Edge of Seventeen

Edge of Seventeen
(Incarnate, 0.5)

By Cristy Rey

Edge of Seventeen Copyright © 2014 by Cristy
Rey

Selections from Taking Back Sunday (Incarnate
Book One)

By Cristy Rey

Taking Back Sunday Copyright © 2014 Cristy
Rey

eBook Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal
enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to
other people. If you would like to share this book with another
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respecting the hard work of this author.

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

All rights reserved. Except as permitted
under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication
may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the
prior express, written consent of the author.

This book is intended for mature adults only.
It is not suitable for anyone under the age of 18.

Taking Back Sunday (Incarnate Book One)

ISBN-10: 0615963269

ISBN-13: 978-0-615-96326-6

Cover design by Cristy Rey

Formatting by Indie Express (
http://indieexpress.org
) (LU
Ann)

Published by CMW Press LLC

Supernatural Suspense / Paranormal Romance

The Incarnate Series:

Taking Back Sunday (Incarnate Book One)

Edge of Seventeen (Incarnate Prequel Novelette
One)

Trail of Dead (Incarnate Book Two)

Wolf Parade (Incarnate Book Three)

Contemporary, Romantic Women’s Fiction

Weeping Angels

The Heart Grow Fonder

Cristy’s website
http://www.cristyrey.com

Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/cristywrites

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http://bit.ly/1iD1Ujy

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From This
Author

Introduction

Glossary

Chapter
One

Chapter
Two

Chapter
Three

Chapter
Four

Chapter
Five

Chapter
Six

Chapter
Seven

Taking
Back Sunday, Chapter One

Chapter
Two

Continue This Story

In
Taking Back Sunday (Incarnate Book
One)
, readers meet Sunday who, after years of running, has
finally settled into something of a normal life. Sunday is the
Incarnate, a mystical being of lore that transcends the magical and
mundane, or non-magical. Through flashbacks, they learn of Sunday’s
young life as an indentured servant to Bernadette, a powerful
sorceress. Expert witchcraft made it possible for Bernadette to
subdue Sunday’s rebelliousness and curiosity in her youth. However,
Sunday’s extraordinary abilities eventually cracked the witch’s
curse.

Cyrus, the famed tracker of the Alaska
werewolf pack, was a part of Sunday’s narrative long before they
encounter one another in
Taking Back Sunday
. They had
crossed paths over a decade earlier when his pack was contracted to
capture her for Bernadette. For years to come, Cyrus will think of
nothing but her and try, desperate and in vain, to let her go.

If this is the first time you read about the
Incarnate and the werewolf who hunts her, then you’ll be pleased to
find the first two chapters of
Taking Back Sunday (Incarnate
Book One)
included at the end of this novelette. For those of
you who are already familiar with them, this prequel hopes to whet
your appetite for the few months until
Trail of Dead (Incarnate
Book Two).

Edge of Seventeen (Incarnate, 0.5)
is
the story of an exceptional fourteen year-old girl who is in the
crosshairs of a dark sorceress. It is also the story of a werewolf
who has lost the will to live, and the unlikely way in which he
finds it. With Fate behind the wheel, these two characters begin
their long journey on these pages.

Incarnate*
— A mystical being of lore
that is purported to be a conduit for energy, both magical and
mundane. Theories abound as to what the Incarnate is; some liken
the Incarnate to a god or goddess living as a human. Variations of
the Incarnate and myths surrounding the Incarnate are found in the
belief systems of numerous faiths and cultures.

Preternatural*
— Phenomenal, or
extraordinary. Term used to describe those in the magical
community, i.e. witches, vampires, werewolves, etc., as well as the
magical community itself. Largely exists hidden in plain sight from
mundanes.

Mundane*
— Pertaining to the everyday
normal experience of the world. A person who is mundane is
described as being unaware of and unskilled in magic.

Esbat—
A ceremonial gathering of
witches. A coven ritual meeting.

Conduit
— A link between two distinct
aspects, used as an agent of transferring or communicating
information or energy.

Myth
— A story that is largely
believed to be true by a tradition or culture, even if facts of the
story cannot be verified. Tenets of faith are usually taught by way
of myth, regardless of a faith’s belief in the factual and/or
historical veracity of the story.

Avatar
— An avatar is a real-world
incarnation or representation of an otherwise mystical, divine, or
abstract concept, i.e. god or goddess.

Pastophori—
Plural form of the
Ancient Greek term
pastophorus
meaning “priest.” There are
some variations of the term in historical/ anthropological
literature and commentary.

Iset
— Also known as Isis, Ancient
Egyptian goddess.

*Note: The terms “Incarnate,”
“preternatural,” “mundane,” and “Pastophori of Iset” as used in the
Incarnate Series
are defined uniquely for the purpose of
these books by Cristy Rey.

Thirteen years ago…

The woman
spoke to the Alpha, Stephen, with her eyes steady, staring directly
into his. Her dark, silver-streaked hair was fixed tightly into a
bun at the nape of her neck. Dressed in black from the high
neckline of her shirt to the floor-length hem of her skirt,
Bernadette was a vision of puritanical severity. Her taut
expression and grave tone reflected her agitation over the matter
at hand, a matter for which Stephen’s pack had been summoned.

Behind him, at the far wall of Bernadette’s
office, Cyrus and the pack’s two other Beta wolves, Angel and Neal,
stood squarely side by side. Meeting them on her own was a display
of Bernadette’s power. She wasn’t afraid of them though she had
cause to be. It was ballsy of her to assert an intimidating
position to such a well-regarded pack Alpha, as if he was a lesser
man. An eye-to-eye standoff with a werewolf was a game of chicken
that a lesser human would lose.

A werewolf’s need for dominance was a genetic
carryover of their curse. Lycanthropy changed a man, and not just
on the full moon. It heightened his senses, slowed his aging to a
virtual standstill, made him nearly invincible, and amplified his
feral tendencies.

Stephen’s arms crossed over his chest so his
generous biceps bulged from the sleeves of his polo. His shoulders
were broad for his small frame. For a werewolf to be less than five
and a half feet tall and still manage to project such an
unmistakable aura of leadership was unheard of. That he was so
widely deferred to among the preternatural population was a
testament to his innate respectability. Even without all the
weightlifting, he posed a threat to other werewolves regardless of
his diminutive stature. It was his nature. Stephen’s gift was his
mastery of the role of Alpha. Authority threaded through his
essence. Even mundanes, or humans with no preternatural skill or
ability, weren’t immune to it.

But Bernadette was no ordinary witch. She was
a force all her own, human or not. In the last decade, she had
situated herself within Seattle’s liberal, youthful demographic.
She and her coven ran the country’s premier tele-psychic
foundation. The unassuming, matronly witch appeared in television
ads and in magazines as the grandmotherly sort, wise beyond her
years, and with ‘gifts of extrasensory ability’ that she offered as
services to the paying public.

Despite the inauspicious, unlikely location
where Bernadette set up shop, she cornered the market on all things
preternatural. Less than an hour away from the heart of the city,
Bernadette and her coven occupied a two-acre estate. The humble
office space in Seattle was nothing more than a front for her real
business. The manor on the property in the rural outskirts of the
city was Bernadette’s true base of operations. While glorified
telemarketers took mundanes’ calls for psychic readings, all the
actual magic happened there.

Unwitting people might have considered the
organization ‘hocus pocus’.
The Seattle Post
profile on
Mother Bernadette, as she was known, described her as ‘a totally
consuming and addictive fraudulent enterprise’. But it was
understood by a fair and secretive population to be a very real and
very powerful group of witches. Rumor had it that Bernadette was
unsatisfied with being the head of the regional organization,
however. She was making a play for the bigger picture. She wanted
it all. This meeting was just the first domino in a long line, the
ends of which were still unknown.

“I have called you here on a very special
matter,” she said. “It concerns the Incarnate. I request your
assistance in retrieving her and bringing her to me.”

Stephen’s brow had grown heavy as Bernadette
had started speaking. By the time she said her last word, it was
densely knotted. His expression matched the gravity of the witch’s
request. As soon as Bernadette had dropped the word ‘Incarnate’ on
the pack, a collective, subtle shudder rolled through the
wolves.

“The Incarnate has been living in the foster
care of a convent for some time. This girl is, now, fourteen.
Within the next year, our sources tell us she will be moved to a
facility that houses at least a dozen other adolescent children
displaced by the system. At her current residence, there is minimal
security and optimal conditions for extraction. Of the next place
she is headed, the same cannot be said.”

Bernadette’s mouth drew into a thin, pressed
line. The creases around her eyes deepened as she narrowed her gaze
further on the Alpha.

As she directed her words to Stephen, the
witch’s voice projected to the back of the room where Cyrus, Neal,
and Angel stood. She didn’t waste a blink acknowledging their
presence, but they loomed nonetheless. Cyrus, over a foot taller
than his Alpha, wore a characteristically grim expression hidden
beneath a thick golden beard flecked with grey. Beside him was
Neal. Neal’s broad chest and equally large stature were yet another
dominant force. His chocolate skin was made darker by the glower he
cast on the witch. Though he was easily the coolest of the three
soldiers, his demeanor was no less threatening. The hottest head
among them was Angel who stood to Cyrus’ other side. Angel’s
expression did nothing to mask his frustration. His nostrils flared
and the scar that sliced through his eyebrow seemed to pulse in an
aggravated twitch.

“We have tried, in vain, to bring her into
our family. We have appealed to her caretakers to no avail. They do
not understand the urgency of the matter, nor do they wish to take
it upon themselves to intercede with her unfurling. With so little
time left to spare, we now turn to you, Stephen, and your…
men
. Will you help us?”

Between the wolves, a conversation was
silently taking place. Communicating through their telepathic link
as a pack, they debated the witch’s request. Everyone in the
preternatural community had heard stories about the Incarnate. But
that’s just it, they were all
stories.
No one in the room
had actually
met
or
experienced
an Incarnate in the
flesh. They all wanted to know the same thing:
What does the
witch know about the Incarnate that we don’t know?