The 'Ex'-Mate Hunt (Shattered Wolf Book 2), page 1
The “Ex”-Mate Hunt
Shattered Wolf (Book Two)
A Soulbound Shifters Novel
Riley Storm
Copyright© 2022
The “Ex”-Mate Hunt
Riley Storm
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic means without written permission from the author. The sole exception is for the use of brief quotations in a book review. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real.
All sexual activities depicted occur between consenting characters 18 years or older who are not blood related.
Edited by Olivia Kalb – https://www.oliviakalbediting.com/
Cover Designs by Jacqueline Sweet Covers
Contents
The “Ex”-Mate Hunt
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Other Books by Riley Storm
About the Author
Chapter One
I knew what was going to happen. And I couldn’t stop it.
Maybe this time will be different, I tried to convince myself as I approached the farmhouse, the two-story affair boxed in on three sides by a wide porch covered by a sloped roof.
I knew this house. I knew who it belonged to. And I couldn’t save them.
“Angus!” I called into the night. “Get in the basement. Lock yourself and Martha in there. Now!”
I could only hope that maybe this time, the elderly farmer and his wife would hear me. That they would go to the basement and barricade themselves inside. Maybe this time, I could save them.
“This isn’t how it happened,” I growled at the night sky, glaring at the stars as they glittered in picture-perfect representation of their true locations. “I was there. It didn’t happen like this.”
Out in the night, a wolf howled. And then another and another after that. The pack was on the move. My pack.
The lights were on in the farmhouse, casting a yellowish glow across the porch, which spilled out onto the gravel driveway. In the yard, grass jutted up here and there, the blades running along the porch base in dire need of a trimming. Stones crunched underfoot as I stalked the house.
I usually tried to run inside and warn Angus and Martha. To tell them to go into the basement. They always argued with me. Fought against my demands until it was too late.
Until he arrived.
A large white and gray wolf, with blood dripping from his jowls and dried brownish-red spots clumping fur down his flank. A hideous visage. I never knew where the blood was from. Or who it belonged to.
“Damn you, Vince,” I shouted. “Let me go. Stop this. I am not coming back to you. It’s over!”
My head pulsed with the touch of our Soulbond. He was there, warping it, twisting my mind. I fought back, gritting my teeth. I would not let him control me. I would not.
“This is my dream,” I hissed into the night, reaching out, trying to take control of it. “Mine. And I remember what happened in real life. I was there, Vince. You can try to pretend like it didn’t happen. But I know how it really went down. Don’t you?”
Wolves howled. They were closer now. Much closer.
I grinned in their direction. “I hope you remember, Vince. Because I kicked your ass!”
Hatred pushed through our connection, and wolves burst out of the night, surrounding me as the dream rippled and changed. The pack was there. All of them. I stared in horror, recognizing two older, tan-colored wolves. I knew their markings. The scar on the male’s snout that he got in childhood that had never fully healed despite the power of his shifter blood.
“Dad?” I gasped. “No, that’s impossible. It can’t be.”
My parents lived on a farm on the far side of the pack’s land. We didn’t talk much.
The wolf with the scar snarled at me, baring his teeth.
“This isn’t you, Dad. Nor you, Mom,” I said to the slightly smaller wolf clinging close to his side. “You’re not here. You weren’t there when this happened. I know that. This is a dream.”
But it didn’t feel like a dream. The gravel was random and pointed under my feet. A slow breeze tugged at the loose strands of my crimson hair, though it wasn’t strong enough to move the thick braid that fell to my lower back. My pale skin puckered slightly at the chill in the air, the feeling rippling over my entire body.
It was a dream, but not a dream. My palms were sweaty, my knees weak. I lifted my arms, struggling against the weight of them. They’d never been that heavy before.
“This is a dream!” I screamed at the wolves who had surrounded me.
I spun at the sound of a door opening behind me.
“Kaycee? What on Ear—” Farmer Angus’ question ended in a strangled cry as he took in the pack of wolves standing outside his back door.
“Go back inside!” I shouted, pointing.
“But, Kaycee.”
“Do it!” I said, screaming, hoping to drive home the point. “Please. Just go inside. Don’t try to do anything.”
Angus looked ready to protest.
“Get inside!” I barked.
The elderly farmer retreated inside, and I immediately swung my attention back to the wolves, one white and gray beast in particular standing out to me.
“Get out of my head, Vince,” I growled, walking forward to the Alpha of the pack, my mate. Ex-mate. “We’re done. Over.”
We’re Soulbound. We will never be done.
The words filled the air, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.
“Yes, we will,” I ground out. “This is my dream. You don’t control it.”
The dreamscape rippled, and a pair of wolves leaped at me. I turned to bat them away, using my Lycan-enhanced strength to strike them. Only my attack wasn’t the strong, powerful swat I’d expected. My arms bounced weakly off a wolf’s flank, and they bore me to the ground.
I struggled as they pierced my skin with their teeth to hold me still.
“Damn you!” I shrieked as the door opened again.
Angus came back outside with his shotgun.
“Git!” he yelled at the wolves. “Go. Go on, get out. Shoo! Begone with you!”
“Angus, go inside!” I howled. “Please. Just go inside! Go back inside and close the door, please!”
The farmer raised his gun into the air and fired it. “Begone!” he shouted as the crack of the weapon echoed out into the night, the tremendous boom assaulting everyone’s ears.
“Noooo!” I wailed as two wolves leaped at Angus.
The elderly farmer cried out in surprise, still in the act of reloading. The wolves bore him to the ground, teeth sinking in deep. I struggled against the wolves holding me down as the farmer was ripped to shreds by the vicious canines, his cries quickly trailing off.
I reached inside myself. Where was my wolf? My Lycan body? I needed its strength, its speed. Maybe I could save him. Why wasn’t it coming to me?
“Angus?”
A strong but aged feminine voice called the farmer’s name from inside the house as the wolves tore him apart. “Angus, are you okay?”
“Martha! No!”
Two more wolves darted inside through the open door, and more cries filled the night until they cut off with terrible finality. There was no doubt about what I would find if I ever entered that charnel house of horrors.
“No! No! Oh, god. Please, no. Don’t do this. Don’t do this to me!” I sobbed.
I hadn’t been able to stop them. I had failed. I had failed. I had failed.
Boom.
The entire world shook around us.
Nobody else seemed to take notice. The wolves continued to kill the farmers, forcing me to watch. Vince stood above it all, lording over me, a statuesque victor, imposing his wil
Boom.
“Kaycee!”
A deep voice rolled over the landscape. I struggled to see who it was, to turn and look, but the voice came from everywhere. Neither Vince nor the pack reacted. They couldn’t hear it.
Boom.
“Kaycee, wake up!”
Wake up. Wake. Up. Why would I wake up? I was awake. I was—
No. No, I was sleeping. This was all a nightmare. A dream. A horrible, twisted dream. But it wasn’t real! At some point, I’d forgotten that. I’d become caught up in the horribleness of it all.
“I’m waking up now,” I told Vince. “I’m not—”
With an abruptness I wasn’t ready for, the dream cut off. Everything went blank, and then a moment later, my eyes opened. Had I woken myself up? Something felt off, like I hadn’t been in control.
I sat upright, the shredded remains of a gray blanket draped over my body where I’d been sleeping on the cold wooden floor.
“Kaycee?” a male voice called from the door.
It was Johnathan. Johnathan Aldridge, Alpha of the Seguin pack.
I remembered then. I was staying in his house. I was safe. Angus and Martha were safe. I had saved them that night. They were alive and well.
“Just a dream,” I whispered, pulling the tattered remnants of the blanket closer. “Just a dream.”
I didn’t know how many more times I could let myself have that dream, though. I needed to do something about it.
Chapter Two
There was more knocking at the door.
“I’m fine,” I called, my voice raspy. Had I been screaming in my sleep? It must have woken him. “Please, go back to bed.”
“You aren’t fine. Are you decent? May I come in?”
I sighed. It seemed unlikely he would go away before checking on me. I appreciated his concern, but right then, I didn’t want his pity. He always tried to hide it, but I still saw it reflected in the royal blue of his eyes.
“Kaycee?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m here,” I said, gripping the blanket tighter as I scooted back to lean against the foot of the bed. I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts, but they weren’t exactly thick and covering. The shredded blanket would have to do. “Come in.”
The thick wooden door creaked as he slipped into my room. His gaze took in my position and the evidence of my dream clutched to my chest.
“Another nightmare?” he said, his bare feet padding across the floor, a squeaky floorboard the only thing betraying his movement.
I shrugged. “I’ll be fine.”
“Will you?” he asked softly. “Kaycee, they’re getting worse.”
He was right. I just didn’t want to admit it. Something, something, I’m not stubborn.
“This one ended differently,” I said.
“Different, how?”
Johnathan crouched next to me before dropping onto his rear to lean against the bed's footboard beside me. He kept some space between us. Not much, but just enough to be proper about it.
I just didn’t care. I leaned against his shoulder. This late at night—what time was it even?—I couldn’t be bothered with rules. I was shaken, and he was there to comfort me. I needed that comfort.
“At the end,” I whispered, staring up at the vaulted ceiling in the bedroom he’d offered me as I took advantage of his hospitality. Something I’d been doing for a week now. “I heard you in the dream.”
“Nightmare.”
“Yeah. I heard you in the nightmare. Your knocks as well. I remembered I was dreaming. I told him I was going to wake up. Normally, he fights, tries to protest things like that. Tells me I’m not dreaming.”
“Not this time?”
I shook my head. “This time, I didn’t even finish speaking. It was like it cut off.”
“You probably just woke yourself up extra swiftly.”
“Maybe.”
We sat in silence for some time after that. I sank into the protective embrace of his presence, though I didn’t allow myself to get so comfortable as to fall back asleep. There wouldn’t be any of that. Not anymore.
“Other than the nightmares, how are you doing?” he asked.
“You know how I’m doing,” I said, my head still on his shoulder. “We see each other every day. I’m fine. I’ve recovered my strength; I can shift at will. Sometimes you’re not the only one who doesn’t run away when they see my Lycan form.”
“That will change in time,” Johnathan said. “They just need time to adjust. For so long, we were taught that Lycans were the enemy. Demons to be killed on sight. Everyone was raised with those stories.”
“I know. I grew up on them, too,” I said, thinking back to the tales my father told around the campfire. Of how the Lycans, a hybrid form between man and wolf, would come in the middle of the night to steal away misbehaving children. We’d run around in our youth, playing “Who’s the Lycan?” and running away shrieking whenever the “Lycan” would reveal themselves.
A week ago, a shifter god had told me they were real. That I was one. And that to have Lycan blood was one of the highest blessings a shifter could have.
“How am I supposed to be one of the Royal Bodyguard for the gods when I can’t even keep myself safe while sleeping?”
“You’ll be fine,” he said, patting my leg. “I know you can do this.”
“I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do,” I said. “He explained it all so quickly, but then he left.”
“His wife bore him a child,” Johnathan pointed out. “A god child. A godling.”
He started chuckling.
“What?”
“Oh, nothing serious,” he said, shaking his head. But his chest continued to bounce slightly.
“What’s so funny?” I asked, trying to remain calm.
“Absolutely nothing to do with you,” he said. “I was just thinking. This brings a whole new meaning to the term being a godparent. Imagine if someone close to Vir and Dani had a child and asked the gods to be godparents?”
I smirked a little. It was funny. “But why do the gods have bodyguards? That makes no sense. They’re faster and stronger than I am.”
“I don’t know either,” Johnathan said, becoming serious once more. “I’m sure once things settle down with their newborn, Vir will open the Direen, and you can ask him all the questions you want about it.”
“Maybe,” I said. “I’ve never been to his realm before. What’s it like?”
“White,” he said. “Lots and lots of white. Stone underneath, the sky is bright. Then there’re the Gates of the Direen. Giant stone walls with these two massive gates set into them, designed to help close the realm when Vir wants no intruders.”
“Like now,” I said.
“Like now.”
I sighed.
“What?”
“I can’t do this anymore,” I said quietly.
“Do what?”
“This.” I tapped the side of my head. “I can’t handle it anymore. The noise. The constant pulse. The reminder. He’s in my head. All the time.”
“Your Soulbond, you mean.”
I nodded. “I feel Vince through it. All the time. It’s quiet right now, but normally, it’s always there. A reminder that I’m linked to him. I can’t do it. I need silence. I need it gone. Like you.”
Johnathan went very, very still. “You don’t know what it’s like,” he said stiffly.
“I know what this is like, though,” I whispered. “I don’t want to have nightmares for the rest of my life. I can’t even sleep on the bed because I’ll rip the sheets and the mattress to pieces if I do. I wake up the entire house screaming. It can’t go on like this. I didn’t choose this. I want to be able to choose.”
“Don’t rush this.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I’ve spent the past week thinking about it. You’re doing fine without your Soulbond. Why couldn’t I?”
Johnathan’s Soulbond had been cut by a god. By Vir, the last of the remaining elder shifter gods.
“It’s different,” he said.
“Is it?” I sat up straight, looking at him, meeting his eyes, my hard green against his deep blue. “I’m miserable because of it. He tried to kill me, to have me killed. He torments my sleep and wants me dead. Vince turned my entire pack against me. What more should I let him do before I decide I don’t want to be with him anymore?”
Johnathan was silent.
