Lycan Legacy - Paladin: Tales of Luna White - Werewolf Read online

  Lycan Legacy - Paladin

  Veronica Singer

  LYCAN LEGACY - PALADIN

  Veronica Singer

  To those who walk on two feet, but hunt on four.

  Text copyright © 2021 Veronica Singer

  All Rights Reserved

  Fantastic Cover Design by:

  [email protected]

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  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

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  1

  The drone of the aircraft engines was shockingly loud to my werewolf ears, bringing back memories of my last trip on a military aircraft—a trip to an Arctic prison specially designed to cage werewolves. At least I wasn’t chained down this time.

  This aircraft was smaller, but otherwise similar to my previous transportation: stretched-canvas bench seats along each bulkhead, a swing-down ramp at the rear, and the well-worn look of roughly used equipment. The rear hatch was open, letting in the icy wind of our twenty-thousand-foot altitude. We ignored the cold, but we all wore oxygen masks. Werewolves can survive in thinner air than humans, but even we needed help here.

  These masks had something extra: small one-way valves that allowed exterior air to enter. Werewolves hate not being able to smell their environment, so this modification allowed us to wear masks without feeling like we were blindfolded.

  For this mission, I was surrounded by werewolves. Unfortunately, these were not my pack. Not only that, they weren’t American. Hell, I couldn’t even read their nametags—they used Hebrew lettering.

  The Israeli pack’s alpha sat to my right on the long bench that ran the length of the aircraft. A diminutive blonde with bright amber eyes, she was in charge of this operation.

  Yes, she. It was just my luck that the first time I met another female alpha, she had to be such a bitch. Each time she looked at me with that air of superiority, I wanted to smash her face in.

  And ruin a month’s planning and put the hostages at risk? I swallowed my anger and put on a calm face. Useless—she could smell my anger and I could smell her superiority.

  I smiled at the thought of tearing into her once this mission was over. She smelled my amusement, then emitted her own scent of anger. The bitch wanted me to submit to her. Not gonna happen.

  Across from me, against the other bulkhead of the aircraft, sat my one ally, Mike. He was squeezed uncomfortably between two werewolves, who kept ‘accidentally’ bumping and jostling him. Mike just smiled with the calmness of a monk in meditation. He had been through all this before. He had told me that military units, no matter what nationality, would routinely harass newcomers to test their mettle.

  And Mike was a puzzle to these werewolves. He wasn’t were, but he wasn’t exactly human. He lacked werewolf healing and senses, but he was inhumanly strong and tough—the result of a desperate attempt to save his life after a savage attack. The cure had involved the combined magic and skill of Mason and myself, and Mike’s own indomitable willpower.

  Mike noticed my look, smiled, and rubbed the spot on his harness over his ‘good-luck charm.’ Then he winked at me.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a green apple. He looked at it with obvious hunger, but it would be impossible to eat the apple with an oxygen mask on. He tugged the side of his mask a bit, but it wouldn’t slide enough to let him get a bite of the apple without risking loss of oxygen. Then he reached to his calf and pulled something from a sheath hidden there. It was his combat knife.

  His solid silver combat knife. Even in the dim red light, the gleam of pure silver flashed through the aircraft. Suddenly, the two werewolves who had been boxing him in had scooted away, leaving him with almost a foot of space on each side.

  Mike nonchalantly sliced a precise quarter-inch section of his apple, pulled his mask out a bit, and slid the apple into his mouth. He munched contentedly, one slice at a time, until the apple was half consumed. He sliced off another section, then said over the intercom, “How rude. I’m sorry, does anyone else want a slice?”

  He proffered a slice of apple, balanced on the deadly knife blade, to the werewolf sitting on his right. The were shuddered and shook his head.

  “Damn,” said Mike in consternation. “I’m sorry. Is it not kosher?”

  Do Jewish werewolves even follow kosher laws?

  I expected that flashing a silver weapon in an aircraft full of werewolves would cause a fight. Instead, the opposite occurred. The were held up both hands in surrender and roared with laughter.

  “Thanks, but we don’t like to eat before a mission.”

  Tension eased with smiles and laughter all around. Mike finished half of the apple, put the remaining half away, and sheathed his knife. The two weres relaxed and scooted closer, but left a respectful distance between themselves and Mike.

  I leaned back and closed my eyes, relying on my inner wolf to wake me if trouble arose.

  It happened suddenly. I had a premonition of imminent danger, a shock to my brain and heart that made me want to escape—now!

  I always trust my instincts. I jerked at my safety harness, only to find it locked. In an instant, I popped a razor-sharp claw, sliced through the harness, and jumped to my feet. There was a tug at my back as Ariel tried to stop me, but it was too late. I’m faster than almost anything on earth.

  A microsecond to decide, then I reached for Mike. He had raised up but was moving too slowly for me. My claw sliced through his seatbelt and I grabbed him by the straps that held his parachute. Three steps to the hatch and I threw us both into the pre-dawn void.

  Only an idiot would jump out of a perfectly good airplane.

  I told my subconscious to shut up and spread my arms and legs out to stabilize.

  Serenity overcame my fear of falling. It was peaceful to float out here, a peace I hadn’t felt in months.

  Don’t take a nap, Luna; the wake-up call will be painful. I shook my head and brought my head back into the present.

  Mike and I were falling as one, locked together by my death-grip on his parachute harness. It reminded me of our first tandem dive. We were both facing the sky, watching the aircraft float away. I barely noticed the tiny figure that jumped out of the hatch after us. Those smooth movements, like a ballerina’s, showed that Ariel was coming after me to get answers.

  The explosion of the aircraft was all the answer she would get. My premonition had been accurate, and I hoped the bitch had been close enough to the blast to die. I blinked to clear away the afterimage and saw pieces of Israeli soldiers and airplane tumble toward the ground.

  At my side, Mike was waving to get my attention, then he started pulling his mask off. The hose to my oxygen mask flapped wildly in the wind, cut in half. Ariel hadn’t been quick enough
to stop us, but she had managed to sabotage me. My oxygen mask spell, controlled by my werewolf side, had appeared, making the military oxygen mask unnecessary. I extended my oxygen mask spell to cover Mike’s head as well. The rush of wind around our heads stopped, and all I could hear was his breathing, coming in gasps.

  “It’s okay, Mike,” I said, stopping him from removing his mask. “I don’t need the mask.”

  All I got in return was a confused expression and slow blinks. It took me a moment to realize: In response to the emergency, I had sped up my metabolism to its maximum, to stretch out my reaction time. At this rate, instead of hitting the ground in ten seconds, it would feel like one hundred seconds. But the result was that talking to Mike was impossible.

  We didn’t have time to waste. Assuming I could speak slowly enough to be understood, what was the shortest message I could give him?

  “H…a…v…e … f…a…i…t…h, … M…i…k…e.”

  Have faith? We were parachuting into a foreign country with no team, no backup, and no way home. Things couldn’t get any worse.

  A shot rang out, and a bullet passed by—close enough that I could hear the thwipping sound it made as it passed.

  Ariel had survived the explosion and was bearing down on us. She had straightened out into a headfirst dive position to cut wind resistance and get closer to us before shooting. Shooting from that position at two targets should be impossible, but the woman was impressive. A second shot glanced off Mike’s combat helmet, leaving a trail of torn Kevlar, and his eyes unfocused at the impact.

  I had a spell that would render the primer in cartridges inert, but it took time and concentration to perform. Mason could do it in an instant. Could I do it in midair while dodging random shots? No way.

  I scrambled to put myself between Ariel and Mike. I wasn’t bulletproof, but the same premonition that had driven me to jump out of the aircraft meant I could predict the path of her shots.

  Ariel spread out her body and slowed her descent, now matching our velocity but slightly above us. She snarled and fired again. I didn’t bother jerking as the shot passed harmlessly to our right. I gave her the finger and raised my weapon. I’m a terrible shot with a rifle but was hoping to ‘spray-and-pray’ and get a lucky hit.

  I set the fire selector to multiple fire and pulled the trigger. The damn gun didn’t work. Had we been hit with some kind of sabotage curse? If so, why was Ariel’s weapon still working? I checked the safety and tried to cycle the action to clear the weapon, but it still wouldn’t work.

  Ariel grinned around werewolf fangs and took aim. I felt the ‘hot spot’ that my premonition showed as the bullet’s target on my forehead. I threw the useless rifle at her, missing by ten meters or more, but the movement of the throw sent Mike and me into a spin.

  Luckily, the spin made Ariel’s shot miss. Mike and I scrambled to straighten out without drifting apart. Once we were stabilized, I wondered why Ariel hadn’t taken another shot. I looked around and grinned to see her tumbling. She must have jerked at my throw, causing her to spin too. Take that, bitch! I’m the only one up here with bullet radar.

  Her own grin widened as she stabilized and drifted even closer. She raised her weapon, then glanced down toward the ground. She stopped smiling, dropped her weapon, and popped her chute.

  Shit! How close were we to the ground? Instead of looking at a possibly sabotaged altimeter, I used the position of the moon and the sun to determine our height. Eight hundred feet? No time to worry about Ariel. Time to deploy.

  Mike and I were floating head-to-head. He had thrown off the momentary confusion from the near miss on his helmet, and his eyes were clear.

  I reached for my chute release and he duplicated the motion. I realized my hyper-speed had faded, exhausted from overuse.

  We pulled our chute releases simultaneously and braced for the jerk.

  But they didn’t open.

  2

  Seconds from a collision with Earth, I desperately gathered magical energy, forcing it into the air below us. With no time to calculate, I forced the air to rush upward at hurricane speed. I had once stopped a runaway car this way, and as the force of the wind blew us back into the air, I regretted not perfecting that spell when I’d had the chance.

  Luck was with us. We didn’t get blown apart, we didn’t get blown hundreds of feet into the air, and we didn’t smash into the ground. Instead, we bounced as if on a trampoline and came down to a rough but survivable landing.

  I was shaking in reaction to the close call, gasping from the exertion. I looked around frantically for Mike. He was sitting on his butt on the ground, knees up, with his head between them. His breathing was strange, halting and gasping. I worried I had injured him in the fall.

  “Mike! Are you all right?“

  He sat up straight and looked at me with glee. “Let’s do that again! I haven’t had that much fun in years.“

  “Do it again? I didn’t want to do it the first time! That scared the crap out of me. How can you be so calm?”

  Mike stood and stepped over to me, holding out his hand to help me up. Despite my being stronger and faster than him, my knees were wobbly, and I appreciated his help.

  “Because you said, ‘Have faith, Mike.’ I had faith that Lady Luna, the patron saint of lycanthropes, would see us through the danger.”

  More jokes about starting a religion in my name. “I’m no saint. Landing without dying was pure luck.”

  Mike rubbed his chest, where his good-luck charm hung. “Of course it required good luck, so it’s a good thing I was wearing this.”

  That talisman was more than a good-luck trinket. Created by Mason from enchanted gold, infused with the magic of both Earth and Fae, it could do amazing things. Could it have helped? With magic, who could know?

  “Let’s keep our luck going by finding Ariel and getting on with our mission.”

  Despite the setback of losing our aircraft, our support team, and most of our equipment, Mike didn’t hesitate, “Luna, where you lead, I will follow.”

  We trudged to the top of the nearest dune, relying on my ‘bullet radar’ to warn me if Ariel tried to take another shot. I turned my head to catch the scent of our last remaining contact.

  We found her three sand dunes away. She was down in the hollow section between dunes, still in shadow while the tops of the dunes were barely touched by the morning light. She was hunched over, holding her left leg in her hands.

  Far enough away that the scent of magic wouldn’t betray me, I activated the spell to disable her weapon’s cartridges. Even if she were faking an injury to trap us, she wouldn’t be able to shoot.

  “Ariel, get your ass in gear.”

  She jerked around and aimed her weapon at us. When she pulled the trigger, nothing happened.

  “Sand must have jammed your weapon,” said Mike. “Lucky for us.”

  “Get up here!” I commanded. “I have questions and you will answer them.”

  “I can’t move. My leg’s broken.”

  A broken leg shouldn’t stop a werewolf. We can recover from much worse than that.

  “Heal yourself and get up here.”

  “I can’t,” she gritted out. “My pack is gone. Without their energy, I can only heal at a normal rate until the moon comes up.”

  Mike gave me a puzzled look, so I explained. “Members of a pack can share lunar energy, and alphas can control the energy flow. Alphas are stronger than the rest of the pack because they can direct the energy to themselves.”

  “So without her pack…?”

  “She’s just a hairy bitch with anger issues. At least until she can absorb some moonlight.”

  “The lack of moonlight doesn’t seem to bother you. That gash on your cheek has already healed.”

  I rubbed my cheek, dislodging dried blood. “I didn’t even notice. Anyway, higher-strength alphas can store lunar energy inside themselves.” I left it unsaid that, aside from my natural storage ability, I had an amulet, crafted by Ma
son, which held centuries of lunar energy.

  Still turned away from us, Ariel muttered, “I will kill you, you know. For what you did to my pack.”

  “See?” I said to Mike. “Anger issues.” I raised my voice. “I had nothing to do with what happened up there. I was lucky enough to see the glint of starlight on that incoming missile. You must have a mole in your organization. Once we complete this mission, I’m going to go up your chain of command and kill them one by one until I find out who tried to kill us.”

  “The traitor isn’t Israeli. Of that, I am sure. Anyway, you’ll never be allowed back into my country. You may as well go back to the US now, commit suicide, and save everyone the trouble of hunting you down.”

  “How do you plan on stopping us?” I included my allies in that statement.

  “We kept your mate out of here.” She sounded petulant.

  I shot a look at Mike. He was one of the few people who knew that my mate Mason was stuck in the magical equivalent of an ICU in Fae, recovering from our last adventure. The thought of Mason lying injured and unconscious sent a sharp pain through my heart. At least the cubs were safe, napping in a slow time bubble next to him.

  Mike jumped in. “You think Mason didn’t come on this mission because he was afraid?”

  “Why isn’t he here, then?”

  “Because Mason coming here would be the magical equivalent of bringing a nuclear submarine into Jeddah port. It would restart the Gulf War.” He looked down and shook his head. “Only this time we would fight it with supernaturals and magic, neither of which have much regard for human life.”