Free Savage Surrender: A Dire Wolves Mission (The Devil's Dires Book 1) by Ellis Leigh Page A

Angelita.
    “What do you mean, you can’t?” Sariel asked.
    “I can’t shift on command. I’ve never been able to.”
    Her mate growled as the sound of an engine grew in the distance. “Our wolves have a better chance in this swamp.” He turned those glowing eyes on Angelita, the power of his inner wolf making the air feel electrified. “Shift to your wolf.”
    Angelita whimpered and shook her head. “I can’t.”
    The thump of car doors closing reached Sariel’s sensitive ears, and her heart raced as she watched the showdown between man and girl.
    “Omega, you need to shift. Now.”
    Angelita met Sariel’s concerned gaze, her eyes wide with fear. “I can’t. I swear, I can’t. If I try, I’ll fail. I can’t even feel my wolf spirit right now.”
    Sariel looked to her mate, ready to follow his lead. He gave her a heated once-over, his eyes resting on her chest for a long second before meeting her own.
    “Shift.”
    With a nod, Sariel shifted to her wolf form, sinking fast to the gray wolf of her second form. The man went still, eyes wide as he looked off in the direction of the houseboats. The scent of something rotten and wrong met Sariel’s nose, and she shook her head to try to rid herself of the stench. The man breathed deeper, nostrils flaring, hands clenching into fists.
    “Motherfucker,” he hissed, turning back to the women. “Do you smell that, Omega? Do you sense the wrongness of the monster?”
    Angelita nodded, her eyes bouncing from the man to the darkness behind him.
    “That’s the scent of werewolf, little one. Real, honest to God, beasts of the moon, werewolves.”
    Angelita gasped and took a step back as Sariel whined, desperate to run. There weren’t a lot of things that could make her feel the level of terror currently winding around her heart, but the presence of a werewolf was certainly one of them. Half dead, rotting away under the full moons, werewolves were the epitome of all that was wrong with an animal and human mix. They hunted relentlessly, killed indiscriminately, and wreaked havoc for three nights whenever the full moon lit up the sky. The way it did that night. And—the most terrifying fact of all to her—they only hunted female shifters. They attacked mercilessly, sometimes wiping out every female in a pack in one night, feeding off the bodies of the fallen women. A fact that led most shewolves to run for their lives when the beasts showed up. And damn, did Sariel want to run. But she wanted to bring Angelita with her.
    “Omega,” the man said, the stiff set of his jaw the only outward sign of the tension that had to be nearly suffocating him. “We have to—”
    “I can’t!” Angelita exclaimed, her breaths coming so fast, Sariel worried the girl would hyperventilate.
    Sariel whined and rubbed her side along Angelita’s legs, pushing her fur against the girl’s skin, wishing it was enough to get her to reach her wolf spirit. But Angelita stood, human as ever, trembling and gasping in her fright. Sariel had one terrifying moment when her mate turned away from them, thinking he’d run off and leave Angelita behind. But she should have known better.
    With a growl, her mate grabbed Angelita around her waist, hauling her off her feet. The girl yelped as he tossed her on his back and began to move, strides long and aggressive. In two steps, he morphed from man to animal, his sterling wolf form taller and longer than her own. A huge, uniquely colored beast that almost made her stop in her tracks.
    A Dire Wolf.
    Assumed extinct, Dire Wolves had been the gladiators of the shifter world. Their size and strength were legendary, their fierceness in battle told in stories over campfires and with a sense of respect, of reverence and fear. But Dires were extinct—no one had seen one for over two hundred years. Until tonight, of course. The size of him, the heaviness of his muscles, the breadth of his shoulders, and the unique ermine spots along his back and haunches