Head Wolf

Chapter 10

Igor slammed his body against the metal door. It didn’t rattle, but so his will didn’t shake. He kept meeting steel with steel, grunt with grunt, reality with denial.

Blenda blinked.

The room buzzed around her. Maybe Amara approached her, talked to her, or patted her on the shoulder. She couldn’t tell. Void spread in her chest, clutching her lungs. She couldn’t breathe, and yet she kept breathing. Walls rose around her heart higher than the ones surrounding her. Even her wolf was stunned silent, for Life was speaking a language it couldn’t decipher; giving a mate it didn’t request and making him the embodiment of everything they loathed.

At her right, Adana pressed both her hands against the wall like a spider, knocking, listening, and knocking harder when the stones muffled her hits.
Zuri dashed to the stairs, followed by her mate.

Blenda blinked.

“Can this possibly lead to somewhere?”

Sebastian crouched next to a circular draining hole in the middle of the room and lifted its large iron lid.

“Not likely,” Giovanni answered from his spot, leaning against a wall. The others gathered around the hole. Josh peeked inside, but the pale light wasn’t enough to reach the bottom, so, he jumped in, landing with a muffled thumb.

“Did you see anything?” Amara asked.

“It’s dark. Give me a second.”

He shuffled his way around the place. Giovanni spoke again from his unbothered place, “It’s just a hole to drain any possible floods of water.”

He pushed against the wall and walked toward the door Igor left behind. Blenda shifted from foot to foot. When he touched the slight dent in the door, her gaze followed. When he shook the handle, she was behind him. Her wolf rose inside her with bristled fur and erected ears. It didn't growl nor did it snarl—A predator in its most lethal form. Her eyes flashed hot pink, which caused Giovanni to turn her way. The few centimeters she had on him made her stand taller. Her nostrils flared, taking in any trace of lies or fear. Giovanni didn’t flinch. Without breaking eye contact, he slowly brought his palm to her nose. His eyes were a bottomless sea of secrets and dangers. They flashed with human intelligence unlike her wolf’s eyes.

“Wolves are restless predators. They long to dominate anything, even their own human, if you succumb to grief.”

His words hit her like a slap—stopping time and muffling the outside with a ringing sound. Blenda blinked while a headache thundered in her temples. As Giovanni slipped away from her, her wolf growled but didn’t move, for a storm broke inside her mind. She pressed her eyes shut while her wolf clawed at the silver eyes and the boyish smile, at the orange glow on the traitor’s face, at every memory turned bitter, at the dreams she didn’t help but have. Everything was reduced to shreds.

“Nothing,” the word was yelled from somewhere behind her.

Nothing was lost because nothing there was.

Blenda blinked, befuddled.

Josh jumped back up and sat on the edge of the hole. He heaved a deep sigh, “Just a four meter square room.”

“There is nothing up here, too” Yoshi said, coming out of the doorway. He walked hand in hand with his mate, who finished his sentence. “The shafts are too small, and the door is like this one.” She motioned to the one Giovanni was inspecting. “It’s locked. I can try to pick it, if you have a bobby pin or something,” she said.

Amara perked at that. “I have two.”

She gave her the bobby pins and they all rushed up the stairs. Blenda followed. When they reached the door, Zuri raised her hand to silence them. She stuck her ear to the door. There was nothing except a far commotion they all heard. She knocked and shook the door, nothing.

Zuri opened the two bobby pins. falling to her knees, she inserted the metal sticks in the top and bottom part of the keyhole. She wiped her hands on her pants and locked eyes with her mate.

“Ok, let’s do this,” she whispered to which he answered with a nod.

She turned the sticks simultaneously until they stopped. Her fingers turned white, but the lock didn’t give in. She turned them backward and tried again to no avail. By now, all the fighters were hunched over her. It was a wonder she could breathe. The metal left red marks on her fingers, but she bit her tongue and turned the sticks…

Click

Everyone froze, except for the drops of sweat covering everyone’s faces. Wide eyes shared a million questions as a heavy door groaned open in the distance, and heavy steps filled the silent room.

“Who’s there?” Sebastian was the first to sober up from his shock. He jumped the few stairs, shouting his words. As if hit by an invisible door, he stopped in his tracks. When he fell back, his wide eyes looked back at them. They faded slowly as a crimson liquid seeped from a hole between them.

Blenda’s sanity snapped, and the wolf took over, but so did every one in the room. They lounged like the dead people they were towards the unknown. The unknown answered with bullets and claws.

Unarmed, outnumbered, and betrayed again, the warriors fought fangs and claws, skin and fur. They fought to die in dignity, not to win.

“Disengage and neutralize. We don’t need attention on us.”

A man shouted his command. His graying black braids teased his shoulders. His face was Perfection sculptured in stone. There was no life in that face except for the two orange flames he had for eyes.

All movement ceased, then the soldiers retreated in a perfect formation.

In the middle of the scattered bodies, four standing prisoners were left, but four muffled bullets sent them to the ground.