# Chapter 2: The Compound of Corpses
The kitchen floor is sticky with blood, and Alicia's threadbare shoes leave prints as she steps over what used to be Maren.
The Beta cook lies face-up near the overturned pot Alicia had been scrubbing. Her throat is gone. Justgone. Torn out in ragged chunks that paint the floor tiles in arterial fans. Maren's eyes are still open, clouded white, staring at the ceiling where grease stains have accumulated for months.
Alicia forces herself not to look away. You have to see it. You have to know what's out there.
Three Ferals sprawl near the pantry entrance, skulls crushed by something heavy. The cast-iron skillet she'd been washing sits dented in a pool of black ichor. Someone fought back here. Someone won.
But they're not here now.
The compound yard beyond the kitchen window is a graveyard of bodies. Pack members she served, ignored by, cowered from_ll motionless heaps scattered across blood-soaked grass. Some are still. Others twitch with the beginning tremors of reanimation.
Alicia's wolf stirs anxiously. Move. Must move.
She grabs a cleaver from the knife block_ot much of a weapon against monsters, but better than bare hands_nd slips through the kitchen door into the servant corridors. These narrow passages wind through Bloodfang compound's walls like veins, invisible to pack members who never bothered learning where the Omegas walked.
Three years of servitude carved these routes into her muscle memory. Left at the linen closet. Right past the broken water pipe that always drips. Down the back stairs that creak on the fourth step.
A Feral Beta lunges from a doorway ahead_ts white eyes lock on her and its jaw unhinging with a wet crack.
Alicia doesn't think. She drops.
The laundry chute opening sits at knee-height in the wall, installed decades ago for servants to send soiled linens to the basement. She rolls through the narrow opening as clawed hands rake the air where her head was.
The slide down is brutal and fast. She hits stained sheets, dirty towels, something that might have been a tablecloth. The impact knocks the breath from her lungs and she tumbles onto concrete in the basement laundry room.
Water. Everywhere. The floor is flooded ankle-deep with blood-tinged liquid seeping from ruptured pipes above.
Alicia scrambles to her feet, cleaver still clutched in white-knuckled hands. The laundry room is a concrete box with industrial washers lining one wall and drying racks bolted to the other. No windows. One exit_he stairs leading up to the omega quarters.
And tucked behind the washing machines, exactly where she left it two months ago: the emergency pack.
She'd stolen supplies over weeks. Dried meat from the kitchens. Water purification tablets from the medical wing. Basic first aid from storage closets. All hidden here in a canvas bag because some part of her always knew the pack would abandon her when things got bad.
She just hadn't expected "bad" to mean the apocalypse.
The bag is still there. Still dry. She slings it over her shoulder and
A cough.
Weak. Wet. Coming from above.
Alicia freezes. Her wolf perks with sudden alertness. Pack. Injured pack.
No. Not pack. She has no pack anymore. But someone up there is alive and hurting.
She climbs the servant stairs, testing each step before putting weight on it. The fourth stair creaks_he skips it entirely. At the top, the door to the omega sleeping quarters hangs askew on broken hinges.
Inside, the room is carnage. Bunks are overturned. Mattresses shredded. The floor is painted in patterns she refuses to interpret.
And trapped beneath a collapsed bunk frame: Elder Finn.
The old Omega wheezes, his leg twisted at an unnatural angle beneath blood-stained wood. But his eyes are clearclear, not the feral white of the turned_nd they widen when they see her.
"Alicia." His voice cracks. "You're... you lived."
She drops beside him, already assessing the damage. Crushed leg. Significant blood loss. But alive. Sane.
"Don't talk." She wedges the cleaver under the bunk frame. "I'm getting you out."
"The Alphas," Finn gasps. His gnarled hand grabs her wrist with surprising strength. "When the mist came... they ran. Left us. Just_ust left."
Alicia's jaw tightens. She braces her feet and uses the cleaver as a lever. The frame shifts. "I know."
"Jax was with them. Your mate. He and that Beta bitch Mara, they were laughing as they" Finn's words dissolve into a wet cough.
"Don't talk." Alicia throws her weight against the lever. The frame lifts six inches. "Move your leg. Now."
Finn drags himself free with a scream that turns her stomach. His leg is crushed, the bone visible through torn flesh. She rips sheets from a nearby bunk and binds the wound with hands that barely shake.
You've done this before. Patched up pack members after fights. You know how.
She helps Finn stand_e can't put weight on the leg, so she improvises a sling from curtain ropes and loops them around her shoulders, taking his weight against her back.
Through the shattered window, the compound yard spreads before them. And across fifty yards of corpse-filled hell: the armory building.
Lights glow in the windows.
"If anyone survived," Finn whispers against her ear, "they'd go there. Reinforced walls. Vehicle garage underneath."
Alicia stares at those lights. Her mate bond_hat cursed thread connecting her to Jax_ulls toward that building. He's there. She knows he's there.
Part of her hates that she still cares.
The rest of her just wants answers.
She adjusts Finn's weight and tests the sling's strength. In the yard, Ferals are beginning to stir as morning sun climbs higher. They'll have maybe five minutes before the monsters fully wake.
"Can you hold on?" she asks.
Finn's grip tightens on her shoulders. "Do I have a choice?"
Alicia looks at the armory's lit windows across fifty yards of hell. Somewhere in that building, her mate is alive_nd she hates that she still cares.
She takes a breath.
Steps into the yard.
**