The Silver Siren

Chapter 8

The wind whipped through my fur and the moonlight lit a path for us through the trees. The first rogue came into view. Of all the ways I had imagined I would meet my mate; this didn’t even crack the top 100. Cole was right. There were dozens of them. At least 35, maybe even more. As more came into view as we got closer, we came to a stop about 200 yards from them. None of them were moving, they were all standing still. This was weird. They must have heard us approach, yet they did not register our presence here or defend their position. I surveyed the scene, trying to figure out what was ging on. It was truly bizarre. I looked left and right briefly. It looked like they were in a circle, just standing there with their backs to us. But where was my mate?

The rest of the warriors gathered around, waiting for their next instruction. The rogues were still, seemingly still unaware that we had arrived. Not able to see past them, I honed into my senses to find her. I could still smell her, it was strong. But I also heard fighting. Wolves whimpering and snarling and growling coming from inside the circle. These rogues were spectating a battle. My mate could be one of these rogues, but more worrying was the possibility that she could be inside the circle being attacked right now! I wasn’t prepared to wait any longer to find out, so I signalled the pack to approach and start to take out the rogues.

The warriors started to move forward, flanking around the circle, when an enormous beam of blinding light poured out from inside the circle, filling the forest. The next thing we knew, every single wolf was thrown back by a surge of energy, knocking us all down. I bundled into Brad as we hit a tree. Hard. I checked that Brad was uninjured. He just had the wind knocked out of him but was otherwise ok.

“What the f**k is going on?” I asked Brad, looking around to check if the other warriors were ok. Thankfully nobody was hurt and were all getting up on their paws again.

“Whoa,” he said, scrambling to get up. The light was so bright we had to look away. Then the light disappeared, as quickly as it had arrived, leaving only a small beam of light shooting straight up towards the stars. Feeling it was safe to approach, I signalled the pack to follow. What greeted us was a scene of utter devastation. A sea of rogues lying in amongst the forest floor, strewn about in small piles of bodies, draped over logs, even one hanging from the branch of a tree. Most of them were still alive, I could hear them breathing. Most were unconscious and a few of them were dead.

Warriors started checking them and securing the ones that were alive. We would need to take them to the dungeons and interrogate them later. I was drawn to the shaft of light. And that’s where I found her.

“Mate” I told Maddox. He howled. The most beautifully coloured silver wolf stood at the base of the beam of light. Most wolves were brown unless they were ranked. I had never seen this colour wolf before in the flesh, it was rare. She stood with her back to me, and it almost looked like the beam of light was holding her up. Her paws were barely touching the ground and as the light started to recede, she collapsed on the ground. We got to her in seconds. Maddox nudged her and nuzzled into her bright silver fur to try to rouse her. Powerful sparks shocked through Maddox making us feel complete. He whined when she didn’t wake up. The light had completely gone now and she started to shift back to human.

When her shift was complete, we quickly checked her body for wounds and spotted some gun shot wounds. s**t. I bent down to sniff one of the entry wounds. Silver bullets. Rogues were famous for them. She looked so small in a little pile in front of my wolf. I shifted to human form and took my t-shirt to cover her up. I carefully pulled it over her head and get her limp arms through the arm holes. It swamped her. I checked her breathing. It sounded rhythmic and steady, almost as if she were sleeping. Her hair was long, snaking around the curves of her upper body. It was brown. Same as in my dream. And she was small, she can’t be more than 5 feet tall. It couldn’t be a coincidence. I was too worried about her to analyse it now though.

“Brad,” I shouted to him. He ran over, still in wolf form. “Round up all the survivors. Mind link an update to the Alpha and tell him we will be bringing in the survivors to the dungeons. Burn the dead bodies. I’m taking my mate to the hospital. She’s been shot with silver bullets.”

“Oh, man,” he said, mind linking me back. “I’ve already updated the Alpha. He has sent some reinforcements and an ambulance for Ben. Are you sure you don’t want to wait for the ambulance for her? Is she ok?”

“No. It will be quicker if I take her back to the hospital now. She’s breathing and showing some signs of healing already,” I explained. I had noticed that the bleeding had already stopped around the bullet wounds when I had put my shirt on her. And some minor scratch marks and bruises had already disappeared. Werewolves had accelerated healing abilities, but this was nothing I’d ever seen before.

“How can that be if she was shot with silver bullets?” he asked.

“I have no idea. I have no idea about anything that happened here,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

“The forcefield that threw us back must have come from her. That shaft of light was coming from her, right?” Brad asked.

“Yeah, it was. How did she manage to conjure a forcefield? Is that even possible for a werewolf?” I asked, puzzled.

“It is possible, but I’ve only read about these types of powers,” he said, “But it doesn’t make sense, they are extinct.”

“What are?” I asked.

“Sirens,” he said.

I’d only ever briefly heard about sirens once, many years ago when some Elders were visiting the pack. So I knew virtually nothing about them, except that they were, as Brad said, thought to be extinct. This was getting weirder by the minute.

“I don’t know what is going on, but we will have to find out later. I need to get her to the hospital and talk to Dad”

“Sure,” he said, “I’ll update you once we have all the rogues back to the holding cells. There’s 28 still alive. Assuming she was the only victim here, she killed 6 before she knocked the rest out with the forcefield. Some of them are coming to now.”

Whoa. She was so small. How did she do that? I shifted back to my wolf. If I was going to get her back to the hospital quickly, running in wolf form was going to be the quickest way. I nudged my head underneath her small frame and scooped her up over my shoulders until she was settled across my back. Brad quickly shifted to human and helped secure her by tying my sweatpants around both of us so that she wouldn’t fall off whilst I was at top speed. I would have to run carefully but it would be much quicker than waiting for the ambulance. Her long hair flopped down and tickled my sides and her glorious scent wrapped around me. Maddox was purring his delight and we started towards the hospital. Thankfully, the hospital was slightly closer than the main entrance to the packhouse. Running as smoothly as I could, I mind linked the doctor at the hospital, so he knew to expect us soon.

Running towards the hospital, I had a brief moment to try and figure out what just happened. I couldn’t make sense of it. As much as I had anticipated an attack at some point, I never for one moment could have imagined the events of tonight would unfold the way they did. Until she woke up, we could only guess what had happened and only she could answer some of the many questions I had. And as strange as the night had been, nothing could wipe the smile off my face at finding my mate. I felt like a completely different person. All the anxiety and unsettledness had vanished. Finally I could think straight.

The hospital wing came into view soon, as it was based on the north side of the packhouse grounds, adjoined by a direct corridor to the packhouse. I couldn’t see anybody to help unstrap her so, to not waste any more time, I laid down on the floor so she wouldn’t fall and shifted back to human. She slipped softly to the floor. I untied the sweatpants from around her and threw them on and picked her up, holding her close to me. She was still breathing steadily. I walked through the doors and the doctor and a nurse were waiting with a gurney. I gently laid her on it, instantly feeling the loss of contact with her. I didn’t want to let her go, but I knew she needed to be treated. She was still unconscious, so the doctor looked to me for information.

“Reece, what happened?” he asked. Doctor Stevens was an older guy and had been working at the hospital for as long as I could remember. Good friends with my dad, I knew him well and trusted him to look after my mate.

“We were called to a rogue attack. When we arrived, she was unconscious and had been shot with silver bullets, but they look like they have already begun healing,” I said, and he looked confused. “I don’t know her name or how old she is, but I do know that she is my mate.”

The Doc looked at me and a gentle smile crept onto his lips. “Congratulations,” he said softly.

“There is something else I think you should know. We think she is a siren,” I told the Doc.

“How can that be?” he gasped, “They are thought to be extinct!”

“I have no idea, Doc. We are going to have to wait for her to wake up to give us those answers.”

He looked down and found her wounds underneath the shirt. “We’ll have to remove these bullets as soon as possible. Her healing powers are indeed accelerated. If we leave them in any longer, the wounds will close completely with the bullets still inside her. You did the right thing bringing her straight in, Reece,” he said. They wheeled her to a treatment room. The nurse began rummaging around in storage cupboards, quickly gathering the equipment they would need to remove the bullets. The Doc scrubbed up and began the procedure, expertly plucking two large silver bullets from her delicate body, one from her shoulder and one just below her ribcage.

“She has been extremely lucky. Both bullets missed all the vital organs and vessels,” he said, cleaning out the would tracks to prevent infection. He looked puzzled as he examined the wounds.

“What is it, Doc?” I asked moving closer to the gurney.

“I can’t see any burns from the silver. The wound tracks are completely clean and have already started healing,” he explained.

“How is that possible? They are definitely silver bullets,” I said, confused. Silver burns werewolf flesh on contact causing painful and extensive injuries the longer the silver is in contact with flesh. In the case of silver bullets, once inside the body, they begin to poison the bloodstream. The longer they are in, the worse the poison gets, and healing times are extended because of it.

Doctor Stevens finished cleaning the wounds and taped some gauze over each of them. “Before their believed extinction, sirens were very rare. I only ever knew of two sirens within this pack, and a handful of others I met at other packs across the country. I never met the sirens in our pack, our paths never crossed. As you know, an average werewolf has far more speed and strength than that of an average human. And of course we have our healing abilities which allows us to heal quicker than humans. For sirens, these abilities are amplified tenfold. Each siren was also blessed with a special gift, a power, directly from the Moon Goddess. Hers could be an immunity to silver. It’s one of the known gifts they could possess. But there are also unknown gifts too.”

“That makes sense. We were responding to a rogue attack. When we got there, she had already killed several rogues and as we approached, we think she let off a forcefield that knocked the rest unconscious. It also knocked us all off our feet too, but we weren’t injured as we were much further away than the rogues were,” I explained.

“What do you mean, forcefield?” the Doc asked. His face had lost all colour and he looked like he had just seen a ghost. I had the feeling he already knew the answer but needed it confirmed with words.

“We were knocked back by a surge of energy and light. When we managed to get closer, the light faded except for a beam of light coming from her, then she collapsed unconscious and shifted back to human,” I explained.

“Oh my Goddess! She has two gifts!” he gasped, “This is extraordinary.”

“Two gifts? But you said sirens only got one gift each from the Moon Goddess,” I asked. This was getting confusing. What was he trying to say?

“If I’m correct, it means she is extremely powerful, Reece. Far more powerful than you,” he said, “And that is the reason for their presumed extinction”

The doors to the hospital burst open and Cole and another warrior wheeled Ben in on a gurney. He had regained consciousness but looked like hell. He had also been shot with silver bullets and was suffering the effects of it. Deep s***h marks covered his neck and arms, his clothes in tatters. And he was covered in his own blood.

“We’ll pick this up later, Reece. I need to get those bullets out of Ben. Now.” The Doc rushed over to treat Ben. He was weak and the silver was damaging his body with every second that passed. I stayed with my mate and tried to process everything that the Doc had said. The nurse stayed with us, and I helped her put a hospital gown on my mate. I took the t-shirt she had been wearing and put it over my head. It was covered with her scent and calmed my nerves, allowing me to think coherently among all the chaos of this evening. When the hospital gown was on, I laid her down and covered her with a blanket.

“I’ll come and check on her shortly,” the nurse said as she double checked the IV and fluids that my mate was hooked up to. She bowed her head and left the treatment room. Left alone with her, I looked down at my mate. She was tiny, but perfectly formed. She wasn’t slight but had generous luscious curves. The type of curves that could drive a man wild. Every inch of her body was toned to perfection and her skin had a golden glow that was mesmerizing. I think I could sit and stare at her all day. Sleeping peacefully, she looked angelic. Her hair was a light brown colour and extremely long. The glossy strands fanned out across the pillow. Her face held delicate features and a very fine dusting of petite freckles across her nose which you could only see on closer inspection. I wish I knew the colour of her eyes. I reached out to touch her hand, covering it with my own. It dwarfed mine and was incredibly soft. Delicious tingles soared across my skin and had Maddox practically melting. He started to purr, and I finally felt some of the panic and adrenaline leave us. I breathed deeply allowing her scent to invade my senses and started to feel calm be restored once more.

I heard someone clear their throat behind me and turned around quickly to find Brad standing in the doorway, his eyes filled with concern for his Luna. I beckoned for him to enter.