Chapter 21
The Anarchy Wolf
We run from the Ravage Wolf straight into a group of pledges led by three marquesses and two barons.
The gold stripes on their masks shimmer in the light as they look us over and focus on me.
I can feel the greed oozing into the air.
If they catch me, they will be promoted; if they catch me, it’s prestige for life. Their reward will have rewards.
“Get her!” the tallest one shouts, pointing in our direction. “Bring me the Omega Keres.”
The pledges roar and charge. A black robed mob of overexcited young betas chasing one omega. It’s ridiculous and terrifying.
“Go!” I snap at the others.
“No!” Jarek snarls.
“If we stay together, there’s less chance of us all escaping.”
“Stop arguing,” Jarek snarls. “We’re not leaving you.”
I huff, but I’ve wasted enough time trying to convince him. I throw myself down an alley with them right on my heels.
A deep lowing of the Path’s hunting horn erupts from deep in the city, answered by others from further away. They’ve chased me with those horns half a dozen times. The trick is staying calm even when your whole body is flooded with panic.
There is something primitive about the horns. Similar to the drums they use.
They will come later, I’m sure.
Perhaps I do know more about their tactics than I assumed.
Mordecai grabs my arm, swinging me into a thin strip between two brick buildings. I’d missed it, but I don’t slow down; I speed up, sending myself like a bullet through space. I explode onto a street in time to see the Ravage Wolf leaping for my face.
I throw myself sideways, letting out a grunting shriek. Ava is not as lucky. The wolf snags her around the middle, shakes his head violently as I roll away. I hear the snap of her back and watch as she goes completely limp. Her life gone so quickly in one crunch of jaws.
Legion explodes out of the gap and attacks the wolf, spinning and kicking. It struggles backwards, yelping, and drops her to the ground, ignoring her now she’s no longer prey.
He snarls in warning, but Legion is as agile as a dancer, and his deadly moves drive the confused wolf back, step by step.
“Jarek!” I shout. “Now!”
Jarek and Mordecai come racing out. The red-haired alpha drops beside Ava and puts fingers to her neck. He stands up and rushes towards me. Ava remains where she fell.
“Legion, you can’t win. Leave it!” I shout.
He snarls, his face distorted with rage. He doesn’t slow down his spinning attacks. The wolf is getting over its moment of being stunned, though, and attacks back, snapping its teeth dangerously close to Legion’s face. Black fur flies around as powerful lunges send it leaping at Legion
I look around and spot a small brown paper nest.
“Sorry,” I murmur.
I rush in and slam into the wolf. It barely notices me.
That’s okay. I dart back, pulling Legion with me.
Is that a silver collar in its fur? Why would a wolf like this have a collar on?
Before I can think more on it, my plan explodes.
The wasps swarm the wolf, a furious buzzing, angry cloud intent on destroying what they think killed their nest. The tiny insects glitter like rubies, but their sting can last for days.
He snarls, growls, and snaps his teeth. They aren’t hurting him, but they are distracting him long enough that we can get away.
“Move!” I shout at the alphas who are staring at the wolf.
We haven’t got long, but it’s enough. We climb into the stone building and hide in the back room. There’s a window to get out and two doors that lead deeper into the construction.
“What the fuck was that thing?” Legion asks.
“The Ravage Wolf, or so everyone keeps telling me,” I murmur, trying to catch my breath.
“Yes, but what is it?” Legion asks.
“Another beast that was transformed by the virus and has lived here ever since?” I say, but I’m losing interest in this conversation. I reach into my pocket and pull out the letters from my mother. My breathing slows to normal as I rub my thumb over the worn paper.
“What’s that?” Legion asks quietly, sensing my change of mood.
“My mother was here,” I say with no emotion.
Jarek’s hand closes around mine, and this time, instead of being shocked or startled like I would have been a few months ago, I lean into the warmth, needing it. Is this how quickly people become accustomed to touch, to others in their space? Friendship is pain, don’t forget that, Kaida.
“I’m sorry,” he says, and I think he means it.
“I want to think she got out, but the odds…”
Mordecai crouches in front of me. “If she is half the omega you are, she gave them a run for their money.”
I sniff and squeeze the letters to me, trying to push the emotion back down. I don’t want them to see me like this.
“I don’t know what I hoped, but I guess that she’d died in some stupid and painless way somewhere far from here. Who will remember their names? Hers? Ava’s? Ours?” Where is Cadel? Is he alive? Where did he go?
“The Resistance will, if we survive,” Mordecai says. “We will remember their names and say them over and over. Their sacrifices and suffering weren’t for nothing. Even if we forget their names, we’ll still remember them. All the omegas and alphas who suffered here.”
I hold the letters for another long moment and refold them, slipping them back in my pocket where they’ll be safe.
“Her name was Valryn.”
“Valryn. I’ll tell them,” Legion says.
I close my eyes, and I think I drift then. I’m not asleep but not quite awake. My mum and I are walking, and she’s got my hand tight in hers.
She’s speaking to me, but I can’t hear what she’s saying. I try to keep up with her, but she gets further and further away until my hand slips from hers, and then she’s gone.
I wake up with a start, drawn out of sleep by a familiar nightmare of my captor’s smirking face. To my surprise, I find Legion staring at me. He forces a smile, but it’s dull and flat.
“My brothers disappeared. I don’t remember my parents, but they were just gone one day.
My older sister was my responsibility, but she presented in front of about thirty betas in a market.
There was nothing anyone could do. They just took her.
My old neighbour held me while I screamed and eventually forced a drug down my throat, and he kept doing that every time I roused.
When I woke up, it was all over. She was in Foreen. ”
“What did you do?” I whisper, no longer wondering why he has such deep shadows in his eyes.
“I came to Foreen. I tried to get in. But I was a kid; I wasn’t an alpha in my prime, I was too new, untested.
They beat me and threw me into a ditch. A few weeks later, they rode away, and I approached the city.
I could smell blood and death in the air.
The bodies they’d hung had started to rot, and the four-winged crows had descended on them, eating their flesh.
I stood there at the chain cage in front of that massive gate, and I couldn’t go in. I was too scared of what I would find.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“So you know why I will do everything I can to save everyone I can. Because I couldn’t save my brothers, and I couldn’t save her.”
I shift until I’ve got my legs crossed. “What was her name?”
“Merril. You want to know the worst part? I don’t remember my brother's names, and I don’t think there’s anyone left alive who could tell me.”
We sit in silence for a couple of minutes with story and pain sitting between us.
“You want me to help the Resistance?”
“I do. I believe in them, not in everything they are doing.” Legion chuckles. “I’m not blindly devoted like Mordecai is, but I believe that we can do some good with them.”
“What makes you think I could possibly offer anything?”
“Keres, please stop selling yourself short; it's getting tiresome. You know how they work; you intimately know the Beta’s Fang. You know the Warden.”
I flinch.
“Oh, yes, I know all about your relationship with him. Who he was to you.”
“There is no relationship,” I snap, but there’s something in his eye, a knowledge and pity that has me sitting stiffly, waiting for a fatal blow. How does he know about us?
“There was. And that’s my point; you know you have more to add than you are letting on. I’m not sure why you are holding back, what reason you could possibly have, but I’m willing to bet you really do want to help, and your reason for not is based in fear.”
“Who are you doing this for now, Legion? Who are you trying to save?”
Legion smiles wider and inclines his head, giving up the argument. Unwilling to spill anymore of his secrets.
Mordecai and Jarek are asleep, but I think our conversation is waking them.
“Was your name always Legion?”
“No, my name was Lucian, once upon a time.”
I think I know the name, but then the feeling vanishes, and I can’t recall a single time I’ve heard it.
Jarek rolls to his feet so suddenly it startles me.
“Can you hear that?”
I stare at him. “Hear what?”
“It’s like…” he frowns, but Mordecai jumps up, pulling me up and shoves me through the door just as the wall and ground cave in.
“Digging,” Jarek snarls as he backs away from the room. “I really hate that wolf.”
We move to a different room, but it follows, stalking around the building and working its way in, room by room.
“Any other ideas?” Mordecai asks in a weary voice.
“Yeah, one.” Jarek leans down and kisses my neck. I break out into shivers.
“Really? Do you think it’s the right time?” Mordecai snaps.
“Yes, smell her.”
The alpha and omega frown and inhale.
“She’s strong,” Legion hisses.
“Yes, if we’re quiet, perhaps we can sneak out under a cloud of her—”
“Say stench, and I will stab you with a rock,” I hiss.
Jarek laughs and grips my hair, yanking it back until my head is tilted up to his.
“Beg me to stop?”
“Are you insane?”
“One little word,” he purrs.
“Get off me.”
“All wrong.”
He leans forward, and when I tilt my head away, he licks a line up my jaw.
A fire ignites inside me, and even I can smell the thick, woodsy scent that slams into the air.
The wolf goes insane, roaring outside. Mordecai slams a hand over my mouth and lifts me up, carrying me silently through the building. They move like wraiths, slipping from the crumbling ruin and silently travelling up the street.
I’m leaving a trail of my scent that will lead that thing right to us. I struggle, but Mordecai wraps me up in an impossible hold. There is no way I’m getting out of it.
For the next half a day, we play a cat-and-mouse game with the wolf. It tracks us relentlessly, but the alphas refuse to allow us to lose. They use every single trick in the book.
But it doesn’t work.
We can’t shake him.
My legs ache; they are panting and look exhausted.
“We have to find somewhere to hide.”
“Where?” Legion hisses. “We’ve tried high, low, underground, stone, wood, trees. It’s got a tracker on you, and it’s not giving up.”
“So leave me.”
“No!” Mordecai and Jarek snarl at the same time. Mordecai runs a hand over his face, wiping the sweat off him. Jarek drops, resting in a crouch, but his legs are trembling.
I lean against the wall. “We can’t keep running.”
“Sure, we can,” Mordecai says with a thick voice. We’re all thirsty, and the water is long since gone. He knows we can’t, he’s just stubborn.
I let out a bitter laugh.
The Ravage Wolf appears like a nightmare at the end of the street; it starts stalking towards us. It doesn’t need to run; there’s nowhere to go. I push myself off the wall and take a stumbling step towards it.
“I don’t want you to die here,” I say to the alphas. “Go and help the Resistance. Tell them I died.”
“Not a chance in Remmilow!” Jarek snaps. “I’m not losing you again.”
Again? When did he lose me the first time?
The wolf snarls, flashing yellowing teeth in deep, dark warning.
A deep bass growl explodes around us, shaking me down to the bones. It’s a sound that sends my soul flying, soaring.
The growl doesn’t come from a human throat, nor does it come from the Ravage Wolf.
I turn and stare at the black wolf with the blood red-tipped fur, the wolf I freed in Beta City.
It peels its teeth back and sinks down, its body moving sinuously as it prepares to attack.
Jarek pulls me out of the way just in time to save me as the two of them charge each other.
I’ve never seen anything like it; I can’t look away.
“What is that?” I breathe.
“I have no idea, but I think we might be getting saved,” Legion whispers.