Fated Shifter Mates

by Jade Alters

  “It's worth a shot,” Will said. “I'll get your legs so hopefully you don't go sliding down in there on your head.” He chuckled but I didn't see the humor. I took the gun off my shoulder and sat my small pack that I carried my pistol and ammo in aside. Going as close to the edge as I could get, I dropped down to my knees and lay down on my belly. The white wolf was watching me and I made eye contact with her.

  “I'm going to push with you,” I told her I knew from experience that English sounded like Chinese to a Wolf, but her eyes registered understanding and as soon as Will grasped my legs I said, “Okay Courtney, push.”

  She used her flank again and I used all the strength in my arms. At first I thought it was still not going to budge, but Courtney seemed to have one last big burst of strength in her and I felt the rock actually slip out of my grasp as it slid to the right.

  “Is it open enough?” Courtney re-set in answer to my question and working together again we both pushed. I estimated that it moved at least two feet from start to finish. That would allow Courtney enough room to pass through, but I wasn't sure about the rest of us.

  As soon as we had our opening, and after the white wolf stuck her head inside and had a look, she climbed back up to the top. I was sitting up in the dirt and Will was standing behind me. The wolf whined at us and I nodded. She was asking me a question, and I could understand her, without words.

  “Yeah, go get Clay and Titan.” We watched her lope away and when she was out of range Will said,

  “That first day that we met her, I wouldn't have thought she had any of this in her.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I guess it's a good lesson in not judging a book by its cover, huh?”

  Courtney

  It took some time and quite a bit of ingenuity, but after about an hour, all five of the “pack” were inside the narrow tunnel, heavily armed and hoping we weren't crawling into a dead end, or a trap. Clay took the front, in human form, crawling on his belly with his rifle in one arm and pistol in the other. I was also in my human form, crawling behind him. I'd never shot a gun before, so when Clay offered me one, I'd declined. Behind me was Titan, more heavily armed than Clay, and Will was next with Manny bringing up the rear.

  If we thought the mountainside was hot, it was nothing compared to the tunnel. We were all covered in sweat and I had to keep telling myself not to panic over what I was afraid was a lack of oxygen. We moved slowly, and carefully in the dark, brushing away vermin and bugs and Clay even used his knife to kill a snake along the way. I had no concept of time in the dark tunnel, but over an hour must have passed before Clay stopped moving. He didn't have to say a word, we could all hear what he was listening to. The sound of voices came from just up ahead which meant we were at least underneath the tower.

  Clay lay still for several seconds, listening, I assumed he was trying to get a read on how many people were there and how far ahead of us they were. When he had as much information as he needed, he began moving again. The voices sounded like echoes to me and when we came to a fork in the tunnel, I was glad that Clay was in the lead and not me. He didn't hesitate before going right and within fifteen to twenty minutes, we came to the end of that tunnel. The door on the end was made of steel, and there was a good chance that it was locked.

  Clay whispered, “Ready?”

  All answers from the team were in the affirmative. After all, at that point, what choice did we really have? Clay tucked his pistol under his chin and I felt Titan rest his rifle across my shoulder so that if the door moved in front of Clay, he'd have a clear shot into the room. Using both of his hands, Clay pushed against the door. I was disappointed, but not surprised when it didn't budge. I saw Clay turn his hands to the side and push again and my breath caught in my throat as the door slid to the side.

  The sound of metal on metal was like nails on a chalkboard, but it was nothing compared to the deafening sound of Titan's rifle as it went off right next to my ear. Just like the day at the airstrip, my hearing was suddenly impaired. That was the least of my worries however as I watched Clay plunge out into the room and I was pushed out from behind. Clay was already engaged in gunfire. I landed on my belly and stayed there as the other men came out of the tunnel shooting. I had no idea how any of them even knew who they were shooting at, but thankfully it only lasted about a minute before silence once again reigned and the smoke began to clear. Once it did I felt Clay's hand on my arm. I let him help me to my feet and as I looked around the room, I began to wish it was my eyesight that had been affected...and my sense of smell, rather than my hearing.

  Silver cages lined both sides of the room. They were small like kennels and stacked one on top of the other. The smell was coming from those cages where people...and animals in various states of change lay naked in their own waste with bowls of rotting food on top of it all. Some of them looked like they had passed some time ago, and the smell in the room reflected that as well. The ones that were obviously alive were staring at us out of emaciated faces. I had never seen a sight so pitiful in all of my life. The four men whose bodies now littered the floor were all fat and I was tempted to change so that I could chew them to bits...even though they were already dead. I was sure that “polite society” would be the first to call the people in the cages monsters if they knew what they were...but the real monsters were the animals that caged them and suddenly I wished I knew how to use a gun, so I could send as many of them to hell today as possible.

  Coughing and holding his hand up to his face to try and block the smells, Titan stood in the middle of the room and said, “We'll be back for you...all of you. Nobody gets left behind today.” He walked over to a door against the far wall and waited for Clay, Will and Manny to get in position behind him. As soon as they were, he pulled open the door. I was relieved not to hear gunfire, but that didn't mean there weren't traps set up for the men/wolves to fall into. I watched as each one of them slowly and cautiously entered the room and then with one last glance around at the horror show surrounding me, I slid in behind Manny.

  The room we'd gone into was some kind of office. There were papers scattered across desks and the floor and the other door was open, making it look like it had cleared out in a hurry. For the next half an hour or so we went through a succession of rooms. There was one that looked like a bedroom, one that was completely empty with shiny wood floors, one that seemed to be fixed up to emulate the great outdoors, and another one filled with cages. I watched as the men's eyes went from cage to cage, searching for their leader, the man who had been inside my head that very morning. They didn't seem to see him, but there were more tortured souls here and it almost hurt to leave them because from the sounds of their soft cries, I knew they thought no one was coming back.

  The rooms turned into a long, tubular-shaped hallway. We followed Clay until he came to a set of double doors. He turned slightly and looked at the rest of us. I guessed this was the lab, the place where they'd been held...and turned, forever changing their fate. The idea of it might have been heartfelt on Grover's part...but the sickness of the men who dabbled in experiments using living, breathing humans and animals, appalled me. Once again Clay waited until the men were all ready and I stood back out of the way. This door was locked so Clay aimed his pistol at it and the metal around the door handle caved in slightly. He waited and when no one shot back, he pushed on the door again and suddenly we were looking into what looked to me like a lab from a science fiction movie.

  There were glassed-in pods and behind the glass in some of them, we could see wolves, chained to beds with silver cuffs. Others were empty and the very last one had been practically demolished. Computers had been crushed, papers shredded and it looked like heavy objects had been dragged out the door. They'd definitely left in a hurry, probably as soon as the shooting started at the other end of the building. We were still taking it all in when the floor and the walls around us began to vibrate, and then shake, like an earth quake. “Chopper!” Titan yelled. The men all ran for the next door whe
re there was a flight of stairs. I tried to keep up with their long strides. They took the stairs two and three at a time, and made it to the top a lot quicker than I did. When I stepped out into the sunlight, I felt a harsh wind and heard a loud noise. I brought my hand up to block the bright sun that was burning my eyes after all that time in the dark...and I saw the chopper as it was lifting off the ground. It was about six feet up and Clay opened fire on it. His bullets only bounced off of it however, and ricocheted into the ground. After unloading his rifle, he stood silently with the rest of us and watched as the men responsible for all the suffering got away. I had my eyes on the window of the chopper. I could see a man's profile and although I couldn't see his entire face, I knew who it was. The General finally turned when the chopper was about twenty feet up, and he looked directly at me. I searched what I could see of his face for sorrow, or remorse. Sadly, I wasn't surprised when I found none.

  Part II

  For about five minutes that day, I thought the hardest thing I'd ever have to face, was looking into the eyes of my father. But then, the really hard work began. The five of us released over thirty live people from the cages. Some of them were barely alive and while I helped Will, who I didn't know was a medic until then, tend to them, I began to hear their stories, one by one. These were not monsters that the scientists had found wandering in the hills, snatching soldiers and campers and eating babies. These were people who had jobs, and homes and families. Somehow the Taliban had come up with a way to track them down and they had begun to round them up by the dozens and sell them to the American scientists at the tower. From what I understood, the mission had begun as a legitimate, top-secret study. But at some point, the American government had found out about the mistreatment of the people there and the bizarre DNA studies the head scientist had begun working on, and they shut the mission down. That was when the tunnels came into play.

  The government was under the impression that the remote “tower” in the mountains above Kabul had been vacated for years, when in fact, it had been fully operational all along. People had been changed into things that the others who were left weren't even able to describe. Most of the women had died off, thanks to experiments around childbirth. None of the children conceived at the tower lived past their first birthday. The old people died, and the sick and disabled. All total, the men had taken out over a hundred bodies that day, and when they began the task of digging a mass grave for them, they discovered that was but a drop in the bucket as far as mortality went. Those who had managed to live were the young men, taken in their prime and after years of abuse and neglect, left with the health, body and appearance of men far into middle age. Some of them were stuck somewhere between wolf and man. Some, were unable to turn at all either one way or the other. All in all, it was the worst day of my life and I felt guilty about that, considering what the rest of them had been through.

  Once the dead were buried and the living were treated as best as they could be with the paltry medical supplies we found, the papers left un-shredded...files and computers and phone books, anything that might help us track down the monsters responsible for what we saw that day, were collected. The people and the things we gathered were taken to a nearby cavern and I watched over them while the men went back to the tower, one last time. I knew they were going to do one more sweep to make sure they hadn't missed anyone or anything. And I also knew that the anyone they would be looking for most of all was their lieutenant colonel. I had tried hard to connect with him again, but I was getting nothing. Clay, who had communicated with him telepathically in the past, tried as well, with the same result. Grover had told me that he wouldn't be there when we came. I had assumed he meant that he'd be dead...but now we all had to wonder.

  I was sitting next to a man who was sobbing over the loss of his wife and children when the earth shook underneath me for the second time that day. I knew this time it was no chopper, however. It was the explosion that would bring down the tower of hell and lay it to rest once and for all. Once that was done, our sad little convoy started down the mountainside...not a single one of us knew what to do or where to go from there. But what we did know was that even against all the odds, we were survivors and, in my mind, that was at least a good place to start.

  One year later

  Courtney

  I held a beautiful baby boy in my arms. Clay held the little girl, and Manny the other boy. It was beautiful to see what fatherhood did to these two big, strong men. They were literally glowing. I was shaking all over, and I was exhausted...but it was a good tired, the best kind. We had three beautiful, perfect, healthy babies, two boys and a girl. We named them Chloe, Christopher and Max. I had experienced a lot of firsts over the past year, and a lot of what I thought were my “best days ever,” but this day and this moment, truly took the cake.

  “She looks like you,” Clay said, staring in awe at the baby girl in his arms. When he looked up at me, his mate...his white alpha, the awe was still there.

  “You did so well. I'm so amazed.” Clay had never experienced childbirth with anyone and throughout my pregnancy he had asked a lot of questions and he had wanted to be there for every important event. They all had been. Manny was nodding in agreement with Clay...

  “You were incredible.”

  “Are Will and Titan on their way?” Clay nodded, his eyes and attention back on the baby in his arms.

  The year had been busy and wrought with so many changes. But those changes had all led us to this moment, and if I had to go through it all again, I wouldn't change a thing. The midwife came in then, smiled at the proud papa's and said,

  “The pack are all anxious to see the babies. I told them they would have to wait until the other two alphas have arrived and had their turn.”

  I smiled at her. I knew I'd been lucky to find her. The woman was a native of Bali and not the least bit fazed about the fact that we were wolves, or any of our lifestyle choices. She'd been nothing but kind, helpful and most importantly to me, non-judgmental. Our pack was 35 strong now, still all men except for me and now Chloe, but we were all thriving and things were only going to get better, I knew that in my heart.

  The first order of business, as soon as the refugees we'd rescued from the tower were healthy, was deciding who would lead us. It was Manny who brought up what I had said to him almost a year before on that mountain, about making their own rules and their own pack. When the others heard my idea, about letting the little team of soldiers lead together, the unanimous consensus was that it was the perfect idea for them.

  The next order of business had been establishing exactly what I wanted to do about a mate. We had discovered through the papers we found in the tower, and phone conversations that I had with my mother that I had been adopted. My mother admitted that they hadn't exactly done it legally. The General had brought me home, telling my mother that the parents were Afghani's who had been killed in Kabul. My mother never really believed him, but she lived in denial to keep from having to give up the little girl she wanted so badly. I might never know where I came from exactly, or if “my father” was actually my father, but I did know that I was born to be a wolf, and that status gave me an actual leg up over the four men as far as leading the pack.

  I didn't want to be the leader. I was content with the men leading together, but there was something I did want. Since I was the only female and would be for the foreseeable future, I wanted to be the one who chose my mate...and now as I held my first babies and smiled up at their daddy, I thought back to the day I told them that.

  “Clay, I hope you know how I feel about you. The chemistry between us is incredibly strong. I think you're brave and kind and I couldn't design a better man. I'm falling in love with you.” Clay had been beaming as I spoke, and he looked relieved. I hadn't told him yet that I was expecting and I knew he was worried about who I would choose once the dust had settled and we were talking about moving on as a pack. “But...” that “but” had caused his smile to falter. “I feel a pull
toward all of you.” I had looked around then at the other three men present. “A strong pull. I think you all complement each other so well, and I think we're going to have a fabulous life as a family. I'm not sure how you will all feel about this because it's certainly not conventional or traditional...but neither are we. We're making our own pack and our own rules, and I was hoping that one of those rules could be...that I could keep you all.”

  Clay frowned. Titan cocked an eyebrow. Will had a confused smile on his face and Manny was looking at Clay, obviously waiting for his reaction. Clay spoke first. “Are you saying that you want to mate with all of us?”

  I nodded. “For selfish reasons, of course, because I love you all. But I'm also thinking of this pack. Until we find females...like us, or willing to be like us, I'm going to be the only one making babies. We have to think about the future of our pack now, and always. One of the things Grover told me before he stopped talking to me was that a werewolf without a mate by the time he's thirty, begins to die. I don't want any of you to die. We're all very close to that age...this would save us all. It would fortify our pack, and we would really and truly be a family, which is what I want more than anything else. If any of you objects, there won't be any hard feelings. I'll understand if you think you might meet your true mate someday...”

  “We have,” Titan said, “At least I have. I've felt it since that first day. You're my mate, I was only taking a step back because I thought you wanted Clay.”