APEX

Ch. 19: Interloper

I obsessed over this as we drove away from the city, past the human-controlled suburbs and through the pasturelands that helped feed the region's gigantic population. I was a juggler tossing around balls. One ball, my family's expectations for me. Another ball, my unspoken promise to protect Calla from that family. And a third ball, my need to keep my emotions steady. If I dropped any of these balls, it was game over for me.

The Apex lodge clung to a rocky cliff, large wooden timbers standing upright giving the building an authoritative, stately appearance against an evergreen backdrop. Rolling down the window, I breathed a little deeper. At the last minute, I'd switched cars, agreeing to ride with Aamon and two of our second cousins instead of my father and Calla, to avoid having to breathe in Calla's enchanting aroma for two hours.

We each stepped out of our respective cars at the same time, avoiding the other's gaze. In a few hours, the moon would rise, and we would transform. All I could think about was her—what she would look like, how her scent would intensify, what it would be like to run next to her, hunt with her, kill and eat with her.

I moved away, into the lodge and up the stairs, tossing my bag into my room and then myself onto the bed. When the change occurred, I needed to be far enough away from her that her smell wouldn't undo me. It was hard enough in human form to control myself around her, but as a wolf, instinct was everything. And my instinct, along with the wolf inside me, now clambering to get out, was telling me to make her mine.

I would kill whatever man or wolf stood in my way.

"Fuck." I hopped off my bed, undressed, took a cold shower, and then, wearing only a pair of shorts, emerged from my room.

Ignoring my family, and especially Aamon, who was standing entirely too close to Calla for my liking, I took a bottle of water from one of our human servants, downed it, and left.

As I let the door bang shut behind me, Liam's accusatory know-it-all voice spoke. "What's his problem?"

They didn't want to know the answer to that...

I walked at a steady pace, determined to put some distance between me and the others before moonrise. Heading east, the path narrowed around a mile from the lodge, and a bit after that, it all but disappeared. But I knew these woods. There was a clearing a short distance further. I veered to the right, scraping my shins against the thorny stems of low-lying shrubs.

As I approached the clearing, two things became apparent: First, the pull of the moon had begun.

I wiggled out of my shorts just in time for my bones to begin rearranging themselves. For some shifters, this process was grotesque and painful, but for an Alpha, the experience felt exhilarating.

Each realignment of bone and sinew, each follicle of fur that grew, was me coming into my full potential. I was the strongest werewolf I knew of—certainly any shifter in Surry would be a fool to challenge me. The only shifter I wanted to go up against was my Luna rival, of course. But that was a challenge for the bedroom, not for the forest. Here, I was indomitable. The apex of Apex.

I shook my limbs, lifted my muzzle, and let out the howl of an Alpha asserting his territory. And that's when the second thing became apparent: I was not alone.

I sniffed the air, unsettled by what I was sensing. Standing water, algae, the riverside of Surry's northern banks and a sourness that made my lips curl back. But also...a faint hint of honey and flowers.

My wolf mind reeled. The urge to draw blood overpowered reason. This interloper had Calla's scent on him, and he needed to die for it.

Rage blinded me, and in that moment of pure adrenaline, this enemy wolf, a wolf who dared to enter Apex territory with the smell of a female I'd sworn to protect on him, pounced.

As his weight hit, we rolled off a cliff and down, not far enough to do damage but enough to knock the wind out of us. I gained my legs first and bared my fangs, an enraged snarl warning him off. He didn't back down. This wolf had come here for the Luna he believed was his to take and he was not about to leave empty handed, even if that meant challenging me to a showdown.

Fool. He was a large wolf, white with crystal blue eyes, and I was guessing a high-ranking member of whatever little pack he hailed from, if not its Alpha, but he wasn't me and he didn't know what he was up against.

He lunged at me, and I dove low, biting into his leg, knocking him onto his side, and then tearing my mouth from his leg so I could go for his neck. I knew with complete certainty that he was the one—he'd bitten Calla against her will, and now I was going to return the favor, marking him with a sign of dominance that would take a whole cycle to fade—if I let him live at all.

I bit down, my fangs savoring the meaty flesh. Warm, iron-rich blood seeped from his wounds, and I drank it down, each gulp gaining me strength.

He yelped, and it took all the reasoning I still held onto in my wolf form, to break away. I'd not been sanctioned to kill another werewolf, and so, I would abide by that. I did have the authority, however, to stop this trespasser from entering our territory and threatening someone under our protection.

I pushed him back. If he attacked me again, I would be within my rights to end him, but the reality was, he was too weak to be a real threat to me. I was more concerned with what he would do if he found Calla out here on her own. The thought lit the fire within me again.

I nudged him back, and whimpering, he complied.

Out of my territory, I communicated as best I could. Within my pack, I could send telepathic messages while in werewolf form, but this wolf was an outsider. I had no link to him, and so, communication was feeble, at best.

He seemed to get the hint though, cowering backwards, away from the meadow, skirting the cliff, towards the opposite side of the forest from the way I'd come. If he kept going, which I sure as hell would make sure he did, he'd be out of Apex territory soon enough.

I growled at him and kept pressing him backwards. As we reached the tree line, a steep drop-off on one side, thick forest on the other, I sniffed the air, and my senses went berserk. Honey and cherry blossom—not the tiny hint of them left on this enemy wolf. No—a whole orchard, a pot of honey drizzled straight into my mouth.

I wasn't the only one who smelled her. The white wolf, blood still dripping from his neck, lifted his nose and sniffed in unison with me. He danced to the side—fast—and attempted to rush past me in the direction we both knew she was approaching from.

As though he was one of the serial killers Dev had authorized me to hunt, I went for him, throwing myself on top of him and pinning him to the ground.

Keep away from her, I managed to convey as he squirmed under me.

She's mine, he communicated back.

That was the wrong response. I dug my teeth back into his neck, determined this time to tear flesh from bone.

As he fought me, her scent grew. If I turned, I knew she'd be standing right there. My competitor had the same thought. He used all his strength to jostle me to the side, just to get a look at her. The movement was slight. I shifted just a few inches, but it was enough. Balanced as we were on the edge of the cliff, a few inches were the difference between staying where we were and careening over the edge.

Still clinging to his neck, I took him with me, and as we fell, I kept him under me, hoping he would cushion the impact.

This wasn't the short fall we'd taken at the beginning of our fight. We fell far enough that I felt a moment of weightlessness.

This is what it's like to be a bird instead of a wolf, I thought, and then huge limbs snapped like dried twigs as we crashed through the tree canopy towards the forest floor. As the moonlit world darkened, a lone wolf howled from above.

I drifted away as her lonely wail echoed across the canyon.