Darien
The survivors didn't want to talk.
I didn't blame them. They sat in the back of a community center in the neighboring pack's territory, wrapped in donated blankets, staring at nothing. Just a dozen or so people. That was all that remained of the Clearwater Pack. Out of hundreds. Hunters who'd been in the woods. Teenagers who'd snuck out past curfew. A woman who'd been visiting her sister two towns over and came home to find there was no home left.
One of them, a man named Garrett who'd been the pack's Gamma, told me what he could. His voice was flat. Mechanical. The way people talk when the only alternative is screaming.
“They came just after midnight. No warning. No scouts. They just appeared.” He stared at the floor between his feet. “The first explosion took out the lodge. Th
