Page 52 of Untamed

Slate stops beside me so suddenly I nearly walk into him. Something moves low between two trees, too fast for me to make out more than the shape before it disappears behind the pines. “Did you see that?”

“Yeah. I couldn't tell what it was.” Arlo turns toward the trees while Kael lowers the map, and another pulse catches at the base of my skull hard enough to lock my shoulders. I press two fingers behind my ear even though there isn't anything there to touch. “Whatever I'm feeling, it's hurt. I don't know how I know that, but that's what keeps coming through.”

Nobody tells me I'm imagining it. Slate watches the trees more carefully after that, Kael folds the map smaller so he can move without staring down at it, and we keep going.

The reservoir shows through the trees before the building does. Dark water sits behind a low stone structure half buried under willow branches, the roof rotting along one side. The door's reinforced, rust has eaten through the bottom edges of the vents, and nothing about the place looks accidentally forgotten. Somebody wanted it far enough from the houses that nobody would wander over here without a reason.

I'm still studying the building when blood cuts through every other scent and stops me hard enough that Arlo bumps my shoulder. I put one hand up before he can ask what happened and breathe through my nose again. Iron, salt, wet ground. The metallic taste hits the back of my tongue before I find the dark smear through the grass.

Slate starts checking the tree line while Malik edges toward the building. Kael catches his arm and sends him wide of the door instead, and nobody argues. We've all been in Wolfscorge long enough to know a locked building in the woods doesn't get the benefit of the doubt.

I follow the blood toward the reservoir. The smear starts narrow in the grass and widens when it reaches the mud, with enough weight behind the drag that I can picture a body even though I don't want to. Arlo stays close when I crouch, and I touch the outer edge with two fingers. The blood's cold but still tacky, fresh enough that whatever happened here wasn't days ago.

Then the scent underneath it reaches me, and my stomach turns. The chemical stink is weaker than it was in the Doctor's rooms, but there's no mistaking it. Mud, stagnant water, somebody else's skin, and beneath all of it an Omega scent so wrong I have to breathe it in twice before my mind catches up with my body. My own scent carried a version of this after containment.

“It's like me,” I say, wiping my fingers against the mud even though the chemical trace stays in my nose.

Arlo crouches beside me, his attention moving from the blood to my face. “What part?”

“The way it smells wrong. Like somebody changed what was supposed to be there.” I breathe it in again and wish I hadn't. “There's an Omega in this scent. Maybe more than that, but definitely Omega.”

Slate goes quiet beside us. Kael asks whether the trail ends at the reservoir, and I follow the smear down to the bank. Nothing comes back out. There aren't footprints farther along the shore or another line of blood through the grass. Just dark water where the trail stops.

Arlo gets in front of me before I can move any closer. “Nobody goes in until we know what we're dealing with.”

The pressure behind my skull hits again, hard enough that my teeth ache. “There's someone here. I can feel them, and they're hurt.”

“I believe you.” He doesn't move, but he doesn't give me the look people use when they're already deciding I'm wrong either. “That doesn't mean you're walking into water we haven't checked.”

Another pulse catches me, stronger than the others, and my body goes toward the reservoir before I can do anything useful with the thought. Arlo gets both arms around my waist and hauls me back. I throw an elbow on instinct, catch his side, and hear him grunt before I realize who's holding me.

“Orion, look at me.”

I try to twist free anyway, pissed off at being stopped until the bond opens hard with his fear. It isn't fear of me. He's terrified I'm going to follow whatever's calling from the reservoir into a place none of us understands, and that gets through where his grip doesn't. My heels stop cutting trenches through the mud.

Arlo loosens his arms right away, though he keeps one hand around my wrist. “We came because you heard something. We're going to find it, but I'm not throwing you into the first bad idea we come across just because it's louder now.”

“We didn't come alone.”

“No, and that's why we're still standing here instead of turning around.” His grip shifts without tightening. “But four people and an old map don't tell us what's under that water.”

Slate crouches nearby, fox scent warmer now that he's close. “If this is another facility, there could be anything down there. He's not saying we leave it, Orion. He's saying we don't lose you trying to reach it.”

I hate that both of them are making sense while the signal gets weaker. The pressure that felt sharp a minute ago is thinning at the edges, fading fast enough that panic starts climbing into my throat. “They're dying.”

That stops Arlo. His hand slides from my wrist into mine, the grip firm enough that I can feel his pulse against my fingers. “Then tell me what you need.”

I look back at the reservoir and force myself to pay attention to the sensation instead of the need to move. The pressure's different now that I'm this close. It isn't only in my skull anymore. Something catches through the blood still under my nails, faint but immediate, and the familiarity makes my skin crawl. Whatever's in that water was changed by the same people who changed me.

“I need to get closer to the signal, not the water.” I kneel at the bank and look up at Arlo before he can object. “If it pulls me forward again, stop me.”

His jaw tightens, but he lowers himself close enough to catch me without crowding my shoulder. “I'm right here.”

I put my clean hand against the ground. Mud and cold earth press into my palm, with machinery still running somewhere deep beneath Wolfscorge, a vibration so familiar I would've ignored it anywhere else. Nothing changes at first. I breathe, listen, push my palm deeper into the mud, and start wondering whether moving broke whatever connection I had when something pushes back through the earth.

The pulse is sharp enough that my hand jerks off the ground. Arlo catches my shoulder before I lose my balance, and I press my palm back down as soon as I can breathe through the shock.

“What did you feel?”

“Someone.” I close my eyes because looking at the reservoir makes it harder to separate their body from mine. “Give me a second.”

The next pulse comes stronger. Cold water touches skin that isn't mine. Stone presses too close. Mud drags across a body I can't make sense of because it's too long in the wrong places, bending where mine wouldn't bend. My fingers dig into the ground while Slate lowers himself on my other side, close enough that I don't have to raise my voice. “I still can't tell what kind of shifter it is.”

Another pulse rolls through the mud, and this time something moves inside it, long and fighting through wet earth, scales catching where they should slide. A word comes with the sensation so faintly I nearly mistake it for one of my own thoughts.

Help.

Every muscle in my body locks. Arlo says my name, but I push harder against the ground because I can feel the connection slipping again.

The next plea comes through clearer, carrying cold, fear, and exhaustion so deep my own lungs tighten around it.

Help me.

Arlo goes rigid beside me. Enough of the signal gets through the bond that his shock hits mine, and when Kael asks what happened, I have to swallow before I can answer. “It spoke to me.”

Nobody moves for a second. The signal comes again, weak enough that I nearly lose it beneath the cold water and mud, but the drag of scales is still there. Something alive is under or beside that reservoir, trapped close enough that I can feel it and far enough away that none of us can see it.

I turn toward the black water, every instinct in me fixed on the place where the blood trail disappears. “There's someone down there.”