A Warrior’s Fate (Wolves of Morai #1)

Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

I sla and Kai broke away from each other, turning in the direction in which the howl came. Her hand went straight into her pocket, feeling the marker’s edges. If it weren’t for the mutual reactions, she would’ve thought she’d hallucinated. “Is that—”

The howl came again, cutting her off—a confirmation. Everyone down below began running.

She stepped back, her mouth falling open, and Kai, her opposite, moved forward. His eyes narrowed on the top of the Wall in the distance. “The Gate—someone’s coming through it.”

Isla had taken off for the stairwell before he finished his sentence.

“Who do you—Isla!” She heard Kai shout from behind her. “What are you doing?”

“What do you think?” She nearly ripped the door off its hinges, getting it open.

Mind and body buzzing, she took the steps as fast as she could, occasionally jumping to a landing when she could manage the distance and impact.

The door above never had a chance to close. Kai’s voice echoed through the chamber down to her. “Are you supposed to leave?”

“No!”

Kai grumbled something about how she didn’t listen to anything before his steps thundered down her same path, the exit slamming behind him with a bang. Isla didn’t care enough to protest him following her. Her mind was focused on the Gate, the marker, the Trainee, and those things alone.

When she broke out of the side door, the world on the ground felt different. The atmosphere felt charged and overwhelming. In the distance, she caught the specks of those from the fire moving beneath the moonlight. Just as Kai made it to her, opening his mouth to speak, she was off again.

She heard him curse.

The dry grass crunched beneath her shoes as she sprinted across the open field, pushing herself so hard that the crisp air and smoke burned her lungs. What she’d give to have a handle on her wolf again. But there wasn’t time to try working out a shift.

The Wall loomed as Isla drew closer—for the first time since she’d gone behind it. Her breath hampered but not from exhaustion. She fought back the paranoia, the demons, the darkness, the fear, pressing forward despite it, unsure how long it could be kept at bay.

By the time she could sense a crowd—hear them, smell them, finally see the faint glow of lights and torches—she was exhausted. The top of the Gate’s wrought iron blended into the night, only the bottom illuminated. The shadows of the spectators danced large and menacing on the stone around it.

She slowed to a stop, observing the scene from a distance. People were pocketed all along the field, some daring to stand close and others maintaining a separation from the wretched land. Not everyone here had come from the infirmary, judging by the various types of dress. The call from an emerging hunter, followed by the signal from the Gate’s surveyor, could be heard for miles.

She’d never witnessed a re-emergence—unconscious for her own and not present for Adrien’s or Sebastian’s. What she expected was excitement, celebration…but everyone just seemed distraught. Taking a couple of steps closer, mingling into the horde of those deciding to keep some space from the Wilds, she began picking up on some of the words spoken. Her heart sank.

Something was wrong.

The Gate should’ve already been opened, waiting for the hunters to come through .

She perked up when she spotted a silhouette, one she could find in any crowd.

“Adrien!”

The Heir spun, face laden with confusion. “Isla? What the hell? Where’ve you been?” He looked her over as if searching for injuries. “We went to your room, and you weren’t there.”

We, she assumed, were him and her brother, wherever he’d gone off to as he was nowhere in sight.

Isla opened and closed her mouth, unsure how to answer, so she didn’t. Instead, she faced the Gate. “What’s happening?”

“It’s stuck.”

Isla jumped as Kai’s voice came from behind her, even if she knew he’d been tailing. She would’ve thought he’d been closer, but he must’ve stopped to ask questions.

He silently nodded in respect and greeting to Adrien before his eyes were drawn upwards. His nose twitched as he sniffed the air.

“Stuck?” Isla ignored the perplexity on Adrien’s face at the alpha’s sudden appearance and her lack of surprise towards it.

“You can smell that, right?” Kai’s unsettled feelings were so strong she swore they ricocheted down the tether and infected her.

Isla lifted her head and took a whiff of the air. The aroma was different , tangy—not putrid and rotten but off-putting, sharp. Too much eventually had tears pricking her eyes.

“It’s been getting stronger,” Adrien said before inhaling deeply. He had to clear his throat from a cough. Uneasiness took his own features. “It’s magic.”

“Faulty magic,” Kai clarified before his jaw tightened. “Something’s wrong with the wards.”

Isla’s eyes went wide as she trained them along the welded patterns of the Gate, chosen and directed by the witches of the past who’d assisted the Imperial Alpha at that time in its construction.

She didn’t know much about magic—only of its ability to be wielded by witches and the banished fae and that its only existence on their continent was localized to this very spot where it served as both a blessing and a curse. The heavy latch was what locked a ward of protection, completing a symbol that she’d never quite understood the true meaning and power behind. When opened and rendered incomplete, the protection was broken. The Gate became just a gate. An entryway, an exit.

But that wasn’t happening.

The latch was lifted, the ward void, yet the metal frame wouldn’t budge. Something else had to be at play, another rune misfiring. It wasn’t protecting them from the Wilds, not keeping the horrors in—

“It’s keeping us out.” The realization fell from her lips in a murmur of disbelief.

A howl came again, this time certainly from behind the Wall. Now, with time to process, dread sluiced through her. The Trainee couldn’t howl—not like that. She listened for his attempt, not perfect but enough. It never came.

Though what did was far, far worse.

The roar was ear-shattering, close . It made everyone, including Isla, stumble back.

It was a bak…tailing the hunters, approaching the Wall. Yet another behavior that didn’t match any part of the legend. They were supposed to be repulsed by the borders, by the enchantment.

Isla’s fingers twitched at her sides, features screwed into a grimace. The fear threatened to suffocate her. She was back there again, experiencing it again in hasty, relentless waves—alone, terrified, fighting for daily survival, battling for her life, hearing the Trainee’s horrid screams, spending semi-conscious moments just out of death’s grasp.

She kept falling down, down, down into that endless, destructive pit until the warmth of comforting hands fell upon her shoulders. Her body recoiled but then settled as they pressed down firmer. Her forlorn gaze met that of the source—Adrien.

“You’re okay,” he eased, leaning closer, squeezing where he touched her. A reassurance, a grounding. “You’re safe.”

She took a deep breath and nodded, then felt it: a sharp phantom tug and release.

Isla snapped from Adrien and focused forward—only forward—not wanting him to see her look at Kai and not wanting her mate to gaze upon the torment in her eyes.

Kai couldn’t see her vulnerable—not like this. A victim to her own mind, to memories, to the past. Helpless, weak, and pathetic, as she’d always been imbued she was before she’d found her purpose, before becoming a warrior. She couldn’t break. Not again. Not anymore. That hell was left behind years ago. That lonely, shattered girl was forgotten.

But that pull came again, harder this time, and reluctantly, she turned.

Kai’s eyes weren’t narrowed in disapproval of the physical contact as she’d been expecting. Instead, they housed the usual mix of emotions, all wrapped in a discernable protective fire—the same one as in the Wilds and on the roof.

Though he didn’t speak, she understood. He couldn’t touch her, but he was there. Their bond, incomplete but still a promise. A deeper relationship, non-existent but still, they meant something .

They held each other’s stares, the world around them fading, fading…

Another howl resounded from the Wilds. Panicked .

They broke the contact.

The hunter was close, so close that Isla could hear his paws padding the mud. And then came a faint iridescent glow—his eyes, the lumerosi snaking through his fur—and next, the sound of a slam against metal. There was a thud as something fell off him, and he whimpered, pawing at the Gate.

“It’s both of them!” someone near the iron shouted.

“Goddess, he’s alive,” Isla murmured.

The roar of the bak rumbled again, and horrified gasps descended upon the crowd. Some turned away from the Gate, retreating, anticipating a slaughter.

“Help us get this open!”

A mass of people rushed forward, Adrien, Isla, and Kai included, but after a few steps, Isla halted.

Panic kept her rooted. She couldn’t will herself any closer to the Wall.

Kai had noticed.

He stopped to look back at her, his brows pulled in concern. For a moment, Isla wondered if he was going to double back to her, but before he could, she subtly waved her hands, saying go.

Kai obeyed, and her fists clenched at her sides in aggravation. Why couldn’t she move ? All she could do was watch as her closest friend and her mate encroached on the Wilds’ barrier .

The hunter pushed, and the mass of the brave pulled, metal screaming and rattling. The screech of iron, the gasps and wails of spectators, the whimpers, shouting, and groans. All of it was a brutal symphony. The bak made no contribution to the chorus which Isla remembered meant it was nearby. Stalking…waiting.

There was a loud snap like a break somewhere, and the Gate creaked, an opening forming. But not by much, and it quickly ricocheted closed.

“Again!”

The orchestra came to a crescendo, peaked by the howl and thundering steps of the bak. The hunter clambered to the gap when it reappeared, dragging, with his teeth, what Isla now saw as the limp body of the Trainee by the collar of his armor.

Any light she felt had dimmed as his body fell motionless from the hunter’s maw.

Dead. He was dead.

“Watch out!”

There wasn’t any time to process it. The Gate slammed closed, and the sound of tearing cloth, scraping flesh, and a scream made it impossible.

The man who’d been hit didn’t get cut deep, remaining upright though hunched over. Lights and torches illuminated the bak, in all its horrendous glory, pressed against the Gate’s surface. Its protracted claws hooked through the metal labyrinth, its spittle flying as its teeth gnashed. It roared and roared.

The Gate shook under its weight, threatening to give way, to let it through. The beast could’ve broken out if it wanted to, Isla knew. But it didn’t. The intention wasn’t to fight them, to kill whatever it could until it was eventually slain itself. It was to warn them.

The Wilds was their territory. A fact known but not one they’d ever been evolved enough to embrace, not like this. Not to guard their home.

Isla’s fingers ran over the fabric of her jacket where she knew the black ink of her lumerosi snaked over the skin of her shoulder, over the top of her arm, tracing as the bak did when she’d been shifted. As it toyed and taunted.

Nothing made sense.

The beast trained its red feral stare over the crowd…and Isla we nt rigid when it looked at her, only her, she swore, dead in the eye. Unease rumbled in her stomach as it roared at the crowd once more before disappearing back into the forest.

Everyone remained still, terrified to move or breathe until the false security of the latch was put back in place.

“Is he dead?” someone wailed as others rushed to give the hunter, now back to his human form, some aid and assistance.

“No,” he answered as a cloth was placed over his shoulders. “I had to knock him out just to get him out here. He completely lost it.”

There was the sudden sound of a smack, an inhale, and then some sputtering coughs. “He’s waking up!”

If Isla wasn’t so exhausted, she may have leaped for joy as the Trainee roused, his eyes cracking open as he groaned.

His voice was like sandpaper when he asked whoever the woman was nearby, “Where am I?”

Isla didn’t know who she was but could see the peeking of a warrior lumerosi on her back. “Back to civilization, Lukas,” she said endearingly, like she knew him.

Lukas—that was his name.

He fought himself into a sitting position. “Who are you?”

The woman jerked back. “What?”

Lukas’s eyes trailed along the mob of onlookers, looking terribly confused before they blew wide. He pointed to the hunter and recoiled. “Get away from him!”

“What? Lukas—”

“No!” Lukas used the Gate to clamber to his feet. “He’s a monster! I watched him!” His chest heaved as he panted, struggling to stay upright. “He—he’s a wolf!”