Black Rook Read Online Free PDF Page A

minutes.
    Father leaned slightly forward and planted his knuckles on the top of the desk, eyes hard. “Who sent you?”
    “No one,” she said, the two words a plea. “I swear, I’m here on my own.”
    “Why?”
    She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, but didn’t speak. Fine tremors shook her arms and shoulders. Rook didn’t pretend to know a lot about women, but he knew a scared rabbit cornered by a wolf when he saw one. The very first time his band performed at a music festival for a cash prize, the bass player had looked just like that in the final few minutes before they went onstage.
    “Knight,” Father said quietly.
    Brynn lurched to the side, but had nowhere to run. She pressed her back against the bookshelf holding Father’s collection of vintage textbooks and primers, eyes wide and hands up in a stop gesture. “I didn’t do anything.”
    “I won’t hurt you.” Knight moved to the center of the room. “I promise. I just want to help you calm down.”
    She tilted her head and glared at him, hands close to her neck, twisting that ring again. “You’re the one scaring me right now.”
    “Trust me.”
    “Touch me and I’ll scream.”
    “I don’t have to touch you, Ms. Jones.” Knight’s voice adopted the soothing tone he used when calling upon his gift. “Look at me, okay?”
    She did, and the moment her eyes met Knight’s, her entire body stilled. Something in the air crackled with energy, like static electricity, as her Magus nature fought against the part of her responding instinctively to Knight’s call.
    Knight was the rarest of all loup garou: a White Wolf. Loup populations were relatively small, and one in five hundred had a chance of being born White. White Wolves had the unique ability to calm other loup, to soothe tensions and prevent the primal, base nature of their inner beasts from taking over. Having a White Wolf in a run kept them civilized. For that reason, and because of the rarity of their births, White Wolves were often treated more like precious commodities than run members. Runs were not allowed to have more than one if another run was currently without. A majority vote from the thirteen run Alphas across the country could change a White Wolf’s life in an instant, and the loup in question would have no say.
    Their mother, Andrea, had been a White Wolf and, according to the stories Rook had been told, was devastated to discover her second-born carried the mark of the White. Once Knight reached the age of four and shifted for the first time, he could have been sent to another run in need. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on the point of view), their mother was killed when Knight was three, just a few months after Rook was born, in a skirmish with the volatile West Virginia run. Her death left them without a mother, but it also ensured the three brothers would never be separated.
    Whatever magic existed in a White Wolf and allowed them to calm other loup had always worked on half-breeds in the past. The difference was that all known half-breeds were from a human and loup pairing. To Rook’s knowledge, no one had ever seen a loup-Magus offspring before. And until they got her story, this small girl was the biggest threat in the room.
    “What are you doing?” Brynn asked, her voice pitched high with fear.
    “Calming you, if you’ll allow me,” Knight said. “It’s painless, I promise.”
    She blinked rapidly several times. “You’re a White Wolf, aren’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    Rook glanced at his father, who seemed just as surprised. The Magi were more educated in loup matters than Rook realized, and that worried him. If the Congress of Magi ever wanted to turn the loup against each other, targeting their White Wolves was the most effective way to create chaos within the runs. Rook didn’t like this stranger, attractive as she was, knowing his brother’s secret.
    “I thought Whites could only calm other loup,” Brynn said. Her genuine fear and