Wolfs choice, p.1
Wolf's Choice, page 1
Wolf's Choice
Time Bites, Book 3
Aimee Easterling
Copyright © 2023 by Aimee Easterling
All rights reserved.
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
Contents
1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11
12. Chapter 12
13. Chapter 13
14. Chapter 14
15. Chapter 15
16. Chapter 16
17. Chapter 17
18. Chapter 18
19. Chapter 19
20. Chapter 20
21. Chapter 21
22. Chapter 22
23. Chapter 23
24. Chapter 24
25. Chapter 25
26. Chapter 26
27. Chapter 27
28. Chapter 28
29. Chapter 29
30. Chapter 30
31. Chapter 31
32. Chapter 32
33. Chapter 33
34. Epilogue
35. Moon Stalked Excerpt
Chapter 1
If I’d owned a business card, it would have read: “Spirit. Temporary inhabitant of a human body. Recovering supervillain.” Trouble was, dumpster divers don’t tend to print business cards.
Yes, switching from world domination to survival mode took me down a notch. Then, right about the time I got the hang of caring for the needy meat suit I inhabited, the past decided to rear its ugly head.
Like most evenings, I was pushing my shopping cart full of belongings toward the bridge I considered home sweet home when the gaze first burned the back of my neck. That wasn’t out of the ordinary. I’d noted watching eyes before.
But in the past they’d always been creepy, not caressing. This non-physical touch, in contrast, wrapped me up in all the warmth my threadbare coat lacked.
Unfortunately, when I turned and stared across the busy city street to find the source of today’s gaze, the eyes barely hidden behind a car’s windshield turned out to belong to someone I recognized. Not just recognized—had been doing my level best to avoid for weeks.
Drake was a werewolf who had zero reason to wish me well and a dozen reasons to punish me for various episodes of murder and memory theft. His mate was even less likely to join my fan club, and she was currently making moves to exit the vehicle. Beside her, Drake clenched his chiseled jaw, dark brows lowering. His gaze became yet more intense.
And even though running was the obvious reaction, my wobbly muscles tried to tell me I should stay where I was and take in Drake more fully. He was intriguing, tantalizing…
Squashing the urge, I turned down an alley like a rat darting into the first shred of shadow, a stream of questions flowing through my head.
Where can I hide? How can I get there without being followed? Why did Drake’s eyes sear through my skin so pleasurably that I didn’t want to run away?
I failed to realize I’d left my shopping cart behind until I was already on the first step of a five-story fire escape. Bad news since, at the very bottom of the shopping cart, I’d also abandoned my sword. The mainstay of my existence. Without it, I might cease to exist.
Still, I couldn’t double back now. Not with Tru in the alley behind me, her silence more ominous than if she’d shouted imprecations.
Regret at what I’d done to her made me peer back over my shoulder even though doing so risked a stumble and fall down to pavement that this human body wouldn’t be able to handle. To my surprise, my pursuer was no longer pursuing. Instead, she was heading back the way she’d come.
She’d turned away, but a flicker of movement from the other end of the alley materialized into her mate, who must have gone the long way around to cut me off. Drake was tall, lithe, and darkly handsome...and his job involved execution and torture. No wonder his gray eyes bored into mine like coals that don’t look hot but, on contact, burned.
Strangely, though, the shot of emotion that burst through me at the moment wasn’t fear. My mouth filled with saliva; my heart pounded so hard it sounded like a snare drum. And this time I couldn’t force myself to turn away as my gaze roamed over my pursuer from head to foot.
Straight hair fell across his forehead, swaying slightly in the breeze. Muscles flexed beneath a suit perfectly tailored to show off his physique. And even though he wasn’t sprinting, his long legs ate up the distance far faster than I’d covered it.
Right. I’m being chased. No time to paint a mental picture.
Ignoring whatever weirdness was going on in my body, I finally managed to rip my gaze away so I could speed the rest of the way up the rickety fire escape. And at the rooftop, I didn’t pause to soak in the view or push wind-whipped hair out of my face. Instead, I forced a brain that wanted to skip around between ten thousand erratic thoughts to focus on the here and now.
Tru was tenacious, so I doubted she’d given up on catching me. Likely she’d thought of another way up to roof level and was planning to cut me off if I traveled in the obvious direction back toward my shopping cart. That way, buildings sat close together, the air space between them easy to hop over if you didn’t look down and did keep your nerve.
So I turned left instead of right. Took a running leap and surged across a gap I wasn’t so sure my human body could handle.
It almost couldn’t. I landed hard, knees banging into the sharp edge, feet dangling into space, hands scrabbling for purchase against smooth roof metal.
Meanwhile, the wind picked up, buffeting me and trying to knock loose my already precarious balance. Sweat slicked my fingers and my breath scraped raw in my throat. I was afraid to move for fear I’d fall.
And the world slammed into sharp focus. This body wanted to survive. My soul, such as it was, wanted to stay grounded in flesh even if that flesh was currently screaming pain from knees and elbows. I ached where muscles tensed into cramping, yet every gasping inhale felt like a gift.
One I might not hold onto for much longer. Because I was slipping, the weight of my lower body carrying me down across the slanted rooftop. Dislodged debris scattered beneath my desperate fingers, tiny pebbles plunking one by one onto hard ground far below.
I’d be down there joining that debris soon.
Then a voice carried across the gap. It had to be Tru’s mate, but his rumble was musical rather than raspy the way I remembered. The shivers quaking through me inexplicably lessened even though Drake was no less dangerous than the threat of gravity.
Meanwhile, his words made no sense when he had every reason to wish me ill. “Kami. Focus. There’s a vent three inches from your left hand. You don’t even need to turn your head. Just feel for it then grab hold.”
A trick. If I’d been fully kami, I would have believed that easier. But his gaze on my back was as warm as the dirty sleeping bag I’d left behind in my shopping cart. As soothing as the wandering cat who’d curled up against my belly two nights prior.
For one long moment, I wavered. Then I moved my hand.
The vent was cold and almost sharp enough to cut through my skin. But I didn’t care. It was solid, unlike the debris that had turned the rest of the roof slippery. The handhold provided enough leverage and stability so I could scramble away from the drop. Could find my feet and stand.
Not that there was any safe way off this building. My throbbing legs warned against trying to repeat the same leap I’d recently endured, even if a werewolf wasn’t currently blocking that exit. Meanwhile, the building opposite the one where Tru’s mate stood was higher up and even further away than the one where I’d started.
To make matters worse, the roof I’d made it onto wasn’t meant to be walked across. So there was no door down into the interior. No fire escape running up the outside.
Which left two other sides of the building as potential exit routes. One dropped straight down to the alley, the other to a main thoroughfare. There were no handy awnings to soften the fall.
My legs transitioned from throbbing to full-on shaking. Tru’s mate might have saved me. But he now had me quite thoroughly trapped.
“I know the outlook appears bleak,” my pursuer said, words just loud enough to hear over the wind. “Reminds me of the time I took the bet that I could stay on the back of a water buffalo for thirty seconds. Not a good idea, just in case you’re considering giving it a try.”
Despite the fact that escape should have been my top and only priority, my gaze was drawn to Drake without permission. His face was square, strong, and perfectly symmetrical except for a single dimple on his left cheek that wasn’t mirrored on his right. Somehow, that one small indentation managed to counteract the whole alpha-werewolf scariness factor, turning him irresistible instead of terrifying.
Warm squiggliness rebounded inside my belly and I finally realized what it equated to. Attraction. What a strange thing to succumb to at a time like this.
I frowned, trying to understand how I’d missed that dimple while throwing roadblock after roadblock between Drake and his mate a month ago. How had it failed to rope me in then the way it was doing now?
Because even though Drake’s words were clearly a ploy to keep me talking instead of fleeing, I was the one who kep
His gaze grew even warmer. The dimple deepened. “Believe me, I can last a good long while.” Then his smile softened. “Let me guess. I’m the only one with my mind in the gutter and you just want to hear about the water buffalo? I’ll tell you this much—I definitely didn’t win that bet.”
While barely scraping by in human skin this past month, I’d found it impossible to turn on the charm that had won me so many free passes as a disembodied kami. But now I could feel my own dimples—two of them, perfectly symmetrical—emerging despite cold, hunger, and the blood oozing from scraped skin on my knees. “So what you’re saying is, you’re no good at being on top?”
“Top, bottom, if you like it, I like it.” His shrug brought my attention to broad shoulders, made me imagine how good it might feel to press myself up against his solidity. To have him kiss away the pain in my knees and elbows. To pull me in close and…
Movement caught my attention behind Drake’s left shoulder. Tru was emerging on a rooftop several buildings down just like I’d expected she would. Back when I was thinking rationally, before flirting turned my head.
Adrenaline flooded me. Drake had made me forget he wasn’t my sole pursuer, or maybe my human body had done most of the work for him. Whatever the reason for my lapse, sharp reality now whipped away every ounce of pleasure. Slowly, hoping the motion wouldn’t be noticed, I began sidling along the edge of the building, no destination in mind other than away.
“Don’t.” Tru’s mate took a step in the same direction I was traveling and that clinched it. He’d been toying with me just like I used to toy with humans. Trying to distract me while he came up with a plan that would end with me in handcuffs.
Or worse.
So I let myself consider the other way off the building. The way I’d tried so hard to avoid even thinking about.
I was nearly at the edge overlooking the main street now. The edge that would at least add drama to upcoming sacrifice.
“Stop!” Drake’s eyes were no longer warm. Instead, they were ice, demanding obedience.
I didn’t. I stepped over the edge, falling backward and staring up into that handsome werewolf’s face as I plummeted.
Humanity shed off me like a snake’s skin. And in reaction, Drake’s face contorted in a way that somehow managed to look like fear for me rather than fury at me. His arms reached out even though he was nowhere near me, his long fingers clutched at thin air.
The same thin air I was disintegrating into. I didn’t strike the ground so much as disembody inches from it. My last glimpse of Drake faded into the gray emptiness of the spirit realm.
Which meant I’d have to steal memories to regain flesh and solidity. The worst part? Pure kami again, I didn’t really care.
Chapter 2
Around me, the spirit realm stretched out as a still, featureless landscape. Faintly glowing wisps of fog drifted through an otherwise empty plane, each one a material manifestation of unclaimed energy. Long ago, when I was a starving kami with no sword to ground me, I’d followed wisps like these for hours before giving up on catching what could provide sustenance but wasn’t worth the chase.
Now, hunger was the least of my worries. Because travel here wasn’t bogged down by the laws of physics—well it was for me, but not for others. Spirits could materialize right beside me while my only escape was a slow, human plod.
The audible pop of someone arriving sent me skittering sideways. Human instinct prompted me to fling my arms up in front of my face even though that wouldn’t shield me from being maliciously punctured.
Punctured and turned into wisps like the ones I’d formerly hunted. If the rents were few and shallow, a spirit might simply lose some of her energy to such an attack. But those who lost too much too quickly disappeared into the void.
That danger didn’t appear to be facing me today, however. “You’re lucky,” the newcomer observed, poking at me with words instead of claws.
“Not right now, Tall Nose,” I answered, dropping my arms to my sides and starting back toward where I’d left my shopping cart. Because Tall Nose wasn’t precisely a friend but he wasn’t an enemy either. Instead, he was what I would have been if I’d made a different choice years ago.
As we traveled side by side, the repercussions of that choice were striking. I appeared entirely human all the way down to my plodding footsteps. Tall Nose, in contrast, floated along beside me with gentle flaps of his wings, featherless arms crossed while his beak turned up in disgust.
He’d pulled ahead while I was assessing our differences, and now he adjusted his pace to match mine even as he mocked me with a yawn followed by pointed words. “You don’t think you’re lucky? How many of us can cross to the human realm so easily?”
I might have been able to cross to the human realm, but I couldn’t zip toward my sword and get there before the garbage man sent my possessions through a trash compactor. Fear about that possibility made me engage with Tall Nose when I probably shouldn’t have. “Being human isn’t all shits and giggles,” I told him. “There are repercussions. I have to steal to solidify my body on the other side.”
Tall Nose didn’t need to breathe in the spirit realm any more than I did, but he still managed a snort that erupted loud as a bullhorn. Flinching, I spun in a complete circle to see if any other spirits had been attracted by the sound. In particular, there was a hag I’d been dodging for months now, one who wasn’t entirely pleased to have Japanese spirits on her turf.
Luckily, the foggy landscape around us was just as empty as it had been a moment earlier. And now Tall Nose found his words again. “Repercussions for humans maybe. None for you when you cross over, or for me if you take me with you.” He batted his eyelashes, a gesture that looked nowhere near as appealing as he thought since long hairs brushed his shiny upper mandible like spider legs dancing. “But you’re stressed about your sword. I can see that. How about I travel ahead and check on it for you? No charge.”
There was always a charge with a tengu like Tall Nose, so I gritted my teeth, shook my head, and kept wafting my immaterial feet no faster than a human could have jogged. It was maddening to be slowed down in kami form. Maddening enough to make me consider what Tall Nose had suggested.
Could I give him a solid body in the human realm the next time I transitioned? I’d have to steal more memories to make it possible, likely stronger memories that would impact the donor more badly. But Tall Nose would owe me if I gave him a leg up. An ally could mean a lot.
Right now, though, I had a more pressing issue to deal with. Because I rounded the corner, took a quick step sideways into the human realm, and found my shopping cart untouched. Tru and Drake were absent. A major relief.
Unfortunately, both cart and sword were bound to remain untouched until I found another memory to seize hold of and turned myself tangible again. In my current kami form, I could feign a physical appearance in the human realm, something even Tall Nose could manage on occasion. But I couldn’t lift the sword and take it with me. Nor could I push the shopping cart into an out-of-the-way corner to protect it from those with more physical abilities than I currently possessed.
Which meant anyone could come along and grab my sword. Being separated from the blade wasn’t a problem, but if it was damaged? I wasn’t precisely sure what would happen. Best guess—the result would be akin to being punctured and forced to watch all my energy seep out.
“If you’d given me a body,” Tall Nose observed, popping into the human realm beside me, “I could be moving that for you right now.”
His form was hazier than mine while benefiting from wings that let him rise up so high a mortal’s neck would have had to strain to look at him. Mine didn’t protest as I peered directly up above my head. “See anybody?”
“Nope.”
Neither did I, no one on foot at least. Cars continued to rush past as day descended into twilight, but I didn’t trust Tall Nose enough to leave him guarding my sword while I leapt into a speeding vehicle and stole a memory. Not when I might wreck the car while re-embodying, that murder dogging my nightmares along with the others when I ended up back in flesh.
Luckily, time wasn’t so imperative in kami form. Cold and hunger didn’t touch me either. And now that I was physically beside my sword, I could likely talk my way out of danger if anyone tried to mess with the weapon.
