Page 33 of Breed

Footsteps coming down the tunnel stop my thoughts and my instincts come to the fore. This is no place for an interloper, and an interloper I will always be. I brace myself for another social interaction that carries the weight of life and death in every word.

I recognize the creature coming toward us as soon as he rounds the corner. Chaos is a red scaled predatory saurian. He is one of Wrath’s generals, and he does not usually run errands. For him to be coming for me means several things. It means reports of my presence in the city have been made. It means they have gone all the way to the very top of the chain almost immediately. And it means that my presence is about to be requested.

“Wrath wants to see you. He’s not happy you didn’t come out with us and ran off after the meat instead.”

Chaos does not mince his words. The moment I discovered Lettie was missing, I did abandon the journey to the wilds to come back to the city to find her. I did not ask permission. Under Alpha Thorn’s regime, that would have been unforgivable. But Wrath runs a den of outlaws. Being impulsive, following instincts, and ignoring orders comes with the territory more often than not. He won’t be happy about the situation, but it will not be in any way suspicious.

“I recovered what I needed to,” I say.

Chaos doesn’t reply. He turns, expecting me to follow. I do, hoping that Lettie keeps her mouth shut for the duration, as this will be an interview with potentially dangerous outcomes.

Wrath is waiting in his war room. He looks as he usually looks, dangerous and yet self-contained. He wants an explanation, naturally.

“How did she escape from a locked and barred room, Shan?”

“She triggered my safe’s detonation, recovered her suit, and used the tools therein to disguise herself while she travelled out of the burrows.” I tell a lie that is mixed with the truth. It is the best kind of lie, one that has the flavor of realism in it.

Wrath stares at me for a moment, then laughs aloud. “Is that so? These humans are more intelligent than they seem.”

“This one is. I can’t speak for others. This one does whatever it wants, whenever it wants.”

He laughs, enjoying rebellion for rebellion’s sake. Wrath is a strange leader in that respect. Somehow he is both completely dominant and utterly reckless. It is easy to fall under the spell of his charisma. His dominance is very different from that of Alpha Thorn. Wrath rules over the roiling, chaotic underworld with a light touch and a heavy fist. We all know that if he stops laughing, real trouble is on the way.

“She tried to get to the alpha’s mate and the enforcer’s mate,” I add. “These humans are going to keep trying to get their captains. They obviously know where they are.”

“That one under your arm should be questioned,” Wrath says.

"She won’t tell you anything. She’s resistant to good sense.”

He laughs again. I know he enjoys dealing with chaotic creatures. I am sure that is at least part of the reason he wants the humans under his control. The greater reason is he sees them as a limited resource, and he’d rather they belonged to him than anyone else. I believe that the breeding side of things is something of a red herring. He likes it because it’s twisted and regarded as wrong. I’ve had a lot of time to observe Wrath, and what I’ve learned about him is that he’s the pure embodiment of criminality. He does things because they’re wrong, and he revels in the wrongness of them. The more perverse the act, the greater his drive to do it. He will sacrifice anything in order to commit crime, including himself. Every saurian in this underground bunker is risking their lives to follow a madman — and it is the madness that they find appealing. Even now, standing in front of Wrath, I feel myself getting caught up in his charisma.

“You missed out on some excitement today when you abandoned our mission in favor of your own,” he says, addressing me directly. “Where we are moving, no alpha will be able to tread. Thorn would shit himself if he were to find himself in the territory we have scouted. We are going to build a new city, founded not in the grave of an ancient beast, but in the living shadow of the primal.”

“But the primal is aggressive and destructive. The only reason Grave City survives is because it instinctively respects the domain of the dead.”

Lettie pipes up with her interpretation of the situation, which happens to be entirely accurate. She, or perhaps all the human crew, have put some real thought and effort into understanding the way our society works. She knows just enough to be dangerous, triggering Wrath’s annoyance.

“We are not going to live like maggots crawling around the sockets of a moldering corpse. We are going to live free and bold. We are going to live as our ancestors did, in the very path of the primal.”

He’s going to get us all killed. There is no way to survive the monstrosities that roam the exterior of the city. Few have ever seen the primal, because few have the nerve to wander those wild lands. There was an outlaw bar that was destroyed by the first human arrival, and that is being rebuilt on orders of the alpha, which one might consider odd if not for the fact that Thorn likes to outwardly keep a friendly relationship with Wrath.

Thorn does not like conflict in his city. He understands that there will always be a criminal element, and that it is better to control it and be as close to it as possible. Better to have Wrath keeping the underworld under his thumb than to have dozens of splintered criminals all acting out in an entirely unmonitored way. But there’s a real problem with that approach, and that’s the fact that when your underworld boss starts getting ideas about taking over entirely, when his network starts to rival your forces as alpha, and when his moves are bolder, braver, and wilder than any you can make… things start to get dangerous. Not just for you, but for everybody.

“I think I’d better get this one contained,” I say. “Keeping a hold of her is one thing, but I don’t want her hearing too much. These humans make pretty adept spies.”

“Your room isn’t secure, is it? We’ll have to find somewhere safer to keep her, won’t we?”

He has a point. And I know that my room will be searched, if it hasn’t been already, and the tunnel she used will be discovered. That alone isn’t damning. There are tunnels everywhere. And by now, Avel should be more than well enough aware to stay clear of that rendezvous point. I take a breath, not too deep. I don’t want to look stressed.

“I think that little visit to the wilderness is overdue,” he says. “I think you should bring your human with you.”

There’s no getting out of this. I have to go to the wilds, and I have to take Lettie with me.

“Agreed,” I say. “But I need a word with her first. A private one.”

With that, I carry my human mate back off to what is left of my private sanctum, now a charred, ransacked, and entirely compromised room. That doesn’t matter now, though. All that matters now is giving her the discipline she sorely deserves.

“Please don’t hurt me. Please let me go. Please…”

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