Page 63 of Enemy Wolf

The emergency alert had hit everyone’s phones three days ago. I knew it had to be Orson’s system, had to have been him who crafted the message for everyone to bunker underground until further instruction.

On our second day of hiding, the mark on my arm disappeared. I nearly cried with relief, thinking this nightmare was finally over. Surely this meant the dragon was dead. Or had at least been captured and agreed to release me from its hold. I waited by my phone and as it continued to stay silent, all of my optimism drained away just like its battery.

I watched my phone until the battery died, checking the messages constantly for an update from Howling Death, or better yet, a personal message from Orson himself. The reception in the bunker under the human lodge was shoddy at best, but I clung stubbornly to that hope like a lifeline. Like the idiot I was.

Why should I expect to hear from him after what I accused him of? My trust had already been shaky because of what I had just found out about the cameras, and I reacted with those emotions after confronting the dragon. After more time to think and calm down, I realized how nonsensical it was to believe the dragon over him. Especially if Howling Death had no cause for concern.

I still couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that Orson was half dragon shifter at all, but that wasn’t his fault, was it? He couldn’t help the circumstances he was born into.

And yet…how could it happen? A werewolf with a dragon. The two species had been separated, sequestered by their respective territories for the better part of a century. There had likely been a kidnapping of some kind. Some poor she-wolf had been taken from her pack, her family, and put into a hellish situation she most likely did not consent to.

The strange part was that I’d never heard such a story. We had plenty of legends about wolves being taken by vampires back when that conflict was at its peak. Werewolf blood was supposedly especially addictive to vampires. Before the territories were established, pups were stolen from their homes to be kept as blood pets. So their parents retaliated by killing vampires. This angered the vampires, who responded by kidnapping more wolves for their blood, and on and on it went until a tentative peace agreement was reached and the four territories established.

But dragons had no thirst for blood, so why would they kidnap a werewolf?

Maybe there was no clear why. The answer might have been simple as someone just choosing to walk up to my bar and forcing me into creating a destructive potion for them. Some unhinged psycho and their random unlucky victim. Although it wouldn’t have been so random if the dragon had to go into enemy territory to find said victim. Which suggested that the encounter could have been consensual.

My gut instantly rejected that notion. After the dragons backed the vampires, supplying them with their daywalking drugs as they were murdering werewolves? There was no fucking way. After my mother was publicly shamed and ousted for letting dragons escape to the human world? No fucking way in hell.

Unless Orson’s mother hated her own kind as much as their enemies did, I could never see her willingly hooking up with a dragon. But the alternative didn’t make much sense either.

Round and round my thoughts went, trying to make sense of Orson’s personal history. Trying to reconcile a member of the territory’s ruling pack as being blood-related to an enemy.

He had revealed so little about himself in the time we’d spent together, and yet I got the sense that he had shared more with me than anyone else in his life, including his packmates.

The only thing he’d revealed about his father was that he was a piece of shit.

I sighed and dropped my chin into my hands, taking a break from staring at my dead phone. Really, how could I fault him for not revealing his dragon nature? For keeping it to himself all this time. Fucking moon, it was no wonder he felt friction between himself and well, everyone. How lonely it must have felt to be possibly the only hybrid shifter in existence.

Sick of stewing around in my thoughts, I stood from the crate I’d been sitting on and headed down one of the bunker’s many tunnels.

Bare lightbulbs were strung along the ceiling, some of their brackets loose or gone completely, which made the lights hang unevenly. It was amazing they still worked, considering they’d been installed in the sixties or so.

Since the territory borders were drawn, we didn’t have much use for these underground shelters anymore. The air was stale despite an elaborate duct system that pulled in fresh air from the surface.

And naturally, we weren’t vampires. After three days underground, everyone was getting restless and antsy without sunlight.

I passed by an open door in the tunnel and paused to give a nod and a wave hello to the small werewolf pack in the room. I hadn’t known the Dark Fang pack before bunkering down here, but we had the room, so they were more than welcome. The family unit consisted of Silvan, the alpha, his two younger brothers, Camus and Talon, Silvan’s mate, Ady, and their two pups.

“Going for another walk, Shiloh?” Camus, the youngest of the adult wolves asked lightheartedly.

“Seeing if there’s an update,” I replied. “Hey, any chance you guys have a way to charge a phone?”

“Sure do.” Silvan leaned up from where he’d been reclined on a cot, cradling one of his sleeping pups against his chest. With a free hand, he pulled out a small generator from under the cot.

“You’re a lifesaver, thank you.”

“No problem.” The alpha stood while I plugged in my charging cord and phone, gently rocking his child as he paced the small room. “We’re all waiting for word from the outside world, aren’t we?”

“Don’t I know it.” I headed for the exit to resume my march down the tunnel. “I’ll let you guys know what I find out. Thanks again!”

I gave smiles and greetings to other families I passed, human, witch and werewolf alike. We had roughly three-quarters of the territory’s witches and humans in our bunker, and maybe a quarter of the werewolves, not including Howling Death. The wolf population usually had their own bunkers under their pack lodges. But for the especially small packs, like Dark Fang, who might’ve not had those resources yet, we were happy to share.

At the end of the tunnel, I knocked on the steel door to the central room, which was the largest in our maze of underground bunkers. We called it the command, and it served as a meeting room for those in charge of our communities.

“Come in,” called a male voice from the other side.

I turned the wheel in the center of the door to unlatch and then open it. Inside the command was Bodhi, the representative of the humans without magic, and Griselda, the owner of our magical supply shop, Manticore’s Cauldron, and chosen leader of witches.

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