Page 29 of Mated By the Pack
Knox shifts and the look in his eyes reflects anger.
“Good kill? We shouldn’t even be fighting shit like this,” Knox says. “We can’t even make a meal out of a Gen-Brute. Fucking trihybrids.”
“We agreed to steer them toward the den,” Gideon says. “We can’t do that if a Gen-Brute eats them.”
“Let’s get back to our camp,” Jace mutters, shaking his head like he’s confused. “It won’t be light for a while. I’ll take next watch.”
“Are you injured, brother?” I ask, approaching him.
“I’m fine,” he growls, calling his wolf and disappearing into the underbrush.
Gideon’s already on the edge of feral. Jace is starting to feel the pull. If this thing is following the hierarchy we were born into, and so far, it has, then Knox will be next. Then Caleb. And eventually… me.
These instincts are new to us. Uncharted. I wish Keaton were still here. He studied all of this more than any of us. He was the first to say what none of us wanted to admit—if we don’t find mates, our pack will eventually become a memory in The Tangle.
At first, we thought we’d die of old age. But the years passed, and we didn’t change. No gray. No weakness. That’s when we realized the truth. The Tangle would claim us long before the shattered remains of our humanity had a chance.
“Let’s go,” Gideon says, shifting and following Jace.
I watch them disappear into the underbrush, my thoughts still on the girl with pretty, pretty blue eyes.
Whatever Calla is…
She may be our only hope.
CHAPTER 8
Calla
I’m sitting in the dark, listening to the aftershocks of what happened in the distance. It was Tansy’s watch, but she woke the rest of us up as soon as she heard the noises. I wasn’t really asleep—just resting with my eyes closed, hoping that the noises wouldn’t get closer.
“Do you think it’s safe to go back to sleep, Nurse Calla?” Fiona whispers, flashing me a look of concern.
“It didn’t make it to us, so we’re as safe as we’re going to be,” I reply. “We can’t travel in the dark.”
“Let’s hope whatever won that fight doesn’t come looking for us,” Brenna says, clutching a sharp stick to her chest.
She’s right. We’re nothing more than prey out here. I’m surprised we’ve made it as far as we have, but we can’t go back. We left three dead bodies at The Outpost, and we don’t know if they’ll send anyone after us. They may even send Frank. I don’t think any of us will survive if he’s the one hunting our trail.
I sit up until Tansy and Fiona are comfortable. It’s Brenna’s watch, so she moves close to the outskirts of our campsite, readying her sharp stick like she’ll fight anything that comes out of the dark. I rub the vine that has coiled into a braided bracelet on my wrist. It’s still pulsating with the beat of my heart. I still feel an unusual energy coursing inside me. I don’t feel like I need sleep, but I lie down anyway.
It’s silent for a while. My eyes finally flutter closed, but it doesn’t feel like sleep pulls me in. It’s a hazy, dreamlike state, similar to what I felt before I woke up with the key-shaped vine in my hand. Except this time, there are no vines around me. I’m standing on a patch of scorched earth. It’s so hot my tattered clothes stick to my skin. I look up and see red clouds, trembling with the fury they unleash across the sky in jagged balls of lightning. Several erupt and streak, illuminating the ruins of a city in the distance.
I’ve seen this in books. It’s long before my time, the period after the solar flare when the heat storms raged. Not hot enough to kill. Not directly. Just a stifling furnace that slowly melts life away.
“You’re here,” the wind whispers around me.
“What?” I ask, spinning in a panic.
“You’re the one we searched for,” it whispers back. “The one who can give us purpose. The one who can save our pack.”
The wind howls louder, rising to a shriek as the dust lifts in a spiraling column around me. I brace against it, shielding my eyes, but the heat is unbearable. It is thick and searing, like the air itself is pressing down on me. My knees buckle, breathshallow, every instinct screaming to run even though there’s nowhere to go.
Then there is only silence. Not a gradual hush, but a sudden drop, like the world took a deep breath and forgot to exhale. The heat fades. The air clears. And when I lower my arm, my pulse stutters so much the vine on my wrist tremors—or maybe it’s my entire body that is trembling.
A massive black wolf stands in the scorched earth where nothing had been a heartbeat before. The wolf has tense muscles beneath fur that is so dark it seems to swallow the light. It shimmers like onyx. His presence is too solid, too still, like a statue carved from shadow and fire. Golden eyes lock on mine and do not blink. They glow in a way that makes every hair on my body stiffen at the root.
“Y-you were the one speaking to me on the wind?” I ask, even though I know the answer. “Where am I? What is this place?”
