4. Lynx
LYNX
“Incoming.” Callum points to the compound gates as three bikes roll up outside, waiting to be let in. We heard them about a mile out and it’s always a tense time as we wait for them to arrive. Doubly so when you’re tired.
It’s barely past sunrise, and neither of us have slept.
I follow him down the steps from the main house, walking out into the middle of the yard to meet those who’ve just arrived. Our walk turns into a run as one of them almost falls off their bike when they come to a stop.
Motherfucker.
I can smell the blood from here.
And something else that shouldn’t be there.
“Call your brother.” I don’t wait for a reply, racing across the gravel to catch Flint as gravity gets the better of him. “What the fuck happened?” This was supposed to be an easy run, recon for the weekend.
“Birch,” Jet hisses, getting off his bike and rushing to give me a hand with a now-unconscious Flint. I don’t need it, I could carry him easily on my own, but an injured brother makes everyone uneasy.
I knew that fucker was up to something when nothing happened after our fight at the pub. I’d fully expected some blowback from that, but our ride home had been surprisingly uneventful.
“I don’t know how they found us,” Jet snarls, anger and disgust lacing his tone, “but seven of them caught us just after the Wellsborne turnoff.”
Makes sense, that stretch of road is neutral territory and isolated. Thick forest on either side. “Casualties?”
He grins, canine teeth a little longer, a little sharper than they should be. “Let’s just say they’ll have to send someone to fetch three of their bikes, no way those fuckers are riding home.”
“Good.” The longer they take to heal, the longer they’ll keep out of our way.
We get Flint inside and up to his room, just as Callum appears in the doorway.
“Corey’s on his way.” His gaze darts to Flint. “How bad?”
“Not sure.” Jet starts to undress him, and I hurry to give him a hand. “Fuckers had silver-coated blades laced with wolfsbane. He got cut helping me out, but I don’t know where.”
Both Callum and I growl.
Not at the silver, we’ve got plenty of our own. It’s the only way to inflict damage that won’t heal straight away. But aconite-laced weapons? That shit’s a new low even for them. It’s a hunter method of incapacitating shifters and an unwritten rule that we don’t fucking go there.
At least it used to be.
“Definitely wolfsbane?”
I get a flat stare in return, then he rips open the front of Flint’s T-shirt.
The snarl I let out fills the entire fucking room.
It’s bad.
The whole left side of his body is an angry red, black lines spidering out from a wound that’s about six inches in length. It doesn’t look all that deep, but then it doesn’t have to be for the poison to do its work. There’s a trickle of blood where his body tries and fails to knit itself together.
Sweat beads his forehead. Wolves run hot as it is, but the heat coming off Flint isn’t natural. He’s practically on fire. As toxic as wolfsbane is, that one cut wouldn’t cause him to pass out. Not yet.
There has to be more.
I can smell it.
“Roll him.”
As we carefully turn him onto his stomach, I see it.
So does Jet because he swears and smashes his fist against the wall, leaving a hole behind. “Fuck!”
The stab wound in Flint’s left shoulder runs deep, the flow of blood a lot more than a fucking trickle this time. Just like on his front, black lines cover his skin, but these seem darker, more sinister, and my wolf stirs, unease dancing under my skin.
Corey arrives five minutes later, thank fuck, because the tension in the room is so thick at least two of us are in danger of shifting.
There’s a wild look about Callum and Jet, a subtle shimmer in the air that tastes of magic, and from the surprised look Corey sends my way, I’m not doing enough to ground them.
You’re their alpha. Do your fucking job.
I inhale slowly, letting the scents in the room fill my lungs.
All of them.
Blood, aconite, pack.
I channel the swell of fierce protectiveness that floods my body and force my wolf to relax, to be the steady presence they need me to be. “Calm the fuck down.” I keep my voice soft but let alpha power bleed into the words. “We can’t help Flint like this.”
It takes a moment, but slowly the tension seeps out of the room, the air losing the magical tang.
Better.
Corey eases us out of the way so he can get to Flint.
“Aconite,” he snarls, gently probing around the wound on Flint’s back. “Bastards.”
We watch in silence as he gently rolls Flint onto his back so he can see the rest of his injuries.
I lose my patience. “How bad?”
Corey blows out a breath as he reaches for the bag he brought with him, and I have my answer. I can smell it, taste it, see it in his eyes when he meets mine. “Really fucking bad.”
Wolves heal from almost everything barring decapitation. I can’t lose Flint from a fucking stab wound. “Can you fix him?”
“Yes. But it’ll hurt like a motherfucker.” He pulls out a bottle of thick-looking white liquid. “You’re gonna need to hold him down for this.”
The Wild Wolves MC was supposed to be secondary to the pack. A cover story that allowed us all to stay and live together, but over the last few years, it’s become so much more than that. A lot of the rules I couldn’t give a shit about, but others we rely on heavily.
I call church as soon as we leave Flint’s room.
Well, our form of church anyway.
We don’t need the privacy of soundproofed indoors for this conversation, and considering the tension rolling off my brothers, it’s the right decision.
Out here we’re free to shift if it gets to be too much.
It doesn’t happen often, our control too good to let our primal side get the better of us, but there are still times when the need to clear our minds is too great.
To let our wolf out and escape to a simpler base version of ourselves.
Something pushes us over that line and shifting is the only way to get through it.
Something like hearing your packmate scream in agony as you burn away the aconite poisoning his body.
I can still hear the raw pain in every sound that tore out of Flint.
Energy ripples under my skin, my wolf restless.
What I wouldn’t give to close my eyes and let him take over for a few hours. To run through the forest surrounding our compound and burn off this fucking feeling that something is about to change.
Instinct is a wonderful thing, but not always as clear cut as I would like.
“Lynx?” Callum calls, and I look up to see the three of them watching me.
Waiting.
Fuck, Lynx, you can’t afford to zone out like that.
“Sorry.” I roll my shoulders, crack my neck, and pull my focus back to where it should be. I can’t help but glance back at the house though.
Callum’s hand lands on my shoulder, his bruising grip settling me. “Corey says he’ll be fine in a couple of days. Three at the most.”
I nod.
There’s nothing else to be done at this point and we have too much going on to let it get in my head.
“I was just saying,” Callum starts, and I give him my full attention this time.
“That for aconite to work like that, it needs to be refined to a certain strength and mixed with other things to make it firstly adhere to a blade and second, spread throughout the body.” He runs a hand through his hair.
“So where did they get it from? The Feral Beasts don’t have that capability, unless they’ve suddenly built a lab that we’re not aware of? ”
We can’t see into their compound. Like ours, theirs is surrounded by thick forest. It makes collecting information problematic and time consuming if we want to avoid a fight.
But I like to think we’d notice a fuck load of building supplies entering their place.
There’s one group of people that have both the capability and desire to create and use aconite poisoning against us. I share a look with Callum. “Hunters?”
He shrugs. “I can’t think of anyone else off the top of my head, but why the fuck would they be supplying it to Birch?”
The Feral Beasts have as much reason to hate the hunters as we do. As every shifter does. Or so I thought.
“Maybe they got it elsewhere?” Mal suggests.
He’s sat with his back against the only tree in the clearing, head tipped up as he stares into its branches.
It’s the oldest tree in our forest, the trunk thick and gnarled, but there’s a pull, a strength about it that we all feel.
“Because as much as I hate Birch and his pack, I can’t believe that they’d willingly invite hunters into their business. ”
“No.” I can’t either. “But they got it from somewhere, and if they used it once, you can fucking bet they’ll do it again.”
Low growls rumble around the clearing, mine included.
Birch crossed a line.
And if he’s willing to do that , what else is he capable of? We have a hate/hate relationship with the Feral Beasts. On the surface, it’s the same animosity you’d expect any rival MCs to have. But our feelings towards the Feral Beasts run so much deeper than club level.
“They were after me,” Jet grumbles. “Stupid fucker took that blade.”
He’s been quiet up until now. Unsurprising, since he’s closest to Flint. Seeing him like that has to cut deep, especially if he’s blaming himself, like he apparently is.
And I can’t have that. Can’t let it fester and get under his skin. My own feelings aside, I need him for what we’ve got coming, and we can’t afford for his head to be elsewhere.
That’s how mistakes are made.
“Stop.” I let enough power bleed into the word that he immediately straightens.
“They target one of us, they target all of us. We all knew what we were signing up for when we let you in.” I make eye contact.
His are a pale green, the same colour as his shifted form, and I don’t look away until he dips his head in acknowledgement.
Mal stands, brushing dirt off his jeans. “What do you want us to do?”
“Nothing right now.” There’s a bite to my voice, because fuck, I’d like nothing more than to hunt Birch down and shake the fucking truth out of him. But we don’t have time for that. “We need to be ready for Saturday night, and with Flint sidelined, someone else is going to have to step in.”
“Shit. Forgot about that.” Mal leans back against the tree, one hand splayed on the trunk like he needs the old wood to ground him. I know how he feels. “Who?”
I’ve been running names through my head since we left Flint’s room.
It’s been me, Mal, Jet, and Flint doing these runs since we started.
We’re like a well-oiled machine by this point—everyone knows their roles without needing to second guess each other.
Anyone new we bring in runs the risk of getting us all killed.
Or worse.
I listen for anyone within hearing range, but the compound is still mostly asleep. The soundproofing in Flint’s room did a good enough job of not disturbing anyone. “What about Beth?” I offer. She’s the one I keep coming back to.
Mal’s low whistle raises the hair on the back of my neck and my lip curls in a snarl.
He’s quick to raise his hands. “Not that I think she couldn’t do it, I know she’s fierce as fuck.
” He raises an eyebrow until I dial it back.
“All things considered, can she hold it together enough to get in and out without wanting to kill every fucker there?”
It’s a valid question.
Looking at the others, I’m not the only one who thinks so, and I need to give it the consideration it deserves. In my mind, Beth’s control is strong enough to do what needs to be done without letting her personal feelings get in the way. But it’s not just my life on the line.
And with her past, I don’t blame Mal for having concerns. Every single time we do this, I want to tear them all limb from limb. I can only imagine how much worse it’ll be for her. I lost one of my closest friends to these bastards, but Beth lost her brother.
But she knows what’s at stake here.
“It’s a good call,” Jet says after a prolonged silence. “She’s one of the best trackers we have, and she’s fast.”
Mal nods. “Faster than me. She can take my place and I’ll cover for Flint.”
We all look to Callum. He has his bottom lip drawn between his teeth, and I can’t get a sense for where he’s at on this. “If you think she can handle it without going feral in there, then I’m good.”
“We’ll ask her later. You can judge for yourself.”
Wolves can’t lie to other wolves.
With that settled, I call an end to the meeting. “Eat, rest, and get your heads together. We’ve got two days to get Beth ready. Be in the library for four.”
Mal and Jet head off towards the house, but Callum lingers.
I raise my eyebrows as he waits for the others to get out of earshot.
When they reach the house and go inside, he sighs. “You really going to let this go without any sort of retaliation? Flint could’ve died !”
“I’m aware.” More than fucking aware how lucky we were. Aconite is a bitch to cure once it gets a foothold in your bloodstream. I hold my hands out. “What would you have me do? We can’t jeopardise the run, no matter how much I want to hunt Birch down.”
“I know, but?—”
“We have one shot at this before they move to a new location.” And some won’t make it out alive if we don’t fucking help them.
He groans and grips his hair, head tilted back to the sky.
It exposes his neck, and the alpha in me can’t resist stepping closer to him.
His scent is a boiling mess of anger and frustration, and it hurts to see him so conflicted.
“We’ll make it right,” I whisper, skimming my nose over his throat, my wolf humming in satisfaction as some of the tension drains away.
“After the weekend, when we’ve got the time to plan properly. Trust me.”
“Always.”
I pull him in for a hug, his arms wrapping around me and gripping tight. Callum Holt is my best friend, my vice president, but more than anything else, he’s my beta. I can’t do any of this without him. If we’re not in sync, then there’s a good chance of everything falling apart.