Destiny and Deception by Shannon Delany

us?”
    There was quiet from my pack as they shifted to forms more capable of speech, some reaching for their scant clothes or the moth-eaten blankets Gabe had rummaged for us.
    “Stop,” I commanded. “Be not ashamed of your forms, either human or animal. We are made in the image of God—doubly so because we admire both Fenrir, the dark and dangerous wolf destined to devour the sun, and Loki, the light-bringer and trickster, his father.”
    They paused, hands sliding away from cloth for the moment. At my bidding. My command. Perhaps listening to Phil preach hadn’t been a total loss after all. They were hungry for the Word—even if the Word was mainly of my own construction. Wasn’t the Bible made by ordinary men supposedly inspired by God? Why couldn’t I be likewise inspired if it helped empower others?
    Where was the harm?
    I shook the stick at them. “Tell me: What do we have in common with this flame?”
    “Some of us are hot? ” Gabriel’s eyes swept across my form, pausing on key locations that piqued his interest.
    I growled at him and shook the stick again.
    “The flame is as hot as the fire that burns within us,” a soft but steady voice responded, and my eyes caught Darby’s—a cute strawberry-blond girl who’d had little of the trauma most of us had endured. I’d found her in San Antonio near the River Walk, tired and hungry, the police chasing her away for begging from tourists. She’d worn out her welcome at the local homeless shelters and was as lost as anyone could be.
    Until I found her—recognized her for what she was and brought her to the pack.
    “Damn right—what else?” I wiggled the stick again, watching as embers tumbled from its tip to be licked up by the flames nestled a few feet below.
    Red eyes glowed from one dark corner, and a voice deep as the noise of the nearby train rumbled out of the darkness. “It burns brightly when tended, but never long enough.”
    Gareth. The eternal optimist. The man meeting our group’s quota for tortured hero.
    My mouth twisted into a grin. “So we tend our inner fire—our wolf—and remember that just because life ends too soon it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make the most of it. We seize each day. Make it ours. And why is that ?” I asked them, looking from face to face in the wavering light the fire cast.
    “Because the Wolf is the Way!” Kyanne led the cry.
    Grinning, I threw my head back, let out a howl, and joined them in the chorus of “The Wolf is the Way!”
    I reached into the blaze and pulled out two sturdy branches, thick with flame. Tauntingly, I jabbed the torches toward my wolves, watching them grin and dodge. I stood as straight and tall as I could, watching the flames flicker and creep closer to my hands.
    When the tongues of fire were so close the fine hairs on my hands curled in the heat, I raised the torches over my head …
    … and set the ceiling on fire.
    Grabbing odds and ends we ran out into the snow, mostly naked but fully alive—and laughing.
    Except for Gareth, who merely raised a heavy eyebrow in my direction and shook his head at the growing blaze. Wanton destruction , he’d once accused me of. I strode over to him and, with a smile, I bent over to slowly pull on my jeans.
    When I rose I knew his eyes only bothered to meet my eyes—that they never strayed to any other bits of me.
    Because between Gareth and me, there was only one of us who was ever wanton. So I laughed again.
    In his so very serious and disappointed face.

CHAPTER NINE
    Jessie
    “Seriously? You’re going to play Dungeons & Dragons?” Amy raised an eyebrow skeptically at me. “Why do I feel a need to stage an intervention?”
    I laughed. “Well, I’m tempted to agree with the intervention idea, but it’d be aimed at Pietr since he’s initiating a family game night and it seems we’re going on a quest.…”
    “I’m so sorry for you.”
    I snagged her wrist. “Oh, don’t be sorry for me —you’ll be joining in the