Page 98 of The Pack

They’d be asleep, and I’d be gone, sneaking off into the nuclear zone before they had a chance to stop me.

The forest was eerily quiet as I slipped away from camp, the pack’s soft snores fading behind me.

I’d waited until the fire burned down to embers, until I was sure their watch had relaxed. Callum had been the last to settle, hishead nodding slightly before he leaned back against a tree and closed his eyes. Magnus, Thorne, Tobias, Killian—all of them were still, resting, and completely unaware.

It wasn’t that I didn’t trust them. I did. But they’d made it clear they had no intention of going through the nuclear zone, and every second wasted arguing with them was a second my brother didn’t have.

I had to do this alone.

The first few hours were uneventful as I moved into the zone. The ground beneath my boots was uneven, the moss-covered rocks slick with dew. Patches of grass shimmered faintly, the colors too bright, too wrong, as if the plants themselves were sick, but it wasn’t as bad as the pack had made it seem.

I kept my pace steady, my heart pounding with both fear and determination. My knife was strapped to my side, my hand brushing the hilt every so often as a reminder that I wasn’t entirely defenseless.

You’re fine, I told myself.They were exaggerating.

I walked for hours, enough to where the dawn started to brighten the night sky. Then something off in the distance caught my eye.

At first, I thought it was a shadow, some trick of the light filtering through the haze, but as I moved closer, the shadow grew.

Holy fuck. It was a bear.

Not just any bear—it was a monstrous thing. Its fur was matted and patchy, the exposed skin beneath riddled with bony protrusions that jutted out at odd angles. It moved slowly, like itwas looking for something, its head swinging back and forth as if sniffing the air.

My breath caught, and I froze, my body instinctively pressing against the trunk of a tree.

It didn’t see me, or maybe it didn’t care.

The bear let out a low, rumbling growl, the sound vibrating through the ground beneath my feet. I watched, heart hammering, as it lumbered off into the mist, its massive form disappearing like a shadow fading into the distance.

I exhaled shakily, my hand gripping the hilt of my knife.

“It’s just a bear,” I whispered to myself, though the words felt hollow.

I kept moving, my pace slower now. The silence pressed in around me, broken only by the occasional crack of a branch or the distant rustle of leaves.

Then I saw something else.

It was quick—so quick I almost missed it.

A fox darted through the haze, its elongated body moving with unnatural grace. Its legs were too long, its head too narrow, and its fur shimmered faintly in the strangest way.

In its jaws, it carried something equally oversized—a rabbit, but not the kind I was used to. This one had legs that were too thick, its body strangely misshapen, its eyes large and glassy as they stared blankly into the distance.

The fox stopped for a moment, its glowing eyes darting toward me as it dropped the rabbit.

My breath hitched, and I took a step back.

The fox tilted its head, its movements jerky and unnatural, before it grabbed its prey and darted into the mist.

I stood frozen for a moment, my chest heaving as I tried to process what I’d just seen.

Maybe Thorne wasn’t being superstitious after all, and I was starting to think I wasn’t ready for what that meant.

Left with no other choices, I ventured deeper into the nuclear zone. At this point, the ground beneath me was uneven and treacherous, a mix of cracked pavement, some weird glasslike fusion of rock, jagged stones, and patches of oily grass.

The ruins grew denser, the skeletal remains of houses and buildings scattered all across the devastated landscape. The silence was deafening, broken only by the occasional sound of distant rustling or the low groan of wind filtering through the hollowed-out remains of what used to be someone’s home.

I kept my knife close, my grip tightening on the worn hilt every time a shadow shifted in the corner of my vision.

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