The People's Alpha ✔

6: Incident On The Northern Border

The pack change rooms were located in a square wooden building on the edge of the village, backing out onto the woods. They smelled of sweat, and an earthy animal smell that was difficult to describe.

I stripped down as quickly as I could. I pushed my clothes into one of the lockers lining the wall and headed for the row of shifting cubicles built into the wall. .

The shifting cubicle was completely dark, and barely sufficient to contain my frame. I squeezed in, hunched down on all fours. The animal smell was even stronger here, mixed with the smell of rubber. At the other end of the cubicle, a rubber flap sealed the cramped space from the outside elements. The cold night breeze whistled through it, making me shiver. I felt goosebumps form on my skin.

I put my nose to the flap and breathed in deeply, sucking in the night air, letting the smells of the outside flood my nose. I breathed in and out several more times, clearing my mind and slowly drawing myself into a trance.

I winced as I felt my bones begin to contract and extend . It was painful, but it was a bracing kind of pain, and something I had long taught myself to bear. It was something I could grit my teeth against and feel a perverse sense of satisfaction. The full moon was also nearing, and that made things somewhat easier.

I felt my guts squeeze as my spine curved into a quadrupedal position. A feeling of pins and needles wracked my whole body as my skin stretched and contracted and changed texture. I felt my fingers and toes squeeze as the nails narrowed and lengthened into claws.

An overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia hit me like a thunderbolt as my transformation completed itself. This had always the most gruelling part of shifting, at least to me. It had almost knocked me out the first time I had shifted. But I had learned to anticipate it over the years, even savour the sensation of it gnawing at my consciousness.

Get out of here, a voice in my head said. We need to get out of here.

I needed to get out into the open.

I charged through the flap, the bracing cold of the night air hitting me as my paws hit the leaf-covered ground.

Run. Run. Run. I just wanted to run.

***

Settling into a steady gait with practiced ease, getting my bearings on the fly, I headed for the northern border, seeking the presence of my pack compatriots through the mind link as I leapt through the undergrowth, paws crunching on dry leaves, skirting through a well-trod path through the woods and barely missing branches that stuck out mere inches from my flanks. Through the trees, the placid waters of the lake that bordered the pack village glistened in the moonlight.

Over here. Come quickly. They're at the very edge of the pack border.

The message came from further north. I quickened my pace.

Over here. We're downwind so they can't smell us.

I reached the edge of a steep embankment, which led down into the gully of a small creek that ran down to the shores of the lake. My fellow pack members stood in a loose formation on the opposite side, hidden in between the tree trunks. Below, where the small creek emptied into the gently lapping waters of the lake, one could just make out a small group of wolves standing at the edge of the shore.

We would have never seen them if Keith hadn't decided to take a detour to the creek to have a drink.

I didn't link anything back as I digested the information. They had probably crept in along the lake shore.

In the near-distance, I could see the bare half-submerged tree trunk in the lake that marked where the Stone River territory began. Have you alerted Stone River?

We did.

I made to move down towards the lake shore, linking to the other guards to follow me. Let's get them.

We moved in slowly, making as little noise as possible, keeping in the shadows at the edges of the ravine, me on one side and the rest of the border guards on the other. There was a light headwind blowing, rippling the glinting surface of the lake and playing through the branches of the trees, wafting the scent of the rogues towards us.

They had become vanishingly rare since the Industrial Zone had been created. There had been a slight resurgence during the recession of the 1990s, but the general fact was that they were now few and far between. Nevertheless, I had chased down more than a few rogues in my time, and I was all too familiar with the rancid tang of an unwashed pelt and the sickly smell of fresh blood from a kill.

These wolves smelt different. They smelt clean and well fed, and there was a faint sweet smell I couldn't recognise, but they didn't smell like pack wolves either, at least unlike any pack I knew of.

Something didn't add up.

That thought was quickly forgotten as we got within striking distance. I linked Keith. This one's yours.

Keith didn't relent. Surround them. Cole, you go round that way. Jim, you stay on the other side of the creek.

The wolf nearest to the mouth of the creek very suddenly turned his head in our direction. All of us froze.

He sniffed the air, searching for a scent. Then his nodded at his fellow wolves and they set off, slowly at first, but increasing with speed as they got further away.

This was also very unusual. Usually rogues went the other way, looking for a fight.

After them, Keith linked.

At the sight of us, the rogues bolted. We set off in hot pursuit, gaining ground rapidly, until their heels were almost hitting our noses. The smell was stronger now. They definitely did not smell like wolves from any pack I knew. The sweet smell was almost overpowering.

Find a target. Everyone.

I pinned my eyes on the wolf nearest to me and launched myself onto his back, throwing him off his balance. We flailed and splashed in the shallow water as my target desperately tried to get away, wet sand getting and

I had barely landed a good blow before my target finally shook me off. Nearby, my fellow pack members had similar luck. Usually they put up at least a little bit of a fight.

I shook off the sand from my coat and set off again. We splashed through the edge of the lake, paws thudding on wet sand. The moon was out, casting a silvery-white glow on the water's surface.

These guys seemed to be a lot faster that your average rogue, too. Now that we were well into the chase, I was struggling to keep up, and so were my fellow pack members. Our targets seemed to show no sign of tiring, though.

The rogues changed direction, bounding into the trees, and we followed, darting through the trees, hot on their trail. We chased them until we reached a small hillock in the middle of the woods, well into the neutral zone between our pack territory and that of the Stone River pack.

I stood at the peak of the hillock, standing in the middle of the dappled moonlight filtering down through the trees, lost in thought as I watched the rogues gradually melt into the dark forest. I was aware that my compatriots were waiting for me, somewhere behind me.

Hey, what you waiting for? They're gone, the bunch of sissies.

I watched for a little longer as the band of rogues finally disappeared into the dense maze of tree trunks. My mind was still racing, trying to comprehend what I'd just seen, searching for any vague significance.

I'm coming.

Within a few bounds, I had rejoined the group and we were heading back home. Keep an eye on that spot, I instructed the other pack members, as we ran past the creek mouth where we had first spotted the rogues. We'll come back and take a closer look in the morning.