I turned to her with a smile.
“Not me, dork.” She rolled her eyes, then focused on a rock in the middle of the undulating current.
Sighing deeply, I picked up the charcoal, then looked around until I found something that caught my eye. Try as I might though, I couldn’t make my charcoal create a fair representation of it on the rough paper in front of me.
“Dammit,” I grumbled, as I tried to swipe away another clumsy mistake. Stupid! I didn’t like things that made me feel stupid.
“Thrane, you need to relax. You’re as tight as a hinder drum. If you can let go of that control you so desperately try to cling to, your brain will switch over to its creative side, and you might just surprise yourself.”
I’ll be surprised if I don’t tear this to shreds by the end.
“And don’t even think about tearing up the paper,” Arlynn scolded, almost as if she’d read my mind. “It’s too precious, and can be easily cleaned and reused.”
I tried following her instructions on how to access what she called my “right brain,” whatever that was. Seemed to me, we all had just one brain, but if it made her happy… Regardless, my strokes were either too wobbly or too choppy. Downright ugly, in fact.
“My parents taught me how to draw and paint,” Arlynn said, her voice a soothing tonic to my irritated nerves. “That was before I was taken to the Training Center, of course.”
“Markon told me about that place. It sounds barbaric.”
“It was. Even compared to your containment center.”
I bristled with regret over that incident. I’d been blind not to see the danger the Terran forces posed, so I’d focused all my hate on the Valley Wargs.
“Arlynn—” I started, unsure of where I was going, but feeling the need to do something utterly foreign, like apologize.
“Don’t, Thrane,” she said calmly. “It’s done. Let’s just focus on the beauty of the forest. Aside from some food gardens, we didn’t have any kind of nature in the city. The land out that way is pretty barren.”
“There’s a reason the Elders of the Warg allowed the alien interlopers to live there. They didn’t want it. They preferred life in the forest.”
“I can see why,” she said with a wistful sigh, her hand freely and easily moving over her paper as she sketched the stream winding into infinity.
“What was it like there? I’ve only seen the ugly walls surrounding the colony, and had always wondered what it felt like to live as a prisoner inside them.”
Arlynn’s hand stopped moving for a moment as she thought. “It was…good? At least, when I was younger. My parents loved me more than anything, and taught me so much. We lived on the outskirts, near the western wall, in an artists’ enclave. No one there cared much about following the government’s rules regarding body size, but someone close to our family betrayed us.”
“Who?” I demanded. I had a thing about betrayal.
She shook her head sadly. “I don’t know. One morning we were a happy, loving family, and that night I was being dragged away by guards for gene therapy.”
“What’s that?”
“Beats me. All I know was that it was horrible. It made all of us sick, but didn’t make us any thinner. Oh, a few girls got skinny out of desperation and were allowed to go back home, but most of us were just born big-boned. No amount of dieting, exercise or gene reconditioning could change that. Clearly.”
“Morons. Why would they want their women so thin and frail?”
“Again, beats me.”
“Why did your parents allow this? I would have killed anyone who tried to snatch my whelp.”
“They had no choice. I’ll never forget the last time I saw them. They’d struggled against a squad of guards, screaming my name as more guards dragged me off.”
Her nose twitched in a way which made me think she was trying not to cry. Rage boiled inside me that she felt such sadness, but I had no one to take it out on, so I just scratched harder on the paper.
“They never visited you?” It was one thing to let her be taken away, but it was another entirely to never go see her in such a horrible place.
“No visitors were allowed at the Center. No messages, photos, visits…nothing. We orphans — that’s what they called us, whether or not our parents were dead — had to rely on each other. We became family, because we had no one else. That’s why Sienna, Natalie and I are so close. We’re so different, but we all have strengths the others lack, which makes us stronger together than apart.”
She laid down her charcoal and glanced up at me. “Sort of like you, Solan and Markon.”
“Hmph,” I snorted, letting my hand move of its own accord, but not really paying attention to what I was doing. “That’s why you need to learn to defend yourself. I learned a long time ago I could only depend on myself. You’d do well to learn that as well.”
Arlynn was quiet for a moment. “Do you trust Markon with your life?”
“Of course! He’s my brother; we would die for each other, and almost have, on more than one occasion.”
“Then I hate to tell you this, Thrane, but you depend on him. Or would, if your stubborn ego was forced to.”
I’d never really thought of it that way, but she was right. If backed into a corner, I would depend on Markon’s help. I huffed in surprise.
“I knew it!” she cried, pointing at me with glee.
“What?”
“You’re not such a hard-ass after all, are you? You should show that side of yourself more often. People would rather follow a leader who inspires them, over one who scares them.”
I growled low in warning, but her smile flooded me with a warmth I couldn’t quite identify. After a moment’s reflection, I realized it was…happiness.
“Hey! You’re not so bad at art either. Although why you chose an orange widow spider as your subject…”
I followed her satisfied gaze to my drawing and blinked in surprise. I drew that? While not as polished as Arlynn’s, my sketch not only looked like the deadly spider in the bush to my left, but there was even a sort of hectic, yet appealing, style to it.
Not that I cared.
Arlynn said something I didn’t quite catch. I must have been too engrossed in my impressive artistic skills. “What?”
“I didn’t say anything,” she replied, setting up the little pots of paint she’d brought along and pulling out a handful of brushes. “Now let’s add a little color, shall we?”
7
THRANE
The village bustled with activity as I walked across the commons with Solan, Markon and their seconds. Several Hill whelps wrestled with some Valley whelps, all grins and giggles, while their relaxed mothers chatted nearby. All this contentment set my teeth on edge.
“We need to beef up security,” I said to no one in particular, since I no longer had a second-in-command to take notes.
Markon had been my second, back when I had been alpha of the Hill tribe, but once I’d left and he’d taken my place, he’d wisely chosen Rikor to assist him. I knew Rikor to be stout, trustworthy, and not prone to excitement. Solan’s second, on the other hand, left a little to be desired.
“Why?” Chorn asked. “As the scouts reported, the Terrans are long gone.”
I ground my teeth together to keep from snapping at the man. “They’re gone from where they were. Who’s to say they haven’t set up a new camp somewhere else? Which reminds me, we also need to send out more patrols to keep an eye on every inch of the forest’s borders. We want to be ready when they attack.”
Chorn snorted and shook his head. “Classic. You’re such a paranoid war-monger, Thrane. Always have been, always will be.”
Rage threatened to take over and show Chorn exactly what kind of man I was, but I stopped in my tracks and shut my eyes, recalling the orange widow spider I’d painted that morning. A round, bright orange body the size of my head, eight impossibly long and impossibly hairy legs, shimmering yellow eyes that stared right through you, and
a stinger so deadly, the slightest prick would immediately send a full-grown Warg beast into a coma from which he’d never wake. They lived by instinct alone; emotions didn’t get in the way of their survival. Their lives consisted of eating, breeding and killing, and not necessarily in that order. I’d always admired them.
The rage quieted, allowing me to speak without my fangs getting in the way. “It’s not paranoia if they’re really after you, Chorn. It’s time you faced facts. The Terrans were testing us during the meadow battle. They wanted to see what they were up against. Until that day, Wargs were monsters with magical powers, who couldn’t be killed, as far as they knew.”
“That’s true,” Solan said, surprising me a bit by agreeing with me for once. “Sienna told me how Terran parents tell their children Wargs will come for them if they don’t behave, if you can believe that nonsense.”
The other four smiled at the idiocy of such a threat — a Warg would never harm a child, even a Terran child — but I remained stony-faced. Nothing about our current situation amused me.
“Now they know we have no magical powers,” I continued. “They also now know we have no weapons that come close to matching theirs. Now they know we are utterly at their mercy.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Chorn scoffed, and I had to wonder if it was simply because the words were coming out of my mouth instead of Solan’s. “They don’t know anything of the sort. We killed twice as many of them as they did us, remember? Even with their so-called superior firepower.”
I leveled a cold, hard glare on the man until he fidgeted and looked away. He needed to know who he was dealing with, but I couldn’t put him in his place as I might have done a month ago. Solan wouldn’t like it if I mauled his second, and as much as it pained me, I had to think of such things now.
“We took them by surprise, if you’ll recall. Regardless, the point is, they know we can be killed. And don’t forget about the rogue Terran who spied on us all that time.”
“What about him?” Chorn asked with a sneer.
“Let me explain it with small words so you can be sure to understand,” I snarled, just about finished with this moron. “He fed them high-level intel on us, everything from how our society runs, to the dangers lurking in the forest. They’re better prepared than they’ve ever been. If it were me, I’d already be setting up camp in the Hill village, waiting for my moment to attack.”
Chorn laughed defiantly. “They wouldn’t dare! Besides, why would they come back for us? Their women have all been turned into Wargs who would rip them to shreds if they tried kidnapping them.”
“Sienna did just that to the spy during the battle,” Solan said, his chest puffing out with well-deserved pride for his mate.
We’d both been in plenty of battles, but I’m not sure either of us had ever seen a death quite as messy as that man’s. Impressive.
“They don’t want the women, idiot,” I snapped at Chorn. “They want the entire planet, and we’re the only thing standing in their way. Wipe us out and they can do whatever they want.”
Chorn opened his mouth to argue — again, the moron — but a louder argument erupted nearby. Two men circled each other, fur and talons and fangs starting to sprout alarmingly. Standing nearby was an unmated Valley female, her worried eyes flicking between the two men.
“I told you she was mine, scum!” growled the Hill male, Strabo, practically daring the Valley male to attack him.
Strabo had always been a troublemaker, even as a whelp. He’d always blamed my family for his bad luck, and had taken out most of his anger on Markon — until I’d stepped in and beaten him to within an inch of his life. He’d still hated us after that, but at least he’d stopped harassing my little brother.
Once I’d taken over as alpha, Markon had always counseled me to have patience with the man because he’d had a tough life as a whelp, but that seemed a flimsy excuse for bad behavior as an adult. I’ve lost count how many times I’ve thrown him in the containment center for starting some kind of trouble or another. Even now, Markon insisted Strabo had changed, yet here he was picking a fight over a female.
“She didn’t pick you at the claiming, so she’s still up for grabs, you Hill animal!” the other man countered.
At his words, the woman became incensed. “Up for grabs?!”
The gods help us, this looked like the beginnings of an outright brawl. From the corner of my eye, I spotted Markon take a step toward the trio. Not on my watch!
Striding forward, I shoved the two men hard enough to send them tumbling to the ground. The woman jumped back, terror in her eyes.
“Enough!” I roared, drawing the gaze of everyone in the commons. I waited until everyone had quieted and could hear my words. They needed to hear them.
“Enough bickering, enough in-fighting! That time is over. We must stand together now as brothers and sisters. Let the past fall away, my friends, leave it behind, where it belongs. Today is a new day, a new tribe. One that could be as revered as the Great Tribe once was, before two fools split us asunder. Our great-great-great grandchildren will write songs about how we saved our tribe, our people, our world. But only if we truly unite and accept each other as tribemates we would kill for, even die for.”
I scanned the crowd, looking for one face in particular. When I spotted her watching me, a surprised smile on her face, it gave me courage to continue with my sappy speech. Talking was against my nature — I preferred action — but since everything had changed for both tribes, I figured I’d might as well try changing my tactics and learning from my fellow alphas.
“The enemy is at our door! They’ve already taken too many of our kind, and they will defeat us if we don’t band together. We must depend on one another now, because very soon, we will have no choice but to do so on the battlefield.”
A few women gasped.
“Yes, right now we are enjoying a time of relative peace“ —I scowled at Strabo and the other man, who both winced— “if idiots don’t screw it up, that is. But you must believe with all your heart that a time will come, and very soon, when our peace will be shattered by violence like you’ve never seen. Our enemy won’t try to snatch you or convert you. They will kill you. And your mate. And your whelps.”
More gasps, this time female and male.
“The only way for us to survive…for our species to survive, is for us to work together to defeat them. We’re stronger together than we are apart. That means we all must learn to fight, including the brave Warg women. Who’s with me?”
Dozens of excited women clapped at my sudden change of mind, but I wanted more. We all needed more.
“Who’s with me!” I roared at the top of my lungs, shaking the trees of the forest.
The cheer was deafening. Green jays flew up from the treetops and whelps slapped their hands over their ears at the noise. I punched my fist into the air three times, and each time, the roars grew louder. Even Arlynn screamed her enthusiasm.
As the crowd turned to each other to embrace their former enemies, my brother and Solan threw their arms over my shoulders, grinning like imbeciles.
“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Solan said, slapping my back.
“Where did that come from, big brother?” asked Markon. “Not so long ago, you would have beaten both of them bloody and thrown them in the containment center for a month.”
I shrugged and caught Arlynn’s eye from across the commons. At my wink, she blushed and turned away. At least she’d blushed.
“Call it growth, little brother.”
8
ARLYNN
“Can you believe it, you guys?” Yara asked excitedly, as I, in an effort to hide my flushed cheeks, turned back to the table we — Yara, Teema and I — had been sitting at before Thrane’s speech. “He actually said we could learn to fight, just like the men!”
“I heard,” I said. “Congratulations.”
Teema and Yara sat across from me, chattering away, but I barely heard them. Thrane had
n’t become violent with those men, which anyone among us would have expected. Instead, he’d used his words. Or rather, my words. Not only that, but his speech had been downright inspiring.
“I’ve never heard Thrane speak so eloquently,” Teema said as we watched the joyous mingling going on in the commons.
“He didn’t give speeches back when he was alpha?” Yara asked. “Solan loves to give them.”
Teema chuckled. “Um, no. At least, I don’t think so. We were bundled away in the koshu all the time, so we weren’t privy to everything going on in camp, but I’m sure Rikor would have told me. I’m sure we would have heard him, for that matter. No, Thrane was always about barking orders and having them obeyed to the letter. This isn’t like him at all.”
“Well, he’s certainly worked everyone up into a lather,” I said. “Look at them all.”
Dozens of males walked around clasping each others’ hands and pressing their foreheads together in the traditional greeting between tribemates. Even Strabo and Zokiar, the two men who’d been arguing over the young woman, took part. They were both grinning when they released each other.
“I wonder what changed,” Yara mused.
I coughed to cover my embarrassment. “Nothing, I’m sure. Leopards don’t change their spots.”
Both women gave me confused looks.
“I mean…” I struggled to find an analogy they’d understand. “Grumpuses don’t change their colors.”
Now they looked more confused than ever.
“But grumpuses do change their colors,” Teema pointed out. “That’s why they’re so dangerous.”
“Sorry. I just mean that people don’t change. Once a vicious kidnapper, always a vicious kidnapper.”
I caught the sharp glance Teema gave Yara. “You’re speaking of when his guards took you and your sister, yes?”
I lifted one shoulder, as if it didn’t bother me. Of course, I’d thought of little else since our painting session that morning. He’d impressed me with his artistic abilities and his eventual willingness to learn, but I couldn’t forget the terrifying moment I first laid eyes on him.
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