60

The day dawns anew, as regular as clockwork, as if to spite the rigor with which change has made a mockery of your previous life. With the new day comes an early pack meeting, one that Ahote set up last week to address the building of strategic defenses should the humans force the pack's hand. The metal rods you'd picked up from the scrapyard some time ago apparently inspired Razor to fashion something of note to be revealed at the meeting's close.

A fine mist of dew covers thin sprigs of grass working their way up through the shattered asphalt along your path to the warehouse meeting ground. You walk briskly, your nose tingling with a salty wind blowing in from the waterfront. You wonder if Ahote already knows what Bly has done, and if so, what he plans to do to keep the humans from coming down on Haven with a vengeance.

A Final Meeting

The audience breaks out into dozens of disparate voices, all yelling over each other to be heard in the wake of Ahote's revelation. Bly's assassination attempt is now public knowledge, and its reveal has set the pack into a panic. You can't help but wonder if the elder is slipping in his judgment; such knowledge does nothing to help the pack and will only end up dividing them.

Calls to turn Bly over to the military clash with hearty cheers of approval for her act, exclaiming wishes that she had succeeded in taking Williams down. Ahote calls for order, but it's not until Haken takes the stage and bellows for quiet that the wall of sound lowers to a dull roar.

"We can't afford to be divided!" Haken calls out to the crowd. "The outcast only attempted something that many of us wish we could do ourselves, yet we lacked the will and the fortitude to follow through on our desires to see the oppressor dead at our feet! The humans are not all-powerful! If we cut them, they will bleed!"

A concussion of thundering sound too loud to process couples with a burst of bright light, and you reel to the floor, writhing in pain, your ears ringing and your vision blurred white.

Yelling.

Chaos.

Feet trample you in their haste to get away, a galloping stampede to the exits. Through your muddy vision, ringed with a corona of sparkling fire, you glimpse the unthinkable: the humans have raided your pack meeting, and Williams himself stands atop the stage, one steely fist wrapped around Ahote's neck. The elder struggles, his bones popping and shifting as he forces himself to change out of sheer desperation.

Williams smiles coldly, weathering the storm of Ahote's struggles with detached apathy. "The change hurts in one so old, yes?" the colonel speaks just loud enough for you to overhear. "You overstep your bounds, ordering my assassination. I thought you were smarter than that, you outdated fossil."

"Assassination?" Ahote groans. "I never ordered—"

Williams uses his free hand to pull a syringe from his left breast pocket and brings it to his mouth, ripping off the protective plastic from the needle with his teeth. He growls something in Ahote's ear, and you limp forward through the bedlam in an attempt to catch his words.

"Behold the end of your species."

The needle jabs into Ahote's skin without a sound, but the results might well send reverberations throughout all of your kind.

Ahote's shifting reverses, and the elder howls in agony, thrashing in Williams's grasp to no avail. Within seconds, he's reverted back into the frail body of an elderly human, and he sags in the colonel's grasp, utterly defeated.

Williams shifts his gaze outward, encompassing the length and breadth of the building as the werewolves of Haven stare in stark disbelief.

Your call is echoed half-heartedly throughout the room, but the pack is too shocked by the reversal of Ahote's transformation to be moved to more than blunted words and grunts of rage.

Williams shouts from the stage. "Your leader's freedom is forfeit. Any further attempts on my life or those of my men will result in immediate sanction. If you attempt to follow me or free this decrepit creature, you will be put down like the rabid dogs you are."

A snarling emanates from the crowd at the foot of the stage, and Haken flies through the air with an inhuman leap, three-hundred-some-odd pounds of muscle and bone.

Williams scowls and pushes Ahote into the hands of his subordinates, sliding to the side with the grace of a serpent. Haken tries to change course but is caught up in his own momentum, flying past Williams harmlessly as the colonel turns sharply on his heel, the back of his hand clouting Haken's head as he passes by. The wolf lands in a heap, groaning.

"The next one dies," Williams says, turning his back on the pack as his men walk toward the door, Ahote's body limp in the arms of two soldiers.

You consider attacking while the man's back is turned but find yourself restrained. You look over your shoulder. It's Lapu.

"Don't get yourself killed, Decaarr. He's not fucking around."

By the time you shake yourself loose from the boy's grip, Williams is gone.

A dead silence shrouds the meeting room, broken only by the echo of Haken's pained whimpers.

Next Chapter