Cursed Ambush

Dante Milburn

The boom of an explosion rattled through the fortress walls.

“What the hell was that?” Caius hissed, his harsh gray eyes becoming bloodshot in an instant.

I watched his hard body stretch as he shifted into his wolf, his arms hanging limply by his sides as long gray claws extended from his fingertips.

“Cannons? The moon goddess’ curse plagues? Whatever the hell it was, its gotten too close to base,” Laziel sneered icily, the lilt in his baritone making goosebumps race down my back.

There was something about the bronze-eyed man that had always unsettled me.

And when I saw the way his dark brown wolf tore through his skin, stretching his forehead taut as long fangs extended from his lips, I was all the more certain it would be a mistake to cross him.

Power rolled off his long-limbed frame in waves as I followed his narrowed eyes to the tall, black fortress walls in the distance.

“Whatever it is, its going to be sorry when I'm done with it.” He snapped, making the gritty floor vibrate when he leaped off onto the walls, disappearing out of sight in the thick mist of darkness swirling just beyond the battlements where the archers stood.

“All troops ready to engage! Kill everything outside our uniforms that move!” I barked up at them, feeling the weight of the emergency crash down on my shoulders like a ton of bricks.

My fingers tightened on the white stone railing of the stair. It circled around the pointed watch towers like a venomous snake.

“Dante! We’ve got wounded incoming, I dispatched Ronan to protect the rear. You want me out there with Laz?” Caius rasped as he ran up behind me and more chills cluttered down my spine as the whistling darkness hummed only some distance away.

Laziel had made his peace living in The Darkness like the demon spawn that he was. I wasn't about to lose Caius, my beta in the same way too.

“Cart the wounded, I want reinforcements at 12 o’clock! Dead north!” I growled, nodding to the gray-eyed wolf who stalked toward the large black gates.

“Your Highness!” The troop of uniformed soldiers behind me echoed as they marched forward with their shiny silver swords at the ready. 

Their neon-red uniforms glowed eerily through the thick black fog that rolled around only inches from our behemoth stone walls.

Thunder rumbled in the mass of gray clouds pulling around the sky and a bolt of unease rippled through my body.

An attack on our pack was a madness even worse than daring to enter The Darkness.

Why on earth were they pulling this shit now?

“Four thousand bloody soldiers…” I muttered grimly, allowing the rage to flood through my body and uncage my wolf when I reached the stone landing of the battlements.

“Archers engaged…fire!” One of the red-eyed commandant screamed as the deafening whoosh of arrows cut through the air.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up straight and my body stretched with lightning speed.

I could feel the thrill of the goddess’ silvery energy as it raced up my veins, pushing my long blackened claws out and making my hind legs stretch until they were as large as tree trunks.

The screams and cries coming from the darkness were so loud that I could hear nothing else as I leaped down from the walls, slashing my claws in a jagged arc and catching the wolves throwing themselves against the stone.

Time seemed to stretch into what felt like hours as I clawed down the misshapen wolves launching themselves at me. 

“Die, vermin!” I bellowed, letting out an enraged roar when pain sliced across my back and chest as more of the bloodthirsty wolves swarmed me like bees.

The boom of thunder forking over our heads drowned out the misshapen wolves haunting cries as I cut down body after body, my claws sawing through midriffs like a double-edged blade.

“Airstrike incoming! Releasing canons!” The distant cry of the wall commander registered in my ears a split second before the ground shook beneath my feet.

The force of the explosion raised dust clouds, making it even harder to see as my body went flying back into the blessed concrete walls.

Pain ricocheted in my head and my ears refused to stop ringing as I squinted into the fog.

Only the shadowy silhouettes of our men roamed the brown mist, but the explosion had awakened other things in The Darkness as well.

“Kill yourself,” A woman’s vile whisper scratched my ears and I whipped my head in a messy circle, realizing only half-burning corpses surrounded me.

Ghoul voices. 

It was one of the things I hated about The Darkness. 

My mind was already dark enough as it was…having someone else inside it, scurrying around like tiny ants…well that was downright mortifying.

“Soldiers! Assemble!” I roared, and the deafening din of my Alpha voice seemed to sweep away the fog of brown mist in The Darkness.

More of our Infinity soldiers scrambled forward, stabbing down what was left of the attackers until they had formed a tight ring around me.

“That’s the last of them, we’ve sent out rangers to begin recovery,” Caius hissed, brushing long claws through his windblown hair.

His harsh gray eyes narrowed to slits when they met mine, leaving the rest of his face encased in shadow.

He looked like one of the ghouls lost to The Darkness. Or maybe the dark mist was making me see things.

My heart still pounded in my chest and I forced myself to blink through the roaring of blood in my ears.

We needed to get the fuck out of this cursed mist.

How had the redhead survived for so long in this shit? It didn't make any sense for her to be a spy…not with her wounds.

My jaw clenched at the memory of the red and purple welts crisscrossing the woman’s back. The nurses had made a patchwork of the woman's cuts, but it could still take nights…weeks even for her to heal fully.

Another fucking mouth to feed in the Inifinity Fortress. A delicious one at that.

“Enough, Dante, fucks sake,” I cautioned inwardly, shaking the memory of Eldwood’s full pink lips from my mind.

“Where’s Laziel?” I snarled, making the other two glance around furtively.

Most of the men had shifted back into their human forms.

The Darkness drove most wolf forms mad…turning them rogue. It was important not to take chances.

“I don't sense him at all, then again, only you have ever been able to,” Ronan hissed before spitting out what looked like a ball of blood and phlegm.

Laziel the snake. It had been his nickname ever since I was a pup. 

Ever since my father’s reckoning in the wilderness where i’d caught him watching our troops, hanging from the trees completely immobile.

I’d convinced my father it would be a waste to blast silver bullets through each of his eyes, hoping to gain me his trust and loyalty that way.

Laziel was loyal as a dog with a dying master as far as that went…as for the trust. 

I would see a witch become a fucking nun before that would ever happen.

The loud creaking of the brass-iron gates behind me as I marched back into the fortress sounded like music to my ears.

All around me, the scent of blood mixed with metal rose. 

Silver bounced off the orange light of the searchlight beams towering over the entire fortress as night descended.

The soldiers had begun sheathing their swords, stabbing into the corpses with long iron spears instead before beheading the fallen for fuel.

The dark winter nights were upon us. A time when The Darkness grew even stronger. We would need all the fuel we could get for the gens and incinerators.

“Alpha Dante?” one of the plain-faced soldiers with a broken nose marched up to me and my fangs bared reflexively.

I saw the fear flash across his eyes before I reeled my wolf in, forcing the harsh breaths through my nose instead.

I needed to calm the fuck down or I would do something everyone would regret.

“Status reports rolling in…we’ve got death toll in the thousands, but the rangers are still clearing the fields.” 

His words echoed like bells in my ears and a vein throbbed painfully in my temples.

“How many?”

“Eight thousand now, Your Highness. We can't say for sure if some of our men fell to the enemy’s sword or to the darkness,” He confided, big soulful eyes turning glassy in the low light before I waved him off.

Ronan and Caius staggered up to me, their camo outfits stained with blood and brains and their eyes haunted by shadows.

“This one appears to be their leader, Alpha Dante, what do we do with him?” another soldier puffed, rolling a corpse off his shoulder and letting it thump meatily to the floor.

The wolf in itself was unremarkable save for the way the top part of his head was missing…Laziel’s handiwork no doubt.

I couldn't tell which of them was the bigger monster, and whether there was something wrong with me for loving his style.

“Search the bodies. Anything to tell us where these fuckers came from.” Caius ordered the gloomy-faced soldiers with swatches of blood stained into their skin and fur.

Damn it. He always beat me to everything. 

I shook my feet free of the pile of bodies, freezing when something glinted in the darkness.

The hairs on my scalp stood pin straight and it felt like my heart had been torn right through my back when I realized what it was I’d been staring at.

“What the fuck is that?” 

You could have heard a pin drop in the silence that stretched through the foyer after the octave of my baritone died away.

My knees buckled reflexively as I plucked the stained badge from the bloodied heap of flesh, bone, and guts.

I held it up to the orange halo of the searchlight still circling in a frenzy from the watch towers and felt my stomach drop.

A white tornado was created into the linen, making my lips form a flat line of disdain.

A ShadowDevil badge. 

“No fucking way,” Ronan whispered, his full brown lips falling open as his thick brows slanted into a harsh frown.

Was I never going to be rid of those bastards?

“The hell? What’s this doing here?” Caius cursed after coming up beside me to snatch the badge.

Only someone as reckless as my Beta would have done something so suicidal, but I was too distracted by my thoughts to care about his etiquette.

“You thinking those shadow scum had anything to do with this?” Ronan muttered, his wet earth scent washing over me as he settled a long, bony hand over my shoulder.

Amara Eldwood’s perfect face flashed in my minds eye and my hands balled to fists at my side.

“Just how much of a coincidence is it that a Shadow struts into our fortress and an army of delinquents under her command follows after?” I seethed, narrowing my eyes at Caius’ angelic face when his brows arched.

“Dante, come on—” He started, but I was already moving, hardly giving him any chance to spit out whatever excuse was already budding in his mind.

That was the thing with Caius. Emotional and empathetic to a fault. 

He was the hero that saved the goddamned damsel in distress right before she revealed her fangs and stabbed him in the back.

It wasn't like them to trust so easily. Hell, it wasn't like Infinity Fortress to take in strays at all, and yet this one woman had beaten all odds.

My fingers gripped the hilt of the sword on my waist. 

I was going to find out who the fuck she was, even if I had to torture her to find out.