26

The girls couldn’t stop staring. The beast didn’t pace like Lexie expected. He merely stood, heavy skull hunched below sharp shoulders, glaring. A makeshift leather muzzle fashioned by Jenna bound its jaws. Corwin enjoyed buckling the muzzle onto the Morloc. She punched him across the nose before the tranquilizer wore off.

Now, awake again, his yellow eyes tracked Lexie, fidgeting behind the wall of her friends. No doubt he knew they were all half-bloods, but she prayed he couldn’t divine more.

They’d erected the cage next to the cave where the Pack, under Blythe’s rule, had brought half-blood males to beat into shifting. Where Lexie had seen the violence these women were capable of, and the hatred. She shivered and zipped up her hoodie.

The cave was too small for the cage, so they stood beneath the haggard pines. They’d have to be extra careful keep the Morloc from howling for his friends.

Gripping her knife in her left palm, Lexie stepped out from behind her friends.

The Rare went ballistic, throwing his weight at the cage with a horrific clatter. She held the knife in front of her, catching the Rare’s reflection in the blade, praying both its metal and that of the cage wouldn’t buckle. His yellow eyes glared back in the reflection of the blade. She looked back at him, squinting, trying to catch the sunlight, or maybe the shadow. She didn’t know which.

Lexie stepped closer, and the Rare rolled a low growl. Despite being bound and muzzled, the beast intimidated still. His eyes were a putrid yellow, matching his teeth as he snarled. His ears were missing chunks of skin, and open wounds wept from his neck and back, two from the day’s wrangle, and more from earlier fights and bites.

Lexie reached the knife into the cage, but it still didn’t show a shift. The Rare was a Rare, no man to be found.

His growl fell to a steady roil. She placed the blade on his patchy fur. He shuddered like a horse deflecting flies.

She slid the knife under his fur, along his shoulder, and he snarled. Blood oozed beneath her incision, but his fur and fangs remained.

His eyes cursed her as she focused on the wound.

“Yeah, there’s more where that came from,” she said, wiping the knife clean on his fur and returning to the Pack.

“Well that’s new,” Lexie said.

“What is?” Hazel asked.

“When I wounded Blythe with the knife, she shifted back to human form. And when I held it on the full moons, it kept me from turning.”

“So the knife should turn a wolf human?” Mitch asked.

“I thought it would, but it didn’t.”

“One test doesn’t prove much,” Corwin said.

“Maybe the knife makes them shift into whatever they are,” Hazel said. “You cut Blythe and she turned into a person. You touched Archer with it, and she turned into a wolf. You cut mean animal over there, and he stays that way.”

“Which means he’s a wolf and not a man.” Lexie sheathed her knife. “Which we knew. Or thought we did. Now what?”

The wolf’s gurgling growls continued, rising and falling in tone, like the Pack’s chatter, but muffled and incomprehensible.

“We’re doomed,” Mitch said, part question, part resignation.

“We can assume this guy was one of the Rares who killed Bree,” Renee said.

“And attacked Sharm. If we can’t get to the whole pack, at least we can kill him,” Corwin said.

The girls continued debating what to do with the Rare now that their plan had fallen apart.

Lexie turned her ear to listen to the continued guttural noises from the Rare. She walked back to the cage, reached in, and ripped the muzzle from his snout. She snatched back her hand just before he snapped at her with his teeth. He bared them at her fully now, yellow against the black of his gums. He snarled once.

“What did you say?” Lexie said.

The wolf narrowed his eyes and snarled.

“What did you say?!”

His throat trembled, a chirping kind of growl. The pattern was familiar, strings of syllables with no breaks except when he took a breath. She had heard this language before, though she didn’t know where.

Humans. This world is not for you.

Lexie jumped back. “Say what now?”

The syllables arranged themselves into lucidity in Lexie’s mind. She struggled to stay present as fear flooded her, screaming at her with each shallow breath to run, to hide, to find Archer and dig a hole and wait out the rest of time together. She stammered, “We just want to know why you’re killing us.”

The wolf stopped growling.

She struggled to flex her throat around the awkward syllables, choking on the first, and dropping the second. Finally, she found the right tension to create the high-pitched gurgled note. She listened in her head to the words she sounded out in English while hearing her throat work on the unfamiliar. It felt like nonsense at first, or some trick from the freaky church down the road. Then sounds croaked from her throat without any analysis. They merely sprang forth.

“Uh … ” Hazel said. The girls had fallen silent when Lexie ripped away the muzzle. Now they exchanged wide-eyed glances.

Lexie chattered until she could complete the awkward and stumbling sentence, a repeat of the question, “Why are you killing us?”

Does need motive spider to kill?

We are human, Lexie chattered.

The wolf stared at her.

You attack humans … she struggled to find the correct word … not deserved.

Who was here first?

Why two hundred years to… Another hole appeared in her lexicon. She stumbled. Revenge, she chattered.

We make attempts. We try new method.

Lexie scoffed.

Cities. Walls. You build to shield, to defend. But you bleed outside, on us, he growled.

Humans came from woods, you cannot banish us, Lexie said.

Not banish. Remind. Where human live in hierarchy.

“Why did you kill Bree?” Lexie spoke in her human tongue.

The wolf blinked in response.

The girl, why did your pack kill her?

Not a pack, the Rare said.

Why did you kill her? You killed child of … government man.

The wolf stared.

That’s important!

To you.

To everyone! Lexie stumbled over syntax and construction, hoping he understood, as though reason was even an option. They could burn forest. They could send in warriors.

It we welcome.

Death?

Chaos. The humans destroy own walls, always. We survive, always.

“I don’t know,” Lexie mocked in English. “You look pretty haggard.”

The wolf responded with another long stare and a small snort.

A flash of an earlier conversation appeared in Lexie’s mind, walking with Renee, smoking the cigarettes: I’m mortal Lexie, and so are you. So are all werewolves.

Then, months ago, Archer’s weak joke that at 185 her age was catching up with her. These Morloc, they were older than Archer, by far. This one certainly looked it.

Good at survival? Lexie thought. No way. The Morloc had no legacy. Archer was the only pureblood, and there had been no report of a female werewolf found, ever. This haggard wolf and his kin were likely the last of their kind—no mates, no pups. They had nothing but themselves.

What do you plan?

Take what is ours.

What is yours?

Our xouitihanou.

Lexie shook her head, not understanding the word.

Our blood survives after our bodies are dead. We create young to carry us on. Your females are ours as long as you live on this land.

 

“Well that was weird,” Lexie said, stepping back to confer with the Pack while Mitch guarded the cage with the tranq gun at his shoulder.

“What did he say?” Hazel asked.

“A lot of things,” Lexie told the Pack. “He made it sound like they’re the ones on the defensive.”

“That’s insane,” Corwin said.

“He seems to think his territory is under threat, and he and the other Rares are merely defending it.”

“Well … ” Jenna said.

“Well what?” Corwin asked.

“It’s kind of hard to argue with that logic,” Jenna said. “I mean, the highway … ”

“They killed an innocent woman,” Renee said.

“Who was inexplicably in the woods alone in the middle of the night,” Jenna replied.

“That’s victim-blaming,” Hazel said.

Jenna held fast. “It’s suspicious.”

“You may as well be asking what she was wearing,” Renee groaned.

“Well, what was she wearing?” Jenna asked.

“Oh my god, Jenna!” Hazel exclaimed.

“It could be a clue! I’m not saying she asked for it. I’m just finding it very suspicious that a pack of full-bloods felt the need to defend their territory from a eighteen-year-old girl.”

“Because they’re lying,” Hazel said.

The girls looked to Lexie, who just shrugged. “I could barely understand him. I don’t think sarcasm or duplicity would track with me right now.”

“Never mind,” Jenna said, waving her palms in front of her. “It’s just suspicious is all. That’s all I’m saying.”

Lexie chewed on her lip, her gaze falling on the dusty ground at her feet. She knew the answer to Jenna’s question, and knew every moment she didn’t answer was a new betrayal to her pack.

“Jeans and a green turtleneck,” Lexie muttered.

The girls shared a curious look. Renee said, “What?”

“Bree was wearing jeans, a green turtleneck, and a jacket. Some makeup. Diamond stud earrings. Boots with a low heel. She looked nice, like she was going on a date. But not too nice, like it was the first one.”

The girls all gaped.

“I found her in Archer’s territory. I was the one that called to tip the cops,” Lexie mumbled. “She was in Archer’s territory.”

Lexie looked back toward the cage. Mitch fidgeted, straining to hear the conversation, his gun slack at his shoulder. The Morloc stared straight at Lexie.

The girls were dumbfounded. Lexie expected a barrage of questions but none came. On her sisters’ faces were merely looks of horror and disbelief.

Renee shook her head. “Did you … ?”

Simultaneous sounds struck them—a rifle blast, and a howl. The howl rattled their collective bones like the bars on the Rare’s cage. It soared in all directions, a tsunami of sound. Lexie and Renee ran for the cage. The other girls took cover.

Mitch had missed; the shot gashed the metal bars and nothing more. The Rare stared at Lexie with hateful eyes. Do not mistake, peacespeaker, the Morloc said. We will kill you, your families, your progeny, your mates. We will kill everything you love. And our blood will survive.