Unaware that back in his Manhattan apartment his girlfriend was actively vetting another woman into his personal life, Aleksander materialized with a muffled crack amidst the damp, dense wilderness of the Appalachian mountains.
The muggy, stagnant night air hit him immediately, smelling sharply of wet earth, crushed pine needles, and the distinct, acrid stench of wolfsbane.
The thick canopy overhead blocked out the stars, plunging the valley into heavy shadow, but to Aleksander’s senses, the entire forest floor was alive and pulsing.
He stood atop a rocky outcropping looking down into a secluded ravine.
A couple of hundred yards out, disguised beneath camouflage netting and thick foliage, sat a makeshift base camp.
Heavy-duty black tactical vans with reinforced plated windows were parked in a rough perimeter, their engines quietly idling.
Portable generators hummed in a low, constant drone, powering harsh halogen floodlights aimed squarely at several massive, reinforced steel cages sitting on flatbed trailers.
Aleksander closed his eyes for a second, letting his awareness sink down through the rocky ridge, bridging his senses with the roots and the wind.
He didn’t just see the camp; he felt it.
Inside the heavy steel cages, the labored, ragged heartbeats of five different wolves thumped in frantic distress.
The scent of sweet, metallic blood and synthetic sedatives hung heavy over the containers.
Surrounding them were nearly a dozen heavily armed mercenaries pacing the perimeter—tactical vests, assault rifles slung low, and pneumatic dart guns loaded with concentrated wolfsbane solutions holstered at their hips.
Whoever organized this operation had spared no expense, running it with the cold efficiency of a private military contractor rather than reckless hillbilly poachers.
Aleksander opened his eyes, a chilly breeze suddenly picking up around his boots and rustling the surrounding briars.
Stepping off the ledge, he began his descent into the ravine, silent as a shadow and ready to show these hunters exactly what happened when you set traps in his forest.
The steady hum of the diesel generators was the only constant sound in the hollow, masking the soft crunch of pine needles as Aleksander cleared the tree line.
He didn’t bother staying in the shadows.
He walked straight down the gravel access path, hands resting casually in his pockets, his dark coat billowing slightly in an unnatural draft that seemed to follow his heels.
A perimeter guard—decked in digital camo, night-vision goggles resting on his forehead, and carrying an assault rifle—spotted him under the perimeter floodlights.
“Contact! We got a civilian on the north ridge—” the mercenary barked into his shoulder comm, raising his rifle.
“On your knees, hands behind your head, now!”
Aleksander didn’t slow his stride.
With a subtle flick of his index finger, the air pressure around the guard plummeted.
The heavy rifle violently wrenched itself from the man’s grip, folding in half with a sickening metallic snap before clattering uselessly into the dirt.
Before the soldier could process the impossibility, thick, thorned roots tore upward from beneath the compacted earth, wrapping around his ankles and dragging him straight down into the dirt, clamping tight until he slumped into unconsciousness.
“Alarm! Alarm!” another voice shouted from near the flatbed trailers.
Three more men rushed forward, raising pneumatic dart rifles loaded with sickly purple, concentrated wolfsbane liquid.
They fired in rapid succession.
The darts never made it within five feet of Aleksander.
A localized squall of wind kicked up in front of him, catching the pressurized projectiles mid-flight and suspending them in the air like bugs in amber.
With a casual flick of his wrist, Aleksander reversed their momentum.
The darts whipped back across the clearing at three times their original speed, sinking cleanly into the mercenaries’ exposed necks.
The men clawed at their throats, gasping as the paralytic took hold, and collapsed into the mud in seconds.
The loud clatter caught the attention of the transport cages.
Inside, the captured wolves—sweaty, feverish from the toxins, and stripped down to ragged clothes—clung to the reinforced bars, their eyes wide with fear and disbelief.
“What the hell are you?” a voice growled from the center of the camp.
The commander, a burly man scarred across his jaw and wearing heavy ceramic body armor, stepped out from behind the command tent.
He raised a customized heavy-caliber sidearm aimed squarely between Aleksander’s eyes.
“Drop your weapons and back up, or I start putting rounds into these animals,” the commander threatened, keeping his gun steady.
Aleksander paused, tilting his head. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
“You brought tactical gear, customized sedatives, and armored vans into these woods. You treat living people like game to be harvested for a paycheck.”
“It’s just business, pal,” the leader spat, his finger twitching on the trigger.
“Whoever you are, you picked the wrong—”
Aleksander raised his right hand.
A burst of brilliant blue fire blossomed across his palm.
It didn’t burn his skin; it danced under his control, sharp and blinding in the Appalachian darkness.
With a quiet push of his will, the blue flames leaped outward, slithering across the damp earth like living serpents.
The fire ignored the trees, the moss, and the soil entirely, bypassing the natural world to strike straight at the unnatural intruders.
The flames surged around the generators, melting the metal into glowing slag and plunging the camp into sudden darkness, lit only by the eerie azure glow.
The commander fired twice.
The heavy slugs flattened against an invisible wall of dense air inches from Aleksander’s chest, dropping harmlessly to the ground.
Aleksander clenched his fist.
The earth beneath the commander buckled.
Stone and roots surged upward, slamming the man backward against the side of an armored transport van with bone-shattering force.
Before he could fall, wooden vines pinned his arms and legs against the chassis, holding him immobilized in midair.
His sidearm flew across the clearing and clattered into the creek.
The remaining two guards panicked, tossing their weapons to the ground and sprinting toward the access road.
Aleksander didn’t even look at them; a sudden gale whipped through the canopy, hurling both men into a low boulder, knocking them out cold.
The ravine fell dead silent, save for the crackle of residual blue fire and the ragged breathing of the prisoners.
Aleksander stepped up to the massive, padlocked steel cages.
He casually reached out and grasped the heavy chains.
A brief pulse of blue heat surged from his fingers, turning the reinforced steel red-hot before it snapped like brittle dry twigs.
He pushed the cage doors open with a creak.
Inside, a young man with bloodshot amber eyes and a dirt-streaked face slumped against the frame, looking up at him in sheer disbelief.
“You’re… you’re not a hunter,” the wolf rasped, coughing as the lingering fumes of wolfsbane drifted away on the fresh mountain wind.
“Who are you?”
Aleksander looked down at them, his expression softening as the glow in his hands vanished into the night air.
“A friend,” Aleksander said calmly.
“And someone who doesn’t like poachers in his woods. Can you walk?”
Aleksander gestured toward the open tree line, letting a warm, restorative breeze wash over the shivering werewolves.
“Head north along the creek bed. The toxins will burn out of your systems within the hour, and the forest will keep you masked until you reach your pack.”
The young wolf nodded weakly, helping two of his packmates out of the ruined cages.
Casting lingering, reverent looks back at him, the wolves vanished into the Appalachian brush.
Aleksander turned his attention back toward the armored transport van.
The commander was still pinned flat against the reinforced steel, thick wooden vines wrapped tight around his chest and forearms.
Blood trickled from his split lip, mingling with sweat and mountain grime, but his eyes were stubborn, defiant, and burning with fury.
“You’re a dead man,” the commander spat, straining uselessly against the roots.
“You think you’re the only freak with tricks? You have no idea whose money you just burned.”
Aleksander walked over with slow, deliberate steps, stopping just two paces away.
His tone was level, cool, and chillingly detached.
“I don’t care about the money,” Aleksander said smoothly.
“I care about the signature on the wire transfer. Who hired you?”
The man sneered, baring blood-stained teeth.
“Go to hell. I’m under contract. Non-disclosure isn’t something I break for a parlor magician in a designer coat.”
Aleksander tilted his head.
“A professional. Admirable, but thoroughly misguided.”
He raised a single hand, resting his palm flat against the man’s chest armor.
A flicker of cobalt-blue fire ignited between his knuckles—not outward into an explosion, but a concentrated, piercing heat that sank right through the ceramic plates, superheating the steel mesh underneath.
The commander’s breath hitched.
His eyes went wide as the agonizing heat began blistering the skin beneath his tactical gear.
He clenched his jaw, trying to hold back the scream, but the sheer, searing pressure was relentless.
“Nature gave you lungs to breathe her air and ground to walk upon,” Aleksander said softly, the blue glow reflecting in his dark eyes.
“Yet you use her gifts to build cages for her children. I can turn the air in your chest to ash, or I can let the forest pull the answer directly out of your skull. It makes very little difference to me. Who is buying werewolves?”
The commander gasped, choking on the smoke curling off his smoldering vest, the raw terror finally breaking his military discipline.
“Stop! Stop, alright!” the man wheezed, his heels kicking out against the van’s side.
“I don’t have a personal name! It was an encrypted routing—an offshore broker out of Virginia!”
“What was the objective?” Aleksander eased the heat slightly, letting the man draw a ragged, shuddering breath.
“Why capture them alive?”
“They wanted… they wanted bloodlines,” the commander panted, his chest heaving as sweat poured into his eyes.
“Live specimens. Genetically active venom glands and spinal fluid. They said… they said they were synthesizing a biological countermeasure. A way to distill werewolf venom into a weapon that could be weaponized against vampires.”
Aleksander’s brow furrowed.
“A weaponized venom. Who were they shipping the cargo to?”
“A corporate front out of Virginia—Kingmaker Land Development Inc.!” the commander sputtered, desperate to keep the blue fire from reigniting.
“They run private airstrips and secure compounds! That’s all I know, I swear to God! The manifests are in the glove compartment of the lead truck!”
Aleksander let his hand fall away.
With a simple flick of his fingers, the glove compartment of the nearest black tactical vehicle popped open.
A thick leather folder containing flight coordinates, encrypted satellite phone frequencies, and a stamped manifest drifted out on a gentle gust of wind, landing neatly in Aleksander’s grasp.
He flipped through the first few pages, noting the corporate shell accounts and the cold, clinical terminology detailing the extraction of live supernatural tissue under the banner of Kingmaker Land Development.
“Kingmaker Land Development,” Aleksander murmured to himself, closing the folder.
Lucien Castle’s little corporate empire, playing with wolves and venom in the dark.
He looked back up at the commander, who was watching him with wide, terrified eyes.
“What are you gonna do to me?” the man rasped.
“Nature has no use for poachers,” Aleksander replied coldly.
With a sharp clench of his fist, the vines around the commander’s throat snapped inward with a clean, fatal crack, ending his life in an instant.
Aleksander didn’t stop there.
Across the clearing, the roots and earth shifted, swiftly crushing the breath and life from every unconscious mercenary lying scattered in the dirt.
None of them would wake up to hunt again.
Aleksander ignited a wide, sweeping arc of blue fire, engulfing the corpses, the iron cages, the surveillance monitors, and the armored transport vehicles in a matter of seconds.
The flames consumed everything synthetic, leaving behind nothing but smoldering, harmless slag and clean ash on the forest floor.
Tucking the Kingmaker manifest into his coat.