Ryan
It’s barely dawn. Four hours ago, I was taking a deep breath as I tucked my mate into our bed, and now we’re here, lying low in the grasslands ten miles from Silver, with twenty of my best warriors scattered behind me.
Stars still fill the sky, shining under a blanket of deep navy and vibrant violet. It's kind of hard to stay focused when the sunrise looks like this, the first echoes of gold casting Aviva, in wolf form, in a halo of light. She’s crouched in the swaying grass just a few feet below where the rest of us are lying, hiding in the scant brush and scorched trees. I watch her edge forward a few inches, her body covered in weapons and leather–one of her special dresses from Endova.
A half dozen whispers ghost through my head, mingling with the thundering of my heartbeat in my ears as we watch, and watch, the dozen or so rogues passing by, moving in a lazy formation toward the forests we, and the tribal packs, call home.
‘What are they doing?’ Andrew lies on my left side, his golden ears flat on his head as his eyes lock on the rogues.
I can barely form a coherent response. rogues aren’t usually found in groups this large. Two or three at a time is pretty normal, but any more than that is completely and utterly unsettling. rogues vary in size and condition, some the same height and weight as the average male wolf, but others are much, much bigger.
I’ve never really understood how these creatures come to be. The easiest answer is that rogues are simply… us–but changed. Wolf shifters who give up their souls to stay in their wolf forms forever, but who would do that? And why? These things aren’t wolves… not to the naked eye. Mostly gray and decomposing, they move with a strange click, like their bones don’t fit together properly anymore. Their eyes burn a deep bloody red in the dim morning light as they pass us, a mile away in the open plains, and cross into the forest.
I send a quick command through the mind-link to the warriors I have stationed on the road leading to Silverhide and another all the way to Jacob, who is in Endova with Jerrod’s warriors, preparing to intercept the rogues if they head that far south.
But they’re not moving south anymore.
Aviva lifts her head ever so slightly, her snout tilting toward the East, toward Navvan.
I heave a wolfish breath and watch as my mate rises and starts padding down the hill.
‘Aviva, wait.’
She halts and turns her head to look at me over her shoulder. ‘They’re turning east and skirting through the woods to stay out of the sunlight.’
‘I can see that. They’re going in the direction of Navvan, aren’t they?’
She lowers her head in answer, her eyes holding mine. ‘Yes, they’re moving away from Silverhide and Endova, but I don’t like this, Ryan. There’s too many together at once.’
The men behind me in their wolf forms start rising from their bellies, stretching out after several hours spent in watch. We’ve been out all night canvassing the woods and securing the village and our territory beyond. The second my feet touched the ground in Silverhide, I knew something was wrong. I felt it in the air when I stepped out of our house and walked into the village, which was silent, every window dark and home empty.
James had secured our people in the pack house like we’d planned in the event of an attack or emergency. Everyone was accounted for, except for the two scouts he’d sent to travel to Moonrise to find me. That was two days ago. They never made it to Moonrise. They never made it out of the Deadlands at all, and they didn’t come home. James and Andrew have been watching the rogues’ progress for days now after they were first spotted. Reports of rogues by our scouts were common, but not this many at a time. We’d grown used to sharing the forest with them over the past two years.
But two of my scouts are gone–vanished. Andrew, sitting on my couch and trying to explain what honestly is unexplainable, mentioned how a few days ago, some of the younger wolves had gone out into the woods to shift and hunt and came tearing back into the village saying they’d heard what they believed were people screaming in the Endovian language, the old Firestone tongue. But when Andrew and James went to investigate, there was nothing there, and Jacob relayed that everyone was accounted for in Endova, that nothing was amiss.
Someone is messing with us. Something is messing with my pack.
Fury blasts through my veins. Aviva feels it through our bond and blows out a breath. ‘Let me do it.’
‘Not alone.’
‘You need to command your men. I can handle this.’
‘There’re twelve rogues.’
‘I’m aware.’ Silence hangs throughout our bond, but I can feel her nerves and absolute bloodlust like it’s my own body reacting.
‘Why are they moving together like this?’ I ask.
‘They're on something’s trail,’ she replies and turns back to the sprawling forest below where their grayish bodies are just visibly in the tree line. Just as the sun comes up, pouring bands of light across the plains, the rogues start running.
My heart quakes at the sight. My body rises in answer to their grizzly, keening screeches. Birds erupt from the trees and then… screaming, in the distance.
Aviva’s ears prick up, her red coat rising. My wolves are totally silent right now as we watch the forest in confusion and horror.
‘What is that sound?’ Andrew snarls in my head. ‘That sounds like a woman–’ His voice cuts off as the scream echoes again, sharper and closer. ‘Freya?’
He leaps out from the grass and starts hurtling down the hill toward the forest. Aviva tackles him, shifting into her human form in the blink of an eye, and rolls with him down the hill.
‘Everyone go back to Silverhide, now!’ I shout through the mind-link to the wolves behind me, then tear after Aviva and Andrew, who are still rolling together.
“That’s not Freya!” Aviva shouts out loud as they come to a stop. She has her arms wrapped around Andrew’s neck, trying to drag him back to the ground, but he’s pulling her across the grass in his haste to reach the forest.
Gray figures moving swiftly toward the forest catch my eye. ‘There’s more,’ I say, and Aviva turns her head to the plains where another seven rogues dash out of the encroaching sunlight at a speed that seems impossible.
Aviva grimaces, baring her teeth in effort while swinging her legs over Andrew’s back. She roughly pulls him to the side, sinking her heels into the meat of his belly, and then they’re rolling again, violently bouncing down the remainder of the hill toward a grassy, shallow valley at the very base of the woods.
The screaming hasn’t stopped. It grows louder and louder, like it’s coming toward us. More birds lift from the trees as the canopy sways like something larger than the forest itself is barreling in our direction.
‘AVIVA!’ I howl, but she’s still struggling to subdue Andrew, who is desperately trying to get her off him so he can run toward the screams echoing over us in waves that make my ears pop and skin tingle with terror. ANDREW!
Suddenly it goes completely silent.
“Stop it!” Aviva hisses, her arm locked around Andrew’s thick neck. She hisses with fury as she forces his snout to his chest, pinning him down with her weight. I drop into the grass, watching with my heart hammering as the new rogues stop at the very edge of the forest. The golden sunlight draws over them, showing off their tangled, deformed bodies in a new way. They’re ugly and mottled. Walking dead.
One of them turns to where Aviva and Andrew are lying in the grass, just out of sight.
But this one doesn’t have red eyes. They’re… green.
An uneasy feeling sweeps over me. Ryatt’s words echo through my head, “I need you to be prepared for whatever’s coming.”
Suddenly, Aviva’s standing. I watch in slow motion as one of the rogues in this new group starts creeping in her direction. His wolfish head lowers and his jaws open in a deranged smile, thick saliva dripping from his yellow teeth. Aviva reaches back for her bow just as the first rays of sunlight hit the valley.
I launch through the air, landing in front of her as the rogues split up, sprinting in every direction. Her arrow slices the skull of the first rogue at the same moment she grabs the rough of my neck and swings her legs over my back.
Andrew is a blur of gold through the grass as he weaves toward us, leaping in wolf form and tackling one of the smaller rogues heading in the direction where our warriors are moving out, on their way back to Silverhide to defend the village.
‘Tell me what to do,’ I say to Aviva through the mind-link.
But she doesn’t need to. I’m barreling toward another rogue, a very big one, when she stands on my back and leaps off me, shifting in midair. She sails through the air in her wolf form, shifting again a blade in each hand. She slices the rogue’s head clean off its neck and shifts back into her wolf before she even hits the ground, then she’s off again.
‘Well, what the fuck does she need us for, huh?’ There’s an obvious smirk in Andrew’s words as he slows to a trot, then sits down on his haunches, licking black blood from his front paws.
I watch in horror and amazement as Aviva cuts through rogue after rogue. She doesn’t need help. In fact, I think she might be enjoying it.
‘Four,’ she hums into my head, leaping from her most recent kill, shifting into her human form and sending an arrow through the base of the neck of her next. ‘Five.’
‘Goddess above,’ Andrew whispers in awe.
S-six.’ Aviva slips for the first time, her human body slick with blood that’s not her own as she stumbles back into her wolf form and tears after the seventh rogue, the last, which is barreling right toward her.
Something is different about this one, though. Something is off. It’s not as big as the others but it’s… new. That’s the only way I can describe it. It’s more like us than its counterparts. It moves with the grace of a wolf, but looks… wrong. Just wrong. Everything about it has my powers going haywire as Aviva runs toward it, blinded by blood and adrenaline.
Another blood curdling scream rushes from the forest. The rogue stops in its tracks and turns toward the noise.
Its sudden stillness startles Aviva. She skids to a stop, all of her fur standing on end as the rogue slowly turns its head back to look at us. It opens its jaw so wide I can see every tooth and all the way down its throat. It lets out a similarly blood boiling screech that causes the grass all around us to tremble. The sound is painful. Andrew grunts and buries his head in his chest, and Aviva bows as well, covering one ear with a paw.
She shifts back into her human form like she wasn’t meaning to. It catches her off guard. She stumbles back with a choking inhale as the rogue continues to wail.
‘Aviva–’
The rogue turns and sprints into the woods.
‘Aviva!’ I shout through the mind-link, feeling a yank on the threads of our bond. A warning.
She’s trembling, shaking so violently her arrows are falling free of her quiver. I’m frozen as she slowly turns to me, her face smeared with black blood, and she….
Her eyes. Her eyes are glowing gold.
Andrew gets up and moves toward her. Her head whips in his direction.
‘Aviva,’ I say calmly as Ryatt’s words from several days ago work through my head again, the same question that's been plaguing me for weeks.
I wasn’t totally honest with him. Maybe he wasn’t totally honest with me, either. He could sense what I could feel on this small, feral woman from the moment I met her.
Aviva has powers.
She just doesn’t know it yet.
She bares her teeth at us, her eyes swirling with golden light, and shifts into her wolf form, disappearing after the rogue.