Ian's Choice (Wolves' Heat)

by Lynne, Odessa

  “I’d rather die than—”

  “Then stay in one of the fucking fortified shelters and away from the wolves during the heat season. If you’re stupid enough to go out, and you get caught, then by God, choose to die. It’s not like they come looking for us any other time.”

  Most wolves stayed away from humans outside of working with scientists and the government during the gap between heat seasons. Or that’s how things had gone until now. Ian wasn’t sure what was going to happen now that the wolves seemed to have reached their breaking point with the killing of their people.

  Brendan scoffed. “Get your stuff if you still have any of it. We’re going. That wolf isn’t far enough behind that we can stand here and argue about this. Save your piss and vinegar for later.”

  The words hit him hard. His grandfather’s favorite phrase, one Brendan had grown up hearing just as often as Ian. The reminder of their genuine childhood friendship stabbed hard at Ian’s anger, but he wasn’t letting things go this time.

  Ian had realized a few years ago that Brendan had changed, but it had been a hard thing to accept. Brendan had been his friend for so long. They’d been so close for so many years that seeing him the way he was now hurt, the bite of reality bitter and sharp. Probably worse than anything he’d gone through since his grandfather had died. And it was why he and Devon both hadn’t written Brendan off already, abandoned him to his plots against the wolves, his grab for power and money when the world changed and the financial markets collapsed one after another.

  “How much of this do you do because you want their technology when you take out a den?” Ian asked, finally calling Brendan on a suspicion he’d carried around for a while.

  “It’s a bonus,” Brendan said, but Ian had known Brendan long enough to pick up the thread of anger underlying his glib response.

  “You selling it?” Ian asked.

  Feet shuffled somewhere behind Brendan. The glow of a flashlight wavered.

  Brendan looked behind him. “Jay,” he said, harsh and pointed.

  “I thought so,” Ian said. “For all your talk about saving the world from the wolves, you’re just going out and killing people for—”

  “They’re not fucking people, Ian, get that through your head.”

  “They’re people, by God! Quit telling me what to believe. I’m not sixteen anymore. Sometimes I hate them for what they’ve done to the world by coming here, but they’re fucking people just like you and me and every human on the planet.”

  “Tell that to Devon. Oh, wait, you can’t. He didn’t want to submit so what choice did he have? He chose to die, Ian.”

  Ian straightened his back and stared at Brendan, tension seeping into every muscle. God, he wished he could see Brendan’s face better in the dark but the glow from the flashlights did little more than put his features into stark relief, the shadows too hard to penetrate.

  Brendan’s voice lowered as he said, “Those wolves, they killed him. They used him and then killed him and that should be all the proof you need.” Brendan reached out and grabbed Ian’s shoulder and shook him.

  Nausea hit hard and Ian thought for a moment he might throw up.

  Devon, dead?

  He didn’t believe Craig would have gone to such elaborate lengths as to stage a conversation with someone just to make Ian think Devon had been left behind when they’d abandoned the first den. So if Devon was dead, Brendan or one of his men had killed him. Staged it to look like the wolves had—

  Ian had to lean over, resting his hands on his thighs. He took a breath, too shallow, and then another. Brendan patted his back, and Ian wanted to growl at him, to tell him to get his hands the fuck off him but he still had enough control to hold the words back.

  The odds weren’t in his favor if he attacked Brendan, and if he didn’t kill Brendan, then Brendan would kill him—of course he would. If he had killed Devon just to prove a point to Ian then there really was nothing left of the Brendan he had grown up with. Nothing at all.

  Brendan had gone too far, and if Devon was really dead because of him, Ian would never forgive Brendan.

  Ian felt a bone deep certainty that Brendan would also kill him if he realized just how compromised Ian’s convictions had become since Craig had caught him, or that he’d allowed himself to be used in a trap for Brendan and his renegade forces.

  “You’ve been in a den now. I bet there’s a lot you can tell us about what happened to you in there that could help us with our next mission.”

  Hell, no, there wasn’t. He wasn’t leaving with Brendan. No way. He would wait for Craig to find him, because he didn’t doubt Craig would come, and that meant getting the hell away from Brendan and his guys.

  Chapter 19

  “I left my bag over there,” Ian said, gesturing toward the mine entrance.

  To get away from Brendan he would have to make a run for it. One knife against five with guns gave him about a hundred percent chance of taking more than one bullet if he even tried. He felt like all he’d done lately was run from one disaster to another, but at least he was still alive.

  If Brendan wasn’t still trying to manipulate him, Devon didn’t even have that.

  “Hurry,” Brendan said. “We didn’t have that much of a lead to start with.”

  “Give me a flashlight, then. It’ll make it quicker.”

  Brendan unclipped an extra light from the vest he wore and handed it to Ian.

  Ian flicked the light on and walked away, carefully memorizing the path in front of him to the mine. When he was out of the range of the glow of light from the others’ flashlights, he flicked his off.

  “Ian?” Brendan called out. “Raider?”

  Ian didn’t answer. He clambered up the rocks by feel alone while flashlights swept over the place they’d last seen him standing. With the cloud cover and dense forest, not a flicker of natural light cut through the dark. Only the bob of flashlights jittered wildly as Brendan and his guys started jogging toward his location.

  “Ian, what the hell you think you’re doing?”

  Light streamed across his cheek and over his shoulder. If he let that light hit his face, he’d be completely blinded. He waited for a shot in the back but Brendan obviously wasn’t ready to give up on him yet.

  A rock gave way under the tread of his boot and he stumbled against the single beam still standing tall at the mine entrance. He skittered down the back side of the rocks he’d stood on earlier during his peek inside the mine and lost his footing. He could have caught himself if he’d been willing to drop the flashlight but if he had, he would never have found it in the absolute dark that waited inside.

  He fell on his ass in a shallow puddle, the sharp edge of a rock jabbing hard against his hip.

  He swore under his breath and lurched his way to his feet. He straightened and realized immediately that he’d done something to his injured leg in the fall.

  He limped forward a few steps, then turned to yell back over his shoulder, “Better leave without me before that wolf catches up with you.”

  “Stop being a dumb shit and get out here!” Brendan yelled.

  “I wouldn’t go back with you if I had a whole fucking pack of wolves bearing down on me!”

  He didn’t hear a response, only the scrabble of boots on rock.

  He had the advantage of having climbed the rock earlier. These guys were climbing it for the first time in the dark and they weren’t making quick work of it.

  Ian flicked his light on and quickly swept it across the open shaft to get his bearings and then flicked the switch off again. He heard a muttered curse and a startled yelp behind him, and the sharp clack of a heavy rock abruptly shifting position.

  Ian staggered deeper into the mine, the glow from the flashlights behind him fading away, the echo of voices disappearing into the depths ahead of him. He just needed to go deep enough to keep Brendan and his guys off his back. They’d leave him, and then he could return to the—

  A rumble vibrated up th
rough the soles of his boots.

  “Ah, fuck,” he said.

  He stopped and waited for the rumble to subside. A few seconds later, a groaning roar pushed through the pitch blackness, air rushing past along with a choking cloud of dust.

  Breathing became a nightmare and Ian leaned on the roughly-hewn rock wall, pulled his t-shirt up over his face, and coughed until he gagged, knuckles digging into the wall where he had his fingers curled around the base of the flashlight.

  His t-shirt slipped and he sucked in a lungful of the filthy air.

  He yanked the fabric up over his mouth and nose and tried to hold it in place while he slid down to his knees, not because the air was clearer down below, because it wasn’t, but because he couldn’t stay on his feet any longer fighting the gray at the edges of his vision.

  He thought he heard an echo of his own hacking cough, but then—not an echo. Someone was inside the mine with him.

  He clutched the base of the flashlight but it took forever to stop coughing long enough to control his fingers and flick the light on.

  A wall of dust floated on the air in the glow of the light. Useless until the dust settled. He turned the light off to conserve the battery, and tried to hold his breath long enough to locate whoever was trapped in here with him.

  Was it one guy or many?

  Brendan or someone else?

  When he could get his voice to work as more than a croak, he called out, “Who’s there?”

  He waited, the silence oppressive but not absolute. He could hear the drip of water again and the creak of structures shifting, the faint clatter of rocks slipping down over one another, and a low whistle he couldn’t identify. He let the silence linger, but no one replied.

  He tried again. “Bren—” Another coughing fit cut him off. He let it run its course, then cleared his throat.

  “Brendan? Anyone?”

  A groan came from the area closer to the entrance and Ian started crawling that way, flashlight thunking against the ground every time he put his hand down, knees already wet and getting wetter. He was pretty sure the opening had collapsed so he wasn’t surprised when he started feeling a lot of loose rock under his palm.

  He stopped and turned the flashlight back on. The dust didn’t float so thick on the air as before, and he could see well enough to make out the body on the ground about ten feet ahead of him.

  Whoever it was, he had been too close the collapse and ash gray dust coated him head to foot. As Ian watched, the man groaned again, turned his head, and opened his eyes to stare in Ian’s direction.

  “Of course,” Ian muttered. He crawled around the bigger debris and finally reached Brendan’s side.

  He released the flashlight long enough to pat Brendan’s cheek.

  “Stupid, you shouldn’t have come in after me,” he said, his words muffled by the fabric of his t-shirt. “You and your guys brought down the whole opening.”

  He wondered Brendan could hear him anyway. Blood streaked down through the thick gray dust from one ear and down his neck.

  Brendan tried to sit up, coughing uncontrollably.

  Ian unclipped Brendan’s rifle and tossed it aside, then took the pistol from his hip and tucked it in the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back, then grabbed Brendan’s arm. He hauled Brendan upright.

  Brendan groaned but stood, and then took his cue from Ian and reached for his shirt, pulling it up over his nose and mouth, his other hand digging into his pocket. He pulled out a bandana.

  “Here.” Brendan offered the bandana to Ian.

  Ian took it and watched as Brendan just pulled his shirt up again over his face.

  “Why?” Ian asked, as he tied the fabric around his face.

  “My shirt’s thicker.”

  “No, I mean really, why?”

  Brendan stared at him, the glow from the flashlight a collection of shadows across his face. “Why the hell do you think, Ian? I’ve been in love with you since we were fifteen and you were too afraid to kiss me because your grandfather might find out, the homophobic bastard.”

  Ian didn’t try to refute the truth about his grandfather. Marshall had been a good man, but like every other human in the world, he had not been without his flaws. “You had Devon.”

  “Devon was always just a way to get to you.”

  “I know,” Ian said. “But I’ve never loved you like that. We were friends. When I looked at you that’s all I ever saw.”

  He had finally put into words something they’d both known for years, speaking harsher than he’d ever spoken to Brendan.

  He continued, “Now you don’t even mean that to me. I’m not your friend anymore, Brendan. I would just as soon see you dead as breathing right now.”

  “Then we’re done,” Brendan said, his expression hardening but not quite hiding all the hurt and anger beneath a mask of indifference.

  “I’ll never forgive you for what you did to Devon. If we make it out of here—”

  “The guys—”

  “Don’t fool yourself thinking your guys are loyal enough to hang around to try to dig us out while wolves are after them. They’re probably already gone. Even if they went for help, it could be days before they feel safe enough to come back with the wolves out there.”

  Brendan’s expression closed off even more. Ian didn’t care. Brendan and Devon were the only family Ian had, and now he didn’t have either of them.

  “I’m going to look for a way out now that I can see better. You can either stay here in the dark, alone, or follow me, but I want your weapons. All of them.”

  Brendan’s eyebrows lowered. He reached for the spot where his gun should have been, but his hand clutched at empty space. “Son of a bitch, Raider.”

  “It’s Ian, thanks.”

  Brendan’s mouth pinched. “Ian, then.”

  Ian pulled Brendan’s gun and pointed it at Brendan. “Every last one of them. On the ground.”

  Brendan slowly removed a knife from his boot and another two from his belt, and then reached for his shoulder holster.

  “Slow,” Ian said. He used the opportunity to step back and put a little distance between them, moving slow to keep from giving away the weakness in his leg.

  Brendan eased the smaller gun out and away and then dropped it to the ground with the knives.

  “Ammunition too.” Ian gestured toward the ground a few feet away. “Right there.”

  Brendan unloaded the rest of his weaponry and supplies and when he was done, Ian gathered up the extra clips for the gun he had, one of the best knives, and the food and water supplies, and then tossed the rest into the dark. The weapons clattered against rock and dirt as they hit the ground.

  Ian had the flashlight. Ian wasn’t going to leave Brendan anything to fight with even if that meant one less useful tool for himself. The news about Devon had irrevocably changed things between them.

  Ian no longer trusted Brendan not to try to stab him in the back if the chance presented itself.

  “Will your guys try to track us with the beacon on my buckle?” Would Craig? Craig seemed like the kind of guy—wolf—who wouldn’t have threatened idly not to let Ian go if he actually didn’t care all that much if Ian did in fact disappear. But that assumed Craig could track the beacon. Just because the wolves had discovered the micro-beacon transmitting didn’t mean they would be prepared to track it.

  “Yeah, they’ll try. Don’t know if they’ll have any luck with it while we’re down in a mine though.”

  Ian stared at Brendan.

  “You’re lying,” Ian said. “That’s okay. Let’s go.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “You can either walk, or you’re staying here. I’m not carrying you and I’m not letting you lean on me.”

  “I won’t try anything.”

  “No, you won’t. I’m not going to give you the chance. I’m done with you, Brendan. Devon was the last straw.”

  “Don’t tell me you ever liked Devon. I know you didn’t.�
�

  “I liked Devon just fine. He might have been an asshole sometimes, but he was our friend. Or he was my friend, anyway. I don’t believe you even know what friendship is anymore.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Ian wasn’t going to waste time arguing the truth, so he pointed the flashlight down the dark path ahead of them, the tunnel wide and deep, and waved the gun.

  “Take the lead,” he said. “And you’re welcome to run off into the mine but don’t expect me to come after you if you do.”

  “Yeah. I get it.”

  “Good.” Ian waited until Brendan started walking ahead of him before he clenched his jaw and followed. He quietly tucked the extra knife into the remaining empty sheath in his boot and pulled his pant leg down to cover the bulge. The fabric scraped against his bandaged calf and he winced. He wouldn’t be able to hide his limp forever, but the longer he kept Brendan from discovering his weakness, the better.

  Chapter 20

  The scariest part of the journey deeper into the mountainside was the undeniable stench in the air. Ian wasn’t ignorant to the idea that dangerous gases could have been trapped in here for years, and could in fact be seeping up out of the ground below through a crack or crevice or from a natural spring. The age of the mines meant that any significant features inside could have changed at any time in the past, and especially during the big quake. Tremors had been felt for hundreds of miles from the epicenter and the damage to the landscape had changed the surrounding areas in ways Ian hadn’t believed until his grandfather had shown him pictures.

  Brendan stopped and looked back over his shoulder. Ian had to concentrate to minimize his limp and he didn’t miss the way Brendan’s gaze flickered down and back up. Brendan made no comment though and Ian kept walking until he had reached Brendan’s side.