Pack Captive by Cate Corvin
Calian
We’d runall day through the wastelands, and had finally set up camp for the night.
No matter what Ryden did, the Caller was not responding to his advances.
I’d run with the pack as soon as we found a good place to camp, with shelter and running water, and we’d brought down several unsuspecting deer for dinner.
I hated to admit it, but it hurt my heart to see the way the little pups gathered around the fire as the Warriors slaughtered the deer and began to cook them, their enormous eyes glazed with hunger.
They were some of the skinniest kids I’ve ever seen. Made me realize how good we had it back in Lykos, where we kept stockyards and farms inside the city walls.
But these pups...their eyes were huge when they realized they were getting an entire deer to themselves.
Which was why it pissed me off even more that our unanticipated little windfall—the Moon Caller— kept shooting dirty looks at our Alpha, even though he had gone out of his way to check out their backwoods little valley.
If not for him, those pups wouldn’t have been eating at all tonight. If anything, they would’ve been captured by one of the roaming packs of the wastelands and become dinner themselves.
She definitely had the marks of a hard life on her. That was the only thing that kept me from snapping at her when she turned away food the first time I offered it to her.
“Calian,” one of the males said respectfully when I strode up to the campfire.
Several of the other Azuran Guardians—who carried the supplies and any injured survivors we found while raiding—were setting up the Alpha’s tent, but the rest of them were content to keep watch and sleep under the stars.
And feed the kids. Damn, their arms and legs were like little twigs.
I nodded to him and pulled a knife out of my belt, leaning forward to slice a chunk of meat off the roasted deer.
The Caller needed to eat, one way or another. Alpha’s orders.
She was sitting at the very edge of the camp, her arms bound behind her back, black hair spilling down her back in a waterfall of tangles.
In fact, it was the first time I’ve ever seen a Caller look like anything less than perfection.
This didn’t sit well with Ryden. Our own Callers back in Lykos were some of the most revered wolves in the pack.
They were given their own quarters in the Dawn Palace, and Ryden had given the orders to have their new Moon Temple built three years ago.
Soon, this Caller, Ayla, would be established with them. Living a life of luxury at the top of the pack’s food chain.
“What have they been doing with her?” he’d growled at me when she’d shifted back to her human form during a rest break, revealing her too-thin form and unbrushed hair.
I’d just shrugged at him.
From the looks of it, their little village had been harried on a near-constant basis by Fenris’s shadow wolves. Getting dressed up was likely the least of this woman’s worries.
That was when he’d ordered the tent set up so she could bathe privately, and then the tent would be given to the elders. And then he’d ordered that I make sure she eat something.
It disturbed me how much he treated her like more than just a Caller.
It was like he was trying to court a mate.
I brought the Caller her roasted deer, holding it out without ceremony. The golden bracelet chained around her ankle was the only clean and shiny thing about her right now.
She looked up at me, her dark blue eyes full of a banked but still simmering rage.
For a single second I knew exactly how that felt. I’d once gone through the same thing myself.
It hurt to lose your only home. But now she had no choice.
Not with those starving pups in tow.
She looked down at the meat I held out to her, and I could tell from the way her lips tightened that she was hungry.
Or maybe it was just the enormous growl her stomach let out.
“Dinner,” I said, refusing to serve her deferentially the way our last young Caller, Tyra, had demanded. “Open up. The Alpha orders you to eat.”
Earlier in the day, after one too many attempts from her to veer away from the pack and take the shackle off, Ryden had ordered her arms bound behind her back. A Guardian had carried her on his back, much to her rage.
She sneered at me and turned away.
“If you untie me, I’ll hunt for my own food,” she said stiffly.
Even though I was full of anger that she’d reject it after the pack had made the effort to hunt it down, I shrugged nonchalantly.
“More for me, then,” I said, taking a bite.
Her stomach growled again. It would’ve been funny, but I glanced over at the main part of the camp.
The pups had fallen on a deer by themselves, their sharp little milk teeth ripping into it. I knew that feeling as well as I knew the sadness of losing your home.
And starvation was always worse.
The Caller’s nose twitched as I took another bite of the meat.
She was too thin. We needed her in top shape if she was going to help us defend Lykos.
That was the only reason I offered again. We needed her power desperately.
It wasn’t because she was beautiful under the dirt, or because she looked forlorn, or because the fucking shackle was too big around her ankle.
“Last chance,” I said, holding it out once again. “I’m not going to baby you. Eat or starve, it’s all the same to me.”
“I didn’t ask you to baby me,” she snapped, but her eyes were on the food, and didn’t pull away. They were too big, her sockets nearly hollow, just like the pups. “All I wanted was the option to choose to go with you. You didn’t have to leash me like a pet.”
I couldn’t tell her the real reason why she didn’t get a choice.
It had nothing to do with the Alpha’s sudden interest—although I was sure that played a role—but the fact that we’d lost Tyra recently.
She’d gone out with the patrol. A third of them had returned, and she wasn’t among them.
We’d been down one Caller who was of mating age, which was a huge blow, until today, when our runes had lit up with the presence of a new Caller.
The Alpha had tracked her relentlessly all the way into the valley.
I would worry about Ryden’s personal interest in Ayla later. Right now, all we cared about was making sure that Lykos was defended against Fenris, and that we got this one back safely.
I’d lost too much, and sacrificed too much, to let one Caller’s hurt feelings get in our way now.
“Just eat it,” I said, feeling tired. “You’re not going to make it another day if you don’t.”
Maybe she hadn’t made the best first impression on me, but I had to give it to her, she had some common sense.
She could’ve chosen to struggle, to turn her pack against us, but instead she’d gritted her teeth, sucked it up, and told them it was safe.
It was safe, because Ryden would never have slaughtered innocents, but technically she couldn’t know that.
She finally gave in, leaning forward and taking a huge bite of the meat. I had to hold my hand still, making sure she wasn’t struggling without her own hands to help her.
Less than a second later, she went in for a second bite, chewing so rapidly she looked like a mouse.
I didn’t want to like her. After all, a Caller was too high in the pack hierarchy for the likes of an orphaned wolf, even if I was a Second, and besides...she was so fucking stubborn.
But the sight of her chewing so quickly was pretty funny. I bit back a chuckle, hoping she wouldn’t notice.
“It’s not bad, huh?” I prodded.
She chewed, swallowed, and examined the roasted deer. “Better than a lot of what we’ve had lately,” she said quietly.
There it was again. That annoying pang of sympathy in my chest.
This girl had obviously been starving as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had given up her own food rations to the pups.
Surprising even myself, I sat down beside her on the sandy, scrubby grass.
Despite her anger, she was like a pinpoint of strange calm, accepting everything that happened to her and making the best of it so far.
Before us, the wastelands were a vast stretch before we reached Lykos. It was a hot, grueling, and thankless run to come out this far.
It had only been because we’ve been hunting several of the Fenris wolves that had skirted too close to the river bordering Lykos that Ryden had even considered the direction that had led to her.
The Caller gave me an annoyed look, as though I’d sat far too close to her despite the arm’s length distance between us. “Why are you out here with me?”
I shrugged again, not really sure what to tell her.
Or rather, I wanted to tell her that she should be grateful she had a second chance. Not everyone got that.
Instead, I chose to nod at the remains of ruins out in the distance.
It was nothing more than a fallen stone wall, where Fenris had come through and eaten everything in his path. My own home had looked a lot like that by the end.
“That’s what would’ve become of your village. You couldn’t have stayed behind.”
She followed my gaze, and her eyes narrowed.
“I’m well aware of that,” she said, her voice as cold as ice. “If you came out here to rub it in, you can just leave. Trust me, your stupid shackle keeps me from going anywhere.”
I looked down at the bracelet around her skinny little ankle. Her skin was already a little red beneath it from the number of times she’d decided to test it.
Ryden had been irritated that he’d had to force her to have her hands tied, but he wasn’t willing to risk her damaging herself. I knew that the shackles hurt like a bitch.
And Elder Yasemin herself, our oldest Caller, had enchanted this one. It would pack a hell of a punch if Ayla tried to run.
“You need to eat more,” I told her, my gaze still locked on her thin legs and the sting-reddened skin. “Quit worrying about running, and just worry about taking care of your pack.”
She tucked her leg under herself, hiding it from my view.
“That’s all I worry about,” she told me. I leaned over and popped the last of the meat into her mouth, and she gnawed on it, obviously trying to chew slowly and make it last.
I guess I could’ve told her that much better food was available in Lykos, but there was a stubborn streak in me, too.
If I told her that and gave her something to hope for, I could as good as admit that I liked her grit. And I still didn’t want to like her.
She was still chewing when she spoke next. “I’ve been surviving for much longer than you think. My pack has depended on me for years. I don’t need you walking in and treating us like we don’t know how to take care of ourselves.”
“Where were your Warriors?” I glanced at her and found myself unable to look away. Even covered in dirt, with her hair unbrushed, she would be beautiful when she was washed and dressed like a true Caller. “All you have are your elders. You wouldn’t have survived for much longer.”
Ayla stopped, going as still as a statue.
She chewed one or two more times, made a face, then spit the last bite out into the grass below the ridge. Then she stood suddenly, wobbling from getting up without the help of her hands, and looked down at me imperiously.
“I need privacy for a moment,” she said.
I stared at her blankly. “This is as private as it’s going to get. It’s a camp.”
She’d been fine a moment before. It wasn’t until I mentioned her Warriors…
They were gone. She would’ve been the one to bury them and hold all the rites herself, taking on the burden alone that was meant for a full pack to bear.
I wished I could take back my question.
She shook her head, not meeting my eyes. “No, I need to pee. Do I need your Alpha’s permission to do that now?”
Oh, that’s what it was. In fact, the Alpha did need to know if any of us were leaving the camp.
But speak of the wolf and it shall appear.
Ryden’s tall form strode towards us, backlit by flickering campfire light.
His blue runes were glowing brightly, much more brightly than we’d ever seen—another thing I wasn’t going to tell the Caller until she was safely locked in the Dawn Palace.
Ever since we’d come across her, the pack Warriors’ runes had been lit up like we were fresh out of a full moon ritual.
There was definitely something about her, and it would’ve taken a thousand Fenris wolves to keep Ryden from stealing her.
That fight in the valley had been nothing while we were mainlining power straight from Ayla.
Instead of waiting for permission, she gave him a filthy look, then turned and marched straight out into the wastelands, finding a stand of scraggly trees at the bottom of the hill.
I looked after her in frustration.
She was going to be treated like a princess in Lykos. We were doing her a favor.
Ryden couldn’t take his eyes off her. “Let her go,” he said. “The rest of her pack is here. She’s not going anywhere.”
“Not to mention the bracelet,” I murmured, watching her vanish into the stand of trees. Now that it was dark, she blended in with the shadows.
It was the only thing that was going to keep her from sneaking off on us, besides the pups being here, but Ryden shook his head. “Not when we have her people. We don’t even really need the bracelet.”
“True.” She would clearly follow them to hell and back. The bracelet was more to warn us if someone else stole her.
Ryden pushed his hair out of his face, looking at where she’d vanished with concern. “Did she eat?”
I nodded, scanning the darkness of the wasteland. “A little.”
It didn’t look like anything was moving out there, but the Fenris wolves had proven that they were as sly as the shadows they were made of.
Soon, we heard the faint noise of stone on metal coming from the stand of trees she’d chosen.
A wry grin crossed Ryden’s face. “She’s trying to take the bracelet off.”
“She’ll fail,” I said casually, unconcerned that she’d do any damage to it.
If she’d lost all her Warriors, she was clearly untrained. She didn’t have the skill to break through Yasemin’s enchantment.
But Ryden had stiffened next to me, staring hard, his body vibrating as he prepared to shift. I followed his eyes.
There was a shadow moving out there.
And it was heading straight for our Caller.