Midnight Whispers - Paranormal Romance (15 page)

The smoke
turned out to be coming from the remnants of a bonfire—ashes and embers
were all that was left. Squinting through the smoke, Kyra managed to make out
what looked like charred animal carcasses in the fire. They’d burned the sheep?
But why—

Someone
grabbed her by the arm and she shrieked, whirling around. Jake caught her free
hand, which had been swinging around to strike him in the face, and she
blinked, dread and horror creeping into her.

“Oh Jake,”
she squeaked, “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“I know,” he
said calmly. “I really don’t think you should be here, Kyra.”

Kyra searched
his face, dismayed to find there was no trace of the laughing, sincere young
man he’s always been around her. His features were hard, his eyes burning with
a cold fire that sent chills up her spine.

He released
her, but rather than backing up, she stood her ground, not wanting to give him
the chance to walk away.

“Judy told me
what happened last night,” she finally said. “I wanted to come by and make sure
everyone was alright.”

Jake sighed
and cast a disgusted glance toward the bonfire behind them. “By the time we
discovered the sheep, their flesh had spoiled and their coats were encrusted
with blood so that we couldn’t even sell the meat or the hides.”

“That’s
terrible.”

He nodded.
“Yes. But not as terrible as what is going to happen to them once I find and
punish the ones responsible.”

Kyra did take
a step back this time—the look in Jake’s eye scared her. “You mean you
know who has done this?”

Jake looked
away. “It’s probably best if you don’t know.”

Kyra grabbed
his arm as he was about to turn away. “Tell me.” She scowled at the hesitancy
in his eyes. “If you don’t, I’ll find someone who will.”

Jake passed a
hand over his face. “There are… demons in the forest. I believe they are
directly responsible for this —the attack has all their markings.”

“Markings?”
Kyra’s heart sank like a stone—her head was already screaming at her, but
her heart refused to believe; it wanted verbal confirmation. “What… what kind
of demons are they?”

“They take
the shape of both wolf and human, though I’ve only ever seen them as wolf when
I’ve hunted them.” Jake’s face darkened. “The bite marks on the sheep most
definitely belonged to a wolf.”

Kyra’s
heartbeat roared in her ears; her world had been turned upside down in seconds.

“What do you
mean? You…hunt them?”

“I… yes. My
father taught me to hunt from the age of twelve.” He frowned at her. “Are you
alright, Kyra?” He shook his head. “You’re in shock. I knew I shouldn’t have
told you about any of this.”

Kyra shook
her head, trying to realign her scattered thoughts—she was in shock,
alright, but not for the reasons Jake thought. All this time, Jake had been the
one responsible for the deaths of the clan? He was responsible for killing
innocent people?

She wanted to
reach out and shake his shoulders—to yell at him and explain that what he
was doing was wrong, but what would she say? She wasn’t even supposed to know
about the shifters.

“I’m… I’m
fine,” she finally said, even though she wanted to scream. She knew she
couldn’t hate him even though the shifter clan did, because he truly believed
that he was doing a good thing. And the shifters had only made matters worse by
slaughtering his livestock. And yet knowing that he and his ancestors were
responsible for so much pain and heartache… it was too much for her to deal
with. “I just never thought of you as anything but gentle.”

She regretted
saying the words instantly—his face closed off. “Well, now you know
better. I’ll do anything to protect my family and my lands. If you’ll excuse
me, I have to round up my men. We have a war to fight.”

He turned
away, and Kyra reached out, helpless as to what she should do. “Jake—”

He stopped.
“Don’t worry about yesterday, Kyra. I understand.” He turned and gave her a
shadow of his trademark grin. “I’d thought you were comfortable enough with me
from all the time we spent together, but I’m hot blooded and can admit when
I’ve jumped the gun. Maybe we can start over when all the dust has settled.”

He walked
away, and Kyra was silent; at a loss for words as she watched him go.

****

Kyra returned
home, even though she wanted to rush straight to the village and demand an
explanation from Bryce. But she couldn’t leave Judy with her aunt all
afternoon, and even if she did reach him what would she say? He’d been with her
all night, so she knew he hadn’t participated in the attack. It was entirely
possible he might not have even known about it.

And could she
really blame the wolves for retaliating in this way? Jake was responsible for
the deaths of many of their members. They could have gone into his house and
slaughtered his entire family in their sleep. Instead they’d killed their
sheep—as a warning, a statement of what they could do. Perhaps they’d
hoped Jake would take the hint and leave them alone.

Kyra sighed.
She should have stayed and tried to explain to Jake about them. The shifters
were good people, and Jake was a good man as well. She didn’t think he was
killing off the shifters for greed or glory; he genuinely thought they were a
threat. But what would she have said? How could she have convinced him? She
knew from experience that it took more than a few words to convince a man to
change his ideals, and this was a very touchy subject.

“This is such
a mess,” she muttered, placing her head in her hands. There was a war about to
erupt right outside her doors, and she was stuck here, helpless.

“Kyra?” her
aunt whispered, and Kyra jerked her head up to see that Sylvia’s eyes were
open.

“Oh, Auntie!”
Kyra leaned over and gave her a very gentle hug, inhaling her aunt’s lightly
floral scent for comfort. “I’m so glad you are awake again. Are you feeling
better?”

She patted
Kyra’s back. “I am, a bit, but you sound as though something is troubling you.
What is it, child?”

Kyra pulled
back with a sigh. “It’s… it’s Jake.” She told Sylvia what happened—the
attack on the wolves, their retaliation against Jake, and now Jake’s current
plans to initiate a final strike. “It’s just awful, and I don’t know what to
do.”

Sylvia
reached out to squeeze Kyra’s hand. “You need to go and warn them, child.”

Kyra looked
down at her aunt’s hand. “I can’t leave you here by yourself.”

“I am but one
woman,” her aunt reminded her. “The wolf shifters may not be a large clan, but
they’ve many more numbers than I alone. And… and you are more connected to them
than you realize.”

“What do you
mean?”

Her aunt
blinked. “Your mother… sometimes she could shift into a wolf as well. No one in
the past two generations could.”

Kyra’s jaw
dropped. “My mother… was a
shifter
?”

“It was very
hard for her, living so close to the Whitakers and knowing that at any time
they might discover her and kill her. It was one of the reasons she married
your father—to get as far away as possible.” Her aunt sighed. “But it
seemed that even moving away from the country wasn’t enough. Those rebels… I
believe they might’ve found her out.”

“No.” Kyra
shook her head. “They killed my parents for being loyal to the regime.” The
words sounded more like a denial than conviction, even to her.

Sylvia looked
at her helplessly. “I don’t know for certain. What I do know is that your
mother wrote to me a few weeks before she died, telling me she was worried that
someone might’ve seen her shifting. She did like to take risks, your mother.”
She shook her head, a sad smile curving her lips. “It seems entirely too
coincidental that she died so soon afterward.”

Kyra placed her
head in her hands and sat in silence for a long time, simply digesting everything
she had just learned. Her head swam, and her heart was a battleground of
conflicting emotions. It seemed that everything in her life came back to the
shifter clan—which made sense if she had a shifter ancestor, but how
could that be? Why was it that her mother could shift and hadn’t been called,
but that Kyra didn’t have any extraordinary powers and was? There was much she
didn’t understand, and probably never would.

But there was
one thing she
did
understand, and when she lifted her head again her
eyes were intense with determination. “All this means is that I have even more
reason to go and warn the shifter clan. Too many shifters have died because of
this prejudice and misunderstanding between the two races. I…” she looked down
at her aunt, who was still so frail. “I have to go.”

Her aunt
smiled. “I will be fine, and if for some reason I am not, the lives of many are
worth more than the single life of an old woman.”

Tears pricked
Kyra’s eyes. “Don’t talk like that. You’re going to be alright. I promise.”

Sylvia patted
her hand, and then withdrew. “I’m sure I will be. Now go, child. I will be
waiting.”

****

“You did
what
?”
Bryce asked through clenched teeth.

Charles raised
his eyebrows. “It was a unanimous decision between the five of us.”

Bryce shot
his Alpha a venomous glare. “A decision you made without me, which I had every
right to be privy to! Why did you keep this from me?”

“We thought
it prudent,” Ranulf spoke up, “seeing as how you are intimately involved with a
human. Your judgment is clouded.”

“My judgment
has not been affected by this!”

“Then why are
you so angry?” Gabriel challenged. “Before you’d met that woman, you would have
had no problem with the idea of giving back to the humans. In fact, you would
have been excited about it.”

Bryce looked
away, his heart sinking as Gabriel’s point hit home. “People change, Gabe.”

“Bryce.”
Charles laid a hand on his shoulder. “I understand this puts you in a difficult
position because you don’t want your future mate to reject you. That is why we
did not ask you, so that you would not need to carry around a guilty conscience
when you were around her. And that is why we struck last night, when you were
with her and the blame could not be placed on you.”

Some of the
tension slid from Bryce’s shoulders, and he looked up at his alpha to see
Charles’ eyes warm with compassion. “I understand,” he finally said. “I just
wish there were another way.”

Ranulf
clapped him on the back. “There isn’t.  We need to prepare our men.”

“We are
hoping the humans would abandon their thirst for our blood,” Charles said, “but
taking into account their history of violence, it would be unwise not to be
prepared.”

Bryce nodded.
“I will take care of it.”

****

Bryce
gathered up all of the able-bodied men in the village and assigned them
positions. Most he took with him outside the village, but he left a group of
them at the village, strategically placed within the maze and at the gates. If
the humans somehow managed to make it past them and to the village, Bryce
didn’t want to leave it undefended.

The rest he
took away from the maze, stationing the bulk of them in one place and
scattering scouts to different areas of the forest. If the humans did decide to
come, he wanted to make sure they met in a head-on confrontation.

Several hours
passed, in which Bryce and his men waited, high strung with tension. Many of
them kept busy by checking and rechecking their weapons, sharpening blades and
adjusting straps. The alpha and the remainder of the council finally joined
them after taking care of their business in the village, and Bryce updated them
on the locations of his men and the situation.

“Maybe we
should just pack up and head back,” he finally said, a stress headache pounding
his temples. “We have given the humans plenty of time.”

“The sun will
not set for some hours yet, Bryce,” Charles pointed out. “We are in no hurry.”

Bryce opened
his mouth to argue, but the sound of footsteps had him spinning around—someone
was approaching very quickly. A familiar scent came to him on the
wind—Albert, one of his scouts.

The scout in
question burst through the brush and stopped straight in front of Bryce. “Sir,”
he said, lowering his head respectively to acknowledge both Bryce, Charles, and
the other council members, “the humans are coming. They have a large force, are
heavily armed, and moving at a very quick speed.”

“How long do
we have?” Bryce asked as his men straightened, their hands going to their
weapons.

“Ten, maybe
fifteen minutes,” Albert said. “And they look like they are out for blood.”

Charles and
Bryce exchanged grim looks. “I was afraid this would happen,” Charles said,
drawing his sword. “It seems that human nature is unyielding. Men, prepare
yourselves. We are about to do battle.”

It wasn’t
long before the humans stepped into the large clearing. There was easily two
hundred men—some armed with farming tools, others with swords and knives.
The man who led them was a tall, strapping fellow with shaggy blond hair and
bright blue eyes that flashed with challenge. His mouth twisted into a
half-smirk, half-sneer as he scanned Bryce and his men.

“No crossbow
today?” Bryce taunted, recognizing the man’s scent—this was the man whose
leg he had bitten.

“No teeth and
fur today?” the man countered. “I was expecting to see beasts.”

Charles held
up a hand before Bryce could respond. “It does not appear to matter to you what
guise we wear—you see us as beasts regardless. We come before you like
this to show that there is more to us than fur and fangs, that we think and
feel with the same intensity that you do.”