Unwilling: a shifter romance

by Hannah L. Corrie

  Darwin and George tensed synchronously.

  "Friends?" Mary mumbled, turning around and having a glance out the windows herself. Her hand slapped on George's back rest and the stink of fear flooded the room.

  "George, it's Carl! He's here!"

  Explosion

  Darwin

  Seeing his father after the days he had been having was the best thing Darwin could imagine. Hugging him was even better; for a while, Darwin didn't want to let go of the old man at all. As grown-up as he had thought himself to be, right now he was happy with just being a son and clinging to someone safe. If only he could have his mate and his best friend back, the world would be alright again.

  It hadn't taken him long to assess Margo's moods by the tone of her voice. Margo had a very expressive set of vocal cords and was more than happy to yell through the whole roadhouse, shooing him from one place to another and shouting encouragement at the same time.

  When she remarked on the people outside, Darwin could picture her face, matching her suspicious voice. It was Mary's call, however, that sent a jolt of fear through his body.

  "No, no, no, no," he breathed as blood from his extremities rushed towards the center of his body, leaving his fingers cold and shivery. "Please, dear god, no." Darwin jogged to one of the windows, discreetly peeking through the blinders and swallowing down gunks of saliva as his mouth went dry.

  Three cars were parked haphazardly on the parking lot in front of the house. Familiar people were milling around, looking at George's car, the roadhouse and the area around it, most likely checking for escape routes and back exits. Carl was standing behind one of the dark blue SUVs, typing away on his mobile phone, but his attention clearly lay on the building. Even a blind man could see the preparations for a frontal attack the Banes Pack was making, but Darwin still turned to Margo.

  "Those people are going to attack you," he said, hating how his voice trembled. "It's my old pack, our old pack, the one we've been running from."

  Another shiver ran through the crowd of slightly hungover werewolves, but none of them got up. The jukebox bleated its last notes and fell silent. Margo cocked her head to one side.

  "Why would they attack us? This is our territory and they're far away from home, what use could they possibly have for a piece of crap heap of houses in the middle of nowhere?" She paused, frowned and added, "And don't get me wrong, kiddo, you're cute as a button, but you're just one submissive. That's not enough reason to drive halfway through the country and start a brawl with another pack."

  "This isn't about a runaway submissive, Margo. They are here to kill me and after they've done that, they will go up to the cabins and kill my mate and my pack." A single drop of sweat lazily rolled down Darwin's temple, itching and tickling on its way down. He swiped it away with numb fingers and palmed his forehead, trying to think through his panic. "That man out there with the mobile in his paw is Carl. He's the Alpha of the Banes Pack and he already tried to kill me twice. If he finds me here, he'll try a third time and this time I won't be getting up afterward."

  One of the regulars huffed and shook his head. "You're talking shit, pup. It's impossible to kill a submissive on purpose."

  "I'd love to try and prove it to you, but then I'd be, you know, dead," Darwin bit out. Funny, it was so much easier snark at people when he was afraid for his life. All the agitation made his spine tingle with the first warnings of change; he took a deep breath, tottering back as he concentrated on breathing, and closed his eyes.

  "My son is telling the truth." George's voice rang out from next to the bar. "That man out there was my best friend, but he's not right in the head anymore. Last night, he sent three of his men to kill me in my own home, just because I had a conversation with Darwin. And we don't think that his murder attempts on Darwin are a first. He's done it before, multiple times, I'm sure of it. We're sure of it. Our pack has not one submissive left, not one! If it weren't for that, if Carl hadn't taken away everyone who kept his people sane, he'd be alone out there. But those people aren't sane anymore. You can't negotiate with them."

  Margo was watching the discussion with tense calmness, looking out the windows ever so often as if not to lose sight of the brewing trouble. "We can at least try," she said without inflection, shrugged and turned towards the doors. Her moving had the whole room rustle, swish and click as a dozen guns and rifles found their way out of pockets, holsters, and off the floor. A few of the men got up and crept towards the windows, those at the bar simply turned around, but each of them was armed.

  Mary had enough presence of mind to grab George's wheelchair and jostle him towards the stairs and the back room, out of the death zone and out of sight. A few of the patrons also went back there, throwing worried glances back to their pack mates as they sought shelter where bullets wouldn't stray too easily. Darwin followed in a quick trot, fighting against the deep, dragging pain in his back. The need to change was still there, teetering on the edge like a dry orgasm, but he didn't try to suppress it, just dampen it enough to hold off for now. If for some reason a fight broke out and Carl actually made his way inside, Darwin would not sit there and take it, oh no. He would change and dominance be damned, he would die trying to kill Carl right back.

  Margo walked to the door in all her average, beautiful, over-painted glory, opened it and stepped outside, arms akimbo. Her voice was a declaration of war, a tumbleweed in a frontier town, echoing through the guest room as she yelled, "So, what the fuck are you doing in my territory? Did you at least bring cake?"

  Darwin, Mary and George froze, looking at each other wide-eyed. George mouthed 'Alpha?' at Darwin, who could only shrug. He hadn't known, either.

  Of course, Carl reacted just like Darwin expected. "Give us the boy and we'll spare you," he yelled in return.

  A few subdued snickers wafted through the roadhouse at that, but Margo didn't laugh. "What'cha want with the boy?" she asked dryly, not bothering to sound surprised. She sounded genuinely interested and that made Darwin nervous. She had hidden her being the local Alpha, so what else was she hiding? Had he tried too hard to win her over, said too much?

  "None of your business! Send him out, now, or we'll come in and get him," Carl snarled. He sounded rather pleased with himself, presumably because of the fifteen werewolves he had brought with him.

  Darwin looked around. In hand-to-hand combat, there would definitely be a lot of casualties. Carl's wolves were unhinged, itching for a fight and they outnumbered Margo's pack. If it came to a brawl, they wouldn't stop until they killed their opponents or died themselves.

  Luckily, there would be no hand-to-hand combat, there would be a gunfight. It was highly irregular for a pack to go into a conflict armed with guns, but this was not a territorial dispute or a challenge, this was an assault. Shooting the invading werewolves was a-okay with common pack law. The police would disagree, but that was a problem for another time.

  Margo still stood in the entrance but a few of her fingers twitched, pointing to those inside the roadhouse. It had to be some kind of code because a few of the men switched positions and one of them elbowed his way past the cowering submissives and around Darwin, Mary and George to reach the back door.

  "You are trespassing on my property and I'm asking you to leave. You're not welcome here," she said in a tone of voice that suggested she herself didn't believe they would listen.

  Then the world sped up past the point Darwin could follow. A bark from outside marked Carl's command to charge, Mary screamed, and the back door and front windows shattered as warm bodies barreled through them.

  A shuddering breath later, half a dozen of guns and rifles awoke to life and screamed death against the invaders.

  A still shrieking Mary jumped onto George, shielding him with her body and opening a path for panicked submissives to flee the brawl at the back door behind them. A moment later, one of Margo's enforcers who had taken the guard post at the back door threw a burly man towards the front and guest room, grazing Darwin
and catapulting him out into the madness.

  Gasping with pain from the impact, Darwin tumbled through a hail of bullets, broken furniture and bodies. He came to a halt beneath a table and jerked back as a bullet-riddled girl fell back and crashed through it, landing at the almost exact spot Darwin had occupied a moment before. Her dead eyes stared right at Darwin, moved only by the last twitches her body made as it fought for futile breaths and heartbeats that wouldn't happen again.

  The noise was unbearable, deafening him as he squeezed himself beneath a bench bolted to the wall. The room stank of gunpowder and blood, hot metal and broken wood, nose-blinding him and filling the air with foggy smoke.

  The fight lasted maybe two or three minutes, but those minutes felt like an eternity. The only sign that Margo's pack was winning came with a sudden rush of gun-wielding truckers towards the front door, followed by a panicked call from the outside as Carl and the survivors turned heel to run.

  From one pained gasp to the next, Darwin was suddenly alone in the guest area. His ears still rang, his brain played an echo of the gunshots and screams to dim the quiet, and the air was still thick with smoke and dust, but the fight had moved outside.

  Darwin gingerly extracted himself from beneath the bench, doing his best to avoid the dead girl blocking his path as he crawled out from under the table. He kept low to the ground and pushing a hand against his hurting ribs to ease his breathing. Nine other dead bodies lay strewn in the roadhouse, but except for the enforcer at the back door and the remaining submissives, who were crouching huddled beneath the stairs, no live body had stayed inside.

  Mary and George were where they had been. As soon as Darwin's and George's eyes met, George seemed to calm down enough to let the nurse fuss over him.

  Darwin careened back and grabbed a hold of another table to keep himself upright as his thoughts raced. Where was Margo? More importantly, where was Carl? As far as Darwin could see, Carl wasn't one of the dead strewn around the roadhouse, but that didn't mean anything. Or did it? If Carl was still alive, Darwin had to know. If he was dead, all the better, but if not, he would have to make sure that crazy bastard didn't keep on breathing.

  Another wave of urgency rushed through his body, intensifying the panic in his chest. This one was different, though, alien and still so familiar. Gasping for breath, Darwin crouched next to one of the dead men and grabbed his gun, almost keeling over as he jumped back up. Was this what shock felt like? It didn't matter. Nothing mattered, except for making sure Carl was dead and Jared alive.

  As soon as Darwin found his footing, he started running, deaf to his father's calls, obeying to the itching pain in his back.

  Carl

  How could things have gone so wrong? His plan had been perfect, thought through to the smallest move, carefully set in scene and executed. His pack had worked like a well-oiled machine, cogwheels ticking into each other with heartrending precision, a ballet of deadly intent,...

  Now they were dead. Put down like a pack of rabid dogs, and with guns of all things. Guns!

  "Shameful," Carl huffed through clenched teeth, laboriously fighting his way through trees, underbrush, and up the steep incline saturated with Darwin's scent. The decision to retreat had been a hard, painful one, but Carl wasn't ready to give up altogether. A lost battle didn't mean the war was lost. He still had Carmen and Graham. He still had a scent trail he could follow directly to that damned Alpha. Killing him had to break Darwin's spirit and Carl was positive that he'd be able to accomplish at least that.

  The thought warmed him, made him grin against the freezing cold air brushing against his teeth. Carmen's bushy gray tail wagged and waved through the trees farther up the hill, pointing the way like a furry flag. Graham was a bit behind him, rasping through the pain of his stomach wound, but keeping up anyway. How those two had survived the hail of bullets, he couldn't fathom. A stroke of luck, maybe? A sign from god? Or had they ducked out of the fight, only to find themselves confronted with his Alpha voice?

  It didn't matter now. Whatever the reason, Carl would make sure they did their duty.

  For Graham, his duty would doubtlessly be the last thing he ever did. Carl smelled the blood and the sour stench of stomach acid even from his position and Graham fell farther and farther behind with each step. Granted, the incline was brutal for the breakneck speed he climbed it with, but Graham was hurt, really hurt. Another victim of the ungodly abyss that was Darwin, another soul Carl would have to take revenge for. Carmen, on the other hand, was a different problem. She was blood-related to that nurse of George's, which made her a thorn in Carl's side. Right now it was easy to trust her tracking skills, he had used his Alpha voice to make both of them obey after all. But even that only worked when his orders didn't totally oppose a wolf's wishes. Carmen obviously wanted to find Darwin, but hurting him... No. Carl would have to do that himself.

  After he killed that Jared guy.

  The thought made him shiver. He had to stop and lean against a tree to keep himself from stumbling with weak-kneed excitement, which gave Graham a chance to catch up. Carl threw a scrutinizing glance at Graham's pasty, pale face and the tightness around his lips, trying to decide if maybe a mercy kill was in order, then shook his head and turned back towards where Carmen had vanished. "Not far now," he said, nodded at Graham and took off again. At least I hope so, for his sake.

  The trees around them got taller, the bushes sparser, and the temperature colder, the higher up Carmen led them. A few remnants of frost clung to pits in the ground and tree bark, glittering in the sparse sunlight of the beginning dusk. Scent marks of deer, foxes, elks and something cat-related drifted through the biting cold air. This could have been such a nice, calming place, Carl thought, were it not for those traitorous wolves.

  Carmen stopped abruptly, whined and took three steps back, dropping down to hide against the incline as she threw careful glimpses over the last heap of earth separating her from what looked like the end of this dreaded hill. Carl came to a stop a few feet behind her, dropping to all fours and crawling to her side with a low growl.

  The cabin didn't look like much but it likely had a great view over the valley beneath. It was small, lit and abuzz with activity. Carl recognized less than half of the scents coating the perimeter, but Darwin's scent intermingling with Rayne's was almost too much to keep his composure.

  "That fucking traitor," he cursed, slid back and turned around, only to find Graham gone. Not a trace to be found, not even the sour scent of blood. Carl ground his teeth, snarling at the unfairness of the world, then crawled back into position next to Carmen. "I guess that leaves us two," he said, snatching glances at both the door, the windows and the empty parking lot in front of the cabin.

  "Let's end this, once and for all."

  Darla

  So much rage. It saturated every pore in Darla's body, stuck to her body and mind like syrup, ready to jump at her, ready to break through that last thin thread of self-control at the slightest provocation. That new, alien, equally enraged second being inside her reeled from her dreams of killing Darwin, but it did understand her anger over this new existence, recognized her right to be angry at the invisible cage she was stuck in.

  On an intellectual level, Darla understood well enough what had happened to her, why she was where she was and why it was necessary to obey to Jared's rules, to listen to Rayne's advice and guidance. On a more animalistic level, nothing about their situation sat right with her. Sure, both Rayne and Jared tried to help her, talking her through these bouts of uncontrollable bloodlust. Darwin left her alone as often as possible and even Harry just smiled and backed away when she barked at him, but all of that just made her angrier and angrier.

  Darla had never been a violent person. Assertive and blunt, sure, but never violent, never this angry. She had no idea how to deal with this, herself in this state, and nothing Rayne suggested seemed to help. The only vents keeping her from erupting and attacking Darwin were the woods and her extended patrols.
She could shift, scratch that itch at the back of her mind, drown in the scents and run, run, run, until her lungs burned and her joints ached.

  This night, Darla didn't run or shift. She cowered in the bushes seaming the lot around their cabin, smeared with mud and fox poop, trying not to gag and keeping an eye on the perimeter with the secure knowledge that someone would attack them, sooner or later. The possibility of a fight was motivation enough to throttle her rage down to a low, steady simmer, but the waiting blew. She didn't give much thought to the after, just as she didn't worry about how she'd get the utter stink of the fox droppings out of her hair when the fight was over, mostly because she didn't like the images her mind conjured.

  Mom and dad, flying in to collect my body, that utterly broken look on dad's face, worse than when he found my brother's corpse. Mom would be all alone, would have to organize everything herself, carry all the weight. Dad would probably try to kill himself again, this time for good,—

  Her fist hit the tree with a crunching smack. Blood erupted out of the lacerations on her knuckles, spilling over the rough bark. The pain was sharp and deep and wholly freeing, raking through her nervous system as her somewhat cracked bones started to knit themselves. Growling low, Darla grabbed a fistful of dirt and leaves, rubbing the mixture over the blood to cover the scent. She so needed something to kill, preferably soon.

  Dead leaves rustled, followed by voices and the panting of a canine. Darla ducked and stuck her bloody hand into the dirt, squinting towards the noises. A wolf, a fat old man and a not so fat, younger man stumbled by, huffing and puffing with the strain of the steep incline and not showing a care in the world. The younger guy fell back, smelling of blood and pain as he futilely tried to keep up with the other two.

  Darla tensed and smiled an ugly smile. Three were too many, even two would have been a formidable enemy, but the wounded man presented her with a way around their superiority in numbers; picking them off one by one not only gave her the upper hand— a necessary precaution if she wanted to keep breathing—, it would also drag out the fighting. A perfect target for her rage.