by Sam Hall
“That’d be Slade.”
“Or Jack, too busy looking at his reflection in the glass.”
“He’s not that bad, really.”
“No, he’s not, and that’s just it. You have a good sense of us. Deep down, when all of this,” he tapped my scalp, “stops chattering, you’ve got our numbers. You know we all care about you.”
“Yeah…”
“You know we all want the best for you.”
“Of course, and I want that for you too.”
“Then, the rest will come. We’ve just got to get through this. Which brings me to something important. The caches aren’t what we hoped. Some look like they’ve been damaged by wildlife. Others have been raided by humanoids. Maybe some of the exiles, maybe someone else. We need to keep our eyes peeled, but this changes how we’ll proceed with the Volken.”
I kept my eyes trained on the ground, hoping the stab of fear I felt wasn’t apparent, but his big hand came to rest on my shoulder blades, rubbing my back in big slow circles. He was right though—I did have a feel for him, as this gesture was a familiar, almost expected one.
“We’re going to have to go in covert and Jules…” I waited for it, knew what was about to come. “I want you to wait somewhere safe. We’ll get the guys out, come back to you, and then we can go home.”
It made sense, I knew that. I wasn’t a badass. I had the potential to be one, if I could get off my back for one second and actually train, rather than just be a core member of Sexapalooza. I scratched at my neck, my nails raking my skin. They were going to go into the wolf’s den without me.
“That would be ill-advised.”
We looked up to see Sylvan had come to sit by the fire, not tasked with setting up camp like the other guys. He frowned as he scanned the two of us.
“This isn’t up for discussion, not with someone like you,” Aaron snapped.
“No? Well, then I may as well make my way back to the gate to try again with a different pack. Covert or full-frontal assault, doing so without Julie is a mistake.”
“You showed us what was in that place. You expect that we’ll take the person most precious to us into that? You saw how they treat women. What would happen if she was caught?”
“She’d be sent to breeding quarters to pop out sons until she died. All the more reason to keep her safe.”
“We will keep her safe, away from Leifgart and your fucking people,” Aaron said, jerking to his feet. “You’ve played the lot of us, and almost got Jules raped, so you’ll excuse me if I don’t accept your counsel. You’ve proven yourself a manipulative cunt, done little other than cause chaos and given us the thumbs up occasionally. If you know what’s going to happen, tell us, before I give my men a couple of pairs of pliers and a car battery to force the truth out of you.” When he looked down at me, Aaron’s eyes were burning. “It’ll be OK, Jules. We’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”
“Oh, so honourable,” Sylvan said with a frown, as he watched Aaron march off. I just looked at the discarded cup of coffee.
“You said we were bonded, mated,” I said, tilting my head but not looking at the black wolf.
“Yes, of course. My venom was part of what—”
His words were choked off as I leapt to my feet, slapping my hand down on his arm before he could think to run off. For a second, I noted the widening of his eyes, and the flare of some emotion within. Hope? Need? I couldn’t tell, but I soon would. I listened to the rapid pant of his breath, felt the warmth of his skin, the cords of muscle there, felt the faint tremble in his body, then I was ripped away, my awareness of the world thrust to one side as I was caught up in the swirl of him as he pulled me down like a silken undertow.
Fear rose up—much, much greater than anything I’d ever been able to inspire with my own anxiety spirals, which just added to the conflagration. I was buffeted and tossed through a chaotic environment, red throbbing cells spinning, the massive boom of a heartbeat smashing into my ears every half second. My own heart started to keep time, the two bass notes thundering faster and faster. I heard the rapid rasp of breath—mine, his? I couldn’t tell, and then it all fell away.
I heard my own lungs labour as my mental field of vision was filled with alien scenes. I watched black fur-clad men toting crystal tipped spears file into a valley, their movements jerky and stuttering, as if the recording of them doing so was speeding up and slowing down at random moments. The men created a loose semicircle around a massive temple complex. Tall menhirs marked the procession way towards the huge temple doorway, the neatly arranged bleached bones of human skeletons marking the spaces between the huge stones. The view jerked forward to the men holding up the spears as the points started to shine with a reddish light, then back again to the tossing of several bodies of dead men at the end of the path, carelessly dumped on top of each other. Flashes of rumbles shook the ground, spear tips sent out a net of scarlet light, and the Great Black Wolf stepped out of the temple gloom into the sunlight.
It all got faster and more garbled after that. Teeth slicing human bodies into chunks in a single snap, disappearing down a night dark throat. The kneeling of all the crystal spear toting warriors as the Great Wolf stood before him, rays of red light radiating from each spear point, then back to the wolf. Hundreds of slave men brought to the site, and being worked to death by the Volken, digging up and carrying endless wheelbarrows of dirt to the temple and burying it. The creation of a settlement, then increasingly a city on the top of this great man-made plateau. The mass execution of those surplus slaves once the settlement was complete—dragging them down into the depths of the embankment, the spasmodic recording of their attempts to escape and howls of protest all silenced as the Great Wolf crept from its cave, its mouth open and ready to consume its due.
Crystals—on spears, in rooms to light them, held in braziers and offerings burned to them, worn on armour, bestowed on boy children at their birth. Men, always men—fighting, talking, cooking, organising, leading, hunting, building and inventing. Slaves did everything else. Men swarming out of the city to attack interlopers, banding together on horseback to swoop in and eradicate whole villages. Then the subsequent raping of the women, thankfully swept over this time. It all became a blur of the same, over and over, until her.
It felt like the camera of Sylvan’s mind wanted to gloss over this, move on to something else, so it was no surprise when the story shifted to the first of us, the white Tirian. Her emergence out of the filth is documented, cold and starving, heavy with child, but transformed with the aid of the strange green-eyed woman. I could see her now, the shadowy outline of the Great White Wolf regarding the process. Then it galloped forward, skimming over what must have been years of frustration for the Volken. The appearance of the first girl children at their door, those initial ones brutalised so thoroughly, I found myself closing my eyes, seeing only their bodies dragged away when I opened them. Then over and over, the hordes of girl children arriving at their door, with only a few male children amongst them, shifting into Tirian form at the first sign of violence, attacking with snapping jaws and heads held low. The begrudging acceptance of the females into their midst, the corralling of them in simple pens initially, then considerably more opulent seraglios as new generations were spawned, until the women were all ensconced in the prettiest of cages.
Then, it shifted again. I watched the halting words of a young boy, with ragged black hair and eyes like iced water, be recorded by much larger men. There was some conferring between them as they considered what he said, then a nod, and his fate was sealed. The boy was schooled and trained mercilessly, a swagger stick slapping the boy’s knuckles each time he faltered in what was asked of him, fists driven into his side over and over. The never-ending requests for information, often specific details about upcoming events, the twist of ever-present fear winding that much tighter as he knew he had nothing to give. His later astute prophecies delivered more from his observations as to how the Volken operated than any god to
uched vision, borne as much for a desire not to be beaten further. His relief when what he predicted ended up coming true, that guilty slinking flush of pleasure twisting up tightly with the fear that next time, he would not be able to deliver.
Then it all slowed down. I counted the breaths of the man who rolled free of another in bed and looked down at the muscular white shoulders and fan of black hair on the pillow. The shadowy man with dark hair and a beard took in the silent sobs, the way the other’s body curled away from his as far as it could, before getting to his feet, refastening his trousers, and exiting the room.
A paler, younger Sylvan lay there, flinching only when he heard the snick of the door. Her, his mind begged, show me her. And she came, quick as only thoughts could be, a tumbling mess of memories and visions. Her smile, the tumble of her red hair, the clasp of her fingers around his, the tangle of their limbs, the taste of her lips—
“No!”
I was returned roughly to the real world, blinking now at the sun setting behind us, the sky painted a rainbow of colours. Sylvan shook me slightly, his jaw tightening, and despite his hands being on my biceps, nothing came down our shared link. He struggled to catch his breath as it came in long ragged sighs, and his eyes bore into mine, glowing an almost phosphorescent blue and flicking from my eyes, down to my lips, and back again.
My hand went automatically to the collar of his shirt, pushing the fabric away to reveal the firm white expanse of his chest. My fingers spidered across the heaving surface, like I had a right to, a weird echo of his handsy approach in my nightmares. When my hand connected with something hard and sharp, not muscle or bone, it appeared as if summoned by my touch. An iridescent crystal, brutally knapped into a sharp point and hanging from his neck on a leather thong.
“So, intent on getting under everyone’s skin,” he snarled, his fingers biting deeper. “Always pick, pick, picking at everyone to let it all out.” He shook his head and then pushed me off him, forcing me to stumble back and sit down hard on the ground by the fire or fall. “Stay away from me.”
I blinked, just looking at the dirt and the trees and the sky for a second, trying to process what I’d just seen. It was momentous, useful. Sylvan was little more than a manipulative puppet master in our midst, so to get something on him felt like a victory. I nodded, still trying to piece it all together as I rolled to my feet, then went off to find Brandon.
“Crystals and I think Leifgart is an acropolis built on top of the Great Wolf’s temple.”
I blurted out the headlines of what I had seen, and the guys all looked up at me from where they were assessing what they’d retrieved from the cache.
“What?” Slade said.
“I touched Sylvan.” This provoked some growls around the group of my pack. “Not like that! I felt his bond and saw a bunch of weird shit. He said I’d be getting his visions now that we’d acknowledged the bond, but I haven’t gotten a thing since we crossed over. If anything, he’s become even more of a closed book. I didn’t know I could do that, just thought it was emotions. Figured I’d at least know what he felt about everything. The Wolf seems to have been there before the Volken. His temple is buried beneath where they built the city. The Volken, they have these crystal spears. That’s how they controlled the Great Wolf. That must be how they keep him controlled now…” I blinked, coming back to myself. “I think that’s important.”
“It’s OK, love,” Slade said. “How reliable do you reckon this vision would be, Brandon?”
“I’ve never known anyone able to share visions, down a bond or any other way.”
“She shouldn’t be bonded to him at all,” Jack growled, then looked around. “What? Am I talking out my arse here? He’s one of them, a fucking threat to what we have here.”
I heard the edge rise in Jack’s voice, watched his hands tighten and his shoulders stiffen, until Hawk slung an arm around him, pulling his head in close and placing a rough kiss on his temple. Jack was scared. Scared a lot of the time, I was beginning to think, but he couldn’t share it. His eyes flicked around the crowd, looking for confirmation, but the rest of the guys kept their own counsel. Jack shook his head, his finger working the small part of the seam of his jeans that were fraying as Hawk tousled his hair. I glanced over at Brandon, who nodded, seeing what I saw.
Sometimes it was hard to see why I’d added Jack to the pack. He was so spiky, getting his back up the minute people didn’t see things the way he did.
You don’t need to agree, merely acknowledge, my Tirian said.
But I did, at least partially. I thought about Sylvan, and a rapid flicker of memories popped up—of his fangs crushing into my shoulder, of his mocking description of me as a little queen, of the much more sober Sylvan, shaking under my grip.
“That makes sense,” I said. “He has been a threat, to my life, my freedom, my peace of mind. I’ll admit, I don’t know if he’s an asset or a liability on this mission. He makes vague prognostications…” I watched Brandon go pale, then swallow and straighten, not letting his body slump like it wanted to. “But provides little real useful information. You’re right to question his presence.”
Hawk smiled at me, his eyes holding mine for a moment before he glanced down to see Jack straighten slowly, the blond man’s face lighting up before he hid behind his cocky smile.
“The problem is we don’t have enough information. He broke the connection, made it so I couldn’t see anything else. Is that normal, Brandon?”
He nodded, his mouth tightening. “Any of you could shut out the others, if you really wanted to. The vision thing though…”
“Would you be able to show Jules how to get past that block?” Aaron asked.
“I…” I watched Brandon’s eyes dart around the group before settling on me. He wasn’t comfortable with the idea, that I could see, but that wasn’t all of it. There was an odd resigned look to his face as he searched mine. Not as severe as the first night at the mining camp, but even though we’d had a quiet moment together that night, there hadn’t been much since. He watched, waiting for something, and as if bidden, the longing and wariness of that night rose inside me. He nodded, looking away for a second before meeting Aaron’s eyes squarely. “I’ll try.”
“That’s all we can ask,” Aaron said.
“Moonie,” one of the soldiers said. Chuckles went around the group—well, everyone but Finn and Brandon. “We can’t do much as a mating celebration, but we brought some bottles of piss from the mining camp.”
“I said to leave them,” Aaron growled.
“Yeah, and we figured this was on its way. One night of celebration’s not gonna kill us. The fucking Volken don’t even know we’re coming,” another soldier said. He shook the longneck beers hopefully.
“Put them in a bag in the river and secure them well,” Aaron said with a shake of his head. “That’ll cool them down before tonight. But…” That stopped the guys from their cheering. “The cache will be itemised and evaluated, and a report given to me within an hour. Tents set up, campfire organised and kindling, rations assessed, and the area scouted for any of the plants or prey on the viable foodstuffs list. Latrines dug, all non-essential items squared away—”
He had more, but the guys just sketched a salute, grinning wildly. “You got it, boss,” they said before taking off.
“I’ll help them,” Finn said, and got to his feet without waiting for input from us. I watched him go, noting the stiff set of his shoulders.
“He’ll come around,” Aaron said, rubbing his hand across my knee.
“Or he won’t,” Slade said, arms crossed over his chest. “I get he’s torn up and shit, but this is bullshit. Jules, love, I know you’re always trying to make sure everyone is OK, but maybe this time it won’t be, and it shouldn’t be.” I just stared at him, my brain struggling to digest his words, so on he ploughed. “You’ve tried to reach out to him, so have I, so have plenty of the blokes. We all want Finn with us on this, but all he can think about is his guilt,
his role in this, and his dads. That kind of inward focus puts a bloody big target on our back, right when we need everyone pulling together.”
“Slade…” Hawk said, shifting restively.
“You don’t kick a bloke when he’s not even here to defend himself,” Jack said with a frown. “If anyone knows what a pain in the arse Prince Perfect can be, it’s me, but at least let him have his say.”
“Now’s not the time to discuss this,” Aaron said.
“No, it’s not.”
I got to my feet, and saw all of their eyes follow me as I did so.
“You’re blunt, everyone knows that, Slade, but sometimes that spills over into just being an arse. Walking away from someone when they’re doing it tough isn’t what makes us a pack. It’s sticking together right when things are difficult and finding a way through it.” My eyes settled on Brandon, and now I could meet his easily. I felt our bond thrum for a moment, and his lips curled into a slight smile. “Brandon, are you cool coming with me for a bit?”
“Yeah, of course,” he said, and came over to stand by me. He grabbed my hand, closing his around it, and I felt that pulse of our connection more strongly.
“I’ve got some things to do, but I’ll be back for the celebration,” I said to Aaron. “Just don’t let the guys persuade you to start drinking without me.”
“I won’t.”
“Spoilsport…” Jack muttered, but his mouth was twisted in a grin.
“You guys gonna do the food?” I asked. Hawk nodded. “Well, there better not be any pubic hair in it. Hands off snakey while cooking, yeah?”
Jack went to protest, but Hawk just shifted slightly, eyes staring into mine.
“We’ll save some batter for later then.”
“Right, right…”
The big man watched me mentally toss that idea around to find many intriguing ways we could combine food and sex, until I forced myself to shake my head and stop thinking about frosted penises.
