My ears perked when I heard one of the boards in the hallway squeak. A rush of terror flooded through me and my hands started to shake. Was this one of them now, trying to get an early start on the rest?
I swallowed my fear down. I had two choices: I could lay here and be a submissive little wolf, letting them do whatever they wanted, or I could fight. Anger rose up inside of me, and I wanted to fight so badly. None of this was fair.
The more I thought about it, the angrier I became. I wanted to make these wolves suffer for what they were about to do to me. Oh, I knew I would lose and probably be beaten pretty badly for my disobedience. But if they were going to use me like that, then I wanted to make them pay the price for it. I would heal eventually and they wouldn’t risk losing their new plaything by causing permanent damage.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes to try and find the spark inside of me that would allow me to shift. There was no time to get undressed, but sacrificing my PJs was the least of my concerns right now. My grandmother had been fully human, and my mother was a halfling. So, while I could shift, it was challenging and took all of my concentration. Plus, I couldn’t do it every time I tried, or as often as the full-blooded wolves.
There had been more than one instance of me being stuck in one form or the other. It was a joke within the pack, but I was just grateful that I could shift at all. None of the other females left here had enough wolf blood in them to do it. The full-blooded females that had been here when I was born had all died within the last ten years. Childbirth was difficult for us, and not many females could survive being bred over and over again like our pack master had forced them to do.
The handle to my door rattled and I was glad that I had locked it. That would slow the intruders down for a minute and give me time to prepare. My heart was beating so fast that I couldn’t concentrate on what I was trying to do. It skipped a beat when I heard a key in the lock; I hadn’t planned on that!
The door creaked as it swung in and my eyes snapped open as my mother’s scent drifted towards me. “Mom?” I whispered in confusion.
My mom crept towards me with wide eyes and placed a finger over her lips to tell me to be quiet. I watched her with confusion as she set a small backpack on the bed next to me. “Shift,” she whispered so quietly that I wouldn’t have been able to hear her without my extra wolf senses.
I pushed away my blanket and pulled off my PJs, eyeing her curiously. She was dressed in hiking boots and warm clothing with a backpack that matched mine. Excitement started to replace my fear. This was it; my mom was going to get us out of here! I had prayed for this moment so many times in my life, but my mom had always insisted that we were better off here with the pack because we had food, protection, and a roof over our heads. Had my birthday changed her mind?
I finally relaxed enough to shift and fought the urge to shake out my coat as my mom leaned forward to strap the backpack on me. She gave me a kiss between the ears once it was secure and took a second to cup my face to look in my eyes.
“I love you.” She mouthed it without using her voice, but I understood her just fine. I nuzzled her neck and gave her a small lick to return the sentiment.
She brushed a couple of tears out of her eyes and stood up, adjusting the pack on her back. I trotted towards the door and used all my senses to see if the coast was clear. My hearing, sense of smell, and night vision were all much better than hers, so she let me take the lead. I could hear the light snores of some of the females in their rooms but didn’t hear anything to indicate danger.
I crept down the hallway, being careful to avoid stepping on the boards that creaked. This wasn’t the first time I had to sneak around the house after dark. We were lucky that there were only the mostly-human females in the house; some of the full-blooded males would have heard us trying to sneak out. This was the house where the females who were too old or too young to mate were kept. The males, and the females who took care of them lived in the nicer homes scattered throughout our neighborhood.
My mom followed close behind me as I led her down the stairs and to the front door. I listened carefully at the door but I hesitated to open it just yet. I pinned my ears back and wagged my tail a little uncertainly at her.
Was she sure about this? Once we stepped out of this house, there was no hiding our intentions. We were obviously about to run away from the pack. As much as I wanted to be confident that we could do this, our chances weren’t high. There were always wolves on guard around the perimeter of our little neighborhood. They were all much bigger, stronger, and faster than me, and my mom was essentially defenseless in her human form. If we didn’t get extremely lucky, we would be brought back here and punished. I probably wouldn’t be allowed to go to my senior year of high school starting in a couple months.
My mom ran a hand over my coat reassuringly, and I wished that we could use the pack bond to talk to each other the way that the males did. What was the plan here?
She opened the door quietly and motioned for me to go out on the front porch. After she had locked the door behind her, she motioned towards the back end of the woods. Our pack used the woods for pack runs and hunts. The forest stretched eight miles before running into a highway, but that wasn’t a lot of space for a pack of wolves. There used to be a lot more free land to run in around here, but too much new construction and development had gone up over the past ten years.
I trotted ahead of her, keeping my eyes, ears, and nose open. She gave me a swat on the bottom to hurry up and I broke into a jog, holding it at a pace that I was sure she could keep up with. Her panting sounded outrageously loud as we made it through the clearing and into the forest. I was so nervous that someone was going to hear us.
I thought I heard the crack of a branch and froze, listening carefully, but all I could hear was my mom’s loud breathing. I started forward a little slower this time, giving my mom a chance to catch her breath as I crept carefully through the brush.
When no one jumped out to stop us I started to get a little more confident. Minutes turned into an hour and there was no sign of anyone around us. The forest was completely silent and carried only the scents of the plants and small animals around us.
We were really doing this! I started to daydream a little about what our life could be like once I started to hear the sounds of the highway growing closer. My mom and I were obsessed with the show Gilmore Girls and we’d always talked about how wonderful having a life like that would be. Maybe we could get a little house for just the two of us in a picturesque town like Stars Hollow. My mom could run a coffee shop just like she always wanted to and I could go to college. I started to get more excited and picked up the pace as we grew closer to our life of freedom.
I would blame myself for those daydreams for the rest of my life.
If only I had stayed on task and been more careful, maybe I would have heard the group of wolves that was slowly surrounding us and closing off our escape. I didn’t realize we were trapped until the breeze carried the scent of one of my cousins towards us. I froze in panic for a second and tried to push my mom in the opposite direction, only to see the pack master step out from behind a group of trees.
Six wolves in total surrounded us. I circled around my mom in a panic, unsure of what I should do. I needed to defend her, but who would attack first?
Baracus shifted back into his human form. “I warned you, Jenny,” he growled at my mother.
“You can’t stop this.”
I growled at him as he stalked closer to my mom but yelped when my cousin sank his teeth painfully into my tail. I tried to spin around, but he had a strong grip on me, so I flung myself on my back to kick him in the face with my hind legs. He closed his eyes to protect them from my claws but didn’t let go. Instead, he roughly shook his head back and forth with my tail still firmly between his teeth. I whimpered in pain as Robert, our second in command, crashed into me and locked his jaws around my throat as he pinned me down. He was the largest and meanest wolf in the
pack and had never lost a fight. My heart pounded in terror, and I tried to look around his massive body for my mom. I needed to protect her!
Our pack master had her by the arm, but she was glaring defiantly at him. “You think that you can defy me?” he roared.
I struggled against Robert and tried my best to dislodge him from me, but he just sank his teeth in deeper. Blood trickled through my fur and his weight on top of me was making it difficult to breathe. I whimpered and went limp in submission, not because I was giving up, but because I wanted him to think that I was.
Robert loosened his grip and waited for my reaction. I didn’t move to fight him, I stayed submissive, desperately hoping that this would work. I heard the smack of a fist against flesh, which also caught Robert’s attention. He tentatively backed off me, observing me carefully. I stayed limp and didn’t move until finally he looked away from me to watch our pack master discipline Mom.
A tear leaked out of my eye when I saw her down on the ground, blood running from a cut on her lip. She met my eyes and there was a moment where I could almost feel her telling me not to give up. She took a deep breath and mouthed one word to me - “Run.”
I glanced over at Robert to see if he noticed, but he and the other males looked like they were celebrating just how easy it had been to subdue two helpless females. Our pack master was standing there laughing at us.
My heart filled with hate. Baracus wasn't going to get away with this. He might think that he had us beat, but this small taste of freedom had ignited a desire within me that couldn’t be quenched. I would get out of here, and I would give my mom the life that she had always wanted.
I started to get to my feet, but Robert snapped at me in warning. As he stalked in my direction, I saw my mom out of the corner of my eye struggling to pull something out of her backpack. The other males circled around me with menace in their eyes. I tried to focus on my anger instead of my fear, but how could I take on all these males by myself?
A sharp crack exploded through the night and I saw blood spray from the chest of our pack master. Time crawled and everything around me moved in slow motion. I saw the anger and hate burning in my mother’s eyes as she pointed the handgun in Robert’s direction next and watched with wide eyes as his head exploded. Blood and pieces of flesh showered the clearing before his body hit the ground with a thump. The threat of Robert had loomed over the pack all my life; his very presence as the pack’s enforcer had been terrifying and had always seemed larger than life. I half expected him to get back up and kill us all, but he just laid there, unmoving.
I wasn’t the only one with a delayed reaction from shock, because my mother had time to take aim at a third wolf before he jumped in her direction. Two shots hit him in the chest and he fell to the ground mid-leap. I was now forgotten as my two cousins ran off and the last wolf ran to attack Mom. I leaped after him in a panic, but I wasn’t quick enough to prevent his powerful jaws from locking around my mother’s neck. Her gun went off again and he went limp beneath me.
I pushed him aside, desperately hoping that I was wrong and that he hadn’t hurt my mother too severely. But when I moved his body aside my stomach dropped. Blood poured out of my mother’s ruined throat and her eyes were wild with pain and fear.
The gun had fallen from her hands and she grabbed me by the ear. She was trying to tell me something but couldn’t speak. I was frantically trying to shift back to my human form; I needed my hands to be able to stop the bleeding, to call 911. But my stupid body wouldn’t cooperate. Life was bleeding out of my mother, and I was helpless to stop it.
Slowly her struggles ceased and her eyes glazed over. I nudged her with my muzzle, urgently trying to get her to look at me again. I gently grabbed her hand with my teeth, trying to make her wake up, trying to make her see that this was our chance. We needed to run now if we wanted to get away from here.
She didn’t respond to anything that I did. Eventually, I noticed that she had stopped breathing and her skin was cooling. I just stood there in disbelief. This couldn’t be happening. This wasn’t the way that things were supposed to go.
Deep down, I knew that I should run. I knew that my mother was gone. I knew that she would want me to get away. But I couldn’t make my body move. I wanted to howl my grief and rage. I wanted to turn back time and reverse every terrible decision that we had made tonight.
A howl echoed through the night in the far distance. That must be one of my cousins, sounding the alarm for the rest of the pack. I licked the blood and tears from my mother’s face, begging her just to start breathing again. But the blank look in her glassy eyes told me everything that I needed to know. I realized that she wasn’t ever going to look at me again. Despair overcame me and I felt the urge to curl up beside her. Instead, I forced myself to stand on my shaking legs.
She had made the ultimate sacrifice for me. I couldn’t save her and I couldn’t bring her back, but I could honor her final wishes. A part of me wanted to just wait here for the rest of my pack. They would take one look at the carnage here and execute me so I could join my mother in death. The thought of going on without her was almost too much to bear, but I couldn’t let her down.
Run.
Her final word echoed through my mind. She had done everything she could to make sure that I
had a chance. I owed it to her to try.
Somehow, the backpack that she had placed on me earlier was still in place, but hers wasn’t. Her bag was lying next to her, open and empty. Was the gun the only thing she had packed for herself?
I took one last look at her crumpled body before stumbling in the opposite direction. I was still in shock and numb to the world around me. I clumsily thrashed through the brush that surrounded the little clearing where I had lost the only person that had ever truly loved me.
Tears were blinding my vision and I struggled to make my body keep moving. I heard more howls in the distance. My pack was gathering and soon they would be after me. The pack master and his second-in-command were lying dead in the clearing next to my mother. There would be chaos in the pack at first and there might even be a few fights until the males established who would be leading the hunt for me. That gave me a little bit of time to get ahead.
Determination took root inside of me, and I felt a surge of strength with my newfound purpose. I needed to get ahead of the pack hunt that would be following me. I felt dread trickle through my thoughts. If my pack caught up to me, I wouldn’t get an easy death; I would regret the day that I was born.
I pumped my legs faster and focused on moving efficiently through the forest. They would be able to follow my scent through here easily, so my only option was to try and head for the highway. I darted between trees, leaped over rocks and shrubs, and focused on the sounds of the highway that were growing closer as I ran.
When I finally reached the edge of the forest and saw the headlights of vehicles, I was both relieved and unsure. I had made it this far, but now what?
I saw a gap in the traffic and quickly darted across two lanes, huddling in the traffic median. The sky was starting to get lighter with the first rays of dawn, so I needed to get out of sight quickly. I waited for another gap before darting across the last two lanes of the road. I was now entirely on the other side, but that wouldn’t stop my pack for long.
The ground sloped down from the highway and the grass was long where the clearing met the trees, so I felt safe running along the edge of the forest. It was still dark enough that the drivers wouldn’t be able to see too much outside of the beams of their headlights and the long grass should hide most of my movement. Even if someone did catch a glance of me out of the corner of their eye, hopefully, their tired brains would think ‘dog’ not ‘werewolf.’ In my experience, most humans tended to brush off any hints of the supernatural and assign reasonable explanations to everything. It helped that I was on the smaller side, a massive wolf like Robert would never be able to pass for an average dog.
I ran for miles, adrenaline fuel
ing my panicked escape. I kept running until I saw a sign for a rest stop ahead. Perfect. If I could get into a vehicle, the pack wouldn’t be able to track me by scent.
I slowed down and my aching muscles thanked me. I had been running as fast as I could for what seemed like an eternity. I stuck to the shadows and crept closer, trying to get a feel for what was here. There were a dozen trucks parked all in a row, dark and quietly looming in the parking lot. Those were probably truckers who stopped to get a few hours of sleep while they were on the road. I walked along the back of the trucks but was dismayed to see that they were all locked up tight. There was no way that I would be able to sneak a ride inside one of them.
The rest stop itself was brightly lit, so I avoided going too close to it. There were signs for restrooms and vending machines, but no restaurants like the larger rest stops that some of the other towns had. This seemed like a place people would want to get in and out of quickly, not hang around. I laid down on the ground to think for a minute and stay out of sight.
I could change back to my human form, but could I trust anyone to help me? I was covered in blood, so chances were they would just call the police. How would I explain being naked and bloody? I watched the area quietly. There was a sign for a payphone, but who would I call?
Everyone that I knew was in the pack and would be out for my blood. I knew humans from school, but not well enough to know their phone numbers or to be able to trust them with my secrets. I couldn’t call a cab. I didn’t have any money and a taxi could be easily traced by the pack.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that if I couldn’t somehow sneak a ride, then I was going to have to stay on foot. I forced my tired muscles to stand so that they wouldn’t lock up. I
needed to keep on the move, I couldn’t allow myself to get stiff.
I finally saw my chance when a pickup truck pulled into the parking lot. A middle-aged man with a beer belly stepped out of the cab and hiked up his pants before waddling towards the men’s restroom. I looked around to make sure no one else was around before darting into the parking lot towards the vehicle. The bed of the truck had a cover on it, but the man had left the gate down because a long piece of wood was sticking out of the back.
Finding Buried Secrets: A Seaside Wolf Pack Novel Page 25
