Destiny Concealed, page 1
Destiny Concealed (Helheim Wolf Pack Series #4)
Copyright © 2023 by Lauren Dawes
www.authorlaurendawes.com
The right of Lauren Dawes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000
E-book: 978-1-922353-81-8
Print: 978-1-922353-80-1
All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity, in any form (electronic, digital, optical or mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the author.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Disclaimer: The material in this book contains graphic language and sexual content and is intended for mature audiences, ages 18 and older.
Cover design by Deranged Doctor Designs
Interior design by Sly Fox Cover Designs
To my wonderful husband Phil: For all your support, love and encouragement. I don’t think I could have done it without you.
AUTHOR NOTE
Readers, please be advised that there may be some triggering scenes contained within this book. I hope that I have given this subject matter the care and sensitivity it deserves.
PROLOGUE
She tracked her prey with sharp eyes. She’d been in the club for a long time, looking for the most suitable male to bring into the fold. The corner booth she had commandeered afforded her the perfect viewing platform from which to visually stalk the many humans drinking, making out and fucking around her.
She crossed her long legs once, drawing the attention of every male within a twenty foot radius. They watched with their mouths open, the scent of their growing lust battering against her skin. Fluffing her hair, she ignored them all, glancing down at her manicured nails to inspect them for chips.
Damn, she had one already.
“Well, hi, baby,” a male drawled. She took her time to look up, her eyes climbing his body slowly. When they finally landed on his face, there was a cocky grin in place. “Can I get you a drink?” he asked in that same slow way.
She narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “I’ve already got one, thanks.”
Despite her answer, he placed his drink down onto the table and lowered himself into the other side of the booth, one arm casually hanging over the back of the seat. His hand lingered on his whiskey glass, his fingers running over the lip.
She studied him. The human had a square jaw covered in fine stubble, his blue eyes were heavy with lust, and his arrogant mouth was turned up slightly in the corner. He would do, but she had to be sure.
“What’s your name?” she asked, propping an elbow up onto the table top and leaning her chin in her cupped palm. The guy’s blue eyes dropped down to the spill of her breasts pressing perilously close to the edge of her Donna Mizani mini dress. He swallowed, and his eyes shot back to hers when she cleared her throat. She arched a brow at him, waiting for his answer.
“Kade,” he replied.
“Kade,” she replied in a voice dripping with sex. He nodded even though she hadn’t asked him a question. “As much as I’d like to talk with you, my seriously deranged ex-boyfriend is in the club, too. I’ve tried breaking up with him, but the guy won’t listen. He stalks me, follows me around.” She leaned in a little closer. “He’s probably watching us right now.”
Kade’s eyes drifted around to the dozen or so men who were actually watching them. “Which one is he? I’ll make sure he leaves you alone.”
She smiled. “The guy over there in the black t-shirt, dancing with the blonde girl. He’s trying to make me jealous,” she pouted. Kade’s eyes fixed on the couple she’d just seen out of the corner of her eye. His top lip lifted off his teeth when the man in question glanced in their direction and frowned.
Reaching across the table, she took hold of his hand and squeezed his fingers carefully. Injecting a little fear into her voice, she said, “But you probably shouldn’t say anything. He’s a Marine. He’d probably just kick your ass.”
Kade growled and stood up, his hands curling into fists. “I can take him,” he spat.
She watched him stalk off toward the couple then sat back and watched the vicious fight that broke out between the two men. Kade was a dirty fighter—going for the low blows at every opportunity. When blood was finally spilled, she felt her wolf padding closer in her mind. Kade beat the other man so badly that he was left barely breathing on the club’s floor. The woman he’d been with was screaming for help as Kade walked back toward her. His fists were covered in blood. There was a triumphant grin on his face along with a dark look of satisfaction in his eyes.
Fresh blood was spattered on his pale blue shirt. Standing, she reached up and thumbed away some blood that had made it onto his chin. Pressing herself against the front of his body, she felt the heat of his body, smelled his sweat and his growing arousal.
“Thank you,” she whispered low into his ear. “Want to get out of here?”
Kade turned and pulled her close to his side. The crowd parted before them. She glanced over her shoulder at the poor bastard who had been on the receiving end of Kade’s rage and felt…nothing. She laughed throatily.
It had been too damn easy.
ONE
Pain.
Agony.
Torture.
Torment.
All these words filled Alex’s head. He thought he was dying. He wished he was, but deep down inside he knew differently. He wasn’t dying. He was being fucking punished for pining after a woman he could never have.
Another roll of intense pain ripped through his body, forcing his breathing to become harsher and harsher with every passing second. The next wave crested, following closely behind the previous one, leaving Alex’s body weak and convulsing.
His eyes cracked open, breaking the crust of sweat and tears that had sealed them shut. The sun was long gone, having probably set hours ago. Alex knew he should have been cold—it was the middle of winter, after all—but the snow around him had turned to slush where it was in direct contact with his body. Lifting a hand to his forehead, he ignored the shake and placed his palm against his damp skin.
He was burning up.
The bite on his right hand had finally stopped bleeding, but not before making the ground around him turn pink. In front of him was a trail of blood that would lead anyone who bothered to look for his sorry ass to the tree he was currently propped up against. He didn’t expect anyone to come looking for him though. He didn’t have any friends left.
Ever since losing Saskia, he had turned into even more of a bastard than before. His subordinates at work avoided his eyes whenever he stalked through the office looking to pick a fight just so he could feel again. There was only one man who would meet his eyes and Alex wasn’t even sure he was human.
Vaile Wolfe seemed to watch his every step, looking at him like he was a stray dog that needed to be put down for being a nuisance. Hell, Alex even felt like he was a stray. Nobody wanted him.
Nobody would notice he was gone.
He winced when another wave of pain traveled up his arm and into his chest. Lifting his hand up close to his face, Alex inspected the wound that he had no doubt would kill him. If he had the strength, he would have gotten his ass up and out of there, but what was the point? He had nothing to live for anymore. What was he going to return home to, an empty apartment? A job he fucking hated? He was living in a world without a sun because he had lost Saskia.
“Yeah, good one, Alex. You’re having a fucking pity party all on your own.”
He heaved a sigh and kicked his legs out. Letting his head drop, he closed his eyes and waited for death to take him…
He woke up with a deep breath, the crisp morning air trickling in through his nostrils. Birds twittered in the trees around him, but instead of enjoying the noise, it was like nails down a chalkboard. He shifted his legs feeling the blood sloshing about in his limbs after being still for so long.
Alex looked down at his chest, surprised to see he was still breathing, still functioning as a human being even though he felt far from it. He squinted against the weak sun filtering past the bare branches above his head, feeling like his retinas were getting a once-over with high-grade sandpaper. Scrunching them up tight, he dropped his chin to his chest and took in a deep breath.
“Christ, even that hurts,” he grumbled to himself since no one else gave a good damn about him. His lungs burned as he filled them with fresh air, settling into a steady simmer when he concentrated too much on the sensation. Lifting a hand to his forehead, he wondered whether the fever had broken overnight. It had.
He took another hit of the fresh morning air, wincing when the scent of death carried into his nostrils. His eyes swivelled around, searching for the source. His gaze eventually dropped down to his mangled hand. Bringing his hand closer to his face, Alex sniffed at the wound.
“Fuck,” he muttered. The thing was infected now. Well, if exposure didn’t kill him, the bite sure as shit would. “Fuck,” he repeated, letting the back of his skull roll back into the tree trunk behind him. It was going to be a long, slow, painful death. His lids slid shut again, waiting for the end to come…
Alex jerked awake; something had woken him. He tried to sit forward only to feel all the muscles in his body seize up. He would have screamed, bu
That was when he heard it: the sound of a soft-footed tread, and it was getting closer. Moving just his eyes, Alex glanced around the clearing and realized that neither the wound nor the cold was going to kill him; it was going to be a goddamn wolf or cougar. He was a sitting duck—crippled, surrounded by blood and dripping in fear. A branch snapped behind him, and he tried to move his hand, finding his fingers had finally unfrozen from their repose. He tried his other hand, able to bend it at the wrist and then the elbow. His body was slowly starting to function again.
Trying to remain calm, he looked around for something to use as a weapon. His gaze landed on his Ka-bar sitting half buried in the snow a few feet away from him. That would be his only choice if he were to defend himself against whatever wild animal had decided he would be an easy meal.
With a grunt of pain, he pushed himself off the tree. He landed on his side. Cold snow pressed against his cheek, sliding down the collar of his shirt. His major muscle groups obviously didn’t want to play nice yet. Forcing his mind on his arms and legs, he coerced them to start moving, his heart rate ratcheting up to oh-fuck speed when he heard the predator getting closer, curious about his obviously impeded movement.
Spreading his fingers out, Alex tensed his muscles and pushed his upper body up off the snow. Dragging his feet underneath him, he attempted to lift himself up off the ground. But his legs had other ideas. With a bitten-back curse, he collapsed onto his hands and knees.
Breathing heavily, he looked up at his target. The handle of his hunting knife was sticking out of the snow like a taunt. His fingers curled into the snow under his palms and he growled in frustration before freezing as a giant off-white paw appeared in his line of sight, not more than an inch away from his knife. With a lump in his throat, Alex’s eyes drifted up until the beast’s giant head was in focus. Its bright orange, intelligent eyes stared back at him.
“You’ve got to be goddamn kidding,” Alex said softly. It would figure that the animal that had given him the wound would come back to finish the job. Ignoring his baser instincts to stay still and lower his eyes, Alex pushed himself up into a stand, propping himself up against a nearby tree trunk when his legs threatened to give way. He stared the animal in the eye, not giving up his right to live just yet.
His legs shook violently, but he tried to hide the shake from this animal that seemed more intelligent than any regular wolf. Opening his arms up wide, he said, “Go on then. Finish me off!”
The wolf stayed where it was, cocking its head to the side in what looked like confusion.
Enraged, Alex lunged for the animal, but it only danced back a few steps and watched as he fell into a heap. He hauled himself upright and glared at the beast with contempt. “Get out of here and let me die,” he spat, leaning back against another tree trunk, defeated. He groaned as a dull throb began in his frontal lobe, his lids sliding shut to stop some of the light still irritating his eyes from getting in. What he was really waiting for was the wolf to just finish him off. He couldn’t understand how one little bite could incapacitate him so completely, other than thinking the infection was moving quickly through his body now.
When Alex opened up his eyes again, the wolf was gone. “Fucking figures,” Alex mumbled, eyes sliding shut once more. “I’m not even worthy of being eaten.” A moment later, though, he was woken by the rich metallic smell of blood. At his feet lay a dead rabbit; its pure white fur was spattered in scarlet blood, its black eyes like buttons buried in all that fur. Alex felt hunger bubble up within him. Falling to his knees, he took the carcass with both hands and brought the torn open belly to his mouth. Warm blood and fresh meat saturated his tongue. His jaws clamped down on the fresh kill, taking it into his body, letting it nourish him.
He groaned around his mouthful, chewing only twice before swallowing. He felt it hit his stomach, and he groaned again at how good that felt. He hadn’t realized just how hungry he had been. When he was down to chewing the bones of the rabbit, he sat back on his heels and looked at his hands. They were red up to his elbows, small chunks of flesh and entrails hanging onto his skin and in the fine hairs on his arms. An indescribable urge overcame him to lick the small morsels from his body, and he didn’t fight it.
He dropped the skin of the rabbit onto the ground beside him and leaned back against a fallen tree, simply staring out into the lonely forest. Fatigue began to weigh heavily on him, forcing his brain to turn off from any higher thinking. Heaving a heavy sigh, Alex let his eyes slide shut.
Saxon shook out his shaggy cream-colored coat and backed away from the clearing. The bastard was still alive—still fighting. He was well into the Change now. Saxon could smell that, could smell his scent all over him. Why had he even done that? Why had he risked his own life to bite the human his sister Saskia had found so charming? He barked a laugh, the noise coming out as a cough in his lupine form. He damn well knew the reason he’d done it.
He’d done it for Saskia.
Saxon looked around the forest. He was far from home. Alex had somehow dragged himself farther and farther away from where Saxon had originally bitten him, getting closer and closer to the territory of the newly extended Alfheim pack boundary to the north. After the final battle, Rhett had allotted the newly freed territories to the other packs, but chose not to take any more for the Helheim pack. They had the largest territory in the first place, so taking more would have just caused problems between the allies.
Saxon’s steady lope ate up the snowy ground. He ran for at least three hours before finally arriving back at his car parked up on the hard shoulder of a fire road deep within the forest. Still panting, he began to change back into his human form.
The tingle started in his toes first, quickly spreading into his feet. When his arms and legs felt the full effect of his change, he grunted in pain, a small whimper breaking free of his throat. His back began to tingle then burn, his pale fur being sucked back into his body with frightening speed.
Frigid air kissed his oversensitized skin, the scream coming out of a human throat this time. Saxon blinked his wolf’s vision from his denim-blue eyes and groaned as he straightened up. Sweat dampened his forehead, his body shaking with the effort of shifting back.
Bracing his arm against the top of his car door, he bowed his head and drew in a few deep breaths through his mouth to settle his pounding heart. The realization of his actions had suddenly swamped him.
Alex was still alive, and instead of letting him die from the Change, he had fed him a rabbit. Saxon shook his head, angry with himself for so many reasons. He had condemned his sister to a loveless mating, and he would punish himself until the end of his days for doing that to her.
Angrily, Saxon opened up the door and pulled out his boxers, jeans and shirt. Slipping them on, he shoved his feet into his work boots and laced them up tightly. He slid on a jacket and got into the car, glancing at the clock when he fired up the ignition.
“Damn it.” He would be late for dinner with Saskia and Ezekiel if he wasn’t careful. Putting the car in gear, he swung it carefully in an arc on the icy road and hit the accelerator, gravel and snow spitting out from his tires as he got traction.
Saskia had moved out of the apartment they had shared together for almost fifteen years, and moved into the little house Ezekiel had bought when they agreed to the mating. It was just what Saskia had always dreamed of living in: a cosy house with a wrap-around porch and window boxes filled with daisies and begonias—at least they would be once spring rolled around again.
Saxon pulled into the shovelled driveway, the grit and salt crunching under his feet as he got out. He breathed out deeply, watching his breath fog up in front of his mouth. When he turned around, Saskia was on the porch, a broad smile on her lips.
