Brendan's Fate (Wolves' Heat)

by Odessa Lynne

  “Where’re we going, anyway,” Matthew asked again. “And I’m tired of the dodging, so give me a goddamn straight answer this time, please.” Matthew’s “please” lacked any courtesy whatsoever. He was pissed and every word he’d said over the last hour had proved it.

  “Just get the halfgas on the fucking trailer.”

  “Asshole. I should just leave you here and go find Jay and tell him it was all a big mistake. Maybe he’d let me—”

  “I don’t trust Jay any more than you do, and if you try that shit, you’re liable to end up with a bullet in your head.”

  “I’m liable to end up with a bullet in my head anyway, hanging out with you.”

  Brendan dropped his end of the halfgas container and the other handle jerked out of Matthew’s hand. The bottom of the container thudded against the metal lattice that made up the bottom of the trailer, rocking the metal frame with a clang.

  “What the fuck, Brendan?” Matthew shook his hand, his mouth creased in a grimace.

  “You think I’m going to shoot you or something? What kind of person do you think I am? I thought you trusted me. I thought I could count on you.”

  Matthew scowled at him. “Of course I trust you and you know you can count on me. I wasn’t talking about you shooting me, for God’s sake! I was talking about all the people who seem to be out for your blood right now. That’s all.”

  Brendan stood there, breathing deeply through his nose, trying to calm his nerves. He’d been on edge for the last two hours and he still didn’t know why. He’d snapped at Matthew at every turn and Matthew had put up with his shit and was obviously still putting up with it or he’d have left already.

  “I’m sorry,” Brendan said, scrubbing at his face. “God. I’m so tired.”

  “Let’s get something to eat before we leave. Can you get inside?”

  They finished loading the supplies Brendan had taken and then went for the house. Matthew waited behind him on the front porch, looking off into the distance toward the woods, a frown on his face.

  Brendan knew the code to Ian’s door since he lived there off and on, and after he’d dragged his finger in the correct pattern over the plate, the lock released. Brendan went in first.

  The inside surprised him. Ian was usually neat, but there were dishes on the table by Devon’s computers and equipment—something Devon would bitch about for days if he were to see it, and when Brendan walked through the bottom floor of the two-story home, he found blood on the floor and in the bathroom, and—

  Devon’s bed was a mess.

  God, what had happened here?

  Brendan glanced down the hall and saw the staircase leading up. “I’m going for the weapons he has stashed in the attic.”

  Dried blood there too, on the wall beside the foot of the stairs, but not much and if he wasn’t mistaken, too black to be human. The wolves’ blood dried darker—what he’d seen of it anyway. Just because they didn’t die from their injuries as easily as humans didn’t mean they didn’t bleed.

  He remembered Trey making him bite his arm and the way Trey had reacted.

  He laughed under his breath, a humorless sound. He knew why they healed like that. He’d been so shocked when Trey had demanded he bite him, but it wasn’t such a miracle after all that they were so damn hard to kill.

  He was probably lucky they died at all.

  The attic had a stuffy feel to it, and he squinted at the wall where a shot had busted the sheetrock and then took in the splatter and smear of dark spots on the doorframe.

  He bit off a curse. He should’ve checked out the house before he took the halfgas from the generator. The light coming through the small window penetrated the corners of the room but barely and not well enough for him to tell if the blood belonged to human or wolf.

  One of Ian’s grandfather’s guns had been thrown to the side and that alone was enough to ratchet up Brendan’s anxiety. Ian had a sentimental streak that bordered on ridiculous and he would never have allowed anyone to treat his grandfather’s guns this way.

  Brendan took a deep breath.

  No matter what had happened, Devon was okay. Brendan had seen him alive and well just days ago—he might not’ve had his memories when he had, but he remembered Devon hauling him out of the old cabin and dragging him through the woods. Devon was fine.

  But he couldn’t help remembering how Devon had looked just before he’d thrown up all over the floor when the wolves had locked him up with Brendan not long after Brendan had been captured.

  Devon had looked half-dead was how he’d looked and Brendan couldn’t stop the shudder that went through him remembering that.

  Whatever had happened here, Brendan had set it in motion when he’d put Matthew and Thom up to making that bet with Devon. He’d done that and there was no way to pretend it hadn’t been his idea to send Devon out there in the middle of heat season.

  He dropped back against the wall, the thud sending a dull pain up his spine, and slid down to sit on his ass, one arm propped up on his knee, his forehead cradled in his other hand.

  He’d had his reasons, and those reasons mattered. They were important.

  But they no longer felt good enough to excuse the way he’d treated two of the only people he’d ever really cared about.

  He heard the footsteps before he heard Matthew call out, “Brendan? What’s taking so—”

  He stopped talking when he rounded the door and saw Brendan sitting in the floor.

  “Everything okay?”

  “No,” Brendan said, too thick, too low, and there was no way Matthew didn’t recognize the redness around his eyes for what it was. Fuck.

  “Hey.” Matthew hunkered down in front of Brendan and put his hand on Brendan’s knee. The comforting warmth of his touch made Brendan want to pull away and curl up against him all at the same time.

  He grabbed Matthew’s arm and hauled him in. Matthew’s knee thudded against the floor and his grunt ended on a puff of breath against Brendan’s cheek.

  Matthew didn’t complain though. “Shh,” he said, and he wrapped his arms around Brendan and held him tight and Brendan sat there with him, ten, maybe fifteen minutes, until a gust of wind caught under the eaves and rattled the window.

  “We have to go,” Brendan said, his voice hoarse.

  “Okay,” Matthew said, but he didn’t move.

  Brendan’s chest and underarms felt sticky with sweat where his skin had overheated because they were pressed so close together.

  He cleared his throat and started to move. “Now. Wolves’ll be hunting us soon. Ian will give us up. You know he will. I’m not even sure why he helped me get away.”

  Matthew sat back on his heels and shrugged, too casually. “Don’t know. I barely know him. He’s the one that came to me on the ship.”

  Brendan sighed. His gut still told him he couldn’t trust Matthew, but he couldn’t run off and leave him either. So he climbed to his feet, his leg cramping and a sharp pain shooting down into his ankle. He was starting to think it wasn’t ever going to heal. It was hard to remember sometimes that it hadn’t been that long since he’d broken it.

  Matthew rose beside him. “What do you need me to grab?”

  Brendan eyed the guns he’d meant to take and felt his chest clench tight. “Nothing. We’re not taking anything from here.”

  Matthew’s eyebrows went up. “You sure?”

  Brendan patted the thigh holster he’d put on back at his own place. He’d also supplied Matthew with one of his guns. “I’m sure. Let’s go.”

  They left the attic and clomped down the stairs, Matthew in the rear.

  Matthew said, “No dodging this time. Where to?”

  Brendan surprised himself by answering truthfully. “My father,” he said. “I need to find out a few things before I can figure out what the hell my next move is.”

  “Works for me,” Matthew said, “but food first.”

  Brendan frowned, but nodded.

  Chapter 24


  They passed some foot traffic on the way to the closest town. Heat season was over and people had started to go about their lives again without the threat of wolves catching their scent and going into a lust-crazed frenzy because of the chemical cocktail the human scent set off in their brains during heat.

  Brendan didn’t understand it; no one did, really, except maybe the wolves themselves with their advanced medical technology.

  The wolves had developed drugs to help stop the killing that had resulted from their uncontrollable lust and their instinct to fight for mates. This heat season had probably been the most peaceful yet since they’d come to Earth eight years ago, because of the development of a newer, better repression drug.

  Brendan’s father was going to be pissed when he realized Brendan had lost the drugs they’d stolen from the wolves in the last big raid.

  Then again, his father was going to be pissed when he found out the deal Brendan had tried—and failed—to broker with those wolves that wanted Trey out of power. That hadn’t been the plan and Robson hated it when Brendan didn’t follow his plans.

  The halfgas got them most of the way there. They ran out a mile or so inside one of the abandoned towns in the valley between the mountains near a grass-covered hill that used to be part of a building. The town had suffered severe damage in the earthquake all those years ago when a massive fissure split the town down the middle, ripping the local high-school right in half.

  There was a memorial nearby, and the damage to the school had been cleared, but the rest of the town? A collection of broken buildings and a couple of abandoned factories so old now that to set foot inside one of them was asking for an early death.

  They went through the supplies and started loading a couple of bags with the essentials for a long walk to the place where his father kept a vehicle to be used only in an emergency situation.

  Brendan’s impending capture and death seemed like enough of an emergency to him. He wondered if his father would agree.

  Of course, that was just about the time Matthew hit him on the side of the arm and pointed off in the distance toward one of the old factories.

  “Something’s moving out there.”

  “Wolves?”

  “Don’t know. Could be. Or Jay and the guys, you think?”

  “Fuck. I don’t know. I still haven’t figured out what that asshole’s plan is. I figured he’d go away once that wolf he was working for died.”

  “He didn’t. He’s been trying to run the whole thing.”

  “Yeah, you already told me that.”

  Matthew gave him a look before digging around in the bag he’d already half loaded. He pulled out a pair of binoculars and then spent a couple of seconds staring toward one of the old factories.

  “Shit,” Matthew said quietly.

  “What?” Brendan demanded, keeping his voice low.

  “Wolves. Can’t tell if they’re the ones who want you dead or—”

  “They all want me dead in one way or another,” Brendan said, cutting Matthew off. He noticed Matthew’s short pause as he raised the binoculars again.

  “You really believe that?” Matthew asked.

  “What the hell else am I supposed to believe?” Brendan snatched the binoculars out of Matthew’s hands.

  Matthew just looked at him, his clear-eyed gaze saying just as plain as words would have that he wasn’t impressed with Brendan’s acting out. “You know, you could ease up a little on the goddamn melodrama, Brendan. You’re alive, you’re back on Earth, you’re not in bad shape, nobody hurt you.”

  “I’ve got a broke—”

  “I heard you did that yourself. Falling out of a tree.”

  “Fucker. Shut up,” but the heat was missing, because Matthew was right. Brendan was acting like a shit and he deserved every pointed look Matthew had sent his way today. He was going to have to ease up. He might not feel like he could fully trust Matthew right now, but Matthew was still his friend.

  Brendan looked through the binoculars, their range limited because even his father’s money hadn’t been enough to get the newer technology the wolves had shared in that first year after their arrival, back when everyone thought the wolves were remarkably peaceful aliens eager to share technology in exchange for a new home on Earth. He counted at least twenty wolves and that was assuming there weren’t more on the back side of the old factory. He wasn’t willing to make that assumption.

  “Not that I had the chance to meet many of the them,” Brendan said, being careful not to raise his voice any higher than necessary for Matthew to hear him, “but I don’t recognize any of the ones I see. Did you?”

  “No.”

  “So we assume it’s these rogue watchers—or the ones connected to Jay if they’re not one and the same and we haul ass before they see us.”

  “Or catch our scent.”

  “Yeah.” Because heat season might set off their aggressive mating instincts, but the wolves’ ability to catch a scent wasn’t caused by the heat. They had better hearing and sharper vision than any human.

  A howling gust of wind swirled leaves across the ground and shook the nearby brush.

  Brendan threw one of the bags over his shoulder. “It’s blowing their way. We need to get out of here.”

  “Yeah,” Matthew said absently, still watching the wolves. “They’re doing someth—oh, shit.”

  “Get your bag, come on.”

  “They’re fighting.”

  “What?” Brendan tossed his bag aside and dropped to his knees behind the vehicle and raised the binoculars again. “Get down.”

  “Something’s going on,” Matthew said, coming down beside Brendan. “They won’t see us now if we run.”

  “You want claws in your back?” Brendan said, disbelieving. “If they’re fighting, who knows what’s going through their minds? I’ve never seen them fight like this outside of heat.” But was that really true? It hadn’t been heat season when Trey had fought to protect him in the woods and killed at least one wolf that Brendan knew of.

  Brendan scowled and continued, “They’re normally peaceful, remember?”

  Oh, the goddamn irony of that…

  “What do you see?” Matthew whispered as he put his back to the vehicle and started stuffing a few more of the supplies they’d put on the ground into his bag. His feet scrabbled in the dirt and grass as he hurriedly turned back to watch the wolves in the distance.

  “Blood,” Brendan said.

  A wolf’s roar carried to them over the wind. Brendan’s hair should’ve been cut a month ago and some of the too-long strands blew in front of his eyes and he gritted his teeth as his eyes lost their focus on one particular shape he’d been trying to track.

  Something about the way the wolf moved seemed familiar and his heart felt like it was trying to pound its way out of his chest as he tried to find that wolf again.

  “Shit,” Matthew said with an edge of panic. “They’re gonna smell us.”

  “Not if we get out of the wind, they won’t.”

  Another roar carried to Brendan and he saw two wolves against one in a brutal fight. A flash of claws and a spray of blood hit the cracked outer wall of the factory. One of the wolves leaped on the other and—

  He lost sight of them because they moved so quickly.

  Matthew tugged at Brendan’s shirt sleeve. “The closest building is the other old factory, back the way we came.”

  “Maybe,” Brendan said, but his heart thudded even faster at the thought of being trapped inside one of those deep, dark cavernous holes. God. Maybe the place had windows. If there was enough light, he’d be okay.

  He gave up his futile search through the binoculars. “We’ll go for one of the safer, smaller buildings, but if we can’t make it…”

  “Sure.” Matthew hefted his bag in his hand. “We should leave these for now.”

  “We need that stuff. If they find it—”

  “Worth the risk so we can move faster, you think?”

  Bren
dan hesitated, then nodded. Running wasn’t his ideal move, but he had no idea what the wolves were fighting over. All he could think was that they’d somehow tracked him here, both Trey’s wolves and the other faction—or factions. But if they had, shouldn’t they know exactly where he was?

  Or maybe they did but they’d run into each other before they’d reached his and Matthew’s location.

  He and Matthew took off at a brisk walk, trying to keep low and hidden, but there were places where there was nothing to hide behind and the entire time he worried that one of the wolves was going to break away and come chase them down.

  The hill hadn’t been the best place to run out of halfgas, but the factory they were headed for wasn’t that far by foot. Brendan could only walk so fast with his broken ankle and the brace, but they made it.

  An alpha howl echoed eerily through the debris filled alley between the factory and a warehouse.

  “Too close,” Matthew said, scrambling up a massive chunk of concrete that stuck up at an angle and blocked their path. He thrust his hand down to Brendan.

  Brendan grabbed hold and climbed, the strain making it hard to hear over his harsh breathing. “I don’t know what the hell I did to suddenly piss off these rogue watchers but I wish they’d go back to ignoring me.”

  A clatter in the distance almost made him stop breathing.

  Brendan looked behind them but no one had followed them into the alley. He wasn’t sure where the sound had come from but Matthew was right about the howl being too close. Matthew would be able to run if he had to, although it probably wouldn’t do him a lot of good in the end, but there was no way Brendan would be able to keep up.

  Wind gusted through the narrow alley, peaking in a howl that died off slowly.

  “If anybody’s back there, they’re going to get a good whiff of us both,” Brendan said, wiping a damp trickle from his forehead. “I’m sweating like a son of a bitch.”