Savage Instinct

by Anwar, Celeste

  Aiden got out of the car and surveyed the damage. Every muscle in his body tensed, prepared for attack. He sniffed the air, catching traces of scent, but whether or not his house was occupied he wouldn’t know until he got closer.

  Shutting the car door, he took a wary step forward, remaining watchful of the woods that surrounded his cabin.

  Nothing stirred from within the building.

  The front door groaned on the remaining attached hinge, caught by a phantom breeze that rocked the wood back and forth to hit against the side of the house.

  The stench of piss lingered on the ground. They’d marked his lawn like it was their territory. Fucking assholes.

  His lip curled and a growl rumbled in his throat.

  The sound of the window lowering drew his attention, though he didn’t look back at the car. He kept his eyes fixed ahead at the abandoned house.

  “Aiden? Is everything okay? Should we just leave? Are you going to be all right?”

  Despite her earlier anger, the fear and concern in her voice were both unmistakable.

  Aiden didn’t answer, but he lifted a hand to show her that he had heard her and he understood. His anger was so great at that moment that he didn’t trust himself to speak to her. He was afraid that the rage building inside him would flood out, and he would take it all out on her.

  Nydia rolled the window up and headed back up the road. Her tension didn’t dissipate. If anything, it had only increased. As much as she wanted to remain aloof to Aiden’s situation, she didn’t like what had been done to his home, and she didn’t like the thought of him getting hurt again.

  Werewolves….

  He might be a little off his rocker, but whoever had done that damage was definitely crazier and had to be dangerous. Someone had stabbed him—there was no denying that.

  She had the horrible feeling that she’d taken him back to his home to die, and all because she couldn’t wait to get him out of her house until his friends arrived. If something happened to him because she rushed things, she’d never be able to live with herself.

  Nydia debated about calling the cops. The more she thought about it, the better that idea sounded in her mind.

  Driving down the twisting, bumpy road, she slowed down to grab her purse out of the center console. She dug around in her purse, trying to find her phone but came up empty.

  Nydia stopped the car and put it in park. The click of the doors unlocking were jarring in the night. She ignored her sense of the willies being in the middle of nowhere, alone, and dumped her pocketbook out in the passenger seat. She pushed the center light and aimed it at the seat, then rifled through the contents. Still, no phone.

  Damn. She must’ve left it at home.

  She gathered everything up and stuffed it back into her purse and clicked the light off. Straightening up behind the steering wheel, she was shocked to discover a line of figures standing in the beam of light from her car, blocking the road with their bodies as they stood shoulder to shoulder.

  Her heart thumped in her chest. The hair rose on the back of her neck.

  Before she could put her car in drive or lock her doors, the passenger door suddenly opened.

  Nydia screamed as the man got in the car with her. His hair hung in scraggly tendrils around his face. The confined space of the car filled with the scent of sweat and wet dog hair.

  Nydia gagged and choked back bile, a hand flying to her mouth as she recoiled in horror. Her eyes darted around the car, looking for a weapon to hit him with.

  The man reached over the expanse of the seat and touched her hair. “Now I understand what kept ole Aiden away for so long,” he said with a throaty laugh. “If I was warming the bed of something as pretty as you I’d take my time as well.”

  She spied the umbrella stuffed between the front seats. She snatched it up, leaning back against her door and swinging the short piece of plastic to keep the man at bay.

  By this time, another man snatched her door open, making her fall backwards out of the car. She shrieked as she hit the dirt and hung by the waist, trapped by her seatbelt. Looking at her adversary upside down, she was greeted by a ratty face and lank, red hair.

  The man inside the car unbuckled her seatbelt, dumping her on the ground. She rolled, trying to recover and get to her feet, but they moved quicker than she could.

  He snatched her elbow, hauling her to her feet.

  Nydia smacked him in the face with the umbrella, making his nose turn red and swollen. As she watched, the swelling almost instantly disappeared.

  He laughed and snatched it out of her hand, flinging it into the surrounding woods. The umbrella made a whistling sound as it sailed through the air and disappeared.

  “Get your filthy hands off of me!” Nydia shouted, trying to pull away. Behind her, someone played with her hair. She smacked the hand that was stroking her hair away before trying to pry the fingers off her elbow. She dug her nails into his hand, growling in frustration.

  Seeing it was getting her nowhere, she grabbed the steering wheel, trying to get enough leverage to pull away from him.

  She was not about to allow these men to pull her from her car. They’d be able to do anything to her then. The car was her only chance. She grabbed the wheel and held on as tightly as she could.

  The long haired man in the passenger seat chuckled. “She is a feisty one, Lee,” he said to his companion.

  Lee, the man outside the vehicle, switched his grip from her elbow to her wrist and started to squeeze. The delicate bones ground together, popping under the strain of his superior hold.

  She gasped in pain, forced to release the wheel as he dragged her back out of the car and into the road where the rest of the men gathered around her.

  Unwilling to make it easy on him, she kicked and scratched every available surface she could reach. He grunted with every impact, but nothing seemed to faze him enough to release her.

  The men were excited and making noises that really didn’t register as human to her. She looked around and saw that not all of the men were the same. Some of them had elongated faces like the snouts of dogs, and some of them had hair on the backs of their hands that looked like fur.

  They looked like monsters.

  Nydia choked back a scream, going rigid with fear but unwilling to show it.

  Inside, her mind wailed.

  She realized Aiden had been telling her the truth when he said he was a shape shifter. She couldn’t deny the fact that these men weren’t human, and by the way they were acting, sniffing the air as if looking for something, they had to be the rival pack that had attacked him. They were in the middle of transforming from human to beast as she watched.

  “I smell his stench all over you and your car. Where’s Aiden? We been waiting on him almost a week,” the man named Lee said, sniff at her hair like a dog. He gave her shoulders a shake when she didn’t answer him right away.

  Her mind raced, trying to figure out what she should do. Should she stall them? It wouldn’t take much effort for them to figure out she’d dropped Aiden off at his cabin. She knew that as much as she tried, she couldn’t fight off these creatures because their strength was clearly greater than her own, plus, she was badly outnumbered.

  Lee caught her around the waist and swung her around for his men to see. Nydia gritted her teeth, playing along until she could see what their intent would be. “Well, well. Looks like we got ourselves a new woman! Aiden Kinsey’s human concubine.” Lee buried his face in the back of her head, drawing in her scent. Feeling him behind her made her want to wretch.

  Nydia stood rooted in place. As much as she didn’t want to, she knew she’d have to cooperate if she wanted to make it out alive. She couldn’t fight them all off.

  “Boys, I believe we have just exactly what we been looking for. When Aiden finds out we got this purty little piece of ass in our possession, he’s gonna come after her. And we’ll be waiting when he gets there.”

  Lee whipped her around, grinning at her with
his yellow, plaque covered teeth. She twisted her head back, trying to escape the smell of his breath, and breathed through her mouth to avoid the stench.

  “I don’t want no one to harm a hair on her purty head before he gets to us. When we got him in our grasp, I’ll let everyone have a taste of her while he watches before we slit his throat,” Lee said with a laugh.

  The other men laughed and howled along with him.

  Lee pointed at two of the men. “You two push that car out of the way. Just push it off of the road and into the ditch for now.” He pulled Nydia by the arm. “The rest of you come on, we have to go get ready ‘cause we got visitors coming tonight.”

  Nydia was scared to death as Lee dragged her through the woods to some unknown destination. Briars snagged at her clothes and her legs as they ran through the woods. She wanted to leave some clues so that Aiden could follow them, but then she remembered that her scent would be enough for him to follow.

  If she’d never fought with Richard and his family, this never would have happened. Now she was caught up in a fight between two opposing forces she wanted nothing to do with.

  She could only pray that Aiden would read the warning signs and not fall into Lee’s trap.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Aiden walked around his house, surveying the damage to his property. The other pack had pretty much destroyed anything that could be broken. All of his belongings were torn apart and strewn around the rooms.

  It looked like a pack of wild pigs had ravaged his home. Rotted food and urine permeated the space, making him wonder if the stench could ever be removed.

  He’d probably be better off burning it to the ground.

  Disgusted and sick of looking at the mess, Aiden waked outside and sat on a large rock beside the small lake. He loved this place and this lake. He always felt at peace when he was here, but Riker had stolen that away from him, tainting his oasis.

  The sky was dark save for the twinkling stars above. The full moon phase was over. The situation wasn’t ideal, but they didn’t have much choice in the matter.

  Timmy and his partner Lila were the first to show up. “What the hell happened here?” Timmy asked, stepping over trash that littered the grounds.

  Lila flipped her black hair over her shoulder, leaning down and putting a hand on Aiden’s arm. “Aiden? Are you okay?”

  Aiden sighed. “I’m fine, Lila. Another pack came and ransacked my house after leaving me for dead. I just got home today. Have you spoken to Malik and the others?”

  “They’re not too far behind us. We were trying to get home before dark. I heard you calling us through the Mindspeak and we decided to head here first. I’m glad we did,” Lila said.

  “Someone has to pay for this,” Timmy said, smacking a fist into his palm.

  “I don’t want any bloodshed if we can help it. God knows we don’t need a half dozen dead bodies to dispose of. You know there’ll be questions.”

  Timmy scowled. “Can you at least tell us what happened?”

  By the time Aiden finished telling Timmy and Lila what he’d gone through in their absence, about Nydia and her hiding him and caring for him, Malik, Abel, and Hudson pulled up in their car.

  Aiden didn’t tell them that he had deep feelings for the human girl, but he didn’t have to tell them. Shape shifters have keen senses and the others picked up on the way his voice changed when he spoke about her. They knew that she meant something to him.

  Malik jumped out of the car, trotting over to Aiden. “Had the cops following us for a while, and I was just sure they were going to get us for speeding. It was hard not laying the pedal to the metal the whole way back.”

  Aiden nodded, clapping his brethren on the arms, glad to see they’d finally arrived.

  Abel and Hudson joined them. “What’s the first round of business?” Malik asked.

  “Where’s everyone else?” Aiden asked, looking to Malik.

  “Driving slow as hell. Do you think we have enough or do we need to wait?”

  Aiden sighed. “I think so. Just as long as you all can remember that they tend to fight dirty. All right. We track them from here. It should be pretty easy to follow. And we’ll have the upper hand since they don’t know you’ve all come back from the festival yet.”

  The group nodded.

  Malik cleared his throat. “I hate to ask, but…do you know if they brought a car up here? We caught sight of a silver bumper in the ditch just past the dirt road.”

  The moment he heard the description, his stomach dropped. “Did you see anyone inside?” Aiden asked.

  Malik shook his head. “No.”

  Aiden’s mouth and throat went dry. He felt his beast uncurl inside him, rising to the surface as rage flooded his veins. “They’ve taken her. She drives a silver car.”

  Everyone knew who Aiden spoke of—the human woman, Nydia.

  “If they’ve hurt her, I don’t care what I said about bloodshed…we’ll kill every single one of them.”

  Malik’s eyes widened. Abel and Hudson looked worried.

  “Let’s go. We’ve wasted enough time,” Aiden said, shedding his clothes to begin the shift into wolf.

  “Let’s try to keep our heads straight, Alpha,” Malik said to his leader.

  Aiden nodded, feigning a calm he didn’t feel. Blood rushed to his temples, making them pound. The world colored red. If they’d hurt Nydia, nothing anyone said or did would save them from his wrath.

  The brethren shed their clothes and shifted into wolves. Anyone privileged to bear witness to the shift would have found the effortless melding from human form to wolfen amazing and beautiful at once. Aiden had always enjoyed the shift. He’d never been pained by his transformation, but then, he’d been born unto their kind. Others, who were turned, tended to have more pain and irritation.

  The Riker pack were an anomaly that needed to be abolished. He would have to resist his inclination to wipe them off the face of the earth.

  Transformed into the wolf pack, Aiden and his brethren left the cabin and followed the scent of the others down the winding dirt road. They were sloppy, leaving broken limbs and tracks easily followed by a novice. They easily found Nydia’s abandoned car, right where Malik had seen it.

  The hope that she hadn’t been taken was dashed. Aiden traced around it, smelling Riker and Nydia but no blood.

  Aiden threw his head back and howled in protest. It was obvious that his attackers had ambushed her and removed her from her car. The rest of Aiden’s brethren caught up to him and they had quizzical looks on their faces.

  Two pack members who’d joined them as they traveled down the road, Santos and Carmen, came to stand with Aiden and Malik, sniffing at the prints along the side of the car.

  “I smell four different men and a woman. Maybe more,” Santos said, growling with his hackles raised and his tail extended.

  “As do I,” Carmen agreed. She looked at Aiden and saw the pain in his eyes. Carmen had been his lover once upon a time, but she’d been too wild and free and uninterested in settling down.

  “We will find your human, Aiden,” Santos said, sensing Aiden’s mood.

  Carmen looked at Aiden and saw the pain in his eyes. She let out a long howl and in a growling voice said, “We will find them and we will make them pay.”

  Before Aiden could take the lead Carmen caught the scent of the pack and their captive. She started off in the direction they had traveled and the rest of the group fell in behind her. Those members that had not made the change at this point started to transform from two legged men to four legged creatures.

  The fact that the rival gang had attacked their Alpha while they were away was something the pack could understand. They would seek retaliation for it, but they knew why the others did it. Involving an innocent human wasn’t understandable or forgivable, especially since Aiden had formed an attachment to her.

  Aiden and his brethren didn’t believe in involving humans in these matters and it was an unwritten code that the par
tners of other shape shifters wouldn’t be harmed in retribution. They’d broken a code that most shape shifters followed. Lee and his men had committed a crime and they would face judgment and punishment.

  The pungent, unmistakable scent strengthened in intensity as they followed, luring them closer and closer to their quarry. The urge to burst upon them surged to the surface, pushing them harder and faster along the distance.

  Aiden reigned them in, keeping them from an all-out attack until he could see what they’d done to Nydia. His nerves were as taut as a piano wire.

  Easing up to the edge of the clearing, they surveyed the area, keeping their heads low to the ground. A breeze rustled the brush around them, rattling leaves and basking them in the smell of their foes. There could be no doubt that the other wolves lay in wait somewhere in the valley.