Bound (Dark Reflections Volume 1)

 The only thing worse than having no family at all, is having a family that is out to hurt you. That would all be bad enough for a normal 17-year-old, but it's even worse for Alec Graves. A shape shifter's pack, his family, is the only thing stopping the other preternatural creatures out there from killing them.

Alec's pack isn't just neglectful, he's pretty sure that his father wants him dead. Alec is about to be sent to the front lines of a war between his people and everything else that goes bump in the night. His only chance of survival is to convince everyone around him that he's the perfect soldier, but there are lines that Alec won't cross, not for any price.

Copyright 2013 by Dean Murray

Alec Graves
Graves Estate
Sanctuary, Utah

It was exactly the wrong thing to say. I knew it as soon as the words hit the air. Jasmin probably knew it even before she opened her mouth, but that didn't stop her from saying it.

"Oh, yeah? Well, better a second-rate wolf than a third-rate hybrid who exists solely to serve as Brandon's whipping boy."

It was exactly the opening that Vincent had been looking for. He'd been riding Jasmin for days trying to get enough of a rise out of her to justify putting her in her place, but she'd been unusually calm—at least right up until that point.

Jasmin and I had slipped out to nearly the outer reaches of the estate in an effort to get away from the constant dominance games that were an inherent part of pack life. We'd found a quiet spot out by the mountain that overlooked Graves Manor from the north and hunkered down to do some homework.

Once upon a time just getting away from the house would have been enough to guarantee ourselves some privacy, but ever since Brandon had manifested his full hybrid ability Kaleb, my father—although I didn't like to think of him as such—had been giving him and his lackeys a much greater run of the estate.

Vincent backhanded Jasmin into a scrubby tree with enough force that she would have at the very least had a concussion if she'd been merely human. As it was she still hit hard enough to see stars, and her knees buckled as soon as her feet touched the ground, but she still managed to glare up at him from the ground.

"I'd tell you what I really think of you, you illiterate piece of crap, but I'd have to use words bigger than two syllables, which you wouldn't understand. Not even your own mother could put up with you long enough to teach you basic manners."

If Jasmin's first comment had been the spark that started a fire, this was pouring gas on the flame. Vincent had the incident he'd been angling for, but her comment must have actually upset him. Rather than playing things cool and using the opportunity to abuse her without actually triggering a full challenge, instead he screamed and shifted.

Jasmin had to be at least a little unsteady on her feet, but she likewise changed forms in an explosion of clothing that left fragments of material fluttering in a circle around her. As Vincent stalked towards Jasmin in his hulking hybrid form my pulse sped up.

A hybrid has a head, two arms and two legs, but that's about where the resemblance to a human being ends. Humans are tool users, hybrids are six-foot plus tall mountains of muscle and fur that were designed with only one purpose in mind.

Everything from the backwards-articulating knees, to the talons on their feet and the eight-inch semi-retractable claws at the end of each finger, spoke to the ability of a hybrid to explode into motion without warning and rend flesh as though it was nothing more than wet paper.

Jasmin hadn't ever manifested a third shape. She was a wolf now, sleek, fast, and deadly in her own way, but she wasn't a match for Vincent, not today, not as shaken up as she was after being thrown into a tree like that. There were things that were even bigger and nastier than a hybrid, but even if one of them had been close at hand it would have been just as likely to kill Jasmin as help her face down Vincent.

I knew Vincent wasn't going to be satisfied with just roughing Jasmin up. He might even be far enough gone to kill her despite the hot water that it would get him into with Kaleb. It was one of those times where nearly every part of me was screaming that it was time to panic, but I'd learned that these kinds of situations are usually when it's most important to take a second and calmly analyze my options.

The breeze played across my face and I took a deep breath, reveling for the briefest of moments in the smell of cedar trees and sage. There were a thousand other scents, some of them only just detectible to me in this form, but it was the cedar and sagebrush that formed the bulwark upon which all of the other scents rested.

I could hear Vincent's heavy stride and Jasmin's lighter, four-footed steps, but I tried to put that out of my mind as I let my eyes play over the landscape. The estate was situated around one of the area's only artesian wells, which meant it was a relatively unique pocket of green in the otherwise dull brown and red southern Utah landscape. Zion National Park was just visible off in the distance and it had its share of foliage as well, but between here and there was little more than rocks, dust, and dying plant life.

I looked back at Jasmin and Vincent and suddenly knew how to stop him. "If you attack Jasmin, then I'll kill you, Vincent."

I'd been half afraid that he was too far gone to register my words, but he pulled up as though he'd run into something.

"That's the prerogative of a pack alpha, Alec. If you're creating your own little pack then there's no need for me to stomp Jasmin into the ground because your dad will rip both of you into little pieces."

"I'm not saying that you can't challenge her, I'm just saying that once you are done fighting her I'll challenge you myself."

It was risky. Custom usually provided both parties to a challenge fight with a few days of immunity from dominance fights so long as they didn't get in people's faces over stupid stuff. We didn't have much in the way of hard-and-fast rules, but we shape shifters tended to treasure the few we had. They were the only thing keeping us from devolving into the savage animals whose forms we assumed.

"You've got an overinflated sense of your own lethality, Alec. Even if you manage to beat me using such an underhanded tactic, you'll still lose your own traditional period of immunity. There won't be anything stopping Nathanial and Simon from ripping you apart once you're done fighting me. You'll have people lining up to take you down."

My heartbeat had slowed back down. It was debatable whether or not Vincent was close enough to hear my pulse, but I found myself hoping he could. When you're up against people with superhuman senses it becomes very difficult to bluff. I'd found that it was just best not to even try. Instead I always tried to make sure that whomever I was up against understood exactly what I was prepared to do.

"I can take you down, and you know it, Vincent. I came out on top in both of our last fights and Jasmin is bound to do at least some damage to you no matter how badly you beat her in the end. It's not a question of
if
I'll kill you, it's just a question of what happens after you're gone. You may be right that Nathanial and Simon will jump in afterwards, but that's not going to make any difference to you, not once you're dead."

"Your dad has forbidden the pack from killing each other. He'll stick you in a box somewhere for a week while he decides whether or not to execute you."

"You can't have it both ways, Vincent. Either your friends are going to kill me or they aren't. I don't think you understand what I'm telling you. I don't particularly care how I go at this point, I just want to make sure that I stop you from hurting Jasmin before I go down."

"Maybe I should just kill you now and then I can do whatever the hell I want to Jasmin after you're gone."

"What about Kaleb?"

"Brandon will keep him off of my back. Your dad's not going to risk pissing Brandon off, not for you, not when you still haven't manifested that power that Mallory is so excited ab—."

The transformation ripped through me in a flash as Vincent sprang at me.

Vincent had been talking to try and catch me by surprise, but I'd been expecting as much. I spent nearly every waking hour trying to keep my beast, the violent urges that separated me from a normal human, caged up, but I'd loosened the metaphysical chains on him as soon as I'd decided on this course of action.

I hadn't manifested one of the unique powers that made some hybrids even more deadly than the norm, but I was still a hybrid and I was slightly bigger and stronger than Vincent now.

Vincent came in low and fast, but I knew it was a trap. With another hybrid I might have gone for it and tried to latch onto his back so that I had a killing hold, but Vincent was fast enough that it was almost impossible to use that particular opening against him.

Instead of going high and trying to dodge to the side I dropped down even lower and dug my talons and the claws on my left hand into the dirt. With so many anchor points to the ground I was capable of generating a lot of force, but even so I knew it wouldn't be enough to let me straight-arm him away. Not even the awesome strength of a hybrid was equal to redirecting the force of two NFL linebackers at full run.

If Vincent was thinking clearly he would know that I was setting up to do something impossible, but I was counting on the fact that Vincent rarely thought things through in the middle of a fight.

I had only a split second between when I got myself set and when Vincent hit me and I did my very best to sell the idea that I was about to meet brute force with brute force.

Vincent came in moving even faster than I'd realized, but by then it was too late. I threw myself forward as hard as I could at the same time that the claws on my right arm sank into the front of his chest. The tendons and muscles in my arm screamed in pain, but my hybrid body didn't feel pain the same way that my human one did. I knew that I'd just pulled a whole host of muscles up and down my arm and shoulder, but the pain was a distant thing that served only to inform rather than distract.

It was a very close thing, but I managed to get low enough and hold my arm straight enough that I redirected most of the energy of his attack upwards. The entire technique was tricky, but assuming that you were strong enough to keep your arm straight, then the most difficult part was figuring just exactly how much momentum to generate when you threw yourself forward at your opponent. Too much and you canceled each other out leaving the two of you more or less motionless but you at a disadvantage because your off hand was still out of position. Too little and you'd get bowled over and pinned to the ground under several hundred pounds of wickedly-clawed hybrid.

Things seemed to balance on the edge of a knife and then his momentum carried us backwards. I tried to convert the fall into a roll, but his right hand slashed downwards towards my head at the last second, and writhing out of the way of his attack forced me out of position.

Rather than me ending up on top it almost looked like I'd failed completely, but as we crashed into the ground I heard a meaty thud and Vincent relaxed his grip on me momentarily.

I shoved him off of me and rolled to my feet at the same time as he picked himself up off of the ground. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the rock he'd banged his head on, but there wasn't time to dwell on the sheer dumb luck that had saved me. Vincent still had an edge of grogginess to his movements so I charged in, raking the claws on my much-abused right arm across the outside of his leg.

My blow struck true and cut deep, but it was all I could do to dodge his follow-up strike to my head. The unsteadiness from hitting his head wasn't entirely feigned or he wouldn't have missed me, but it was obvious that he wasn't as far gone as he'd wanted me to think.

Neither of us seemed to have any fancy tricks left, so the fight moved into the brutal, sudden savagery of a normal hybrid matchup. I hadn't been lying when I'd said that I'd beaten him in both of our last two matchups, but those had been close fights and it was still too soon to tell who had the upper hand this time.

His next blow came at me too fast for me to completely dodge and hot trickles of blood started making their way down my chest as he tore a set of furrows in my flesh that were more than a foot long. Vincent was smiling now, his bestial lips pulled back to reveal long fangs. Nathanial and Simon had transformed into wolves and were yipping in excitement, but I'd sunk the talons on my left foot several inches into his leg as I'd tried to get away from his last attack.