They all heard it at once. Not the familiar keen of the beast in the trees, but a new sound, one far less familiar. First, a low, rasping hiss that set the fur prickling down his spine… and then a brassy bugle, a roar that was unmistakably tinged with pain. One of the six of them recognized the roar as belonging to a dragon—Seth would never be sure which. Once knowledge was shared, it belonged to the pack, not to the individual. The six of them knew that there was a dragon out there in the mist, under attack by one of the beasts that stalked the night when the Fog was thickest.
And it was especially thick tonight. Their ancestral patrol trails were clear, of course, but barely five feet from the edge of the paths, the Fog looked almost like a solid wall, impenetrable. Stay on the path, that was the rule. Stay on the path, complete the patrol and return home, to the safe embrace of the pack. Getting caught in the Fog would only get you into the exact situation that the hapless dragon was experiencing right now.
But Seth hesitated as another scream reached them, this one even more agonized. Dismay at the poor creature’s fate mingled with a bleak curiosity. Dragons rarely strayed from their mountain peak—few wolves could remember ever getting closer to one than a distant, circling shape cut out against the sky far above. There had been a few meetings, always carefully orchestrated diplomatic encounters—outside of those, the two species took great pains to avoid each other. What the hell was a dragon doing out here in the forest in the middle of the night? How had it allowed itself to get this close to one of the beasts that stalked the Fog? Was it alone out there, as death closed in?
And with that thought, Seth knew that he and his wolves couldn’t turn back… and he knew without hesitation that they felt the same way. There was little love between dragons and wolves, especially at the moment, but they were in wordless agreement that to leave the creature to die alone and terrified would have been monstrous. As one creature, they lifted their heads and howled a battle cry… then lunged off the path and into the darkness.
Seth might have been imagining it, but it almost felt as though their howl split the Fog before them. It certainly destroyed the illusion of impenetrability as they tore through it, paws thudding hard against the earth, teeth bared as adrenaline surged through them. Every wolf behind him had dozens if not hundreds of battles like this one under his or her belt; they knew how to handle themselves. More to the point, they knew exactly what kind of danger they were about to face. As Alpha, Seth would never allow a wolf out on patrol who didn’t take these creatures seriously.
There! It was Victor who spotted the beast first, and all six of them turned to take in the scene before them. The dragon was pinned against a tree, writhing helplessly in the grip of the monstrosity… one of the biggest any of them had seen, he realized, a cold feeling settling in his gut. There were only six of them—a patrol, not a delegation sent out for battle. Would it be enough? It would have to be. They fanned out around the beast, which was already turning its hideous form to face them, keening its displeasure at having its meal interrupted. The dragon, released from the beast’s grip, dragged itself a few feet away, then collapsed, blood oozing from deep wounds. Wings shredded, Seth noted with a pang of empathy. The beasts had an unerring knack for targeting weak points—they knew as well as wolves did that the only part of a dragon that wasn’t thickly armored were their wings.
But they had to focus on the beast now. The six of them had surrounded it, and he studied it closely, searching for any advantage they could press. There—this time it was Josef that had seen it first—one of the beast’s limbs had been amputated, fresh black oozing from the stump. The dragon, he thought with some approval. She’d done some damage in exchange for what the beast had done to her wings. One of his fellows wondered, just briefly, exactly why he was assuming the dragon was female. But before he could respond, a sudden movement from the beast snapped the six of them back into battle mode, and he felt himself subsumed by the group event.
It was like a dance, almost, fighting as a pack. Seth lost himself to the familiar feeling, allowing his body to operate like one limb of a larger organism. The beast, for all that it was one of the largest he’d seen and as clearly set on violence like most of its kind, was already injured. It wouldn’t take much, they could sense, to turn the tide here. The group wavered for a moment over whether or not they should put an end to the creature. They tried to ensure that most battles with the monstrosities from the Fog ended in death for the creatures—one less foe to stalk the night. But right now, with a seriously injured dragon behind them, Seth’s instincts were telling him to settle for chasing the beast off.
And so that was their focus. Snarling and snapping, they dove in again and again, delivering quick blows to any part of the creature they could reach. The thick, black substance that oozed out of these creatures was bitter and acrid and not quite like blood, and it wasn’t long before Seth’s jaws were soaked with it. The beast was keening constantly now, the hair-raising sound setting Seth’s teeth on edge as he dodged its increasingly frantic blows and kept on pressing the attack. Finally, the creature seemed to decide that this encounter was too much trouble—not that there was any evidence that these monstrosities were capable of thought. With one final, ear-splitting shriek, it shambled away into the trees, the Fog closing around it for all the world like a thick gray shroud.
Breathing hard, Seth watched the place where it had disappeared, mentally running checks over his squad as he listened to the sound of the creature’s retreat. No injuries, no damage—nothing more serious than a light bruise or two where the creature had managed to sneak in a blow. Relief washed through him, echoed by the wolves around him. They all cared for each other … but it was different, for Seth. As Alpha, the well-being of the other wolves was his concern, his responsibility. He’d have had trouble forgiving himself if his decision to rush to this dragon’s rescue had led to a member of his pack being hurt.
The dragon. A jolt of shock went through him when he turned to find the place she’d been lying was empty. For a moment, strange wild grief ran through him, as though he’d lost something incredibly precious. Feeling the mild confusion from his packmates, he shifted back into his human form, suddenly self-conscious about their intimate awareness of his inner thoughts. That in itself was strange, too. He’d never had any secrets from his pack. Wolves tended not to—secrets never lasted long among a community who shared each other's thoughts when they were wolf-shaped.
The dragon wasn’t gone, of course. With injuries like the ones he’d seen, she wouldn’t have gotten far—and sure enough, there was a woman slumped against a tree, her knees curled to her chest and a grim set to her jaw. She was binding a deep wound in her thigh with a strip of cloth she’d clearly torn from the cardigan she was wearing, but her hands slowed as he approached. Her eyes were a pale shade of blue, and he attributed the shock that ran through him to unfamiliarity. Every wolf shared the same bright silver eyes, and Seth had never met a dragon before—though he’d accessed ancestral pack memories of meetings with their kind. Usually diplomatic occasions, stiff and formal. Nothing like this, looming over this injured woman who was gazing up at him with a mixture of trepidation and defiance. Badly hurt and outnumbered as she was, Seth knew somehow that she was more than ready to fight him, if she needed to.
Something about that made him smile despite the tension of the situation.
Behind him, he was aware that his pack hadn’t joined him in shifting into their human shapes. An intimidation tactic, perhaps. Tensions were particularly high between wolves and dragons at the moment… but Seth didn’t see the point of driving that home, not right now. So he dropped into a crouch beside her, not missing the way she tensed up at the sudden movement.
“How bad are your wounds?” he asked, nodding at her bloodstained clothing. She blinked her blue eyes at him, looking utterly perplexed by the question. “Your wounds,” he repeated, glancing over his shoulder at his pack with vague uncertainty. Did she not understand him? In the pack’s shared memories of dragons, they’d always spoken the same language. But then the woman cleared her throat.
“I am well,” she said, her tone halting and uncertain, as though she hadn’t spoken in years. “This body… heals.”
“Of course. We have that in common,” he said, gesturing unhelpfully to his own body. Injuries sustained to one form always carried over to the other, but while the human shape was more fragile, it also bore less severe manifestations of whatever injury had been sustained. A deep laceration to a wolf, for example, might translate as only a scratch once they’d shifted into their two-legged form. From what he understood of dragons, the same was true… which meant that the injuries this dragon had sustained must have been life-threatening. It wouldn’t be safe for her to shift back until she’d had the chance to heal a little.
“My name is Seth,” he said now, aware that the silence was stretching out between them as the dragon scrutinized his face. That eerie calm their species was famous for, a side effect of their long, long lives—it was as unnerving in person as it was in the memories he carried. “I lead the pack, as did my mother and father before me.” It felt a little strange to use the formal diplomatic phrasing on this strange battlefield, but he was aware that the eyes of his pack were on him, that he was currently representing them all in front of a woman who was technically an enemy.
“I am Lana,” the dragon said after a pause. Did all dragons have that strange, stiff accent? She seemed to be searching for each word she spoke, selecting it with great care. “I am… lost.”
Seth nodded. This, at least, was something he knew how to help with. “I’d imagine your injuries will make it unsafe to shift. There’s a waystation nearby where we can rest—then we can escort you as far as the Plateau in the morning.” He kept his tone neutral, knew without even looking that his wolves were shifting restlessly behind him. Disrupting their patrol to take care of an injured dragon? He’d be fielding a few questions about that choice over the next few weeks, that was for sure. He’d come up with a justification. Something about diplomacy, about the value of goodwill between their warring species.
And then, a little later, he could figure out what was actually going on here. Because enemies or not, the moment he’d met her eyes, he’d known with absolute certainty that it was his duty to stay by her side.
Chapter 3 - Lana
As grateful as she was that she wasn’t currently being digested by the awful beast that had attacked her, Lana couldn’t help but feel a little annoyed about the fresh heaping of confusion that her gallant rescuers had brought with them. None of it made any sense. Where the hell was she, for a start? She’d given up on the rather pleasant hope that all of this was some hyper-realistic dream—the fierce pain of her injuries had put that idea well and truly to bed. But that meant that she was really here, limping through this bizarre, foggy forest with an escort of surly wolves.
She snuck another glance up at Seth. He was intimidatingly tall, this wolf. He’d been the largest of the pack when he’d been wolf-shaped, too. The leader—the Alpha of the pack, then. She’d spent a fair bit of time among wolves in her travels. The stereotype was that wolves and dragons hated each other, but these days, those old enmities were gradually becoming a thing of the past. Most sensible, modern shifter communities had realized that they had far more in common with each other than they did with humans… especially in the larger cities, which was why she enjoyed visiting New York so much. Shifter harmony was something she wished her rather-traditional family would embrace. Her mother and father had always been distrustful of wolves in particular, always warned her to keep her distance.
What would they make of these wolves, she wondered now? Of Seth, who’d kneeled down beside her and spoken ancient Draconic like it was his native language? For a moment, she’d worried that she’d sustained some kind of head trauma from the beast that had attacked her—but sure enough, this wolf spoke flawless Draconic. Even hearing the syllables aloud was unusual. The old language was restricted almost exclusively to written records, at least these days… it was a big part of why she’d chafed and complained so much about being forced to learn it as a child.
Well, she was grateful for those interminably boring lessons now. She only hoped her vocabulary was still up to scratch. She’d tried a few sentences of English with the wolf as they’d set off down the path, but he’d only frowned at her in confusion. The mystery deepened. Lana had about a thousand questions, but the shock and the blood loss were taking their toll, and she found herself having to focus on putting one foot in front of the other instead of interrogating her escort about where she was. Her curiosity continued to boil and seethe, tempered only a little by pain. Her wounds were serious, but they’d heal with a bit of rest. She was far more interested in how a pack of wolves had learned an ancient language spoken only by dragons.
The waystation Seth had mentioned came up quickly, to her relief. It was a little cabin, perched on the side of an incline that was growing steeper and steeper as they traveled. Seth escorted her to the doorway and gestured inside. In the gloom, she could just make out a central table and chairs, and behind them, a handful of bunk beds against the cabin’s back wall. Rustic, but she’d slept in worse places on her travels. It would do.
“We’ll keep watch,” Seth told her—and before she could respond, he’d shifted, his paws hitting the soft earth with a thump. The six of them padded away without a second glance back at her, and she frowned. Seth was the only one who’d bothered to shift into his human shape to greet her, and she had a feeling she wasn’t imagining the hostility she’d sensed from the other five. The mystery deepened. If these wolves didn’t like dragons, why did their leader speak their language fluently?
Lana swayed a little, feeling a warning wave of dizziness move through her. Her dormant dragon growled a clear warning—rest now, or the decision would be taken from her. Reluctantly, she headed for one of the bunk beds, pulling her phone out of her pocket to light her way. It was probably too much to hope that a cabin this rustic would have a phone charger, wasn’t it? She climbed into the lower bunk, pulling a thick quilt over herself and resolving to leave a note apologizing for the bloodstains. No cell service, of course, and her battery was already half dead. Served her right for taking the cheapest plan available. But when had she last charged it? When, exactly, had she gotten to this strange place? There was an odd, grayed-out area in her memory… not exactly blank, but confusing, incoherent. With the soft sounds of the forest around her, she tried to focus on that strange, ambiguous period in her memory… but before she could so much as frame a question, her eyes slid shut and darkness claimed her.
Lana slept long and deep, resting her body and mind sorely needed, and when her eyes slid open, she felt like herself again. A little drowsy and disoriented, perhaps, but the shock and adrenaline of the previous night were gone, and when she sat up in bed, the sunlight falling on her face made her smile. She’d always been a morning person. There was something so pleasant about the promise of a new day… especially when you made a habit of waking up in places you’d never been before. Lana was a lifelong traveler, and while her current situation was a little strange even for her, her natural optimism was hard to repress for long. This wasexciting. A weird forest, a pack of wolves who spoke Draconic, of all things, a battle with a monster that she was already beginning to think of as a good story instead of a terrifying ordeal…