Chapter 36 Another beast?
Dravik’s pov
Auren had fallen asleep lying down on the car seat by the time we got home.
I had watched her shoulder shudder as if she was crying or trying to hold back one. I watched her silently not knowing what to do or say at times like this.
What will make her better?
I’m not good with this emotional thing when it comes to ladies, that’s Jace’s forte. Even shadow was at a loss and remained quiet for the first time in his life.
Do you think she is in pain from the rejection? Shadow mutters in my head after a while.
I shrugged, she said she felt nothing, maybe it’s like a delayed reaction or something, you know, because of the binding.
We should make this official once we get home since she is now free from that bastard. Finally we can mark and bed her, we have waited for too long
She just witnessed something tragic for Chris sake Shadow I snap. This is the last thing she needs right now. Besides, she is no longer bound by the contract so she gets to decide herself.
Decide? he sounded incredulous. What do you mean to decide? You’re not letting her go are you?
I ignored him as I carried Auren upstairs towards the bedroom and gently placed her on the bed.
I removed her boot and she instinctingly folded her leg upwards curling around it as she turns towards her other side, making a sniffing hiccup sound as she slept. I watched her silently for a while.
“Dravik,” Garrick's voice came through the pack's link. “You need to see this.”
“Come to my office” I answered, my legs already moving towards the door because of the way his voice sounded.
“No, Meet us outside, we’re arriving in about five minutes,” he cuts the link.
What the hell did he mean by arriving, I gave him the order to come back here with the others.
What do you think it’s about? Shadow asked.
I have no idea, guess we have to find out.
I took one last look back towards Auren and shut the door behind me. I rushed downstairs, waited a few minutes before lines of cars started to arrive, all creating a blockage in front of the house.
It was as if they wanted to hide whatever was going on from the pack members.
Garrick jumped out before the first car stopped.
I approached him, “I told you to come back with the rest of our men.”
“Yeah Brandon told me but I decided to stay back and help him with the search.”
I glowered at him. I had my reason for telling him to go back, if something ever happens to me I needed him to be here to take over.
A car stopped right in front of us and Brandon came out.
“So, did you guys at least find them?”
“No, we found something else,” Brandon looked about. “Where is Auren?
“Asleep.”
He nodded his head as he reached back in the car pulling someone out with him. A man…..a very naked man.
He tossed him onto the snow covered ground, the chains around making a loud sound. His wrists and ankles are chained together with reinforced steel threaded through silver. A thick silver collar clamps around his neck, etched with old runes meant to weaken and burn. The metal already eats into his skin and angry red welts sizzle faintly, his flesh blistering beneath it.
It gave me a flashback of my time in Silverveil when I was bound too.
The man looks half conscious, covered in blood and snow making it difficult to make out his features or his age. I folded my hands looking at them.
Is this a joke?
“You brought me a naked man?” I looked at their faces. “That's not really my thing.”
Garrick turns to Brandon, “show him.”
Brandon crouches down beside the naked man, grips the collar, and loosens it just enough to give the man room to breathe. Then he kicks him hard in the side.
“Shift.”
Nothing happens.
More of our men step forward with more chains. Real Heavy ones, the kind we use only on Alphas.
I frown…….That should not be necessary. Is the man some kind of a powerful wolf I don’t know about? Because that will be impossible.
Brandon kicks him again, harder, “Do what I fucking tell you!”
The man groans, his body trembling. Slowly he pushes onto his hands and we hear bones start to snap. His spine arches violently, the vertebrae cracking one after another. His jaw dislocates with a wet pop. Fingers elongate, joints grinding as claws tear through skin. Muscles swell and knot beneath flesh that stretches, splits and reshapes.
Fur bursts along his spine in uneven patches, dark and coarse. His chest expands, ribs flaring outward as lungs grow too large for the chain that holds them. His face elongates, his teeth forcing their way out, blood and saliva spraying the snow.
I take a step back without realizing it.
Because I know that beast.
The same one that slipped into my territory days ago and attacked my men. The beast I couldn’t find its origin anywhere in the books.
Suddenly it snaps forward, the remaining chains around him shattering under the force of its strength and it lunges straight for me.
Before it reaches me, Garrick and Brandon slam into it from both sides, snapping the silver collar back into place. More chains wrap around its body, biting deep and the beast howls as silver burns into flesh. It fell to the ground.
I stare down at him.
“Where the hell did you find it?”
“During the hunt for Magnus and his people,” Garrick says. “He was up in a tree.”
In a tree? Shadow exclaimed.
And I have to agree with him. You can never find a wolf in a freaking tree. What kind of twisted shit is this?
Brandon crouches and grabs the beast’s jaw, forcing his head side to side. He was slowly starting to transform back to a man’s body thanks to the silver poison seeping right into him.
“Haven’t you noticed the other thing?”
I look from him to Garrick. Then it hits me like a blade to the gut.
It has no scent.
Nothing.
Even now, injured, bound and bleeding, there is no scent coming off him, not even a body odor.
“That is impossible.”
Brandon kicks him back into the snow. “Apparently it is. It explains why the last one was able to make it into our pack without us knowing. When we were in the forest, this one fell right in front of us, the branches gave out or something.”
“What Brandon is trying to say is,” Garrick turned to me. “once they turn into that thing… they can hide in plain sight.
He meets my eyes.
“Literally.”