Huntress Rescued Read online

  “I don’t think that’s much of a choice, Alpha Brooks,” Lee replied, his tone almost as tight and furious as my own. “Fine. But be aware that some of the deployed hunters on site have a bad history with werewolves. You might want to keep your people away from them. We wouldn’t want any incidents to happen.”

  Judging by the way he said the word ‘werewolves’, he was probably included in that category. I didn’t bother pointing this out. “You should be telling your men that, not me. If there will be incidents, they won’t be caused by us. We have no quarrel with your unit.”

  “I think we both know that’s beside the point.”

  Yes, it was, because most humans didn’t see how illogical it was to blame all werewolves for the actions of one pack. I would never admit it, but I was secretly grateful for the existence of the undead. Without their influence and their decision to make an enemy of most creatures in the world, humans and shifters would probably still be at each other’s throats. And since werewolves had always been among the most preeminent types of paranormal beings, my pack would’ve probably been in far more danger than it was now.

  Dismissing the thought, I focused on more practical matters. Arguing with Alan Lee was all well and good, but like I had told him, we needed to work together, and we’d never be able to do it if we stepped on each other’s toes. “We’ll coordinate troops,” I told him. “What region are your units covering? I can come from the opposite direction and make sure the undead don’t escape.”

  “I sent three scouting units ahead. My main attack unit is west of the base.”

  “That’ll work. We can cover the area in the south. Do you want to try to snipe your target from the distance?”

  “That’s the plan, but for the moment, we’re standing by. Their numbers are higher than we expected.”

  My wolf stirred at the back of my mind. That sentence gave me a bad feeling.

  Undead were always numerous when they clustered around a base. They were like cockroaches, multiplying at an alarming rate the moment they found the right breeding ground. Even a regular human knew that. If Alan Lee had been unprepared for their high numbers, we were in far more trouble than I’d originally thought.

  Byron obviously knew this as well, because he was already moving, sending out the necessary commands and calling out to our pack. He didn’t bother with inferior, human communication methods. He simply shifted into his wolf form and howled.

  We had already left our lair and gathered in a small grove a few miles away from the undead base. I’d known that there would be hunters coming in, though, and I’d been forced to wait and see how they’d approach matters. A decade ago, I could’ve just attacked Popovic outright, but the recent amendments made to the PHP changed that and I had to play along.

  During our wait, I’d given my men leave to spend time with their respective partners, friends, and families. It was always something I liked to do because there was nothing more important to a werewolf than a familial bond. In a world like ours, every day could be our last, and we had to take advantage of every precious moment to show that feeling to our loved ones.

  Even so, as soon as Byron notified them the operation was starting, they all came running. Wolves of various colors, both male and female, emerged from the foliage, ready to obey my commands. Their voices joined Byron’s as they reported for duty.

  Naturally, the sound echoed into my communicator. There was a long pause at the other side of the connection. Despite the mess we were all in, I found it amusing. I wondered what Lee thought about the meaning of the howls. It probably reinforced his belief that we were animals.

  I’d long ago stopped caring about the opinion of people like him. “If that is all, Lead Hunter Lee, I must return to coordinating my union. I will meet you at the undead base. We’ll be coming in shifted form so just let your men know not to shoot the wolves and we’ll be fine.”

  To his credit, Lee recovered quickly and took my suggestion—or rather, my command—in stride. “Understood. Lee Hunter Base, out.”

  He abruptly cut the call, and the rudeness made my wolf growl. The idea that another leader was daring to defy me didn’t sit well with my beast. I told myself that I’d soon be able to take out my frustration on people who were far more deserving to be torn apart than Lead Hunter Lee, and the wolf subsided.

  The human didn’t matter all that much anyway. It was only my pack that counted.

  Shutting down my communicator, I directed my attention to the wolves who were already waiting for my instructions. “The hunters have agreed to work with us. Mostly. Their leader claims he has men in his team who dislike werewolves. But that’s nothing new to us.

  “All you need to remember is this. The hunters are friendlies. You will leave them be. The undead are our targets. Take them out. But be advised that they might be more numerous than we’re used to. Our absolute priority is to not lose any member of the pack. You will control your wolves at all times. Going on a rampage is not an option. Am I making myself clear?”

  My pack responded with another chorus of determined howls. In them, I heard a combination of various messages, all of them meaning the same thing.

  “Yes, Alpha.”

  “I will make the pack proud.”

  “I won’t lose myself to the wolf.”

  Normally, I didn’t require such reassurance, but this wasn’t a normal day. As much as I trusted my people, we needed to be extra careful on this operation. No wolves from my union had died in battle for over five years. I would not let that change.

  Still, I didn’t like speeches any more than I enjoyed tactful conversation with hunters, so once again, I focused on practical matters. I divided my union in three different teams. Byron and I would lead the first two, and we would infiltrate the base. I had no doubt that we’d eventually be forced to intervene. If the hunters had not shot Popovic until now, they probably wouldn’t do it at all. The third team, led by my Omega, Ulysses, would stay behind, cover us, and make sure no stragglers got away.

  Once everything was in order, I took my clothes off. I didn’t bother taking off my communicator. I hated wearing it and I didn’t need it to speak to my pack, but it could help me to monitor the positions and locations of the human hunters.

  I might not like this type of equipment much, but I was still grateful we’d managed to adapt it to suit our needs. After all, it was the law of nature that any creature that refused to adapt unavoidably died out.

  After that, I shifted and let out a howl of my own, allowing the strength of my Alpha nature to encourage and empower every single member of my pack, even those who were not present. The vibrations flowed through the air, through the ground and the trees, up into the sky, reaching out to the moon like a distant song.

  We hadn’t been bound to the spell of the full moon for many years, but we still heeded its call and it heeded ours.

  Its magic showed me my path and gave me both freedom and clarity. When I turned away from my wolves and started running through the undergrowth, they followed me without hesitation. We moved like silent shadows, making our way to the undead base. We’d almost reached our destination when my communicator crackled in my ear. It was Lead Hunter Lee again. “Alpha, I don’t know if you’re receiving this transmission, but if you are… Please, help me. The vampires… The vampires caught two of my people. They have my sister.”

  The desperation in the human’s tone reached out to the most basic part of me. Even if he had not been my ally, I would have still wanted to help him. Family was important, and I could understand his fear, that terrible all-encompassing dread that couldn’t compare to anything in the world.

  I’d lost my mother and father to a demon attack when I’d been five. I’d known it before my father’s Beta had even told me about it. I’d felt our connection being torn apart the moment those creatures had ripped my parents to pieces. Humans might not have that kind of bond naturally, but that didn’t make the affection between siblings any less real.


  I nudged the communicator with my paw and let out a low growl, notifying the human that I understood. Hopefully, he’d get the message. I didn’t have time to shift and speak to him in his language.

  He did. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Please, hurry. It’ll take far too long for us to get there and there’s no telling what those bastards will do to Imogen until then.”

  I was barely listening to him anymore. Turning off my communicator, I silently guided my union to spread out and take their positions.

  There would be no more howling now, since I couldn’t risk being discovered by the undead. But I was the Alpha of this union, and my thoughts and my voice would reach my fellow wolves even if I didn’t call out to them out loud.

  Besides, they didn’t need any further instructions. Due to their advanced senses, they had all heard the human’s request and understood what we needed to do. I wasn’t the only one who’d lost family and friends to war. If it was in our ability to help the hunters, to keep them from experiencing that agony, we would.

  The two squads led by me and Byron advanced toward the base, with Ulysses’s team watching our back. The moment the structure came into view, I knew we were in trouble.

  It wasn’t the sight of the compound that worried me, or at least, not only that. The number of guards stationed around the gate did seem somewhat alarming, but after my earlier exchange with Alan Lee, I’d been prepared for that. We had a bigger problem than the unexpectedly numerous undead.

  The distinctive scent of sulfur filled the air, subtle, undetectable through regular means, but almost glaringly obvious to me. I’d smelled it many times before and I still remembered. I could never forget the way the foul stench had clung to the survivors of the attack that had killed my parents, so overwhelming it had nearly driven them mad with the desire to scrub their skin off.

  Suppressing my anger, I sent out my thoughts through my connection with the union. “There are demons on site,” I warned them. “Be careful. Remember what I said. If you run into too much resistance, retreat.”

  I sensed their agreement vibrating through the bond, glowing like the distant rays of the moon. “Yes, Alpha.”

  “We won’t fail our union.”

  “You can count on us.”

  Now more than ever, they understood the importance of controlling their wolves at all times. We could not afford to make any mistakes. If we did, we would be the ones mourning our loved ones, and that was unacceptable.

  Oh, there was some reticence, as I’d known there would be. Byron in particular was not happy with the idea of going to face demons for the sake of a human. Even so, he didn’t question me. He only allowed himself a single display of affection and concern, nuzzling me with his snout.

  “Be careful,” he told me. “Nothing that comes out of a cooperation between demons and vampires is ever good.”

  I nodded and pressed my paw to his. I wanted to say more to reassure him, butthere was no more time for conversation. When he left, I watched him go with a heavy heart, wondering not for the first time if I’d done the right thing by picking him to be my Beta.

  I trusted Byron, and I knew very well that, physically, he was as strong as I was and just as capable. But a small, selfish part of me dreaded the thought that one day, he might not come back.

  Ulysses padded to my side, discreetly brushing against me. It was only for a moment, but his calming aura helped soothe my agitated wolf. “He’s going to be fine,” he said. “He’s too stubborn to ever leave us.”

  I nuzzled his jugular, appreciating the reminder and the support. “Thank you, Ulysses. You’re right. I just can’t help but worry.”

  “We all do, but we have to move forward, regardless.”

  His eyes were greener than the grass underneath our paws, shining like emeralds, and it was so easy to drown out my doubts and fears in their depths. I would fight on, with the utter conviction that Byron would return to me.

  Eyeing the base, I reassessed my strategy. The sole gate I could see was well-guarded and I hadn’t spotted any sign of human hunters. It was likely that we hadn’t reached their position yet. We could not rely on humans for a confrontation against demons. We were on our own in this one.

  A distraction would’ve come in handy, but whoever approached that gate was a dead man walking. No, we needed a different plan. If we couldn’t go through the door, we would go around it.

  Ignoring the main entrance, I guided my team toward the western wall of the outer compound. Its height alone made it an unappealing solution and the barbed wire added to the challenge. But I’d climbed bigger walls and forced my way through tougher barriers. With my union by my side, I could do this too.

  The interesting thing about undead was that they rarely installed electrified fences or motion sensors in their facilities. Human equipment worked better for them than it ever would for a werewolf, but they didn’t trust it. They had their own, unique methods of keeping intruders out, some more efficient than others.

  This particular base used traditional vampyr wards. It was a technique developed and practiced mostly by ancient vampires, since younger undead didn’t have the power levels necessary to sustain such enchantments.

  But there was a trick about vampyr wards, something I’d learned more or less by accident. In theory, the shields could detect any living being that passed through them. In practice, they fluctuated a lot. They occasionally flickered and they weren’t continuous like a man-made fence. They had weak spots, regions where the spell frayed. Every single time, those holes were in areas that had been exposed to sunlight.

  This base was no different. The vampyr wards were so thick that even my fellow wolves could sense them, but the distinctive chill the spell always left behind occasionally faded in one particular spot. To take advantage of the weak point I’d found we needed to move quickly. We couldn’t climb the wall in our wolf forms, so we shifted back into our humanoid shapes. The rapidly fluctuating ward was right ahead of us, only a few feet away from the actual structure.

  “Okay,” I said. “On my mark, we’ll pass the ward and go up the wall, one by one. Be ready. One, two… Mark!”

  My fellow wolves flashed past me, in perfect sync, following my cue. The ward fluctuations never lasted more than a few fractions of a second, which was why vampires never deemed it a problem. For us, it was more than enough. We passed the ward, and in a little over a minute, we had all climbed the wall, jumped over the barbed wire, and neatly landed on the other side.

  It took less than that for us to run into the first set of undead guards. The good news was that none of them were vampires. The bad news was that they were revenants, and their patrol unit had at least a dozen members.

  Unlike vampires, revenants weren’t very smart and they lacked the ability to learn complex enchantments, shape-shift, or cast dark magic. They compensated for those flaws by being very sturdy and hard to take down. Normally, I didn’t find a revenant a difficult opponent, but today, we were going for a discreet approach, and eliminating a revenant discreetly was about as likely as getting it to swear fealty to the human race.

  I pounced on the group, shifting mid-leap and landing on the first revenant. It took me only a couple of seconds to tear the creature’s throat out, but I knew better than to believe he would stay down. I didn’t have the time to finish him off. The priority here was to immobilize them all before they could ring the alarm. We could tear their hearts out or decapitate them later.

  Two of the revenants flanking me instinctively reached for me, perhaps intending to do the same thing to me that I had to their friend. I didn’t give them the chance. Fluidly shifting back into my human form, I danced out of their reach. I grabbed another revenant and easily snapped his neck.

  Around me, my fellow wolves engaged the rest of the undead in combat. They weren’t as lethal as I was, but they were doing an excellent job anyway. The revenants were defeated, not destroyed, but unconscious and unable to alert their masters that we were here.


  I should have known better than to believe anything in my life would ever go smoothly. It was the final revenant that threw a wrench in my plans.

  Instead of blindly trying to attack us like the others, he finally remembered he had a brain and pulled out his gun. Having identified me as the leader, he pointed the weapon at me and pressed the trigger. I dodged the bullet, but I still flinched as the projectile whizzed past me.

  The sound of the gunshot echoed far too loudly in the silent courtyard of the compound. I had just enough time to rush forward and knock the irritating revenant out before a new group emerged from one of the buildings.

  “Intruders!” a male vampire shouted, his eyes flashing red. “Werewolves! Kill them! Kill them all!”

  Shit. So much for a discreet approach.

  Chapter Four

  In the Middle Ages and the years up to modernity, the existence of paranormal creatures was something widely acknowledged and taken as fact, rather than mythology. Such beings were also often deemed to be related one way or another and not much distinction was made between each type of creature.

  The advent of the modern era brought a decline in the belief in paranormal beings, as humans started to explain what had once been deemed magical or paranormal through science. It was only in the early 20th century that we learned the truth was somewhere in the middle.

  Since the Paranormal-Human Pact, paranormal beings have been the subject of much debate. One of the most burning topics that emerged following the PHP was the distinctive difference between werewolves—and associated species—who are now deemed subspecies of humanity, and inhuman creatures.

  One of the most eloquent examples of inhuman beings is the vampire. The source of vampirism remains unknown to this day. Past myths blamed the existence of the undead on religious sources, curses from the devil or children who died without being baptized. This explanation has since been debunked, as vampires and related beings are immune to any sort of religious weapon. Their abilities are as varied as they are dangerous. Their one ascertained and confirmed vulnerability remains sunlight. (…)