Savage Instinct

SAVAGE
INSTINCT

Celeste
Anwar

Copyright by Celeste Anwar September 2013

Cover art by Eliza Black, copyright September
2013

www.celesteanwar.com

Also on Facebook. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Celeste-Anwar/544142812323946

This is a work of fiction.  All
characters, events, and places are of the author’s imagination and not to be
confused with fact.  Any resemblance to living persons or events is merely
coincidence.

Chapter
One

Someone or something followed him.

Nerves twitched along his spine, making his grey fur stand
on end in warning.  Aiden Kinsey turned his muzzle to the sky and sniffed the
air as he crouched in the shadows cast by poplar trees along the mountain pass.

Aiden learned long ago to trust his natural instincts and
to never throw caution to the wind.  He didn’t have the comfort of a normal
human.  He couldn’t just call the cops because he was in trouble.  In the
shifter world, trouble usually got you killed if you weren’t careful.

A cool breeze disrupted the quiet of the night, ruffling
leaves like a cheerleader’s pompoms.  The heady aroma of mountain flowers
mingled with the earthier scent of the forest floor, and another faint trace of
someone Aiden didn’t quite recognize.

Wolves.

He couldn’t tell how many tracked him, who they were, or
who they were with.

Under normal circumstances, Aiden would have his pack at
his back, hunting alongside him beneath the full moon.  He’d howl long and
loud, and they’d come running to his aid.

Tonight, he was on his own.

With the coming of spring and the lure of the powerful full
moon, however, his brethren had left Tennessee to attend a festival in Stone
Mountain, Georgia.  Aiden declined to attend the festival where many of his
kind would mingle with packs from surrounding territories.  His second in
command, Malik, said they needed new blood and new females if the Misty Springs
pack was going to continue to grow and thrive.  Acquiescing to the wisdom of
the move, Aiden sent Malik to go on a recruiting mission with the others.

He’d been craving solitude for a while now and wasn’t sure
why.  Something had put him in a foul mood and he hadn’t been able to shake the
feeling.  He thought it’d been because he’d resisted shifting and hunting
through the winter.

Maybe it was because he hadn’t chosen a mate.

He’d taken a lax view of their mating rituals.  If that’s
what the others wanted to do, it was fine by him.  He’d stay close to home. 
When the time came for him to find a mate, it would happen.  If it didn’t,
that’d be fine too.

He was comfortable in his life and didn’t need a woman
except to warm his bed on occasion.

A muscle cramped in his leg.  Aiden shifted his weight on
his haunches and sniffed the air again. The scent remained faint and distant.

For a moment, he wondered if some of his brethren had
returned early from their Georgia festival and came out to hunt here near the
lake.  The area was generally an excellent place to find a deer or other small
game when they came down to water.  Rare occasions might bring a bear amongst
them, proving a challenge.

The proximity of the lake provided the shape shifters with
the ability to clean up the evidence of their kill and thus keep neighboring
humans from questioning their existence.  All shape shifters knew that the
fewer humans they revealed their existence to, the better.

He’d rather them think something as crazy as aliens had
marauded the countryside than to think that their town was infested with the
supernatural.

Which it was, but they didn’t need to know that.

Tearing through the underbrush, Aiden launched from his
hind legs into a run.  Almost in sync with his movement and barely perceptible,
his ears detected the echoing crash of someone following his moves.

Blood pounded his veins, heightening his excitement and
senses.  His eardrums twitched with spasms as he cocked his ears.  Beneath his
paws, the flattened grasses felt soft against the leathery pads.  The cool
night air ruffled through his fur, increasing as he ran the trail.

Who the fuck hunted in his woods? He wondered.

Weeds hugging the game trail smacked his forelegs as he
loped along the worn path.

Confront the trespasser or flee?

Aiden had never been one to run from an attack.

By now, had the tracker been one of his own, they would
have revealed themselves.  The question in his mind was why would they follow
him rather than just attack?

Maybe they thought his pack near at hand?

Aiden ducked his head low to the ground, sniffing for the
foreign scent.

They weren’t ahead of him, not yet.  Which meant if he took
off through the thick underbrush, he might have enough time to circle back
around and come up behind his adversaries without being detected.

He’d avoid being boxed into the valley and still have
access to the mountain road.

Aiden considered himself capable of handling three or four
opponents, but more than that, and he might be in deep shit.

Decision made--and he hoped it was the best one--Aiden maneuvered
through the brush, his movements slow and deliberate for stealth.  Moving
downwind, the intensity of the foreign scents increased, masking his position.

Moonlight filtered through the canopy of trees, glinting
like shards of silver on the dark path.

Aiden circled back and positioned himself just past a curve
on the trail and waited.  He realized after a moment that the others had
changed their movements.  He surmised that this meant they could sense where he
was and were almost ready to make their move

Aiden crouched near a small pine tree.  Prickles of excitement
ran up his spine.  An adrenaline spike could make him lose control over his
beast, turning him into a mindless animal seeking only to kill.  He gulped air,
forcing his nerves to steady, regulating the rapid pulse thrumming in his
veins.

When the stranger rounded the curve, Aiden had twenty or
thirty seconds to size him up before the other shifter could fully see his
position.

He didn’t wait long.

Within moments, the shifter tracking Aiden turned the curve
in the path, revealing himself to Aiden’s view.  Shoulders bunched with
muscles.  A stocky body with too short legs, and a snout scarred from
fighting.  With a brief look, Aiden knew the wolf hailed from a rival clan that
had been inbred too often.

The members were dull witted and not exactly prime examples
of quality stock.

Big, stupid, and mean made for a helluva combination.  And
dangerous, given the situation.

Sensing Aiden’s presence, the wolf spun around and froze,
capturing Aiden’s gaze.  He howled once, loud, and behind him his brethren gathered
to the call.  A half dozen pairs of eyes peered at him from the darkness,
glowing with inhuman malice.

Aiden felt his adrenaline jumpstart his heart.  Blood
roared in his ears.

He was outnumbered.

As one, they dropped their heads and shook all over,
muscles twitching with spasms.  One of them howled as if pained.

The change wasn’t supposed to hurt.  He only imagined with
their inbreeding, they’d lost some of their natural ability.  He wasn’t a
scientist, so he could only speculate, and it didn’t matter anyway.

They could all bleed.

Skin replaced fur in a bizarre reversal of wolf to man that
looked like something out of the Howling or some other shitty werewolf movie. 
Disgust made his thin lips curl over his fangs.  His nostrils flared, scenting
the sweaty musk of their bodies as they contorted on the ground.

Finally, they stood, human once again.  A few of their
number remained in wolf form, guarding the perimeter to prevent his escape.

Those who’d retransformed stood naked, their bodies as bulky
and odd as they were as wolves.

The leader, short and stocky, with a head that seemed too
large for his shoulders.  His hazel eyes looked half an inch too close, and his
fiery red hair stood on end.  A sheen of sweat coated them from the effort of
shifting.

The leader flexed his chest and arms, making fists and
breathing so hard, his chest visibly rose and fell and his muscular belly
contorted.  A belt tied around his waist with a knife handle poking from a
holster looked more ridiculous than menacing.

Aiden dropped his head, allowing the change to come over
him.  The shift felt fluid, like water washing over his skin, seamlessly
flowing from fur to skin.  Senses, heightened as a wolf, dulled as he became a
man once more.  No longer could he smell the forest floor or his adversaries. 
The dark seemed thick as a witch’s cauldron.

He stood erect, stretching the kinks out of his body and
cracking his neck before facing his enemy.

“We got us a purty boy!” the red headed shifter shouted,
glancing behind him at the others as he sneered at Aiden.

Aiden remained quiet, darting a glance around to make sure
they weren’t closing in on his back.

“I seen you hunting all alone.  I thought you Misty Springs
shifters were too scared to hunt all by yerselves.”  He sauntered forward,
looking like a fighting cock ready to pounce.

Just beyond the stunted grass and shelter of the pines, he
knew the safety of the road beckoned.  The tree line bumped right up to the
edge of the road.  It wasn’t well traveled, but the chance for aid lay closer
in that direction than any other.  There were plenty of neighbors living up in
the mountains and the valley.  The kind that didn’t take well to strangers. 
Most of them had guns and a lot of them.

That might be his best bet, given the odds didn’t seem to
be in his favor.  Especially since he was too far from his own place right now
to get a weapon.

Aiden thought bravado and bluff might work in his favor.  Tension
tightened his muscles, ready to spring into action.  He straightened his spine
and squared his shoulders.  “You’re trespassing on private land.  Who are you
and what the hell do you want with me?” Aiden asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Lee Riker’s the name,” Lee announced. “These are my
brothers.  We came here to get yer women.”

Aiden snorted in derision.  “It look like I got women with
me?”

Lee blinked then flared his nostrils and frowned.  “You
being sarcastic with me?”

“Not at all,” Aiden said, furrowing his brow.

Lee stared at him a long moment.  “I ain’t got time for
bullshit.  We want your women and your pack to join us.  But mostly just yer
women.  Ways I figured it the only way that’s gonna happen is to kill you and
take it over,” Lee said.  He reached down to his side to the ridiculous looking
holster Aiden had noticed earlier, withdrawing a long toothed knife that
glinted silver as he palmed it.  “So I’m about to do just that. “

Didn’t look so silly now.

Aiden weighed his options, deciding in a split second that
he needed to shift if he had any chance to make it through this.

His beast swelled inside him, pushing through the muscles
of his body, distorting his form.  Shivers rippled across his skin as fur
popped along his length.  His back bent.  His arms and legs shortened.

Lee, seeing the change beginning, rushed forward, plunging
the knife into Aiden’s chest while the shift absorbed him.

Aiden snarled, snapping his teeth at his opponent’s hand,
losing control of his human mind at the most vulnerable stage in the cycle.

Lee held strong, refusing to release his grip on the
blade.  The teeth ripped through Aiden’s flesh, halting him mid-transformation,
halfway between wolf and indescribable monster.

As soon as the metal punched a hole in his chest, he knew
it wasn’t steel.