Dire Wants Read Free Page B

here.”
    “And that’s not going to happen?”
    “None of it,” the woman confirmed. “Everything that was supposed to be will change.”
    “Kate!”
    Her mother’s voice. Kate turned to see her face white, lips pressed together. She looked furious and frightened all at once, and she said nothing as she dragged Kate away toward the car, where her father waited.
    When Kate turned to see the fortune teller as she was being pulled away, there was no one behind the table at all.
    Had there ever been?
    She didn’t know where Julia was or why she hadn’t kept Kate out of trouble. She’d find out later that her friend had gotten distracted, innocently enough, by a group of cute boys, and that being left behind at the fairgrounds would be the best thing to happen to her that day.
    Kate never made it home that afternoon, and her parents would never go home again, but the fortune teller was right about one thing—everything changed that sunny afternoon when the big black truck slammed into the side of her family’s car, killing them all.

Chapter 1
    Two Dires will be born to aid in the great war between wolf and man. One can hear, the other, influence. Brothers who, if they don’t turn their wrath on each other, will cause destruction and ruin outward.
    —Prophecy of the Elders circa tenth century
    T he prophecy Stray had grown up hearing about himself and his brother, Killian, was coming true. Kill was coming to town and would be expected to live up to his name, and Stray needed to run to lose himself. To hunt instead of brood, to stop trying to figure out if the prophecy wanted him dead or alive.
    As part of a pack of what was believed to be the last six remaining Dire wolves, he was feared and revered. Immortal and therefore invincible, they currently called Catskills, New York, home. They had come back here months earlier to aid the Weres and found themselves embroiled in a shitload of trouble.
    Still, in the woods outside the Dires’ secret underground lair, there was laughter under the glow of the moon. Even if it was foggy, she shone to them as bright as the sun to humans on a hot summer’s day.
    The nightly run would happen on the plot of land that was protected by unshifted Weres. Under normal circumstances, the Dires changed their locale as often as possible. This was anything but normal. The safe place was at the end of a tunnel that let out into a thicket of woods nearly impossible for most humans to pass through. Their leader, Rifter, was there, with Jinx and Vice.
    Jinx’s brother, Rogue, remained in a supernatural-induced coma back at the house, along with Harm, the Dire who’d walked away from the pack thousands of years ago and had come back just weeks earlier, bringing even more trouble with him.
    Gwen was with them as well. She was Rifter’s mate, a half Dire, half human. Harm’s daughter.
    Stray watched Vice rib Jinx for picking up a werechick the night before, and Rifter and Gwen were nuzzling each other. Business as usual, despite everything.
    Except Stray had an even bigger secret than the brother he’d been keeping under wraps. Tonight, though, he was determined to shake the maudlin shit off and let his Brother Wolf run wild. And Brother growled in agreement, barely waiting for Stray to strip before the shift began. It was a pain and pleasure kind of thing, a change that took Stray to his limits every time his wolf took over.
    “Stray’s gone!” Vice called behind him, and Stray knew his shift would pull the others along. Sure enough, soon he was surrounded by the wolves as they disappeared into the woods, camouflaged in safety.
    Stray wasn’t the name he’d been given at birth. He’d adopted the moniker after he’d left his pack because he refused to use or even think his birth name. Kill refused to change his. Maybe he was too proud or too stupid—or a combination of both. Stray could be stubborn too, but living like a hermit was his specialty, not Kill’s. He couldn’t imagine