife, and he wondered why Darrow had never challenged for the pack leader position. Was he so afraid to lose? Or—mayhaps, he was afraid he’d win? Darrow met his eyes and he saw a warning there. Don’t do it, not now, not yet. But Griff felt ready. His body sang with his desire to lead, to conquer, to win.
“Son, I’d love to turn my role over to you,” Raife told him, dismounting and looking around at the crowd of wulvers that watched, tense, waiting. “Some day, I hope I will. But right now, I know my leadership is still what’s best for this pack. And I would do anything to protect it. Would you?”
Griff did growl at that. How could his father believe he wouldn’t do everything to protect the pack? It was what he was born, bred and trained for. The Great Hunt was practice for war—a war that just might come, one day. He would be ready to take anyone on, to protect all of them—his mother, his sisters, his aunts, uncles, and cousins. Just like he was ready, right now, to take on his father.
They faced each other, man to man, the same height, same build. No one would have questioned that they weren’t father and son, with the same big, brawny shoulders, strong jaws, thick, long, dark hair—Griff had been born a redhead, like his mother, but his newborn hair had changed color. He was still the only red wolf in the pack, though. And his eyes, instead of the blue of his father’s, were actually a strange amber color that went red when he was emotional or angry, if others were to be believed. He’d never seen his own eyes turn color himself.
Both men were in full gear, although Raife had an actual sword at his side, while Griff’s wooden one lay between them on the grass. He felt both excitement and worry rising in the crowd. Would there be a challenge this day? Would father and son face off in a duel that could lead to the death of one of the two big men? Griff heard a soft cry from near the mouth of the den, and knew his mother’s voice well. She didn’t want this to happen—likely, ever. But a man had to become a man eventually, didn’t he?
“Winners get served first at the feast!” Laina, Griff’s still very beautiful, shapely blonde aunt announced, putting an arm around Garaith, her son. “But don’t they have to muck out the stalls first?”
