Bad Seed: An Imp World Novel (Northern Wolves Book 4)

by Debra Dunbar

  Jake’s eyes narrowed. He stared at me for long enough that my own were starting to water. I could feel the tension in the room, feel the nervous anticipation of my roommates. Then he nodded.

  “Stacy, report to Jamie at four tomorrow morning for punishment.”

  Fox Face bit short a wail, and nodded, tears welling up in her eyes. I clamped my teeth together hard and continued to meet Jake’s eyes, waiting for my punishment. Surely I’d be punished as well. He knew. I knew he knew. But would he act on his instinct, or hold back unless he had substantial proof that I’d done wrong?

  Without another word he turned and left the room. I felt myself sag, swaying slightly in relief. I still wasn’t in the clear. I was darned sure that Jake knew I’d been the instigator of all this, but he was too tied up in his rules and procedures to punish me unless he could prove I’d been involved. I’d gotten away with it. The toughest, smartest, strongest, most dominant Alpha I’d ever known, and I’d managed to get away with this. I should be relieved, but instead I was worried.

  Because I was positive I hadn’t gotten away with anything at all, only temporarily evaded an inevitable punishment.

  Chapter 9

  I met my team at ten o’clock outside the dining hall. For all the pack’s quasi-military environment, the group looked more like a bunch of coeds getting ready to study for a test than a security team. The leader was a blond dude with a man bun and a soul patch. He read a bunch of stuff from a clipboard about sub teams, assigned areas, and communication protocols, then he sent one team of six to the east of the compound. One he designated to guard the actual compound area. I was in the team that was to head to the west, opposite the lake. Aside from the group remaining in the compound, we were all supposed to guard on four legs.

  Hence the communication protocols, because it was darned hard to operate a walkie-talkie or a cell phone with paws, and growls and barks could only communicate a limited number of things. Soul Patch was leading my team, so we all followed him out past the lake to the trail I’d explored earlier in the day. Then everyone began to shed their clothing and shift into their wolf form.

  I hesitated, wishing I’d been assigned the compound duty instead so I didn’t have to shift. Normally I would have requested a transfer, citing that my beast wasn’t always cooperative about what animal form I took, and they might not want a lion roaming around an Alaskan forest, but after my close call with the roommates, I was reluctant to rock the boat. I was already on Jake’s radar. Plus, being labeled uncooperative and defiant wouldn’t help me establish myself in the pack.

  Waiting a few minutes until everyone was focused on their shift, I stripped my clothes off, pleaded with my beast to cooperate for once in her life, then changed form.

  Werewolves take about twenty minutes to shift. It’s gross and painful, and they can’t do it too often in one day or they’re too exhausted to stand. I’m all sorts of special, so shifting form takes me about three seconds and I can do it all day long without fatiguing myself. The only hitch was that I didn’t always end up a wolf. Lion wasn’t all that bad. Lion-ass with a giant eagle front and a snake head was a problem. Previous packs had been freaked out enough about the non-wolf forms I occasionally wound up in, but the mix-match ones usually sent everyone running and screaming.

  My beast must have been in a good mood because I wound up a sort-of wolf. I was bigger than the others, my fur a matte black that blended in with the shadows. I had the lowered hips of a show-quality German Shepherd with joints that would allow me to easily stand and walk on two legs if I so chose. The toes on my feet were more like fingers in terms of length and dexterity, and my jaw was broad—built for crushing rather than slicing and dicing.

  The others finished their shift and shook out their fur—fur that immediately stood on end as they saw me. I grinned, going for that friendly monster look, but the sight of my gleaming fangs didn’t help relieve them of their unease over my appearance.

  Soul Patch narrowed his eyes at me, but there wasn’t much he could do in wolf form to ask me questions or demand I turn into something more traditional, so he swung his head and pawed the ground. That was our signal to take our respective guard spots. Every one of them gave me one last nervous glance, then headed out. I loped silently through the woods, traveling just above the ground to keep my scent trail and sound to a minimum. I made my way to the designated area, close to where the creek dumped into the river. We were only six and there was a lot of area to patrol, so thankfully this wasn’t a job where I had to sit on my butt for hours and stare at the trees.

  Deciding that patrolling along the established pathways wouldn’t be the best way to perform guard duty, I went off track, through bushes and weeds that were tall enough to brush against my hips. The occasional breeze brought the scent of my pack mates, orienting me to their positions and locations. Two hours I prowled around the woods, enjoying the sensation of being in an animal form, but not noting anything that would give me cause for concern. I glanced up at the moon and stars, so incredibly bright in the Alaska sky. Midnight. This was when that sidhe was supposed to be doing the divination. We were supposed to guard for another hour, then head back in.

  I was looping by the area where Mir had told me the deadfall was when I felt something. Freezing in place, I lifted my nose to the sky and swiveled my ears. All I could smell were the normal scents of my surroundings and the occasional whiff of my pack mates in the distance. All I could hear were insects, frogs, the careful footsteps of a herd of deer about half a mile away. But there was something off, something that felt as if someone was rubbing sandpaper across my fur. A moment later I felt a burst, like someone had pulled apart a juicy orange and sprayed it right in my face. My skin prickled, and then it was gone.

  What. The. Fuck. I’d never been around magic before. Well, I’d never been around real magic anyway. There’d been a few tarot card readings I’d indulged in from local psychics with a sign in their window, but I’d never felt anything unusual during those sessions. And I’d definitely never felt anything like this.

  I shook myself to try to rid the feeling from my skin and fur, then continued my patrol, hoping that I’d be able to go back to the compound soon and go to bed. I’d been up early, had a physically demanding day, and was tired. Although I wasn’t sure how well I’d sleep in a room with all the drama earlier this evening—drama caused by me.

  Making my way through the rocky area with the little dens, I felt it again. The too-perfect scent areas were stronger, recently reinforced, and there was that sensation of sandpaper on my fur. I hesitated, but my beast urged me forward, to make my moves as casual as possible. I did, and that’s when I saw them.

  Something so indistinct I could barely tell it from the surroundings. It was dark over by the dens, and all I could see was the occasional distortion, so tiny, so brief that I almost missed it. Watching out of my peripheral vision as I continued to move by, I put all the distortions together and came up with six figures.

  I couldn’t smell them, hear them, or even see them, but they were there. My beast grinned, delighted that we now had prey to hunt. Walking on, I waited until I was far enough away that they couldn’t see me, but close enough that I could still feel the weird magic they were using, then I begged my beast to shift once more.

  A human form wouldn’t do me any good, but a huge monster wolf-like creature wouldn’t either, especially with humans that were most likely carrying bullets that would rot me from the inside out. For once, my beast listened and I felt myself shrinking down, taking the shape of a mink. I hoped they had minks in Alaska, otherwise I’d be screwed. I wasn’t sure six guys who were most likely packing rifles and who were using some magic to cloak themselves would give a damn about a mink prowling around in the brush. They were hiding from werewolves—either in human or in wolf form—not a mink.

  Luckily I could be a really fast mink, because after twenty minutes, the hunters moved, and they moved fast. I followed the silent, odorless, faint
ly blurred forms as they traveled down the path along the creek. I watched from underneath a briar as they crossed the log bridge, their feet not even splashing or breaking the surface of the water as they jumped off the log to wade the last few feet to the opposite creek. I waited for them to be out of sight because I knew I’d be exposed crossing the log myself, and that my swimming through the water for those last few feet wouldn’t be silent.

  The water was really cold, even as a mink, and when I climbed up to the other side of the bank, I realized I had lost my prey. It pissed my beast off, but I was determined, confident that I could catch that weird sensation of magic again as well as that artificially perfect pattern of scent. I searched in a grid pattern, finally managing to trace the hunters through the woods for three miles to a road.

  There had been a vehicle, and whatever magic they’d used, they hadn’t bothered to coat their car with it. I morphed back into my sort of wolf form, and ran, easily following the car’s scent for another twelve miles until it turned onto another road.

  I needed to make a decision. Judging from my sense of time, it had to be close to four in the morning. Should I continue on for possibly hours, or days, tracking this truck? I had no way of contacting Jake and the pack, and I could only imagine how alarmed they’d be when I didn’t return. They were probably already alarmed, and I wasn’t sure they’d be able to track me down since I’d been very careful to alter my scent to that of a mink. I could keep tracking, but the odds were that a car moving at speed would eventually evade me. And then I’d need to drag my ass back to the compound without six hunter heads on a stick, and need to tell my rule-crazy Alpha that there was a good reason for me to take off for a day or so without letting anyone know.

  I needed to get a cell phone. Although where the heck I was supposed to put a cell phone while I was a mink or a sort of wolf was beyond me.

  Giving up, I headed back, speeding up as I saw we were getting close to sunrise.

  Chapter 10

  I expected some degree of chewing out when I returned, but I wasn’t prepared for the absolute chaos in the compound. They’d clearly scented me coming because I could see them waiting for me as I came around the edge of the lake and headed for the Alpha House. There must have been ten of my pack mates gathered there, half of them in wolf form. Soul Patch got on a walkie-talkie as I approached, clearly calling in some sort of search party. I hadn’t encountered anyone on my way back, so they must have been a pretty lousy search party and heading in the absolute wrong direction.

  “You okay, Mills?” Soul Patch’s face was pinched with worry. I’d just met the guy. It was flattering that he’d been worried about me, although one look at Jake’s face made me wonder if my team leader’s worry wasn’t for my well-being, but for the trouble he was in for losing one of his group.

  “Yeah. Sorry, I went to check something out and it led me pretty far away from the compound.”

  “And you didn’t think to check in?” he shot back, worry dissolving into irritation.

  “I don’t have a cell phone. Besides, where would I have put it in my wolf form, up my ass?”

  “You were supposed to find a team member and let them know if you saw anything. You were supposed to go check out that something in teams of no less than two, not head out on your own.”

  Jake wasn’t speaking up, so I got the impression that they were tag-teaming this verbal abuse. Soul Patch first, then my Alpha would no doubt finish me off.

  If I’d gone and gotten someone, the hunters would have most likely been gone when we’d returned, and they would have thought I was a liar. Even if the hunters were there, they probably couldn’t have sensed them and thought I was a liar anyway. Plus, I wouldn’t have been able to track them with a werewolf trotting beside me, potentially setting off all sorts of magical alarm shit and getting the both of us killed. It seemed pointless to tell Soul Patch all this, though. He wouldn’t believe me, would think it was just a bunch of excuses. So instead I tried to look cowed and submissive—and was well aware that I was failing at that.

  “Sorry. I won’t do it again. I promise next time I’ll shove a cell phone up my ass and dig it out to text if I see anything.”

  Snark probably didn’t help the situation. Soul Patch growled and stepped forward, his teeth bared. Jake grabbed the man by the shoulder and pulled him back, clearly saving a member of his pack from death or serious injury at my hands.

  No, I’d mistaken my Alpha’s motives, because no sooner had he shoved Soul Patch aside, than he grabbed me by the arm, twisting it around behind my back and marching me up the stairs of the Alpha House. I was too shocked to struggle or protest, until we were inside. Even then, trying to twist myself free did nothing but wrench my shoulder nearly out of its socket.

  He shoved me into his office, slamming the door behind me. Then he grabbed me once more, pushing me against the wall. I tried to get a knee up between his legs, but he was too close and too strong for me to move more than a few inches. Instead of hitting him in the balls, I just ended up pushing my thigh against his crotch, which was far more seductive than I’d intended it to be. Not that my beast minded. She liked screwing just as much as she liked fighting, and she really wanted to do some of the former with Jake.

  The Alpha blinked at me in surprise for an instant, then his expression returned to one of fury.

  “We couldn’t find you. The patrols came in, and you didn’t, and no one had heard from you. Hours we searched. Hours.”

  It was my turn to blink in surprise. They were worried about me. Well, maybe not Soul Patch and the others, but Jake clearly was. He was so pissed that steam was nearly coming out of his ears, and that was less because I’d broken the rules, and more because he had been worried that I was injured or dead somewhere.

  “I saw something,” I told him. “Well, not saw exactly, more like I sensed something. I didn’t have time to tell anyone, and I needed to be stealthy, so I tracked it. I’m sorry, but I thought that following the hunters was more important than checking in.”

  He growled. “Hunters. You were following hunters.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said. Hunters.” Duh. That was the purpose of having us patrol wasn’t it? To make sure the divination went off without a hitch, and to keep intruders from attacking?

  Jake scoffed. “Right. I was out there with three of my best trackers, and we smelled nothing.”

  “That’s exactly it. The scent pattern is like their surroundings, only more symmetrical. It’s too perfect and organized, and it lingered in the spots where they’d been. I could feel their magic when I was up close, and if I watched carefully, I could see a faint distortion in the background where they were.”

  He stared at me for a moment. “You expect me to believe that you can smell odors to the point where you’re reading the patterns at the level of chemical molecules? And that you somehow can sense magic that none of us can, see things that none of us can?”

  I squirmed. “Maybe if you’d been there you would have seen the distortion and felt the magic as well. But as for scent, yes.”

  He stared at me in disbelief. I knew what he was thinking, that if he, an angel-light, couldn’t do these things, then I shouldn’t be able to either.

  “I followed them through the woods to a road, then followed the scent of their vehicle, but it was getting close to morning and I needed to come back. Besides, the farther ahead of me they got, the greater the likelihood that I’d mistaken the trail or lose it entirely. I didn’t want to be gone until midafternoon or longer and come back empty-handed.”

  “You followed them. You mean to tell me that you, in that giant weird wolf form Stevens said you’d taken on, followed a group of six magically shielded humans for miles and they didn’t notice you? They somehow have the magic to be invisible and leave no scent trace, but they don’t have the magic to detect a shifter in their midst?” Jake scoffed. “Admit it, Mills. You saw a herd of deer and couldn’t resist going hunting. You left the area you were
supposed to patrol and went off to do something more interesting.”

  Oh, I so wanted to punch him in the face. “Fuck you. I didn’t go chasing off after deer. I patrolled my area, and clearly I did a better job than those other morons you had out there because I was the only one who sensed those hunters. Fuck. You.”

  “Then why couldn’t we track you? Me. And three of my best trackers. We had your scent until just after midnight, then it vanished over near the rock face by the river. You didn’t check in. You didn’t call. And you didn’t leave any kind of trail for us. Where were you?”

  “I was following the hunters,” I yelled at him, punching the wall with my fist. It made a nice dent in the drywall. “I fucking told you that. I saw them, sensed them, and knew that they saw me. I knew they’d shoot me if a big-ass werewolf started following them, so I acted like I didn’t see them, went off a ways, then changed form into something they wouldn’t expect. That’s why my scent vanished.”

  Actually my scent should have remained the same no matter what form I was in. Subtle differences due to form, but clearly still me. I didn’t want to go down that path, because a discussion of how I could alter my scent would lead Jake to realize I’d been behind the drama in my dorm room this evening.

  “You have another form.” Jake said it as if he didn’t quite believe me. Again. It was clearly the morning for disbelief.

  “I have many forms. And a lot of the time they get all jumbled up together. I knew they wouldn’t expect something small, so I followed them as a mink.”

  “But your scent trail vanished. I’m your Alpha. I, at the very least, should have been able to find you no matter what form you took.”

  Shit. I was busted either way, but I’d rather take my lumps for the dorm incident than have him not believe me about tonight. For some reason, it was very important that Jake not think I was slacking off and chasing deer, very important that he knew these hunters had been close to our compound, no doubt doing reconnaissance.