Alpha and Rogue
Kieran POV
The forest blurred into streaks of green and grey, a tunnel of motion driven by pure Alpha power. My paws tore up the earth, pushing off roots and stones with enough force to shatter them. Behind me, the subpack moved as a single, terrifying entity, a landslide of fur and muscle.
The run would usually take a patrol unit thirtyfive minutes. We made it in twelve.
The smell hit us a mile out.
It wasn’t just the iron tang of blood. It was sulfur. Burning rock. The unmistakable, acidic stench of a reptile, but wrong. It smelled like a Draconian who had been rotting in a swamp for a century.
‘Vane!’ I projected, my mental voice booming like a war drum. ‘Status!’
‘Broken!’ Vane’s voice was a jagged shard of pain in the link. ‘It breached the settlement line. We are holding it at the bridge, but Miller is down and Jareth is... gods, Jareth’s leg is badly hurt. He can’t walk on it! Hurry!’
We crested the final ridge, the settlement of River’s Edge visible in the valley below. The scene was a nightmare bathed in moonlight.
The “aberration” was massive.
It stood on four legs, easily the size of a siege tower, dwarfing the farmhouse it had just crushed.
It was reptilian, yes, scaled in jagged, obsidian plates that leaked a glowing, orange ichor, but its proportions were grotesque.
Its neck was too long, thick with muscle, and its tail was a war hammer that thrashed with mechanical violence.
Vane’s remaining patrol, five wolves, brave but hopelessly outclassed, were darting around its ankles like flies.
‘Engage!’ I roared.
We didn’t slow down. We hit the valley floor like a meteor strike.
‘Torin! Front! Take the aggro!’
Torin, my massive Enforcer, surged past me. He didn’t try to bite. He slammed his shoulder into the beast’s front left leg with the force of a runaway train.
CRACK.
The sound was thunderous. The beast roared, a sound like grinding metal, and stumbled. For the first time, it looked down, its burning orange eyes widening. It wasn’t fighting gnats anymore. It was fighting wolves.
‘Mara! Kael! Hamstring!’
The beast snapped at Torin, its jaws massive enough to swallow him whole. Torin ducked, his thick fur bristling, taking a glancing blow to his shoulder that could have killed a lesser wolf. He held his ground, snarling, keeping the head occupied.
That was the opening.
Mara and Kael hit the hind legs. Mara was a whirlwind of violence, her jaws locking onto the softer scales behind the knee, tearing and shaking. Kael was a blur, slashing tendons and dancing away before the beast could stomp.
I launched myself at the throat.
I hit the beast mid-air, my claws sinking into the gaps between the obsidian plates. My jaws clamped down on the thick, leathery muscle of its neck. I tasted vile, burning blood.
The beast thrashed, whipping its neck. It was like riding an earthquake.
‘Hit it! Hit it with everything!’ I commanded, my teeth grinding against bone.
We were doing it. We were hurting it. Black blood sprayed across the grass as Mara tore a massive chunk of flesh from its leg. The beast screamed, stumbling back from the bridge, away from the cowering civilians.
It was working.
‘Jax! Juno! Eyes!’
The twins were on the ridge, using the high ground. Juno was launching rocks with a specialized sling to confuse it, while Jax was waiting for the shot, the leap to the eyes to blind it.
The beast shook me off. I landed in a crouch, sliding ten feet through the mud.
It reared up, exposing its belly.
‘Now!’ Jax projected.
Jax leaped. He was a dark streak against the moon, aiming perfectly for the creature’s left eye.
But the beast didn’t strike with its claws. It didn’t bite.
It spun.
It was a move no reptile of that size should have been capable of. It pivoted on its hind legs, whipping its massive tail around in a 360-degree arc at a speed that blurred the air.
‘Jax! Abort!’ I screamed in the link.
Jax saw it coming. He was mid-air, momentum carrying him forward, but he didn’t panic. He couldn’t dodge, but he wasn’t going to take it full-on.
In a fraction of a second, Jax twisted his wolf form. He tucked his head and threw his shoulder forward, curling his body into a tight, armored ball to shield his exposed underbelly.
The tail, thick as an ancient oak, slammed into him.
THUD.
It was the solid, heavy impact of brute force meeting dense muscle and thick fur.
Jax was batted out of the air. He hit the ground rolling, crashing through the lower branches of a pine tree before his claws tore into the earth, carving deep furrows in the dirt as he skidded to a halt against a granite outcrop.
‘JAX!’ Juno’s mental scream tore through the link.
A jagged spike of pain flared across the Pack Link, sharp, breathless, and hot, but the connection remained bright.
Jax shook his head, a low, winded growl vibrating in his chest. He was hurt, but he was on his feet.
‘I’m up,’ Jax strained, his mental voice tight with pain but steady. ‘Ribs are rattled. But I’m up.’
The beast roared in frustration, turning its burning eyes toward Juno on the ridge, realizing its kill shot had failed.
My vision sharpened. The panic settled into cold, lethal focus. Jax had bought us a second chance.
‘Torin! Flank left! Elara, check Jax!’ I snarled, the command ripping from my throat. ’Finish this thing!
----
Aurora POV
The wind whispered to me first.
It wasn’t a sound. It was a shiver that ran down my spine, against the grain of my fur.
I was bellied low to the earth just a mile shy of the Valdoran border, silently stalking a six-point stag through the dense underbrush.
Every muscle in my body was coiled, ready for the killing strike, but suddenly, the air tasted... wrong.
It tasted like burning hair and void.
The stag caught the foul scent a second later and bolted in blind panic, but I let it go. I stood up, my ears swiveling toward the south. My instincts, honed by eight years of surviving things that shouldn’t exist, were screaming at me. Go. Now. Hurry.
I wrapped the wind around my legs, turning every stride into a fifty-foot leap. I blurred through the trees. Thankfully, I had rolled in dirt and ash this morning to mask my scent and colour for the hunt, but I didn’t bother with Nature’s Veil now. There was no time to be subtle.
Because I was already patrolling the edge of the Forbidden Lands, it only took me about fifteen minutes at full speed to reach my destination.
I crested the final ridge overlooking River’s Edge and skidded to a halt. The scene below was a slaughterhouse in the making.
A monstrosity, some twisted hybrid of reptile and nightmare, covered in weeping obsidian plates, was dismantling the landscape. And the subpack was losing.
I saw the sleek, dark form of the Tracker who was clearly hurt, but he was still standing. A smaller female Wolf was scrambling toward him, likely the medic.
And the Storm Alpha...
He was losing it. I could smell the rage from here, a thick, metallic scent of bloodlust. He was charging the beast head-on, his golden eyes burning with a suicidal need for vengeance. He was powerful, yes, but he was blind.
The beast saw him coming. It didn’t recoil; it braced. It raised a massive, clawed foreleg, preparing to swat the wolf out of the air like a gnat. Storm Alpha was too focused on the throat to see the blow coming. He was going to get hurt. Or worse… die..
‘Not on my watch!’
I pushed off the ridge.
I didn’t just jump; I compressed the air behind me until it detonated like a cannon blast, launching me across the valley floor at a velocity that made my eyes water.
I was a bullet.
Just as the beast’s massive claw began its descent toward the unaware Alpha, I slammed into the monster’s face.
I didn’t go for the throat, it was too thick. I went for the sensory organs.
My jaws snapped shut around its left eye.
The taste was vile, but I bit down hard, flooding my teeth with Magic, turning the bite into a searing brand of fire.
CRUNCH.
The beast screamed. It was a sound that shattered glass. It thrashed, abandoning its attack on the Alpha to claw at its own face. The massive head whipped around with the force of a trebuchet.
I held on for a split second longer, grinding my teeth, before the centrifugal force became too much. I released my grip just as a claw swiped at me, using the momentum to flip backward.
I soared through the air, twisting like a cat, and summoned a cushion of wind to catch me.
I stood between the Alpha and the monster.
The beast was thrashing, clutching its ruined, smoking eye. Black ichor poured down its face. It turned its remaining good eye toward me, letting out a roar that shook the leaves off the trees.
I lowered my head, baring every single one of my teeth. The fur on my back bristling.
I looked the monster dead in the eye and let out a sharp, resonant bark.
’Over here, ugly!”
The beast focused entirely on me, its hatred shifting from the black wolf to the blur of brown that had just blinded it.
I grinned internally, muscles coiling. ’That’s it. Come and get me.’