A Warrior’s Fate (Wolves of Morai #1)

Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

T he bak were solitary predators—Isla had that in mind as her paws padded along the murky terrain of the Wilds. They did not dwell near the Gate or drift close to the Wall. They resided deep in their forest, blending in with the dead thickets and ever-present fog, their scent shrouded by a pungent vapor that seemed to emit from the ground in wheezes everywhere she turned.

No amount of training, not a single novel-length tale, could’ve prepared her for what the Hunt was truly made of. Not for the time, the effort, or the sheer force of willpower she’d need just to keep her head on straight. Her senses were so overtaken by the new world around her that she’d felt blind the second she entered.

In time, she adjusted to the sinking earth, dizzying odor, and piercing shrieks of some bird-like creature that taunted her with its incessantness, but how much time had passed, she couldn’t tell exactly. Maybe a few days, but it was hard to judge as mornings and nights shared the same absent sky, eternal grayness, driven by the heavy hang of overgrown forest.

Or some may have argued, a lingering essence of dark, destructive magic.

Isla didn’t know when she’d last seen true sunlight, let alone her family, friends, civilization, or any of her fellow hunters, including her mate. Kai had stayed out of her way as she’d asked, or maybe just by happenstance. As he’d said in his reassurance before they parted, the Wilds was expansive, and as a result, all the wolves seemed to have spread far across the treacherous wood.

She’d been alone with nothing but a lingering sense of doom and her thoughts for Goddess knew how long. And though the beasts were plenty, they weren’t the easiest to track, so it seemed the spinning wheel would never end. She’d be cursed to either face the dishonor and shame of returning without a kill or to die here when the ravages of starvation claimed her. There was very little suitable to eat in this region, and much fewer safe sources to drink, and even those, cursed as they were, would eventually kill her if she consumed enough.

But maybe there was hope.

Isla’s ears pricked at a rustle in the nearby trees: the first sound that wasn’t birds or hissing soil.

This had to be it.

She whipped in the noise’s direction and crouched with teeth bared in a silent snarl. As she stalked along the forest floor, repeating the mantras of how to deal with the beast in her head, she tried to catch a scent. If this one somehow evaded her, she’d, at least, have a better chance to track another. But the odor she caught—though nearly indiscernible, so incredibly faint and mixed with the ground’s almost-sulfuric odor—was familiar.

Very familiar.

She rose from her bend, snout high in the air, and sniffed again. Her eyes were wide as she pressed through the decomposing shrubbery, stopping just before reaching a clearing. She had to rein in her excitement as her eyes fell upon a man—but not just any man.

A man with auburn hair beneath a helmet that mirrored his leathers and a face coated with grime. A man with a blade gripped tight in his hand and a look of intensity in his tired chestnut eyes.

The trainee from Tethys. Or just “the Trainee” as she’d now dubbed him.

He fully turned his back to her as he crept forward, his steps heavy yet delicate across the forest floor. His gaze was focused in front of him as his thick boots sunk into the muck.

Isla couldn’t decide what emotion to feel—disbelief, elation, confusion. He was alive; that’s what mattered. One of the few who’d attempted this tribulation unable to shift completely, and he’d survived this long. She may have only known him through the pieces she’d gathered at the feast—and she’d have to remember to catch his name—but he suddenly felt like her greatest friend.

The Trainee halted in his path, something on the ground seeming to catch his attention. As he bent to it, resting his arm on his knee and stabbing his blade into the dirt, Isla inched closer. She watched as he dipped his fingers into the mud and pulled out a sphere. The orb was coated in dirt and appeared to be rotting from its crater-like edges. Letting go of his sword’s hilt, he tried to clean it with his fingers.

Isla dared move in closer, any sense of a hunting ability gone as she carelessly stirred the foliage.

The Trainee jolted. Eyes bright, he whooshed around, taking his sword in his hand and lifting it, firm and ready to strike. “Come out, bastard!”

Perhaps it was a sign of her declining mental state that she found his threats amusing. Laughing to herself, Isla slipped out of the bushes.

At the sight of her, shock flashed across the Trainee’s face, and his grip loosened. He was silent as his eyes frantically darted over her wolf’s features.She wasn’t expecting the first blissful words she’d heard in likely days to be, “Who are you?”

“You don’t remember me?” Isla projected with a little levity.

But as he continued to stare at her hard yet blank, she realized the communication wasn’t landing. His inability to finish his shift may have been the reason.

Against what some would declare good judgment, Isla, desperate for some camaraderie, called back her wolf. In a dimming of light and pain she was accustomed to, bones straightened, muscles tightened, claws, hair, and teeth retracted until she’d returned to her human form. Her limbs felt weak and wobbly, almost unfamiliar: typical when one remained in a shift for whatever extended length of time she had.

“Oh, wow.” The Trainee twisted his head away from her, looking up into the canopies. “It’s you. ”

So, he did remember her .

Taken back by his surprise, fearing something had happened, she glanced down at her bare body. Though slightly worse for wear, covered in filth and some faint, healing scratches from battling through thorny thickets, there wasn’t anything horribly alarming.

She gazed back at him, brushing her wild, dirtied blonde hair from her face. “Something wrong?”

“No.” The Trainee cleared his throat, eyes daring one more glance before shooting up again. “This, uh, this just isn’t how I imagined seeing you naked.”

Immediately after the sentence had left his mouth, regret mixed with the redness peeking through the mud on his face.

Isla pursed her lips to hold back too big a grin.

With most of those in Io able to complete their shifts, nudity was inevitable and quite common. Clothing didn’t linger after transformations—her own shredded undergarments from beneath her robe probably still sat in the field in front of the Gate, waiting for her to return—so it wasn’t a big deal. But for other packs, other wolves, where partial shifts or no shifting at all was most prevalent, that wouldn’t be the case. She understood how it could be…startling.

Isla smirked at the man, who’d seemed like such a gentleman when they’d met. “You’ve imagined seeing me naked?”

His response was, as expected, a garbled mess. Though at once having dwindled her attraction to him, now, she found it endearing. But as much as she would’ve loved to continue toying with him, they were in the middle of a wood full of monsters whose only driving force was to slaughter.

She took a few steps back into the bushes, hiding everything but her head and shoulders behind them. “Better?”

The Trainee spared another look over, and his shoulders relaxed. “You don’t have to—but if you want to, it’s really…I didn’t mean—” He sure had a knack for getting tongue-tied.

“It’s nice to see you, too,” she called, pausing for a moment to tease out any foreign clamor to ensure they were safe before she ushered in a conversation. “Have you crossed any others?”

The Trainee coughed. “No, you’re the first I’ve seen.”

“Lucky you.” She couldn’t resist the teasing again. “And I’m assuming you haven’t encountered a beast. ”

“Not one.”

“Neither have I.” Another pause. She lifted her head for a quick sniff. No changes; they were still alone. “What were you looking at before I showed up? That thing you pulled out of the ground.”

“Oh, the marker?” he said, his features brightening. He paced backwards to pick it up again.

“The what?”

The Trainee held the ball up close to his face and examined it. “The sign that we have an incredibly long way back to the Gate.” Upon Isla’s perplexed stare, he elaborated, “We’re on the Ares Pass. I can’t believe it.”

It wasn’t nearly enough explanation. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“Because you’re not supposed to.” He tossed the ball up and down in his hand, a surprising confidence having slipped into his voice.

Isla quirked a brow. This really wasn’t the best time to play inquisitor, but… “Care to elaborate?”

“Not so sure that I should.”

She frowned. “And why not?”

He flicked his eyes to her, remaining silent for what felt like an eternity. The litany of thoughts going through his head was betrayed by the subtle twitches of his features. Downturns of uncertainty, scrunches of anger, rises of curiosity…

Isla felt her wolf stirring, readying to emerge again if he were preparing anything dangerous. Though attacking another during the Hunt was a traitorous action punishable by death, she could never be too careful. After this much time wandering through this hell, all of them were on edge.

Finally, he answered. “Because its existence is something the Hierarchy has wanted to keep buried from everyone.”

Isla’s roiling power faltered.

She knew the Hierarchy had its mysteries, far above her jurisdiction. Many secrets that would never pass her eyes or ears despite being the Imperial Beta’s daughter . Yet, how could this random trainee from Tethys know anything about it?

“And how do you know about this?” she asked, feigning indifference.

“I read the right books and know the right people,” he said before adding lowly, “or the wrong people, depending on who you ask.”

“Why try to bury it?” Guilt dug at her for the probing question. If she wasn’t meant to know, she shouldn’t be asking. That’s what she’d been taught. “It sounds like it’s just a passageway.”

“Because of what it connects. Why it connects.” The Trainee fell to a few more beats of what seemed to be careful deliberation. “Phobos and Deimos.” He gestured along the decimated ground on which they stood before waving further out into the clearing. “Back before the decimation, their alphas were kin.”

Isla’s eyebrows shot up. “One bloodline ruling over two separate packs? How could they do that? There are rules against it.” Receiving the alpha’s blessing, the Goddess’s power, two-fold was deemed too much for one family to hold.

The Trainee eyed the marker, seeming to get lost in it. “They hid it, of course. Times were different then. It was not so easy to travel between packs or to communicate. It’s a wonder Io has maintained such a hold over the continent for as long as it has. By the time the Imperial Alpha realized what was happening, the alphas had already made this pass to connect their people and bring their lands together. They were already two of the more powerful regions on the continent by themselves, but as one, they posed to be a force. You can imagine how that discovery went over with the Hierarchy. A sudden budding empire . Challengers to Io’s highest rule.”

Isla wondered if the reason he spoke so freely was because they were so far from home. Part of her felt like she should’ve shut this down, this talk that somehow felt…traitorous. But her curiosity got the better of her. “Not well?”

“No, definitely not well.” The Trainee’s eyes snapped to her again, his own fear and uncertainty flashing across his face as if he finally realized what he was doing. Who he was talking to. “You know…I saw you talking to the new Alpha of Deimos before the Hunt.”

“Oh.” Isla stiffened. She hadn’t really been covert about it. Could he have figured out their truth just by looking at them? “Is that a problem?”

“I’d be careful if I were you.”

Once again, his words struck her. “Why? ”

“You’re of Io and the Imperial Beta’s daughter. He’s the Alpha of Deimos,” he said as if it were obvious. At her enduring look of confusion, the Trainee went quiet, mulling over his next words. “There’s a lot of darkness in the pasts of Deimos and Io. A lot of bad blood. It runs back far—and deep.”

Isla found it difficult to swallow as the forest seemed to take on a new eeriness as if responding to his words. She paused, listening again to make sure they were safe. Not just from bak but from other listening ears. She’d heard of some disagreements and difficulties between their packs—not much different than any other internal strife—but nothing along the imposing lines of darkness and bad blood.

The Trainee continued, “Something about being in the Wilds with him feels unsettling. We’re walking through the ruins of the annihilation of half of his bloodline, and after everything that just happened…”

“You mean with the alpha and heir?”

Rustling in the trees had them both tensing, the Trainee raising his sword and Isla drawing her claws in response. But it was merely a small, cursedly deformed, squirrel-like creature that skittered across the forest floor. It would’ve been smart to kill it for food, but Isla was still too wrapped in the Trainee’s words.

“I should go.” The Trainee pocketed the marker and adjusted his hold on his weapon.

He was right, they’d dawdled long enough, but—

“Wait. You can’t leave me at that. You have to explain,” Isla protested. “Do you…not trust the Alpha of Deimos?”

His features fell, and he shook his head as if he regretted telling her all of this at all. “We’ll…we can talk when we’re out of here.” He turned to head off in another direction. “See you on the other side.”

Isla huffed, relenting for now, but as she prepared herself to shift again, an idea struck. “Wait!” The Trainee spun back around, and she waved him over. “Come on, we’ll work together and get out of this hell faster.”

“I don’t need help from a shifter.” His tone took on a sourness. “I’m fine on my own.”

Isla pursed her lips. How could she explain she was sick of being alone, their conversation had put her even more on edge, and part of her selfishly needed to make sure he made it out alive?

“I don’t doubt it,” she said. “But nothing says that the Hunt must be done alone as long as we each draw our kill. It doesn’t take away from the victory. We’re wolves. We work best as a pack, and we’ll work together when we’re warriors.”

The Trainee narrowed his eyes, though in good spirit, and moved closer. “I’m going to hold fast to my belief that you aren’t patronizing me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Isla smiled, her eyes glowing as she began to shift.

But then everything was agony .

She cried out as daggers broke through the skin at her side, drawing blood as something sent her soaring across the clearing. Her body thrashed into a tree, head slamming, bones screaming, teeth rattling, and the drying bark splintering beneath her on impact. For a moment, her mind went dark.

“Isla!”

She came to in a heap on the dirt, ears ringing as she slowly peeled open her eyes. Through the slits, her vision cleared enough to find the Trainee across from the most horrifying being she’d ever seen.

The creature seemed as though it was molded from the ground it stood on, murky and dark, with a shadow-like vapor emanating from its pores. Its sparse hair sprouted from skin taut over thick muscle, so dry that it looked like it could crack open with any movement. Two powerful haunches mirrored solid arms in their size, the beast’s two bulky halves hunched at its narrower middle. Its black claws were so long that they dragged in the dirt. So sharp, they could’ve cut her insides out if it had taken a better shot at her.

But the most unsettling thing about the beast wasn’t its ginormous build, dark aura, or the weapons at its fingertips. It was how, in her gradual return to sense, with its features so akin to one of their own, she’d thought it was just a giant wolf. It appeared as if it were someone demonized halfway through a shift.

She couldn’t gather how she hadn’t felt or scented it approaching.

The Trainee glanced over at her awakening with a heaved sigh of relief. He swung his sword at the bak as it tried to lunge for him. “Are you o—behind you!”

Isla barely had time to roll out of the way from another scythe-like paw heading straight for her neck, the very tip leaving a slash on her collarbone.

Her eyes flashed as she got to her knees and met the bright red glower of a second beast.