Series: Werewolves of Wall Street Series by Renee Rose
Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
The fire pops and crackles in the grate.
“I won’t drink your witch's brew,” the Warden says.
“I have no reason to poison you.” A touch of condescension in Oma’s tone. A bluff, a challenge. Oma has plenty of poisons in her apothecary. My first chores revolved around tending, picking, drying, and storing the powerful plant medicine. I wouldn’t put it past her to put something in the Warden’s tea, to make him more pliable. She’s done it to me plenty of times.
Another long silence. This is how you play pack politics: slowly, using silence to shift the power to your side. It’s not easy when you’re the lone woman among arrogant alphas–cruel wolves who’d rather kill first and never ask questions.
A chair scrapes across the stone, the sound startling me. I stifle my gasp. It’s nothing, I tell myself. Just Oma is settling into a seat at her table.
There’s so much tension, it’s hard for me to breathe.
“I had a vision of a wolf without ears breaking the stone altar. Desecrating the bond of magic shared by the Moonborn and the Adalwulfs. The dais itself cracked in half, and the pup straddled the broken halves. He was bathed in moonlight. He wore the mantle of the Adalwulf alpha.”
The clink of china and a slurping sound tell me Oma’s sipping her tea.
“You think it’s the deaf pup born from the Blood Heir Alpha Rites.”
Goosebumps inexplicably race across my skin. Every nerve in my body charges, like I’ve been asleep for all of my life until this moment.
It takes all my concentration not to bolt upright, wide-eyed and ready.
Everything in the pack revolves around the Adalwulf alpha. His power is propped up by the cult of the Moonborn.
Hundreds of years ago, the Grandmothers’ Coven made a pact with the Adalwulfs. The pack provided protection to the coven in the new world, and in exchange, the coven offered up and bound their most powerful veilwalker to the Adalwulf pack to serve as Seeress. Over the years, the veilwalkers and the wolves bred together to become the Moonborn.
The Alpha Rites–the sex ceremony in which the alpha females are stripped naked and blindfolded, bound with vines to the ceremonial stone to be bred by the alpha or several powerful alpha males–ensures the most powerful pup becomes alpha.
Oma’s vision means the end to all that. And it all revolves around a deaf pup. Is that why Oma wants to kill him, “the wolf with no ears”?
Pain stabs my head, a return of my headache from earlier. I hear whispers from beyond the veil. The Grandmothers speak to me, and they have much to say. Trouble is, they’re all clamoring at once–I can’t distinguish any message.
“Yes, the one we swapped for Aiden.”
Swapped for Aiden! Swapped. For. Aiden.
Oh, sweet moon goddess. This is a revelation. Aiden isn’t really Odin’s son? The pup he raised as his own? The pup meant to rule the pack?
Suddenly, Oma’s vision makes sense. She’s taught me how to interpret the visions and signs we receive. The symbols the Moon Goddess uses to make things clear.
The Moonborn leaders didn’t want to face Odin’s wrath if they presented him with a deaf infant after conducting the Blood Heir Alpha Rites. They must have told him Aiden was the first child born from the rite, swapping out the true firstborn, who was deaf. Now, with the vision of that child being the true heir to the pack, Oma must destroy the threat to Odin’s “son” Aiden before her lies are uncovered.
The whispers in my ears grow louder and more tangled.
“You told everyone the boy was dead,” the Warden grates.
“And you let his mother bargain for his life. Track him down and destroy the threat.”
My stomach clenches into a knot. I hate this part of being a seeress–choosing who lives and who dies. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do it. I don’t know if I’ll be able to become as hard and brutal as Oma.
A horrible sound echoes through the room. It takes me a moment to realize it’s laughter. The Warden is laughing. “You fucked up,” he says to Oma. “You thought you’d cover it up, but it didn’t work, and now you want me to fix it, or you’ll suffer Odin’s wrath.”
“We both will,” Oma’s tone is cool. “Or don’t you remember the part you played?”
I strain my ears, wanting to know what the Warden did that makes him fall silent when Oma reminds him, but neither of them explains.
“Find the wolf with no ears and kill him,” Oma repeats.
“Again, I don’t take orders from you. But I’ll kill the pup.”
I hear the door open and close, but otherwise, the Warden moves silently.
Oma’s cup clinks in the saucer, and she sighs. “How much of that did you hear?”
Keeping secrets from Oma is a game I hope to win one day. Unfortunately, it seems the woman can fish anything out of my head. I sit up and rub my eyes against the candlelight. “All of it.”