by Leia Stone
Slipping out the barn, I crossed the farmland, and quickly tucked into the trees that bordered the Wild Lands. I knew on the other side was the Ithaki portion, but I had no choice. I’d rather brave them than the vampires right now. Stepping over the orange flags that demarcated the property line, I started a brisk job through the woods.
‘On my way,’ I told Rab. ‘If I don’t run into trouble, I should reach you in the next thirty minutes.’
‘I see you. Go right,’ he said, and shock caused me to slow and look around.
“What?” I whispered out loud.
Rab, Sage, Arrow, and Eugene stepped out from behind an outcrop of trees. They were armed to the teeth and covered in mud paint to camouflage themselves.
“You didn’t think we were going to leave you on your own, did you?” Sage winked.
My throat tightened at the sight of my little protection squad. Their loyalty made tears form in my eyes as I swallowed hard. One by one, their noses wrinkled as they took in the stench covering me.
“No offense, Alpha,” Arrow said, “but you smell like shit.”
Sage pinched her nose. “Literal shit.”
I grinned. “Cow dung. Threw off the vampires. Come on, let’s get home so I can shower.”
With that, we crept through the woods together, working as one unit. I was so used to doing things on my own and having no one else to rely on except for Sage, that I’d forgotten what this felt like. This feeling of being cared for and looked after.
We encountered no trouble on our way back to the Paladin Village, and I was pleased to see the wall around the city being repaired, city and Paladin wolves working side by side, building it higher than ever before.
“They’ll work all night on the fence and only sleep when it’s complete,” Rab told me.
“And the witches said they can do repellent charms and magical tripwire alarms to alert us of an attack,” Sage added.
“Awesome,” I breathed.
Because I was going to need to sleep about twenty-four hours after this marathon of a night, and I would sleep more soundly with a twelve-foot wall around my home and magic repellent charms. Once we stepped inside the village, there was a flurry of activity. People were erecting temporary tents in the middle of the open road. Homes were being swept out with corn husk brooms and repaired. The meeting hall was being rebuilt, with people already laying bricks. It’s like the second people saw a place they could live, they threw everything they had into making it a home. Children were running through the streets, weaving in and out of the tents and pointing up at the darkened sky.
“It’s the moon, it’s the moon!” they yelled.
“Bonus of having over twenty thousand wolves,” Rab stated. “We’ll have the city restored in no time.”
“What’s the food situation?” I asked him as we walked to the birthing center, which was doubling as our medical ward. I spied Astra through the open door, sitting up and drinking something warm.
“Willow buried a giant tin capsule of thousands of seeds before we left. They are still there. We will sow them tomorrow indoors until the weather is better to transplant them outside. Until then we will hunt and fish.”
I nodded, no longer afraid to be without food as I would have been before my year in the Dark Woods. I lived day to day out there, trusting that nature would bring me my next meal, and she always did.
“The creek behind the corn fields is full of salmon,” Arrow piped in. “And the walnut and citrus groves were fully restored when you healed the land. I’ll do inventory of the other permanent crops, but I imagine it will be the same.”
That was the best news ever. I nodded and breathed a sigh of relief. Now that I was alpha, I could feel our land. I knew how big it was, where the borders were, and all the streams and waterways. It was so large that we had only populated twenty percent of it. The rest was left wild and natural, which would be perfect for hunting.
“Sage.” I turned to my bestie and new second-in-command. “Get a team of hunters together, go after big game.”
After our time in the woods together, Sage and I were masters at catching a meal. Starvation turns you into an expert quickly.
She nodded. “You got it.” Then she scurried off.
“Rab can you figure out who will be best on security detail? I want this place crawling with armed wolves. We will not be taken unaware again.”
He bowed slightly to me. “Yes, Alpha.”
‘My love.’ Sawyer’s voice invaded my head and my breath caught in my throat. ‘Things are not looking good here … this might be the last time we speak and I just wanted you to know that I love you so much, and if I can’t make it back to you, I want you to lead our people and raise our son and just be happy, okay?’
Our people. Last time we speak?
My heart hammered in my chest. ‘What do you mean? Why are you saying that?’
‘Sometimes we have to know when to quit. Didn’t you tell me that?’ He sounded dejected, like he’d lost all hope. Something must have happened, something bad.
I did say that, dammit, but I wasn’t ready to give up.
‘No, I’m not giving up on this, on us. There is no happiness without you, Sawyer.’
‘It’s too late, my love.’ His voice faded and I knew I was losing him.
Desperation rushed through me. ‘Don’t say that! Don’t lose hope. I can walk through fucking walls Sawyer, I—’
‘Not here love.’
My heart fell in my chest. ‘I’ll find a way. We’ll be a family. No one tells me what I can and can’t do.’ I growled at him.
‘God I miss that smart fucking mouth. I miss the way you taste.’ Sawyer moaned and a tear slipped free from the corner of my eyes, rolling down my cheek.
‘Sawyer I will get you out. I’ll think of something brilliant and I’ll get you out.’
‘I gotta go. I love you so much.’ He said, I felt him leaving as panic seized me.
‘I’m leaving right now. Just hold on. I’ll be there in a few days!’ I frantically thought through scenarios of how I could get into Light Fey Territory undetected. Tears slid down my face, and I was about to speak again, when a female wail cut through the night. It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on who it was. Then she screamed again and I recognized it as Sawyer’s mother.
Oh God.
A stone sank in my stomach as I took off running in the direction of the scream, with Rab and Eugene hot on my trail. It sucked to run at human speeds after knowing what I was capable of, but it was the only way to cover my scent. I had to wear these damn cuffs.
Crisscrossing through the tents and children and general chaos of twenty thousand displaced people with duffle bags, I finally found her. She was in my cottage, the guest house I’d stayed in when I lived here for a short while, sitting in the dusty living room clutching a hand crank radio that my dad was pumping to keep on. My mom stared at the radio in shock while she held baby Creek to her chest.
“What happened?” I asked, but the man on radio started to speak and I froze, listening intently.
“So that’s the latest news from Light Fey City. Just to recap, Sawyer Hudson, former alpha of Wolf City, has been sentenced to death for his crimes, and will be executed via guillotine one week from today.”
A strangled howl cut through my throat as the room spun around me.
Sawyer … death sentence. Executed. Did they change his sentence? So suddenly? Did Queen Drake have anything to do with it? Maybe my running off had inspired her to put in a call. I couldn’t process it all, and before I knew it, black dots danced at the edges of my vision. I started to fall backward, but before I hit the ground, a pair of giant arms caught me, and then Eugene’s voice was there.
“It’s okay. I got you.”
The day had been too hard. I’d run too long, this news was too dark. Instead of fighting the blackness pressing at the edges of my vision, I gave in. A person could only be so strong before they broke, and I’d reached my br
eaking point.
I came to and immediately reached for the baby, only to find that he wasn’t next to me. Everything came back to me in a rush, and I gasped in panic, until I heard my mother’s voice.
“Shh, I got him, don’t worry,” she whispered from the dark corner of the room, where she sat in a chair bottle feeding him.
I lay back on the bed, letting my heart still. The first shafts of light of a new day were bleeding into the room, highlighting the dust slowly settling in the air.
Sawyer. They were going to murder the love of my life, and I just couldn’t live with myself if I sat back and did nothing, no matter the cost.
I sat up. “Mom … I have to get Sawyer out of there.” I ran my fingers through my tangled hair, glad to find someone had changed my cow dung clothes, probably my mother. But I still wanted a shower desperately.
My mom stood, bringing Creek with her as she sat at the edge of the bed. He played with a loose strand of her golden blond hair and it made me smile to see the bond they were forming.
“Honey, listen to me and listen carefully.” My mom’s voice was firm and strong, and when I met her gaze I saw a fierceness there. “I used to worry so much about you. Especially after your attack. But even just going to Sterling Hill I worried you would be hurt, killed, heartbroken, all of the things every parent worries about.”
I reached out and patted her free hand, totally understanding now that I had a child of my own.
“But I don’t worry anymore,” she said matter-of-factly. “Something about being gone in those woods has changed you. You’re more capable now than ever. I pity the person who gets in the way of you bringing Sawyer home. You can do anything, Demi. I see that now.”
Her words knocked the breath out of me, lighting a fire inside of me that had gone out last night when I’d heard the bad news. She was right. No one was taking Sawyer from me, not before he got to meet his son, and not before I got to love him at least eighty more years.
I stood, looking down at her and the baby, reaching out to stroke Creek’s head as he cooed.
I nodded to my mom. “You’ll watch him? Make sure he’s safe?”
My mom snuggled Creek to her chest. “With my very last breath.”
Leaving him would be hard, but I had to do this. I couldn’t live in a world where I sat idly by as Sawyer was killed for fixing a mistake the justice system made.
I nodded to my mother, and then leaned down to kiss Creek’s forehead. He looked at me with those deep blue eyes and I made my son a promise. A promise I intended to keep.
“Mommy’s going to get Daddy,” I said, and the promise cemented into my heart and worked its way into my bones.
The Dark Woods had turned me into a wild woman, and the Magic City Prison was about to suffer my wrath.
Book four, Mated Girl, is the final book in the Wolf Girl series and is on presale here. I plan to bring that date in sooner.
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