Shadowmated, p.5
Shadowmated, page 5
“Chief Bellwether, call off your wolves.”
A more mundane jolt of electricity struck my face, the sort of electricity that coincided with every werewolf’s shift. Then the alpha in front of me was human and laughing. And why not? Now that they were both two-legged, it was clear Chief Bellwether matched Orion muscle for muscle. Up close, I could tell that his scent was darkly furry, redolent with the alpha musk that proved him a worthy opponent. One on one, Orion and Chief Bellwether would have been evenly matched.
But the man in front of me had dozens of wolves to call upon while Orion ostensibly only had two, both of whom were trapped and unable to reach him. Naked, it was clear Orion had brought along no weapons to turn the tide.
Well, that wasn’t quite true. He’d brought me.
And this was the moment I’d been waiting for. So as soon as Chief Bellwether’s attention became fully fixated upon Orion, I pounced.
Like everyone else here, I lacked pockets to pull weapons out of. I also lacked bulk and dominance. But even a smaller wolf can pin a larger man when he doesn’t see her coming, especially when she doesn’t pull her bite.
Thinking of the torture the prisoner had endured and of Ari and Hailey’s current dilemma, I had no regrets as I darted around in front of the alpha then leapt upward, my teeth clenching together around his throat. I wasn’t gentle, either, as my hind legs clawed into a very intimate portion of his anatomy.
In response, Chief Bellwether struggled, attempting to drag me off him. But his efforts just made my teeth dig in deeper and my claws scratch what he very much didn’t want scratched.
“I repeat,” Orion said as the alpha’s blood oozed into my mouth, sweet and salty. “Call off your wolves.”
It didn’t take long for Chief Bellwether to gasp out agreement. To open a path for Ari and Hailey to pass through on their way to Orion.
The whole time, I clung to the alpha’s throat hard enough to threaten but not hard enough to cause permanent damage. And, face to chin with the pack leader, I tried to figure out why this man who should have looked familiar was a complete stranger to me.
Because I’d met all of the alphas whose territories surrounded the outpack, first when I captured them at the behest of the Council then again when I helped free them from their oil-rig prison. So I must have seen Chief Bellwether at that time, did recall the almost-too-ripe peach scent invading my nostrils, a scent that I suspected was more of a pack signature than a personal one.
Despite all that, I was certain I’d never met this alpha before my teeth made contact with his flesh.
The one who was familiar, I eventually realized, was the prisoner. The aisle of empty desert that Hailey and Ari retreated down on their way to Orion gave me a better view than I’d had previously. And through it, I recognized the prisoner’s hawk nose despite the way pain twisted his features. I recognized his high cheekbones and thin lips despite the way torch shadows combined with blood streaks to break up his skin into blotches of dark and light.
The prisoner was Blade Bellwether, the one I’d thought was the alpha of this pack. Which made no sense…until I realized what I’d forgotten while letting that hook in my gut drag me north.
The werewolves imprisoned on the oil rig a month ago hadn’t been able to shift when we found them. Not for the reason Celeste and Finnegan couldn’t shift—laboratory manipulation of their genome when they were mere embryos—but instead due to recent chemical injections also perpetrated by the Council.
A month ago, Orion had worked with some of those shiftless werewolves, using his alpha dominance to drag them into their fur forms. But as best I could recall, Vega’s pack mates were the only ones who’d submitted to that indignity. The alphas who were on the oil rig without their packs had kept their distance from any forced shifts.
Still, I’d assumed the pharmaceutical inability to don fur had worn off after those alphas were released. Apparently not. Because a werewolf prisoner would have been able to free himself from the awful predicament Blade Bellwether found himself in. All he’d have to do was shift and his thinner lupine wrists would slide out of the knotted rope.
My conclusion—Blade couldn’t turn into a wolf or he wouldn’t be a prisoner. Which meant that his pain and suffering, in the end, could be traced back to me.
Guilt tightened my throat even as Hailey and Ari reached Orion. “Thank you,” Orion said, focusing on the alpha who must have used the previous pack leader’s weakness as an opening to assume command. “Now, cut down Blade.”
“No.” The new pack leader’s throat rippled beneath my fangs as he refused Orion’s order. “Blade failed the test.”
Test? Was this really how wolves evaluated each other? My house mates pouncing on Finnegan had seemed mostly harmless, but what was their hazing other than a mild example of the same brutal lupine instinct on display tonight?
Even though I didn’t want to fall back into old ways of thinking, I couldn’t help agreeing with something Gabi had told me years ago. “Wolves never show mercy,” she’d warned. “Don’t expect it and you won’t be disappointed.”
Here and now, Orion remained calm. “Perhaps Blade did fail the test. But you have what you want. Release him to me and he’ll be…”
I must have loosened my grip while listening to Orion act like a true alpha. Or perhaps I loosened my grip because I wanted to emulate him rather than acting like the merciless wolves Gabi had raised me to believe in.
Whatever the reason, my reaction turned out to be a weakness, exactly the one Chief Bellwether had been waiting for. The instant he was no longer in mortal danger, his hands grabbed both sides of my snout, ripping my jaws wide open. Then I was spinning through the air, the crook of his elbow catching my throat while my claws and fangs tore into nothing.
The tables had turned. One moment, the pack leader was my hostage. The next moment, I was his.
Chapter 8
Which is when Chief Bellwether drew upon his dominance. “Kill Blade in my name,” he ordered, the compulsion rolling out across the wolves in a visible wave of changed behavior. “Slowly,” he added, the addition not binding but nonetheless obeyed.
Because his pack was apparently just as sadistic as he was. Their body language suggested they took pleasure in leaping at the prisoner, taking a bite out of his side, his arm, his leg. Causing pain and weakness without expediting the end of his life.
Or perhaps they were building up the energy housed within Blade’s broken body. After all, torture was a tried-and-true method of enhancing blood magic, the same sort of magic I’d seen unleashed in far too many packs when a similar sacrifice was made. Worse, Ari and Hailey had been caught up in tonight’s awfulness due to the alpha compulsion, moving against their will to join the infliction of pain.
I had to stop this. Couldn’t let Ari’s gentleness and Hailey’s youthful optimism be marred by taking part in something awful. So as Blade jerked against his restraints, I struggled against the alpha’s hold.
Blade’s efforts had no effect, but mine did—they prompted the alpha to tighten his grip and block my air flow. Dark spots slid across my vision even as Blade sagged, appearing to lose consciousness. Then the first drop of his blood struck soil at the base of the cactus. A gust of wind sprang to life that felt like the desert’s inhale.
Orion inhaled too. Of course he did. He was best equipped of all of us to stop this extended torture, his dominance great enough that he could spit out a counter-command and freeze the attacking wolves in place. No wonder his mouth opened, the first syllable already emerging from his lips before my captor intervened.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Chief Bellwether warned, pitching his voice loud enough to carry over the sounds of battle. “How long do you think this one will last without air?”
As he spoke, he shook me like a rat whose back needed breaking. Instantly, Orion’s mouth snapped shut, his protective instincts sliding away from Blade, Hailey, and Ari to latch onto me the same way it always had when he thought I was in danger.
In response, I widened my eyes, trying to get Orion to focus on the more important issue. Just spit out the command, give me an opening, let me do my part…
We’d worked together so well moments earlier. Now, though, Orion resorted to empty posturing. “The matebrand…” he started, lifting the arm that still had electricity sparking out of it.
Chief Bellwether interrupted. “Isn’t in play or you would have used it already. What did you do? Roll around in the sand and pick up outpack electricity? A child’s party trick.”
That must have been exactly how Orion had made his tattoos glow. Because, of course I would have felt my own ink awakening if Orion had rekindled our matebrand during the time we were separated. In contrast, the desert was full of electricity tonight. It likely would have been easy to tempt some of that energy to mimic the matebrand’s swirling imagery on Orion’s arm.
That same electricity teased at my fur now. A promise that the outpack would help me if I needed help. That all I had to do was ask…
And I did need help. Because past events had proven Orion would let Blade die if it came down to a choice between the prisoner’s safety and my own. I wasn’t about to repeat our misstep at the oil rig, especially when Ari and Hailey’s lives were also at stake.
So for the very first time, I welcomed the outpack inside me. Stopped fighting the energy that swirled around and through me. Channeled it to assist me in mustering a shift so fast Chief Bellwether didn’t know what was happening until it was done.
Human, I slid out of his grasp and drew in a tremendous breath, filling my lungs with much-needed oxygen. Oxygen and electricity. The outpack surged through my body in answer, tingling my extremities.
No, that wasn’t an answer. It was a demand. The magic I’d just teamed up with wanted me to rekindle my matebrand. Wanted me to bind myself to it and to Orion the way I’d done once before. I owed it…
But I’d made no such bargain. I’d merely accepted the gift on offer without promising anything in return. Clenching my fists, I forced the electricity out of my body and into the sand beneath me, my rejection as firm as when the matebrand had tried to manipulate me and Orion into kissing outside Finnegan’s basement apartment. I was in control of my body and future. Nothing could make me re-create a mate bond with Orion until we were both good and ready to commit.
I expected the desert magic to recede then. But it didn’t. Chief Bellwether reached for me and I scampered backwards more agilely than I should have been capable of. Electricity sparked each time my feet struck the earth, and each spark made evading my pursuer easier than I would have expected it to be.
Not that I really needed the outpack’s assistance now. I didn’t have to win this fight, just stay out of Chief Bellwether’s reach while Orion acted.
Evading would have been simple if the desert hadn’t rippled beneath me at just the wrong moment. I windmilled, trying to keep my balance. And as I did so, I saw what had been happening on the other side of the mass of wolves while I was making my escape.
Blade’s skin was more blood than bare now, entirely due to the work of Chief Bellwether’s underlings. Because Ari had taken the slowly command to heart and used it to counteract the other half of the order. The teenager was still in the back of the melee, hadn’t taken a single bite out of the prisoner. There would be no torture haunting dreams already broken by seeing his previous alpha killed.
Hailey, in contrast, had chosen expedience, or perhaps mercy. Whatever her motivation, she now sprang across the last few wolves, aiming for Blade’s throat the same way I’d aimed for the throat of the pack’s current leader.
Unlike me, however, she didn’t mitigate the force of her jaws clenching together. Didn’t hesitate either. Just clamped down and ripped with a jerk of her head. Then, shifting from fur to humanity, her bare feet struck sand already saturated by fountaining blood.
Blood was power. No wonder the desert responded, first with another anticipatory ripple like the one that had knocked me sideways, then with an earthquake that shook me all the way off my feet.
I struck the sand on hands and knees, so I didn’t see what happened next. I heard it though. Two voices making demands of the desert in exchange for what I now realized had always been a planned blood sacrifice.
“I will own the outpack,” Chief Bellwether bit out, his attention abandoning me in favor of something he considered far more important.
And, at the exact same moment: “Reveal the ancient lore surrounding the sister matebrand.”
The second voice was Hailey’s.
The outpack’s response began as a squall of wind that seemed to emanate from the heart of the desert. It carried not just familiar aromas of sagebrush and creosote, but also underlying rot. The same rot I’d grown familiar with while hunting down perpetrators of blood magic in my former role as enforcer for the Council.
The air smelled the same because that’s precisely what this was—blood magic. Chief Bellwether had set up not only a regime change but also a major boost to his power, all fueled by the tortuous sacrifice of his predecessor.
Meanwhile, Hailey appeared to have successfully shoved her way into the culmination of Chief Bellwether’s plan. Because even as the scent around us changed, the desert answered Hailey in words that thrummed through me, bypassing my ears and tunneling directly into my brain.
“Once close as kin, secrets kept, blood not hearts entwine,
“Betrayal’s mark precedes sister matebrand’s rise as ancient inks decline.
“Compelled by…”
The voice that wasn’t a voice cut off as abruptly as it had begun, and there was no time to decipher the cryptic wording. Because it appeared Chief Bellwether had gotten his way after all, or at least part of his way just as Hailey had gotten part of hers.
A moment ago, the scent of peaches had wafted faintly toward me only from the Bellwether alpha. But now, a reek of rotten fruit arose from the sand beneath me, from the air around me. The cloying sweetness clogging my nasal passages with each inhale. It was everywhere; it was everything.
In other words, the patch of desert we four had intruded upon, safe in the knowledge it was owned by no alpha, was outpack no longer. And the wolves who surrounded us bore the exact same scent.
They howled, the entire Bellwether pack in perfect harmony. We were trespassers they intended to cast out of their newly claimed territory. Or perhaps they’d tie us up against other cacti, correcting Hailey’s interruption of their leader’s demand by ripping more blood magic out of our flesh.
Did the fragment of poetry I’d heard mean the Bellwethers now owned only part of the outpack? Did it matter when we were on the part they currently owned?
I was lupine again and arrowing toward Orion before that thought had fully materialized. It was either that or wait for him to come to me as I knew he would, and we couldn’t afford any delay.
Orion and I met halfway, swiveling as a unit to find our younger pack mates fleeing toward us also. Ari and Hailey had disentangled themselves without further assistance, had known as soon as we did that escape was now our top priority.
A priority that we’d need help in order to achieve. I reached for the electricity that had begged to be utilized earlier. But with this territory claimed, we were no longer inside the outpack. The sand beneath our feet was mere sand. There were no longer untapped energy reserves ready and willing to speed our footsteps as we ran for our lives.
Even without that assistance, at first it seemed like we might escape. The heart of the peach-rot scent did fade behind us as we left the site of Blade’s sacrifice. But the air remained unbearably fruity as we sprinted four abreast back the way we’d come.
Meanwhile, a wall of pursuing wolves remained within easy view each time I wasted energy to turn my head and peer backwards. They weren’t quite close enough for us to feel the heat of their breath on our heels, but they weren’t far enough away for us to hope to evade them either. Our only chance was to reach the edge of the outpack and hope their bloodthirstiness would fade once we were no longer trespassing.
A goal that proved impossible as we crested the rise Orion and I had recently stood atop. Now, facing south and looking in the direction from which we’d come, the view should have been a seemingly endless expanse of desert. Dark, uninhabited. Easy to lose ourselves in.
Instead, lights rippled across the sand like clouds of fireflies rolling away from us. If I wasn’t much mistaken, this was a visual representation of the power of blood magic claiming territory for the Bellwethers. Each lit area marked outpack that was no longer outpack, the edge of that claiming moving far faster than wolf feet could ever hope to run.
Despite that fact, Orion, Ari, Hailey, and I didn’t pause. We kept pursuing the receding line of safety.
But my heart sank. We’d never make it to neutral territory before the Bellwether pack took us down.
Chapter 9
We ran for what seemed like hours, drawing slightly ahead of the Bellwethers only because they let our lead elongate. They knew we were exceeding our bodies’ limitations, that eventually we’d crumple and they could catch up at their leisure.
Or, rather, they knew that I was pushing past my limits. In front of me, Orion, Ari, and Hailey looked like they could lope along forever. And while I’d considered myself in good shape before this, I’d also been living among humans until the beginning of the summer. Daily exercise back in my old life nearly always took place on two legs.
Now, my pads ached from slamming into hard sand. My right front paw, in particular, twinged each time I put weight on it.
Was it a coincidence that the leg in question equated to the human arm still marked with matebrand ink? I assumed so until I noticed Orion limping on the opposite front leg, the one that corresponded to his own residual mate mark.
