Page 2 of Resisted

Vince was only delivering facts in his normal careless fashion, but it was true. Poachers had no morals, not that I expected them to be loaded with morals to begin with. They sold sentient creatures for cash, after all. Still, if we didn’t kill them, chances were we or someone we loved would be the next body warming that cage. I couldn’t have that.

“So you just—”

Vince jumped in before the pup could finish his sentence. “Tear into their body, aim directly at the jugular. The more blood that spurts out, the greater the chances that your goal of elimination is successful.”

“Couldn’t we just—”

“No,” Vince said, cutting him off. “The chances are—” Vince stopped talking and tilted his head to the side. “I hear something.”

At first, I thought Vince was just fucking with the pup. But after a few moments, I heard it too. It was faint, barely audible over the sound of the rain hitting the leaves, bark, and rocks, but it was there. A slight rustle of plastic and the crunch of leaves and branches as heavy boots pounded down upon them. They were far away and I doubted they heard us, but with our animalistic hearing, we heard every movement they made.

“I hear six,” I whispered.

“Two to one odds. We can handle it,” Vince mumbled.

Beside us, the pup tensed. “Two to one? We’ll all die.”

“First of all, pup.” Vince popped the word ‘pup’ dramatically, emphasizing the fact that Boyce was so much younger than us, less experienced. “You never say die before a salvage. Second, we aren’t a bunch of weak ass pansies. We could take them four to one. We’re fucking beasts. Remember that.”

Boyce shook. “Beasts. We’re beasts.”

Without acknowledging the mini meltdown of the kid next to us, Vince nodded to me before jogging to a tree a few hundred yards away. We would surround them if plans went right, cut them off before they realized we were near and eliminate most of their escape routes. I spared the pup one last glance. “Wait for the signal.”

“What signal?”

I was already jogging to my location, leaving the pup behind. He would figure out the signal, one way or another. It wasn’t hard. When chaos broke, that usually meant it was go time. When I reached my tree, I crouched behind it, listening to the trouble coming my way. The sound grew louder, the drum of footfalls more pronounced. They didn’t know. They had no fucking idea that they were about to die, no idea that in less than a minute, their throats would be torn from their body, their carcasses left to rot here on the forest floor.

I inhaled deeply, tasting the scent of a shifter and human, mingled with sweat and fear. The fear wasn’t human, but it was present all the same. The fear was what my wolf latched onto, what drove him to be a better animal. He loved the fear but also loathed it. I let my clothes fall to the forest floor before inhaling a final time. Then the shift took hold, gripping me from the inside out. It pulled and mutated my skin until the man was gone, and in his place, the animal remained. The wolf.

The crunch of a twig breaking a few feet away had the animal springing into action. The man was no longer in control, though I still held partial reins. The beast was at attention, its teeth snarling, its muscles tight as it jumped out in front of the traveling party. The tires of their small four-wheel vehicles squealed to a halt, and the carts they pulled jolted, nearly tipping to the side.

Instantly, a silver dipped knives and guns, which no doubt held silver bullets, were in their hands. It wouldn’t have made a difference how fast they were, since we were always faster. It came with well honed skills, years of practice, and the determined senses of an animal dead set on protecting. Their stances became stiff as they looked around, their eyes not fully focusing on me in the dark. Their muscles bunched, and their fear permeated the air.

“One wolf? We can take one single wolf?” the one shining a flashlight on me mumbled.

Maybe? But could they handle three shifters? Not just wolves, shifters, who were born and bred by fate’s design? Whose power and strength surpassed any other animal in this forest? Who could kill a man in an instant, with a single lock of my jaw? Chances were doubtful that they could muster enough strength to defeat a superior being such as myself. Still, I knew they would try.

It didn’t take long either. Once one of them announced confidently that they could take me, half rushed forward to try. Only my beast wasn’t tied down by the weight of a man and slowed by the structure. I jumped, my jaw clamping down on the throat of the nearest human, sending sprays of blood over my fur. The artery continued pumping when my jaw released. The life force of the man spurted outward, and though he attempted to stop it, it was no use. He was dying.

He fell to his knees in front of me as my beast snarled, blood and saliva dripping from my teeth as I pulled back my lips and bared my teeth. His eyes blinked once, then twice, as if he couldn’t believe that he’d been bested. The confidence and superiority of man had always, and would always, be their downfall. One more blink before his body slumped forward, his face smashing into the forest floor as his eyes looked on blankly.

The man in me mourned the loss of a life, but the wolf in me savored the last drips of his life force that coated my tongue. I couldn’t feel sorrow long though, as another man stepped forward, his knife already swinging in my direction as his buddy took aim, raising his silver filled rifle in the air toward me. A familiar growl echoed in the air behind them before Vince sprang up, his hind legs powering him through the air. His jaw locked onto the arm of the shooter, his teeth sinking into the skin until it hit bone. The rifle dropped to the dirt, the sound of it hitting the ground muffled by the man’s screams of pain.

The surrounding movement became a flurry, the chaos heightening by the second. The snarls intensified as Boyce joined us, and the men? They didn’t stand a chance. We tore them down body by body, until all that was left was a single man standing in front of us. His blade was clasped in his shaky palm as his free hand griped the hair of a woman.

“I’ll kill her,” he threatened, and my beast inhaled the scent of her. A shifter female, though her scent had been hidden, her body smeared in a thick paste of mud and horse shit. My heart skipped, and if I were still the man standing in front of them, I’d no doubt my hands would shake. But I wasn’t the man, I was the wolf, and the wolf didn’t care how rare a female was. He only cared that he succeeded in his mission, that he made the kill.

My paws crept slowly forward, my beast’s mind solely thinking of one thing—blood on the forest floor. He knew the threat, and the threat must go. The woman would be an unfortunate causality in the elimination. If only he realized that the man didn’t feel the same. I urged him to stop, and he reluctantly did so, though he licked his bloody lips, salivating at the thought of biting into the man.

The man’s voice shook as he looked around, noticing for the first time that he was surrounded. Surrounded by wolves. Surrounded by bodies. Surrounded by the stifling copper scent of blood. “She will die.” He pointed his knife at all of us, the weapon hardly stable. “Her blood is on your hands.”

You will save her.A faint feminine voice drifted into my mind, and my wolf froze, recognizing for the first time that the female in front of him was not a mere human, but his equal. He whimpered, and I tried to soothe him. If he moved just right, he could save her. He could save the woman before the man’s knife pierced into her skin.

“You think you’re a superior being. You’re monsters. You don’t deserve to breathe the same air as I do. You will never be superior.” He spat the words out with venom behind them, spittle flying as he spoke.

Except the only person or beast who believed his words was himself. We were superior. We were faster. Stronger. Smarter.

Kill him before he kills her. He’s unstable.

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