by Leeda Vada
The group quickly re-traced their route and eight hours later, located and dispatched two-thirds of the pack. But the alpha and his beta were holed up in a freighter with the remaining members of their force.
Unfortunately, they had commandeered a freighter and were holding the crew hostage. The allied forces blocked them from using the ship to escape, while deploying a small reconnaissance force. The leaders could do nothing more until the reconnaissance team returned with the information they needed to develop a plan of attack that would pose the least risk to the hostages.
They ordered the rest of the warriors to stand down and get some sleep. The combined forces had been on the move for four days with little more than a few minutes of rest. They needed everyone at full alert for the final assault at nightfall.
Canaan collapsed on one of the narrow cots in an abandoned warehouse. He closed his eyes and blanked his mind, leaving it to his body to find its respite.
#
He woke in a large chamber. The ceiling was several hundred feet over his head, long, thick stalactites reaching for huge columns of stalagmites rising to meet them.
Loud splashes had him turning his head. Cascading sheets of shimmering water mesmerized him. The water landed with such force that jets of it broke free, anointing the surrounding walls and boulders.
Six feet in front of the waterfall was a raised platform. Standing in its center was an elderly Were priest. His arms were stretched out in front of him as he read from an ancient scroll.
He recognized it as one of the five Holy scriptures that chronicled the original laws and customs of the Were race.
Suddenly, he was on the platform, facing the Elder. At the same moment, he recognized the words, echoing through the chamber.
They were wedding vows. Was he getting married?
A sense of foreboding began to dampen his skin, and he turned to his right.
Standing beside him was a bride wearing the ceremonial bridal gown preserved in glass at the Canid museum in Bakari.
He strained to see the face beneath the veil, a flowing French Alencoa creation of Chantilly lace. The small, half-carat diamonds, adorning the gown’s neckline, glistened in the reflected light of hundreds of candles, perched on the small outcroppings in the granite walls.
But the layers of lace were too thick.
His heart began to race.
At twenty-three, Canaan was beyond the age when a Canid male usually identified his mate. But despite all his forays into the pleasures offered by the opposite sex—and there had been many—the identity of his mate had eluded him.
Could this be her?
Here?
Now?
In this sacred place?
#
An infant’s cry pierced the air. Canaan turned toward the sound.
His mother, Lupa Belen, with his father, Alpha Apollo, at her side, was holding a swaddled infant. Somehow, he knew the infant was his.
His father was holding the hand of a little boy. Despite the child’s ebony locks and slate-gray eyes, his facial features mirrored Canaan’s own.
An organ chord drew his attention back to the platform.
“I now pronounce you man and wife,” announced the priest. The organ built into the chamber walls sent a crescendo of celebratory tones echoing throughout the cavernous structure, augmented by the applause and cheers of those present.
Canaan turned to face his bride. He reached up and lifted her veil.
Shock propelled him backwards. Sound ossified in his throat. He couldn’t breathe.
#
He gazed into a macabre, black, featureless mask. Blood was spewing in violent bursts from a gaping hole where her mouth should have been.
Her eyes were savage, sulfur-yellow lupine orbs. Grooves and gashes lined both cheeks. Blood gushed from everywhere. Scorched skin began to slough from her small frame.
Unable to move, Canaan watched in horror as his new bride’s skin and clothes scorched to black. He was still frozen, unable to look away from the abomination in front of him.
On a subconscious level, he noted the rising level of the pool below, turned crimson by blood now cascading down the waterfall.
A crescendo of screams began to surround him, inhumane howls of pain giving voice to the horror that had paralyzed him. An invisible pressure forced him to his knees.
He lunged forward and grabbed her shoulders, then screamed in agony at the heat that penetrated his fingers.
But what remained of his mate tore herself from his grasp, the skeletal remains of her fingers, ripping his face.
Collapsing on the platform floor, she pushed herself up and began crawling away.
But not before he saw the three sixes scored into her back, each digit shooting red and orange flames from its base.
His consciousness tried desperately to reject the image before him, but his soul no longer had the strength to hold the fury at bay. He offered no resistance to the rising beast, welcoming the abyss.
A howl of rage so deep and excoriating that it could no longer be contained ripped through the smoking cavern, forcing the terrified guests to their knees.
#
Canaan jolted awake, his body and bedding soaking wet. He struggled to draw air into his lungs.
Dakota and Tamby stood over him.
“You were screaming, Canaan,” Tamby said, gripping his left arm.
“That must have been a ‘helluva dream,” Dakota added. “Are you okay, man?”
“Yeah,” Canaan rasped. He couldn’t stop shivering.
Dakota tried pressing a flask into his right hand, but Canaan pushed it away, shaking his head.
“Drink it or we’ll hold you down and pour it ourselves,” his cousin warned.
After a few tense moments of staring into his cousin’s determined gaze, Canaan acquiesced and took several gulps before standing up.
“Now, go away. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll be right out.”
Dakota sensed that Canaan was holding back. Whatever he had experienced while asleep, it had terrified him. And his friend did not frighten easily. But he also knew that no information would be forthcoming until Canaan was ready to discuss it with him. If he ever did.
“Okay. We’ll see you outside,” he said and left.
Tamby started following Dakota, but when she reached the doorway, she paused and looked back. “Canaan?”
Her brother continued into the restroom.
She stared at the closed door for a few moments before leaving to join the rest of the team.
#
As the cold water soaked his head, Canaan braced his forearms on the sink and tried to find his equilibrium.
Still shaken by the nightmare, he struggled to make sense of what he had seen.
He hadn’t slept in days. Was the nightmare the result of physical and mental fatigue?
And why this dream?
Or was it a vision?
A foreshadowing?
And if the bride was his mate, why did the vision not identify her?
After a few moments, Canaan raised his head, allowing the water to drip unchecked. He forced his eyes open, only to confront the haunted specter staring back at him. That other part of him—the beast that was as much a resident of his soul as his human self—felt the same dread.
“Canaan?”
“Coming.”
As he left to join the others, the fear went with him.
Chapter Three
Morrison Bland and his Purist allies felt that he had been ordained by God to rid the world of the abominations that were the Canid: Satan’s spawn. The Were DNA inside every Canid would eventually become so powerful that it would destroy the human DNA, creating a race of monsters that would mean the end of humanity.
A major part of their plan to eradicate the species involved finding locations for new facilities that would be immune to detection by Alpha Apollo Powhatan and his North American Coalition.
One of his commanders suggested that the dark
continent would be the perfect place. So much of it was unexplored and inaccessible by land that they could build several strongholds, complete with containment cells, cutting-edge medical equipment, and laboratories, even quartering barracks. They would be able to conduct their experiments in peace until they found the “ultimate solution.”
#
Five years later
According to Canid intelligence reports, the Hounds of God had established a secret lab in Ethiopia. An isolated tribe of Ilimu were their latest victims.
When Were descendants banded together after a century of territorial wars, all the tribes did not elect to form alliances. The unspeakable violence and savagery the feuding tribes inflicted upon each other left behind deep scars of resentment, bitterness, and distrust.
The Ilimu were one of these tribes. They elected to live a life of peace and passivity, rejecting violence in any form. Because they did not trust outsiders, they maintained an isolated existence deep in the rain forest.
Alpha Asher of the Gondar tribe, their nearest neighbors, honored their request and granted them sanctuary in his territory. As soon as he learned of the hidden lab, he sent a reconnaissance team to investigate. The team relayed images of Hound scientists performing vivisections on the women and children they had kidnapped from the village.
Asher respected the Ilimu chief’s choice of isolation, but he could not stand by and allow the persecution of innocent villagers. Because most of his Gondar forces were abroad on committed assignments, he appealed to Apollo for help in rescuing the villagers and destroying the lab.
Apollo assigned the mission to Canaan and his Mestizo League. Canaan and his team were familiar with the area because of a previous recruiting mission on the African continent. They would now join forces with the remaining Gondar warriors.
#
The mission presented some unexpected challenges. The density of the African foliage prevented specific targeting from the air and wreaked havoc with the electronic surveillance equipment the Mestizos had brought with them. Computers were spitting out false and confusing readings, sending them on wild goose chases.
Aware of the urgency of the situation, Canaan contacted Commander Odin who immediately dispatched the Lakota alpha and beta wolves. The lupines’ natural antennae were not vulnerable to electronic interference, so the pair quickly led the rescue forces to the hidden lab.
Though the allied forces destroyed the lab, their victory was a Pyrrhic one. They were only able to save one-third of the victims. The others had not survived the experiments.
Canaan and his team stayed on site to assist the Ilimu with re-building their village, re-planting crops, and securing a store of meat.
By the time they returned to Bakari a week later, they were exhausted both physically and mentally.
#
After a de-briefing with the Council the next morning, Canaan and Dakota made their way to the Annual End-of-Summer Training competitions.
They joined Tamby and Shani poolside to watch the finals of the water events. By the time they took their seats in the bleachers, the group of thirteen- to seventeen-year-olds were up.
“Damn,” Dakota whispered. “Who is that?”
Canaan followed Dakota’s gaze to a group of teenagers practicing their platform dives at the far end of the Olympic-size pool.
“The girl in the black suit, the one Neo is helping,” Dakota said as he let out a whistle.
“Shut your mouth,” Dakota’s sister, Shani, admonished, slapping his arm. “You don’t want to die today, do you?” she warned. “That’s Calli, one of the triplets.”
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Dakota exclaimed. “Canaan, are you looking?”
Not hearing a reply, he turned toward his cousin.
Canaan’s face was white. He seemed transfixed. Stunned, would be a more appropriate term. “Dear God,” he thought. “That cannot be Calli.”
When he left five years ago to begin his trek across the world’s continents. Canaan was twenty-one, and Calli, an awkward, gangly, flat-chested tomboy of eleven dealing with the angst of adolescence.
Though his babysitting duties for the Lakota triplets had ended years ago, he had always regarded them as his charges to protect and nurture.
But this image before him of a young, voluptuous, nubile body, budding with womanhood was new to him, and it made him uncomfortable.
He watched Calli stretch her arms above her head, raising her breasts, accentuating her firm, trim arms, her tiny waist, and her taut muscular legs as she lifted her toes in preparation to launch herself from the platform.
Bending her knees and propelling herself high above the board, she arched her body and knifed into the water with only a hint of a splash.
As the image of the lithe body suspended in the air cemented itself in Canaan’s mind, his beast, as if sensing its mate, stretched, then contracted its muscles, sending a hot blast of sexual need straight to Canaan’s loins.
To Canaan’s horror, his manhood firmed at the sight, straining at the zipper of his jeans. His palms were sweating as he gripped the beer bottle so tightly that it exploded into projectiles of amber glass bits onto the table. Dakota scooted his chair back, and Shani and Tamby jumped up from the table, shielding their faces.
“What the hell?” Dakota yelled. He glanced down at the front of Canaan’s pants and then back up to his friend’s face. “Shit, Man!”
Shani and Tamby were too busy wiping up the spilled beer and collecting the glass to notice Canaan’s physical predicament.
“Wow, Canaan. What’s the matter?”
Rising and turning away from them, “Nothing,” Canaan rasped. “I’ve got to go,” he tossed back as he hurried off.
“What was that all about?” Tamby asked, a puzzled expression on her face as she watched her brother rush off.
Canaan was the poster child for equanimity, the personification of stoicism. He never raised his voice and never lost his temper, having been trained since he could walk to maintain control of his emotions in any situation.
His team members could stake their lives on his control; it had saved them on many a mission. This characteristic was such a large part of who he was that he became the de facto leader of any group. It unnerved her to see him like this.
“I’m afraid, Tamby, that your brother has just discovered who his mate is.”
Tamby and Shani gasped and stared at each other in shock. Canaan’s mate could not be Calli.
#
Canaan went to his favorite spot, the highest of Candid’s surveillance towers. He surveyed the kingdom his father and his generation had worked so hard to establish. Each year, the Canid community came together to honor those who had perished in their ongoing struggle to survive.
As he fixed his gaze on Odin’s log cabin den below him, Canaan attempted to deal with the feelings that had just turned his life upside down.
He stared off into space, still reeling from the reaction of his beast to Calli’s image. Shame and revulsion swamped him. He shivered as the picture of her budding sexuality kept re-asserting itself, no matter how hard he struggled against it.
As Calli had emerged from the dive, Canaan had watched a vision of olive-tinted skin, a thick, raven-black braid wrapped tightly around her head. The black tank swimsuit plastered to her body, streams of water cascading down her torso as she emerged from the dive.
He had been unable to look away, unable to quell the rising lust. Blood pounded in his ears. His heart hurt. His chest was frozen in panic. He had not realized how tightly he had been gripping the beer bottle until he heard Dakota’s exclamation.
What was wrong with him? God, he had been hard as a rock—barely controlling the pain as he turned and walked away—hoping none of the others noticed. However, he was sure Dakota had.
He felt as if his skin was too tight. He was trapped. His honor defined his life. To lose that was to lose who he was.
But his nashoba cared naught for honor. It cared only for c
laiming its mate, and Canaan felt its struggle to overwhelm his human half. The beast made Canaan look at some of the memories he had suppressed.
One of those memories being the nightmare Canaan had experienced in the Kenyan rainforest. Was it possible that the doomed bride had been an adult Calli?
Canaan was no fool. As painful as it was to accept, his body’s reaction to Calli’s teenage body did not lie. She was his mate.
And he would protect her, even from himself. No matter what his body and nashoba declared, Calli was still a child. He would not claim a child.
His beast surged, but Canaan held firm.
The nashoba had delivered his message. Now it was up to Canaan to do all in his power to make sure Calli did not meet the fate of that doomed bride.
Chapter Four
Two years later
Commander Duncan Montauk was the head of intelligence for the Canid nations. His work was often secretive and subversive in nature. Alpha Apollo gave him free reign to do whatever he deemed necessary to safeguard the Canid community.
All Canid had heightened senses and physical strength, some more dominant than others. But none had been able to master the shifting ability of the rumored ancients who had planted the seeds of the Were beings in the human population centuries before. The gene had been dormant for several generations, so many in fact that the Elders had relaxed their vigilance.
The fear of the human population as well as Were communities worldwide was that Weres would regress to their animal natures. Therefore, it was essential that the triplets’ ability stay hidden.
The Commander, as was the case with most adult Canid, had been raised with the prophecy of the resurrection of the nascent Were gene through the Powhatan line.
The Elders among them who espoused this belief had been disappointed when Apollo mated with a human, thereby making the fulfillment of the prophecy almost an impossibility. However, a few diehards held out hope that his heir, Canaan, might salvage their dream.
Odin Lakota had descended from an ancient line of Canid, so when the triplets were born—and one a female—many interpreted her birth as a sign that the prophecy was still possible, for the Lakota female would be a proper mate for Canaan.
