Page 22 of Brutal Alpha Bully

Chapter 11 - Xeran

“X, you up there?”

Soren’s voice floats back to me through the trees and the smoke, and it brings back a million times that the two of us have been in this situation before. Fighting fires together as teenagers, making our fathers proud.

We got the call about the fire this morning, and though we’ve only had a week to train, I called the guys together. I needed something to do so I could stop thinking about Seraphina.

About the look on her face when she talked about me leaving.

Like she was talking about me leaving more than the town—like it was more personal for her. Itwaspersonal back then—I hurt her. In front of everyone. Coming from a family like hers, she’d never had an easy time, but my rejection surely only made it worse.

So wouldn’t she be happy that I’d gone? Would it have been better for her that I left?

That’s what I’d always assumed.

“Xeran?” Soren calls again, and I realize I’ve been too caught up in my own head to answer him. Clearing my throat of the smoke and heat, I call out to answer him, “I’m on your six!”

I grit my teeth as I move forward, trying to see him through the thick black cloud of smoke around us. That’s one way we can tell it’s daemon fire—the smoke is inky black, swirling, making even the brightest day feel like night. Normal fires burn with a lighter gray smoke, and sometimes you can occasionally even see right through them—but notwith the daemon fire. Humans often get disoriented, trip over themselves, and end up hurting their squad mates in the din. We’ve even heard stories of them having panic attacks or mental breaks because the darkness in the smoke was so deep.

But it’s easier for us to make our way through the woods now—I can feel the heat of my squad mates, sense them, hear the crunch of their feet. All things humans can’t do, which leads them to lose one another and walk right into the clutches of the fire.

“Fuck, man,” Soren groans, stumbling into me. I get an arm around him, helping him to step out of the shit on the ground.

Each of us carries a canister on our backs, but it’s not filled with water. Instead, it’s filled with a thick, pulsing goo, similar to the stuff that comes out of a fire extinguisher. While fighting the first round of daemon fires in high school, we realized that the leftover ash from the fires—a substance devoid of energy or life—could be used to smother the flames. Mix it with some holy water, and you create a silvery, tar-like substance that sticks to surfaces and kills the flames.

“Over here!” Lachlan calls, swinging around wildly and plastering the trees near him with the stuff. Soren and I move toward him, watching as the bright, electric blue of the fires blinks out of existence.

Through the trees, I can only barely make out the stuff he’s sprayed sliding down the trunks of the trees, coating the bark in its slimy, greasy residue.

“Sor, watch out for that crest up there.” Maybe I don’t need to remind him—he knows these woods just as well as I do. His family has a cabin somewhere up in the mountains, andthey’d disappear up there for long bouts of shifting and hunting together.

“Thanks, X,” Soren calls back, and I can hear in the labor of his breathing how long it’s been since he’s done this.

Since any of them have done this.

When I left, Declan made it perfectly clear that firefighting was no longer one of the priorities for the pack, dissolving my old squad and disabling the old warning system. Now I’m the only one of us who’s been keeping in firefighting shape.

We’ve been out here for hours and have only just started to get this fire under control. It came to life in the hills northeast of the town just before dawn. My goal was to stifle it before it could make its way to the town, and it seems like we might actually manage it.

“Oi!” Felix’s voice rings out to our left, sounding strange and echoing. “Guys, come check this out!”

There’s a bit of laughter to his tone, like there always is, and together, Lachlan, Soren, and I push toward him, lifting our knees high to get through the muck. With any luck, there will be a good, heavy rain to wash this all away—the ash off the trees and the extinguisher off the ground. If these remnants stay for too long, they can start to trap animals and insects, swallowing up the local wildlife.

To my right, Lachlan moves faster toward his friend, already shaking his head. Felix is always on the verge of laughter, even when he’s in serious trouble. Once, when we were kids, we responded to a call like this, only to find him facing up against a wild boar, his hands raised, a wicked smile on his face.

“Think I can take him?” he’d asked, glancing at us. The moment he took his eyes off the thing, it charged.

Now, in the trek to find him, we stumble forward through something of a wall—the smoke disappearing like we’ve walked through a door into another room.

“What the fuck?” Lachlan asks, blinking and reaching up to take his helmet off. His face is smudged with soot and ash, silver streaks running along his temples where it’s mixed with his sweat and dripped in a solid, shining line.

We stumble and stop, glancing at one another, confused. Usually, the smoke will linger for days, stay thick and heavy in the forest. But right now, we’ve emerged into a patch of grass with crystal-clear air, right in the center of the burn. Like we’re in some sort of eye of the storm.

And in the center of the clearing stands Felix, his arms held up in question toward us.

“Be honest with me,” he calls across the field, “am I dead?”

“If you’re dead,” Lachlan returns, “that means we’re all dead.”

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