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Chapter1
Cricket
Ihop out of the big rig semi-truck and my converse shoes hit the hot asphalt with a slap. Turning to the guy I’ve spent the last few hours with, I smile and wave. The whole ride he didn’t say a word, the whole damn ride. He doesn’t look at me, just reaches over me and closes the door in my face with a nod. Nodding was the truck driver’s only form of conversing.
As the truck roars away, I turn and look at the town as it spreads out below the hill. Zenith is tiny, quaint; there’s a bar with the word “Bob’s” in bright red standing on the roof, a small gas station, and an itty-bitty grocery store tucked into a grove of trees that should probably be thinned out. Besides that, there’s only a small police station at the end of town and a cluster of houses and trailers spread out sporadically.
I asked the truck driver to let me out here seeing as I needed to steel myself for what was coming. I roll my shoulders, taking off my thin flannel shirt and tying it around my Daisy Duke shorts. My red spaghetti strap shirt does little to protect me from the blaring sun, but I’m already sunburned, so who cares?
Picking up my backpack from the ground where I threw it out of the truck, I toss it over my shoulder and start walking. I feel like I’ve been walking for a week straight, and even if I wasn’t sick I think my body would still be rebelling. I’ve been pretending this whole journey hasn’t been hell on my joints, pretending I’m not losing feeling in my toes and fingertips, pretending the doctor’s words aren't playing over and over in my mind.
“It has all the markers of Huntington’s, but your labs are like nothing I’ve ever seen before…” he’d said.
No shit dude.
I was never supposed to be in that hospital, but with Bea too sick to whore me out to men she found around the city I had no choice but to take her in. Then I collapsed. Fifteen thousand dollars in medical bills, and those were just for me! The doc said I had maybe a year, and I spent six months at my ‘mother’s’ bedside.
I owed her nothing, not a damn thing, but something wouldn’t let me leave her. Even as she cursed at me, called me weak, reminded me she’s hated me since the day I was born, I still stayed. The day she threw her diary at me in anger was the day she died. HIV, the doctor said, but just like me her DNA made no sense and didn’t respond to any treatment.
Little did they know that’s because we can change into wolves whenever we please.
Being a wolf was the only reason I survived all these years. I learned to hunt young, rats and cats were the only thing I could find for sustenance. ‘Mother’ never fed me. She showed me once how to kill and from then on it was on me. I was five. I used to love cats, adore them. I hope one day to have a cat of my own, but I don’t deserve to.
I shake myself, trying to rid the bad memories. Trying to remember the good ones. The homeless woman who refused to call me Zeta, which was all my mother called me. She called me Cricket because of the small noises I made as a child. I didn’t find out for years that I had an actual name, Olivia. I never claimed it, I kept the name the woman gave me. The woman whose face I could no longer remember. When I was young I shifted in front of her and that was the last time I ever saw her.
It was me and Bea from that point on, in whatever shack or cardboard box we could find, in alleys and dumpsters to avoid the rain. In the end we had a tent, but it was never enough to shield me from the cold in the bitter winters.
I never knew there were more like us, more werewolves, not until that diary. I stroke the bulge in my pocket, feeling the little book through my jeans to remind myself it’s still there. All the proof I needed to know there was a pack here.
My father is somewhere in that small town below this hill.
Zenith is where Bea grew up, the bar below me is where I was made. Her diary is barely legible for days after that incident. She was so excited to be chosen by the Alpha, but afterwards? The sting of her hate filled words are too much for me to handle. There’s no way my father could have been as horrible as she describes… I can't accept that. I need to meet him for myself. Hear it from his mouth. Hear that even before I was born, my creation was nothing but an act of cruelty.
The thundering roar of a motorcycle brings me back to the present with a jolt. All I see is leather and dust as the bike speeds past me, and with a yelp I lose my balance and twist my ankle. I try to stop my momentum, but I don’t have the strength. Within a blink, I’m rolling, once, twice, three times into the ditch on the side of the road. It all happens so fast that my mind is spinning, my vision blurry, and I lay on my face in the dirt in shock for a few seconds.
Spitting soil out of my mouth, I lift myself to my knees and suck in a sharp breath between my teeth as the pain in my ankle registers in my brain. The motorcycle screeches to a stop, smoke from burning rubber rising all around the biker as he pulls to the side of the road and runs back to me. I look over my shoulder, fear filling my heart. I have to get up, have to run, he could be cruel like the bikers in the city. There’s no point taking a chance. I try to stand but I yelp and fall on my ass again.
I cower in fear as the man slips down the ditch in a rain of gravel and slides to a stop before he hits me. I flinch away from him as he takes a knee behind me and large hands grip my shoulders. I hunch, taking the fetal position, body freezing on instinct, but a rough hand finds my face and turns my head to look at him.
“Hey! Hey, are you okay? Shit, you went down like a ton of bricks. Is it your ankle?”
His voice… Genuine concern echoes in my mind, telling me to be calm. Those large rough hands aren't pulling on me, they’re gentle. Comforting.
Slowly, I open my eyes and look into eyes the same shade as mine. Eyes that are full of worry and under a serious brow, long wavy hair framing his face. He pinches his lips together through his short beard as he glances at me nervously. All he’s wearing is a leather vest and oil-stained jeans over biker boots, every inch of his skin seems to be covered in tattoos, and even though he looks like he could snap me in half with his powerful arms, I’m suddenly not afraid of him. There's something in him, something that tells me I’m safe without a shadow of a doubt.
“I’m… I’m okay… I just, it’s just my ankle…” I whisper. I can't look away from his blue eyes, so crystal clear, so identical to mine. Even our widow’s peak in our dark hair matches. Is it possible that the Alpha had more children? My mother’s eyes were mud brown, dark like her heart. I never knew where I got mine.
“I’m sorry I scared you, girl,” he says, and without another word he scoops me into his arms and carries me back up the ditch and sits me on his bike. Before I can protest he’s on his knee again, untying my shoe, and holding my bare foot in his hand. I try to suppress a chuckle while he touches my foot, trying to see how bad the sprain is. I’m just too damn ticklish. He grins slightly when I cover my mouth to smother the sound.
“It doesn’t seem that bad, but my sister is just at the bar over there. Let me give you a ride. She can wrap your ankle for you. What’s your name?”
He looks up at me while he rubs my ankle gently, and the family resemblance seems to dawn on him at that very moment. His mouth parts slightly, eyes shifting from me to the bar down the hill, and he releases my foot and wipes his hands on his jeans nervously.
“Call me Cricket,” I tell him.
He stands and runs a hand through his long hair. “Ryder… What brings you here, Cricket?”
I watch him closely as I give voice to the truth. “I’m looking for my father, Richard Ashcroft?”
