Claimed by the Pack

Holy… Holy shit…

My limbs were shaking. My heart,

pounding so hard I thought my chest would explode. I took a step backward, away from the chasm’s cold, dark edge. Then another…

“MURDERER!”

The word was Lionel’s. His hulking form took up most of the chamber’s entrance. Christophe stood next to him, his face twisted in horror.

For a second we just stood there staring at each other, realizing the magnitude of what just happened.

Then they began to morph… and I grabbed Boone’s club and fled faster than my two legs have ever carried me in my life.

35

BRODERICK

“Say it. Say the words…”

I was delirious. My mind, in a constant fog. My body burning… eating itself alive…

“I can’t help you unless you say it.”

She was breathtakingly beautiful. A red-tressed, flowing-haired goddess. I thought she was an angel, to tell the truth. An angel of mercy, sent to bring me over, safely, to the other side.

I tried to sit up, but my chest flared with pain. Somehow I managed to crane my neck down, and my already heavy heart sank even further. The bandages were soaked through. My wounds still ran with pus, all stinking and white and yellow.

But I was alive… and they weren’t.

My God…

My unit. My men. My responsibility. I’d failed them all. I deserved to die.

You did everything you could.

I shoved away my own voice of reason. I simply didn’t want to hear it. Besides, the stench was overpowering. The agony, even more so.

“There’s a piece of shrapnel lodged just beneath your heart, Broderick. If they try to extract it, you’ll die.” The voice was soft, soothing. Almost musical. “But you’ll also die if they don’t…”

I writhed beneath the thin white sheets, sweat pouring off of my fever-soaked body. Somehow I knew she was right. I could feel it. I knew it as certainly as I knew my own name: I’d never wake up tomorrow.

“I’ll take it out for you,” the angel said. “And I’ll let you live, as well.”

Her scent was strong as she hovered over me, all perfume and jasmine and… something else. Something more powerful. Something coppery and primal, I couldn’t put my finger on.

“There’s little time,” my angel spoke softly. “In just minutes you’ll be dead.”

I punched the button on my morphine drip. In the back of my drug-addled mind, I knew I’d already maxed it out.

“I’m offering you life. Hope. A new beginning.”

I clamped down with my jaw. Squeezed so hard it felt like my teeth would shatter.

“This is your last chance, Broderick.”

She leaned forward, brushing her lips against me.

“Your very last moments in this world.”