Gypsy Wolf (Strange Lake Falls Series Book 5)
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Authors: KD Jones
Gypsy Wolf
Book 5 Strange Lake Falls Series
KD Jones
Copyright 2016 KD Jones
License Notes
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Table of Contents
Chapter 12:
Chapter 1
The Past
“You belong to me now. I’m your mate.”
Diana stared at the stranger her father had brought her to see. She should have told her father she didn’t want to see him. She didn’t owe him anything. After all, he had left her when she was six. Her mother had died when she was born leaving her to be raised with her best friend Roxanne for the last nine years. It had been the happiest she had ever been.
A few days ago, she had received a letter from her no-show father. He claimed he had cleaned up his act and had some family items, like albums of her mother that he wanted to give her so she could know more about her lineage.
Against her foster parents’ wishes, she agreed to meet her father after school. She walked to a hunting cabin up the hill from the local village. Walking through the woods gave her a very uncomfortable feeling. It was so quiet she could almost hear her heart beating.
If she was a regular werewolf she could shift into her wolf form and protect herself, but Diana was a mixed breed, part werewolf and part Romany. The combination of two such magical beings had a side effect: It prevented her from ever being able to shift. She still felt her wolf inside of her, but was silent most of the time. Except now, she was sensing danger. She wished she had listened to her wolf.
A man was standing outside the small cabin with his back to her. Her wolf scented him and found him familiar. Then the man turned to face her. Was this her father? He did look a little like she remembered. When he spoke, though, she knew for sure. She would never forget the angry, hurtful tone of his voice.
“You took a long time getting here. If you were a real wolf, you could have made it here faster.”
She didn’t argue the point. She knew she was less than other wolves. She’d felt that way all her life, and if that wasn’t bad enough, others in her pack made sure to tell her every day. If not for her best friend Roxanne, she would have left to go on her own a long time ago.
Standing there looking at the man who had fathered her, she felt no love for him. He was a stranger to her.
“You said you had some things that belonged to my mother.” She just wanted to get the things and leave.
“They’re inside the cabin, come on in.” He turned to walk inside.
She shivered with fear. Her wolf was not happy at all about this. Diana looked behind at the pathway that would lead her to safety. She had gone nine years without knowing her parents; she didn’t need to know that badly.
“Never mind. I’ll be going now.” She turned to leave and bumped into a large man she had not heard come up behind her. “Excuse me, I am leaving.”
“I can’t let you do that,” the man said in a raspy voice.
He grabbed her arms, lifted her straight up into the air, and carried her in the cabin. There was no give in his strength. She kicked and screamed. Her wolf was howling in anger. Diana may not be able to change into a wolf, but she still had strength and speed like any other werewolf. However, nothing she could do fazed the guy.
“Let me go!”
“Settle down, girl, and mind your manners!” her father called out from the kitchen table. He was just sitting there watching. Why was he allowing this to happen?
The man finally put her down, tossing her to the bed. She tried to get up and make it to the door, but he just shoved her back down.
“Who are you? Why are you doing this?”
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
She shook her head and looked over at her father, silently pleading for him to help. He just turned away.
“I don’t know you.”
“We met once when you were six. You were a scrawny thing. Your alpha refused to let me take you with me then. I waited until you filled out a little more. I waited nine years for you.”
She frowned, feeling confused. “I don’t understand.”
“Your father promised you to me years ago. He owed me a great debt and I absolved him of it in exchange for you.”
“What?” She glared at her father. How could he do that, trade his child for a debt?
“You belong to me now. I’m your mate.”
Stunned was one of many things she felt. She still couldn’t fully comprehend what was happening. “Dad?”
Her father finally looked at her. “This is Kilian Dorn and he is your mate. Serve him and you’ll be just fine.”
“Go outside while I claim her. Stay close, but not too close,” Kilian ordered.
Her father paused for a moment, looking at her. She was a stranger to him just as much as he was too her, but surely something in him should tell him this was wrong.
“Dad—”
“This is how it has to be, Diana.” Her father stood up and walked out of the cabin, shutting the door behind him.
Panic seized her; these men were crazy. Nothing had prepared her for what was about to happen. Diana was shaking uncontrollably. She had to get out of there; she had to survive this somehow.
“Please let me go.” She tried to get up again but he came down on top of her, taking her hands into his and holding them roughly over her head with one of his. He was so strong. His other hand ripped open her shirt and squeezed her breast, hard.
“You have filled out quite nicely.”
She tried to rock him off of her, but he didn’t budge. He used his knees to force her legs open. She wore a long skirt, but it was now bunched up high.
Diana shook all over as the realization that he was going to force her sexually fully hit her. She had never had sex, never even kissed a boy before. She hated how his weight pressed down on her, hard and heavy, forcing the air out of her lungs. She couldn’t breathe.
“Hold still!” He smacked her when she managed to wedge her knee between their bodies. He gripped her hair and pulled her head to the side. Then he lowered his mouth to her neck, licking her before he extended his canines and bit into her flesh, making his claiming mark.
That moment was a catalyst for her powers. She had dreams and sometimes saw things before they happened, but the emotional distress combined with the physical pain seemed to jumpstart her magic.
A bright light shot from her hands and shocked Kilian, knocking him unconscious. She crawled out from beneath his heavy body and stumbled to the door of the cabin. It burst open and her father stared at her then at Kilian’s immobile form.
“What have you done?” He ran over and reached down. “He’s still breathing.”
Why was she standing there? As she tried to leave, her father grabbed at her arm. Her new powers were going completely haywire. She raised her hand and hit him with a shock of power. Her father went down to his knees, growling like he was about to shift to wolf.
Run! Get far, far away!
her wolf demanded. She turned and did what her wolf wanted, but as she ran she could hear Kilian yelling after her.
“I’ll come for you, mate! There won’t be anywhere you could go I won’t find you!”
She went to her foster parents and alpha to tell them what happened. Her foster father wanted to kill Kilian and her father for forcing a mating on such a young girl.
They went to Alpha Ric’s old pack temporarily, but Kilian was right, he found her. He would always find her, unless she could somehow magically disappear. The soothsayer commune was the perfect place for her to go.
It seemed to solve two problems at once. The commune was kept secret from all werewolves, so Kilian and her father couldn’t find her, and it would also allow her to learn how to control her powers. Once she was there, she missed Roxanne every day, but she was glad to be able to do something to keep her friend and foster sister safe.
How long would her reprieve from Kilian last? She knew the day would come when he would finally find her. She dreaded that day.
Chapter 2
Present Day
“I can’t believe that you got us lost.” Diana stomped into the hotel room and threw her overnight bag on the bed.
“I didn’t get us lost, you got us lost when you told me to take that last turn that led us to a dead end.”
“It showed on the map that the road would lead us to a direct and faster route through the mountains. It’s not my fault you bought a map that was five years old.”
“I wouldn’t have had to buy a map if you hadn’t messed up my car’s GPS. Shouldn’t you be able to use your voodoo powers and magically know which way to go?”
“I told you I accidently spilled the hot chocolate on your GPS, and I am not some Magic 8 Ball you can shake and tell your fortune with! My powers don’t work that way!”
“One thing after another has been going wrong since we left Strange Lake Falls. It’s like you are purposely trying to destroy me, starting with little things and building up to the finale where I keel over or am driven to murder!”
“You’re such an idiot!” She turned to poke his chest with her finger.
“You’re an accident-prone, tongue-lashing witch!” He walked toward her until her back hit the wall. Both of them were breathing heavily.
“You’re a bully and an asshole!”
“You can’t read a fucking map! Damn if I’m not turned on,” Lucas growled.
“Me too,” she whispered.
Lucas gripped the back of her head and pulled her toward him, kissing her with all the strength of his pent-up frustrations behind it. What surprised her the most was she found herself responding back. She raised her arms and wrapped them around his neck. God, nothing had ever tasted as good as Lucas. She could kiss him like this forever.
Then reality interrupted them as her cell phone started ringing. Lucas jerked away from her like she had stung him. Why did he have to send her such mixed signals? She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out her phone.
“Hello?”
“Little Diana, it’s time for your claiming. I’ll be coming for you,” a familiar husky male voice said before hanging up.
Dread filled Diana’s body. Memories of her nightmare early childhood came pouring back. She started to tremble. She was so lost in her horrific memories that she didn’t even feel Lucas cup her cheek with his hand.
“Diana . . . are you okay? Who was that?”
“My . . . my . . . m . . . m . . . mate.”
*****
Three hours later
“Are we going to talk about this?” Lucas asked as he drove. Diana sat in the passenger’s seat with her cell phone to her ear. She had called Roxanne to warn her, and then the werewolf council, as soon as she got the call from Kilian. She was on hold while the council conferred.
“No.”
“You flirt with me for weeks, then all of a sudden you’re mated. I think I deserve some answers.”
She glared at him. “I have not been flirting with you. You’re the one that’s been flirting with me!”
“Who’s the guy?”
She held up her hand as one of the councilman got on the phone. “Yes sir, he called me a few hours ago. The commune is still . . . No, I don’t want to be his mate! You can’t do that; I was just a kid when he tried to claim me! I won’t do it and no one on this Earth is going to make me!” She hung up on the councilman. She was shaking and tears were streaming down her cheeks.
She didn’t notice that Lucas had pulled his car over to the side of the road. Not until he reached out and touched her arm. She jerked away from the touch.
“Easy, I just want to help.”
His hurt expression was too much. She got out of the car and looked around her. It was dark and the clouds kept her from seeing the moon and stars. They were in the middle of nowhere and she had no place to go. She wiped the tears from her cheeks and cringed with every step that Lucas took around the car to get to her side. She didn’t want to have this conversation with him or with anyone, but her choices were being taken from her.
“I’ll help you, but you have to let me in, sweetheart. From the pieces of conversation I heard already, you are somehow mated to a guy that you don’t like. Why don’t you fill me in on what I don’t know.”
She wrapped her arms around herself and looked off into the distance. “Most of what I know about my parents I learned from my foster parents, the Jaspers, who raised me. My parents were not true mates. In fact, my mother was promised to another. Her name was Rosanna Rhapsody and she was a werewolf that came from a long line of powerful Romany thought to be tied loosely to the Roland family, but no one knew for sure which of the Romany families she came from directly. The Rhapsody name came from the werewolf side of the family when they attempted to blend in with a human community.
“My mother’s intended was killed in a battle. She was devastated and therefore vulnerable to the charm my father, Chet Wako, laid on her. He knew that more than anything she wanted children, so he used that to get her to agree to mate him.
“They mated and not more than two months later she was pregnant with me. The pregnancy was hard on her and she suffered complications at my birth. She lived just long enough to hold me and name me.”
“I’m so sorry. My parents died when I was young, too. My grandparents raised me. What about your father?”
“My father had never really paid much attention to me, I was always being shuffled off to one pack member or another until I was about six years old. That’s when we had moved to the pack where Roxanne’s family lived. Roxanne’s parents took me in and refused to give me back to my father. My father tried to get me back several times, but he had caused problems for the pack and the Alpha finally made him leave. He went lone wolf for years. I was fine with that because I finally had the family I always wanted with Roxanne. We became as close as sisters. Everything was fine until my father suddenly resurfaced.
“When I turned fifteen, he tried to come onto pack land, but the Alpha refused to allow him anywhere near me or the pack. He wrote letters to me telling me that he had things that belonged to my mother that he thought I might want. I had grown up not knowing much about my mother and her family, so I was interested. Blame it on teenage angst, but I snuck off to meet with my father. Biggest mistake of my life.”
She started pacing. Her wolf wanted to run but couldn’t shift to do it. “My father wasn’t alone. He had brought a man, a wolf shifter, with him named Kilian Dorn. My father had sold me to Kilian to pay off his debts. Kilian came to collect his prize.”
“Diana, what did they do to you?” Lucas growled.
“Kilian touched me . . . then he bit me to leave his mark.” She shoved her hair off her shoulders to show the hateful mark. She shivered when Lucas stepped closer to touch the mark.
“Did he . . .”
“No, I managed to get away from him before he could fully mate me.”
“You were only fifteen, too young to mate. I would kill him for having touched you.”
For some reason that made her feel more comfortable. He was angry on her behalf. “I ran home and told my foster parents. We relocated to another pack but my father and Kilian sent a letter. I overheard my foster parents discussing whether they should move us again, and they were worried that Roxanne would be in danger. I didn’t want to cause problems for the Jaspers and I definitely didn’t want to put Roxanne in danger.
“So, I asked my foster parents to send me to the commune. Werewolf guardians protect it and witches placed a spell on it to keep it invisible to everyone outside the commune. I was safer there and at the same time I was able to keep Roxanne safe.”
“How long since the last time you saw him or he found you?”
“Over eighty years.”
“How did he find you now if it’s been that long?”
“I left the commune. Once I was far enough away from the protection spell, he could track me again.”
“I don’t understand why you would leave the safety of the commune.”
“For Roxanne. She needed me. Plus, I was really bored of the commune.”
“Then you should go back to the commune immediately.”
“I can’t. The council feels like I could put the commune in jeopardy if I try to return. Kilian is petitioning the council to force me to accept his claim. They want me to accept it willingly.”
“What the fuck! Are they crazy? The man tried to rape you as a child!”
“The council is worried that our numbers are dying down.”
“Well, how do they expect you to solve that problem? You’re not even a real werewolf.”
His statement was a slap in the face. It wasn’t like she hadn’t heard that before. She knew how full-blooded werewolves felt about her being a mixed breed. They thought because she couldn’t shift that she was less than them, weaker.
“Kilian is pushing for the claim, and since any male children I have would be able to shift, the council is inclined to side with him.”
“Wait, what about male children?”
“Only female children born to me would be a soothsayer like me or a human. Male children are rarer, but they would inherit the werewolf genes and be able to shift.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Not many people take the time to learn about soothsayers. Anyway, the council is having a hearing in about a week in Nevada. They want me to come forth and present my case. I need to find a representative that knows pack laws and can help me.”
“I may know someone. They’re in Vegas.”
“I hate to ask you, but . . .”
“I’ll take you. We’ll stop by and check in on my pack on the way.”
“I thought you were from the European pack?”
“We originated in Europe, but recently we moved to the United States because our numbers were dwindling.”
“Oh. So we’re off to Vegas then.”
“It appears so.”