Wolf Shifter Diaries: Lies Tamed (Sweet Paranormal Wolf & Fae Fantasy Romance Series Book 2) by E. Hall (books for men to read TXT) 📗

I light a campfire, and we feast on the provisions we brought. Stricken with sudden and strange exhaustion, I lean next to Kenna who gazes fixedly at the horizon. I lace my fingers through hers.

As the fire crackles, she starts to hum a mournful tune. I don’t understand Kenna’s words so much as feel the melodious lyrics in the center of my chest. It’s almost as though each of the words is a small arrow, piercing something inside me. Not in a painful way, but injecting me with warmth and passion.

My eyes grow heavy. I could sleep for a day or ten, preferably in a hammock or that cushy bed back at the casino.

With a startle, I wake to a murky dawn. Kenna’s song must have lulled me to sleep. My hand is empty. She isn’t beside me. She’s not in the van either. I hustle down to the shoreline, my shoulders braced against the wind.

Low tide exposes the rusted hull of a boat, tilted on its side. A little farther out, there’s another, deck-side down as though a giant had picked it up and then tossed it away like an abandoned toy. Still farther out, the ocean churns restlessly.

I creep closer, the water cloudy with sand as it erodes the metal of the ship. I wonder just how many vessels the ocean has claimed, not to mention lives.

The sun and salt faded the ship’s name, the passengers and crew likely nothing more than a sad memory, and the tragedy a mere blip in history.

I sense Kenna before I see her. Relief sweeps through me. She sits on a piece of driftwood and with her feet in the water. Her eyes match the clouds, which match the roiling waves.

“Sorry I passed out,” I say.

She shrugs. “I didn’t sleep much. This place—” She shrugs. “It feels like the right place, but is also spooky.” She throws her hand in the direction of the beached ships, the metal groaning as a wave shifts their skeletons.

“I don’t like it here,” I admit.

“It’s just cloudy. Wait until the sun comes out.”

“No, it’s something else. Something eerie.” I slide onto the sand and wrap my arm around her, pulling her close. “Have you ever heard of ghost pirates?” I ask.

“I thought there were only three types of ghosts.” Kenna wrinkles her nose. “I have to admit, although Alister was nice, the concept still freaks me out. When I was a kid, I had a dream that the librarian at my school turned into a ghost and a shark—at the same time.” She waves her hand. “Admittedly, I’d watched a retro double feature at our drive-in earlier that night—the movie Jaws and Ghostbusters.”

I chuckle. “These ghosts are stuck like Alister, except they haunt the sea, and I don’t mean in a friendly butler about the manor kind of way.” I clear my throat. “I’ve heard that ghost ships patrol the oceans, searching for elusive treasure, and hoping that if they add one more member to their crew, they’ll find what they’re looking for. They never do. They’re cursed to sail the sea on an endless hunt.”

“Do you think those ships are—?” Kenna asks, pointing.

“I don’t get a good feeling. That’s all.”

“Have you ever seen a ghost pirate or ship?”

I shake my head.

She claps her hands together. “As soon as the sun burns through the fog, it’ll be fine.”

The battered and creaking boats lift the hairs on the back of my neck, but there’s no sign of ghosts, pirate or otherwise, or her father for that matter.

Fog persists through the morning. The only thing that pierces the cloudy silence are the invisible calls of seagulls.

A thick, foreboding feeling closes over me and before I can stop myself, I shift into my wolf.

Chapter 17

Kenna

I feel something inexplicable—maybe it comes off being a little crazy and uncertain, but I feel, deep down as though there’s a reason for me to be at Bahia Magia. Plus we don’t have much else to go on.

The wind shifts. One moment, I’m gazing at Corbin in physical form. The next, he’s a wolf.

My breath stills in my lungs as I feel his Alpha tugging on mine. The pressure of my bones pressing against my skin and my insides changing shape is like a snapping, whipping, and gouging feeling that I can hardly resist.

But I do.

I catch snatches of his voice speaking in my head as he communicates in the wolf-way. Kenna, we have to leave here. This place is stained. Bad things happened here. I know it.

Wolf-Corbin paces along the shoreline. He must have shifted on pure instinct. His shoulders ripple with power as he gazes toward the sea. He’s tracking something. He’s protecting me. He senses something out there that I don’t—just like he intuited the password to tell the guard to access this place.

I want to shift, but if there’s something out there and I do change, and then we need to make a hasty getaway, I can’t very well drive as a wolf.

“Corbin, come back,” I call.

He’s coiled between me and whatever is out there.

I tuck my head, defeated. When I look up, a shadow moves through the waves. “Wait! There is something in the water. A man.” At least I think so. Oddly, I’m not afraid. Rather, I’m drawn to the water.

Before I can stop myself, I rush past Corbin, kicking up sand. I plunge in. My legs push through the resistance of the incoming waves. It’s as if my intuition kicked in. I have to go find the person.

I scan the murky water, looking for ripples or bubbles or whatever I saw. My wolf recedes into the background. All of a sudden, I