Unwilling Ch. 05

The room instantly was flooded with dim yellow light that hurt in Harry's eyes. He had to close them and wait until they had adjusted to the brightness, then finally took a good look around.

The cellar wasn't as big as Harry had imagined it, but still pretty spacious. Definitely big enough to fit a dozen small wine barrels in, or six big ones, like the one standing there on the far side of the cellar. Harry could have easily hidden in it, but since it was the only obvious place to hide it wouldn't do him any good. He did spot old inclined air vents on the right wall of the cellar, and though they were covered with old metal hatches, he would probably be able to tear one of them out. Fitting through the air vent and climbing up the steep funnel was a whole different story, made impossible by the shackles on his hands.

Harry didn't want to give up that quick though. It felt good doing something, anything, to help himself. Maybe Darwin was already on his way to rescue him, if he had forgiven Harry for the whole 'Jared-incident', but Harry was fed up with waiting for other people like a maiden in distress.

With an audible sniff he walked to one of the hatches, because he was already pretty sure that plans weren't made in one go but instead came to people as they went. The hatch was a good foot over his head, unreachable with bound hands, so he went to the barrel next. It didn't have a lid to stand on, but the walls were massive and the whole barrel probably weighed enough to not move if he tried to stand on the rim. If he climbed onto the barrel and balanced on the rim he could reach the hatch on the wall, and maybe tear it open... as soon as his hands were untied, that was. What to do after that would be a problem to solve when he came to it.

Harry felt exhilarated as ideas streamed into his head, all by his own doing and without any help from anyone. Nobody was here to criticize him or talk him out of it, nobody had a better idea he just had to follow through. No. For the first time in his life he had to try his own thing.

Just as he began the complicated climb up the side of the barrel with his back wedged against the cellar wall, he heard steps from the stairs behind the cellar door. Someone was coming!

He quickly wiggled out of the small spot between the barrel and the wall, hurried back to the middle of the room and sat back down, trying to look inconspicuous. It was not a second too soon, because just as the dust settled around him, the door was unlocked and pushed open, and in stumbled...

"Jared?"

~*Darwin*~

It wasn't hard at all to follow the scent of his mate, even after they'd piled into the 4x4 and accelerated. Darwin's wolf had kept himself to the bushes far off, always keeping an eye on the small group and staying downwind and invisible.

When the car zipped away he fell into an energy saving canter, following the road on a parallel trajectory just a few feet into the woods as long as possible. They did at one point go through the outskirts of the city, which the wolf didn't like at all, but since it seemed to be a quiet, wide-spread neighborhood he finally followed them with ears flattened to the head and tail tucked between his legs.

A few children were out playing, but didn't pay him much attention-- they probably couldn't distinguish him from any other dog. Luckily they also didn't try to run up and pet him.

One of the elderly neighbors watering his lawn wasn't quite as calm as the kids. He took one look at the wolf, dropped his hose and sprinted back to his front door, simultaneously yelling at the children on the other side of the road.

The sudden commotion provoked Darwin into a short sprint back the way he came, and he only stopped when the road he had followed before disappeared behind trees, wild hills and bushes. Had he been a real wolf, he probably would have tried his luck again after dark, but Jared would have been dead by then.

It was the first time Darwin's conscious mind left his dark place and tried communicating with the wolf instead of screaming mentally and shying away from the strange presence. He wouldn't have tried for anyone else, but this was Jared. Jared who'd rescued him-- essentially saved his life-- without blinking an eye, twice.

He had to save him, there was no other way, no compromise around it.

Two minds touched each other after years and years of trying so hard not to, and only Darwin's insistence and unwillingness to delay any further allowed him to finally convince the wolf to just cut through the woods and go around the suburbs instead of singlemindedly following the smell.

He could see the reflections of red and blue lights of a police car entering the neighborhood he'd been to just a few minutes before, but his minds were still not communicating quite as well as they could have. The human mind knew that the police and wildlife rangers would come into the woods looking for them and tried planning ahead for that, the wolf didn't see any immediate danger and just wanted to follow the route his mind was mapping out for him.

The cornucopia of smells was distracting Darwin constantly. There were the smell of rotten wood and leaves, the stink of mice and wild rats, fox markings, deer droppings, the sharp scent of freshly distilled moonshine somewhere uphill, and the stinging pang of fuel following the tracks of motor bike routes. The wolf just went with all the distractions, having had to cope with it his whole existence, but the human tried to sort through them, make sense of it, and got lost and confused so often it affected them both.

Most surprising about this experience was actually being conscious and able to remember it at all. Darwin didn't even realize that big difference until he reached the gravel road leading towards the pack meeting house, and when he did he started to panic instantly. Losing control and conscious thought once more he retreated into the dark, quiet place inside his mind.

With this, the wolf was on his own again. Shaking himself to fend off the unsettling sensation of not being alone in his body he started walking again, keeping himself to the ditch next to the road, following the scent of Jared. He was near now, there was no doubt about it.

~*Jared*~

They didn't cover his eyes for the trip, and they didn't stop him from looking out the car windows. It was a very subtle gesture, but it was also very hard to misinterpret-- they'd kill him. Maybe not now, maybe not soon, but they didn't plan on letting him get away. His hands had been shackled together behind his back with a pair of silver and titanium infused handcuffs, but otherwise he was free to move around as he pleased.

They had put him in the rear trunk of the car, and he understood that choice too. With a normal human being it would have been enough just to sit him in the middle of the back seats and have someone sit left and right from him to cover the doors, but a werewolf's mouth was just as dangerous as his hands, and much harder to control. Having him in the cargo area cut him off from direct access to the car doors and the necks of his captors.

The four werewolves were silent as they were driving, which was kind of unsettling. They didn't whisper to each other, they didn't discuss directions or later tasks or the weather, and they didn't turn on the radio.

It felt like a trip to a funeral for a body that was still breathing.

The driver was Mr. Sultry, the dark skinned guy-- Arabic heritage mixed with something darker, Jared guessed-- who had landed the winning blow to his head, and now that Jared had the chance to watch him, he was even more impressed. He had a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and a very tight expression around his jaw, but those were the only signs of his nervousness. Much more obvious was the unhappy expression around his eyes and brows.

Was he unhappy about how the hunt had ended? That he couldn't kill Jared? About the task he had gotten? It was impossible to guess, but still quite interesting.

When the ringing sound of a mobile phone disrupted the tense silence everybody except the driver jumped. He pulled the phone out of his pocket, answered the call with a single, sultry, "Yes?", and then seemed to listen to a distinctly angry sounding mumble coming from the speaker. Jared couldn't understand what the other voice was saying, but from the changing expressions on the driver's face he got the impression that they didn't like each other very much.

"No sir, we didn't get him, just his companion."

A short pause followed as Mr. Sultry listened intently, then his eyes met Jared's icy blue ones in the rear view mirror. Testing. Frowning.

"No sir, I don't think he's an Alpha. We had him in mere minutes."

The voice on the other end of the line got louder for a moment, loud enough for Jared to hear something about, "what use is a foot soldier to me? I need Darwin, and I need the Alpha!" and some more swearing. The driver kept his cool though, and only the groan of the faux leather covering the steering wheel betrayed his temperament.

"We'll be at the pack house in about ten minutes, sir. I'll see you then," was the last thing Jared could make out before the call ended. 'Sir' the driver had said, so Jared guessed he'd been talking to his Alpha, or a high ranking enforcer. He assumed the mentioned pack house was the same house he'd visited-- and killed at-- before, but he'd been too out of his mind then to remember the way now.

There were many questions Jared would have liked to ask his lovely companions, but he didn't. This was neither the time nor the place to play word games with a bunch of aggravated werewolves, and it didn't work like in the movies. Bad people didn't just tell you what they had planned for you just in time to stop them from doing it. No, Jared had to wait for the right time, the right mood, or he wouldn't get any answers at all.

He just had a very intense feeling of relief his captors hadn't realized yet that they had already found what they wanted.

As they reached the city outskirts he saw a black shadow making its way through the bushes on the side of the road, and nearly cried out in surprise. It was a wolf, Jared had no doubt about it, and the only possible candidate he could think of was Darwin. But Darwin had told him that his wolf was out of control, dangerous and unpredictable, so why was he following the car?

Jared hastily turned his eyes away from the window, hoping no-one had watched him stare to the side of the road. His captors wanted Darwin, not him, which in itself was strange enough. It was nearly impossible to distinguish an Alpha from a dominant werewolf if he chose not to show it, but it was impossible to not recognize Darwin for what he was: definitely submissive. You didn't need to capture a submissive as long as you had its Alpha or a dominant pack member, they just followed the flow wherever it led.

It reminded Jared of the story Darwin had told him about his Alpha, about the way he had to hide what he was for fear of getting killed. Maybe this was the same thing, Jared mused as he tried to find a more comfortable position in the cramped space while his head throbbed unhappily.

It was reasonable to want to catch or kill an Alpha intruding on pack grounds, it was the way it had always been. It was just as reasonable to get rid of his dominant followers or simply catch them and bring them over to your own side, but it was practically a sacrilege to even think of harming the submissives. Jared would have understood hurting one's own submissives much easier than the mere idea of hurting another pack's submissive members. It would be like kicking a pregnant woman in the belly, mindless and senseless violence.

What the hell was going on?

The urge to break his silence and just ask the three werewolves was nearly overwhelming, but luckily the car made a turn onto a familiar road before Jared could give in. They were back on the gravel road that lead to the house Darwin had fled from just two days ago, but the car didn't stop at the first small building. Instead they passed it and followed an overgrown maintenance road deeper into the wilderness.

They also passed five or six people walking by the road with firearms-- mostly hunting rifles-- who were obviously watching the woods for uninvited intruders. Jared's heart jumped with fear for Darwin, and for the first time he hoped not to find him following the car.

Did the others hear his heart pumping with fear? They didn't look at him as the car stopped near the almost picturesque doors of a big, classy holiday cabin, but that didn't mean they didn't notice his sudden increase in anxiety.

All four of them went around the car to the rear hatch, and in the background Jared could see one other guy aim his rifle at him. Just to be sure he didn't bolt, he guessed, as the rear hatch was opened and four pairs of hands grabbed him.

They didn't care if he came willingly or not, Jared was pulled out of the car with brutal force, thrown to the ground without a chance to catch himself, and then dragged to the entrance of the cabin.

His feet scraped over the gravel, his knees were cut open, but he didn't make a sound. This was a spa treatment in comparison to the things his family's pack had done to some of their intruders.

The doors were pushed open and a dizzying cloud of werewolf-scented air washed over him, clogging up his senses as they kept dragging him through the tastefully decorated house. It was hard to breathe through the dozens of different scents as they coated the insides of his nose and his throat, but breathing through his mouth only brought a short respite. Dazed he let them drag him along, watching a few unknown faces pass by.

Their tour ended in front of a solid looking door.

"Bring him down and throw him in with his pack mate", Sultry said.

He was dragged down a set of concrete stairs, his legs hitting each and every one of them with a painful thud. Another door at the bottom of the stairs was opened as Jared found his footing and managed to stand up, then he was pushed inside, stumbling into a nearly empty cellar, and into the arms of Harry.

~*Rayne*~

It had been six months since Rayne had joined the Banes pack. He would have left the minute he realized that the local Alpha was a bag of crazy and nothing more, but he had always known he couldn't. There was no place left to go for a wolf like him, so this was it.

He had tried to fit in, kept his head down and his mouth shut, but it had gotten harder and harder every week. It was his curse, or to be exact the curse of his upbringing.

When Rayne had been young, there hadn't been that many packs around. Hunters-- not the normal kind, but the metaphysical kind-- had kept their numbers low without anyone noticing, but modern age had made killing citizens a very hard and dangerous field of work. There were security cameras, the internet, linked databases for everything, intense finger printing for every offense,...

Hunters were a dying breed.

With the rise of packs another 'breed' had started dying. Rogue wolves, werewolves who didn't commit to a pack but instead kept themselves to small family groups, had been hunted and killed or forced into communities for the last decade, even though nobody really wanted them. If you were a rogue wolf you only had two choices: join a pack and be treated like garbage, or run and be killed eventually.

Rayne's parents had chosen road number two. Rayne had chosen road number one after that.

Of course you could always switch packs if you didn't like the way they treated you, but everywhere a rogue went he was treated like a smudge of dirt on a lily-white pack coat. Only the bigger packs even considered taking rogues in, since they were powerful enough to enforce their position and hold sway against any attempt on their pack lands, but since they weren't dependent on one more or less member, they also tended to treat them more carelessly.

The Banes pack was the last pack in northern US Rayne hadn't joined and left yet, so now he was utterly and truly stuck.

There was nowhere else to go, forcing Rayne to try his hardest to keep his Alpha and his fellow dominants happy, even if he didn't like it.

As Rayne watched the guy they had just brought into the pack house getting dragged down the stairs to the cellar, he quietly asked himself why he had risked everything for such a sorry sod. Sooner rather than later Carl would find out that they already had the Alpha, right there in their own cellar just beneath their feet, and somehow he'd know that Rayne had known the whole time and kept quiet. Rayne had seen many Alphas in his wandering years, but none as good in smelling a lie as Carl was. So why the heck had he lied?

Turning away from the cellar door he walked into the meeting room, one hand furiously clawing through his short hair, eyes lowered to the ground as he mentally cursed himself.

He nearly ran face first into the fistfight erupting right in the middle of the room.

Jerking his head out of the way of a flying fist he stumbled backwards and put up his hands for cover, but he needn't have worried. Greta and Dennis, both dominant pack members, were too intent on caving each others faces in to bother trying to get him involved again.

The scenery was unreal.

Rayne stood there, hands ready to block a blow or grab a fist, frozen as he watched Greta, a typically very guarded and noncommital fitness trainer, take out her rage on the wiry and thin, definitely untrained tax accountant that Dennis normally was. While Rayne understood Greta's melt-down, after all she had been one of the group to catch the Alpha-- not the most challenging of all hunts, but definitely up there in the most frustrating moments ever--, he had absolutely no idea how that alone could have provoked Dennis to engage in this all out Fight-Club-style slapfest with her. It simply boggled the mind.

Worse than this display of aggression was the effect it had on everyone in the room. There were seven other dominants dispersed all over the furniture in the room, and everyone watched those two with fixated, intent, heated glares. Nobody had moved to join in yet, but the longer this went on, the more dangerous it would become for everyone.

The worst thing however was that Rayne felt it too. The stinging tug on his veins, the increase of his heartbeat, the mind numbing pins and needles triggered by the thick stink of testosterone, it all beckoned him to join the tussle, taste blood, feel flesh rip beneath his claws, hear a heart beat its last sluggish pulse before quieting forever.

Rayne felt his fingertips starting to itch.

With a deafening roar he jumped forward, slamming into Greta and Dennis, and using his momentum to thrust them into different directions, effectively breaking them apart.

Greta tumbled into another young dominant, and Rayne could actually see the girl twitch with the instinct to pounce on her, but somehow she managed to contain herself.

"Have you both gotten insane?!" Rayne bellowed just when Dennis managed to get back on his feet, eyes still fixated on Greta, who had a harder time extricating herself from the girl and the love seat she had sat in.

"Not another goddamn step, Dennis, or I swear I'll throw you into the cellar with that other guy!"

The yelling seemed to help. The air was still sizzling with the potential for violence, but at least it hadn't escalated. Nine pairs of unhappy eyes locked on to Rayne's face, and for a moment he felt like the proverbial rabbit in front of the pack. One wrong move and they'd use him as their outlet. Not a pretty thought.

Licking his lips Rayne looked from Dennis to Greta, and back again. In a quieter voice he asked, "so, what's gotten into you?", hoping that question alone wasn't enough to re-boil the skirmish.