Chapter 512 - 512 Short-lived

512 Short-lived

Howls of pain and screams of anguish filled the stadium, coming from the humans that had mysteriously started undergoing their first shifts. Amidst the convoluted chaos, two more humans were thrown into the process of the first shift, sowing seeds of doubt into everyone that had no clue what was going on, which was pretty much… everyone in the stadium.

At Dexter’s order, civilians were asked to evacuate the stadium while all the wolves going through the first shift were taken care of with fewer people around.

Werewolves that had some knowledge of the first shift advised the rest of the humans to remain calm as adrenaline was one of the triggers that resulted in the first shift.

With this much chaos and lack of information, it was safe to assume anyone could shift at any moment. The sudden transformations had been completely random and the cause still remained unknown.

Dexter stayed close to Titus making sure to keep the boy awake until the shift was done.

“Stay awake! That’s the only way to ensure you don’t bite anyone’s head off in your wolf form,” the delta spoke, hoping his words reached the point guard.

Titus showed no signs of listening, groaning and growling as the pain continued to assail his body. He seemed to have run out of the energy to struggle but that didn’t mean he was in any less pain.

After what felt like fifteen minutes of painful shifting, a grey wolf lay on the floor of the court, panting with exhaustion.

Dexter ran to a cooler containing water bottles at the edge of the court and returned with the bottle in hand, which he offered the wolf. Titus’s grey wolf sniffed the water and shuffled away from it, giving off a frustrated grunt.

.....

“Stubborn even after all that,” Dexter sighed, getting up to his feet. The nurse had left Titus to him and gone off to attend to another victim while the rest were also helped by werewolves from Dexter’s pack.

‘What’s the meaning of all this?’ he wanted to ask.

Turning to the werewolf on the ground, he tried to project his thoughts into the boy’s mind but there was no reaction. Not even a sign of the boy’s subconscious mind gaining access to the collection of the pack link…

It would make sense if he couldn’t send any message through. After all, the mind link got harder to use the more unrelated a werewolf was.

Communicating with members of the same pack was as simple as breathing. Communicating with members of another pack was harder and required some bit of concentration for as long as their pack was under the same empire.

If the pack was from a different empire, it was strenuous to use the mind link to communicate but not impossible. The only werewolves that would then pose a problem to communicate with were… ‘rogues.’

‘A rogue bite?’ Dexter thought.

There was that issue of rogues being sighted around Brigadia. Whether these two matters were related, Dexter couldn’t tell. It was odd for rogues to leave anyone alive in the first place. If they intended to turn someone into a rogue, they would abduct them.

Leaving them to walk away with their lives, however, was borderline impossible. This was why breeders found to have escaped were always considered among the luckiest of the rogues’ victims.

Unlike the rogues that were recruited to fight, the breeders were never tainted with the outlandish beliefs of genocide that the Rogue King implanted into all his subjects.

There were so many questions and no answers. It wasn’t like Titus could hide the colour of his eyes intentionally. That was not something werewolves could do at will unless they had a drug to help conceal their wolves.

However, his option couldn’t work as well for anyone above the age of eighteen. Above that age, the wolf side of a werewolf was simply too powerful to be suppressed by diluted amounts of wolfsbane.

Dexter looked around at the other shifting wolves, “Congrats, you were the first to go through the…”

A dangerous growl cut him off. Dexter turned back to witness the grey wolf wobbling on its four limbs, trying to get the hang of balancing on his four paws.

Drool dripped down the wolf’s maw as it eyed him with savage fury. The look in its eyes betrayed any form of intelligence… Instead of the intelligent eyes Titus had possessed as a human, this wolf bore the eyes of a deranged killer, wanting nothing but blood and carnage.

“Dexter, what’s wrong with him? Didn’t you keep him awake through his shift?” the nurse yelled at him whilst holding a female wolf’s head on her lap.

“Yes, I…” the delta was cut off by a commanding voice echoing through the mind link.

“Werewolves of Brigadia. This is Alpha Graves speaking. The humans that are shifting have been deemed dangerous irrespective of the progress of their first shift. Put them down as soon as possible. It would be ideal to knock them unconscious so we can figure out what’s going on. ,” the message was brief and emanating an intense sense of urgency that was impossible to ignore.

Dexter turned to Titus, searching once more for signs of consciousness. Despite being on opposite teams during the game, this wolf was still a student.

Dexter might have been older than the boy but he still knew what it was like to be a teenager in his senior year. Back then, he was so stubborn and rebellious that he wound up on the head hunter’s bad side too many times to count.

Then again, if he was anything like the kind of teenager Dexter was during his school years, then he was probably as cranky as they came, seeking to assert his dominance and prove that he was on top of everyone in the school.

What better way to do that than to beat up some old alumni who couldn’t take the heat during a friendly basketball game? ‘Is what I would have been thinking if I were in his shoes.’

The wolf let out a loud snarl, baring his teeth at the delta before circling him in challenge. From the constantly flexing cables of muscle within its limbs, Dexter could quickly read the indecision plaguing the wolf.

“Yes, that’s right. I’m a delta with far more experience than you could ever hope to achieve in the next three years. You’d do well to fear me.”

“DEXTERRR!!!” the nurse spoke up, getting up to her feet and backing away.

The wolf she’d been tending to snapped its teeth viciously at her, nicking the flesh at her wrists as she quickly leapt out of the way.

It was a close call.

Growing of this odd behaviour, the pack members helping the other wolves quickly backed away, crowding closer to Nurse Tilda. The other wolves unsteadily stood and instinctively joined Titus, snarling viciously at the cornered pack wolves.

Incidentally, most of them were civilians, incapable of fighting as well as the pack warriors. It was only then that Dexter noticed that of all the wolves that stayed behind to help, only two were pack warriors while the rest of the able fighters had left to help with the evacuation.

“Uh, we might need help in the stadium,” Dexter echoed over the mind link.

After a short silence, a sliver of a reply returned, “The nearest pack warriors are preoccupied and reinforcements are on the way. The hunters are on their way as well. Try to hold out as long as you can, delta.”

Dexter, when given such subpar replies, was used to yelling back at whoever it was that had told him this… but this wasn’t just anyone. The person that had chosen to reply to the delta’s plea was none other than the alpha of the pack.

‘What’s happening out there?’ he thought to himself. Sensing a wave of tension, fear and urgency all over the mind link, he kept these thoughts to himself. Perhaps they were dealing with a very similar situation, he thought.

But that didn’t change his current situation.

Seven wolves against three was not a fight he wanted to get involved in… and yet, he didn’t seem to have a choice.

The wolves snarled at them, growling viciously as they gathered between them and the door, “You don’t think they’d actually attack us, do you?”

Titus’s wolf raked its claws on the ground and bounded for them, covering the distance in a few short leaps. The wolf leapt into the air, opening its maw wide and heading straight for the delta.

Dexter had seen this kind of action coming, considering he was also the one that had triggered Titus’s painful first shift. The newly-shifted human was bound to have a grudge against him.

Dexter dashed forward, synchronising his movements with those of the attacking werewolf and not giving him a chance to land a solid attack. He dodged the wolf’s maw and put his hand around its large neck.

With a loud groan, the delta pulled Titus back and threw him back at the group of hostile wolves. The other wolves dodged their flying comrade and growled at the delta in rage.

‘Oh, dear!!!’

Two came rushing forward at once. While the other four circled around him. As a strategic tactic, the wolves were trying to deal with the strongest one of the group first as though they were hunting down a herd.

And as such, these newbies didn’t notice when another person, out of the trapped civilian wolves, stepped out to help the delta, delivering a dreadful blow into the gut of one of the attacking wolves as Dexter dealt with the other.

The delta dashed forward slamming his knee into the wolf’s maw. The wolf, trusting the ferocity of his teeth, had not expected an attack so blunt. As such, it was thrown off guard, allowing Dexter to deliver an upward kick to its neck before hurling it back to the pack of hostiles.

The delta quickly shifted into a black wolf and growled, challenging the rest of the wolves to a fight. His comrade shifted as well, mimicking his act of dominance and instilling a wave of fear into the inexperienced wolves.

Dexter’s confidence…

…was short-lived.