Chapter 1 - Ambush
The night stretched on, thick with silence. Too thick.
Jack had been on watch for just over thirty minutes, and still, something itched beneath his skin. His wolf was restless, prowling along the edges of his mind, pacing, growling, urging him to move. To do something. It made his breath tight, made the air around him feel heavier than it should.
But there was nothing.
No rustling in the underbrush. No shifting of the wind. Just the oppressive weight of the trees towering overhead, their gnarled branches clawing at the sky. The moonlight barely cut through the dense canopy, throwing faint, broken shadows over the forest floor. A hunter’s night. A night where the wrong kind of things moved unseen.
Jack didn’t like it.
His fingers twitched at his sides before he reached out, his mind linking with Adeline’s. Adi. The thought was sharp, urgent. Adi, wake up.
She lay curled beneath a low-hanging branch, her bright coat muted in the shadows. Before she even spoke, he felt her stir, her mind sharpening like a blade unsheathed.
Jack? Sleep clung to the edges of her voice, but it vanished in an instant. What is it?
Something’s wrong. He scanned the trees again, frustration licking at him like flames. We need to shift back. Armor up. Weapons ready.
No hesitation. No questions. That was the thing about Adeline — she trusted him completely.
Wake the boys, she ordered. Stay alert while we get dressed. Then come.
Jack caught the gleam of her wolf eyes as she moved, a sleek, silent shadow slipping from beneath the tree and padding toward the spot where they’d stashed their clothes. The others needed to be up. Now.
His mind reached for them, sharp and commanding. Lew. Carlo. Get up.
Instant awareness.
The last two days had put them all on edge. They hadn’t had a moment to breathe since crossing into enemy territory, and it had honed their instincts to the sharpest point possible. So when Jack gave the order, there was no grumbling, no hesitation. Just action.
Shifting back felt like peeling away a layer of himself, but there was no time to dwell on the loss. The night air pressed cool against his skin as he grabbed his clothes/armor - an ordinary-looking black, long-sleeved top and charcoal cargo pants. It is anything but ordinary, though. Made from an advanced fabric that is something between lycra and supple kevlar, it served as armor, impenetrable by blade or bullet. The weight of it was familiar. Grounding. A shield between flesh and teeth.
Adeline moved beside him, fastening the buckles of her belt. Her silver-white hair, still damp with sweat from sleep, was pulled back into a tight braid. Shadows painted the sharp lines of her face, but her eyes — gods, those cobalt-blue eyes were alive. Watching. Calculating.
Lew finished securing his knives, rolling his shoulders, the cocky ease he usually wore replaced by something far deadlier. Carlo silently strapping his gun to his thigh, his fingers brushing over the hilt of a blade.
Jack swallowed. The feeling in his gut hadn’t gone away. If anything, it had worsened. The forest is thick here, branches closing in above like a canopy of black leaves, only the faintest hint of pre-dawn light filtering through. No wind. No sounds beyond our footsteps.
Mind link only, Adeline warned as they set off. No talking.
The air was too thick. The night too quiet. Jack moved at Adeline’s side, his senses open, absorbing every shift in the wind, every crunch of a distant branch. He’d been trained to listen to his instincts, to trust the ones woven into his very blood. And right now, those instincts were screaming.
The others felt it too. He could tell by the way Lew moved, his usual swagger gone, his steps too precise, too ready. By the way Carlo’s fingers hovered near his gun.
They weren’t wrong to be ready. Because the second they reached the clearing, the world exploded.
A snap. Too fast. Too close.
Jack barely had time to pivot before shadows burst from the trees. No warning. No scent. Just impact.
A body slammed into him, sending him sprawling before he even had the chance of firing a single shot. The ground rushed up to meet him, but he twisted, absorbing the hit, rolling back to his feet in one fluid motion. Gun up. Finger on the trigger.
He fired. A scream. Then another body hit him from the side.
He lashed out, fist connecting with a jaw. The attacker staggered, breath hisses as Jack threw him off, but before Jack could get his bearings, more emerged from the dark.
Fast. Too fast.
They can’t shift with the armor on, which is why they train more extensively in skin than in wolf form. But sometimes it’s limiting. Like now, when Jack realizes he would have preferred to fight in his wolf form.
Adeline was already moving, straight into the thick of it. She didn’t even bother with her gun. She was a storm, her body blurring into a whirlwind of motion.
A fist to the throat of a guy almost three times her size. A quick, clean break. One down.
A wrist caught mid-swing. Twisted until it snapped. Two down.
A blade flashed toward her ribs. She side-stepped, yanked the attacker forward, and slammed her knee into his chest so hard his ribs caved. He collapses, gasping for air. Three down.
“Jack!” Lew’s voice ripped through the chaos, but Jack couldn’t see him. Couldn’t see Carlo either. Only movement. Only the clash of bodies. Only the sound of teeth snapping, steel slicing.
Jack turned just in time to see a wolf hurtling toward him. Big. Too big.
He had seconds to react. He grabbed its front leg, twisting, using the beast’s own momentum to slam it into the nearest tree.
But it wasn’t alone. More poured from the shadows, their movements too organized. These weren’t ordinary shifters. These were faster and extremely well trained.
Jack snarled, shifting his grip on his rifle, just as another set of claws swiped toward him. He twisted, the butt of his gun slamming into a gut. A second later, pain ripped through his arm — teeth, sinking in but not breaking skin, the armor holding up well.
He yanked away. But another one hit him from behind.
Too many.
A fist crashed into his ribs, the impact knocking the breath from his lungs. He barely had time to register the sharp crack of bone before something heavy slammed into the side of his head.
Stars exploded behind his eyes. But somehow he stayed up.
From the corner of Jack’s fading vision, he saw her. Adeline.
She was a force — silver braid whipping behind her as she moved, precise and unrelenting. She barely looked winded as she took them down, one after another. Wolves, men, it didn’t matter. She flowed between them like a specter, slipping under strikes, redirecting blows, shattering bones with brutal efficiency.
No killing. Just incapacitation. Because she was trained that way. Trained by the queen herself.
But there were too many.
Two wolves tackled her from behind. She twisted, sending one flying with a brutal kick, the other’s leg snapping at the joint. But more were already there, four in skin form, closing in too fast.
Jack’s pulse roared in his ears as hands grabbed her arms, her legs. She fought, thrashing, landing blows even as they held her down.
A fist cracked against her jaw. Her head snapped to the side, a thin trickle of blood escaping her lips. But she didn’t fall. Not yet.
Jack tried to lurch forward, to fight through the blinding pain, but his body refused to move. He was weightless and heavy all at once, limbs sluggish, the edges of his vision turning black.
“Adeline!”
Her cobalt blue eyes found his, wide, startled, searching.
Then — impact.
Something slammed into the back of Jack’s skull. The world tilted. He hit the dirt hard, his rifle slipping from his grasp. His vision tunneled, and the ringing in his ears grew louder, drowning out everything — the snarls, the clash of bodies, the sharp cries of pain.
Somewhere in the chaos, Carlo was grunting through a fight. Lew’s wild laughter had twisted into something else. Something raw. Something desperate.
Another hit, this time to the already broken ribs. His body seized, a sharp, sickening pop cracking somewhere deep inside him. Jack gasped, or he thought he did. He couldn’t hear it. Couldn’t feel anything except the unbearable weight pressing down on his chest.
The world blurred.
Figures moved like shadows in the trees. Then Adeline’s body hit the ground. The sound of it, her collapsing, her strength finally giving out, was worse than the pain. Worse than anything.
Jack tried to turn his head, to see her, but the darkness came too fast.
The world blurred into nothing.
Her body felt like it had been poured full of concrete. Heavy. Slow. Disconnected from her mind.
Adeline blinked against the haze coating her vision, thick and sluggish like a drugged fog, every nerve firing wrong. Cold metal dug into her back. A sensation so stark, so intrusive, that it finally forced her further into consciousness. Not fully, not yet. But enough.
The scent hit her next. Damp earth. Sweat. Blood. Wolves.
The realization struck hard and fast, a visceral lurch in her gut. She was alive. That singular fact brought everything crashing back like a tidal wave: the ambush, the chaos, the screams, the crush of bodies slamming into her, and then... nothing. Just black.
Her eyes snapped open.
Bars. A cage.
Small, tight, barely big enough to sit up in. Her knees were drawn tight to her chest, shoulders huddled inward like a caged animal. Her spine curled against the curved back of the enclosure, which was welded from gleaming silver-coated iron. It reeked of restraint and punishment. Of power stripped bare.
Her hand reached for the bars — instinct — and she flinched when her fingers brushed them. The scent of silver hit her nostrils like a slap.
But… no pain.
The armor... Thank the gods.
She flexed her hand slowly. Her gear included gloves made from the same bulletproof material. It didn’t make her invincible, but it sure as hell gave her an edge most wouldn’t expect. Like now, with the silver-coated bars on these cages.
She shifted, testing the space again. Pressed her shoulder against the bars, this time with deliberate force. Still no burning. No pain. The armor was holding strong.
Small victories.
Beyond the curved walls of her cage, Adeline caught sight of movement. Other cages — three of them. Each one housing a member of her team. Lew. Carlo. Jack. All of them slumped and still, unconscious or just beginning to stir.
Her pulse surged. She dropped her head back against the bars and reached out, forcing her thoughts down the tether of their bond.
Jack.
Her voice was sharp, focused, clenched tight like a coiled blade. No room for fear. Not now.
I’m here. His voice filtered through a moment later, sluggish but coherent. Groggy. Not dead.
Are you hurt?
Nothing permanent. My ego, maybe. That dry edge, that cocky undertone — it was all Jack, even when bruised and half-conscious. But she caught the fatigue underneath it. He was putting on a front. That’s what they all did. Soldiers didn’t break until after the mission ended. If it ended.
Lew’s waking. Carlo?
A pause. Then Carlo’s graveled voice slid through the link. Yeah. I’m here. Feel like I’ve been trampled by a bear, but still breathing.
Adeline exhaled, slow and measured, easing her panic back into submission. Check yourselves. Every limb, every rib. Internal injuries can kill faster than external ones. We need to know what we’re dealing with.
She scanned the others while she ran her own check — knees pulled in, spine tight, but nothing screaming in agony. Her muscles ached. Her jaw throbbed from the hit. Her energy reserves were drained, but her body was already healing, fast-tracked by her bloodline. Still, there was only so much accelerated healing could do without rest and food.
One by one, the others began moving — awkward, cramped movements, each of them struggling to shift in the tiny metal cages. No room to stand. Barely enough space to turn. And they were all much bigger than her.
Time passed in a stretch of silence, punctuated only by quiet mental links and the creak of shifting weight against metal.
What the hell happened? Lew asked eventually, his tone heavy with frustration.
Ambush, Jack answered. And a good one. I felt it. Just didn’t have time to act.
No scent. No sound, Adeline added, piecing it together in her mind. They were trained. Smart. Organized.
But who the hell are they? Carlo muttered.
Before anyone could answer, a low vibration traveled through the ground beneath them... footsteps.
Heavy. Deliberate.
Adeline’s spine snapped straight. Muscles coiled. She caught the others’ gazes through the bars, and they nodded, silent, alert.
Their cages jolted without warning, dragged from their corners across the earthen floor. Metal screeched against rock, and then they were pulled into a larger chamber where sunlight slashed through cracks in the timber roof above.
The bars glittered in the morning light, silver-lined, a gleaming threat and a prison all in one.
Now she felt it. The drain. That low, buzzing hum of weakness licking beneath her skin, like silver knew it couldn’t burn her, so it tried to sap her strength instead.
They were shoved side by side, lined up like war trophies. The wolves surrounding them weren’t just muscle, they were killers. Scarred. Battle-hardened. Faces etched in violence and silence. Adeline scanned every one of them. Watched how they moved. Watched how they looked at her, like she was the prize they hadn’t expected to catch.
One of them stepped forward. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Authority clinging to him like armor. His gaze swept over the team, lingering a second too long on her face.
“Alpha blood,” he muttered.
Another voice joined his. “Not just Alpha. That one...” A nod in her direction. “She fought like a demon. Took more than ten men to bring her down.”
Ten? Adeline smirked inwardly. Should have sent twenty.
“She’s dangerous,” the first one said again, narrowing his eyes.
She didn’t flinch. Didn’t drop her gaze. Let them see what she was. Let them be unnerved by it.
“She doesn’t burn,” someone else observed, nodding toward the way she leaned casually against the silver bars. “Silver should’ve blistered her skin by now.”
Adeline stayed still. Let them draw their own conclusions. Let them wonder. Let them be afraid.
They don’t know who we are yet. She pushed the thought toward the others. We still have leverage. Keep your heads down. Don’t provoke them. Not until we understand what we’re dealing with.
They can’t keep us in cages forever, Jack replied. We’ll get out. We always do.
Adeline’s gaze shifted. Behind her captors, more cages lined the room. Strangers trapped in them. Wolves, most of them gaunt and hollow-eyed, watching her with quiet desperation.
Her stomach tightened. This wasn’t just an ambush. It was part of something bigger.
And the question burned like fire beneath her skin: What the hell have we walked into?
Interesting...🤔