Chapter 5 Feral Pact: Malachai

Upon Lucian’s arrival at reaching the safe house, did he look as though he’d been yanked through hell and back. Which, by right, he did.

Having recognized him almost immediately. The same operative I seen walking the halls of the Directorate. The same one who looked as though he was questioning everything he knew. And finally, the same one who finally broke. Or maybe not broken, just free. A total difference between both, and one I fully understood.

“Lucian,” I say, careful upon stepping forward. My voice steady, professional. A voice of someone who spent three years learning how to lie convincingly. “Welcome.”

His eyes narrowing. A wariness to them, and one that comes from years of training, while learning that every person you meet could possibly be a threat. “I know you. You were in the regime.”

“I still am,” I counter. “I’m just working for the other side now.”

Kess quick to step forward, her hand resting upon Lucian’s arm. She’d been expecting him. I sent word as soon as the message came through that he was alive. “Malachai is one of our best assets. He’s been feeding us intelligence for three years. You can trust him.”

Lucian looking between us, clearly trying to figure out if this was some kind of trap. You could see the calculation happening behind his eyes, the same calculation I’d done a thousand times over. Was it real? Was this a trap? Was the regime using me to lure him out, to confirm his location, to finish what they started?

I understood the need. The impulse. The regime teaching us that trust was a liability. That every person you trusted was a potential weapon pointed against you and your heart.

“Why did you help me?” Lucian asks.

“I didn’t,” I say. A truth. I wasn’t the one who brought him in. Hadn’t found him lying in a forest. I didn’t make the choice to save him. “But someone did. Someone brought you to us.”

“A feral,” Lucian explains. “He called himself Raze. And wouldn’t come with.”

My heart skipping a beat.

A feral alpha, working with the resistance? That was news to me. It was dangerous. Yet, it was potentially very useful.

I once heard rumors about a feral operating in the eastern territories, whispers along the Directorate’s corridor, mentions during intelligence reports that were quickly eradicated. The regime trying to hunt him down in the early years, by sending operatives into the forest to bring him back. Except, they’d come back either empty-handed or not at all.

Eventually, they’d stopped trying. As some problems weren’t worth the resources. But if this feral saved Lucian, and the one to bring him towards the resistance, then he was more than just a problem. He was an opportunity.

“What did he look like?” I ask. That need to know rising.

Lucian quick to describe him. Massive, coiled muscle, and eyes that were still half-golden. A scent that made his wolf sit and take notice. The description matching the rumors. Matched the operative reports that had been filed away and forgotten.

Suddenly, I feel something shift along my chest. Not hope. I’d learned long ago never to hope. But something close. A possibility. A chance.

“We need to find him.”

“He doesn’t want to be found,” Lucian counters. “He made it very clear.”

“Then we convince him,” I say. “Three alphas are stronger than one. And if we manage to get a feral one to help us—”

“He won’t,” Lucian replies. His voice firm, yet there was something beneath it. Something that sounded almost like regret. “He’s not interested in helping the resistance. He’s not interested in anything but himself.”

I smile. I once heard that before. I once said it myself. Back when I was still trying to convince myself that I could work better alone, that I didn’t need anyone, and that the seventeen dead weren’t my responsibility.

Back when I was still lying to myself.

“Tell me more about him,” I offer instead.

Lucian soon settling upon the cots, wincing as his ribs began to hurt. My hands quick to help but instantly waves me off. “He found me in the ravine. Half-shifted, bleeding, dying. He could’ve killed me. Could’ve left me to die. Instead, he saved me.”

“Why?” I ask. “Why help only to leave?”

“He said he didn’t know,” explains Lucian. “But I think… I think he recognized something in me. The refusal. The choice to be free instead of safe.”

I suddenly understood that too. I once made the same choice three years ago. I took one good look at the regime and decided I couldn’t be part of it anymore, that the cost of loyalty was too high. Except, It taken me three years to find the courage to actually act.

While the feral made the choice instantly. Had seen a stranger bleeding in the ravine and decided that freedom was worth saving.

“He’s dangerous,” explains Lucian again. “Not to us, necessarily. But he’s not… he’s not pack. He’s not going to work well with a group. He’s not going to take orders or follow strategy. He’s going to do what he wants, when he wants, and if that happens to align with the resistance, great. If not, he’ll disappear back into the forest, and we’ll never see him again.”

“Then we don’t ask him to be a pack,” I say. “We ask him to be an ally.”

Lucian soon looking as though I went crazy. “You don’t understand. He’s feral. He doesn’t do alliances. He doesn’t do anything but survive.”

“He saved you though,” I counter. “That’s not survival. That’s choice.”

“It’s instinct,” explains Lucian. “Pack instinct. He probably didn’t even realize what he was doing.”

Yet still, I could hear the doubt dancing along his voice. Could hear the part of him wanting to believe that Raze cared, that the choice to save him meant something more.

A feeling I knew well. A feeling I got when I decided to help the resistance and realized I could use my position within the Directorate to help save more people than hurt. A feeling I felt every time I managed to get somebody out, each time I prevented a raid, and each time I used my intelligence to protect the unregistered.

It was the feeling of being part of something much bigger than yourself. The feeling of mattering. “Give him time,” I say. “Sometimes people surprise you.”

My thoughts soon back upon the seventeen dead. My thoughts of how I failed, and that no amount of work with the resistance could ever balance the scale. Yet, I also thought about the people I saved. The unregistered wolves I’d gotten out. The operatives I’d turned. And the resistance cells I helped establish.

It wasn’t redemption. But a start.

“Raze is currently alone within the forest,” I offer. “He’s been alone for years. He’s built walls so high that he probably doesn’t even remember what it felt like to be a part of something much greater. But he saved you. So it means there’s something still in him that knows. Something that wants connection, even if he’s too afraid to admit it.”

“You sound like you know him,” Lucian replies.

“I know his type,” I say. “I’ve been his type. I’ve stood where he’s standing, convinced that the only way to survive was to cut everyone loose, to trust no one, and be completely alone.”

“What changed?” questions Lucian.

Pausing, I think to myself. What did change? Was it the seventeen dead? Was it the moment I realized that working alone meant being complicit in the regime’s crimes? Was it the first time I managed to save someone, the first time I felt like maybe I wasn’t completely irredeemable?

“I realized that being alone wasn’t survival,” I offer. “It was just a slower way of me dying.”

Lucian soon quiet for a brief moment. “He told me not to die,” he says finally. “When leaving. He called me back and told me not to die.”

I smile. That was it. That was the first real crack within Raze’s walls. It was proof he cared, even if he was too scared to admit it.

“Then he’s already halfway to the resistance,” I offer. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”

My eyes still locked upon Lucians. An operative who refused an order, who chosen freedom over safety, and was saved by a feral alpha hiding within the forest. Looking to Kess, who was still watching me with that sharp, assessing gaze. I think about the seventeen dead, and the hundreds I saved since. And I make an instant decision.

“We’re going to find Raze,” I say. “And we’re going to convince him that he doesn’t have to be alone, not anymore.”

“How?”

“By showing him what he’s already started to believe,” I reply. “That some things are worth fighting for. That some people are worth saving. That pack isn’t weakness, it’s strength.”

A piece of me unsure if it would actually work. If a feral alpha who spent years running from the regime would ever agree to work with us. But I knew deep down that Lucian was alive because Raze had chosen to save him. And I knew when Raze called him to say, “don’t die.” It became a simple admission. A simple truth. And one that was easy to hope for.