Chapter 34
AN UNEXPECTED REPRIEVE
I wait for the pain of fangs stabbing into my flesh. But it doesn’t come. Hesitantly, I open one eye, then another. The beast of a wolf who was about to chomp my head off is stumbling backward, a feathered dart sticking out of his neck.
He trips on his own feet and topples onto his side. He’s out cold.
Instantly, I hobble back onto my feet, and Jasper, tossing off his latest attacker, leaps to my side.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yeah, I’m . . . what happened?”
Just as I say that a new wave of wolves comes streaming down the forest slope. I lift my nose to catch their scent. I open my mind to try and identify them. Not a single unifying detail stands out. They’re . . .
“Rogues!”
Rogue wolves in their hundreds—no, thousands—stream past us, taking out what’s left of the Axis Pack wolves in our clearing and thundering through the woods in the direction of camp.
You can tell they’re rogues from their different sizes, varying ages, the coloring of their coats.
Unlike the almost uniform Axis wolves, this isn’t a sleek army, it’s—it’s a movement.
“I thought you said they weren’t coming?” Jasper asks.
“They weren’t.”
Two female wolves, moving a little slower than the others, clop down the hill toward us, one with what looks like a bamboo pipe tied around her neck.
“Mal? Agatha?” I ask, locking on to their consciousnesses.
Mal’s wolf is quite large, with a mix of scraggly gray and brown fur. Agatha’s is smaller, with a long frizzy autumn-red coat. They stop in front of us and Mal nods her head in greeting.
“Blood Wolf,” she says. “And the young alpha.”
Agatha almost knocks her sideways trying to get in on the conversation. “Looks like we arrived just in time.”
“We—we thought you weren’t coming?” I say, completely bewildered.
Mal lifts her muzzle and shakes it out before saying, “You were right, Blood Wolf. This fight is ours as well. We couldn’t let these Axis wolves come to power.”
Agatha nudges her with her shoulder. “Took a little convincing though.” Her wolf winks at me.
“Not long after you left us, I sent out the Big Howl. I hope we haven’t arrived too late.”
“Just in the nick of time,” I say, stunned to the point of breathlessness, not that I need breath to speak via mind-link. “Thank you.”
Jasper steps to my side, his fur brushing against mine.
“Jasper says thanks as well.”
“Where should we direct our people?” Mal asks.
“The Axis Pack is heading east to the campsite, that’s where Alpha Jericho is.”
Mal tilts her whole head to the side, eyeing me strangely, but I don’t have time to think about why.
“That’s where we need to go,” I finish saying.
“I’ll tell the rogues.”
Mal leaps away from the group, her front paws landing on a raised boulder to give her some height, then lifting her muzzle, she lets out a commanding howl.
In the distance and all around, the sound of rogues yelping in response rises through the forest.
Does this mean . . . could it . . . do we stand a chance?
Jasper nudges me again, his head nuzzling into my neck.
“Ask how many of them there are,” he says.
“Agatha, do you know how many rogues are with you?”
She pads back and forth a little like she’s thinking. “Well, we didn’t count ’em. We just took along everybody who answered the call. But if I had to guess, I’d say around five thousand.”
Five thousand! That puts us nearly equal with Walter . . . maybe. I let Jasper know.
Mal trots back over.
“With your help there’s a chance we can win this,” I say.
“We better,” Mal says dryly. “We came all this way. And saying that, don’t you think we should go help out?”
Jasper, despite his injuries, is already scratching at the ground, ready to get back to fighting alongside his wolves.
“You’re right,” I say, nodding toward the camp for Jasper’s benefit. “Let’s go.”
The four of us take off running, heading in the direction of camp.
Jasper takes the lead, knocking Axis Pack wolves out of our way like bowling pins. Just behind me, Agatha has managed to get her pipe in her mouth and blows more of those darts with pinpoint accuracy, taking out wolves as she jogs to keep up.
At one point an Axis Pack wolf jumps into Mal’s path and I turn, ready to help her out, but she doesn’t need my assistance. She’s bigger and stronger than most of the Axis wolves and with one swipe of her claws she sends her opponent spinning.
I do my best to reach out and render as many wolves immobile as possible, though it’s hard at speed.
“Max,” Jasper says as we enter familiar territory. “We need to regroup. I need to know where our troops are so we can send help where it’s needed. Can you do a lap and let me know what you see?”
“On it!”
Like a bolt I break off from the group, sprinting faster than ever before and thanking the moon gods for my speedy legs.
As I do I try to survey the forest in my mind, though it’s difficult to concentrate and run at the same time.
I’d find a quiet spot to concentrate but all around me wolves are squaring off, battling fiercely.
To stop now would be suicide. Luckily, I am fast enough to evade pretty much any of the enemy’s attempts to come for me.
So while it’s patchy, I manage to reform the bio-map of the forest.
It doesn’t take long for me to find Salazar.
His battalion is beleaguered by Axis Pack wolves, the rogues haven’t quite made it to him yet.
I send out a signal to Jasper and Mal, letting them know to assist. As rogues are diverted to help, I continue on, passing more of our troops and instructing Jasper how best to reform our defenses.
At the base of a familiar waterfall, I find Omar and Aisha. From the look of things, the volunteer civilian battalion has been completely disbanded, sent to all corners of the forest by the Axis attacks. Omar and Aisha are all that’s left.
They’re standing at the base of the fall, water up to their bellies, with Axis wolves surrounding the basin of water on all sides.
I skid to a halt and reach out with my mind. Like clockwork, the Axis wolves fall, one by one, until they’re all writhing on the ground.
“Come on!” I shout, and my friends leap from the water to my side.
“Thanks, dude,” Aisha says, shaking out her sopping wet fur as we run.
“Did I hear Mal’s howl?” Omar asks, water dripping down his face, his limp less severe than before.
“Yes,” I say, smiling as much as a wolf can. “The rogues are here. We can win this.”
Buoyed by this knowledge we speed up.
The bulk of our wolves have been driven back to the campsite, so that’s where we head.
By the edge of the forest Mia and Olivia are fighting back-to-back, each as fierce as the other.
Olivia is strong and ruthless, her strikes are quick, and she knocks out her opponents with one fell blow.
Mia on the other hand has less brute force, but she makes up for it with her lithe speed and agility.
I watch in awe as she jumps from the back of one wolf to another, nipping at their necks until they’re completely discombobulated, and finally, while they’re spinning in dizzying circles, she swipes with a single claw at their throats.
“Bout time you showed up,” Olivia says.
“Yeah,” Mia says, springing right over the back of another wolf. “We were worried you were about to miss all the fun.”
They can understand each other, which means they can mind-link too. I guess that’s cool. I’m totally not even jealous that they got there faster than me and Jasper.
The five of us leave the forest, bursting through the tree line and arriving on the northwest side of camp.
Over to my right, the retreat is in absolute chaos.
Both sides have lost any sense of formation.
Rogues, Elite and Rocky Pack wolves are all mixed up with the Axis Pack.
It’s a total free-for-all. The destruction is immense, from cabins with the walls knocked down and windows smashed, to the canoe shed, which is literally on fire.
The ground is brown slush, and everyone is covered in mud or blood––or both.
I can’t tell from here who has the upper hand. There’s too much chaos, too many wolves just biting and snapping at whoever comes near them.
“Little help!?” I hear Mason cry and turn to find him on the bank of the river, struggling on the pebble beach where I once swam with Aisha.
I motion to my little group to follow, and we swiftly descend on the ten or so wolves who are backing Mason into the water.
We take them out quickly, almost savagely, not sparing a moment to stop and think, only wanting to save our friend.
Omar is especially vicious and once he’s dispensed with the two or three Axis wolves in his way, he’s the first to run into the water to check that Mason is okay.
He uses his head to lift Mason’s, inspecting his neck for wounds then licking the side of his face.
Together we bound into the fray.
Enemy wolves come at us from all sides, but we’ve become our own battalion, my friends and I. In a tight circular formation, we move through the camp, helping any wolves on our side who need it.
Near the edge of the cabins, we come across Todd, who takes out a couple of Axis wolves then joins us.
“Hey Cuz, where are we heading?” Omar asks.
Up ahead I spot Jasper fighting alongside Morven, Mal, and Salazar.
I wonder what it’s like for Mal to be shoulder to shoulder in the trenches with the pack wolf who invaded the sanctuary, but I don’t have time to dwell on that thought.
The Axis wolves are reforming an offensive line, a crescent shape, driving our wolves toward the lodge.
It seems every wolf still standing has left the woods and we’re all here out in the open, drenched in moonlight, fighting fang and claw, in this place that’s usually a beacon of hope.
It seems incongruous to me that there is so much pain and suffering, so much violence, when usually this camp would be full of hopeful young wolves just looking to find a soulmate.
I seethe at that thought. At these Axis wolves who are destroying the sanctity of this place, coming for our way of life because of one man’s thirst for power. One man who . . . I freeze in the middle of the battlefield.
While my battalion of friends speeds on, leaping into the fray, I stay where I’m put. I turn in a circle, scanning every wolf in sight, reaching out, searching, trying to find the man responsible for this bloodshed. But . . . he’s not here.
I can’t sense Walter anywhere on the battlefield. In all the mayhem I hadn’t even thought to look for him. But if his troops are here, shouldn’t he be here as well?
Unless . . . Up ahead the Alpha’s Lodge rises like a castle on a hill.
An impenetrable fortress, surrounded by some of our strongest warriors.
But even they’re under attack now and struggling to keep back the tide.
Could Walter be somewhere in hiding, waiting for his moment to strike, to infiltrate Jericho’s room and take him out personally?
Has this whole war been a distraction?
We’ve already been tricked once. Have we been fooled again?
“Guys,” I call out to my friends. “Can you cover me?”
Aisha, Omar, Mason, Olivia, Mia, and Todd make a circle around me. Protected, I dig my claws into the soil, close my eyes, and reach.
My consciousness zooms across the battlefield, ignoring the melee and the bloodshed, into the lodge and to Jericho’s room, which is . . . empty?
There’s no one there. The bed where I saw Jericho laid up is perfectly made, the sheets untouched. A heart monitor stands beside it unplugged, monitoring nothing.
The lights are off and the air still.
Where the fuck is Jericho?
And more importantly . . . where is Walter?!