Wolf Dominion Volume 2

The wounded arrive back to the small camp in a surrender late that night. A hundred soldiers.

They walk back along a broken highway – cleared of foliage.

I’m surprised any of they make it back at all. I’ve followed them, and before they reached the camp before me, I made sure to get to Orrin’s side first, so I had a representative.

I stand outside Elder Orrin’s house with his son Orrin, and the rest of their family.

The soldiers walk into the camp, right up to their Elder, while Orrin jnr. does the headcount.

The one in charge of the small army, approaches to report.

This one is a graceful warrior – larger than the rest. Still skinny and starved, but still strong and tall.

Orrin tells me, “This is our Commander Valen–”

Valen notices my height difference and the general look of me.

He knows.

Instantly.

Enemy.

He comes for me before he’s even introduced properly. But if it’s a fight he wants – he wasn’t going to win. I’d teach him a lesson or two.

I go to defend myself with my hands, but he goes straight for the gun at his side.

I launch toward him before he can aim, but he uses his foot to kick out my ankle, and then knees my stomach and shoves his arm against my throat – pressing the gun to my head. He gets the upper hand through experience and having absolutely no fear.

“You fight just like them,” Valen snarls – distraught and traumatised by the battle he just fought, and again with facing me. I’m just shell shocked he out manoeuvred me.

Valen moves to press the trigger but Elder Orrin yells out, “NO – you don’t know who she is!”

“She’s an Alpha,” Orrin jnr. calls out, sheepish.

“Luna,” I hiss, while Valen’s eyes spark.

“Skye’s past lover,” Elder Orrin speaks even more slowly – and I see that light really start to fire up in Valen’s eyes. Being important to Skye was hope to Orrin and the weak – but to Valen… I see it. It’s his chance for revenge.

I feel the nerves in my leg scream at the memory of such a rage when I had seen such fury ignite from humans before.

I wait to see what Valen would do – and I know in this second I might just get a bullet through my b –

He steps back.

“Past lover? Of the Dominator?” Valen asks me, his voice dripping with venom, “And where did you come from, did you just drop out of the sky? You’re a spy.”

“I’m actually not,” I answer huskily, feeling all eyes on us, “I crawled out of an Incinerator. They think I’m dead. Skye thinks he ended me.”

“Why. Why would he try to kill one of his own –” Valen is in disbelief.

“Because he never saw me as one of his own. He thought I was human. He enslaved me and tortured me, into who I am now. I had no thoughts. Other than loyalty to Wolf Dominion. I had nothing but brain washing and mind fucking and being fucked – and now I’m watching him burn the human race to the ground. I’m done with being fucked.”

“Ha,” Valen can’t quite believe me, and he turns to Orrin to report, “They stopped playing fair today. Used a fucking flame thrower to burn the first line. They all watch like they’re cooking food for their Beasts. Dinner time.”

“What did you just say?” I murmur, raising a brow.

“She says the Wolf Beast is hers – not the Dominators,” Orrin jnr. adds in, excited to pass this onto Valen.

Valen is further silenced. I’m not sure he believes any of it, but he listens none the less.

“Hey. Are they feeding humans to the Beasts?” I ask, “Tell me the truth,” Valen clenches his jaw but his eyes say it all. Yes, “Good –”

“Good?!” Valen almost comes for me again, his rage rising quickly.

I quickly retort.

“That means they’re hungry,” I snarl back, “Like me. I’m starving. They have large appetites. They need to eat more than you. I’m just tallying up the score and how we can win the next battle.”

“You’re telling me you’re on my side?” Valen asks, unable to drop the hatred, “Yeah right bitch, no one trust her,” Valen yells out to the camp, “I want eyes on her at all times,” he turns to his most trusted, “We’ll take rounds. Me tonight. Cobra. Adam. We’ll swap when we tire. No slacking,” Valen turns back to me, “If you want to prove you’re on our side, you’ll sacrifice a leg for us to eat. We’re hungry too.”

I go quiet.

Orrin the Elder coughs into his hand.

“Valen,” he speaks his concern quietly.

Valen turns back to me and looks down, to follow Orrin’s gaze.

I shuffle out my leg, to show him my metal foot.

“You can’t eat it, but I’ll bludgeon you to death with it if you try to take it from me,” I speak, dead serious.

Perhaps with the threat, it’s more normal to Valen’s ears, because he calms down – slightly.

“That’s why you’re being watched,” Valen concludes my sentence, “You’ll tell me everything about Skye. Everything. And not one detail less.”

I nod.

It was a start of something.

After the head count is done, I follow Valen to the river to wash up.

They all surrendered after just enough had died, so that they could come back to camp with no war battalion from Skye following them.

In the dark of the early morning, Valen waits for everyone else to finish washing away the blood in the river before he even starts. I stand near him and observing his human emotions are refreshing. He’s concerned the weak and injured fighting men and women might accidentally drown. Or that they might be too traumatised to clean.

Valen makes eye contact with every soldier, passes on encouraging words – and commands. Just to keep them focused on one thing at a time. A comforting practice.

When they’re all washed off and march together back to camp, Valen finally turns to address me, eventually sitting on the boulder silently next to him.

I’ve followed him closely, it’s not hard to remember how to be an obedient pet. In this instant, it’s amusing at the very least.

Valen watches me as he strips off his shirt.

“You need to wash too,” he murmurs it, not kindly, just a suggestion.

As he turns, he walks as he slips off his pants and shamelessly walks into the icey river.

I stand and throw off the borrowed tank top, and the ripped shorts.

I was still very dirty, so I wasn’t going to decline.

Covered in scars and bones peaking through from the long coma, I look like rubbish. I have barely any meat left on my bones. I needed to eat badly.

But that would have to wait.

I run up and dive into the water off a boulder – straight into the depths of the wide river.

I come up feeling fresh and alive, gasping in cold air, my head bursting through the surface.

Valen is clearly impressed by my easy lithe athletic ability, his eyes narrowed at every movement from me.

I swim closer to him and stand up in the shallows to face him.

Being naked doesn’t concern me, although it might concern him.

He’s trying not to look. I can tell.

“You certainly act like a Queen,” Valen speaks dryly, to acknowledge my confidence and his awkwardness, “I believe you’re a Luna.”

“I am the Luna,” I correct him, “Messier Luna Ryder. I’m a level up beyond the Genesis Kind. Beyond any Alphas.”

“If you’re really off-side, you’ll be dead like us in seven days,” Valen gets straight to it, “Unless we work out a negotiation.”

“No negotiations,” I whisper, “They only understand violence.”

“My worst doesn’t even make them blink twice,” Valen answers, calmly, as if he’s accepted he’ll be dead soon.

“My worst can stop the Dominator in his tracks,” I smirk, “Skye is predictably unpredictable. Although these staged battles every week suggests he’s changed. That tells me his arrogance has increased. I wouldn’t doubt it. Since he’s aligned all the Dominions.”

“What are the Dominions?” Valen seems embarrassed asking this, like he should know it.

“Wolf, Bear, Reptile, Cat. They hate each other. I don’t know what aligned them. Nothing ever has. My guess…” I lick my lips, “What I said before. Hunger.”

“All meat, any other animals, went extinct last year, in all forms – we eat tree leather now,” Valen explains, “It tastes like deer, from the LO tree. Those aliens eat meat. They eat us. Their beasts eat us.”

“No fruit? Vegetables?”

“Every kind is poison in Destor,” Valen tells me.

“How do you even survive off tree leather?” I ask.

“We just do,” Valen decides to walk out of the water now.

I follow close behind.

We get dressed and walk back to camp.

Valen heads to his stick hut covered in an old canvas, and almost immediately lays down on his bed inside.

I sit in the entrance, watching him close his eyes.

He’s trying not to fall asleep – but I can tell he’s exhausted.

I do the simple trick of closing my own eyes and pretending to sleep where I sit – to encourage him to do the same.

A few minutes later, I hear human snoring.

I open my eyes, Valen is out light a light.

When I look around the camp, it’s the same.

Everyone is going to bed, oil lamps burning around the camp with tree sap, which acts like a fuel.

After a little while, I listen to the sounds of the forest before dawn.

I listen until I hear strange things.

The unnatural bending of a branch.

The slight crunch of a boot.

A heavy boot. A careful one. The sounds they make are accidental.

I immediately move off to investigate.

I creep right into the forest behind Valens hut, slowly, while keeping my eyes peeled.

I don’t intend to come face to face with the person – but I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t a direct threat to the camp.

But it could very well be a spy.

I wouldn’t doubt it.

The moon isn’t very bright, and the sun has not started to rise, so nothing is lit very well.

I eventually see a strange shadow moving – and we both see each other at the exact same time.

Neon blue eyes choke me into breathlessness.

Black long hair, flowing and so long and beautiful.

A tall pale young man.

With a familiar sour and screwed up mouth – like mine – but in this instance, flat, after he seems to register me as another human.

He turns back into the trees, binoculars bouncing on his chest from a string. He’s back off the way he had come.

Wandering.

Just wandering around.

He didn’t know who I was. He didn’t care.

But how did he grow so fast?

Just as I’m trying to process seeing Ryder – I am intercepted.

Valen.

He’s loud. Too loud.

I turn around toward him before he pounces on me.

He’s holding up his gun again, pointing it to my head.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asks – and his voice shakes, clearly traumatised.

“Wandering,” I whisper.

“I’ll kill you next time you wander,” Valen answers me, killing all emotion.

“You’re being hypervigilant but you need to sleep to heal –” I try to reason with him.

Valen snaps, “Then we’re sleeping together,” I raise a brow, and Valen turns, ushering me along, “You’re not leaving my side again.”

I don’t think he understood how he sounded – but I didn’t want to die.

So, I’d oblige, and at the most, despite how awkward the sleeping arrangement was bound to be, I’d keep him warm for the night.