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Chapter 1: Aislin

Chapter 1: Aislin

“T

he decision is final. Muriel Vale stays here with us,” said my Alpha and best friend, Gavin Steele, his eyes dark with stern resolve.

The tension was so thick between my packmates, it made the air hard to breathe. We had been bickering constantly for the past few days. The presence of a unicorn shifter in a pack of wolves was a disaster waiting to happen, and our pack was already struggling to survive without the jaws of death hovering over us.

Ever since the clash between our pack, Grandbay, and our neighboring pack, Dalesbloom, I could tell my packmates had begun questioning Gavin’s leadership. Alpha David Hexen hungered for our territory and intended to slay the unicorn, Muriel, going so far as to secure an alliance with the Inkscale dragon shifters to do so. We were outnumbered and everyone was on edge, but Gavin had committed to protecting her. That meant standing our ground even in the face of imminent danger.

I stood across the room from him, my chin raised in proud solidarity with my Alpha, while our packmates murmured. Of the eleven of us gathered in the living room of our pack cabin, five still disagreed, seeing the choice to keep Muriel as a death sentence more than an act of good will. Gavin’s new mate, Billie Jesper, sat on the couch, hands clasped politely on her knees. She had quickly made herself part of our family, waiting for a lull in the murmurs before speaking, “How will we prevent David from identifying where we’re keeping Muriel?”

Gavin considered it. “Aislin,” he said, “you have a room for Muriel too, don’t you?”

“Oh yeah,” I said confidently. Unusual pain tickled my lungs.

“So we have five safehouses now that we can rotate Muriel through. We only need to dedicate one person to guarding her,” Gavin continued. “If we change locations every one or two days, it’ll decrease the chances of David’s men finding her. Unless they somehow learn about all the safehouses and coordinate an ambush at every location, I’m optimistic that we can keep her safe.”

“But we’re still inviting ourselves to be attacked,” argued Albin, the owner of a hotel in our little town of Grandbay, alongside his wife, Barbara.

“David’s committed to attacking us anyway. He wants our land,” I reminded Albin.

“He wants me,” said Billie.

Disgust stirred in my gut as I remembered how David tried to take control of Billie. He’d stolen her from the parents he murdered and raised her to take the brunt of his sexual frustrations. It was a miracle he never laid a finger on her until the feud between Grandbay and Dalesbloom came to a head, but since learning about his sexual intentions, we all began to see David in a new light. He was so much worse than we could have expected. And he had dragged his son, Colt, into his depraved schemes by commanding him to mark Billie. Knowing how far Colt was willing to go to obey his father made it that much more disgusting that Colt ever had a crush on me. I dodged a bullet there. Imagine what I might have been subjected to if I’d given Colt a chance and gotten involved with his family! I nearly vomited at the thought.

“Then clearly another attack from Dalesbloom is inevitable,” said Albin. “How can we protect ourselves? How can we prevent losing any of our loved ones to Dalesbloom and the Inkscales?”

Gavin sighed. “I understand the risk factor here. None of us want another tragedy like what happened to Cat.”

Catrina Hexen’s death weighed on all of us. As David’s daughter and Gavin’s ex-girlfriend, she’d lost the most from the conflict between our packs and planned to use Muriel’s unicorn horn in a ritual to become a dangerous Lycan. Her wrath and madness had sealed her fate, intensifying David’s hatred toward us. Dalesbloom’s silence in the wake of her death was just the calm before the storm. The Hexens’ grief loomed like a cloud full of acid rain waiting to burst.

“Protecting our own means we’ll be prioritizing evasive measures, placing as much distance between ourselves and Dalesbloom as possible,” said Gavin. “But it also means we’ll have to prepare for another fight. We have to train. I already have new equipment coming in—security cameras, ballistic shields, and armored plates we can use in our clothing. David thinks he can get the upper hand against us using firearms, but with the right defenses, I think we can avoid more death.”

I knew how important to Gavin it was to protect our packmates. The last deaths Grandbay had experienced were that of his parents three years ago, and the loss was devastating. There were so few of us now that another loss would shatter us, make us even more vulnerable. Nobody wanted to lose a parent, sibling, or child.

Wendy, a hairdresser in Grandbay, folded her arms and looked with displeasure at her mate, Philip. Philip looked to Gavin. “I’m sorry, Gavin. But it might be more prudent for some of us to leave town until this is over,” said Philip.

Gavin’s shoulders sank. “It’ll weaken our defenses if we have less numbers.”

“None of us want to die. Especially for a stranger,” Wendy said, glancing at Muriel.

The older woman sat beside Billie, her wavy silver hair clipped up on the back of her head, looking dignified despite the judgment pitched at her. Muriel merely dipped her head in acknowledgment.

“Does anybody else want to leave?” asked Gavin.

Barbara clutched her toddler, Casimir, closer to her. “A conflict like this is no place for me and my son,” she murmured.

Sympathy crossed Gavin’s face.

“I agree, I would be much more comfortable if Barbara and Cas weren’t here. But I’ll stay,” said Albin. “Somebody has to manage the hotel.”

Gavin nodded. “And you, Niko?”

The thickset construction worker in his mid-twenties, Niko Silva, grimaced and adjusted his baseball cap. “This is going to end badly for all of us still here. There’s no way around that,” he drawled. “But if we’re the ones with the unicorn and her healing magic, then at least that gives us a fighting chance. ‘Sides, I lived here my whole life; loyal to Grandbay through thick and thin. Nobody’s gonna decide for me who I serve or where I live except for me. Fuck David.”

“So you’ll stay?”

Niko sneered. “Guess I have no choice.”

Small relief sat within me knowing we’d still have at least seven of us to protect our territory. Niko was a slimy asshole sometimes, but he was loyal, so despite our differences in the past, I was glad he was staying.

Sudden tightness in my chest had me coughing. The pain made me squeeze my eyes shut as I coughed into my elbow. When I opened my eyes, I glimpsed my mom, Gretel, and my dad, Oslo, Gavin’s Beta, standing together near Gavin and looking on in concern. I wiped red specks off my arm, hoping they didn’t see, but my breathing remained ragged. It took all I had to control it, soothing the hoarse whistling into shallow inhalations.

“Okay,” said Gavin, “we’ll begin training right away. Today, if possible. Those of you who are leaving should leave as soon as possible.”

Everybody murmured, nodding to one another.

“If anybody from the Mythguard or Eastpeak contacts you, don’t respond,” he cautioned. “It’s become clear that we can’t depend on assistance from either of them, or else we risk Muriel falling into questionable hands. But we don’t need them. We can endure this on our own. We will find a new Alpha to overthrow David.”

Replacing David had become our solution. There was no way we could defeat Dalesbloom and the Inkscales with brute force. Fighting them head-on would get us all killed. We had decided that the only way we could come out of this with as minimal deaths as possible was to eliminate David, and Colt if necessary, and plant a new Alpha in their place. There had to be somebody in Dalesbloom who would help us, who had a mutual idea of peace without shedding more blood. David would be as good as dead once he completed the Lycan ritual, anyway. No leader could be effective as an uncontrollable hybrid, a man-monster, and we knew now that it was David’s ultimate goal to obtain Muriel so he could use the unicorn’s horn to complete the ritual. He was condemning himself and his pack to self-destruction—and we had to stop him before it was too late.

After those who were skipping town had left the cabin, the remaining were Gavin and Billie, my parents, Niko, Albin, and me. We moved into the kitchen, all seven of us crowded around the kitchen table where Gavin laid out a schedule and a spread of papers with illustrations of defensive and offensive techniques. Not all of us were warriors, but it was imperative that we became as much, even if we had to scrape together our determination to do so.

“We’ll have our first training session this afternoon,” said Gavin. “I’m going to train Billie to start. Oslo, I want you to refresh the basics with Albin, and Niko and Aislin will spar to gauge their skill level. You’ll be fighting as humans first, then as wolves. Gretel will take Muriel to the Mundy home. Try not to injure one another too badly, as Muriel is still recovering from all the energy she used healing everyone after the fight.”

Hot discomfort rushed through me at the thought of dealing with Niko and his scuzzy fighting techniques, all while sustaining chest pain that grew worse with each breath. But there was no way I’d let my pain show. I was Aislin Mundy: a champion, a gladiator, a fireball, and I couldn’t reveal even the slightest vulnerability. Besides, outlasting the pain would prove my ability to protect my pack. One day, when my parents retired, I would become Gavin’s Beta. I would lay down my life for him and Grandbay, even if it meant fighting to my dying breath. Sparring Niko would be nothing compared to that.

I caught Niko’s eye and he smirked. It didn’t deter me.

Heading outside, I followed Niko to a patch of mowed grass near the far edge of the yard. Gavin and Billie stayed near the cabin, little Billie determined and full of zest to learn, while my dad had Albin in the middle of the yard. Beyond the yard, warm sunlight from that sunny August afternoon filled the forest with a golden glimmer. No foreboding shadows lurked on the periphery, just towering trees and the gentle rustle of leaves caught in the wind. Blue skies made it a beautiful day, but none of us could enjoy it, knowing what dangers were waiting for us outside of Grandbay.

Niko tossed his trucker hat into the grass, then unbuttoned his red flannel and tossed that aside too, leaving him in just a stained white wifebeater. He bent his torso and raised his hands in anticipation of a grapple.

My fighting spirit urged me to taunt him. “Oh, you think you can outmaneuver me in those jeans of yours?”

The way his nose wrinkled made his moustache wiggle. He had sort of a short mullet going on that completed the whole sleazy trucker look. “Worry about yourself, Mundy.”

I scoffed. Whatever, the grass and mud stains he’d get on his jeans when I crushed him into the ground weren’t my problem. Then again, I supposed if we were fighting anyone as humans, it would be in whatever we happened to be wearing at the time. Fortunately, I mostly wore jeggings that gave me the full range of motion I needed in my legs to kick anyone’s ass.

The first thing I did was quickly assess Niko for weaknesses. He would probably focus on using his arms more than his legs. The long tuft of hair behind his head would provide me something to grip, but I had the same weakness with my red hair pulled into a ponytail. I would have to shoot low and avoid his hands. My lungs radiated with pain and I cleared my throat before breathing in long and slow.

Niko struck first, hurtling directly at my midsection. I slid sideways and dodged him, giving a hard kick to his hip, only for my attack to backfire as the impact led my foot to the ground. My back was to Niko, who used the force of my kick to redirect his weight to his opposite foot and thrust his shoulder into my right side. His size and weight caused me to stumble sideways, twisting my body so I faced him again, but he all too quickly grabbed my arms and pulled them in toward my chest and down. My shoulders followed, and I knew he would try to gain control of my neck from there. I twisted my neck, my left shoulder dipping and my right shoulder rising as I tried to turn my body. Just as he wrapped his left arm around my neck, I bit his bicep above his inner elbow. He howled and grabbed my ponytail like I expected him to. I rammed my heel just above his knee. That caused him to buckle forward but left my torso open—and he retaliated with a sharp thrust of his palm into my chest.

The intense collision took my breath away, agitating the pre-existing injury to my left lung. Pain paralyzed me as I stumbled back—pain powerful enough to bring me to my knees as I struggled to breathe. Niko advanced on me, and in a fit of panic I raised my hand, unable to ask for pause as a coughing fit wracked my chest. I was lucky that he stopped.

The ache was unbearable. I felt like I was suffocating, unable to inhale, as if my chest was already full of air that my lungs wouldn’t accept. All I could do was keep coughing, and out of reflex I coughed into my arm, hiding the droplets of blood that escaped my lips. I wilted on the ground, wheezing while Niko stood above me.

“If I were the enemy, you’d be dead by now,” he said.

I knew that. That was the worst part of this, realizing how vulnerable I suddenly was.

“I thought you were tougher than this,” Niko laughed, raising his foot and aiming for my chest. He intended to secure his first victory by taking advantage of my weakness, but he didn’t know just how dire my situation was.

“Don’t,” I rasped desperately, reaching out to stop him.

He would have followed through if not for my father suddenly calling, “Aislin!”

Instead, Niko’s foot crashed back to the ground and he stepped aside. My father charged over, but frantic to hide my feeble condition, I stifled my cough and staggered back to my feet. “I’m fine,” I said, but the words barely made it out. Just speaking made me feel like my left lung had deflated.

My father paused beside Niko. “What happened?” he asked, looking between us.

“She couldn’t take the hit,” said Niko.

I bared my teeth at Niko. “He just caught me off guard.”

“You’re wheezing,” my father pointed out.

“It’s nothing,” I insisted, staggering past them both. “I just need a break.”

He hesitated. Behind me, I heard him turn his voice to Niko. “Go against Albin for now. I’ll spectate.”

All I wanted was to escape from their prying eyes. I couldn’t let them know how bad it was, and I was grateful that they accepted my excuse and let me retreat to the cabin. Stumbling into the bathroom, I leaned against the counter and my chest rattled, expelling bloodied phlegm into the sink. My chest felt like it was going to explode.

I knew what was wrong. A portion of my left lung must have collapsed during the fight with Dalesbloom and the Inkscales a few days ago. Whoever I was fighting at the time had struck me hard in my ribcage, and I suspected the rib had fractured, a splinter puncturing my lung. My chest kept feeling tighter as air slowly filled the pleural space where the collapsed portion of my lung usually sat. I hadn’t bothered approaching Muriel for healing because I thought my condition as a wolf shifter would expedite my recovery, but instead, the injury kept worsening. It was too late for me to approach Muriel now, anyway. Her healing magic had put such a strain on her over the past few days that she’d grown weak, and I didn’t know how much more it would take from her to help me.

I would survive it on my own. I had no other choice.

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