The All Consuming: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 4) by May Ellis Daniels Page A

and fearing my alpha brother. How he kept me obedient by securing a chain around my neck and attaching it to his wrist when we rode against those who resisted—  
    “I won’t go,” I whisper. “I will not kneel. Not again. Never again.”  
    Several things happen at once. The wasp sinks her poisoned stinger into my arm, startling me from my trance. The windows implode inward. A vast, buzzing cloud of wasps pours into the villa, followed quickly by the black blooded, twisted creatures. Stricken. My brother’s corrupted spawn. Luz screams. Thrusts her spear through the throat of a grinning, horned Stricken with the body of a man and the head of a bullfrog.  
    All this happens while I remain frozen in the middle of the room.
    Helpless.  
    Luz shrieks something, but the buzzing wasps drown out her voice. The villa door opens and my sister Shiori glides in, wearing a white summer dress that shimmers in the low light and makes her look even more pale.
    The Stricken pile into Luz, knocking her to the floor. Her spear clatters against marble tile. My sister pauses at the threshold while her buzzing swarm circles in the air over my head.
    “The Lord of Near and Nigh?” my sister sneers. “I brought you a gift, my weak, wayward brother.”
    Shiori tosses a loosely wrapped bundle at my feet.  
    A deer’s foot with a gleaming gold cap rolls across the floor.  
    I see my obsidian amulet half-hidden in the bundle.  
    The Smoking Mirror.  
    “Raise the Night Wind, Rodas,” my sister says in her quiet, almost shy voice. “Summon the stalker. Challenge me.”  
    I’m trembling. My heart racing.  
    I can’t move. I’m too weak. Too afraid.  
    I scent my sister’s power. She is the High Priestess.  
    My brother’s second in command in the Age of Discord.
    She has usurped my place at his side.
    The Stricken rip Luz’s loincloth off. She’s screaming, kicking and scratching at them. Bleeding from where their wicked claws have carved into her. Two chattering rat-faced animals grab her wrists and secure her arms over her head while a third, a blunt-faced goat, works at parting her legs—
    “Do you remember my name, my brother?”
    “Shiori,” I stammer.
    “I have many names. As you once did.” My sister spits. “Your blood is watery. Like a Skin’s. But still. You are a Risen. You belong with your packmates.”
    The goat-Stricken grips Luz’s leg and fumbles with his belt while the rats holding her arms cheer him on—
    Shiori’s lips twitch into a smile. “Does it bother you?”
    “She’s innocent of our war.”
    Shiori shrugs. “The strong are free to take what they desire from the weak. It’s their right .”
    “No. I don’t think so. Not anymore. No right-minded animal commits such atrocity. No right-minded animal maims and murders without need. Or takes pleasure in another’s pain.”
    My sister’s wasps descend from the ceiling.  
    They’re circling only a few inches over my head.  
    “The world has weakened you, my once-proud brother.”
    “If what you have is strength, then I accept weakness.”
    I accept.  
    The words pound through me.  
    Luz screams as the gasping, spitting goat-Stricken strokes himself hard and leans down—
    “Call the stalker, Rodas,” Shiori hisses. “I want to greet him. Feed on him. Summon your strength. Challenge me! I feel your hatred. Scent your bloodlust—”
    My world burns yellow and black.
    Night Smoke.
    O Night Lord have you mistaken me for another? I who am a commoner, a laborer. In excrement and filth my life is lived…I am unreliable. I am an imbecile. I am stillborn. Why do you darken the sky for one such as me? For what reason do you offer such a wondrous gift?
    I raise my head toward the ceiling and roar, scattering my sister’s wasps.
    Shiori looses a high-pitched wail of triumph while her jaw distends and her face elongates and her limbs shift into vicious hooked forelegs—
    Shiori believes my animal will kneel to my brother’s power.