Chapter 15

Rachel

I was dizzy. Wolf was dizzy. We were mid-shift, and our collective head was spinning like a top.

“Rachel, you need to calm down and finish your shift,” Megan told me. Her tone told me that she was telling me something important, but Wolf couldn’t quite figure it out, and I was too occupied trying to stay upright to pay her much mind. Suddenly, what felt like a tether in my mind snapped and a bleak howl rose in my throat. I could do nothing to hold it in, and a wild, heathen noise erupted, filling the cabin with a haunting, terrifying sound.

“Not good, not good,” Megan chanted somewhere in the background. My back arched and all else was lost as I didn’t so much surrender to the primal feelings coursing through me, as I succumbed to them. Horror filled us as Wolf and I realized that something deep, dark, and base was clawing its way up from the depths of me and was taking me down, dragging me under. I shrieked, fear snaking up my belly and wringing a desperate wail from my throat.

“Rachel.” That voice. His voice. Calm stole over me and my heart ceased its frantic beating. The darkness receded and Wolf and I were left quaking and shivering as the frigid tentacles of darkness that had a strangle hold on my heart released and went back to the deep.

Shaking my head out, Wolf and I righted ourselves. My vision cleared and I saw Kyp, white as a sheet, standing in the doorway with Sam behind him. I whined, pacing forward and bending my head to rub against Kyp’s knees. My senses began returning to normal and I perused the room, locating Megan.

“I’m here, Rach.” She made eye contact with me, then Sam. “Sam, she didn’t react to my dominance at all.” Megan was the equivalent of a Beta, since Sam was, and he was the one that bit her. Wolf cocked her head. Kyp was low man on the totem pole, therefore, I was that equivalent, too. Wolf should have reacted to Megan’s dominance, but I’d felt nothing beyond the wild fear that took hold when the darkness tried to catch us.

“How is that possible?” Kyp asked. My wolf eyes caught when Sam’s expression changed.

“Let’s see if Dad is home yet,” was all Sam answered.