The Feral Mate

Chapter 6: Colt

Chapter 6: Colt

The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up. Oslo was practically foaming at the mouth inside my head.

“We’re being watched.”

I didn’t react immediately to what my wolf was telling me. I continued to carve a path with the machete Johnathan had lent me. I casually surveyed our surroundings, and when I spotted a figure amongst the trees, I did my best not to linger. I mind linked my crew.

“Don’t all look at once, but there’s someone or something in that tree.”

Everyone did their best to remain nonchalant, but you could feel the tension rising with each passing second.

“What’s our next move, Alpha?” Brock questioned. The figure blended in perfectly with the canopy, wearing a mud and leaf-covered poncho and some sort of animal skull covering its face. The eyes behind the skull were predatory, glowing red in the dim light. It had no scent, and was simply staring at us from a high branch. I decided to stare back. It didn’t react.

“Hello?” I called out, “Do you speak English?” The thing didn’t move. It didn’t even blink.

“What do you want?” Joan called out. Again, nothing. “Alright, f**k this,” Joan muttered. She grabbed a rock and threw it as hard as she could at the figure. What happened next was a total blur. The figure managed to catch the projectile, then, with uncanny strength and speed, sent it rocketing back into Joan’s stomach. Joan clutched her midsection, gasping for breath while we scrambled to help her.

“Joan! Are you okay?” I asked, and she nodded. I returned my attention to the figure, but it was gone.

“There it goes!” yelled Cliff, already sprinting after the dark blur through the jungle.

“Cliff, wait! Stay together!” Jonathan yelled ironically, running to catch Cliff. I couldn’t blame him though. If my mate ran off to fight some bizarre shadowy figure, I’d chase after them too. Brock and I helped Joan to her feet. She had regained her breath, and was extremely pissed.

“Let’s kill that thing and finish this,” Joan growled.

“We still don’t know what we're dealing with. It could’ve just been defending itself,” Brock replied. I didn’t have time to deal with their bickering.

“Brock, shift and go after Cliff and Johnathan. No matter what this thing’s motivations are, it’s clearly strong. We’re not going to take chances,” I said, beginning to take off my clothes so that when I shifted they wouldn’t tear.

“Not taking chances means killing it, right?” Joan asked, removing her own clothes.

“Try to catch it first. This thing seems intelligent, but we need to see if it possesses any humanity. However, if it comes down to either you or them, end it,” I replied. The three of us were naked, but it was nothing we hadn’t seen before. Thanks to shifting in front of dozens of strangers during the war, I had lost all shyness when it came to my body. Besides, I knew I looked good. I tried mindlinking our missing comrades.

“Cliff, Johnathan, how far have you gone?” I asked. Silence. The three of us looked at each other with growing dread. “Cliff…Johnathan…?” I tried again. Nothing. If alarm bells weren’t blaring inside my head before, they certainly were now. There were only four reasons why a werewolf wouldn’t answer their Alpha’s mind link. One, they were too far to hear, which I hoped was true in this instance, but it was highly unlikely. The island wasn’t that big. Two, they were unconscious, which means there was either an accident, or worse. Three, they’re touching something silver. That would mean that whatever was on the island knew our weaknesses, and was already exploiting them. Or four, they were dead. I didn’t think this was the case, though. Oslo could usually sense if a member of our pack had died. At least, he could during the war.

“We’re coming guys, just stay put,” Brock said, and shifted into his wolf, West. A sandy colored giant that reminded me of a golden retriever. He took off just as Joan had finished shifting into her wolf, Lita. Lita was lean, and her scar-covered face made her a frightening sight. I watched Lita’s pitch black form dart after West, and continued my own shift. It took me longer to shift into Oslo because he was the biggest wolf in the pack, as most Alpha’s wolves tended to be. He used to be dark brown, like my own hair color, but when the Moon Goddess transformed us into an Alpha, his fur turned silvery gray. Finally, we were ready. I bounded after Lita and West, picking up both Cliff and Johnathan’s scents. I tracked them to a clearing, where their trail mysteriously vanished. Lita and West were wandering aimlessly with their noses to the ground, trying to find some trace of our friends.

“There!” Joan exclaimed. Lita raced into the tangled wilderness with West and I on her tail. My eyes landed on what Lita was tearing after. Another dark figure, this one much taller than the last, was holding a knife over its head in front of a bound and gagged Cliff. Cliff was suspended in the air upside down and wrapped in chains that I assumed were silver. Otherwise, his struggling would have broken them. Lita pounced, and her teeth sank into the back of the figure’s neck. I felt a flash of relief until the earth opened up and she was swallowed whole with a surprised yelp.

West and I reached the edge of the newly formed pit which we discovered wasn’t newly formed at all. It was a trap. Lita had attacked what was essentially a scarecrow. It was lying in pieces next to her at the bottom of a 12 foot hole. In the blink of an eye, Cliff joined them after the rope holding him up was severed. Lita managed to catch his head when he fell, which I’m sure he was grateful for.

“Joan, can you climb out?” I asked.

“I think so-,” she replied, but in that instant another trap sprung. A net made of silver chains, weighted by rocks, fell from the canopy over the pit. If it pinned Lita to the bottom, it would force her to shift, and then she really would be trapped down there. I leaned in and managed to snag a corner of the mesh in my jaw, but it was immensely heavy. West took another corner, and I realized that we probably looked like a couple of wolves drinking at a watering hole. Not pack leaders in a desperate struggle to save our companions. Our necks strained and the silver burned our mouths, but we had gotten a decent hold of the net. I mind linked Brock.

“Back up slowly. On three, okay? One, two-,”

A brown blur roared and barreled into my side, knocking me into Brock. We lost our grip on the net, and I heard a whimper from Joan as she was forced to rapidly shift back into her human form. I scrambled to my feet and let out a deep growl. A chocolate-colored she-wolf was looking between me and Brock with bared teeth.

“Mate,” I heard Brock say through the mind link, and froze. For a second, I thought I’d misheard. I hadn’t. I wondered if our adversaries had somehow tricked my Beta’s senses? However, the she-wolf seemed equally stunned, her big brown eyes growing wider the longer she stared at Brock. I was baffled. How could this be his mate? This crazy werewolf laying traps and mounting heads on some random island? And why was she trying to kill us? “Mate. Mine,” Brock repeated, taking a step forward.

“N-No!” she yelled, but the connection was already developing. She wouldn’t be able to mind link with him if their souls weren’t bonded. She took a few steps back. Brock followed her.

“Mate, submit to me,” Brock growled. He was going to try to end the fight by demanding her surrender through their soul bond. Normally, I would object to a male forcing this type of submission, but in this circumstance I’d allow it. So far, we'd done nothing but have our asses handed to us. What we needed to do was sit and have a long conversation with this female.

“Go to hell!” she said, and bolted deeper into the forest. West pursued, now driven by the newfound promise of claiming his mate. I glanced once more into the pit before following. Joan and Cliff looked beaten up, but it was nothing serious. Once we got that silver off of them, they’d heal quickly.

I couldn’t see the she-wolf anymore thanks to her crooked path through the dense undergrowth, but West kept popping in and out of my line of sight. I did my best to heighten my awareness, now that I knew what I was looking for. I caught glimpses of figures in the trees with similar ensembles as the first figure. Most of them didn’t reach 5 feet tall, and I saw one that barely reached 4 feet. I could tell they were slim and moved awkwardly, not like the first figure. These shadows were trying their best to stay hidden.

“Are there children here?” I wondered, still sprinting after West. The strange shades didn’t attack, instead they released bird sounds as I passed by. I knew a signal when I heard one. We were running into another trap. I was about to mind link this information to Brock, when I heard a pain-filled whimper transform into an agonized scream.

I ran to help my Beta, who was lying in the dirt on his stomach. He had transformed back into his human form, with a metallic barbed cable wrapped around his leg. More silver, no doubt. The pain that comes from a forced shift is excruciating, and leaves a werewolf extremely vulnerable. The brown she-wolf was gazing at him with what looked like guilt, but my wolf was too furious to care. We had to get her away from him. Oslo lunged, fangs tearing into her side. She yelped, thrashed and tried to bite back, but we were too powerful. We dragged her 40 feet from Brock until we finally let go. She tried to get up and bite us again, but Oslo put a paw on her throat and dug his claws in just enough for her to get the message. For a moment, I saw the look of panic in her eyes, before I was tackled for the second time that day.

However, this tackle was different. It was more ferocious than the first, with added teeth and claws digging into our flesh. It also filled me with a blissful ecstasy that I had been dreaming about my entire life.

“Mate,”

The smell of waterlilies and rain overwhelmed my senses. I forgot where I was. What I was doing. It didn’t matter anyway. Only one thing mattered.

“Mate. Mine,”

Oslo pushed us up to gaze at the wolf the Moon Goddess had chosen for us, and euphoria turned into shock. My blood was dripping from her jagged maw. She was huge, possibly bigger than Oslo. Her white coat was matted and riddled with scar after terrible scar. Red eyes met my blue, and I felt despair bury itself deep into my heart, and the heart of my wolf.

Hatred. That was all I saw when I looked into her eyes. No recognition. Not even surprise. Just pure anger and hate.

Why?

She snapped at my neck, bringing me out of my trance. I remembered she was trying to kill me.

“Wait!” I tried to mind link with her. “Wait!” She kept on attacking. I didn’t know if she couldn’t hear me, or was simply ignoring my pleas. I was narrowly dodging each savage lunge, but she would get me eventually if I didn’t fight back. I tried my best to pin her down without hurting her, but she was too swift. Too strong. We continued this strange dance for what felt like awhile, but it was really just a few seconds. Finally, she seemed to be running out of energy and I was able to hold her in place beneath me. Oslo, the horny fiend, was quite pleased with the position we had put her in. Belly up, and face to face.

“Please, I mean you no harm. I swe-” I started to say, but was tackled for a third time. I had completely forgotten about the brown she-wolf. The discovery of my mate had blinded me to a lot of things. I braced for impact with the ground, but it didn’t come when I expected. Instead, I fell down, down, down another pit. I remember my head hitting the bottom. Then darkness.