Chapter One
Standing there in the hallway of the block, Amber has a fleet of butterflies in her stomach. They are cavorting and leaping up to her throat as she adjusts the mask over her face, and stands at the back of the group she’s with - a cocktail of nerves and excitement aggravate the butterflies even more, but she quiets them as best she can.
Ordinarily, Amber was poised like a coiled spring - muscles taut under her skin, and spine stretched to make her look as tall as possible. She was 5’4”, an imaginary extra inch made all the difference. Today, though, she had wrapped her shoulder-length brown hair into a bun, pulled a cloth mask onto her face to hide her freckles, and stood with her spine curved just enough to make a chiropractor sigh. Despite this deliberately poor posture, she tenses her arms and legs, keeping herself warmed up and stretched - it’s no good being able to fight anyone that she happens across if her hamstring spasms halfway through a dramatic leap.
She is wearing many layers. Not only is it cool outside, but also she has to ensure that she blended in as just another raider. The majority of the things in her wardrobe are clothes that fit properly, and she has to scavenge to track down baggy clothing that makes her look like an appropriately amorphous blob.
She isn’t supposed to be in the raiding party, but she can’t resist.
There’s a bounty on the heads of some wolves from a nearby pack, the Langstons. Mostly, they keep themselves to themselves, except for a couple of younger members who enjoy a night on the town from time to time.
Amber’s father, Atlas Yarbrough, has assembled a crack team of wolves to get the bounty that he is sure will get results. ‘You’re only as good as your last bounty.’ Atlas always says, and so every team he puts together must get the results that he wants.
At the back of that team of thirty, Amber smells all sorts of strange things. As a werewolf, her human nose has a bit of an upgrade. Of course, the wolf nose was where it was at for most things, but it was a blessing to be able to smell her neighbor’s stew six apartments down from hers.
The first thing assaulting Amber’s souped-up nose at this present moment is the stench of the guy in front of her. Some of these raiding party guys get a bit intense about the ‘luck’ of it all - so they wear the same shirts again and again, sure that washing the shirt would remove any trace of luck within the fabric. Amber always thought it didn’t make much sense - most of the people they raided were werewolves too, so they had great noses. The smell from a foot away was nearly knocking Amber out, so surely the stench would carry a long way, putting a stop to any stealth. Then again, this will be Amber’s first raid, so she could be misunderstanding.
The next thing that Amber could pick up was the smell of the fresh air outside. It has a gentle tickle that catches at the back of her throat, and she has to swallow a few times to make sure she doesn’t collapse in a fit of hacking coughs. The pollen wasn’t out, as it was September, but Amber had precious little exposure to the outside air in her life. She had been tucked away in a flat upstairs for nearly her whole life, merely fluttering from apartment to apartment when she had to move or when she wanted to go and see someone.
Now, she is going to go outside. She can’t stop herself from imagining how luxurious the sun will feel on her face now that it won’t be filtered through a net curtain. The grass, trees, and bushes are all going to thrill her, letting her get a glimpse of what natural life would have been like for her ancestors.
Of course, as enticing as natural life in the countryside is, she can’t deny the virtues of indoor plumbing. She would trade a flushing toilet for all the careless shepherds’ flocks in the country.
The final thing that Amber can pick up is the scent that was on the rag that had been handed around not too long ago.
The main bounty for today is Patrick Whitlock - he’s a soon-to-be-alpha from the Langston pack, and there’s a lot of money on his head. He, and all the other Langstons, are threatening to move back to the countryside. They have been for a long time, but now it seems like they’re serious - a Yarbrough sentry caught sight of the Langstons pulling people out of a safe house last week. It was a safe house that no Yarbrough knew about, meaning that it was a good one. The only reason to pull someone out of a safe house like that is to bring them home, and the only reason to bring someone home is to set up for something big. Presumably, this is the mass migration that they’ve been talking about for so long.
This huge shift of wolves from NYC to upstate New York would mean that the landscape of the wolves in the city changed forever. All of a sudden, it would be acceptable for people to up sticks and leave - which is something that would put Atlas’ aggression at stake. Why would anyone need to be scared of Atlas if they can just move away?
So, Atlas had come up with a plan: raid the Langston building, and kill anyone that tries to stop us. It’s not a very complex plan, but it could work - Atlas would instill plenty of fear in other wolf packs, and the status quo would remain the same.
Patrick Whitlock’s scent was on the rag that had just been handed through the group. Yarbrough agents had brought back knowledge that indicated that anywhere Patrick goes, the rest of the pack will follow. While Ian Langston is still the head of that pack, everyone knows that Patrick will be on top before long.
In her mind’s eye, Amber can see a pathway that directly links her and Patrick. It’s a gentle blue line on the floor in front of her, and it disappears underneath the huge double doors at the end of the corridor. Presumably, the line keeps going, right to Patrick’s feet. The only other things in the room that are glowing such a bright blue are the rag, and the fingertips of everyone that touched it. They’re going to find Patrick today - there is no doubt in anyone’s mind.
At the moment, Amber has been kept in the Yarbrough family’s apartment block for her entire life. She showed great promise when training as a kid, only to be turned away when she applied to be a regular feature of the bounty hunters. It was an open secret that women weren’t allowed to be a big part of the family business. While there have been one or two in history, they have been there to look good and make people think that the alpha at the time was tolerant and accepting. Amber will be changing that.
She knows that she needs something big to secure a spot on the bounty hunting team. She also knows that the bounty on Patrick’s head is very big indeed - he’s a valuable person. Smashing those two ideas together had brought her to a wonderful conclusion: capturing Patrick will bring her untold status upgrades within the pack - a better life, a better apartment, and more luxuries. Her apartment was nice enough now, but growing up in a competitive pack means that she’s always strived for a little bit more of the nicer things that she has.
All of these smells combine in Amber’s nose, filling her sinuses as she breathes them all in. It’s a heady, intoxicating mixture, so full of promise and the dreams of tomorrow that she almost feels giddy. She starts to stand taller to center herself, only to realize how recognizable that could make her. Stopping herself from panicking, Amber hunches over and tucks her hands into her pockets - there’s no better way to ruin your posture in thirty seconds flat.
A skinny, older man saunters out of the office at the end of the hall and unclasps the doors. The bodies that she’s stood at the back of start to troop slowly towards the opening doors, and Amber spies white-hot rays of sunlight hitting the floor in front of the first hunters. They shake the tension out of their arms as they stride forward confidently, knowing that there’s nothing in their path that will stop them today. Buoyed along by the weight of bodies and her desire to get herself further up in society, Amber takes her first steps down the corridor toward the outside - equal parts petrified and thrilled.
The street is a lot less enjoyable than Amber was hoping it would be.
From the window in her apartment, she could see a small park. Nothing too dramatic, just a shock of grass that’s complemented by a few small trees and hedges - plus a fairly pathetic flowerbed. That park must be on the other side of the building since Amber is trudging through the greyness of a city seemingly uninterrupted by such luxuries as grass and trees.
Despite the gentle nip in the air, she could feel the warmth of a day’s feet in the pavement through the soles of her boots. Lots of people had come and gone here today, and she can smell everything that they’ve left behind. There is a semi-interesting feature on a bench, which Amber realizes after a moment is a quarter of a cappuccino. There is a fully dull feature near a lamppost, a clod of earth that must have come from somewhere else in the city - it smells out of place.
The overwhelming grey is what tips Amber into a gentle sadness. She has been so desperate to see the colors of the city up close and personal, and now she was being forced to look at different tones of grey, pretending that they are nearly as interesting. Of course, they are not.
The only striking bit of color in the surrounding area is the trail leading her, and the rest of the pack, to Patrick. It gets interrupted here and there by spills and raindrops, but the trail is true and clear. The bright, neon blue from inside the block has been replaced by a faded pastel blue. It’s as though someone walked along carrying a bucket of paint with a hole in it, and their trail became faded with time. Or perhaps, with NYC’s best effort’s to wash the paint away.
Despite the time and wear that had happened upon the scent trail, the pack makes good time in their pursuit of the scent. They all know what’s riding on this mission - the status quo of their city, and the civilization that their ancestors built. Of course, they’re all focussing on that, rather than the rewards that scoring Patrick will get them.
Before they know it, they arrive at the Langston block. In several ways, it’s similar to the Yarbrough block - they’re fairly close, so it stands to reason that they might have been built by the same people. The only difference, at least to Amber’s untrained eye, is the cleanliness of the places. The Langston block, while showing the wear and tear of countless thunderstorms and blizzards, still looked presentable. Up to the height of a tall ladder, Amber could see that someone had spent time on the window frames with a brush and some soapy water. The Yarbrough block was functional but never clean.
For a final preparation, the raiding party all stood by the floor-level door. They couldn’t wait too long, as that would arouse suspicion, but they gave themselves a moment to change to their wolf forms and stretch out any kinks in their backs.
Staying at the back of the group, Amber follows the rest of the raiding party into the Langston building. The inside is much the same as the outside - it works fine, and it’s clean and well-maintained. In the distance, Amber can hear a light sprinkling of background music which, presumably, is playing in some kind of communal space.
Across the foyer from the entrance doors, there are two guards. They’re great hulks of men, and they must be nearly seven feet tall. One of them immediately leaps to his feet and sprints at the pack of Yarbroughs, while the other twists and pulls a fire alarm - it’s clear that they’ve been trained for this exact situation.
Under her paws, Amber can feel the squeaky linoleum tremble ever so slightly as the alarm bells ring through the building - there will be wolves on top of them before anyone can do anything. This is a smash and grab raid, they’re going in loud and aggressive, consequences be damned.
Snapping back to reality, Amber sees the two guards as they leap into the wall of Yarbroughs that were first through the door. Only the strongest get the honor of fighting at the front, and these honored wolves get pushed back into the body of the party that surges through the door.
One of the two guards is hidden from Amber’s view - there are too many bodies in the way. The other, however, is separated from her by only one row of wolves. As Amber starts to put her weight into her back paws (the better to pounce with) she sees three wolves from directly in front of her bear down on the guard. They’re all teeth, claws, and muscle, not holding back even as the guard-wolf whimpers and tries to get away.
At this point, Amber makes a realization - this raid is a show of strength, of course it’s going to go down like this.
All of a sudden, blood leaps out of the neck of the unlucky guard dog, and his yips and snarls become all the shallower and damper. For a moment Amber is frozen in place, not able to see past a wolf that was lying in front of her like this years ago.
A burly wolf bumps into her side, telling her ‘Get on with it, they’ll run if you’re stood there blocking the rest of the pack!’. This brings Amber back to the world that she’s found herself in, and she bolts deeper into the building.
From within the foyer, she sees several different corridors that must all go to different rooms and staircases. Picking the one closest to her, Amber bounds away, letting her legs carry her gracefully away from the brutality that she wasn’t expecting. She had grown up on stories of raids, and they’d never been like this in her imagination. She ran until she couldn’t anymore, and slumped into a corner.
Two wolves rounded the corner opposite her - one with a fat chest and neck which made him look like a buffalo, and one with a mangy coat that wrapped around his skinny body. The thing that unified them was their color - pitch black. While Amber doesn’t know for certain, she briefly thinks that they’d make great additions to a stealthy night pack.
‘Oi!’ the buffalo one shouted, ‘what do you think you’re running from? Us?’
‘Of course, she is,’ skinny guy muttered to his colleague, ‘she’s not one of ours.’
‘She was at the back, with the rest of the Yarbrough scraps, wasn’t she?’ buffalo replied, a frown creasing his brow.
‘You idiot, there are no she-wolves in the Yarbrough parties, are there?’ skinny guy told his friend, wrongly. Upon seeing the cogs turning in his friend’s (apparently very thick) skull, the skinny guy carried on. ‘You’re a Yarbrough, third nephew of Dennis Yarbrough. You’ve been on fifty raids, have you ever seen a she-wolf on one?’
Buffalo considered this. ‘No.’ He concludes, after a moment.
‘So that means that she isn’t one, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘So since we’re in Langston tower, that means she’s a…?’ skinny prompted.
‘Langston!’ buffalo bellowed, realizing only now that the petrified mess of fur at the end of the corridor must be an enemy. He bears down on Amber, his teeth and claws bared, and Amber scrambled to sit up and move away as quickly as she could. She pulled herself to her feet, the stitch in her side preventing any thought of reasoning with this brute.
Just as she was stood, a bolt of lightning struck buffalo in the side, slamming him into the wall of the corridor with such force that the plaster cracked. It was only after a second’s thought that both she and skinny recognized the lightning bolt for what it was - a snow-white wolf, bright and shining with righteousness in this dim corridor.
Skinny had the good sense to run when he saw his friend’s blood pooling where his head lay on the floor, and the white wolf turned on Amber.
She pressed her back to the wall, seeing the muscles in his sides twitch with each step. The terror enveloped her heart as she saw his tongue licking the blood out from his teeth. There was something about his scent, she recognizes it, and yet it seems so alien to her.
‘Are you from downstairs?’ he asks.
The white wolf had raised his eyebrows during the question, tilting his head to one side too. This was a question that he had no idea of the answer to.
Amber’s brain ran at a mile a minute. This wolf must be a Langston - he had killed buffalo, who had identified himself as a Yarbrough. This must mean that anyone from downstairs would be an ally, as they’d be just as much Langston as he is. Knowing that she has to save herself, Amber replies.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Hmm,’ the powerful wolf says into the silence of the corridor, ‘I don’t recognize you. You must be one of the new ones. I’m Patrick. Come on, let’s get you upstairs to where the injured are hiding.’
That’s where she knows his scent from, this is Patrick, the primary for this mission! For a second, her instincts tell her to collect the bounty now and be done with it, but she soon realizes the stupidity of that plan - Patrick’s far bigger than her, and better trained. She couldn’t fight him if she wanted to.
In truth, she didn’t want to. Maybe it was that he had saved her life, or maybe it was that he had such rich, thick, white fur, but something is spellbinding about his presence. She couldn’t help but follow him and would have even if he hadn’t asked her to.
‘No,’ she thought to herself, ‘I won’t be claiming the bounty on his head today.’
