Series: Werewolves of Wall Street Series by Renee Rose
Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78974 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 395(@200wpm)___ 316(@250wpm)___ 263(@300wpm)
I’ve spent years building toward one goal—bringing down the pack that brainwashed my mother and ordered me dead. It’s my sole focus and I don’t get distracted.
Not when I have dreams of a woman with hair like starlight. Not when I discover she’s an Adalwulf who serves as pack Seeress, my sworn enemy.
Not until I’m alone in an elevator with her and she collapses against me, shaking with a vision only she can see. I wrap my arms around her and hold her through it. Give her a few moments of comfort and disappear before her guards ever see my face.
I should forget her. Instead, I hunt her.
When I learn the Adalwulfs have locked her in a tower—their own seeress, caged like a weapon they can’t control—I turn feral.
Her pack will call it war. She’ll call it kidnapping. My wolf calls it destiny.
Aster is mine.
Big Bad Betrayal is a stand-alone book in the Werewolves of Wall Street series. This enemies to lovers, rival packs inclusivity romance features a Deaf wolf shifter and his psychic fated mate. No cliffhanger, HEA guaranteed
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Prologue
Aster, 12 Years Old
Oma thinks I'm asleep, which is the only reason I hear her order a child’s murder.
As a seeress for the Adalwulf pack, I’m called to use my power for the good of the pack. But on this cold, dark night, I wish I could live as a normal girl. Then I wouldn’t be overhearing Oma, the seeress, plot with the high priest of the Moonborn, the Warden.
I’m curled up in an overstuffed armchair in her quarters, where I’d passed out with an aching head after she put me through a grueling afternoon and evening of training. I woke when the Warden entered, my body coming alert, wary in the presence of a predator, but pretended to be asleep, remaining still and keeping my breath slow.
I work hard to make myself invisible here in the Adalwulf castle. It helps me avoid verbal or physical abuse at the hands of Odin or Aiden. They hate anything they can’t control–and no one can control the Sight. Deep down, they fear and resent our witch-muddied bloodline, even though Oma and I are prized possessions as their pack’s veilwalkers–the Seeresses who can see beyond the veils of reality into the future.
“I had a vision,” Oma tells the Warden.
I can’t see him, but I can sense his aura. It’s grey and thick and oily like putrid smoke. In man form, he’s big and burly, a brutal enforcer. He’s always in war paint–his ice-blue eyes framed in a band of black. It’s supposed to evoke his wolf’s distinct markings. I think he looks like a raccoon. His long, white-blond hair worn with a drastic side-part, makes him look like a mad wizard. Right now, he’s probably taking Oma’s measure. Normally, she would offer her visions up directly to Odin, so the fact that she called the Warden in here and is speaking to him in hushed tones means there’s subterfuge going on.
My skin prickles with warning. Knowledge is power, and secrets are the most powerful of all. I learned that early in my seeress training.
“You need to kill the wolf without ears,” Oma murmurs.
“What did you see?” The Warden’s voice always sounds harsh. Cold and hungry for violence, never sated.
“It is not for you to interpret the visions,” Oma says in the authoritative voice she uses when working with the big egos of dangerous wolves. “I am the Seeress.”
“And I don’t take orders from you.” His voice is as cold as his eyes, and I have to stop myself from reflexively curling into a tighter ball.
I hear Oma pace around the small antechamber to her bedroom. Unlike the wolves who prowl this mansion, her movements are loud and uneven. We’re in the medieval stone behemoth built in the crook of the Adalwulf pack’s pine forest, nestled at the foot of a mountain beside a crystalline lake. There’s electricity and hot water, but Oma insists on living in the dark ages, lighting candles and using the fire for heat. She says fire contains magic, so we must keep it close.
I hear the sound of Oma’s teapot boiling, and she pours two cups of tea. The scent of lavender and lemon balm nips at my nose. She’s stalling. She always pours tea when she’s debating her next course of action.
Oma’s ancient–she won’t tell me exactly how old, but I think it’s over one hundred. She and Odin, the alpha of the Adalwulf pack, are magically bound by a powerful spell. Oma draws power from Odin’s body, giving her an unnaturally long life. By sharing in his alpha magic, all of her visions are of and for the pack’s well-being. She siphons some of his alpha power, as she did from his father before him. He will be the last alpha she serves, though. When he dies, so will she.