TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page Book 3
Copyright
Chapter One Aaron
Chapter Two Lily
Chapter Three Anik
Chapter Four Aaron
Chapter Five Lily
Chapter Six Shiori
Chapter Seven Aaron
Chapter Eight Lily
Chapter Nine Rodas
Chapter Ten Aaron
Chapter Eleven Lily
Chapter Twelve Anik
Chapter Thirteen Aaron
Chapter Fourteen Lily
Chapter Fifteen Shiori
Chapter Sixteen Aaron
Chapter Seventeen Lily
Chapter Eighteen Rodas
Chapter Nineteen Aaron
Chapter Twenty Lily
Chapter Twenty-One Anik
Chapter Twenty-Two Aaron
Chapter Twenty-Three Lily
Chapter Twenty-Four Shiori
Chapter Twenty-Five Aaron
Chapter Twenty-Six Lily
Dedication
About Author May Ellis Daniels
The One We Answer To
Pureblood Predator MC
Book 3
May Ellis Daniels
COPYRIGHT © 2015 May Ellis Daniels
All rights reserved.
The One We Answer To is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events portrayed in this story are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, shared, down-loaded, compiled, stored, or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the author.
CHAPTER ONE
AARON
THE MOUNTAIN ANIMALS are starving.
I am starving.
The Blood Moon rises crimson against a rocky ridge deep in the Cascades. The night far too warm for early spring. I lift my nose to the breeze and scent the air.
There’s a forest fire raging in the next valley.
More fires arrive every evening, with black-bellied storms that roll in from the west, barreling across the Pacific like cavalry in the churn and scream of war, slamming into the mountains and cutting the night with vicious red lightning. Flames follow in the storm’s wake, consuming cedar and fir in this land that was once known as a rainforest.
The time of rain has ended.
This is the Age of Discord.
I know this truth like I know I will die this evening unless I succeed in a kill.
Starvation lives deep in my marrow.
I growl and paw at the dry forest loam, releasing a sharp whiff of decay.
With any luck the fire in the next valley will drive game into the exposed terrain along the ridge. The deer will be frenzied, panicked, oblivious to the lone wolf waiting to pounce.
Ambush.
Once, when I commanded a Pureblood pack, I would have scoffed at such a tactic. I preferred to announce my presence to my prey. Preferred the thrill of the chase. Enjoyed running my prey down, watching exhaustion overtake them as they staggered and stumbled.
Enjoyed toying with them.
I was tireless then. We all were.
Ambush is a strategy for the weak and desperate.
For those unwilling confront their kill straight-on. For cowards.
Is that what I have become?
A coward?
Everything I once loathed?
Or is this survival, the will to continue hunting when every fibre of my being screams at me to stop, lie down, rest…and never stand up? Is survival simply stubbornness, the blunt refusal to admit I’d rather be dead than alive?
I pace back and forth within a stand of stunted balsam and huckleberry, the hunger a living demon in my belly. The pacing is foolish. I should lie down. Rest. Conserve energy. Even now I’m not certain I have the strength to give chase. The seeping, unhealed burn on my chest refuses to heal, its pain both lesson and reminder: trust no one.
They will turn on you. Betray you. Everyone you once trusted.
Every single one of them.
Lily.
That strange word. Repeating in my wolfmind whenever the pain of my burn becomes too sharp to ignore. One of the few Skin words I’m left with. For some reason the burn reminds me of that word, but I’ve lost all sense of its meaning.
Lily.
I look to my right, expecting to see my younger brother, the magnificent black wolf, crouching in the shadows. Only his grey-green eyes visible. But there’s no one.
I’m alone.
They will all turn on you.
Wind rolls over the ridge, sending a plume of black-grey smoke swirling toward me. I lower my head and snarl as red embers whip into the trees I’m hiding in. Soon the fire will crest the ridge and the wind will carry the embers into the valley below, lighting treetop after treetop, crowning a mile ahead of the main blaze, impossible to outrun.
Sometimes I think the fire is hunting me.
Tirelessly.
Laughing as I stagger and stumble. Toying with me.
The fires burn with unnatural heat. I’ve seen the flames transform solid rock to molten red lava. I’ve seen fire shoot straight into the night sky, a single column a thousand feet high, then race to the ground in a different direction, as if targeting something, and when it touches down a violent explosion shakes the earth.
Now I take a quick breath through my nose. Air so hot it singes my lungs.
Soon it’ll be too hot to breathe, and I’ll be forced to retreat hungry down the hill.
I paw and scrape at the soreness around my neck.
My fur is thin, the skin beneath worn raw from my claws.
There was another fire like this one: too hot.
Unnatural.
That fire almost killed me. I remember it burning into my chest, melting something I hated from around my neck, then I was falling, landing in cold rolling water that slammed me against a rocky shore.
Collar.
I lean down, drag my head and neck through the dirt, maddening myself with memory and physical pain.
She freed me.
Lily.
I lift my head to the raging red-orange sky and howl.
The sound echoes across the valley, long and mournful.
The smokey-black air changes.
Gathers.
It heard me.
I should never have howled. I’ve seen Pureblood screams draw the ascendant alpha near.
Seen the Fallen’s power—
I lower my head and slink deeper into the balsam and cedar. There’s a meadow behind. If I flee I’ll be in open terrain. Exposed. But here I’m pinned down—
The smoke begins to swirl, slowly at first, then increasing in speed until it becomes a tornado whirling along the ridge, sucking stones and small trees into its center. I hear myself whimper and moan. The whirling wind concentrates into a single point and for a moment I feel the wind…pulling at me.
Calling me.
Leaves and branches fly through the flaming sky and vanish into the swirling wind. Then, with a quickness that makes me growl, the wind suddenly calms. Glowing embers fall like rain. Sitting on its haunches on the ridge fifty yards away is a giant red wolf with the head of a preying mantis, its three compound, crystalline eyes gleaming black as it stares into the grove I’m cowering in.
The mantis-wolf glares into the trees for a long while. I lick my dry, cracked lips and try not to
whimper. It scents…wrong. Unnatural. It’s like the fires that burn without wood: it should never be.
Yet it is.
Worse, I know what it is. Or…I once did.
Now I only know its strength.
The mantis-wolf is an apex predator. The current peak of evolution. And me?
I’m prey.
The mantis-wolf stands, unfurls a pair of ruddy red eagle’s wings and leaps into the sky, trailing an arc of burning embers as it swoops toward me.
I lower my belly to the ground. A snarl escapes my lips.
I scent this creature’s foul black blood.
The creature arcs low to the ground, banks sharply, rides a thermal high into the storm-ravaged sky, turning in a wide, slow circle, then furls its wings close to its sides and dives straight at me.
Blind panic races through me, and for a moment I’m stunned motionless.
This is how it feels. To be hunted.
I dig my claws into the dirt and prepare to leap at the winged mantis-wolf. It barrels down, its eyes black and heartless, insectile mouth parted in a shrill, high-pitched shriek that makes my ears feel like they’re going to rupture. I ignore the pain and concentrate on sinking my fangs into its flesh at least once before it tears me apart.
To drink black blood again, even as I die, would be more than I deserve.
At the last second the creature lifts its head and flaps its wings and swoops upward, diving so close its vicious, curving claws rake against the trees overhead. Hot wind following in the creature’s wake presses me to the ground, and for a moment I glance up and meet the creature’s gaze, and in my mind I hear:
You hunted beside me. You will do so again. Now, feed. Live! I may yet have need of you, Aaron of the Mountain River.
Embers fall and singe into my flesh as the creature whirls and vanishes into the valley below, and there, staggering over the burning ridge, is a frightened doe, near dead with exhaustion. The sight of game makes my empty stomach scream, and I know that the mantis-wolf has granted me life for another day, and that soon he’ll arrive to collect his debt.
***
The kill gives me strength to outrun the blaze.
It feels good to move, even better to have blood on my lips.
My paws sink into sandy soil. The rhythm of my stride lulls me into a waking trance. I press east through the night, avoiding heavily-wooded mountain slopes and keeping to valley floors where ancient rivers now run dry make for fast travel. Soon the sun rises, casting its sickly yellow glow through clouds of smoke. I pass other animals fleeing east: black bears and foxes and the odd cougar.
The predators give each other a wide berth. For now.
The fire recedes behind me, but other dangers are not so easily outrun. Images, blurred and half-formed, race through my mind. A shining, screaming animal I once rode on the hunt. The strange sensation of standing upright on two legs. Of being able to hold objects in my paws. A world without trees, full of disease and noise and deception.
A world where nothing is what it seems.
I pause at a stagnant pond, sniff the water. It’s murky and stained with soot, but there’s nothing else. I’m about to bend my head to drink when a female bear shuffles from the woods a few yards off. She’s injured, her fur burned to blistered skin across her shoulders.
She won’t live long.
I’m shocked I didn’t scent her; the fire must have deadened my nose. I raise my haunches and snarl. The bear pauses, eyes the water, then retreats into the woods.
I’ve known other bears.
One a Kodiak. His memory is distant.
Another even larger, a massive white-furred killer with three eyes. I shake my head against the image and press on, driven by nothing more than an instinct to escape a fear I can’t name.
Soon cedar and fir give way to thin pine. The soil changes from soft and rich to hard, dusty and sun-baked. The scent of sage fills my nostrils. I scramble to the top of a knoll and peer into the distance: a broad expanse of dry rolling hills and brittle grasslands.
The sun beats down on my back. Pains my eyes. Makes my burned chest sting.
This is no land for a wolf.
It’s a land of scorpions and snakes; cold-blooded creatures clinging to shadow.
I look back the way I came, into the mountain range. Usually the highest peaks are ringed in snow. Now they’re dry and barren and lit by flame.
Something touches my shoulder.
I startle, leap around, growl. There’s nothing there.
I feel it again. A soft touch. Warm. Inviting.
Lily.
I bury my nose in my paws, trying to block out the strange word.
Odd, unwelcome feelings return: the taste of her blood when I marked her shoulder, the welcome pain when she marked me, the feeling of being inside her, so close we were almost one being—and then something shudders through me, a violent tearing deep in my bones and spirit and I’m howling in pain and fear because there’s nothing for me in that lost life, a life of pollution and disease and treachery and pain, a life cut off from this pure, elemental world of earth and sky—but the feeling of her body pressed close to mine, and her scent, her scent, an alpine meadow touched by morning sun, its been with me all this time, no matter how much I’ve tried to deny her she’s always here and now she’s drawing me back, the fucking bitch—
She’s why I’m running east into this blasted, sun-withered desert. To escape her, my bloodmate, the one I harmed and betrayed, the one who gave my life meaning, the creator and destroyer, and then I collapse in the sand, writhing and struggling to stay conscious, lost in poisonous memories and treacherous emotions—
How long has it been?
In my animal?
Days? Months? Decades?
A time of roaming free through the hills. A time of trying to forget.
But my shoulder pops and my legs grow long and thin and then something at the base of my spine snaps and I scream and howl and spit and claw at the earth because my bones are rearranging themselves, my skin stretching taut and thin and I watch in horror as my beautiful paws and sharp claws vanish and the silver-black fur on my arms recedes and not this, please no, not this, I can’t live that life again, a life of uncertainty and heartbreak and weakness, but then I’m holding my hands to my face, feeling my jaw snap and recede and my fangs flatten and I’m turning into this thing, this horrible misshapen aberration called a human, the cruelest of species, something I swore I would leave behind forever when my bloodmate decided I must die—
I press my face into the dirt and breathe deep, hot sand stinging my throat and searing into the burn on my chest and I try and bring the wolf back, try and remember how glorious it felt to hunt, free and alone, no regret or guilt or loss or uncertainty, only a single moment lived eternally, only the now…but he’s leaving me, the fucking bastard, even the wolf is turning on me, and I remember burying my younger brother Sorry after he died in shame, I remember my packmates turning on me when I failed them, but most of all I remember her, the feeling of her lips pressed to mine, how she smiled in a way that made damn sure I understood she saw through my bullshit, how natural it felt when we were together, the way she dug her fingernails into my back when we fucked, and the first words out of this goddamned cursed human mouth, which I whisper after spitting a mouthful of choking sand, are: “I remember you, Lily. I fucking remember what you are. And I’m going to keep on running.”
***
I shelter from the sun’s blistering heat in the shade of a scrubby juniper for the remainder of the day, swatting at biting red ants and trying not to dwell on how badly I need a black heart to feed on or what to do next.
Arron Arud. My human name like a prison, trapping me in a life I’ve learned to hate.
My animal fled east out of instinct. I see no reason to change course, bloodmate and lost pack and my fucking Harley rusting away in the Pureblood Predator clubhouse be damned. I’m not the first half-dead fool to venture naked and alone into the d
esert hoping to find an answer or two, and if I’m lucky maybe I’ll find a burning bush and return a fucking messiah and murder a certain mantis-wolf.
Vuk.
The First Fallen. The One Without Value.
Fuck Vuk.
The thought makes me laugh. But there’s madness and desperation in the sound, and my laugh quickly becomes a choking, miserable wheeze.
The burn on my chest is infected. Badly.
The strangest thing is not wearing the iron collar. I keep running my hands around my neck, marveling at the feel of my bare skin. I’d worn the collar so long it became a part of me. Feared what would happen if I was freed.
Feared my own animal, the one scrap of me that’s worth saving.
The air cools quickly as the sun descends, and when it dips behind the mountains I begin shivering and crawl out from under the juniper. Fires rage across the mountains behind, sending a vast column of smoke into the blue-black sky. The first stars emerge, and the fucked up Blood Moon. End of days? Maybe the doomers and whackos and preppers were right.
Not that it’ll do them any good.
They’ll just suffer longer.
I walk though the night. My feet blister and crack and bleed, and I’m too weak to do any healing. I try and drop fang a few times, hoping maybe the wolf decided to stick around.
Nothing.
Just little ol’ me, Aaron ‘One-Eight-Seven’ Arud, a weak-ass, heartbroken and half-dead Skin through and through. Love’ll do that. Drag you kicking and screaming through the dirt. Make you question who and what you are.
I worry maybe the wolf’s gone forever, goodbye and fuck you, and I can’t blame him, but the thought of living without him makes my stomach twist and turn.
He can’t be gone. Not forever. I’m weak is all.
In need of a Stricken’s black heart to feed on.
Soon the eastern desert scrubland gives way to rolling hills covered in brown grass. The only sound is my feet crunching through brittle grass. A few narrow ravines cut through the hills and at the bottom the air is cooler and a few trees, juniper and aspen mostly, cling to the banks of shallow dried riverbeds. The air is calm and still.
The One We Answer To: A Shifter MC Novel (Pureblood Predator MC Book 3) Page 1
