Page 13 of Mated By the Pack
Vance cares more about the plants in The Tangle than anything else except the pack and our next meal. He’s studied the wildlife extensively since we started calling this place home. Named most of it, too.
“Try talking to it, like you did the treant that was throwing pinecone grenades at us,” Knox jokes. “Ask it if it has any friends that can stop a Gen-Lion.”
“It’s no danger to us. You know that,” Vance sighs. “But it should have eaten them alive last night. Well, I assume the Gen-Lion would have kept it from killing them all, but…”
“There’s something about her,” I rasp, no longer able to find her fresh scent in the air. “Let’s continue on.”
It’s not just a scent I’m following. It’s a pull. A need that burns inside me. Not a human need—most of those vanished the first time I shifted. This is deeper. Wilder. A hunger that coils around every bone. The need to claim. To rut. To mark. Tobreed.
Once we shift and start making our way through The Tangle, I’m in the lead again. Jace is on my heels. Caleb and Vance are behind him. Knox brings up the rear. I’m not sure if it’s wolf instincts or the training we received when we were soldiers that causes us to travel like this. It’s hard to tell the difference these days.
Moving through The Tangle is simple for us. We don’t need the old highway that cuts through the underbrush. We don’t even need a trail. Our sense of direction is better than the GPS we used to rely on during the Great War.
But The Tangle is still full of danger. We were genetically engineered to be the next class of hybrid soldiers. Ironic, since the Class-1 hybrids hadn’t even seen the battlefield yet. Those hybrids carried their genetic enhancements on the outside, like the Gen-Lion traveling with the slavers. Our enhancements were meant to be hidden. We could pass as regular humans—exactlywhat a government that didn’t want the rest of the world to know what it was creating needed.
“We could have overtaken them hours ago,”Jace says through our mental link.“Why do you keep slowing down? Are we just stalking them now?”
This is something that can’t be rushed. She doesn’t just belong to me—she belongs to all of us. I can sense it, even if they can’t. It goes against everything the scientists said when they were trying to engineer mates for us, but I don’t think we’re the same as we were back then. Something changed inside of us after the solar flare. It quelled our humanity and gave dominion to the call of the wild.
“Are you in a hurry to fight a Gen-Lion now?”I reply, continuing on.
Jace doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. None of us want a fight. We craved it in our youth when we were hot-blooded young soldiers, ready to defend our country—or impose our country’s will on others, depending on your perspective. But that was a long time ago. We’ve seen the horrors of war. The pain of unnecessary violence. Felt the loss that came with every grave we dug for our brothers and sisters who no longer run with the pack.
I can sense Caleb conversing with Knox, but I can’t make out what they’re saying. It’s like static playing in the background. That’s how it normally is when you’re not included in the conversation. My brothers and I all share a mental link when we’re close like this, but only when we’re wolves. Caleb listens but rarely responds unless he’s talking to Knox. Vance… Vance communicates with The Tangle itself more than us. He claims it answers sometimes, but I’ve never seen proof of it.
“It’s getting dark. They’ll be stopping soon,”Jace transmits to us all.“We should find a place to stop for the night.”
“Agreed,”I reply, stopping by a tree.“We’re not close enough for the Gen-Lion to get our scent like last night.”
“If we’re stopping, we’re hunting,” Knox growls as he shifts from wolf to man. “We haven’t had a bite all fucking day.”
I look around, feeling the grumble in my gut as I shift. “Take Caleb and Vance. Go east, so you stay out of the wind. We just need food for tonight, so find easy prey.”
“We don’t need to be ordered around like soldiers, Gideon,” Knox snarls. “We know how to hunt without being detected.”
Knox shifts back into his wolf form and cuts east with Caleb and Vance trailing behind him. Jace shifts and helps me prepare a small campsite, ensuring it is clear of anything Vance would be fascinated by. The last thing we need is for him to discover a new plant species. Nothing will pull his attention away from that.
“You’re starting to sound a lot like Silas,” Jace says. “You used to ask our opinion about everything, instead of telling us what to do.”
“I’m not doing it intentionally,” I mutter, kneeling by a tree and watching the slavers’ camp below our position.
“Silas blamed everything on instincts, too,” Jace reminds me, as if I’ve forgotten. “Especially his mistakes. I’m sure he’d have blamed the one that got him killed on that too, if he hadn’t been choking on his own blood in his final moments.”
“Stop,” I growl. “I get it.”
This is worse than an instinct. This is… hope. Hope that our pack could grow, instead of shrink. Hope that nature has more for us than suffering and loss. We had a lot of hope after the wolves inside us roared to life in the wake of the solar flare. First the humans crushed our hope by rejecting us because we were different. Then we found out that The Tangle wanted what was left.
And what a price we paid. Our sisters were taken by slavers and caged. Beaten into submission, so their human owners could defile them.
We didn’t have harmony with our wolves back then. Shifting was painful and exhausting. We were vulnerable and weak after we did it, regardless of what form we were in. Rescuing them cost more lives than we saved, and they were never the same after experiencing that brand of cruelty. Not in mind. Not in spirit. It was only a matter a time before they turned feral and were lost to The Tangle.
“Two hybrids are closing in on the slavers,” Jace reports, pulling me out of my thoughts.
“What are they?” I ask, moving closer to him.
“Minotaur.” Jace raises his head and inhales. “You can’t get their scent? I can smell their last meal on their breath.”
I try, even though it’s useless. There’s only one scent in the air that draws my attention. Her. I don’t know what she is, exactly. Human? Something different? Not knowing is almost as maddening as the pull I feel toward her.
