The Hidden (Shadowed Wings Book 1) Read online

  The Hidden

  Shadowed Wings Book 1

  Ivy Asher

  Copyright © 2019 Ivy Asher

  All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the author, except in cases of a reviewer quoting brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Edited by Polished Perfection

  Cover Design by Nichole Witholder at Rainy Day Artwork

  For the incredible readers who give new authors and their books a chance. Thank you for being dream-makers.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Thank you so fucking much for reading!!!

  Also by Ivy Asher

  About the Author

  1

  I’m shoved against a wall as soon as I clear the doorway, and lips seal to mine. The kiss is hurried, a little messy, but I can work with that. I grind my hips forward, and the hard bulge in his pants protrudes against my lower stomach. I reach down and start to undo the button on his jeans. I moan as Trevor—shit, I think that’s his name, or was it Turner?—runs his hand under my shirt and cups my breast with a firm squeeze. His tongue swirls with mine as I try to recall what he said his name was when he approached me at the bar. All I can really remember was the brown scruff dusting his jaw, muscles, and the hint of his farmer’s tan peeking out from the sleeve of his t-shirt.

  I take over the kiss, modeling for him exactly what I like. I dive into the memory of when he came to talk to me, and dig through it for his name.

  “Your boyfriend’s been in the bathroom a long time,” a tan, brown-eyed, brown-haired man tells me, pointing to the helmet sitting in the seat next to me.

  I finish the bite of food in my mouth and then run my gaze up the stranger’s lean but nicely muscled body. I take a discreet inhale of the air around me and pick up a distinct pine and soil scent. He’s a wolf shifter. He gives me a knowing smile, and it’s clear he’s already picked up the same olfactory hints from me. I reach out and lift my helmet off the seat and place it on the polished wood of the bar I’m sitting at. I don’t bother correcting the boyfriend comment. I’m decked out from head to toe in riding armor, and the helmet’s obviously mine. He’s either stupid or shit at opening lines; either way, he’s pretty to look at and currently exactly what I’m looking for.

  I take another bite of my burger as Tan and Pretty sits down next to me. I unzip my jacket and shrug it off, exposing the gray ribbed tank top I’m wearing underneath and a lot more skin. He takes another deep inhale, and his arm brushes against mine. I’m just a shade lighter than him, but I have my father to thank for the extra dose of melanin and not the sun. My grandmother said he was from some island somewhere, although it was easier to sit through a bikini wax than to get her to be more specific than that. She never liked talking about him much.

  Travis, or whatever the fuck his name is, tries to take control and bites at my bottom lip a little too hard. It yanks me from my wandering thoughts. I growl at him and then return the favor, and he hisses at me. I’m tired of this freshman make out session that’s going on. I want to fuck, shower, and get a little sleep before I need to get back on the road, and Tyler is not being nearly as aggressive as he was at the bar. I want a hot hook up, not a slow and sensual lesson in the merits of the karma sutra.

  I suck on his tongue and muscle myself away from the wall I’m pressed against. I flip our positions and slam him back. The yellowing plaster of the wall cracks a little, but I doubt the manager will notice; this motel room isn’t exactly a five star establishment. I grab Tate’s hands and direct them to my ass, and then I reach down and rub at his hard length which is, annoyingly, still in his pants. I kiss him harder, but instead of the growl and aggressive response that I’m hoping for, Tristan stiffens.

  I pull back to look at him, and irritation flashes through me when his eyes aren’t filled with heat like they were at the bar or when he was just feeling me up.

  “I don’t like dominant play,” he informs me.

  I stare at him dumbfounded for a couple of seconds. “Then you shouldn’t pick up chicks more dominant than you,” I challenge.

  “I didn’t think you were. You were pretty quiet and went along with my lead back at the bar,” he counters.

  “Yeah, because I was eating and didn’t give a shit about whatever the fuck you were talking about.” I separate from him and shake my head as I walk over to the door and open it.

  “Are you kicking me out?” he asks, shocked.

  “I wanted a good fuck, but at this point, my hand is more likely to give me that than you are,” I answer simply and motion out the open doorway.

  He stares at me openmouthed for a few beats as his eyes grow more and more incredulous. “I should have fucking known you’d be some alpha bitch when you got on that butch-ass motorcycle and brought me here,” he accuses, grabbing his shirt from the floor and pulling it on.

  My eyes narrow with anger. “That butch-ass bike is a Ducati XDiavel S, and she feels better between my thighs than I’m sure you ever would have. Bye, Troy, wish I could say it was nice to meet you.”

  “My name is James,” he barks at me and then stomps out the door, mumbling something about how I probably don’t even like men. He makes a beeline for his shitty truck, and I slam the door, leaning back against it with a huff. James? I could have sworn it started with a T.

  I shrug it off as irritation and anger pump through me. I can feel my wolf wanting to respond, and I take a couple of deep breaths to try to calm the both of us down. As much as she wants to rip out of me like the big bad alpha bitch that she is, I’m a fucking latent. No matter how much I try to shift, it just doesn’t happen. The failure to do what should come naturally to me as a shifter hurts me and the animal that prowls underneath my skin, but I’ve learned to accept that it is what it is and there isn’t shit I can do about any of it.

  I thumb the large moonstone ring that I wear on my middle finger. It was my mother’s, and I always feel close to her as I rub the same metal wrapped around my finger that was once wrapped around hers. I haven’t taken it off since my grandmother gave it to me at fifteen, and playing with it or touching it in some way has become like a soothing tic. A truck engine roars to life, and the sound of tires kicking up gravel resonates just on the other side of the door.

  The peeling wallpaper and obnoxious floral bedspread of the motel room are suddenly all I can see, and I try not to cringe. I was fine to get my orgasm on in here, but now the thought of staying in this place for the night makes my skin crawl. I grab my jacket off the back of the chair that’s tucked into a small desk with a cracked top. The leather and the quilt stitching of my jacket hug me tightly, like the old friends they are, as I shove one arm into a sleeve, then the other, and zip it up. I grab my pack and helmet and hea
d out.

  “Well, Gran, it looks like it’s just me and you again,” I announce, as I strap my helmet on and make my way back to my bike. I power up my GPS as I straddle my motorcycle, and my thighs and lower back give a twinge of protest. Gran, of course, doesn’t answer since she’s in an urn in my backpack, but just like touching my mother’s ring soothes me, talking to Gran while I take this trip helps me feel a hell of a lot better about it. The engine of my bike roars to life under me, and I pat the pack on my back reassuringly.

  Gran always hated that I loved vehicles of the two-wheeled variety as opposed to the four-wheeled options, but something about the wind as it rushes past me sends my soul flying. I’ve been hooked on bikes since shop class when we were tasked with building one my sophomore year of high school. Even though Gran put up a fuss about it, I could always see a gleam of longing in her eyes when I talked about my love of speed and what it felt like to cut through the wind on one. She grumbled, but she never did stop me from saving up my money and buying my first bike.

  I take off out of the parking lot, careful not to eat it on the gravel, and head back out toward the highway. I have about four hours of easy road ahead of me before I reach the final destination of this four-day road trip. I was hoping for a solid distraction so I could put things off a little longer, but the hard cock between my thighs I was hoping for clearly didn’t work out. I merge on the highway and pick up speed as I get lost in my thoughts.

  “Miss Umbra—”

  “Falon, just call me Falon,” I correct as I stare absently at the large cherrywood table I’m sitting at.

  “Falon, did your grandmother ever discuss with you her preferences when it came to her remains?” the suited and booted lawyer asks me, his voice soft and bleeding sympathy.

  “No,” I answer hollowly and try to fight the melancholy sitting on my chest like a rock. I can’t believe she’s gone. I mean Gran was old. She had a full and, as far as I can tell, relatively happy life, but I just never really pictured myself without her. Without a tether.

  “Your grandmother asked that her ashes be spread in Pinion, Alberta. It’s a small town just over the Canadian–United States border. She has an address listed here,” he tells me and slides a piece of paper across the table.

  He starts talking about my gran’s house and her assets, but I tune him out to stare at the stark white paper with the black typed address. I’ve never heard of Pinion, Alberta, let alone heard Gran ever talk about it or whatever exists at the numbers sitting on the paper in front of me. I didn’t think she was from a place like the small mountain town in Colorado where I grew up; I always got the impression Gran was city forged. My parents died when I was five, and ever since then, it’s been Gran and me against the world. Now it’s just me.

  I shake away the sad memories and focus on the road in front of me. Miles blur by, and the next thing I know, the smooth female voice of my GPS tells me I’m only twenty miles away from my destination. I’m on a winding mountain road that seems to be nothing but switchbacks, and I’m having fun leaning into each turn and pushing my bike and myself to see just how much speed we can take. But with each mile I fly through, the more it feels like a boulder is resting on my sternum. Trees flash past me, and I can’t help but dip back into all the curiosity I have about this place.

  Gran didn’t like talking about where she came from. That subject, and my dad, were pretty off limits, but the closer I get to the address that Gran left, the more I wonder if this is where her home pack lived. Gran wasn’t latent like I am. She’d talk about shifting with longing and fondness, but whenever I’d ask her to shift, she’d become morose; she’d wave it away and say those days were behind her. She seemed almost relieved when my wolf couldn’t complete the transformation.

  I sniff at the air as much as I can with my helmet on, but I don’t smell wolves or any other shifters for that matter. The crisp mountain air is cool and laced with moisture. I can smell snow on the breeze, and I really hope wherever I’m going has a place to crash for the night, or it could be a cold drive back to the last town I passed. I turn down a small road I would have never noticed on my own; thank fuck for Google Maps. I drive slowly and cautiously down the hard packed dirt path until the posh feminine voice announces, “You have arrived.”

  I pull into a clearing that has a small stone cabin sitting in the center. The road I’m on ends abruptly, and I stop and step off my bike. I stretch my back and legs out and wait to see if anyone is going to come out and greet me from the small little house. No one does, and after staring at the house and surrounding unkempt grass for a couple minutes, I conclude that it’s empty. My gaze travels around, taking in the trees and the patches of tall grass and weeds. I’m not sure what to think about this place, but it’s clearly not home to Gran’s pack—or anything else, it seems.

  I pull my backpack off, and my heart drops as I unzip it and pull out the urn holding Gran’s ashes.

  “Well, Gran, we’re here,” I announce as I unwrap the plastic protecting her in my bag. “I’m not sure why this place was where you wanted to be, but I guess it’s only right that you kept those answers to yourself; fuck knows you did enough of that when you were alive, too.”

  I can practically hear her telling me to watch my language, and I give the urn in my hands a sad smile.

  “Love you, Gran,” I tell her as I walk away from the road and out into the clearing.

  I look for a good spot for her and start to move toward a patch of dandelions that are in the wispy, make-a-wish stage of their lives. Out of nowhere, a white light flashes all around me, and I’m suddenly airborne, being thrown back with g-force like speed. Pain sizzles through my body, and I’m pretty sure I was just electrocuted by some invisible fucking force field. I slam into a tree behind me, and I can feel my bones breaking upon contact. I crumble to the ground, the smell of burnt skin and hair filling my nose. A whimper escapes me, but I’m broken and unable to make more sound than that.

  My vision blurs and then comes into focus. Blades of grass solidify in my view, but beyond that, I can just make out my smoking hand. My mother’s ring is black, and there’s a brutal crack down the center of the stone. Anguish bleeds into me and ripples through the pain flooding my system. The last thing I see is the ring breaking apart and crumbling into nothing on my finger before everything goes black.

  2

  Fresh air clears my senses as I come to. I feel groggy and surprisingly pain free. Wind whips past my face, and I revel in the feel of it. I shake away the disconnected feeling I’m currently experiencing and look around to find I’m surrounded by blue sky and wispy clouds.

  What the hell? Did I die?

  I flash through the sky and pull my wings closer to my body so I can fall into a fast dive.

  Wings?

  Confused panic crashes into me, and I come all the way to my senses. What the fuck is going on? I’m in the sky, the motherfucking sky, and I have wings. Wings! My strong black wings flare out, and I go from a dive into a soar. I scream internally, and a terrifying screech comes out of me at the same time.

  Holy shit, I’m a dragon! How the fuck am I a dragon?

  I look around, and shock filters through my excitement and disorientation. I’m soaring over cliffs that are a reddish-purple, and not because the setting sun turned them that color, they just happen to be reddish-purple mountains. There are patches of trees and other greenery speckled about, and I know right away that I am not surrounded by the Rocky Mountains anymore. I’m a fucking dragon, somehow flying through the sky, in a place I’ve never seen before, and I have no idea how any of it is happening.

  A glittering light catches my eye, and I realize it’s a lake of some sort. I have the sudden drive to see if I can catch what I look like in the reflection of the water. Just as that thought flashes through my mind, I feel myself lean in that direction and give a couple powerful flaps of my massive wings to propel me exactly where I want to go. It seems I’m a narcissistic dragon. I ride the wind t
oward the sparkling lake and try to figure out how my dragon body just seems to know how to do this.

  I’m so overwhelmed by colors and smells and the feel of my new form that I can’t seem to process anything. All I can think of is the sight of my mother’s ring disintegrating on my hand, and I just know instinctively that somehow this is all connected. When my wolf—dragon, I correct myself, because it’s clear now that I am most definitely not a fucking wolf shifter— couldn’t surface, I was devastated. I’ve mourned the inability to do something that should have been so natural for me as a shifter.

  All the times my grandmother watched me struggle to let my animal out surge to the forefront of my mind. The pain it caused me physically and emotionally not to be able to shift echoes through me like a fresh wound, and I realize this whole time, it’s been because of the ring my gran gave me. Fury boils through my veins, and as much as I love my gran and appreciate everything she’s done for me, I’m raging to know that for some reason, she lied to me.

  For the first time since she died, I’m glad that she’s gone. Because if I were able to confront her about this, I don’t know that she and I would ever be able to come back from the fight that would take place. She’s been fucking lying to me, and as soon as I can figure out how to shift out of this form and get back to that clearing and my bike, I’m going to scour Gran’s house and find some fucking answers.

  My wings flap and adjust my angle as I approach the lake. I have no idea how they’re just doing that, but I suspect it has something to do with the hint of other consciousness I feel inside of me. I don’t poke at it too much as I don’t want my animal to lose focus of the awesome flying she’s doing, but as soon as our four feet are planted firmly on the ground, I’ll be demanding to know how the hell all of this is happening. I glide lower over the water, and my shadow flows ominously across the surface of the blue lake. I look down to search for my reflection, and shock surges through me.