by H. D. Gordon
A part of me wanted to crumble under the pressure, but a bigger part of me reverted back to the mode of survival I’d fallen into all those times I’d had to step into The Ring. I yielded instantly and completely to my Wolf, allowing the beast in me to take over because the mortal side of me was too broken and weak to handle the situation.
Luckily for me, my Wolf takes no shit.
Rather than waiting for the hammer to fall, I let the power coil in my legs and launched myself forward, my formidable jaws aiming for the throbbing vein in the male creature’s thick, grotesque neck.
My jaws snapped shut a hair’s width from home. Pain shot through my side as something hard slammed into the spot just above my rear left flank. My body was thrown sideways, my right side slamming into the unforgiving bark of a tree.
I only had a split second to lie there before I was snatched up again, this time by the base of my tail, and flung once more with bone-cracking force against yet another tree.
My vision blurred, the pain seeming to erupt from everywhere, but survival mode had kicked in, and I was able to center on the happenings with tunnel-like focus.
I could feel their positions around me, their scents as strong in my nose as if they were pressed against my nostrils. They smelled like sweat and decay, and I almost gagged on the taste it brought to my mouth, which was overpowered only by the irony tang of my own blood.
When one of the females went to grab me once more, I twisted my body just in time to avoid her grasp, and sank my sharp fangs deep into her clammy flesh. The squeal she let out was guttural and swine-like; the agonized grunt of a wounded pig. The sound of it sent my Wolf’s instincts humming.
I told myself these three were nothing more than overgrown pigs, and I was a Wolf. To be bested by them would be the ultimate insult.
But I was tired from running full tilt, and busted from the impact of hitting the tree. If I didn’t take them out quickly, they would overwhelm me in numbers and strength.
I darted here and there, escaping their clutches with pure luck and speed. They were bigger and stronger than me, but I was faster, and this single advantage would have to be enough.
There were only half heartbeats available to study their anatomy, to locate the most vulnerable parts and then move in to rupture them. As a predator and hunter, my Wolf understood that all things made of blood and flesh had natural weak points, arteries and systems that when damaged, could take down the entire specimen.
The beast within me sensed what the next move was, and my body acted in accordance. My muscles coiled with power and I shot forward, my jaws spreading wide and my eyes locked on target.
In the next instant, my sharp canines were sinking into clammy, mottled flesh that was bitter to the tongue, and blood unlike any I’d ever tasted flooded into my mouth.
When I bit, I locked. Being sure to do so was one of the things I’d learned very early on in life, and had saved my hide on more than one occasion. An old Dog had once told me that a bite is only as good as the lock, and that when in battle, a Wolf’s bite should only slip free if it’s taking a hunk of flesh with it.
So that’s what I did. Bit and locked. When the male creature backhanded me hard enough to knock me free of the soft spot under the female’s throat, my jaws took a big chunk of her throat with me.
The female crashed to the ground, her eyes rolling up while her sausage-like fingers clutched at the gaping hole in her neck.
I spat out the rancid flesh as though it had burned my tongue. If time had permitted, I might have grinned Wolfishly at the male; his backhand had essentially killed his companion. The force of it combined with the lock of my bite had ripped the meat right from her neck.
But that backhand had knocked the wind right out of me, and there were places on my body that were burning and throbbing with pain. The blurry edges around my vision were beginning to creep toward the center.
One down, two to go.
Ropes of blood and saliva hung from my mouth, my ears still flat upon my head. My heart was hammering hard in my chest while the rest of my body felt on the verge of collapse. Pushing aside any mounting panic, I calculated the next move of my attack.
The male was bellowing with rage, and he charged me head-on, giving me no choice but to focus on him. His tubular ears were pulsing and had gone slightly red over the greenish gray color of his skin. Those three, bulbous eyes were glassed over in fury, and in them, I could see my own death.
The ground beneath my feet shook with every charging step he took toward me. His enormous hands were already outstretched, ready to snatch me up once more and break me over his leg like a piece of wood. The crack of my spine would resound through the silent and dead forest.
In the fractions of seconds before he reached me, I saw my opening, and didn’t think twice before moving toward it. He was so large that his legs, when spread open the way they were now as he thundered toward me, provided a space large enough for a small Wolf to squeeze through—if she happened to be quick enough.
I barely had the time to suppose that there were worse ways to die than this, and that at least I would take the bastard down with me.
9
My timing was right, as it always had been. Another feature that had kept me breathing over the years. I slipped through the opening in his legs at the perfect moment, avoiding his powerful clutches with zero time to spare.
As I did so, I twisted my head to the side and sank my fangs into the centermost spot between his legs, willfully refusing to think about what part of the creature’s anatomy I was grabbing onto.
I bit, and locked, and as my momentum carried me forward, my jaws removed a hunk of rancid meat.
The angry and pained bellows of the creature shook the very trees of the forest, but I could hardly absorb them as a flash of grayish-green crossed my vision. A moment later, I felt the wide foot of the remaining female make crushing contact with my ribs.
This time, my vision went black, and seconds that felt like individual eternities passed before any resemblance of sight returned to me.
What the hell was this wretched place? What the hell were these wretched creatures?
I was lying on my side, the thick vines covering the forest floor digging into me like fingers. I tried to summon the strength to get back on my paws, but only found myself collapsing once more to the ground.
My sight came back just enough to see the overgrown, hairy green feet of the female creature—the last one standing.
I’d been right about the weak points of their anatomy, apparently. Otherwise, I was pretty certain I’d already be dead.
Even so, death was approaching nonetheless. I could feel her standing over me, could sense the acuteness of the vulnerability of my position, but I couldn’t get my body to work.
I was done.
I blinked up at the creature, taking in her hideous features with cold calculation. I didn’t hate her for what she was about to do to me. My Wolf understood that this female and her two companions had only been doing what nature dictated they do. At least my body wouldn’t go to waste. I would die, but she would eat me, and in my dying, she would live.
It was the circle of life. The food chain in its purest form.
And there were worse ways to die. Burning alive while you slept in a hut on the beach, for example. That would be much worse.
I closed my eyes and waited.
And waited.
After a few seconds of not dying, I peeled my eyes back open and blinked twice before I could see. Where just moments before there had been the female, staring down at me triumphantly with her three bulging eyes and crooked brown teeth, now there was only the twisted, barren branches of the trees and the dark sky beyond.
I tried to move my body and pain shot through me strong enough to make me whimper. Lifting my head was a feat for a hero, but somehow, I managed to raise it a few inches off the ground. To my left, I spotted the felled bodies of the male and the female I’d taken down. The other female, who
’d I’d been positive was about to kill me, was nowhere to be seen.
I almost released a sigh of relief.
Then, I felt it.
Cold crept in as if carried on the fog settling around me. I watched as the atmosphere became chilly enough that my breath plumed out in clouds in front of me.
The female had not left because of some stroke of mercy. She’d left because something worse had arrived on the scene. Something bad enough to make a fearsome creature take to their heels without even pausing to finish an earned kill.
I felt my body start to shake, and it took me a few moments to realize that I was trembling. I couldn’t recall ever doing so in all my life. I wanted to shut my eyes again, but was too afraid to even do that.
My eyes searched for the source, and found it. Snaking through the trees was what can only be described as a black shadow. It moved as though it was nothing more than mist, taking various shapes and forms as it made its slow way toward me.
As I stared into the churning blackness, I felt something being drained from me. It was similar to the pulling sensation I’d felt in the town square earlier, when we’d all given some piece of ourselves to save Bakari, the Divine-blooded, winged male. Only this pull was stronger, more insistent. If I had to put it into a single sentence, it felt as though something were sucking out my very soul from inside me.
I used every ounce of strength I had left to make a final attempt at moving, but my muscles were unresponsive. I could feel each of my breaths growing steadily shallower, each beat of my heart yielding more and more space between the next.
The black shadow moved closer, and I saw its true form for a flash that I wished I’d missed. The shadow gathered to reveal a skeletal frame with fingers as long as my tail. It wasn’t so much its shape that ignited the terror in me strong enough to restrict my movements; it was the things I kept glimpsing in those shadows.
It was as though this new creature knew all about me. My hopes and dreams as well as my guilt and fears. I saw my whole life there, memories I’d long forgotten, and others I only wished I could forget.
And, still, my breathing grew shallower, my heartbeat slower and slower.
Hadn’t I just been thinking that there were worse ways to die? I’d been right.
This was one of them.
As the shadow creature moved closer, the memories and emotions only became stronger.
There I was at eight, stepping into The Ring against a female who’d had no chance at beating me, of tearing her throat out and turning toward the cheering crowd with pride, as though I’d done something impressive.
And there was me at fourteen, lying in my hut in Dogshead, trying to find sleep while an older male entered my space and took it upon himself to have his way with me. There I was, crying out while he succeeded, and then crying out again as I shifted instantaneously and severed the bastard’s femoral artery so that he bled out with his pants down and his hand still clutched around his puny member.
And, again, there was me as I was strung up in Dogshead square the next day, whipped bloody for having defended myself against a mid-list Dog who’d raped me on the floor of my own hut.
And more and more and more.
A whole lifetime of misery and melancholy.
When the images of my time spent with Ryker began to flash by, I felt something inside me shifting, something that once moved, could not be relocated back.
If this shadow creature was intent on killing me, I wished like hell it would hurry up already. Death would be a mercy if the alternative was reliving my past, of facing Ryker and the rest of my crumbling world.
Now it was so close that the cold set me shivering even beneath my thick fur coat. My eyes began to slip closed, my heartbeat so faint that I felt the blood circulation slowing in my veins.
The harsh sound of something large crashing through the forest roused me, pulled me back from the edge of that beaconing abyss. Opening my eyes took enormous effort, but somehow, I managed.
The new arrival drew the attention of the shadow creature as well, and I watched in equal parts horror and fascination as it roared a spine-tingling sound that could not be interpreted as anything other than a deadly warning.
When the ground rumbled beneath me, I first thought that the greenish-gray female had returned, but my mind finally cleared enough to reveal the truth.
The shadow creature had retreated a bit from where it had been hovering over me, and as the distance between us increased, so did the function of my mind. Even so, I had to blink a few times before I processed the fact that Adriel had arrived.
He’d somehow found me.
I knew it was him, because I had seen the Mixbreed in his non-mortal form one time before, on the day I’d left Dogshead and the Midlands and headed to the Western Coast. Despite this, I must have forgotten how intimidating he was in this form, and for a moment, the thought that he might scare off the shadow creature only to make me a meal of his own occurred to me.
And then I had the good sense to feel bad for thinking it.
His Wolf blood was evident in this form, as his head was that of an oversized Wolf, but he didn’t walk on all fours, like full-breeds did. Instead, he stood over ten feet tall, on two massive legs that ended in deadly sharp claws. Ebony fur that was thick and shiny covered every muscled inch of him, and his hands were tipped in razor-like talons.
Of all his physical characteristics, however, Adriel’s eyes remained the most captivating, even in this form. They were such a deep scarlet that I thought if one looked long enough, they just might glimpse the fires of the Underworlds within. His Wolf-like ears were flattened on his enormous head, and his sharp teeth were bared in an unmistakable threat. The growl he returned in answer to the shadow creature’s roar reminded me of the angry, rumbling thunder that always preceded a massive storm on warm summer nights in the Midlands. The power of it radiated outward, as if carried on the very atmosphere.
For a handful of heartbeats, Adriel and the shadow creature stared each other down, and I understood well that the very next decisions of the two would determine what would go down here. Adriel had placed his enormous body between the shadow creature and me, and the way he’d planted himself revealed that he was not going to move willingly. They were either going to fight, or the shadow creature would have to retreat.
Another pang of guilt struck me when I recalled my initial thought upon Adriel’s arrival. Was I really such a bigot that I couldn’t recognize help when it found me?
That was too big of a question for the moment, so I tucked it into the back of my mind for later.
A decision was made, and with a final sneer, the shadow creature cast a look down at me and began to retreat deeper into the trees. It was so silent I could hear my own heartbeat once more in my chest. I didn’t dare blink or breathe until every bit of the shadow had leaked out of sight.
It was fully dark now, the sun having set behind the horizon while Adriel had been facing down the creature, and the night was seeping deeper into the dead trees with every passing moment.
Gods forgive me, but when the Mixbreed finally pulled his red gaze away from the place where the shadow creature had retreated and looked down at me from that massive height, with those massive claws and teeth, I flinched.
I felt immediately like an asshole for it, but it was involuntary. I’d seen some downright scary shit in my life, and not a one of them held a candle to the terror of Adriel in this form.
He did not react to my reaction, but something about the look that flashed behind those scarlet eyes told me that it hadn’t gone unnoticed. When he shifted back into his mortal form a moment later, I was almost positive this was solely for my benefit.
Once more, he was just the handsome, ebony-haired, red-eyed male with the black slacks and pressed collared shirt, his pale hands tucked casually away in his pockets.
“We need to move. After nightfall it gets worse,” he said, extending one of those pale hands to me. “The Ogres and Enenra a
re not the worst things in this forest. Not by a long shot.”
10
I could not in a million moon cycles imagine what could be worse than the Enenra; the shadow creature that had nearly killed me with the painful memories of my past, but there was zero doubt in my mind that Adriel meant what he’d said. Even in my half-dazed state, I could feel the sinister ambiance the forest created. I wanted nothing more than to leave this place and never look back.
But as I stared up at the Mixbreed, at his extended fingers, his promise of a ticket out of these dead trees, part of me wished that he’d leave me, that the Ogres or Enenra had just finished what they’d started.
All of this passed through my head in a matter of seconds, but when I once more met Adriel’s scarlet gaze, I got the strange feeling that he was somehow aware of what I was thinking. When he spoke for the first time since locating me, I braced myself for some sort of snarky comment or derision.
Instead, he asked a question.
Hiking up his slacks with a sigh and crouching before me, Adriel asked, “Is this what you intend to do with your freedom then, Rukiya? The collar couldn’t break you, nor the Hounds, nor the Masters… but an open world of opportunities and choices… that’s what makes you cower?”
A growl rippled up my throat in warning, anger flooding into me, which was better than the numbness and guilt, though I wouldn’t have admitted it.
That rebellious smirk pulled up one side of Adriel’s mouth. “I have a job for you,” he said, and though his tone was as smooth and even as always, the way his eyes darted around the dark trees before returning to me revealed that he was not comfortable spending any more time in this forest.
But he did not leave me.
With a silent curse, I shifted back into my human form, ignoring the pain this caused me as I’d endured much worse so many times before. I knew from experience that I had cracked a rib or two, and several sections of skin would be black and blue by the morning.
