I wanted to share an extended teaser from my current work in progress. I am so nervous about this book! It’s different, and a whole new cast of characters you will have to get to know. But it mainly focuses on the MC Michael Salem and his coming of age story, understanding what and who he is and coming to terms with the fact that he is different than the rest of his kind in a very big way.

And some hot Alpha Lycans, a sassy ass witch, a softly spoken medium, a scary as fuck principal, a weird history teacher, a hot jock love interest, and some creepy old creature from be fore time was time that eats supernatural and paranormal beings. Yup,  there’s even the crazy ‘Wulfy style’ plot twist and turns and evil secrets that you’ll be ripping your hair out to find the awsewrs to.

But I’ll let the confusions and WTFs commence from chapter one.

It was the first story I ever wrote from start to finish, and boy was it bad, like not even a priest could exorcise the grammar mistakes out of it. But I’ve been hard at work re writing it. And with some help from my fairy godmother aka Mamma Bear, I can finally show you guys some of it.

The Wulf Chronicles

Blurb:

What if Werewolves were real?
What if one of them was different?
What if you were a defective werewolf?

Welcome to my life. I’m Michael Salem. I’m a defective werewolf.

This is not the story of how in one night I got bitten and my life changed.

Nor is it the story of how I go on a savage killing spree left with guilt and dread the next morning.

No. I am born one, born defective and instead, I’m the one on the menu.

I am born one, born defective and instead, I’m the one on the menu.

 

CHAPTER ONE

BLACK SNOW

 

I was going to die.

As I stood in his office, a rotting sickness riddled my body, curdling my blood, its black claws dripping with venom and wrapped around my heart. A poison I had so carefully tried to build an immunity to.

I knew Death was going to be my only friend in this moment.

Fear laced each barreling breath he grunted into the air. Stained each ram of my heart that slammed into my tight chest. Burned in each tear of sweat that licked its way down my neck, soaking into my collar.

I was going to die.

That truth was etched in his wrath, growling livid within his glare, like liquid rancor, devouring everything and anything in its path, coming straight for me.

His knuckles cracked, massacring the air between his enormous, clenched fists. Lightning howled in his cyan-cerulean eyes, its sharp glint amplified by his dark-furred and deep protruding brows,  his scowl dipped in an inky shadow.

A rage cooked through him, its vapors blemishing his face in a feral red as it swelled thicker and thicker. His stone-tight jaw twitched, promising nothing but oblivion while his nostrils flared in vexation.

He was a hazard of the most mutilating kind as he stood before me, his presence a suffocating animus that drained anything and everything from the world. A savage behemoth of solid man. I swallowed. Gruesomely intense and heartless at that.

My mind was clasped in a death grip, squeezing onto one question; who in their right mind ever gave him the position as high school principal? Because someone had to find that person and shoot them dead. More pressingly, why had Mother Nature even allowed him to be born? He was a violation, defying the natural laws of the cosmos altogether, a havoc of fury too eminent to be a normal man and by far too terrifying to be breathing.

He was too big, so massively big that even the large furniture in his office looked teacup size in comparison.

“Mr. Salem!” His voice came tight, shattering the silent air. The veins in his thick, muscled neck bulged as he stepped forward.

I shuddered, eyeing his desk, the distance between us, and the door, knowing I would have mere seconds left of my miserable existence before he would have me pinned against the wall. His fingers would dig into my gut, threatening to wrench out my warm innards if I so much as breathed.

I gulped on my own spit, my throat burning, searing hot, the muscles clamped tight, forcing me to squeeze out air in a thin, soundless whimper. I shut my eyes, trying to lock him out, wishing this could be over. If it would result in my own demise, that would be okay, because at least in death I wouldn’t have to face him again. But even blinded in darkness, his presence scraped over my skin, and I knew then, Death held no restriction to the residual voracity he infected within my soul.

“Look at me, boy!” His growl resonated, licking along the pulsing vein in my neck, where I knew he wanted to claim the soft flesh of my throat with his teeth.

I snapped my gaze to his, stealing a shaky breath as the lack of air reached my legs, desperately clawing to drag me to the carpet of his office floor.

He slammed his fist down on his large minuscule desk, making the wood groan and sending a stack of folders scattering for their lives onto the floor. Even inanimate objects knew enough to be petrified of the colossal beast. He was a fucking monster. Wolfish. His dress shirt appeared about a thread away from dying at the seams where his bulky muscles warred to eat through the material.

Big raised his head, the overhead light slicing sharply across his bald scalp. He huffed, his enormous body a shaking mass of dominance from a simple breath. He puffed and flared his nostrils while his eyes narrowed, his thin lips peeled back in a snarl.

A tremor squeezed through me like razors, and Principal Black’s frigid, molten gaze dipped, following the undulation drumming along my flesh. Those stone-cold orbs scraped in a heartless scour of anger, trailing my lithe body as if they were marking every inch of my skin. It was in no way sexual, more like staring the shit out of a piece of shit that had the misfortune to be stuck to his shit-stained boot.

I bit my lip, anger and heartache tearing at my insides, and fought hard not to spill tears. I hadn’t cried since I was ten years old, not since I stopped calling her mommy. I had stood strong, hardened against the world’s odium, against the carnivorous, bloodthirsty force always snapping at our heals.

Against the fear of Them.

But… Big… He ripped that control away like it was a thin piece of fragile lace that had weakened and withered over time.

My vulnerability was mine, no one else’s. It was the only part of me I could still keep safe, soft, and decontaminated within the shell I pretended to be. It was the only part of me that remained from eight years ago, the only part of me that was still Michael. The small light I had left to guide me against the fear and the darkness of our life.

Big was ripping it apart, like I was some display on a cold morgue table, my gut and chest all flayed open so he could poke around inside my soul. My most precious truth that no one could touch, the real me I always hid from the world…the part of me that I only let out when I was completely alone, the only part of me that I allowed to know fear—Big was infecting it with his presence, with his dominance, claiming and tearing my light out and taking it from me for himself.

“You’re late!” Big’s deep, graveled voice boomed in a harsh rumble. He stood straight, his thick beefy arms folded across a deep chest. He grunted, a thick sheen of sweat pearling on his forehead and dripping down the sides of his face. Yet more perspiration tracked down his fat, veiny neck, while large dark patches stained the undersides of his sky-blue dress shirt below his arms.

I swallowed. Alarm bells exploded in my head, one by one, as they burst from the excessive warnings clawing at my gut. The A/C was rumbling on a high that could freeze Hell over. Yet it was not the cold that had shivers raking down my skin and soul to burn my bones black with frostbite. No, it was purely from fear. A terror this man infected into anyone who so much as glimpsed him.

But that fear was also accompanied by the eldritch sludge now knotting in my belly.

Big. Had. No. Smell.

My chest squeezed tight, fists curling into pain as I flared my nostrils, dragging more air through my nasal cavities just to get a small hint…but, the prehistoric cave troll, standing across from me…had no scent. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

I didn’t like this. The hairs on my arms and even my neck were already standing up, vibrating with his presence that permeated the room, now they were curling as a sharp dread of caution spiked over my skin.

Smell… Without it, my senses were whacked out of fuck.

Big’s mouth slowly twisted into a sneer, his face a maddening red as a warning dripped from lips. “I don’t like trouble-makers, Mr. Salem.” Those orbs flashed, Big’s voice a cacophonous, dark thunder punching out each word, boom, boom, boom—rapturing my blood vessels. “And you seem more like the kind of scum we’d prefer to keep out of this town.”

Pain wove through my oscillating heart, bleeding itself into my irises, moisture burning as it filled my gaze.

Big didn’t so much as blink, seeing the scars of his words reflect in my eyes, his suffocating leer pinned on me, waiting for my tears to fall.

I kept staring at him, a frightened kid standing in the shadow of a breathing nightmare. He had already claimed my fear: I was determined not to give him my tears.

He couldn’t have those. I wouldn’t let him.

They were for her, the only person who had ever loved me. Despite what our lives were, despite the fact that I knew it was because of me that our existence was this constant roller coaster straight from Hell, Mom still loved me. And she would do anything and everything to protect me, even lay her life down if it came to that.

That was who I was saving my tears for. Her. For the day when we would have to say goodbye.

As much as I feared Them, feared Big, I knew that day would come when we would be stolen away from each other and there would be nothing I could do to stop it.

Death was an eternal truth that connected all things, to bestow a kiss from which  no one would be spared.

Big’s large hand went to the gray tie that appeared to be choking him in this moment. Those thick fingers wrestled the silk snake free before unbuttoning the top two studs of his shirt, revealing a hint of a very dense forest of dark-brown and silver chest hair. Those massive paws could—and probably wanted to—crush my skull and snap my body in two like a dried out twig. He flexed them once he’d lain the tie on his desk, before popping his knuckles.

“You have a pernicious record, Mr. Salem.” Big narrowed his eyes, barbaric and berserk hostility radiant in his glower. “Skipping class? Indolent about your school work, poor grades, being expelled? Having to redo your final year?” Big’s calamitous voice rang through the room, chewing into me. Whether it was Big or my own body making me tremble, I wasn’t sure at this point anymore. I was trying too hard not to wet himself. “Switching to five different high schools in a period of three years!”

I stammered at the growl, only to be stopped by Big’s office wall biting into my back.

Luckily my only physical reaction had been to dribble.

He sure knew how to make a goddam impression on a student on their first day.

“P-principal Black.” My voice quivered when I spoke for the first time since entering his office. “I know I’m not the star student—”

Big massacred his open palms down on his desk, the wood releasing a loud crack. I was damn sure that sturdy oak shivered from the weight bearing down on it.

I curled my fingers around my backpack’s strips in desperation to hold onto something while my heart was going for gold in my chest as Big leaned his massive frame forward. His immense shoulders, biceps and triceps were fully sculpted and on display as the material twisted around them, evincing menace. His brows frowned dangerously sharp, the deep indents of skin knitting a shadow over those hellishly beautiful eyes.

Despite the primeval fear and the violent ripples possessing my flesh, I had to admit, as with the man himself, those eyes were a terrific sight. Something one both feared and yet held in awe. Like a night sky filled with stars: you gape at its vast, cavernous beauty, consumed with the crippling feeling of how small and insignificant you are in comparison. His eye color was so unique and preternatural, so vivid and chaotic, it could quell hellfire, but that might only be due to the fact that Big was an ulcer of rage.

“Miss Elena!” Big thundered, leaving me to shiver as that callous voice burned over my flesh. “Escort Mr. Salem to his class.” Big’s face still bore that angry expression, that growl never leaving his barrel chest.

With a snap of his thick, hairy fingers, he uttered a “Go!” signaling and dismissing me towards the door.

Unsteadily, I forced my feet to move, to turn, to get away, but it was an exhausting attempt. Halfway out the door, the Big Bad Wolf fucking snarled, “Boy! I’ll be keeping a close eye on you.” That low, hostile blare scraped its talons against my bones, and I wanted to curl into a ball and appear as small and vulnerable as I felt in Big’s presence.

I sank down into the chair, waiting on the receptionist to be done with whatever the hell she was doing. Big’s voice still resonated through me, my skin pulled tight in icy goose flesh. Big’s heavy breathing, fast and deep, taking in extra air to accommodate that large size, still rang in my ears. Those eyes haunted me, their dreaded scowl squeezing the life from my lungs with an iron fist around my heart without Big even laying a whispered touch on me.

He—Big’s presence—was inside me, a ravishing storm of liquid fear growling in my blood, leaving my pulse to run a dead beat.

A tear crawled down my cheek to my jaw, and dripped onto the back of my hand. I stared at the starburst of moisture, my face muscles trembling to let the others free.

I flared my nostrils, my nails grating over the denim of my black jeans covering my knees. I was a high school kid. What the fuck ever had I done to him to deserve this… abhorrence?

My stomach crunched. Bubbling acid guzzled in my gut as I still tried to digest the bitter burning sting; he had no scent.

But for him to tear down this protective fortress I had so carefully built to preserve myself?

That rocked me the most.

Big was an unwanted obstacle, a temporary stone fucking wall of muscled tyranny that would stand in my way, and I couldn’t let that distract me.

I couldn’t afford it. Because this time around, when They finally did showed up, we would have to take a stand and fight back.

How? I still wasn’t sure. But we couldn’t keep running. This last move of ours took everything from us. There wasn’t enough money left from the little we had, to leave everything behind and run again, and start off somewhere else.

And Mom was at her last end, this life finally starting to claim her. Like cancer, it had been eating away at the woman I called my hero, at the single person who had battled and fought so hard to keep me alive and safe from Them.

And yet, I knew They would come, sooner rather than later, because They wouldn’t stop until I was dead.

I gazed down the open hallway, the poor lighting giving the stretch of space a sinister chill that trickled down my spine as I watched the shadows play in all that gray: the walls, the floor, even the lockers were painted the same sad, depressing color. And the halls were hushed. For a high school, even with Satan as the principal, they were just too silent.

But that gray…

I swallowed, feeling it lick up my spine. Internally I shuddered as the ice-cold dolor swam in my stomach. My eyes burned as I squeezed my lids and blinked out the world before me.

It would be so easy to slip into despair because that was all we ever knew.

The forest of a thousand eyes will show its teeth.

Black

Vicious.

Cruel.

Fear forever snapped at our heels, a starving beast that lurked around every corner, ready to choke us. To claw out our hearts and rip us apart when we stopped to take a breath.

We were drifters.

I was scared.

She had to be too.

And I was so sick of it all.

Mom had to be too.

Her voice, so loud and clear and painful in my skull, it screamed.

A crippling feeling consumes you when you hear your parents cry and talk to themselves. Well, parent would be the more accurate word… There was no other family, there had never been.

“I don’t want to talk about your father. It’s best to leave sleeping beasts lay. There they can’t hurt you.” Her voice, so fragile, so broken, it left a scar.

It made sense in a way. Isolation was our protection…it kept others safe.

It kept me and Mom hidden from Them.

But.

They wouldn’t stop, not until I was dead.

Mom had worried it might be a bit too close-knit, but I liked it here. Black Snow. An island situated off the coast of Maine, only reachable by boat. Population 825. Yeah, so few people living so closely to one another, nothing usually goes unnoticed.

There’s always somebody watching. Unknown eyes gazing from the shadows.

Waiting.

Hunting.

Preying.

Yet there was something about this place, not the town nor the constant fog that hugged the island like an overprotective mother, but about this land. A feeling had crawled over me the moment we had set foot off the ferry and I had sniffed my first lung full of the air. A whisper that had bedeviled the breeze, singing a warm but silent chant through the icy oxygen pulled into my lungs.

Home, this is where you belong. Welcome…

That same grim feeling had licked at my spine as I had sneered at the currents drifting through the windows and cracks of the two-story building that had stood in front of me. The ever present fog had been thicker than usual this morning. Its murkiness, swelling into a white apparition, had engulfed me as I had moved my late ass towards the building. The particles so dense, I could see them wandering before my eyes.

If there was ever one true hell,  the vilest of evils we’ve all faced at some time in our lives, it was high school.

The building looked too new: perhaps it was simply a case of being well taken care of. Except for the gray walls and roof, the steps at my feet were dingy red-brown, one of them chipped, the grove populated by vibrant green moss. I had pried through the glass of the red door, the window’s wooden frame creaking as I clawed onto it. The hallways were poorly lit, light bouncing off the tiles and walls, the same dull gray, with darker gray lockers matching it for dreariness.

Yeah, fucking high school. But there I had been, sucking at air and opening the door to a new school, another house and a new town, with new people I wasn’t even bothered to remember, the ones before already long forgotten. No matter that this ambiance sitting so heavy in my chest proclaimed this to be home or…our last run.

And now I was sitting in a chair feeling sorry for myself and my despondent life, still trying to exorcise the cruel char of meeting Mr. Black, aka Big, aka motherfucking Scare-o-saurus.

“Mr. Salllllemmmm!”

I cringed, clenching my teeth when the receptionist spoke,  her voice a needle dragging along a vinyl record, her wrinkled face a frozen image when I peeked in her direction. She peered over her half-moon glasses, large, ancient blue eyes spying me up and down, looking too much like Grandma Ethyl from Dinosaurs. As lifeless as the school’s gray walls, she might as well have faded into the background. I grimaced, nose scrunching from the revolting smell of mothballs clinging to her pink knitted blazer. If she could at least have licked her lips she would have appeared more interesting than the dead slab of gravestone she pretended to be. Alas, there was no hope for this one.

“Please, follow me.” She pushed out of her chair and moved around her office, stepping out to the waiting area and proceeded to storm towards the hallway, foregoing any attempt at politeness.

With a heartfelt sigh, I shoved out of the seat and made a valiant attempt to add my Chucks’ squeaky squeals to the clicking symphony of her heels on the polished floors.

I followed the vulturess down the hall and up a flight of stairs to the second floor where it seemed brighter than the ground floor’s gray gloom. My skin still hummed. Grinding my teeth, I closed my eyes to shake Big’s presence from me.

But…even behind closed lids, a storm rumbled. The deep majestic, ocean blue-green of his eyes, dangerously intimidating, wild and wrathful, and yet utter feral hellfire. I blinked, swallowing hard as my heart almost killed me…it couldn’t be. Big was downright terrifying, that was all, with nothing more than the faintest possibility that maybe… Big was one of The—?

“Mr. Salem!” I snapped to as she clicked her fingers before my face, her gaze narrowed, her lips pursed into two tight lines.

I gulped as she pointed at the door. She smiled or attempted to, but it was anything but. More a twisted sneer, telling me I didn’t belong here. I’d seen it on so many people before.

“Thank you,” I worded as she passed me, not even bothering to acknowledge my voice as she kept walking, her heels echoing off down the corridor and finally the stairs.

I sucked in a deep breath, gripped the door handle and glanced left then right… This would be so easy. One small act and it all could be over. I had enough money in my pocket to cover the ferry fee. I would find a way to survive somehow. It wouldn’t matter because Mom wouldn’t need to bother with me. She could find someone else, start a new life—without me. Be happy for goddamn once. While I led Them away from her. She had sacrificed so much for me. Be cruel to be kind, as they say. I closed my eyes. I wanted to do it, the urge so strong in my gut it made my bones tremble. But one thought left an acidic slash in my chest, a gush so deep it penetrated my vulnerable heart.

I would destroy her, because I was all she had.

I was her happy.