Page 20 of The Pack

CHAPTER 20

C allum

I sat near the hearth, turning the rabbits that I’d caught in the wee hours of the morning while everyone else still slept, over the fire, the smell of roasting meat filling the quiet space. Thorne leaned against the doorway, his eyes scanning the horizon outside.

My eyes drifted to where Zara lay nestled in a pile of furs, her body relaxed in a way I hadn’t seen before. She looked peaceful, her lips slightly parted, her chest rising and falling with soft, even breaths.

It was hard to reconcile this Zara—soft, sleeping, vulnerable—with the fierce, determined woman who had faced down ferals and freed us from that tribe of cannibals. She was a contradiction in every way, and I loved every bit of it.

Her dark hair spilled over the edge of the furs, the morning light catching on the waves and giving them a warm, golden sheen. Her skin, pale and smooth, was dotted with faint bruises and scratches from her time in the caves, but those marks didn’t diminish her beauty. If anything, they only added to it, proof of her strength and resilience.

Something occurred to me just then.

She would make a great mother.

I caught myself smiling, the image of her belly round and full with our child flashing unbidden through my mind. The thought stirred something deep inside me, a longing I hadn’t realized I carried. A future with her wasn’t just possible—it felt inevitable.

The others began to stir, their movements quiet as they shook off the last remnants of sleep. Magnus stretched, his dark hair catching the light as he ran a hand through it, his sharp eyes flicking toward Zara. Tobias sat up next, his dark gaze lingering on her for a moment before he stood, his usual stoicism tempered by something softer. Killian woke last, yawning as he ran his fingers through his sleep-mussed hair.

“She’s still asleep?” Magnus asked, his voice low.

I nodded, turning the rabbits over again. “She needed the rest.”

“Didn’t we all,” Tobias muttered, his tone dry, but lacking its usual bite.

As if sensing the weight of our gazes, Zara stirred, her dark lashes fluttering before her eyes opened. She blinked, the morning light catching in her deep blue eyes as she looked around, confusion shifting across her face before she relaxed.

“Morning,” I said, offering her a warm smile.

“Morning,” she murmured, her voice still thick with sleep.

I grabbed the cooked rabbits from the fire, tearing off a piece and handing it to her. “Eat. You’ll need your strength.”

She sat up slowly, pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders as she accepted the food.

“Thanks,” she said softly, taking a bite.

A short while later, we prepared to leave the cottage. Zara dressed, slipping into a new flannel shirt along with a pair of jeans we’d found packed safely away in a trunk holding clothes, some of which happened to be her size.

“You ready?” I asked, stepping closer.

She nodded, adjusting her tank top under the flannel and rolling her shoulders. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

Magnus stood near the door, looking off into the distance.

“Let’s move,” he said firmly.

The six of us set off into the forest, the path winding upward as the Wicklow Mountains loomed ahead. The air grew thinner and cooler as we climbed, the dense canopy of trees thinning to reveal jagged rocks and patches of green. We walked for a long time, until the sun reached its zenith in the sky. We paused at the crest of a mountain peak and took a moment to really look at what lay waiting for us in the distance.

The view was both breathtaking and haunting at the same time. In the distance, the ruins of Dublin sprawled out, the corpse of a once-thriving city. The fractured skyline jutted against the horizon, jagged and uneven, with skeletal remains of several buildings leaning precariously like they were frozen in their final moments before they went down.

I remembered this place like it was only yesterday.

Back during the Collapse, when the virus was spreading faster than anyone could control, one of the last organized human armies had gathered near the Rockbrook area just outside Dublin. It was the site of their last stand, a final attempt to hold the line against the feral wolves. The soldiers fortified what they could, set traps, dug trenches, and fought like hell.

The wolves came in endless waves, though, stronger, faster, and more coordinated than anyone had imagined. When it became clear the battle was lost, London made the call that changed everything. A nuclear strike, ordered without warning, turned the entire battlefield into a smoldering crater. Thousands of lives—human and wolf alike—were snuffed out in an instant, and the fallout poisoned everything for miles for a long time.

I’d been there once before in the time since then, and the memory never quite left me.

The heart of the zone was Rockbrook. What had once been a quiet suburb was now an unnatural expanse of fractured terrain, where the earth had been fused into jagged, glass-like formations in some places and crumbled into fine gray dust in others.

The land bore the weight of two hundred years of radiation, its once-searing presence now settled into the soil and air. The ground was uneven and pockmarked, the craters left behind by the explosion softened by erosion, but still gaping like open wounds. What vegetation attempted to grow here was twisted and wrong—patches of thin, brittle grass that shimmered faintly in hues of yellow and sickly green, and trees with bark that peeled away in long, brittle strips, their gnarled branches bare and fragile.

The River Dodder, which once meandered peacefully through the southern suburbs, had been transformed into a lifeless trickle, its waters tinged with a faint iridescence. The banks were coated with layers of strange sediment that sparkled faintly in the light of the sun, remnants of radiation that had seeped into the soil and spread with every rainstorm.

Dublin itself was on the very edge of the nuclear zone. In order to get to the city, we’d have to go through the fallout zone or go well around it.

Zara stopped beside me, her breath catching as she took it all in.

“That’s Dublin,” I said quietly, nodding toward the ruins.

“That’s it,” she answered softly, her voice trembling. “That’s where he is.”

“You don’t know that. He could be somewhere else by now or worse, he—” Tobias began, his dark eyes narrowing as he stood behind us.

“I do know,” she shot back, cutting him off as her gaze locked onto his. “He was taken to Dublin. I saw it on the truck. He’s there, and I’m going to find him.”

Magnus crossed his arms, his expression calm, but unyielding. “We’re not going into the nuclear zone. We’re going to go around it.”

Zara turned to him, her jaw tightening. “Cutting through there is clearly the fastest way. That could take a day versus, how long, a week to go around it?”

“You don’t even know if he’s still alive,” Tobias said, his tone cutting, but not unkind.

“I have to try,” she said, her voice breaking slightly.

Magnus sighed, his eyes softening as he looked at her. “We’ll find another way. A safer way. But we’re not going through the zone. It’s not safe.”

“Magnus—”

“No,” he said firmly, his tone leaving no room for argument. “I understand what he means to you, Zara, but you won’t save him by getting yourself, and us, killed.”

The tension was palpable, the weight of her desperation hanging in the air between us, but we had to stand our ground.

Going through the nuclear zone was too dangerous and she would just have to accept that. We’d go around it and that was that.

I stepped closer, placing a hand on her arm.

“We’ll find him,” I said softly. “I promise. But Magnus is right: we can’t go through there.”

Her dark eyes searched mine, tears shimmering at the edges. “You don’t understand. He’s all I have left.”

“You also have us, and you’re all we have now,” I said soothingly.

She looked away, her jaw tight as she fought back tears. I wanted to reach out to her, to hold her and tell her it was going to be alright, but I sensed that wasn’t what she needed right now, so I held back.

“We’ll find him, Zara,” Magnus said. “But not that way.”

She didn’t answer, didn’t even look at him.

“Sweetheart,” Tobias said, his tone firm. “Magnus is right. You go in there, you’re as good as dead. The animals in there alone?—”

“I don’t care,” she snapped, finally turning to face us. Her eyes burned with a fury that made my chest tighten. “He’s there and I need to go to him. He’s my brother. I know he’s there.”

“We can’t go in there. That place isn’t just dangerous—it’s cursed,” Thorne blurted out.

Killian raised an eyebrow, a grin tugging at his lips. “Cursed? Really? You’re not serious.”

“I’ve heard stories,” Thorne continued, his tone clipped, but edged with unease. “Mutated animals are one thing, but the zone… it changes people. Those who go in don’t come out the same. If they come out at all.”

Killian barked a laugh. “You’ve been spending too much time listening to old campfire tales. Next, you’ll be telling us there’s ghosts in there too.”

“Not ghosts,” Thorne said, his jaw tightening. “But something worse.”

Magnus sighed, his silver eyes flicking toward Thorne. “Let me guess,” he said dryly. “You’re talking about the tales where people go mad in the radiation, turning into monsters themselves?”

Thorne’s pale gaze hardened. “You can mock me all you want, but you’ve seen the beasts. Tell me you don’t think the same thing could happen to us.”

“Mutated foxes and badgers are one thing,” Tobias said, his eyes narrowing. “But turning into monsters? That’s a stretch, even for you.”

“I’m just saying we don’t know what the radiation does to people,” Thorne shot back. “You think it just kills them? Maybe it twists them, the same way it twists animals.”

Killian snorted, crossing his arms. “What, like we’d grow an extra head? Maybe some sharper claws? Sounds like it’d make us more interesting, honestly.”

“Keep laughing,” Thorne said, his voice a bit more cutting than before. “You won’t be laughing when you see what’s in there.”

I stayed quiet, my focus shifting to Zara. She stood slightly apart from the group, her arms crossed over her chest, her jaw tight. Her deep blue eyes stayed locked on the distant city, but I could see the tension in her shoulders, the way her hands clenched into fists.

“Guys,” I said softly, glancing back at the pack. “Ease up.”

“What?” Killian asked, his grin faltering as he followed my gaze.

Zara turned to us, her face pale but set with determination.

“I can’t afford to waste a whole week because of silly superstition. It’ll take a day or two to cross that and get to Dublin,” she said, her voice trembling with barely contained frustration.

Thorne frowned, his expression hardening. “This isn’t superstition, Zara. That place is a death trap.”

“Every second we waste is another second that he could be suffering. Or worse. I can’t just stand here while you all argue about make-believe monsters and radiation,” she snapped.

Magnus sighed, running a hand through his hair. “We’ll find another way,” he said. “A better way. But we’re not going through the zone. I forbid it.”

Zara stood there for a moment, just staring at Magnus before she turned on her heel and stormed off. Her dark hair swayed with her hurried strides, and I could feel the frustration radiating off her even as she disappeared around a bend in the path.

“Let her go,” Magnus said, his eyes fixed on where she’d vanished. His tone was calm, but his jaw was tight. “She needs space.”

“And we need a bloody plan,” Thorne muttered, his jawline tensing as he folded his arms.

“She’s not wrong,” Tobias said, his expression distant. “Every second we stand here is a second wasted.”

Killian snorted as he too crossed his arms. “Wasted? You think goin’ in there is better? Do you know what that place is like?”

“We know,” Magnus said firmly, glancing to Killian.

“I was in there twenty years ago, you know, that time we split up to look for supplies,” Thorne said suddenly, his voice low. “Just on the edge, looking for supplies near the old outskirts. A bear the size of an elephant nearly took my arm off.”

“A bear? In Ireland?” I asked.

“I know. Must have escaped from the zoo or something strange like that,” Thorne said, his voice clipped.

I frowned, glancing at him. “You’ve never mentioned that before.”

“Because I don’t like remembering it,” he said bluntly. “The place was bad then. Now? It’s probably that much worse.”

Magnus nodded, his expression grim. “The mutations have accelerated over the past few years. The radiation’s twisting things faster, making the creatures bigger, stronger. Smarter.”

Killian leaned back against a boulder, his grin nowhere to be found. “Smarter. Great. Just what we need—mutant bears with brains.”

“There’s more than that,” Tobias said. “Last time I was there, I saw… something. Looked like a fox at first, but its legs were too long, its face stretched like it didn’t fit its body. It ran like a shadow. Fast. Quiet. Almost got me before I realized it was there.”

“We’ve all been in there at some point,” Magnus said finally, his voice edged with steel. “And we all know what it’s like.”

“It’s a nightmare,” Thorne said flatly. “The creatures, the radiation, the silence. It’s like the place is alive and waiting to claim victims.”

“It is,” Tobias said quietly.

Killian let out a low sigh, running a hand through his fiery hair. “We’ve got real reasons not to go in there, you know. No one gets out unscathed.”

“But we’ve got a good reason to go now,” I said, my voice firm.

They turned to look at me, their expressions ranging from frustration to resignation.

“It’s her brother,” I said simply. “And it’s our Zara.”

Magnus’s eyes narrowed slightly, his jaw tightening as he let out a slow breath. “She’s not going to let this go,” he said, his voice quiet, but sure.

“She’ll go in alone if we don’t stop her,” Tobias added.

“She’ll get herself killed,” Thorne muttered.

“And we can’t let that happen,” I said decisively, my eyes sweeping over the group. “Not just because of her brother, but because she’s one of us now.”

The silence stretched between us, the weight of the decision settling over us like a heavy shroud.

Finally, Magnus straightened, his face painted with resolve. “Fine. We’ll go in. For her,” he said simply.

Thorne’s jaw tightened, but he nodded. “Fine.”

Killian let out a low whistle, shaking his head. “We’re insane. All of us.”

“We’ve always been crazy,” I said, a faint grin tugging at my lips despite the tension.

Magnus’s expression softened slightly as he glanced toward the bend in the trail where Zara had disappeared.

“We’ll tell her about our decision in the morning,” he commanded quietly and the rest of us nodded.

And just like that, the decision was made. We’d face the nightmare of the zone—not for ourselves, but for her.