Feral

by Nicole Luiken

  “Not the first,” Marcus growled. “The plane crash came first.”

  “Tell them what happened.” Chloe touched his arm. “What you saw.”

  While he spoke, she pulled her clothes back on. She was cold, and they weren’t going to be practising any time soon.

  A patch of deep blue in among the bushes stood out from the forest colours.

  It was probably just a piece of trash stuck down there, but just in case, Chloe let her gaze drift past. She dug out her phone and walked a short distance away from the boys and, coincidentally, a little closer to the bush as if seeking privacy.

  She hit redial and got Scout’s voicemail again. “Hi, Scout, this is Chloe from the Pine Hollow Pack.” She took another step closer, pretending to be absorbed in the call. Her pulse picked up when she spotted more blue patches. It looked like fabric. “I wanted to ask you about Conrad Wharton,” she continued. “Call me. Bye.”

  She pocketed the phone, started to turn back to the boys, then dived into the bushes. Branches scratched her face, drawing blood. The owner of the blue shirt squeaked and tried to run, but Chloe caught an ankle. She hung on despite a vicious kick to the jaw, and then the boys jumped in and it was all over.

  They dragged Ilona Novaskaya, kicking but not screaming, into the clearing. But this was a different Ilona than Chloe had seen before. Her clothes and face were smudged with dirt, her blonde hair leaf-strewn, and her eyes were wild.

  Dean stood behind her, arms wrapped around her middle, anchoring her.

  Brian began to swear, a tedious litany of all his favourites.

  “Shut up!” Chloe pegged his shoulder.

  “But she saw us!” Brian hissed. “She saw us Change!”

  “We don’t know that,” Chloe said sharply. “Quiet or you’ll end up telling her our secret yourself!”

  “I didn’t see anything!” Ilona said, still struggling.

  Dean gave her a shake. “What were you doing out here? Why’d you follow us?” His expression was grim, almost haunted. He thinks we’re going to have to kill his girlfriend.

  Not if Chloe could help it. She liked Ilona. But Pack Law was clear.

  “I just wanted to know what you were doing,” Ilona cried. “I didn’t see anything!” She wrenched herself sideways again, almost breaking free, but Kyle grabbed her other arm.

  “Everybody calm down,” Chloe said forcefully. “This is fixable. Ilona, just answer one question, and we’ll let you go.” Well, they would if she gave the right answer. “Okay, Ilona. Just breathe for a moment.”

  Ilona stopped struggling, inhaled twice and nodded.

  “Now then, you wanted to know what your boyfriend was up to. That’s perfectly natural human curiosity. So you followed us into the woods. Then what happened?”

  Ilona shrugged. “I saw you standing around. You mentioned crystals. I thought it might have something to do with my mom.”

  You said she was your aunt. Which is it?

  Another shrug. “I was curious, so I hid behind a bush to listen. Then Marcus started talking about the plane crash and you jumped me. That’s it.”

  Hope blazed across Dean’s face.

  Oh, how Chloe wished she could believe Ilona, but— “You’re lying. There’s no way you walked close enough to overhear what we were saying. We would have seen you. There’s dirt ground into your clothes. You crawled at least the last twenty feet then hid in the bushes to spy on us. Now what did you see?”

  Tears welled in Ilona’s blue eyes. “Please let me go.” Her voice emerged as a broken whisper.

  Dean grunted as if he’d been hit in the solar plexus. “She saw us. What are we going to do, Chloe?” Misery etched lines onto his forehead, but he never slackened his grip on Ilona’s waist. “She’s a threat to the Pack.”

  Why was he asking her? A surge of anger shook Chloe. Fourteen months of being shunned as a Dud, but now that she’d Changed they were all looking to her for the answers. She opened her mouth to say it wasn’t her decision—but that smacked of cowardice. They all knew what needed to be done.

  As a kid she’d secretly dreamed of becoming Alpha, but a terrible weight of responsibility came with the title. She was glad she wouldn’t be Alpha.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Ilona howled, throwing her weight backward and almost overbalancing Dean. “I didn’t see anything!”

  Chloe’s stomach churned. The Alphas would order death.

  No. There had to be another way. Maybe they could scare Ilona into silence. But they’d have to truly frighten her, otherwise it wouldn’t take and somewhere down the line Ilona would tell someone, and if that someone also lived in Pine Hollow and had seen something strange once themselves then the Pack could easily find itself facing a witch hunt. Just as the Pack scorned the townies, Pine Hollow residents had never warmed to the Pack. Especially now with tensions running high over the proposed logging deal.

  “You didn’t see anything?” Chloe asked coolly. “Then maybe we should show you. Marcus, Change, please.”

  Ilona’s eyes widened with horror, then slammed shut. “No! I won’t look.”

  She had seen, then. Why else would she be so alarmed? “Dean, make her open her eyes. Marcus, wait until she’s looking, then Change.”

  Marcus didn’t understand why Chloe wanted him to Change in front of the blonde girl, but he obeyed his Alpha. He was already stripped down to his underwear. Dean threatened to poke out the girl’s eyes unless she opened them. Once she was watching, he Changed.

  Taking wolf form was a pleasure. He looked to his Alpha for instructions.

  “Show her what we are,” Chloe said. She smelled sad.

  Marcus growled and raised his hackles, advancing forward on the shrinking girl who always smelled of horses. Except today she was terrified and sweating, all the horse smell melting away. He stuck his nose in the sweat stain under her arm. She squealed, but all he did was take a good long sniff.

  Marcus Changed back.

  Chloe snarled at the horse girl. “That is what we are, all of us. And if you tell, we’ll tear you to pieces. Understand?”

  “She won’t tell,” Marcus said with absolute certainty.

  Dean looked at him with naked hope. “How can you be sure?”

  Marcus answered matter-of-factly. “She won’t tell because she’s a werewolf, too.”

  chapter

  20

  Ilona, a werewolf? Chloe tried to conceal her shock. Not that she doubted Marcus. If he said Ilona was a werewolf, then she was one.

  “What?” Dean’s jaw went slack in surprise, then his eyes brightened with hope. He hugged Ilona and sniffed her neck. Ilona bit her lip, looking dismayed, but didn’t object. “She’s one of us!” Dean pronounced triumphantly.

  Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. They hadn’t exposed their secret to a townie. They wouldn’t have to kill Ilona.

  But they were forgetting something. “She’s not Pack,” Chloe pointed out.

  “Nobody’s going to hurt her,” Dean said fiercely. “Nobody’s going to touch her.” He growled a warning.

  “Nobody’s going to hurt her,” Chloe agreed. “But she does owe us an explanation.” She met Ilona’s gaze. “Are you spying for another Pack?” Like the Quesnel Pack? She tried to remember when Ilona had moved to Pine Hollow—about two years ago? Did that predate Quesnel’s resettlement troubles or not?

  “I don’t have a Pack.” Ilona’s gaze darted around nervously.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Dean asked. His arms still encircled her waist, and he sniffed her neck again in obvious satisfaction. “Now my dad can’t forbid us to date.”

  “Yes, Ilona, why didn’t you tell us?” Chloe put her hands on her hips. “And why the horse perfume?”

  Ilona pressed a little deeper into Dean’s embrace. “Some Packs drive out lone wolves.”

  “So what? You wanted to be in tight with us before you asked to join our Pack?” Chloe asked.

  Ilona’s chin lifted. �
�Basically, yes.”

  But there must be more to it than that. Ilona had lived in Pine Hollow too long and—Chloe’s heart jolted—Basia, Ilona’s mother/aunt, had made the crystal necklaces.

  “So, how did you become a lone wolf in the first place?” Chloe kept her tone friendly and interested. “What Pack were you born into?”

  Ilona’s lips twisted. “I never had a Pack. My mom’s Pack was wiped out by a mudslide while she was pregnant with me. She took refuge with another Russian Pack, but they never really accepted her or me. We were tolerated, but that’s it. We were permanently bottom of the Pack hierarchy, always hungry. And then—then my mom died, and I left the Pack with Basia.” The corners of her lips turned down. “I want to belong, but not if it means being low-rank forever.”

  Dean hugged her again. “That won’t happen.”

  “So Basia is a werewolf, too?” Chloe asked.

  A slight hesitation. “Yes.”

  “Then why is she on the loggers’ side?”

  Ilona shrugged. “You would have to ask her.”

  “What about the crystals? Did she really heal Olivia?”

  “Basia thinks so.”

  “What do the crystals do?”

  Another shrug. “Different types have different effects supposedly. Ask Basia, not me.”

  Ilona was being evasive. She knew more than she was telling. Chloe knew it, but she didn’t know how to get Ilona to tell the truth.

  Already Dean was giving her stink eye, apparently not liking the hard tone of her voice. “Well, I think it’s really amazing how you fooled all of us with the horse scent. How’d you pull that off?” he asked. “Most horses hate us.”

  While Ilona answered, Chloe’s phone rang. She glanced at the screen: Scout returning her call.

  “Excuse me.” She took a few steps away before answering. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Chloe,” Scout said breezily. “Congrats on your first Change.”

  Wow. He really was a gossip. “Thank you.”

  “So what’s up?”

  “Just a quick question. The day we met, you called Conrad Wharton by a different name. What was it?”

  He took a moment to respond. “Did I? Must have been mistaken.”

  Chloe started to pace. “I don’t think you were. I think he changed his name.”

  “Listen, Chloe, we received word that Conrad Wharton is your new Alpha. I don’t want to damage relations with him by spreading rumours.”

  Crap. He was going to hang up.

  She lowered her voice. “He may have been involved in my friend’s murder. Please.”

  Scout paused again, then sighed. “Okay, kid, but you didn’t hear any of this from me. I first met him as Bill Josephs. He was with an American Pack, I don’t remember which one, but I do remember one of the European delegates pointing him out and saying he’d been kicked out of a Russian Pack and gone by a different name there, too. And don’t ask me the other name, I really don’t remember.”

  Russian. Chloe played a hunch. “Was it Novaskaya?”

  Scout paused in surprise. “Actually, I think it was. Josef Novaskaya. Huh.”

  Marcus gravitated to her side as soon as she rejoined the group. Ilona was describing how she’d spent hours and hours accustoming one particular horse to her scent, then gone for a ride every morning and kept a sweaty horse blanket in her locker for emergencies.

  “Very clever,” Chloe said truthfully. “But when you were telling us about your old Pack you skipped part of your story.”

  “Like what?” Ilona’s nostrils flared. “Like how my mother had to sleep around to keep us from being kicked out? Like how the male wolves were starting to eye me and the female Alpha turned a blind eye?”

  The pain in her voice set hooks in Chloe’s heart. Chloe growled. “I promise that won’t happen to you here. That’s not the way a proper Pack is run. Feel free to break up with Dean anytime you want to.”

  “Hey!” Dean protested. “I’m standing right here.”

  Ilona nodded, thoughtful, but stayed in his embrace.

  Chloe hardened her heart. She couldn’t let pity blind her to the lies Ilona had told and was still telling. “What was your uncle doing while you and your mom were treated so badly?”

  “He ignored us. Pretended we weren’t even related—” Ilona stopped, eyes widening at what she’d let slip.

  “But you all left the Pack together: you, your aunt and your Uncle Josef,” Chloe guessed.

  “Yes.” Ilona pressed her lips together.

  “So why didn’t your uncle—Josef Conrad Wharton—bring you and Basia in with him when he joined our Pack?”

  “Wait. Coach is your uncle?” Dean asked.

  Chloe continued to stare at Ilona. “Answer the question.”

  A shrug. “He wanted to wait until he was established before bringing me—I mean, us—in.”

  “He’s been part of the Pack for over two years. He became Alpha last night. Seems pretty well established to me. And yet here you are, still spying on us.” Chloe circled around. Ilona’s gaze followed her warily, even as she nestled deeper against Dean. Chloe wasn’t buying her helpless act. “What’s his plan? Is he going to have Basia step in as Alpha after Judy’s mother has a convenient relapse?”

  Ilona sneered, but bitterness and helplessness showed through her expression. Her fists were clenched. “Why should I tell you?”

  Chloe got right up in her face, consciously trying to Dominate the other girl. “Because something is endangering my Pack, something to do with your uncle and aunt and those stupid harmonic crystal necklaces. And if you don’t tell me what’s going on I will hurt you.”

  Ilona looked down, losing the Dominance contest. “I can’t tell you.”

  “My mom has a purple crystal. What does it do?”

  Ilona barked out a harsh laugh. “The crystals don’t do anything.”

  Liar. Chloe opened her mouth, but then her brain twigged to the emphasis Ilona had put on it. The crystals didn’t do anything; they were just for show. It was the other part of the necklace that was important: the chain. She inhaled sharply. “The silver. In the stories werewolves are always killed with silver bullets. Silver doesn’t poison us on contact, but maybe it does something else, makes us vulnerable to witches.”

  From Ilona’s expression she’d got it right. “Silver collars for all the little wolves,” Ilona said, mockingly.

  “Your aunt is controlling the Pack with the silver.” Another guess framed as a statement.

  Rage flushed Ilona’s face. “She’s not—” Her words choked off. Ilona clawed at her neck.

  Too late Chloe realized the danger. “She’s wearing a silver necklace! Get it off her!” She yanked open the collar of Ilona’s western-style shirt. A silver chain writhed around her neck, choking off her air.

  Ilona fell back against Dean, gasping. Her face quickly turned red.

  “Do something!” Dean yelled.

  Chloe tried to pull the chain away, but it burned her fingers. Worse, the chain had sunk into Ilona’s flesh. Her nails were too short to grab it.

  Ilona’s body went limp. Dread seized Chloe as he lowered her to the ground. Had Ilona passed out or was she dead?

  The chain loosened, and Ilona’s chest rose in a deep breath.

  Chloe backed off, afraid to touch the chain, afraid any attempt to take it off would make it tighten up again. Chills raced up and down her arms, and her hands shook in reaction. Ilona had almost died right there in front of everybody.

  Chloe flashed on the way her mom’s hand had gone to her own necklace when Chloe had asked too many questions. Had her chain started to choke her?

  “I’m confused,” Brian complained. “Is anyone else confused?”

  Chloe ignored him.

  Marcus stood rigid beside her. “I remember.” His voice rasped. “The necklace Coach gave Abby—it was silver like that. While Mom was trying to do a dead-stick landing, Abby started to choke. Dad tried to help her. Maybe he hit som
ething getting out of his seat, or maybe he just distracted Mom at the wrong moment, but that’s why the plane crashed.”

  Chloe slipped an arm around his waist, wordlessly offering what comfort she could. Poor doomed Abby.

  It began to sink in that they were in serious trouble. Olivia wore a collar and had forced collars on most of the adult Pack members. Maybe even Judy and Nathan. Chloe and the boys were free, but Dean, Kyle and Brian all bore the Pack Bite and would have to submit to the Alpha, if given a direct command. Or did the fact that Nathan gave them their Bite mean they could resist? Nah. If that were true, Coach would no doubt have insisted on Biting them all last night. So only she and Marcus were rogue agents—and the Alphas thought Chloe was under control.

  Which was why the Novaskayas had attempted to get Marcus shot yesterday. It was no coincidence that Basia had been on the spot with her hunter friend.

  What did Basia and Coach want? Just to take over? Chloe remembered the conversation her parents had had about their credit cards. Money, then. Maybe power.

  Ilona would know, but Ilona couldn’t tell them.

  As soon as Ilona went home, Coach and Basia would know that Chloe knew. Worse, they would know that Chloe’s Bite had healed.

  Chloe started to pace in tight circles, growling under her breath. Her heart beat under her breastbone like a bird trapped in a cage. They were so screwed.

  “What’s wrong?” Marcus asked her when they were a little distance away from the others.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Chloe said in a low voice. “We have to save the Pack, but I don’t want to throw Ilona under a bus either.” Ilona was a victim, too, and another werewolf. And somewhere along the way, when Chloe wasn’t looking, she’d also become a friend.

  “You want to protect both,” Marcus said quietly.

  “Yes.”

  “Then make Ilona Pack. Bite her.”

  Chloe stared at him, open-mouthed. He said it so simply, as if the solution were obvious.

  Maybe it was.

  Chloe was no Alpha, but she was more Dominant than Ilona. It might work. And it was better than the alternative: keeping Ilona prisoner. Besides, they desperately needed the insider knowledge Ilona had.