Chapter 7
Chapter
Seven
Feeling my way through the rough, earthen tunnel with nothing but the flashlight on Felicity’s phone was far and away the scariest thing I’d ever done in my life.
With every step, the urge to turn and run welled up inside me, higher and higher each time. Somehow, I found the strength to push that selfish impulse down.
Sure, I didn’t want to go into the Wilds. I didn’t want to face that horrible snarling alpha again. I didn’t want to die. But far more important than what I didn’t want was what I did.
I wanted Felicity to live.
The thought of slinking back to LA without her, of having to tell her family what happened, admitting that I hadn’t tried everything to get her back, was a thousand times more horrifying than trudging through this nightmare.
I was halfway through the dark, muddy passage before I realized that I wouldn’t have to tell Felicity’s family anything. By the time the sun came up tomorrow morning, they’d already know.
Felicity’s kidnapping had been captured live on a handful of social media apps. Sure, there’d only been a few hundred people watching when it happened. Still, if I knew the internet, then at least a few dozen of them had already started forwarding the video around.
The government might have kept the death of Private Franklin quiet, but they wouldn’t be able to keep a lid on this. No way in hell.
Unfortunately, that meant, even if I managed to do the impossible—track Felicity through the Wilds, take her back from the alpha, and lead us back home unharmed—we’d be greeted by a world of trouble.
The government would want to make an example out of us for trespassing on military territory.
I didn’t doubt that for a second. The only question was how tough they’d be.
Would they simply toss us in jail for questioning or go all in and ship us off to some foreign black-site torture camp? I had no idea.
And I didn’t have time to worry about it now.
I needed to focus on the immediate dangers right in front of me. And there were plenty of them.
I was heading straight into the Wilds with only six bullets to take down the most dangerous creature known to man. And Chuck had made it clear as he led me to the hidden mouth of the tunnel that it wasn’t going to be easy.
“The shells in that .45 might look big, but they’re gonna feel like bee stings to a ferus,” he warned me. “So if you’re crazy enough to do this, you’ll have to make every one of them count. Don’t waste your shots. Aim for the head or the heart. Nowhere else. And don’t fire more than five times.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“‘Cause if you’ve unloaded five bullets into that son of a bitch, and he’s still coming for you, trust me, you’re gonna want that last bullet for yourself.”
Dear God. My blood ran cold at his words. If anything was going to stop me, it would have been that.
But I couldn’t back down. Not when Felicity needed me most.
“Any other advice?” I asked before lowering myself down into the hole.
“Yeah. Don’t do this.”
But there wasn’t any other choice. At least, not one I could live with.
After what felt like an eternity, but was probably just another minute, I finally emerged on the other side of the tunnel and took my first step into the Wilds.
Dark and dense, I was surrounded by a forest so thick that the phone’s light only penetrated a few feet.
Trying to orient myself, I looked around for something familiar, a distinct boulder or stream I might recognize from my dreams, but the black night and tree cover were far too heavy to see anything clearly.
I could barely even make out slivers of the towering slab of concrete just a few hundred feet behind me.
Heaven help me if I thought I stood any chance of finding Felicity in this dark, chaotic tangle of life.
But I had to try.
“Felicity,” I called her name…or rather, I tried, but fear closed my throat and strangled my voice into a whisper.
Still, I froze in place and listened for a reply. But there was nothing. No sound at all. Not even the rustle of a breeze through the boughs above.
“Felicity!” A little louder this time.
But the response was the same—total silence.
Shit. I knew this wouldn’t be easy.
Turning the light down to the ground, I looked for any signs of which way they might have gone.
Even though the ground felt soft and spongy beneath my feet, I couldn’t make out any distinct footprints, but there did seem to be a path.
A thin, faint trail that had been worn down little by little over the years.
It was my best bet. Carefully, I crept down it, keeping my steps as quiet as possible.
Though I’m not sure why I bothered. My heart was pounding so hard the folks back in Goldwood could have heard it, and the way my hands were shaking made the phone’s flashlight flicker like a strobe across the forest floor.
It was slow going. Step after step. Breath after breath. With one hand on the flashlight, the other on the gun. Stopping every few hundred feet to listen for any sign of my friend. A cry. A whimper. A shout.
Anything.
But, over and over again, there was nothing.
So I kept moving forward on the path. Resisting the call of cowardice to turn and run.
Then, after about a mile or so, the trail started to fade away. Slowly becoming thinner and fainter with every step until it was completely gone.
“Damn it,” I cursed under my breath. What the hell was I supposed to do now?
Turning in circles, I scanned for a clue to which way they could have gone. But I was a city girl, not a backwoods tracker. I didn’t have any idea what to look for.
To my eye, everything looked the same—dirt and duff, clover and fern. All of it dark and shadowy. All of it just waiting to swallow me whole.
Crack!
My heart nearly burst as the sound of something large moving through the brush sounded to my side. I froze. My eyes went wide as my fingers tightened around Chuck’s revolver.
“Felicity?”
I trembled in silence, waiting for an answer.
Crunch.
Another heavy step. This one to my left.
I pivoted hard to the side, snapping the muzzle of the gun toward the sound. But I didn’t dare pull the trigger and risk blowing a hole in my best friend.
“Who’s there?” I called out. “Show yourself.”
But there was no answer. Whatever was hiding in the shadows went quiet.
Then the growling started.
Vicious and low, the sound turned my guts to water. There was nothing human about it.
And when the long, pointed muzzle of the animal finally poked through the brush, I understood why.
It wasn’t a ferus. It was a wolf.
Big and brown with snarling jowls and powerful limbs, it slipped from the undergrowth with a menacing kind of grace. Its golden eyes locked on me, attuned to my every move as it crept closer.
I’d been so preoccupied with the alpha that had taken Felicity that I hadn’t even thought about the other predators stalking these woods. Hungry animals looking for an easy dinner. This wolf must have sniffed out my fear miles away.
“Go away,” I said to the wolf. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
And I didn’t.
It might be a terrifying animal, but it was also beautiful. And more importantly, it was only following its nature.
Maybe I could scare it off.
Slowly and carefully, without taking my eyes off the wolf, I reached down for a heavy, jagged rock near my foot. But the moment my waist bent, I heard another growl—this time coming from behind.
Two wolves.
Make that three. Another flash of reflective eyes emerged from the darkness behind the first creature. Then another…and another.
A whole pack of wolves.
Seven in total, slipping into my small circle of light. And those were just the ones I could see. Who knew how many more were back there waiting for the first drop of blood to spill?
My heart plummeted. Never in a million years would I have guessed that this might be how I met my end.
But it didn’t have to be.
Rocks might not be enough to scare off a wolf pack, but I was willing to bet a blast from the .45 was. Adrenaline rushing through my veins, I raised the weapon above my head, tightened my finger around the trigger, and—
Bang!
The gunshot was deafening. My ears rang and buzzed as my arm shook with the force of the recoil.
But the blast did its job. The wolves, spooked by the thunderous blast, spun around and disappeared back into the woods.
I could have collapsed with relief.
But I forced myself to stay upright.
This wasn’t over. Not even close.
I might have survived the first test of the Wilds, but I was, quite literally, not out of the woods yet. I still needed to find Felicity, fight an alpha, and get us both back to civilization alive.
And now I had one less bullet to do it with.
At least I knew which direction to go—away from the wolves.
But moving through the forest in the pitch black night without the help of a path proved slow…and loud. I wasn’t going to be sneaking up on anyone when every step I took crunched against the dry leaf litter. Everything would hear me coming a mile away.
Including the wolves.
About fifteen minutes later, while I was stopped to scan the tree line for any signs of Felicity, I heard the familiar snap and crack of their paws surrounding me again.
Shit.
My heart dropped, sinking down into my stomach as their growls swirled around me in near-perfect circles, waiting for the right moment to strike.
Damn my compassionate heart.
My warning shot had been useless. Now they thought I was armed with a loud but otherwise harmless toy. They were no longer wary of me and were too bold to back down.
I should have shown them the damage a gun could do when I’d had the chance. Maybe then the rest of them would have stayed away, fearing the same would happen to them.
But now there was no point. The pack was no longer skittish. So even if I did manage to take one down, the rest of the pack would spring forward before I had a chance to cock back the hammer and fire off another shot.