Some kilometers away from Melody Heights, deep within the forest, the air trembled with the sound of pounding paws and snapping branches. Figures darted through the shadows, blurs of muscle and fur, their eyes glowing in a spectrum of colors—violet, indigo, blue, and orange—each hue flaring like fireflies in the dark.
At the very front sprinted the largest of them all, a beast whose eyes blazed crimson like burning coals—Jide. His massive form tore through the forest with unrelenting speed, each stride shaking the ground beneath him. He was no longer a man, no longer bound by restraint. He was Alpha, the Red-Eyed terror, and tonight he hungered for blood.
Behind him, his summoned pack thundered in unison. Over sixty wolves answered his call, their growls weaving together into a low, resonant chorus that seemed to rattle the night itself. This was no mere patrol. This was war.
Their destination was clear: Ajamu.
The air around Jide vibrated with fury and purpose. His howl still echoed in the marrow of every wolf present, a command none dared disobey. Every leap forward carried the same message—vengeance.
---
Ajamu stood on the high balcony, the night wind whipping his coat against the stone. Below him the forest opened like a dark sea, and in that blackness a tide of wolves moved—thundered—toward his chosen line. He watched them come with a smile that had nothing gentle in it.
"See?" he said, voice low and pleased. He glanced at Alamu, who stood a few paces behind him, fingers white on the railing. "I told you. Kill his newborns and you drive him into a fury. An alpha who howls with blind rage makes mistakes. He'll throw himself at anything we lay before him."
Alamu didn't smile. He had seen the pack answer Jide's call—sixty strong, a force that would flatten most defences. "If he comes controlled, sir," Alamu said cautiously, "he'll sniff the trap. He'll—"
"You underestimate my work," Ajamu interrupted, amusement sharp as a blade. He turned, face lit by the lantern at the balcony's end. "On my signal—release the surprise."
Alamu swallowed. Around the compound, men shifted like shadows. Fires were banked low; ropes and nets lay coiled near hidden posts; low pits had been masked under leaves; jars and vials were cradled in leather. The plan had been built for nights: snares that could hoist a wolf, kevia-woven nets for a pack, men with spears and hooks trained not to climb down into the fray but to pull and set and let the wolves hang themselves. And for the closer wounds, for the ones that truly made wolves choke—there were darts and powders, something bitter pressed into pellets and sealed in wooden tubes.
Alamu's jaw moved. "You're asking us to bring the alpha into a trap and then—"
"Finish him?" Ajamu supplied, soft as a confession. "No. Let us weaken him. Let us show him his newborns die and then make him watch a hundred small humiliations. Take from him what he values: control, peace, his pack. When he breaks—when he truly snaps—he will expose himself. Then we take him."
A twig snapped far below—the sharp, small sound of a sentry shifting—then another, and the howl of Jide rose, long and keening, sweeping the trees. The pack answered, closer now, a rolling thing alive with noise.
Ajamu folded his hands behind his back and watched the dark line of wolves grow nearer, each flash of eyes a metronome counting down. He stepped forward, toes on the balcony edge, and gave the slowest, coldest nod.
"Now," he said.
At his command, Alamu moved. Lanterns were tilted; men slid from shadow into position. Ropes hissed free. The first nets unfurled, ropes singing like a chorus of thin thunder through the trees. In the hush that followed, the world held its breath—the forest, the running wolves, the men waiting to pull the snare tight.
Below, Jide's howl split the night again, answering the signal with another surge forward. The line tightened. The first set of traps shivered as the lead wolves crashed through the undergrowth.
And then—into that living collision—Ajamu's "surprise" began to fall.
Jide's massive body slammed into the snare and for a heartbeat it seemed the trap had failed. The rope screamed as it snapped free and the alpha tumbled forward, shaking the world with a howl that shredded the night itself.
Ajamu did not flinch. He lifted a hand—an almost casual motion—and from the treeline men loosed a volley of arrows. They found their marks. Jide's broad flank erupted in a bloom of dark blood where iron met flesh. The howl that followed was animal and human at once, long and pained, a sound that rolled like thunder through the trees.
Every wolf in the line surged. The pack pressed as one living thing, a wave of muscle and teeth desperate to reach their broken leader. They hit the first line of snares and nets and drove through them like a storm—only to slam against something that was not rope, not wood, not earth.
A shimmer hung in the air, thin as breath yet hard as stone. It threw them back. Wolves scrambled, paws scrabbling for purchase on the ground, noses flattening against a barrier they could not understand. Muscles bulged as one after another hurled themselves at it and recoiled, hacking, snapping, bewildered.
"Hold!" Ajamu called, voice steady, not celebrating so much as measuring. He watched the spectacle with a predator's calm. Around him the men tightened lines, loosed another flight of arrows, checked net anchors, and readied spears.
Down below, Jide tore and raked, lungs burning. He beat the air with his great paws, fur matted dark with blood. The ribbon of men nearest him danced back from each swipe, ropes whistling as they tried to haul the alpha into new constraints. His pack answered with frantic, pained cries—then crashed again into that invisible ring and were repelled, time and time again.
Alamu, watching from Ajamu's side, felt something like awe and something like dread prick at the back of his neck. "I didn't think a man could set a line like that," he murmured.
Ajamu only smiled, cold. "Neither did I," he said. "But men learn. Witch-work learns. We learned how to make the forest our ally."
The wolves' restlessness grew into a low, rolling panic. A few tried to flank, to find a weak spot, and met the same resistance. A smaller wolf nosed at the shimmer and its whiskers smoked; it stumbled back, tail tucked, yelping. Blood slicked the leaf-litter where the alpha had fallen; the pack nosed at it, frantic, wanting to drag him free. The barrier held.
Jide's howl cut higher, feral and raw; he reared on his hind legs and struck the ground with both forepaws, sending leaves and dirt flying. For an instant his red eyes found Ajamu's shape in the dark—an exchange of furious, mortal intent. Then the alpha's weight bent the net once more and men shoved, ropes screamed, and the forest answered with the sound of a great animal being slowly, inexorably hauled into a trap.
Around them, the night watched and waited. The first battle had not gone the way the forest itself might have decreed—something new had been set between man and wolf, and neither side would forgive the other for it.