A Place to Run (Trials of the Blood Book 1)

by Becca Lynn Mathis

  I don’t know exactly how long we ran or how much ground we covered. It didn't matter, I had survived. My wolf and I weren't fighting to be in control of one another. We were one—no longer two pieces, but a whole. The coin had flipped. I stopped in a patch of moonlight and howled my appreciation to all of creation. Or at least, all that could hear. The pack answered me. I thought my heart might burst out of my chest with happiness at the sound. Had I been human, I was sure it would have brought me to tears.

  Sheppard steered our run back to the clearing, all of us piling over each other as we flopped to the ground, chests heaving from the exhilaration. Jonathan nuzzled under my chin, and Sheppard lay with his back against mine. We all dozed lightly in the cool night air before we roused to chase another rabbit that had come across our pack. We rushed after it, following the little patch of grey fur until it darted into its burrow. We flopped to the ground again right there and dozed. I was curled against Jonathan’s belly when I realized that time no longer mattered. Pack was pack, and the time spent together was so much more important and valuable than the way people—humans—typically measured time.

  It was still dark when Sheppard roused us and led us back to the clearing where the night had started.

  Everyone changed back, stretching as they reoriented to two legs and pulling their clothes from the pile. I tried not to stare at anyone, but my eyes kept wandering back to the back, shoulders, and arms of a certain dark-haired joker who was pulling his jeans on. The pants did nice things to his rear end.

  I shook my head, snorting the clear late-night air out of my snout. Still, I had no intention of reorienting to two legs for a while. I wasn’t even sure how I had actually accomplished getting into wolf form. I certainly had no clue how I was going to get back into human form.

  Sheppard pulled his jeans on and knelt in front of me, shirt in hand. "It's alright if you don't want to change back here." He rubbed my head. "I'll bet you'd love to get a good look at yourself anyway. I know I wanted to when I first changed."

  I leaned into his touch, closing my eyes in contentment.

  "Jonathan doesn't mind fur in his jeep,” he said. “Ride back with him. You can get a good look and a little rest back at the house before we hunt Frederick."

  I wagged my tail at him—a strange thought—and paced over to my clothes, now the only ones left in the pile. Everyone was gathering at the edge of the clearing toward where the cars were parked.

  I pawed at my clothes to get them collected together and then nosed them in Jonathan’s direction, letting out a little yip. It turns out that wolf mouths don’t make words.

  Jonathan looked to me, another of his signature smirks on his face. His shirt was in his hand and I realized that none of the guys had bothered to put their shirts back on.

  “Ridin' with me, huh?" he said.

  I nosed my clothes toward him.

  “Hard to do people things without thumbs, isn’t it?”

  I rolled my eyes, planted my butt on the ground, and sighed.

  "Alright, alright,” he said, picking up my clothes. “Come on Dreamer," he added quietly.

  I padded along beside him as we walked back to the cars.

  "She's a manual, so try to keep your nose out of the way of the shifter, alright?" He smiled and lightly tapped my snout with a finger. I snorted.

  Jamie saw us approaching the Jeep and nodded, something unspoken passing between the two brothers. He spun on his heel, turning to face Sheppard. “Mind if I ride with you and Ian? The Jeep’s a little crowded.” He hooked a thumb in our direction as he winked at me.

  Sheppard looked at Jonathan, who was opening the door for me and chortled. “Sure.”

  Jonathan put our clothes on the passenger seat and I hopped up into the Jeep. He closed the door and I caught a flash of white in the rearview mirror. Matt’s Camaro roared to life as I maneuvered around to gaze at the face of the white wolf in the mirror. I moved my head side-to-side and the reflection followed. The wolf was beautiful. I was beautiful? Pale golden-brown spread along the back of my neck and presumably along my back, but the mirror was too small to tell for sure.

  “I’ll catch up,” Jonathan called to Sheppard.

  I heard the rumble of the Ram start up and pull away, but it felt distant.

  “That mirror’s too small to do you any justice,” Jonathan said softly as he waved his phone. “I can take a few pictures of you now for you to see before we even head back.” He quirked an eyebrow at me, but my tail was already wagging. “Y’know, if you’re the impatient type.”

  I pawed at the door handle and he opened the door to let me back out of the Jeep. I bounded a couple of steps away as Jonathan opened the camera on his phone.

  TWELVE

  “The older wolves in our pack, like Sheppard and Matt, seem to forget that these phones do more than just make calls.” Jonathan’s eyes sparkled at my bounciness as I shifted my weight from paw to paw. “They tend to be pretty useful.” He pointed the back of the phone toward me and a light laugh escaped him. “You’ll have to sit still if you want any of these to come out clear.”

  With a huff, I sat down. A flash of bright light blinked from the back of the phone and dots swam in my vision. I snorted and shook my head.

  “Sorry about that. The full moon isn’t enough light for these things. How about I take a video walking around you and maybe you can keep your eyes closed?”

  I yipped an approval and bounced to my feet. The flash came on again and moved in a slow circle around me. I couldn’t help but follow it with my eyes anyway, though I kept it in the edge of my vision, trying to see Jonathan too. My tail waved side to side with excitement.

  When he was done, he knelt next to me and played the video, but I couldn’t make out anything other than a white blob in the middle of darkness thanks to the dots still swimming from the flash. I guess my eyesight had changed as well. I shook my head, squeezing my eyes shut. When I opened them, I still couldn’t see the images on the screen.

  “I think your wolf form is causing you trouble here,” Jonathan said, pausing the loop of the video. “If you change back, you may find it easier to see.”

  With another huff, I sat down again. Well okay, but how do I get back to my other shape? I closed my eyes and thought about the release of shifting back. My skin crawled a little and my toes curled, but otherwise nothing happened. I huffed in mild frustration.

  “You have to think of it as the reverse of how you got into your wolf,” Jonathan said. “It’s like remembering that you’re put together differently—your bits belong elsewhere.”

  I grumbled and closed my eyes to try again, this time thinking harder.

  “I’ll try to help you,” he said. “Sheppard uses this one phrase to help new wolves change back: sarcina eiusdem sanguinis.”

  It sounded like the Latin from a Catholic church.

  I felt a pull on that same sense that I felt when running with the pack. The connection that bound all of us together. My skin crawled again, but nothing actually changed. My whole body shook with the resulting crawling itch.

  “You felt that,” he said. “Right?” He shifted around to face me. “It's pretty normal to have to fight your wolf to be human again the first few times. Maybe if I touch you and concentrate.”

  He put a hand on my shoulder, spreading his fingers into my fur. He took a long, deep breath, letting it out slowly. With a quiet murmur, he repeated the phrase.

  “Sarcina eiusdem sanguinis.”

  Nothing more than the skin crawl happened again. Maybe I could help with some concentrating of my own. I locked eyes with him. His heart pounded. I took a slow, deep breath like he just had. Then another. On the third, his breathing matched mine and he murmured the phrase again. I willed myself back to my human form, trying to push my body into shape with my mind.

  My skin crawled, but then it grew tight, and my joints felt like they were in the wrong places. Like before, sharp, breaking pain caused me to yelp and curl to the grou
nd in front of him, my head landing on his thigh as my bones shifted. I watched my paws lengthen and become fingers, the fur giving way to skin as my nose shortened and paled to its human form. As the last of my body changed back, I was curled on the ground, eyes squeezed shut and breathing hard.

  The pain was nothing, however, compared to my elation at having survived the night.

  As the pain receded, I looked at Jonathan, who was also breathing hard where he knelt. His eyes were closed, and he was using both hands to steady himself, the phone curled into his white-knuckled fist on the ground. I moved closer to him and touched his shoulder, my heart still pounding. Despite what should have been a cool night, his skin was warm, hot even, but he wasn’t sweating. He trembled almost imperceptibly at my touch. I ran my hand along his shoulder and up to his jawline, moving my own face closer to his. The woodsy electric scent of him was intoxicating. I closed my mouth against his and breathed his scent in.

  Squeezing my shoulder, he pulled away from me. His eyes were wide, focused on mine, the question plain on his face. I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth.

  “Lynn?” His green eyes searched my own.

  I closed my eyes, put my forehead against his, and whispered, “No questions. Just kiss me.”

  He chuckled against my mouth. “Gladly.”

  His hand tangled in my hair as I pushed him back against the leaves and dirt and moss on the ground. My knees were on either side of his hips, but when my breasts pressed against the heat of his chest, my breath caught in his mouth. His other hand brushed against my bare hipbone and my skin erupted in goosebumps. I pressed closer to him, my kisses becoming more urgent as I reached for the button and zipper of his jeans. I released them one-handed and ran a hand along his waistline and over his butt. It felt as nice as it had looked. I smiled against his mouth and giggled as he picked me up and placed me on the ground under him. Together, we worked the pants off his hips and I could feel his hardness press between my thighs.

  He stopped kissing me then. “What on Earth am I supposed to do with you now?”

  Like the heat he pressed against wasn’t telling enough.

  With a mischievous smile, I pressed a palm against his lower back and my hips against him, curling a leg around his suggestively. “You can’t tell me you don’t already know.”

  “Mmhmm,” he replied. He pressed into me and I threw my head back, moaning in pleasure. “I just needed to be sure.” He placed a gentle kiss on my exposed throat.

  A short time later, we were lying spent and naked on the forest floor, our legs still tangled together. I twisted a section of his hair around my finger as he ran his hand along the line of my body from shoulder to hip. The scent of him clung to my skin and I reveled in his touch.

  He shifted away from me and grabbed his cell phone. “You never got to see the video clearly, did you?” he asked. He tapped the screen a few times and then turned it to me. “Here.”

  Taking the phone from him, I sat up. The wolf on the screen was beautiful. She had pale golden-brown fur along her spine and top of the tail that faded to a creamy white on her belly and paws. I recognized the face from the mirror on the Jeep, and tears welled in my eyes.

  “She’s beautiful,” I whispered.

  Jonathan sat up behind me and kissed my shoulder, his lips brushing against the scar there. “You’re beautiful,” he corrected. “That’s you.”

  I became hyperaware of my skin and scars and my heart pounded in my ears. I wiped my face and shook my head lightly, pulling my knees to my chest. “I’m just me.” I thumped my chin onto my knee.

  Jonathan guided my hand to the scars crisscrossing his chest and I could make out the faint ones on his arms in the moonlight. I gently traced the smooth skin with my fingertips. He watched me for a moment before hooking a finger under my chin, tilting it up so I met his eyes. “You are beautiful, Dreamer,” he said softly. “And I will spend the rest of my life proving it to you if that’s what it takes.”

  I sucked in my bottom lip. What the hell did he mean by that?! I took a breath. Then another. Then a third. “We should probably get back before everyone gets worried.”

  Something flickered across Jonathan’s face, but then his smile appeared. “You just want to get back so we can make use of a bed.”

  I smiled and shouldered him. “Well now that you mention it,” I said, planting another kiss on his mouth. “I am pretty sleepy.”

  And I was definitely not ready to think about the rest of his life—or even my own, for that matter. I just wanted to get back to familiar ground.

  He laughed and stood, pulling me to my feet with him. He stepped over to his discarded pants, shook them out, and pulled them on. I opened the door to the Jeep and brushed the leaves and dirt from my skin.

  My bare skin.

  It was November in Colorado.

  I may have been born and raised here, but I still should have been cold to be outside, buck naked, in the middle of the night. But I wasn’t. A cool breeze sent goosebumps flowing along my skin, but even that wasn’t uncomfortably cold, just cool.

  Kaylah wasn’t kidding when she said the wolves ran warm.

  I pulled on my own clothing, sitting in the seat of the to pull on my socks and shoes, Jonathan’s discarded shirt in my lap. He got in the drivers’ seat and started the drive back to Sheppard’s. I watched and smelled him as we drove in silence for a mile or two.

  “You shouldn’t really need the full moon to change now that you’ve changed the first time," he said quietly, almost absentmindedly. “But it helps. The more often you change, the easier it will be for you. Sheppard will probably take us on nightly runs though for a couple of weeks to help get you used to it."

  A thrill shot through me at the thought of running through the forest again with my pack. But then something else hit me.

  Jonathan.

  I had just slept with him. Or did my wolf just sleep with him? My gut jumped.

  Mine.

  The thought came so forcefully into my head that I startled and growled softly. But weren’t my wolf and I one and the same now? I mean, clearly, Jonathan wanted what just happened. Didn’t I want that too? God, I didn’t even want to think about what he meant by ‘spend the rest of my life proving it to you.’

  I wasn’t really paying attention to how hazy everything was as we approached Sheppard’s neighborhood, but with a start, I realized that the smoke I was smelling on the breeze coming into the jeep was stronger than any fireplace chimney would warrant. We were close to pack central.

  As we rounded a corner onto the cul-de-sac, reality slammed into my gut like an 18-wheeler going 70 miles per hour.

  Sheppard’s home was ablaze.

  THIRTEEN

  ANGRY RED AND AMBER flames licked through the windows on the front of Sheppard’s once-beautiful home. Clouds of thick grey-black smoke billowed onto the wraparound porch and into the night air. It blotted out the stars, and everything in the area was hazy. Firefighters sprayed the house with two huge jets of water, causing more smoke that was lighter in color than the house smoke. But the upstairs had already collapsed. There would be no salvaging the house. Pack central was going up in flames—literally, and I couldn’t look away.

  Jonathan pulled his Jeep alongside the curb a few houses down from Sheppard’s. His heart thumped hard in his chest. So did mine, for that matter. He pulled his shirt on over his head as we exited the Jeep and looked for the rest of the pack. I couldn’t smell anything but the smoke, but I could make them out close to one of the fire trucks.

  Matt stormed over to us. “Where have you been, Jonathan?!”

  He took a deep breath in through his nose. His expression changed, and he narrowed his eyes at me before turning back to Jonathan. “You should have been here sooner! The pack needed you!”

  Why the hell was he so angry? It wasn’t like the fire was our fault.

  “You’re letting her,” he jabbed a finger at me, “make you lose your focus on what is important! She�
�s not even sure she wants pack yet and you’re rutting in the forest with her like you have claim to her! Meanwhile, our home is burning down!”

  Jonathan’s gaze turned to steel, and his fists were balled. “I have my own place across town, Matt,” he said, quiet anger roiling in his voice. “You know that.” His voice got louder. “And even if we had made it back sooner, what—precisely—do you think we could have done?!” He shouted the last line, moving so close to Matt that they were almost touching noses.

  I wanted to run, wanted to hide. But I was not going to give Matt the satisfaction. Rutting in the forest? What kind of chauvinistic piece of—

  “That’s enough.” Sheppard’s voice washed through us along with a shimmer of the sort of power I was coming to expect from him. He came over and placed a hand on Matt’s shoulder. “The smoke’s covering the smell now, but it was vampires that set the fire. Once the fire’s out, you’ll be able to smell it again, and we can track it.”

  That broke my chain of thought. “Vampires did this?”

  Sheppard nodded. “They must have known we were out with you for the full moon. After your encounter with their sheep earlier, they must have wanted to retaliate.”

  I stepped back. “It was because of me?”

  My voice was barely above a whisper. Cold fear ran down my spine.

  “They wanted me, in the store, but they didn’t get me.” My voice trembled. I trembled.

  “No,” Sheppard said.

  “Now, they’ve burned down your house.”

  “Lynn...” Jonathan reached for me, but I jerked away.

  “It’s my fault!”

  Run!

  Sheppard and Jonathan both called after me—Matt too—but I didn’t hear what they said. I ran toward my little purple car, still in the driveway and unharmed by the flames. Maybe I was faster than them, maybe I wasn’t. It didn’t matter, I had a head start and was fast enough. Certainly, faster than the firemen who tried to block me. I didn’t have the key on me, but my dad had shown me long ago where he had zip-tied a spare key to the frame in case I ever lost mine.