Thrown To The Wolf (Pack Heat Book 3)

by Sam Hall

  I sat there in the rear of this mystery woman’s mind as she rode the seer to victory, felt her orgasm as if it was my own, which was uncomfortable at best. I cheered somewhat dejectedly when she climbed off him, caressing his face as he panted, struggling to get his breath back. Then we rolled off the bed while he called her name and she assured him she’d be back. We walked until a door appeared, then we slipped inside a white-tiled bathroom.

  I saw her face in the mirror as we went over to the sink, washing our hands in the water. Long reddish hair and green eyes was all I caught, but I needn’t have strained to get a glimpse. She straightened up, looking straight into the glass, and then smiled.

  “This is not what will help you. Hijacking my seer and seeking access to his mind will not give you what you seek. Do not try again. You will find his mind barred to you.”

  You’re talking to me? I asked.

  “I would have thought that was obvious.”

  And who are you?

  She smirked at this, “You need to focus on your pack, little queen. It is your bonds that will help you through what’s to come.”

  Yeah, you guys keep saying that, while keeping all the relevant information to yourself. That’s a lot to take on faith.

  “Yes? And what other option do you have? Very well, know this. Giving one’s name was a powerful thing when I roamed the earth. It was believed that knowing it could give you power over another. I am Branwen, little queen. Now return to your mate and build some bridges.”

  The tent reasserted itself with a jolt, my breath sounding horribly loud. Slade saw I was conscious, his face too pale in the moonlight coming through the flap.

  “Let’s get you out of here, princess.”

  We scrambled out of the tent with more noise than we should have, but if Sylvan’s twitches were anything to go by, Branwen had gone back for round two. I gasped when we emerged out into the night air, and Slade carried me until I was deposited on Finn’s unused sleeping roll.

  “Love, what happened? You were out to it, and then you were twitching. That was the scariest shit I’ve ever seen.”

  Slade wanted me to share more, and I had no problem meeting that need. I rolled into a seated position and told him everything.

  14

  I woke to the sound of drumming.

  I blinked, the tent now doing little to obscure the morning light, merely diffusing the brightness into an eye pricking haze. I looked around me, searching for some kind of sign of what was causing the bloody noise, but got nothing. Slade snored quietly beside me, and my eyes caught for a moment on how relaxed his face looked. He seemed younger somehow, with no sardonic twist to his mouth or sparkle in his eyes. Well, there was no such sparkle when I shook his shoulder. He looked blearily at me, unable to focus on what was happening around us, mouth hanging open as he said, “Wha…?”

  “Do you hear that?” I asked.

  Shouts came with the drumming, the tone frantic. “Come on!”

  We mobilised quickly, Slade snatching up a shirt as we emerged from the tent. What we saw did not improve things at all. Aaron was ordering people about at a rapid rate, shouting instructions I couldn’t hear the details of. The reason became immediately apparent when we turned around.

  “Oh, fuck…” Slade said.

  I saw his cigarette packet drop to the ground from limp fingers as we caught the huge cloud of dust forming along the horizon. But it was no dust storm creating this percussive sound. The place we had camped at overnight had a river to the right, an open grassland to the left. Trees grew thick along the water, but this seemed to be some kind of savanna with only low bushes and the occasional larger vegetation on the other side. Which gave the animals a massive space with which to run. And they did. I squinted, seeing their forms far in the distance as they stampeded towards us. Quite possibly the close relatives of whatever we had for dinner last night were bearing down upon us at top speed.

  “We gotta go,” Slade said, then grabbed me by the scruff of my shirt and hauled me along as I tripped over everything, his too long sweatpants tangling with my feet. I felt the tension in the fabric, heard it begin to give as he ripped open a car door and thrust me in the back seat.

  “Slade!”

  “Get in and be ready to go on my order!” Aaron snapped at Slade, appearing by the door. “We’re going to have to try and outrun whatever the fuck this is. I’ll be on the back strapped in and trying to shoot down whatever gets too close, but for fuck’s sake, don’t roll it.”

  “Got it,” Slade said as keys were slapped into his hand.

  “Aaron!” I said as he hauled himself into the tray, then another man toting a machine gun joined him. “Slade, what about the pack? Where are the rest of them?”

  “We gotta get out of here, sweetheart. They’ll be—”

  “Right here,” Jack said as he yanked open the door. He climbed in beside me, a rifle in his hands, and Hawk swung into the front.

  “Seatbelts on!” Slade said, putting the car in gear right as the door opened again.

  “Room for one more?” Brandon quipped, jerking it shut as Slade took off. “Seatbelt, Jules,” he said, and pulled his own on.

  We roared off, Slade cursing a steady stream as we drove. I watched his knuckles go white as he gripped the wheel, and the rest of us had to reach for the ‘oh shit’ bars or risk being tossed around the cabin.

  “You OK, love?” Hawk asked, turning in his front seat to look back at me.

  “No, what the fuck is happening?” A sudden flash of fear alerted me to what I’d neglected to notice. “Finn! Where’s Finn!”

  “There,” Jack said, stabbing a finger at the glass to point at several other of our vehicles pulling up beside us. He took my hand as I craned my neck, searching for a sign of him. “It’s Prince Perfect, love. He’s gotta go with the heroics, but he’ll be fine. Guys like that always are.”

  He was trying to be comforting, I knew, but it didn’t help. I watched the car next to us pull ahead slightly. Finn stood in the tray, strapped to the metal headboard, hands on a machine gun.

  “What’s happening? What are those things?” I asked, shifting to try and look out the back window, but the guns and guys in the trays blocked it.

  “No questions, love,” Jack said, standing up and popping open the sunroof. “Keep it steady,” he told Slade.

  “Fucking trying! This isn’t exactly a freeway, so try not to blow our mates’ heads off!” Slade glanced at the rest of us in the rear vision mirror for a second before jerking them back to the expanse ahead. “No more talking. Time to discuss after we get through this.”

  Brandon grabbed my hand and held it as we thundered on. Slade was right, the going was rocky as reverberations from the tires tracking over rough terrain shook the whole cab, and we couldn’t get anything like the speed we would have on asphalt.

  “Here they come!” Jack shouted. Then came the noise.

  Some was more muted, a rat-at-at from the other vehicles, but the sound of Jack’s rifle and the machine gun in the tray was deafening. I clapped my hands over my ears, then found I was swaying wildly with the motion of the car. Brandon leant forward, digging through the pouch on the back of the car seat, then passed me a crinkly plastic packet of ear plugs. He passed them around, Slade shaking his head when offered.

  So when the stampeding beasts appeared, they did so in a strange, muffled world. That was a relief in some ways. They looked like some kind of deer, their pelt a curious blush blue grey with faint mottled patterns spreading across their backs and hind quarters. Whatever they were, they ran fast, the first few drawing up to the sides of our car while we peered through the glass to take a look. And then they were shot.

  Blood bloomed on the side of the one closest, its mouth opening to emit a scream I heard even through the earplugs. Its stride faltered, those long slender legs no longer eating up the ground with frightening efficiency and instead folding messily underneath as the animal collapsed. I caught the moment its eyes dim
med from wild to dull and empty before we sped past.

  Brandon nodded to me as I shrank back against the car seat.

  “Fuck!” Slade shouted as the rest of the herd started to make an appearance. Animals streamed through the space between the cars, and the guys started shooting as many as they could, but that caused problems in itself. The beasts grew even more panicked as the screams of their brethren stopped them from just flat out running, causing them to veer wildly and get dragged down by those that were shot. “Get ‘em to stop fucking shooting! It's only making things worse!”

  I tugged on Jack’s jeans a few times to get his attention.

  “What?” he snapped, but when he ducked down, bracing himself against the back seats, he saw what was going on with a quick glance. He put the safety on the rifle and passed it to Hawk, and then stood up again.

  “Aaron!” I couldn’t hear much of the conversation as the words were whipped away by the wind, but I felt something inside me loosen when the sound of gunfire halted. Of course, that wasn’t going to be it.

  “Hold on!” Slade shouted as we charged up a rise.

  “This Dukes of Hazard shit is not cool!” Jack yelped, hands snapping around the headrests as the car felt like it became airborne for a second—that weird, airy, weightless feeling that just doesn’t feel right when riding in a heavy metal cage on wheels. Then gravity got her due, the ute slamming down hard.

  “Well, that’s gonna fuck the suspension,” Slade growled, but pushed onwards.

  “Is there more rough terrain?” I asked, craning my neck and looking out the windscreen. “What’s the plan? Do we just keep going until these things stop running? What’s chasing them, anyway?”

  “Fuck.”

  As if summoned by my words, horse-like beasts emerged from the trees that ran along the river, and on them were what looked like some scary motherfuckers. I saw them for a moment as we zipped past. They wore black leather armour a lot like the Volken, theirs more elaborate from the gleaming silver I caught, but that’s where the resemblance ended. Each was deathly pale, like albinos. They noted our passing and then urged their mounts forward.

  “Heads up, we might have hostiles on our tail,” Hawk said.

  “Of course, we fucking have,” Slade snarled. “Weapons?”

  “No guns, just bows and arrows.”

  “Well, we’re gonna have to hope Aaron and the boys can sort them out.”

  It appeared they were on to it, if the sounds of the guns were anything to go by. I pressed my nose to the glass, struggling to look behind us. I went to lower the window so I could get a better look, when Jack grabbed me by the scruff and yanked me back. I started to yell, then a barrage of arrows hit the door.

  “Don’t make me use the child locks!” Slade shouted.

  “Fucking hell, Jules!” Jack said, wrapping an arm around me and tugging me as close as the belt would allow. “They’re fighting out there.”

  I knew that, academically. It was why my heart raced while my head felt kinda spacey and my palms were all clammy. But sitting tight in the back seat while people put their lives on the line sat badly with me. I had no abilities, nothing other than the capacity to enter a weird psychic space. Really, I was powerless, required to be a good girl and stay safe, and I didn’t like it.

  “There’s something… Looks like ruins off to the left,” Hawk said. “Walls are high, will protect us from the stampede.”

  “Maybe. Make a nice little box for these white fuckers to herd us into as well,” Slade said.

  “We’re gonna run out of petrol if we just keep running. We’re way off course. The map doesn’t cover this place.”

  “Fuck.” Slade nodded and then slammed his fist down on the horn, pointing to the squat brown ruins on the horizon. “Let's hope these fucks are after meat and not us.”

  We watched the buildings get closer and closer, and Slade had to swerve madly to avoid chunks of brick in the grass, sometimes slamming into smaller ones that went unnoticed. Jack’s arm hadn’t loosened as he held me like I was some kind of comfort object.

  “It’ll be alright, love,” he said when I looked around at him, but I saw the tension in his eyes. They dropped down to my mouth, then he leaned over and kissed me hard.

  Maybe he was trying to distract me, maybe he wanted to take that one last opportunity to kiss me before shit went down. It didn’t matter, since it worked. As soon as his lips touched mine, I could feel him seeping into me. It was as if with stress, the psychic space we all seemed to be able to reach for was that much easier to touch. I pulled back, and his brows creased as he stared at me.

  “What was that?”

  “Alright lovers, petting in the back seat is done. We’re going to pull in hard, hope the momentum of the stampede keeps those white fucks running along,” Slade said. “Jack, let the blokes in the tray know.”

  “Done,” he said, and stood up quickly.

  Once he’d done it and was strapped in, all our eyes trained on the ruined building that was emerging on our left.

  “This is gonna be the biggest fucking handbrakie I’ve ever thrown, so hold on tight,” Slade snapped.

  Arms shot out, grabbing onto seats, bracing against the dash, and then the whole world slid sideways. Slade had wrenched on the handbrake, causing the back of the truck to swing out and around in a dizzying turn.

  “Out!” Brandon said as soon as the car came to a stop.

  “Here,” Jack said, reaching under the seat and pulling out weapons. He tossed them and ammo to the guys as they got out.

  “Down here, love,” Hawk said, pulling me to him and bringing me down to a crouch behind the car. “If those fucks come in, we’ll take them out.”

  “You OK?” Aaron dropped down beside me, lifting my chin and inspecting me, as if an answer from me wouldn’t be enough.

  “She’s fine,” Brandon said. “Nothing got through to us.”

  “And you?” Aaron asked, his voice much lower. I smiled when I saw him reach out to the other man, rubbing a thumb across Brandon’s cheek.

  “Never in danger. You kept us safe.”

  It wasn’t just me that saw the smile spread across Aaron’s face. Jack and Hawk watched the exchange, then glanced at each other when they took the gesture in, questions in their eyes.

  They didn’t get a chance to investigate this change in the pack dynamic as the other utes arrived. I searched them as they pulled up and created a little barricade between us and the plains beyond. My heart clenched when I saw the guys pile out, Finn among them.

  “Johnno’s been hit,” he said, holding one of Aaron’s men, keeping him upright with an arm around his shoulders.

  “Hicks, you got the med kit?”

  “On it!”

  “C’mon, mate,” Aaron said, helping Finn lay the man down.

  “The fucking cunts shot me with fucking stone age weapons!”

  “Not quite stone age,” Finn said, inspecting the brightly fletched arrow protruding from the man’s shoulder. “This has been well crafted.”

  “Yeah, well, feel free to congratulate the maker after you get the fucking thing out of me.”

  “Are they barbed?” Aaron asked the other men clustered around. One nodded. “Mate, this is gonna suck, but we’ve gotta push the bloody thing through.”

  “What? Fuck off, just yank the bastard out.”

  “I saw it in a doco. The barbs will anchor in your flesh and tear everything in its path coming out. You’re less likely to end up with a permanent injury if we do it this way.”

  Aaron waited until the other man nodded before gesturing to one of the men to hand Johnno what looked like a bottle of spirits.

  “Get a good mouthful into ya,” said one of the guys crouched down beside him, watching Johnno’s throat work as he swallowed the dark liquid down. Then, as he was passing the bottle back, they lifted his shoulders, snapped off the end of the arrow, and then thrust it through with all their might.

  Birds I hadn’t noticed f
luttered up into the air at Johnno’s screams. I focussed on them instead of the man, but the ragged sound tore at my ears. I felt a warm presence at my back and looked up to find Hawk there. He pulled me to him, holding me close, and for a moment, I just felt that, let my eyes scan the ancient building before us as I tuned out the sound of the men helping Johnno.

  What if it had been one of them?

  Of course, my mind went there, and I felt instantly guilty that that was more important to me than Johnno being hurt. He had family, perhaps a mate waiting for him at home, or maybe he’d get one. He might not go home to find one, none of us might return. I’d been distracted by purple monsters and pack dynamics at Sylvan’s insistence, but that had left a glaring blind spot. I turned within Hawk’s arms, loving the weight of them, feeling like I needed to initiate more of that, and rested my head against his chest as I watched the guys get the wounded man to his feet. We were walking into the lion’s den, and one of us was hurt already.

  “Jules,” Hawk said as he stroked my hair. “It’s OK.”

  At his words, the world dropped away, as if he pulled me from the difficult reality to somewhere quite different.

  Almost immediately, a sense of peace settled over me. We stood on the stony shore of a vast ocean, pine trees growing on the rise behind us, beyond the sand dunes. The sea filled the air with its soporific hiss, the waves tiny, lapping at the big polished stones beneath our feet.

  “This is the place my uncle took me fishing,” Hawk said, looking about him. “How the hell did we get here?”

  “We’re not actually here,” I said. “Brandon showed me. We have this psychic space that those within the pack seem to be able to go to.”

  “So, this…” he bent down and picked up a flattish rock, “isn’t real?”