Prince of Wolves
By: Quinn Loftis
Published by Quinn Loftis
© 2011 Quinn Loftis
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher
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Table of Contents:
Chapter1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 1
Jacque Pierce sat in the window seat in her bedroom, watching her neighbors' house across the street. I'm not really being nosy, she thought to herself. Just curious.
“Yeah,” she snorted. Only if you call curious having your eyes glued to your neighbors' house like a hound on the hunt. Oh, well. I can call a spade 'a spade' tomorrow morning, she told her conscience.
The Henrys were having a foreign exchange student stay with them this year. They didn’t have any children of their own and Jacque didn’t know if that was by choice or because they weren’t able to have children. Either way, Jacque was here to get the nitty-gritty on the situation and report to her best friends afterward.
So here she sat, scoping out the neighbors house with her lights turned off and blinds cracked just enough to see. To top off her James Bond experience, she even had binoculars! Now if she only had the nifty background music to go along her shenanigans.
She'd been sitting in her window for an hour and was just about to give up when a black stretch limo pulled to the curb. Now isn’t this strange? she thought. A foreign exchange student arriving in a limo? She put the binoculars to her face and adjusted them to get a better look, settling them over the passenger door to see who would emerge. She knew this was a little much, but honestly, in a town of 700 there just wasn’t a whole lot of excitement and Jacque would take it where she could get it.
The driver got out of the limo to open the back door, but it was already opening, and the boy who stepped out of that limo had to be the most beautiful guy she'd ever seen. And that was only his profile. Wow, I mean wow, was all Jacque could think. Jacque couldn’t even imagine what his entire face must have looked like. He was tall, probably six foot one or so, and his hair was jet black. It was longer on top and she could tell that he had bangs that fell across his face. They swept to the left, partially covering that eye. He had broad shoulders and, from what she could see of his profile, high cheek bones, a straight nose, and full lips. She realized her mouth had dropped open and she was all but drooling over this guy. She shut it and watched as he and his driver conversed. It all seemed very formal until the driver hugged the boy with obvious deep affection. He must be more than just his driver, Jacque thought.
Suddenly, the boy turned as if he had heard what she was thinking and looked straight at her window, straight at her. Jacque froze, unable to look away from the mesmerizing blue eyes that held her. All her thoughts seemed to fade into the distance and she thought she heard the words: “At last, my Jacquelyn.”
Jacque shook her head, trying to clear the haze that had filled it. After she came to her senses from the intense stare, she recapped in her mind what his face had looked like. She was right about the cheekbones, nose, and lips. What she wasn’t prepared for was that his crystal blue eyes now seemed to glow in the moon light; the hair that fell across his forehead and over his eye only added to his mysteriousness. Overall he had a very masculine, very beautiful face.
The shirt he was wearing was black and, thanks to her handy dandy binoculars, she was able to see that it fit tightly and showed off a muscular chest and flat stomach. He had a black leather biker jacket on, but past that she couldn’t see because the car was in the way. She imagined his legs were every bit as nice as the rest of him.
When she looked back at the street, the mysterious guy was walking into the Henrys' house. As she saw the door close she heard the voice again.
“Soon.”
Jacque sat there for a few minutes, trying to get her brain to work again. Everything seemed so hazy. After blinking what felt like a thousand times, she pulled herself together, picked up the phone, and dialed Jen’s number.
Three rings later Jen answered. “What’s the word?”
Jacque took a slow breath and said “I think you better come over.”
“I’m there, chick. See ya in 5,” Jen answered and hung up.
Jacque grinned to herself. It was great to have a friend you could always depend on to be there when you needed her.
Jacque picked up the phone again and called Sally, who answered after only one ring. She had obviously been diligently manning the phone, waiting for Jacque to call with details on the latest small town drama.
“Jen is on her way over,” Jacque said. “I need you to come too. We need to talk.”
“Okay,” Sally simply said and hung up.
Fifteen minutes later, the three friends were gathered on Jacque’s bedroom floor, hot chocolate in hand, because how can you have a girl powwow without hot chocolate?
“So fill it and spill it,” Jen said.
“Okay,” Jacque said, taking a deep breath. “So I’m sitting in my window seat, shades cracked, lights off, binoculars in hand…”
“Binoculars? Really, you honestly were using binoculars?” Sally interrupted.
“Well, you said you wanted details, so I was giving you details,” Jacque defended.
“Oooh, did you have the Mission Impossible sound track playing in the background? Cuz that would have been spy-tastic,” Jen said enthusiastically.
“Actually,” Jacque said distractedly, “I was thinking more James Bond-ish. You know, with the whole stakeout thing…”
“No, huh-uh. That would be more like Dog the Bounty Hunter type stuff. But you couldn’t be Beth, ‘cause you’re not stacked enough on top. You would have to be baby Lisa…” Jen rattled on.
“You are so, so not comparing me to Dog the Bounty Hunter’s daughter right now. And why are we talking about this anyway, because it is sooooo NOT the point!” Jacque growled in frustration.
“Spy analogies aside, I was sitting there about an hour and then a black stretch limo pulled up in front of the Henrys' house.”
“A limo? What foreign exchange student shows up in a limo?” Jen asked.
“I know, right? That’s what I was thinking,” Jacque stated. “I assure you the limo was of no consequence once the person inside stepped out. Ladies, I saw the most gorgeous guy to ever grace my line of sight.”
??
?When you say gorgeous,” Jen started, “are we talking Brad Pitt boyish good looks, or Johnny Depp make ya want to slap somebody?”
“No, we’re talking Brad and Johnny need to bow down and recognize,” Jacque answered. “But, aside from him being dropped off in a limo and aside from the fact that he was a walking Calvin Klein ad, it began to get strange at this point in our story, boys and girls,” Jacque said in a spooky voice.
“Like it wasn’t strange already?” Sally asked.
“Well...okay, strange-er. Just as he was about to walk up the path, he suddenly turned and looked straight at me, as if he could sense I was watching him! Like, he looked right in my eyes. I literally couldn’t move. It was like I was mesmerized by him or something. And then we entered the world of 'what the hell.' As he was staring at me, I heard a voice in my head and it said 'at last, my Jacquelyn.' Then, as he turned to go in the house, I heard the voice again. It said, 'soon'.”
Jacque stared expectantly at her two best friends, waiting for them to tell her she’d finally jumped off the deep end. But they just sat there, staring back at her.
“Well?” Jacque asked.
Finally, Jen stirred. Taking a deep breath in, she looked down at her empty hot chocolate mug and said, “We’re gonna need more hot chocolate.”
“Agreed,” Sally and Jacque replied at the same time.
Once Jen had returned with three fresh mugs of hot chocolate and Oreo cookies, she said, “So, let me see if I’m catching what you’re throwing. Hottie exchange student drives up in a limo, steps out, rocks your world, looks into your eyes, and speaks to you in your head? Am I getting the gist of it here?”
Jacque nodded her head, sheepishly looking at the floor. “I mean, I guess it was his voice in my head. It could've been a long lost dead relative who decided to speak to me the moment that hottie looked into my eyes.”
Jen and Sally both gave Jacque their “get a larger spoon if your going to shovel it in that big” look.
“What?” Jacque asked. “I’m just saying,” she said, throwing her hands up in the air in frustration. Flopping back onto the floor, she groaned loudly and covered her eyes with the back of her hand. “Am I going crazy, ya’ll?”
“No, sweetie. You've been gone a long time now, we just didn’t want you to know that we knew,” Sally said with humor.
“Seriously, I know it sounds crazy. But I promise I heard a voice – a beautiful, deep, masculine voice in my head, and it knew my name! That is crazy, jacked up, 'put her in a straight jacket', totally insane!” Jacque looked at them both with fear in her eyes. She truly did wonder if she had finally cracked.
There was after all, people in her family of questionable sanity, her mother being one of them. Jacque loved her mom and they had a good relationship, but she wasn’t always in touch with reality. Jacque’s father wasn’t in the picture and never had been. He had bailed as soon as he found out her mom was pregnant. Thankfully, she had two best friends who kept her feet firmly on the ground, which was why she was so fervently seeking their thoughts on this matter.
Sally finally spoke up. “I don’t think you're crazy, Jac. Really, you’re not. There has to be some sort of explanation. We’ll figure it out, we always do.”
“Yeah,” Jen added. “It’s two weeks 'til school starts. From now until then we are on scout detail.”
Sally nodded her agreement.
The three were quiet for a few minutes, each pondering ways to “run into” the new exchange student without seeming too obvious. Jen was lying on the floor, looking up at the ceiling fan when she said, “We need to find a way to introduce ourselves to him so that we can each get a good look and see if Sally or I hear a voice in our head.”
“My mom was planning on taking over a good ol' Southern meal for him since he isn’t from here. We could ask if we could go over with her. Or would that be too lame?” Jacque asked.
“No, I think that’s perfect,” Jen stated.
By midnight they had come up with a somewhat weak game plan, the whole of it revolving around going with Jacque’s mom to give the new exchange student some fried chicken, taters, and corn on the cob. Seriously, how lame can you get? Jacque thought as she lay on her bedroom floor. Jen and Sally had fallen asleep on the other side of her room each with a blanket wrapped around them.
Jacque sat up and looked around her room. This was a place she felt safe and comfortable: the twin-size bed with the new green bed spread her mom had bought her for her birthday, the stained-glass lamp with absolutely no theme whatsoever that sat on her small wood desk. She, Sally, and Jen had carved various things on the desk's surface. She looked at her dresser mirror, which had pictures lining both sides, mostly of Jen, Sally and her in various places and poses.
A few hours ago I was just another seventeen year old getting ready to start her senior year. I was so normal, she thought.
She had three homecoming mums hanging on the wall next to her bed, and on the other side was the window seat she had occupied tonight, where her life had changed in a way she wasn’t sure of yet. Jacque lay back down on her back and watched her ceiling fan go around in a circle, the motor lulling her to sleep. Her last thought as she drifted off was of a full moon, whatever that meant.
Chapter 2
As his limo pulled up to the house where Fane would stay, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. Not necessarily in a bad way, he just felt unsettled, restless, and tense.
Well, it could've been because he was more than a thousand miles away from home. He knew absolutely no one, it was his senior year in high school, and he was going to be spending it in a country he had never been to before.
“Yes I imagine that might make a person tense,” Fane said to himself. He looked at the house and noticed it was quite large – two stories with a wrap-around porch. It actually looked like a house you might see out in the country, not in a suburb. The yard was nicely manicured with short green grass. There was a tall, full tree to the right of the walkway with a quaint bench underneath. On the porch there were two rocking chairs and a porch swing, and between the chairs was a little table with a potted plant. Overall, it was a charming home. A home in which a person would feel comfortable – a normal home.
Fane hoped this was the case because 'normal' was not usually a part of his vocabulary. He was, after all, from a family of werewolves. Specifically Grey wolves (Canis lupus). Not only that, he just happened to be the son of the Pack's current Alpha. His name, Fane Lupei, literally meant “Crown Wolf.” How fitting for the Prince of the Romanian Greys.
What could possibly be normal about your family being able to change into wolves, or being a prince of those wolves yourself? Nothing in that scenario could ever be normal.
You made this choice, Fane told himself. Now you have to live with it. So get out of the car.
Fane wasn’t really sure why he had even decided to apply to the foreign exchange program. He just knew he'd felt a pull, like a moth to a flame, to come to the United States. And not to just any city in the United States, but to Coldspring, Texas. Why he'd thought it was a good idea to leave his home in Romania, which had the largest number of Greys in the world, he didn’t know.
There were other places that Canis lupus held as territories, like Ireland, the Balkans, and Poland – even Italy and Spain had some Grey wolves. One would think that a Grey would go to another territory where other Greys were. The problem was that wolves were extremely territorial, especially among males, and unless a wolf wanted a fight, you didn’t wander into another’s territory. Fortunately, there weren’t any Canis lupus in the small town of Coldspring, so Fane was free to come and claim his own territory, which was completely in his nature to do.
Okay, no more stalling, Fane thought. He looked up at Sorin, his driver and friend, and said, “I guess this is it. Mulţumesc (thank you), my friend, for coming all this way to drop me off. I appreciate it.”
“Think nothing of it, my Prince. It is always an honor to serve yo
u.”
“Oh, come now. Don’t go getting all formal on me. Here in Coldspring, I’m just a high school student, not a prince,” Fane said.
Fane knew this was hard for his friend, though Sorin’s title was actually “Guard to the Prince” and had been since Fane was a child. Sorin had actually wanted to stay in the U.S. with Fane, but Fane had insisted Sorin go home and let him be on his own for a while. Because there were no other Greys in this area, it wasn’t likely that he was going to get into a battle.
Sorin got out of the car to open Fane’s door, but Fane was unfolding his tall form before Sorin could even get around the front of the car. Fane stood six foot two inches tall, which was a good five inches taller than Sorin, so once out of the car he had to look just a little lower to meet his long-time friend in the eye. Sorin bowed only slightly, a show of respect and love for the Prince, and then broke formality and hugged him. Wolves took great comfort in touch; it was as much in their nature as breathing and even in human form they tended to touch more than humans. Fane patted Sorin on the back and stepped away.
Out of nowhere, Fane caught a passing thought in his mind that caused his wolf to perk up.
“He must be more than just his driver.”
Fane turned his head to look toward the thought’s origin, and locked eyes with a girl in a window of the two-story house across the street.
The belief by humans that men “changed” into werewolves was false. Fane was able to do what the Canis lupus called “phasing”. The wolf and the man were one, there was no changing from one to the other. A change would mean that once a man was in wolf form he was no longer a man, but fully wolf, and when in human form that he was fully human. This was not the case. A Canis lupus was always aware of his wolf, as was the wolf always aware of the man. They usually existed together harmoniously. When Fane was in his wolf form, he could still think and reason as if he were in his human form. When he was in his human form, he could call on his wolf to phase only the parts he needed to use instead of phasing his entire being.