Page 1 of The Pack

CHAPTER 1

206 years after the Collapse

Zara Yorke

What the… actual…fuck?

Startled, I woke up to the smell of damp moss, fresh rain, and the shocking realization that I wasn’t home in my own bed. With a deep breath, I pressed my fingers to the ground, finding it cold and uneven beneath me.

Fuck… This is really not good.

My eyes flew open, panic flaring in my chest. Above me, tree branches clawed at a gray sky, skeletal and bare, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe.

Where the hell was I?

I sat up fast, the world tilting on its edge, while my head pounded like a war drum. My hands pressed instinctively to my chest, but there was nothing there—no jacket, no shirt, nothingexcept the rough scrape of what felt like leather fabric against my skin. I looked down and froze.

I was dressed—if you could call it that, Iguess—in some kind of crude leather wrap, tied haphazardly around me. It barely covered my thighs, left most of my shoulders bare, and clung too tightly around my chest. My arms were exposed, goosebumps racing up and down my skin in the cold. The leather looked handmade with rough stitching and uneven cuts. As if someone had hacked it and lashed it together in a hurry.

I hated it. Immediately.

Not just because it made me feel practically naked, but because it screamed of something primal, feral even. Something I couldn’t put my finger on, but that made my stomach twist with dread.

Why the hell was I dressed like this?

But more important, where the fuck was I?

I scrambled to my feet, my bare toes curling in the soft dirt. My knees shook, and for a moment I thought I’d collapse and fall to the ground, but I managed to steady myself by leaning on a nearby tree. My legs felt like they didn’t belong to me, and my head throbbed something fierce, but I forced myself to focus, to take inventory of where I was and what was happening.

It quickly became clear that I was in a forest. Dense, dark, and silent, except for the occasional rustle of wind through the trees. The air smelled damp, earthy, with a faint metallic tang I couldn’t quite identify. My hands patted my sides, my hips, searching for anything useful—a knife, a pack, a scrap of paper—but I came up completely empty. Whoever had dumped me here had left me with nothing.

And the worst part? I had no idea how I’d gotten here. Literally zero clue why I was here, and not home, safe and sound waking up in my own bed.

The last thing I remembered was… I paused, grasping at the slippery threads of my memory. There had been… a room? A table? The rumble of a car engine? Faces blurred in shadow?

No. There wasn’t anything there I could hold onto. My memory was gone. It was like someone had wiped my mind clean with a dirty rag, leaving nothing more than an inkling of fear and confusion behind. No matter how hard I focused on it, I couldn’t remember why I was here or even how I got here. I just came up blank.

“Focus,” I muttered, my voice hoarse. I swallowed hard, scanning my surroundings again. The trees stretched endlessly in every direction with no clear paths, and no signs of civilization. I was alone. Vulnerable.

Oh,fuck.

The back of my neck started to prickle and suddenly, the unmistakable sense that someone was watching came over me.

My fingers tightened against the bark of the tree, my breath hitching in the back of my throat. I turned my head slowly, scanning the shadows, looking for something, anything that could have given me that feeling that wouldn’t seem to go away.

Nothing.

But the feeling didn’t go away. It pressed down on me, heavy and oppressive, like a weight I couldn’t shake.

I didn’t like it one bit.

I crouched, moving slowly, my muscles tensing with adrenaline. My instincts screamed at me to find shelter, but I wasn’t about to run blindly into the trees. I knew better than to act without a plan.

First things first: I needed a weapon.

My eyes darted around, searching the ground. A fallen branch, thick and gnarled, lay a few feet away. It wasn’t much, but it was something I could use to defend myself at least. I crept toward it, keeping my movements quiet. When I reached it, I picked it up, testing its weight. It felt solid, the bark rough beneath my fingers, and it had a sharp point end, kind of like a spear.

With the branch in hand, I crouched lower, scanning the woods again. That feeling of being watched still hadn’t gone away. If anything, it had grown stronger, like the eyes on me had multiplied and my uneasy feeling increased exponentially.

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