“Alright,” I said as we stood assembled one last time by Jake and Matthew’s pickup trucks. We’d used them both to freight our gear from the Curious Turtle to this little side road on the edge of town. The sun had long gone down behind the mountain, plunging into darkness the little valley Enchanted Rock called home. If we left now, we’d be able to get to Burton’s Folly by go time. “We all know the plan. We’ve gone over it at least fifty times. Any of you guys have any questions before we gear up and head out?”
The men of my pack stood around me, arms crossed. Mary was seated on the dropped down tailgate of Jake’s old pickup, swinging her legs back and forth like this was just another day in the mountains. We were all still wearing our civilian clothes from earlier in the day, with our gear packed up in the modified duffel bags loaded in the truck beds. The bags were like the ones some people strapped onto their dogs for extended hiking and camping trips, but built to fit over a giant wolf’s body. We’d need them to haul our gear up through the woods. No way was I planning on taking a vehicle anywhere near the Jaeger-Tech soldiers. They’d see it coming from a mile away. Instead, we were going straight up to the other side of the ridge, then approaching on their blindside.
I noticed Jake shuffling around a little bit, like he wasn’t sure if he should speak up. “You okay, Jake?”
He looked around and sighed. It was clear he was torn about what he wanted to talk about, but after a moment he finally spoke up. “Before we go, Cap, I do have one thing that’s been bugging me. Say we get Jessica and Vanessa out of there, and we get all these guys. We kill ‘em and push ‘em out. What then? That doesn’t eliminate the threat, does it?”
He was right, and I’d been wondering when someone was going to bring this up. After all, it had been on my mind for the last day. We had no plan for the endgame, no way to bring this thing to a closure.
“Yeah,” Richard added. “What are we going to do, Pete?”
All eyes on me, I lowered my head, kicking a rock off the side of the road. “We’re going to do what we should have done in the first place,” I said, looking up at them. “Take the fight to them. At least, that’s what I’m planning on doing. This pack is a group effort, not some dictatorship. You all trust me to lead Frost Security and that’s fine, but I’m talking about going after something bigger and more dangerous than anything we’ve faced. And you’re right, if we bloody their nose tonight, we still have to deal with them tomorrow.”
Quiet unease settled around the loose circle. “Some of you mentioned before tonight that you think dropping off the grid is the better option. And, I’m not going to lie, that might be safer in the short term. But I think we also owe it to ourselves and to shifters everywhere to see if we can stop this. We need to put these Jaeger-Tech people down permanently and stop whatever the hell it is they’re doing to our people. So, after tonight, that’s my plan of action. And I know Vanessa will be with me on it, as soon as we have her out. Now, you all have your own mates, your own worries and concerns, and that’s fine. I’m not expecting you to take the same path I choose. But I’m not going to reject any help you want to offer. These people, no matter how powerful they think they are, came after my pack not once, but twice. They killed my parents, butchered my family, and now they’ve got my mate and my best friend’s wife. I’m not going to just wait around anymore to finish the job.”
“Wait, wait. Am I hearing this shit right?” Frank asked, looking around the group. “You splitting up the agency, boss man?”
I raised a hand, trying to calm their voices, which were already clamoring together. “Not saying that,” I said loudly. “Not yet, at least. But it may be a possibility.”
“But, Frost Security is like our fucking home,” Matthew said, his voice gaining in volume. “What the hell?”
Richard shot me a pissed off look, and I just shrugged. I knew it wasn’t the best idea for me to drop this bomb on him, but it was something I’d been considering for a while now. I just couldn’t rest until Jaeger-Tech, or the people they worked for, weren’t around anymore, but I couldn’t run Frost Security at the same time I was waging a war from the shadows.
Still, though, my partner had my back. He turned to the rest of the pack. “That’s not what he’s saying. What he’s saying is we’re striking back after tonight. Whether the agency stays around, that’s up for debate. Worst case scenario, I’ll stick around. Okay?”
“Best case,” I said. “I will, too. But I can’t make any promises.”
Silence fell over the men of my pack. Even Mary, still seated on the extended tailgate, had stopped swinging her legs as everyone weighed what we’d all just discussed.
Jake was the first one to step up. “Hey, Cap,” he said. “You know, if it were just up to me, I’d be with you all the way. You know that, right?”
I nodded. “I understand. That’s why I’m not giving you guys an ultimatum. None of this is an order and none of it has been. This about us being brothers, not you just being soldiers.”
“I get that,” he said, pausing to look around. “Something I also get, though, is that right now we’ve all got a mission. And that comes first. And I think that’s something we can all agree on.”
A small smile spread on my face, and I nodded. “Good. Now, if we’re all done with our bitching and moaning, I’d like to get back to the mission.”
At the barest mention of the word “mission” all four men seemed to fall in line, like their entire demeanor and personality changed. Gone were the concerns of the civilian world, of what was going to happen when we all returned from this run up into the mountains. Gone were the petty concerns about rent, car payments, or what was for dinner that night.
Instead came the hard-nosed certainty that, by the end of the evening, our mission would be over one way or another. Either we’d succeed and complete it or we’d fail and all our planning and our determination to defeat the enemy would be for naught.
This was the way it had been back in the service. You might hate the guy next to you, or, hell, you might love him. You might agree with the mission or you might think your higher ups were just trying to get you killed, but at the end of the day, the only thing that mattered was completing the mission. The guy next to you was depending on you. People in other units were depending on you. And finally, you were depending on all of them to be focused and intent on being part of the team.
This was the kind of thing you missed when you joined civilian life. The kind of thing that made vets rejoin. Out here in the non-service world, there was no big goal, no ultimate critical moment you were all striving for. Instead, it was just emptiness. Everyone pulling a million different ways.
But as I looked around at the faces of my pack, it was like I was transported back to that time. The time before Frost Security.
“Alright,” I said, clapping my hands together. “Let’s do this.”
And with that, Matt was the first to strip down and begin his shift. Mary went around to the front of the truck, giving him a little privacy. Minutes later, after he’d finished his transformation into his reddish wolf, I brought Mary over and we detailed the way that the bag needed to be strapped to him.
“Reach around the chest, lock these clasps here,” I said, pointing to the appropriate clasps and straps.
“I know, Peter,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You made me practice this, like, ten times today already.”
“Just want to make sure you’re not going to have any issues when it comes time to load the rest of us up, that’s all.”
All in all, it took us about fifteen more minutes before I was ready to shift. As I sat there, though, my body undergoing the change, my thoughts wandered to Vanessa.
I still hadn’t heard from her. Still hadn’t felt her. God, I hoped she was okay.
The rest of the pack was spread out in the tree line, away from view of the main road, waiting for my order to head out. Their packs were loaded, every piece of gear imaginable strapped into place or in their modified backpack.
“Ready?” Mary asked as she went to lift the pack off the pickup’s tailgate.
I whined low, nodded, and wagged my tail.
She settled the pack onto my shoulders, centering the weight so my lower back and hips didn’t carry much. We weren’t horses or pack mules, and we still needed mobility as we headed up into the mountains.
“I’m worried about you,” she said as she strapped me in, reaching below my chest with her small, thin hands. “You know that, right?”
I whined low again. This wasn’t a conversation I particularly wanted to have right now, even if none of the guys were around to hear it.
“If you leave after this, what am I going to do?” she asked. “Stay with Gen and Lacy?”
I whimpered a little. I hadn’t really considered where she’d end up in all this.
“You made me a promise over a year ago, though,” she continued, “that you’d get these bastards. But I’ve been thinking about what the price of revenge is, Pete. Is it worth it? To give up your family, your loved ones, just so you can go after these guys?”
She had a point, to a degree.
“Maybe…maybe, I don’t know, they’ll leave us alone after this? After we stand up to them and make them realize they can’t take us in without a real fight? And all those other packs out there, Pete…why is it your responsibility to protect them?”
Leaving a mess up to somebody else or looking at a problem and naming it a Not-My-Problem was something I couldn’t do. It just wasn’t in me. I hadn’t joined the military so I could worry about just myself. I’d joined it so I could fight for my country, so I could protect people. I growled low, not liking where this was going.
Mary knew exactly what I was saying with that growl, too. She sighed, but didn’t back off from strapping my gear on. “Fine,” she said after a minute. “But I just wanted you to know that you’re not the sole protector of all the shifters out there. Some of them can take care of themselves, too, you know?”
She wasn’t much taller than me when I was standing, and I glanced up at her, chuffed a little. I could see the tears at the corners of her eyes, and instantly felt bad for the pain I was putting her through. No one should have to face losing two families during their childhood, but here I was, putting my life in danger despite her misgivings.
And then she threw her arms around my neck, pulling herself close to me. “I love you, Pete,” she whispered in my ear.
I closed my eyes, whimpered a little, and hugged her back as best I could in this form. When she finally broke the embrace, I licked her cheek.
“Yeah,” she said, smiling through her tears as she put a hand to her cheek. “You be safe, too.”
Not being good with goodbyes, I just turned and darted up to join my squad on the mountainside. Behind me, Mary slammed the tailgate on Matthew’s truck, went around to the front, and climbed up into the cab. We’d decided Jake’s could be picked up later after all of this was said and done.
Ready? Richard asked, his tail wagging, the gear on his pack piled high in the modified duffel bag.
Ready as I’ll ever be.
And then we were off, up into the mountains, streaking through the spruce, elm, and pine of the Colorado Rockies like homing missiles to our destination: Burton’s Folly.