A Love Untamed (Feral Warriors #7)(3)

What the feck? Had he turned into a bloody monster?

His tongue snagged on the teeth suddenly crowding his mouth. No, not teeth. Fangs. Like the Welshman, he’d gone feral.

But . . . two new Feral Warriors? Impossible . . . unless another had died without them knowing. Dismay, shock, and elation all warred within him, all trying to find purchase.

People crowded around them, gaping, silent. It wasn’t every day a Therian got to see a Feral Warrior. Kieran himself had never laid eyes on one, not in the entirety of his over three hundred years. Now, apparently, he was one.

The others all started talking at once.

“I thought only the fox had died.”

“Maybe the Ferals were attacked again, and we didn’t know.”

“You have to call Feral House.”

Kieran met the Welshman’s gaze, glad to see the male’s eyes were once more human, his fangs and claws retracted. Kieran’s own slid away as well.

Jill joined him, her eyes wide in her face, drenched in dismay. “You’re leaving, then. To join the Ferals.”

“Aye.” The thought sent a thrill through his body.

“It’s a dangerous business,” she said, her voice uneven. “They’re on the front line of the battle. Two are dead.”

But the front line was exactly where he wanted to be. Fighting back evil, making a difference. He met the Welshman’s gaze and saw again that look in his eyes that he didn’t like. Maybe the male was one of those who didn’t take well to authority, in any form. Or maybe he was just an ass**le. Either way, apparently they were now brothers. For the rest of their immortal lives.

As he pulled out his phone to call his enclave and get the number for Feral House, goose bumps rose on his arms, the telltale sign that his intuition was kicking in with some tidbit of knowledge that would likely be of little use.

Wrong.

Wrong? And what in the hell did that mean? That he was wrong in thinking his “gift” would be of little use? Wrong in trying to call Feral House right now? The time in Washington, D.C., was . . . about 7:30 A.M. Too early?

Or was his gut trying to tell him something more profound?

Who knew? There was no use worrying about it. What was done was done. He’d been marked to join the exclusive ranks of the Feral Warriors, and there was no turning it down. Nor did he want to.

All his life, he’d dreamed that this moment might someday be his, and he was damned well going to celebrate it. Even if his gut continued to whisper that one word over and over.

Wrong.

Three days ago

Just before dawn on a cloudless night, Kieran strode through the woods that hung high above the rocky falls of the Potomac River in Great Falls, Virginia, surrounded by Feral Warriors, both old and new. He’d thought that the fact that he and the Welshman had both been marked meant two of the Feral Warriors had died, but that wasn’t the case, thank the goddess.

For millennia, there had been twenty-six Feral Warriors, twenty-six animal shape-shifters left in the world, each of whom shifted into a different, unique animal. Then, six centuries ago, seventeen of them fell into a spirit trap, never to return. The spirit trap had separated the men from their animal spirits, killing the men and holding the animal spirits so they could never mark another. For six hundred years, the Feral Warriors had numbered only nine.

Then a week ago, the first of the seventeen lost animal spirits had returned. Word hadn’t reached Dublin, but the Ferals had believed their new fox shifter had arrived. Instead, the new Feral had shifted into a saber-toothed cat, one of the seventeen lost animals. As the Ferals rejoiced, eight more had been marked and made their way to Feral House including Kieran and the Welshman. Tonight was their Renascence, the ritual that would bring them into their animals for the first time, revealing which animal had chosen each.

Kieran strode down to the cliffs beside Jag, one of the original Ferals, and Ewan, another of the newly marked, one he’d fought beside on both sides of the Atlantic, on and off for decades. A good man, thank the goddess. If they’d all been like the Welshman, Kieran might have begun to wonder if the animal spirits truly marked the best in the line, as had always been claimed. The new Ferals were, by and large, an unruly lot, but the originals showed every sign of living up to the legend. From what Kieran had seen, they were a good, honorable bunch and a true brotherhood.

“How does this work?” Kieran asked Jag, as the band of more than a dozen immortal males strode, shirtless and barefoot, along the rocks. Lyon, Chief of the Ferals, brought up the rear with his mate, Kara, their Radiant.

“We’ll call a mystic circle upon the goddess stone in order to hide what goes on from any humans who happen by. Then it’s ritual time, pretty boy.” Jag grinned. “I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”

A hard thrill coursed through Kieran. He was about to shift into an animal for the very first time. How many times had he done so in his dreams? How many times had he wondered what it must have been like in those ancient days, when all Therians shifted? Too many to count.

As he climbed down the rocks, he wondered which of the animal spirits had marked him. He hoped the fox, for that was the ancestry he knew. His mother had possessed no knowledge of her own Therian heritage. Few Therians ever mated, and virtually none were monogamous unless they did. His mother had never known who her father was, let alone his deep animal DNA. Which meant, Kieran could potentially have been marked by any of the seventeen animal spirits as well as the fox.