Taken by Storm: A Raised by Wolves Novel by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Authors: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
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saw Maddy, covered in blood. I saw her Shifting to wolf form.
I saw Lucas—hopeless, hungry, and full of fury—leaping for my throat.
Blood, blood, everywhere there was blood.
Just like that, I was back under the sink at my parents’ house, hiding from the Big Bad Wolf. Except this time, when I peeked out and saw the Rabid tearing through my father’s skin and shredding it like a manic child opening a present, the Rabid wasn’t the one from my memories, the one who’d haunted my dreams.
It was Maddy.
You did this to me.
The fear was overwhelming and absolute. I didn’t want it to be true. I didn’t want to be feeling it. I didn’t want the world to be closing in around me as I watched blood splatter up against off-white walls.
All of a sudden, I was standing, yards away from where I’d been before. My back was to the wall of Jed’s cabin, and I could feel my pulse throbbing in my stomach.
“Feel it?” Jed asked, over the sound of my breathing, the deafening beating of my heart.
I could feel the surge of energy, that whisper deep inside of me, the kind of power that let a panicked mother lift a car.
“Hold on to it.”
My body was quickly realizing that there was no present danger. I could feel the power beginning to leak out of my limbs, but I pulled it back.
The smell of wet cardboard and rotting flesh. The heavy sound of breathing in the silence.
I lived and breathed the fear, and my senses heightened. I felt something—an odd kind of silence, not quite a noise—behind me. Hopped up on power, I whirled, and a second later, I slammed Caroline back against the exterior wall of the cabin, my hand around her neck.
I hadn’t heard her coming, but I’d known she was there. After a moment, I let go of my Resilience, allowed it to slip away. I pried my hand away from Caroline’s throat.
Unfathomably, she smiled. “I take it the lesson went well?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
T WO PSYCHICS, TWO WEREWOLVES, AND A PSYCHIC human alpha walk up to a crime scene….
It was like the beginning of a very bad joke, and I found myself wishing that Devon were there to share it with. Instead, our merry little band—Lake, Chase, Jed, Caroline, and me—stood in absolute silence, the wind cutting through the trees with a high- pitched whistle and carrying new scents to the Weres’ noses.
“There’s no one around for miles,” Lake told us. “That it?”
She jerked her head toward a house in the distance, and I nodded, even though there was nothing about the way the house looked—from the outside, in the dark—that would have tipped off the average observer to the fact that days earlier, someone had been murdered there.
Unconsciously, I began running through everything we knew about the circumstances in which the death had been discovered.
The front door was closed when the police responded to a 911 call placed from the vicinity. They found the body—what was left of it—inside. The walls were dripping blood.
I forced myself to focus on the sights and sounds of the here and now. We were close enough to the mountains that even in the dead of summer, it smelled like snow, and the moon overhead was a shade fuller than it had been the night before.
To my eyes, the world was shadowy and dark, quiet, still. I could barely make out the outlines of the people standing right next to me, but to the Weres, the scant moonlight would have been as good as a spotlight, illuminating the leaves on the trees, each blade of grass, and the house in the distance.
Beside me, Chase breathed in deeply through his nose. Through the bond, I could feel him sorting his way through layers and textures, scent upon scent upon scent.
“Anything?” I asked him, my voice quiet, but echoing through the silence nonetheless.
He closed his eyes and breathed in again. Even though I couldn’t quite make out his features, I could picture the expression on his face almost exactly: long eyelashes lying still against pale skin, nostrils
I saw Lucas—hopeless, hungry, and full of fury—leaping for my throat.
Blood, blood, everywhere there was blood.
Just like that, I was back under the sink at my parents’ house, hiding from the Big Bad Wolf. Except this time, when I peeked out and saw the Rabid tearing through my father’s skin and shredding it like a manic child opening a present, the Rabid wasn’t the one from my memories, the one who’d haunted my dreams.
It was Maddy.
You did this to me.
The fear was overwhelming and absolute. I didn’t want it to be true. I didn’t want to be feeling it. I didn’t want the world to be closing in around me as I watched blood splatter up against off-white walls.
All of a sudden, I was standing, yards away from where I’d been before. My back was to the wall of Jed’s cabin, and I could feel my pulse throbbing in my stomach.
“Feel it?” Jed asked, over the sound of my breathing, the deafening beating of my heart.
I could feel the surge of energy, that whisper deep inside of me, the kind of power that let a panicked mother lift a car.
“Hold on to it.”
My body was quickly realizing that there was no present danger. I could feel the power beginning to leak out of my limbs, but I pulled it back.
The smell of wet cardboard and rotting flesh. The heavy sound of breathing in the silence.
I lived and breathed the fear, and my senses heightened. I felt something—an odd kind of silence, not quite a noise—behind me. Hopped up on power, I whirled, and a second later, I slammed Caroline back against the exterior wall of the cabin, my hand around her neck.
I hadn’t heard her coming, but I’d known she was there. After a moment, I let go of my Resilience, allowed it to slip away. I pried my hand away from Caroline’s throat.
Unfathomably, she smiled. “I take it the lesson went well?”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
T WO PSYCHICS, TWO WEREWOLVES, AND A PSYCHIC human alpha walk up to a crime scene….
It was like the beginning of a very bad joke, and I found myself wishing that Devon were there to share it with. Instead, our merry little band—Lake, Chase, Jed, Caroline, and me—stood in absolute silence, the wind cutting through the trees with a high- pitched whistle and carrying new scents to the Weres’ noses.
“There’s no one around for miles,” Lake told us. “That it?”
She jerked her head toward a house in the distance, and I nodded, even though there was nothing about the way the house looked—from the outside, in the dark—that would have tipped off the average observer to the fact that days earlier, someone had been murdered there.
Unconsciously, I began running through everything we knew about the circumstances in which the death had been discovered.
The front door was closed when the police responded to a 911 call placed from the vicinity. They found the body—what was left of it—inside. The walls were dripping blood.
I forced myself to focus on the sights and sounds of the here and now. We were close enough to the mountains that even in the dead of summer, it smelled like snow, and the moon overhead was a shade fuller than it had been the night before.
To my eyes, the world was shadowy and dark, quiet, still. I could barely make out the outlines of the people standing right next to me, but to the Weres, the scant moonlight would have been as good as a spotlight, illuminating the leaves on the trees, each blade of grass, and the house in the distance.
Beside me, Chase breathed in deeply through his nose. Through the bond, I could feel him sorting his way through layers and textures, scent upon scent upon scent.
“Anything?” I asked him, my voice quiet, but echoing through the silence nonetheless.
He closed his eyes and breathed in again. Even though I couldn’t quite make out his features, I could picture the expression on his face almost exactly: long eyelashes lying still against pale skin, nostrils
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