The Red Wolf (The Wolf Fey #2) Read Online Free PDF Page A

Logan-part of my brain was utterly confused. What did the Midnight Knight mean “now” - surely we had always been werewolves? But the words coming out of the Red Wolf's mouth confused me even further. “I sought the advice of the ancient Fey Queen,” I said. “Queen Panthea.”
    “Panthea, alive?”
    “She was not easy to find,” I was now saying. “I had to undergo many trials to even reach her – and more still once she heard my plea for help. But in the end I prevailed, and she granted me and the rest of my army a gift: a chance to defeat the Dark Hordes. We can all shift now, as we choose. Into wolves.”
    The Midnight Knight took a step closer, looking me up and down. I could not see his face behind the visor, and so the intensity of his stare unnerved me. “Wolves are known for their strength as well as their loyalty. Can I count on both in you, my brother?” He placed his gloved hands on my shoulders. “Can we trust in you now, Connell?”
    “You can trust me,” I knelt before him.
    “Queen Panthea is a wise and powerful woman,” he said, “and yet – how did she manage to transform you? Ascribing powers to fairies is a dangerous and difficult thing to do – I've almost never heard of such a thing.”
    “She said there would be sacrifices,” I said, and as I spoke I felt a great sense of foreboding within me: a nameless, terrible terror. “She said that my men would sacrifice a great deal for the great gift she was giving us. And then she took my blood, running silver, pricking me with a dagger on the thumb. She caught my blood in a vial and then she mixed my blood with the red blood of a wolf, chanting all the while. And as she mixed the blood, turning my blood red, I looked at the wound she had made upon my flesh and saw that there, too, I had begun to bleed red, not silver.”
    “As mortals do?” The Midnight Knight looked up.
    “As mortals do.” My voice shook. “ Just like mortals.”
    “Then even if you survive this battle...”
    “We will age far more rapidly than you do, my brother. But it is a choice we all agreed to make: me and all my men who underwent this treatment before Panthea's gaze. Immortality is worth nothing if we live in a dishonored Feyland.”
    My brother embraced me. “What strong magic – to change the blood. And what a sacrifice.” He hugged me tight. “I hope that, if fate should decree it, I will not make a less noble sacrifice on the battlefield than you did for your men.”
    “For Feyland.”
    “For Feyland,” he echoed. “It is what is necessary.”
    “They are beasts,” I said, “those we fight – beasts! We must become beasts to fight them. For that is the pact I have made with the Queen. At times we will be men – at other times, beasts. We will live or die as both from henceforth.”
    “Hence you should have a new name, friend. If you survive. You were named Connell, but now I think a better title is fitting. Your blood runs red now – and so I pronounce you the Red Wolf.” He kissed me on both cheeks. “But do not let your blood run tonight, brother.”
    “We must go,” I nodded.
    “Yes, it is time.” We looked up at the rapidly darkening sky.
    “Come,” I called out to my soldiers. “It is time to fight beast with beast.” One by one, my men began to turn, transforming into an army of wolves ten thousand strong.
    “Now,” said the Midnight Knight, turning to his own army. “It's time to move.”

Chapter 4
     
     
    I opened my eyes, groggily rubbing the last traces of sleep from my eyelids. “What the...” I tried to sit up, but my muscles failed me, and I fell back onto what smelled distinctly like a pile of hay. I breathed in, only to choke and splutter on the scent: it smelled like the less pleasant end of a sweaty cow. I felt the area around me with my fingers, to my surprise finding not snow but hay and wood. The potion that Pan had slipped me may have worn off a bit, but I was still groggy and disoriented. And, it