Traitor Wolf of Piston

TRAITOR WOLF OF PISTON (WOLVES OF PISTON, BOOK 4) By T. S. JOYCE Traitor Wolf of Piston Copyright © 2023 by T. S. Joyce Copyright © 2023, T. S. Joyce First electronic publication: January 2023 T. S. Joyce www.tsjoyce.com All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission. NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content. Published in the United States of America. Editor: Alyxandra Miller Other Books in this Series Zombie Wolf of Piston (Book 1) Brother Wolf of Piston (Book 2) Lone Wolf of Piston (Book 3) War Bear of Piston (Book 5) Contents Copyright Other Books in this Series Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Epilogue Up Next in this Series Newsletter Sign-Up More Series from this Author For More from this Author About the Author Chapter One “Long time no see.” Vaughn knelt down in the yard of his childhood home and frowned at the translucent figure of the devil herself—his mother. He plucked a blade of grass and ripped it in half lengthwise, glanced at the woods behind the rubble that used to be the single-wide mobile home he and his twin brother, Vander, were raised in. His mother’s face was just as he remembered at the end—gray with years of alcohol and substance abuse. The wrinkles in her face from a lifetime of bitterness and hate made her look much older than she’d actually been when she’d died. She was smoking a cigarette, and a tail of ash was dangerously close to falling off the end. Her brown eyes looked full of disdain, even as a ghost. All of that made sense and clicked right into place with his memories of her. Oh, he’d seen her ghost before. She showed up from time to time in his dreams, as ghosts sometimes did. Her outfit was different though. “I like your dress,” he said sarcastically. She kicked her feet out straight from the lone remaining stair of the porch where she sat. She plucked at her old-fashioned petticoats with her free hand, and fingered a tatter on the full skirts. “Do you? I found some new friends. They’re fun, but you and your idiot brother wouldn’t know anything about that.” Vaughn lifted his gaze to the three ghosts riding across the other side of the demolished house in an old-fashioned stagecoach. A man was whipping the reins at a skeleton horse that was snorting and galloping. The man looked over at Vaughn and grinned an eerie expression. The two glowing-eyed men sitting in the back gave away exactly who this was. He’d thought they had been rid of the ghosts that haunted his Alpha, Stryker. He had come to the Piston Mountain Pack dragging the ghost of his old Alpha, Nathaniel. The other two in the back would be Stryker’s old long-dead Packmates, Lake and Ben. Monsters, all of them. Of course they would link up with his mother. Evil attracted evil. Those dead werewolves were looking for a way to join the living again. Standing, Vaughn told his mother, “Your new friends are lame.” He tossed the blade of grass he’d been shredding to the ground and strode for his truck. “I know why you’re here,” his mother called in that gravelly voice of hers. Vaughn turned. “Oh yeah? And why is that?” She held her cigarette out over the pile of rubble beside her. “To burn it down.” His heart kicked up to a gallop as he watched the ashes dangle from the end. “Let me help you,” she sneered. And she dropped the cigarette. The splintered porch beside her burst into flames and Vaughn lurched forward, hand out. Did he want to stop it? No. Right? Or perhaps he did? Shit, he was so confused about this place. The house burst into flames that licked at the sky, and he watched with a combination of horror and bone-deep relief. He swallowed hard as his mother screamed and threw herself into the flames. Did he want to save her? Did he? No. Right? “Vaughn?” His mother and the fire and the stagecoach disappeared the instant that word was spoken. Startled, Vaughn jerked his attention to the neighbor’s house just over on the next lot. Randall Everett was sitting in a wheelchair on his front porch. His hair and eyebrows had gone gray over the years Vaughn had been away. His wrinkles had deepened, but he still had that same twinkle of humor in his frost-blue eyes. Mr. Everett pushed the wheels of his chair until he reached the porch railing. “I thought that was you.” “I never understood how you could tell me and my brother apart,” Vaughn said, willing his racing heart to slow. A quick glance at the house and for now, the ghosts seemed to be banished. “It’s the way you two always carried yourselves.” “What do you mean?” “Vander learned to not have a care in the world, but you…you always moved like you carried the weight of the world. You back to burn her down?” Swallowing audibly, Vaughn approached Mr. Everett’s porch. The second