“The only good Lycan is a dead one!” One of the hunters pipes up from the crowd and there’s a chuckle of appreciation around him.
“Really? Well how many of you have even seen a Lycan other than on television? How many of you have been attacked by a werewolf or know someone that has?” Sofie looks out over the sea of faces as they each look at each other, waiting for someone to pipe up. “No one. And how many of you have been attacked or robbed or hurt by a human?” The murmur among the crowd is enough for them all to draw the same conclusion. “Looks like you have more to fear from other humans than from Lycans, don’t you think?”
“Enough of these games, Ms. Braun.” Luke talks down to her, making it clear just how unimportant she is to him. “You have one last chance to decide which side you’re on. Theirs or mine? Will you die with them or live with me?” Luke smiles, looking at her expectantly as if there’s only one possible answer she could give.
Sofie keeps her eyes locked on Luke, not wanting to miss the expression on his face. “I’ve already made my decision, I’m a Lycan now. So I will die with them if I have to.”
Here goes nothing, she thinks to herself as she does what Gus had taught her. She imagines herself floating away, letting the wolf inside come out. She had expected it to hurt, like it had when her bones were being re-aligned, moved when she was going through the change. But transforming into a wolf is as smooth as slipping into a warm swimming pool.
She hears a gasp go up from the crowd and takes in Ashton’s look of shock. That’s enough to tell her that it’s worked. She looks down at herself, seeing her white muscular shanks and paws where hands and feet should have been. She’s white, white as the driven snow.
She can hear the other weres’ minds as if she were listening to her own. White wolf. White wolf. The words are repeated with something close to reverence. There’s a murmur of respect among the pack and, automatically, one by one, they all kneel before her, keeping their eyes on the ground, even Gus, even Ashton.
Sofie is confused, not understanding why the pack has reacted to her like this. It was clearly something that Gus had left out of his Werewolf 101 class. But there was no time to wonder, she would find out later, if she ever lived through this. She looks out over the pack, stretching out with her mind. Time to get your game faces on, gang. I’m a little tired of getting shot at.
Ashton raises his head, grinning at her mischievously and follows her lead, morphing into a magnificent golden wolf. His beauty takes her breath away and she wonders if she’ll ever get used to it. His transformation is followed by the rest of the pack. They stand together, ready to fight whoever they need to.
Luke raises his hands to the hunters. “Keep the line!” He shoots a look at them as some of them try to take a step back from the snarling wolves in front of them.
One of the hunters, the man Sofie recognizes as Warner, lifts his rifle, aiming it at Sofie but before she has time to react Ashton dives on top of him. Sofie watches as if it’s happening in slow motion. Ashton bats the gun out of Warner’s hand, sending it sailing across the crowd, knocking the wind out of the hunter at the same time.
Ashton gets to his feet, looks up at the sky and howls. But it’s not a sound of pain, it’s more like a battle cry. The rest of the pack lift their head and follow suit, joining his cry and, out of pure instinct, Sofie does the same. Their cry is taken up by The Howlers, living up to their name and showing their solidarity with the werewolves. That’s when all hell breaks loose.
“Kill them!” Luke’s face is a twisted snarl. “Shoot them all, every last one of them!” Anger has overtaken him and he’s clearly not thinking anymore about the press cameras or how he’s coming across to the people at home, watching his performance.
Gunfire fills the air but the weres are too fast and too strong. Sofie joins them as they bat the hunters’ guns away, snarling and snapping their jaws just enough to scare people into turning around and running away. They’re gaining ground every moment, pushing the hunters further and further back until a familiar sound pierces the air. The wolf caller.
Everything stops. The Lycans are powerless against the caller, morphing back into their human forms, writhing on the ground in pain. Sofie is the only one that remains, having found her own personal protection against the caller in the flapping of tiny wings. She looks around her in panic as her friends and the man that she loves lie on the floor, unable to defend themselves, unable to even stand. She’s the only one left, the only one that can stand against Luke and his men. But she won’t be enough, not nearly.
Get up! Get up! She tries to push the thought into the brains of the pack, but she can’t get past the sound. It’s like it’s creating a barrier that she can’t push through.
She turns to face Luke and his merry band of murderers. There’s no way out, for her. She could try to run and leave her friends behind to die, defenceless. But that doesn’t even cross her mind as an option. She had wanted to be one of them, wanted to stand next to Ashton and face whatever they had to, together. So that’s exactly what she planned to do.
She stands tall, readying herself for the feeling of the bullets that she knows are about to start raining down on them. She looks at Ashton, not wanting to die without telling him one last time that she loves him. That’s when the air moves and she catches a scent, a scent of something familiar.
That’s when she hears the voice loud and clear in her mind. Sorry we’re a little late to the party, doll. It’s Lindsey. Sofie lifts her head and sees her friend leading a group of other weres. There looks to be at least three or four packs coming up behind Luke and his men, trapping them between two flanks of Lycans. It’s enough to distract them and give the werewolves a fighting chance.
You always do like to make an entrance. Sofie almost giggles to herself as she sends the message out, wondering if wolves can even giggle. But as Luke catches sight of the advancing Lycans, he brings the whistle to his lips, ready to inflict the same pain on them as he has on Ashton’s pack. Sofie knows that as soon as they’re in range they’ll be just as affected and just as debilitated by the whistle as her pack is.
She looks over at Ashton, needing some guidance, needing an idea of what she should do. He’s the first one from the pack who’s starting to come round from the caller, he looks straight at her and sends her his thought. We need to get the whistle away from him. But don’t touch it. Wolfsbane is deadly to us. Us. The word sounds better to Sofie than she ever thought it could. Now they were one and the same. Now she understood what it meant to be were, what it meant to be like him.
Sofie nods in understanding, but thinking to herself easier said than done. How is she supposed to get the caller away from Luke without touching it? There was no way. There was no other choice. If Luke used the caller against the packs that had come to help them then that would be it for them. There was no-one else coming to save them. She was it. This was why she had become a were after all, to protect her friends and the man that she loves.
She doesn’t give herself the opportunity to come up with another plan. There’s no time. Without thinking twice she launches herself at Luke. She watches as realization of what she’s doing crosses his face and he turns to run away. But he’s too slow. Sofie makes contact with him, knocking him to the floor and landing lightly beside him. The caller spins out of his hand and along the ground. The crowd parts like the sea for Moses as Sofie leaps towards it. She can’t pick it up with her paws so she dips her head, trying to pick it up in her mouth, but a burning sensation rips through her mouth, making her howl in pain. She drops the caller instinctively watching as it skitters away from her again and towards a man that should never hold that kind of power.
Luke laughs at her, mocking her as he picks it up slowly. “Is this what you were after, my little bird?” He looks at her with pity in his eyes, and Sofie wonders if she’d be able to love with herself if she chewed the smile off of his face.
“You really are a wonderful looking creature.” He
surveys her as if she were a piece of meat that he’s paying for at the butchers. “You’d make an excellent pet.” He reaches out to touch her and she snarls at him, warning that if he gets any closer then she’ll do more than snarl. He snatches his hand back, his face full of hatred more than fear even.
“Don’t bluff, Sofie. You’re not very good at it. Your precious morals won’t let you hurt me. I’m not afraid of you.” He laughs in her face and Sofie wonders if the craziness in his eyes had always been so obvious or if it’s something that her Lycan senses have opened up to her. He laughs maniacally, like a fanatic, like a madman.
“And as far as taking this away from me,” he holds up the wolf caller between his fingers, taunting her, “well, I think we both know how that goes.” He shakes his head at her giving her that look of pity that makes her wish he weren’t right about her stupid scruples. “Another taste of this little baby would probably kill you. It’s the perfect weapon, almost elegant really when you think about it. It’s something that the enemy can’t take away, can’t destroy, can’t even touch.”
Luke raises the caller to his lips, unhurriedly, keeping his eyes on Sofie the entire time, wanting to watch as her world comes to a crashing end, as she realizes she’s all alone, with no-one to save her. But instead of fear or defeat in her eyes, Luke sees something else, something that gives him pause. He sees a light that can only be described as defiance. You have no power over me. You are nothing to me and you never will be. She sends the thought to him, pushing with all her strength, needing him to know that. The force of Sofie’s thought makes Luke take a step back. He clutches his hands to his head, his brain rocked by the mental strain of Sofie’s words.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Darwin appears to stand next to Luke. Sofie doesn’t have time to nudge him out of the way or to warn him to get away. He’s too close to Luke and Sofie is too far away. Don’t let him get hurt, please don’t let him get hurt, Sofie prays. But she wonders if she’s out of prayers already. All she knows is that she lost one father, one that hadn’t meant all that much to her and she’d found another one, one that she could share her dreams, her hopes, her work, her happiness with, she wasn’t going to lose him too.
“That’s a neat little whistle there, Luke.” Darwin blinks at him, looking completely natural and at ease, as if he weren’t in the middle of a war zone.
Luke looks at him as if he’s lost his mind. “Get out of my way, old man.” Luke dismisses him, his attention fixed on Sofie, not interested in anything else.
“See, that’s always been your problem, Luke. Ever since you were a boy.” Darwin shakes his head as he lectures a flabbergasted, as if he can’t believe that he’s really being given a stern talking to as if this madness weren’t going on around him. “You never took into account the whole story, only the parts that interested you.” Darwin looks at Luke as if he knows a secret that Luke would kill to get his hands on.
He plays his cards exactly right, piquing Luke’s interest enough to make him question what he believes he knows. “What are you saying? What part of the story am I missing here, Darwin? Because from what I can see, I’ve pretty much got everything covered.”
Darwin smiles at him as you would at a chronically stupid student. “That’s my point, Luke. Your own blinkered, narrow-mindedness. That’s always what’s going to get you in the end. Well, that or your greed.” With that, Darwin wraps things up, not wanting to waste ant further breath on his irredeemable pupil.
“You’re wrong Luke, about that little whistle. You said it was the perfect weapon because the enemy couldn’t even touch it. But that’s where you’re wrong. It’s not the enemy that can’t touch it, it’s just those of us that happen to be werewolves. And you have far more enemies than just the ones that happen to travel on four legs, Luke.” With that, Darwin reaches out delicately, his fingers closing over the wolf caller, yanking it out of Luke’s loose grip without a struggle. He takes a couple of steps back, until he comes to stand by one of the giant drilling rigs.
“Don’t do it, old man. You’ll regret it! Remember everything that I have on you! If you do this, you’ll never see your kids again, you’ll lose everything!” Luke stretches his arms out, the sheen of perspiration on his forehead shining in the sun. His jacket has come off during the commotion, his shirt is dirtied and his tie is askew. Right now, he looks a world away from the aspiring governor. With his wild eyes and crazy expression, he looks like someone that belongs in a mental institution.
“You can’t threaten me anymore, Luke. Not me or anyone else. So what will you do now?” Darwin looks at him, not with anger, but with pity as he leans over the driller and drops the whistle through the hole that one of Luke’s own machines has made. The wolf caller falls through the hole and down, down, down, deep under ground, drowning in the oil that Luke was so desperate to get his hands on.
Luke stands completely still, like he can’t believe what’s just happened. He looks between Darwin and the hole created by the driller where his one weapon against the wolves has disappeared. He virtually throws himself after the caller, pushing Darwin out of the way as he stares down the black hole, leading to nowhere.
“I knew that there was something I could do.” Darwin smiles impishly at her, looking like a young man again, all trace of the worry that had made him old before his time, gone.
With the wolf caller destroyed the weres begin to shift again, pushing the human supremacists back. Block them in. Sofie’s mind is filled with Ashton’s voice as he lets his will be known amongst the pack. As she hears the words she sees that the packs being led by Lindsey are doing the same, advancing on the human supremacists from behind.
The wolves snarl and snap at their heels, not inflicting any damage, but making it clear exactly who is in charge now. The cries of ‘Wolf Scum’ have died down in favor of ‘Don’t hurt me!’, ‘I’m sorry’, ‘I didn’t mean anything by it.’
Let them go. I can’t stand the sight of them anymore. Ashton’s voice booms out across the weres’ minds, invading all of their thoughts. It is a voice that demands to be obeyed, but there is no other option. Sofie can’t imagine how anyone would be able to resist his will. Gus hasn’t reached that part of the werewolf training, but he will soon. The Alpha mind imposes its will on the pack. Ashton isn’t the leader just because they choose to follow him, he is the leader because they cannot help but follow him.
The supremacists are blocked on two flanks by wolves and on one by angry Howlers, telling them exactly what they think of them. The wolves, as one, move in, funnelling the ‘Humans First’ brigade out into the only remaining side. They’re left with one option, to run away.
As they swarm around them, Luke stands his ground, yelling after them. “You bunch of cowards! What are you running from? You want to let the monsters win? Is that it?” But the men and women that had followed him as if he were the second coming, don’t even hear him as they barge past him, too intent on their own fear and their own desperate need to escape.
“Forget it! I don’t need you! I don’t need any of you.” Luke shouts after them, waving them off dismissively. He looks like he’s half-cut, his shirt hanging out of his dirty chinos, his hair dishevelled from the number of times he’s raked his fingers through it. His eyes are wide and wild, giving him that wild look that makes him seem far more savage than the Lycans that he calls creatures, monsters.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
As the last of the human supremacists disappear into the distance the weres start to change back to their human form. The danger has passed. The Howlers take some steps towards them, handing out their own shirts and pants, anything that will help the Lycans cover themselves and keep their dignity in front of the still-rolling cameras.
Sofie smiles as a woman gives her a sweatshirt that reaches almost to her knees. It’s the first time she’s turned and the first time she’s had to deal with the nakedness that comes with the territory of being a Lycan. She had expected to feel embarrassment or shame at being na
ked in front of so many people. But it had seemed like the most natural thing in the world. She felt proud rather than ashamed of her body, especially when she had seen the look that Ashton had given her, before she shimmied into the borrowed sweatshirt. It was a look full of promise, a look that she expected him to follow up on as soon as they were alone.
“Slut.” Sofie stops dead at the word, her blood running cold. She didn’t even have to turn around to know that the voice belonged to Luke. “Dirty, filthy wolf whore. I don’t know what I ever saw in you.”
Sofie resist the urge to turn around and send him flying with a flick of her hand. She knows that she could do it, but she knows that it wouldn’t solve anything. She would always resort to words before violence. “Get out of here, Luke. Leave this place. It’s over. You’re done.” She doesn’t even give him the satisfaction of turning around to look at him. She knows that it’ll make him even madder but she’s past caring about what Luke does or doesn’t want. It’s not her problem anymore.
“Don’t worry, I’ll leave. I can’t stand to be near you. You make me sick!” He virtually spits the words out. “But I’ll be back. This is just one tiny battle, enjoy your little victory, it will be your last. When I come back it’ll be even stronger. I’ll destroy you and every other pack in the country, in the world!” He rants at Sofie’s back, taking a step forward to grab onto her arm to turn her around. He thinks about punishing her for showing him her back and he smiles sadistically at the thought of it.
But before he gets a chance to reach out to her, cameras are shoved in his face, and he’s drowning in a hail of questions, blinking into the harsh artificial lights.
“Mr. Calambor, what can you tell us about the alleged unlawful practices taking place at Shale?”
“Mr. Calambor, what’s your reaction to your employees’ allegations against you of hacking and invasion of privacy?”
Torrent (Alpha Love - a Paranormal Werewolf Shifter Romance Book 4) Page 18
