Ian's Choice (Wolves' Heat)

by Lynne, Odessa

  The glare of the flashlight revealed a gaping crack in the rock and a trickle of water down one sheer face. It wasn’t the first hole in the wall they’d come across, but the fresh scent of air was new.

  He felt the air flutter across his sweating forehead and he took a deep breath. Brendan did the same.

  “That’s almost warm air,” Brendan said. “Do you think we can get through there?”

  “I don’t know. Could be a cave with an exit but caves are risky.”

  Ian gave thought to the idea of waiting for Craig here, wondering vaguely if the wolves had technology that would allow them to map caves and tunnels more accurately than human technology allowed and that could be used along with the micro-beacon to locate him quicker. But the thoughts didn’t linger because Ian knew he couldn’t wait for Craig to find him. The collapse of the entrance could have destabilized the floor, the ceiling, the walls—another collapse could happen at any time and they’d already been walking for—he pulled out the phone he’d taken from Brendan along with his weapons—for over three hours. If it hadn’t been for the water and meal bars in Brendan’s supplies, he would have really been suffering. He hadn’t eaten much at all in the last twenty or so hours.

  Ian rubbed his hand over his face, then lifted the bandana he hadn’t needed in several hours to soak up some of the dirty sweat at his hairline, caused not by the steady temperature in the mine but the walk and the increasing pain in his leg. He figured he’d pulled his still healing calf muscle, or he’d succumbed to a resurgence of the deadly bacteria Third had introduced into his leg with those damned claws of his. Either way, Ian wasn’t feeling well and yet he couldn’t do anything about it and he couldn’t rest because if he did, Brendan would probably try to kill him, or at the very least, gain the upper hand.

  “Don’t want to stay here,” Brendan said.

  “No, we can’t stay in the mine forever,” Ian said. “We’ll just keep going deeper. We’ve been on a downward slope for a while.”

  “We could get halfway in and find out there’s an underground river in the way, or a bottomless cavern, or an opening so narrow we can’t fit through.”

  “If that happens, we’ll turn back.” Ian swept the flashlight’s beam into the crack, spending extra time on the ceiling and walls so he could study them for any hint of weakness. It would be nice if he knew what he was looking for.

  “I don’t like tight spaces.”

  Ian sighed. “No. You never did.”

  He didn’t like it but he was going to have to lead the way. He couldn’t let Brendan get in there and panic and stop them in their tracks.

  “Listen,” Ian said. “I’m going in first, so if you have a panic attack, I’ll just leave your ass behind. Don’t think I won’t. After what you did to Devon, I should have taken all your supplies for myself and left you to die anyway.”

  “Oh for God’s sake.” Brendan turned a glower on Ian and threw his hands up. “Shut up about Devon. He’s back at the damn shelter where we took him after we raided the wolves’ den.”

  Ian shoved the base of the flashlight down the front of his pants.

  Brendan clenched his fists. “I just wanted you to see them for what they really are! I thought if you believed they had—”

  Ian grabbed Brendan by his shirt. He yanked Brendan close. There wasn’t much difference in their height so the move put them face to face. “Why do you have to be such a manipulative bastard?”

  Brendan grabbed Ian’s wrists. “I’m serious! When I left he was bitching—”

  Ian shook Brendan. “You thought telling me the wolves killed him would make me more sympathetic to your view?”

  “You pissed me off.”

  “Why tell me now?”

  “You kept acting like I killed your best friend or something. You could barely tolerate Devon when I started dating him. You sure as hell didn’t act like anything had changed over the years, and then you were willing to run off into the woods looking for him as if he was your best damn friend ever. I just took advantage of the opportunity that presented itself. He knew what he was doing when he agreed to go in for the money. You really think he didn’t?”

  Ian didn’t answer.

  Brendan dropped his hold on Ian’s wrists and continued. “I’m done trying to make you see the truth. They’ll take over the planet and it won’t be because I didn’t try to stop them. You want to keep preaching that dumb shit you’re preaching, go for it. Maybe I should have told you Devon wasn’t dead sooner but after what you said to me, I thought you deserved to suffer.”

  Ian shoved Brendan away from him. Brendan stumbled but kept his feet under him. “Asshole. Stay the fuck away from me.”

  Ian moved the gun from his back to his hand, then pulled the flashlight free of his waistband and walked into the gaping crack in the wall, the quiet trickle of water wetting the side of his arm. Brendan could follow or not.

  He let the flow of fresh air lead him through the dark. Although the flashlight’s glow hadn’t dimmed, he worried how long the power supply would last. He had no way to know how long it had been since the last charge and if the light went out, they would be screwed.

  But the light held, through the opening tunnel, through a cavern so tall they couldn’t see the ceiling and so wide it took two hours to make their way around the pools of milky water and the broken remains of long dead stalactites and stalagmites, and through a narrow fissure with jagged walls that glittered darkly in the reflection of the flashlight’s wide beam.

  After being on his feet much too long, Ian could smell the scent of wet leaves and decay, pine and honeysuckle sharp in the air, as if the outdoors were just around the next corner.

  “Do you see anything yet?” Brendan asked from somewhere behind him.

  “No.” Ahead, the tunnel ended in a looming wall of rock over a narrow opening a foot or so above ground level that barely looked wide enough for a person to crawl through.

  “Shit,” Brendan said.

  He’d come up on Ian as Ian knelt and peered through the gap. The flashlight didn’t show him anything but a long wide space that seemed to have no end in his direct line of sight.

  “I’m going to turn the light out. It might take a while for our eyes to adjust enough to pick anything up but I can feel the air coming through.”

  He put his hand into the gap and left it long enough to note that the flow of air seemed to be coming from his right.

  Ian switched off the flashlight and darkness descended sudden and absolute. He could hear every breath from Brendan and himself, the quiet drip of water somewhere farther back in the cave, and even the faintest whistle of wind through the opening in front of them.

  And then the darkness didn’t seem so absolute after all. Not from the right of the opening as he’d thought because of the flow of air, but to the left. He should have realized an opening to the outside could be creating a chimney effect. Either way, he trusted the faint glow of light more than his feel for the direction of a breeze.

  “I’m not turning the flashlight back on until I can get around those rocks in the way up ahead. They might be hiding the way out.”

  Ian stretched out on his belly on the cool earth. He immediately felt the hard press of his belt buckle and the gun he’d tucked into his pants when they’d been walking earlier. He hesitated but then the thought of the gun firing unintentionally and shooting off his dick decided for him. He pulled the gun out of his pants.

  Brendan’s breath already sounded ragged but he lowered himself to his stomach. “Fuck.”

  Ian wished he didn’t care about Brendan’s building anxiety but he couldn’t stop the empathetic twinge he felt. Gun in one hand, flashlight in the other, he squeezed himself into the narrow passage.

  “Fuck,” Brendan said behind him, his hands bumping against Ian’s boots. “Fuck. I don’t know if I can do this.” He blew out a loud breath. “Fuck,” he said again.

  “Calm down. You can’t even see the rock.”

&
nbsp; “I can feel it pressing into my back. That’s enough.”

  “It’s too narrow for me to pull you along so you better get your shit together or you’re going to die here.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. Finding it hard to give a fuck anyway.”

  Brendan’s hand clamped around Ian’s calf. Pain jolted up his leg all the way into his thigh and groin and Ian couldn’t stop a gasp.

  “Let go of my leg,” he demanded gruffly. There was also the matter of the knife tucked into his boot, but Ian thought Brendan was too panicked to remember it.

  Brendan’s fingers dug into his muscle almost right on top of the gashes Third had left. Ian tried to pull away but the crawlway was too tight.

  Brendan took almost too long to let go. Ian gave his leg a sharp jiggle and finally Brendan’s fingers slid off to the rock below.

  “Sorry.”

  Ian pushed forward, his buckle grating across the damp rock underneath his belly and hips. His calf muscle throbbed and the toes of his boots kept dragging against the rock, sending a painful vibration into his leg. He kept his hand wrapped around the flashlight until his knuckles ached from the constant drag over the rough stone.

  The path got tighter, Brendan got quieter, his breath a shuddering echo behind Ian, and the glow around the corner of rock ahead seemed to brighten and fade even as he shimmied closer, squeezing between the damp rocks, the heavy press of weight from above making him even more sympathetic to Brendan’s claustrophobia and more determined to force his way through to the end.

  Then he finally rounded the jutting piece of rock that had blocked his view forward from the opening and saw a pinprick of light ahead.

  Nervous sweat trickled down over his temple, while the air breezing faintly through the narrow crawlway cooled his skin. The light pierced at his eyes but at least he could see his hands now and make out the shape of the rocks around him through the flare.

  The path ahead narrowed impossibly tight and Ian let out a shaky exhale.

  “Shit,” he whispered. Maybe a child could have fit through the sliver of an opening but there was no way he or Brendan could make it.

  “What? What is it?” Brendan demanded, strain in every word.

  Ian rested his forehead on the cool stone and took a few deep breaths.

  “Come on, what do you see? Tell me.”

  “We have to go back.”

  “No.”

  Ian heard a scuffle behind him.

  “No,” Brendan said again. “We’re not going back. We can’t go back. I won’t go back. There’s light. I see it.”

  “Turn around. It’s wide enough.”

  “No, I want out. Get out of the way. We can get out.”

  “We can’t, I said, it’s too narrow. We’ll get stuck. Get your hand off my boot and turn around. We’ll go back to the—”

  “No! Get the fuck out of my way if you’re not going on.”

  “Brendan.”

  “We can bust through or something. I’m not going back. Shoot our way through.”

  “And bring down the ceiling on top of us!”

  Brendan yanked at Ian’s leg. Ian kicked back at Brendan. He wasn’t sure what his boot hit but Brendan grunted and let go.

  “Move,” Brendan said, “Come on, move. You have move. Raider, please.”

  Ian growled out his frustration and made a decision.

  “I’m going to try to scoot over. Then you can see for yourself.” He clenched his fist around the flashlight and awkwardly shifted sideways to make room for Brendan.

  Brendan wiggled his way up beside Ian and then passed by him.

  “Brendan, you’ll—” Ian winced and shut up, then watched Brendan wedge his way into a spot much too tight for him.

  Although the height of the cave didn’t allow enough room for a human body to pass through at the point where Brendan was doing his best to get stuck, there was still plenty of room around Brendan for the glow of the narrow band of daylight ahead to penetrate into this part of the cave. Ian watched Brendan jerk frantically, his toes digging at the rock, but he had stopped making any forward progress at all.

  Ian pushed back with his hands and forearms, trying to work himself into a wide enough space to twist around and head back the way they had come.

  “I see somebody out there!” Brendan said, his voice sounding frantic and hopeful.

  “What?” Ian stopped his own backward shimmy.

  “I know I saw legs. Someone walked by. Hey! Hey!” Brendan’s shouts reverberated through the cave. “Help! We’re trapped in here!”

  Chapter 21

  The first thing Ian thought when Brendan started yelling was that maybe Craig had found him. The surge of hope he felt was too strong to pretend it was anything else. The tracker in his buckle could have led Craig and his wolves to their location. But just as likely, the tracker could have led Brendan’s guys to the area and Ian didn’t want to find himself back in the situation he’d gotten himself trapped in a mine to avoid.

  Brendan was still within reach and Ian grabbed at Brendan’s pant leg. “Shut up, you idiot. We don’t even know who it is.”

  “I have to get out of here and there’s somebody there. I’m not letting them leave us.”

  Brendan’s struggles against the confining rock started up again, legs kicking at the rock, his boots scrabbling, scratching and digging and throwing sandy grit toward Ian’s face.

  Ian turned away to keep from being blinded by the loose particles. “Damn it, Brendan.”

  Ian couldn’t see anything from his position because Brendan’s body blocked his view. What the hell did Brendan think he could do, anyway?

  Assuming Brendan wasn’t just having some kind of panic induced hallucination.

  But then, “God. It’s wolves,” Brendan said. “Fucking wolves.”

  Ian was pretty sure then that Brendan wasn’t hallucinating.

  “We have to go back,” Ian said, and he hated saying it because the thought of going back into the dark made him sick with dread and exhaustion. He couldn’t count on the wolves being Craig’s, even if he wanted it to be them, and while heat season raged, wolves were too dangerous to take a chance on.

  Because, yeah. He liked Craig a lot more than he should, but he wasn’t a fool. Craig wasn’t necessarily representative of the rest of his kind and that meant a run in with more wolves would probably be more like his experience in the woods the night they’d met, and Ian knew he couldn’t handle a chase right now. He would lose, and he wouldn’t submit this time. He didn’t feel like analyzing why, but he knew in his gut he would not submit to another wolf the way he’d submitted to Craig.

  “Brendan, I’m leaving. I’m hungry and thirsty and I’m not staying here to die.”

  “I’m not going back.” Brendan started yanking at his jacket and vest but he didn’t have the space he needed to pull his arms out of the sleeves. “Fuck this! Give me a knife.”

  Ian was so tired of Brendan that he could picture himself just turning around and leaving him to continue to try to fight his way out of a space no human could ever get through. It wouldn’t matter if he stripped down to nothing, he wasn’t going to fit through that last stretch of cave.

  “Give it up, Brendan. You’re coming with me. Don’t make me put a bullet in your ass.”

  “Bullshit. You won’t shoot me.”

  “By God—” Ian tucked the flashlight under his chin, just to make sure it didn’t get away from him. When they got back into the dark of the inner cave, they would have to have that light. Then he grabbed Brendan’s ankles and yanked with everything he had in him. Brendan wrestled forward but Ian didn’t stop. Unfortunately it didn’t do any good because Brendan had the leverage necessary to keep himself in place and they were too evenly matched in size. The flashlight shifted and Ian felt it slide free of his chin.

  Ian hurriedly dropped Brendan’s boots and scrambled for the flashlight before it rolled away.

  “Shit! Brendan, you really want out if it�
��s wolves that rescue you? Heat season isn’t over. You know that. And that’s the only way you’re getting out here, is if they find some way to get us out. And then you’d better be willing to give up a piece of your ass for it because it’ll be that or die when they get a whiff of you.”

  “I can’t go back. The light. It’s right here.” Brendan’s voice broke at the end.

  When they were fifteen, two kids they’d gone to school with had locked them in a pitch-black basement once and Brendan had beat at the old wood door until his knuckles were busted and bloody. When they’d finally gotten out, the need for revenge had consumed Brendan for days, until they had managed to get the other boys into the same dark basement. Ian had been pissed himself and thought the boys had deserved what they got, but Brendan had kept them locked up for almost twelve hours overnight in retaliation for his and Ian’s two hour stint, until Ian had finally told him to let them go or he would personally lock Brendan in a dark basement himself.

  Times might have changed, but Brendan’s claustrophobia hadn’t. But Ian was done making allowances and excuses for Brendan.

  “All right,” he said. “Stay. I’m leaving.”

  He shimmied backward a few more feet and then started a slow twist on his stomach, shuffling his feet across the rock until he faced the direction they’d come in from. His shirt inched up and the scrape of cold rock felt like sandpaper every time it rubbed his skin.

  He flicked on the flashlight and aimed for the darkest corner.

  A shiver vibrated up through the rock beneath him, the tremble of earth rising through his belly and groin where they pressed tightest to the rock, while a shudder and a loud pop echoed from somewhere in the rocks above.

  Ian tensed and stopped breathing. Brendan yelled. Probably a curse, but Ian didn’t pay attention.

  For one moment in time, so long and short that he would never be able to judge later, Ian was sure he was going to die, crushed where he lay as the mountainside settled around them.

  Then over the sound of Brendan’s yell and his own heavy exhale, he heard dirt falling, earth settling, and another loud pop echo through the cave. He turned his head, chin scraping roughly against the rock under him, hair pulling at the back of his head on a sharp edge jutting down from above.