Wolf pack, p.1
Wolf Pack, page 1
Copyright © 2021 by Mary Beesley
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Cover design by Cammie Larsen
Cover image from shutterstock.com
Map by Adam Gray
To Ann Crompton of Lancashire, England, who lost three sons in World War I. And to all mothers everywhere who have sacrificed a child to the great cause of freedom.
Contents
One - Hunting
Two - Crossing
Three - Gone
Four - Human
Five - Confirmed
Six - Exposed
Seven - Found
Eight - Alone
Nine - Wounded
Ten - Plans
Eleven - Strike
Twelve - Parallel
Thirteen - Defending
Fourteen - Wrong
Fifteen - Strangers
Sixteen - Change
Seventeen - Strike
Eighteen - Retreat
Nineteen - Helpless
Twenty - Ill
Twenty-one - Outsider
Twenty-two - Spotted
Twenty-three - Traveling
Twenty-four - Poisoned
Twenty-five - Solitude
Twenty-six - Walking
Twenty-seven - Promised
Twenty-eight - Mitera
Twenty-nine - Jealousy
Thirty - Mother
Thirty-one - Misery
Thirty-two - Healing
Thirty-three - Summoned
Thirty-four - Deadly
Thirty-five - Dreading
Thirty-six - Bare
Thirty-seven - Family
Thirty-eight - War
Thirty-nine - Disguised
Forty - Sorrow
Forty-one - Preparations
Forty-two - Infiltrating
Forty-three - Peacock
Forty-four - Party
Forty-five - Embarrassment
Forty-six - Guilty
Forty-seven - Impersonating
Forty-eight - Seen
Forty-nine - Spotted
Fifty - Murder
Fifty-one - Mission
Fifty-two - Defeat
Acknowledgments
About the Author
One - Hunting
THIRRO
Thirro swooped low, inhaling the sweet scent of humans as a warm southern breeze ruffled his wings. His scouting loop complete—nothing new in the Elysium camp—he circled north to cross the Rugit River and return to Skotar. The fox canine that hung on a leather ribbon around his neck skittered over his sternum and clanked against a knife handle in his baldric. Instead of landing at camp and giving another boring report to Captain Ferth about the inactivity of the humans across the river, Thirro crossed the border and flew east, the waning moon and laughing stars silhouetting the dense forest.
With his eagle-sharp vision, he spotted a black beast stalking through the trees far below. He tucked in his long wings and dove, pulling up barely in time to alight with aching gracefulness onto a thick tree branch. The scent of blossoms clogged his sensitive nose. Spring was here. It had been a long winter of waiting, but with the Draco Sang reinforcements almost arrived, they would attack Elysium within days. It didn’t feel like soon enough. Impatience revved through his veins, fluttering his wings as he crouched, his focus riveted on his prey.
Inky black scales covered a body the size of a ram. Poisonous horns glinted in the moonlight as its narrow head swiveled back and forth. An iron-toothed crosk on the hunt. A rare sight. Had it sniffed out the Draco camp? Thirro’s heart hammered in eagerness at the same time his skin chilled. He palmed the tooth that hung around his neck. He wore the canine to impress the great chief, Laconius. And Laconius had not even noticed Thirro’s prize. Laconius would take note of this. Only the bravest, fiercest Dracos could take down an iron-toothed crosk. At least in a fair fight.
Thirro lifted his bow off his back and pulled an arrow from the quiver between his wings. The crosk’s scaled skin was virtually impenetrable, the weak spots being underneath, at the joints. From above, there were only two tiny targets for Thirro. The wind shifted, and the beast stopped and sniffed. It turned and padded toward Thirro’s tree. Thirro set his arrow and pulled on the string. He whistled. The iron-toothed crosk looked up, and Thirro released. The arrow sliced into the crosk’s right eye. He grinned as his prey let out a bone-chilling howl. It kicked and screamed and clawed at the tree trunk. Blood squirted down its face.
Thirro fired another arrow. The Dracosteel tip hit the thrashing creature’s brow and bounced off. He cursed. Braced against the tree trunk, he waited for the crosk to weaken and slow. It didn’t. Its claws cut deep groves in the tree harboring Thirro. The beast looked up with its one good eye and snarled out a promise of death. Thirro ignored the fear in his belly and took aim. The arrow struck true, burying deep into the skull. Blinded, the crosk flailed and screamed. Thirro tucked his bow into the case between his wings on his back. He waited. And waited.
Red sprayed the tree trunk and dribbled down black scales. Thirro was hungry. He swallowed as he thought of the warm meal that awaited him back at camp. He yawned and leaned against the tree while down below the beast cried and tore out chunks of earth. It was deep night by the time the iron-toothed crosk slumped into the jagged grave it had dug.
Thirro slid his dagger free. Scanning the trees for company, he glided down. The fearsome face came into focus. Blood crusted over dead black lips. Thirro pulled another knife and squeezed the handles tight. His pulse rang louder than the war horns as he crouched by his motionless prize. He jabbed a blade into the weak spot underneath its forearm. The crosk didn’t move, and Thirro let out a sigh of relief. He pulled his arrows free with a sickening pop. The eyeballs came too. He tasted one, didn’t like it, and cut the rest off, flicking the pieces onto the dirt. He wiped his arrows clean on the brown grass. He’d helped the steelsmith make the weapons, using his own feathers as fletching.
Now for his prize. He couldn’t pry the jaws open without anchoring the body. Talons curled at the ends of Thirro’s half-human feet—he hadn’t worn boots since his transformation into an eagle Draco. The crosk’s scales were cold against the bare pads of Thirro’s foot as he stood on its neck. Panting, he sawed through jawbone and muscle. Grateful for the strength and sharpness of his Dracosteel, he cut out the largest tooth, a serrated barb as long as Thirro’s finger. He held it up to the starlight, a victorious grin spreading over his face.
Fleeing the scene, he flapped up to a high branch. Congealed gore stained the tooth. He left it. Blood splatter was a good look. He untied the fox tooth from the leather around his neck and tossed it to the wind. Carefully he secured the deadly beauty so it hung at his sternum. While he flew back to camp, he imagined the look of pride the crosk’s tooth would bring to Laconius’s face. Ferth would be so jealous.
Not quite ready to leave his realm in the sky, Thirro circled camp, savoring his treasure. Below him, a few night-loving Draco Sang crisscrossed the paths. The fools didn’t look up. They never did.
A familiar fox Draco crept up to Ferth’s tent. There was only one reason Dara would visit their wolf Draco captain in the middle of the night with her vest unbuttoned, revealing cleavage velveted in short amber fur. Now that Ferth’s slave had left him, Dara was making her move.
Thirro grated his teeth, hating Ferth. Even after Ferth had been whipped raw yesterday, humiliated in front of the entire army, the females still flocked to him. Tasting the pain of Ferth’s punishment on the cold air and hearing the music of the crop had been a sweet pleasure.
Dara disappeared inside Ferth’s tent. Seconds later she stalked back out. Satisfaction warmed Thirro’s feathery chest. Rejected again.
He tilted his wings, intent on landing next to her, but storming footsteps kept him airborne. Directly below Thirro, Ferth sprinted past, his sword drawn, his wolfish face hardened into threatening lines, and his golden eyes bright with fury. Thirro flinched, then cursed his cowardly reaction and forced his chin up. He was not afraid of Ferth. Coming out of the shadows, Dara turned to follow their captain. Thirro landed in front of her. She jerked to a halt inches before walking into his chest. She narrowed her honey eyes and scrunched the fur on her forehead in a scowl.
“What’s that?” Her gaze dropped to his chest.
“An upgrade from the little fox trinket.”
Her frown deepened. So sensitive, always taking it personally when he mocked foxes. She moved to walk past him, but he flared his wings.
“Come with me. It will be easier to follow Ferth from the air.”
She hesitated. Then, to his pleasure, she nodded. His nerves hummed as he wrapped his arms around her back and pulled her waist against his own. The scent of fox and female tickled his nose and warmed his blood. As he spread his brown wings, he held her closer and tighter than necessary, but she didn’t need to know that.
With all the elegance he could muster, he lifted her into the night air, into his domain. She let out a low gasp that sent a secret thrill through him. Her head rested against his neck. Her hands held tight to his shoulders. Flying was pleasure. Flying with Dara’s body flush against his was …
“He went that way,” Dara said, interrupting his fantasy. She craned her neck and pointed with her nose.
He lifted a wing and tilted south.
Twenty feet below, three Draco soldiers, swords drawn, followed Ferth into the forest south of camp. Thirro’s pulse hitched. Had the humans attacked? He was itching to fight, put his training to the test.
Through a gap in the skinny spring treetops, Captain Ferth came into view as well as a white wolf, a woman in Elysium uniform, and an injured man lying on the ground. The scent of blood and wolf and human rose on the wind. Thirro inhaled, racking his brain for memories that came with that smell. He flashed back to the night of Captain Jobu’s murder. This was the human with a wolf abomination that had killed their previous captain. And Ferth was going to kill the assassin before he could escape.
Ferth would get all the praise.
Forget that Ferth let a slave escape. Forget yesterday’s lashing. Forget that Ferth still had human patches of skin on his face and chest. Ferth would be the hero. Again. Killing an iron-toothed crosk was nothing to killing an enemy abomination. Thirro swallowed bitterness.
He and Dara watched Ferth rise to meet the three Draco soldiers as they approached, but instead of directing them to take the humans prisoner, Ferth held up his sword. Moonlight glinted off Dracosteel as Ferth brought his blade down against his own soldiers.
Thirro reeled back, squinting in disbelief as Ferth attacked his Draco brothers. Dara let out a strangled cry as the white wolf abomination joined the fight, helping Ferth kill the last two soldiers. Thirro sucked in air. He exhaled.
Ferth was a traitor.
His oldest friend. A traitor. Thirro blinked, but it didn’t change the scene unfolding. Ferth had turned on his Draco Sang soldiers. He’d murdered them.
Ferth and Thirro had grown up together at Shi Castle, sharing a room in the nursery and moving to the hatchlings floor at the same time. They’d pulled pranks and stolen things out of the citadel before they were old enough to enter. Inevitably, every teacher and trainer had compared the two boys. And Ferth always came out on top. He was the son of Laconius—what sharper edge could a boy ask for? Thirro had to fight, beak and talon, for everything he had. His parents were lawless ones. They’d given him as tribute to Mavras when the queen had begun planning this war all those years ago. When the humans had put in their irrigation canals, weakening the Rugit River, Queen Mavras had responded by demanding children from her subjects all over Skotar. Growing up as an orphan trained for war, Thirro had to prove himself to the officers at Shi Castle every minute. But not Ferth. Ferth, the last to transform and still the first to become an army captain, had been given everything.
And he’d just thrown it all away.
Dara’s heart pounded a frantic beat against Thirro’s chest, and her claws dug into his arms. He’d unconsciously risen in the air as the shocking scene had unfolded. Thirro forced a deep inhale, relaxing enough to fly closer for a better view as Ferth set his treasonous sword in the mud and knelt by the injured human again.
On silent wings Thirro stayed out of view behind the figures on the ground. The human woman at Ferth’s side tilted her head, the moonlight catching familiar lines. Dara hissed at Ferth’s runaway slave, Shale. Thirro knew her name because Ferth had made everyone in their unit learn it. He should have realized Ferth was a traitor long ago.
Thirro’s eagle eyes narrowed as gray fog rolled off Ferth. The mist coalesced, darkening and taking shape. Thirro’s body went rigid with shock as a gray wolf appeared from the swirl. Abomination. Ferth sagged as his body shrunk to its weak human form. Laconius’s son, the captain of the camp, Thirro’s lifelong rival and friend, Ferth, had lost his birthright, had failed so spectacularly that his beast abandoned him.
Dara gasped. Thirro forced himself to breathe, air rushing into his aching chest. His mind churned. Horror and glee clashed through him. Ferth was an abomination. Dracos hunted failures like Ferth. Thirro should bring him in. This was his chance to prove himself. If he brought Ferth, the human assassin, and the runaway slave to Laconius, Thirro would finally be the hero. He meant to move, to land with a flourish and draw his blades, but he didn’t. His body failed to obey. Maybe it was the shock, maybe it was the grief painted on Ferth’s familiar face, or maybe it was the pain tearing through Thirro at the thought of losing the closest thing he had to a brother. But instead of flying down, Thirro shot toward the moon.
He ignored Dara’s protests, climbing higher and higher. The wind blasted away his cowardly emotions, his hesitations. As he touched the clouds, Thirro laughed. All that Ferth was, all that he had, was now Thirro’s to take. Wicked cackles pierced the stars. He looked down at Dara in his arms. Buzzing with delight, he kissed her. He ignored her blanched face and watery eyes as he pried her lips apart with his tongue.
Anger flared when she punched his jaw. His head snapped back, and he almost opened his arms to let her go. He tipped forward and dove toward the ground like one of the arrows in his quiver. To her credit she stayed silent, but he grinned at her hammering heart and shallow breaths.
The forest was empty and quiet. Ferth, the wolves, and the humans had fled. Thirro was glad to give Ferth a head start. Let him live in fear a little longer. Thirro would enjoy this hunt. And he would be the one to kill the traitor. After years of living in Ferth’s shadow, it was Thirro’s turn to step into the light. How sweet his revenge would taste.
He shot over the first row of tents. He flipped upright and slammed into the ground in front of Ferth’s door. Dara’s knees buckled. He let go, and she fell. He left her sprawled in the dirt, trembling and whispering Ferth’s name, as he waltzed into Captain Ferth’s private tent.
Thirro’s tent now.
Two - Crossing
FERTH
Blood-piercing fear powered Ferth forward as he carried his brother’s dead body up the southern banks of the Rugit River and onto Elysium soil. Shale and the gray wolf—his wolf—flanked his sides. Through their mental connection, Ferth felt the animal’s shock mirror his own. They followed dumbly, too confused for thoughts of rebellion or escape.
The white wolf, Lyko, led them through rows of sharpened timbers, a paltry defense against the Draco Sang. A three-toned horn sang through the night, and shouts reached them before Ferth crossed the camp boundaries.
Soldiers approached, weapons at the ready. Confused eyes darted between him, the two wolves, Shale, and Cal’s corpse.
“I’m taking him to Captain Titus.” Shale wrapped a steady hand around Ferth’s elbow, fueling him forward, past the silent humans. A group of soldiers fell in around him like prison guards.
Her fingers tightened on his arm. Shale. His escaped slave. The reason his back was on fire from his father’s crop. She’d made it here, to freedom—at least she’d be free until the Dracos arrived. Why had she risked her life to follow Cal back to Skotar? He couldn’t make sense of any of it. He wanted to sink to the mud and give in to the overwhelming pain and confusion, but adrenaline kept him staggering forward, kept him from buckling under his twin’s dead weight. Blood trickled down Ferth’s spine where his wounds had reopened from the whipping. Was that yesterday? It felt like a lifetime ago. A different life completely.
Ferth could not meet the surrounding soldiers’ eyes, not when he carried their fallen brother in his arms.
Not when Ferth had killed him.
No. He couldn’t think like that. It was Laconius’s horn that had gouged Cal’s organs, torn a hole in his side. Their father had killed Cal.
