Fate Succumbs

by Tammy Blackwell

  “We have company,” I said, pointing to the tracks, not that they were incredibly hard to notice. The forepaw was at least five inches long and maybe four and a half inches across.

  Liam squatted down and lowered his nose to the ground. Once he got the scent, he followed the trail, occasionally stopping to sniff a random tree or bush. Not wanting to get in the way, I stayed where I was. Eventually, he came back, concern etched on his face.

  “It looks like there are at least four of them, maybe five,” he said, plopping down on the fireside bench next to me. “And they’re all huge. All of the prints were about the same size as the one you found.”

  “Four?” My heart pounded against the confines of my chest. Who would they have sent? A local Pack? The Taxiarho? The Stratego? Could Liam and I take on five and win? “What do we do?”

  Liam kicked a chunk of ice off the leg of the bench. “Nothing, I guess.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Yeah, wolves usually leave us alone. I’m surprised they got this close to the cabin.”

  “Wolves don’t…” It finally clicked into place. I couldn’t stop the laughter erupting from my chest. “Wolves. As in natural wolves, not Shifters.”

  The look I got suggested I might not be mentally stable, which was a pretty accurate accusation. “You thought they were Shifters?”

  “No.” Of course not. Nope. Not me. I didn’t jump to ridiculous, outrageous conclusions and almost have a complete and total meltdown over them.

  Proving he wasn’t stupid, Liam didn’t believe me. “If there was a Shifter nearby, we would both know it. I promise.” He frowned as his eyes followed the trail the tracks left in the snow. “Actually, I can’t believe we didn’t notice these guys. It must have happened while we were asleep.”

  “Do you think their den is close?” Knowing I wasn’t going to have to fight for my life, I became curious. I had never seen a natural wolf in the wild before and was eager to compare them with us.

  “Doubt it. They were probably just passing through and caught our scent. We’ll probably never see them again.”

  But he was wrong. We didn’t see the wolves, but their tracks became a common sight in the area surrounding the cabin. They never again got as close as they did the first time, but they seemed to travel around it on all sides. I thought it was cool, but Liam seemed uneasy.

  By April, we were able to spend longer stretches of time outdoors. Liam and I resumed our sparring sessions, taking an exorbitant amount of delight in throwing one another into trees and rolling across the semi-frozen ground. Our canned food supply was dwindling down to virtually nothing, but we were able to compensate with wild game. Liam and I were both out hunting - me with a spear since the bow and arrow, while cool and a sentimental favorite, wasn’t exactly functional, and Liam with teeth and claws - when I heard the wolf pack for the first time.

  The howl ripping through the afternoon sky was beautiful and terrifying at the same time. I stood in awe, listening for more. Then, I heard them. A second wolf growled. And then a third. A fourth.

  A fifth.

  My heart stalled as my nose confirmed what my ears already told me.

  Liam was under attack.

  I don’t know which happened first - my starting to run or the wolves attacking - but in my head it was at the exact same moment. I flew across the ground, ears and nose trained on the fight Liam had no chance of winning. I don’t know what I thought I would do, one girl in human form with a pointy stick, but I knew I had to get there and help him, or he would die. Liam was strong, his wolf one of the single most amazing creatures I’ve ever seen, but even he couldn’t overcome five to one odds.

  I was so attuned to Liam, I wasn’t paying proper attention to where I was going. One second I was running at top speed through the trees, the next my face was speeding towards the ground.

  No!

  I knew something, or somethings, were going to break when I hit the ground. I would be no use to Liam, and I would most likely have to lie there until the next Change, if I made it that long before the wolves smelled weakened prey.

  It happened without conscious thought. After all those Buddha-like attempts at mind over matter, it was instinct that had me smacking the ground in the form of a human and raising up as a wolf mere seconds later. Not having the time to marvel over my bout of awesomeness, I shook off tattered clothes still clinging to my body and started running at four times my human speed.

  A battle was well underway when I arrived. The wolves in the pack were huge, although none of them were quite as big as Liam. They were all bigger than I was, but Wolf Scout didn’t care. She jumped into the fray, which was now down to three fully functional wolves and one injured wolf against the Shifter she considered hers.

  I had never really practiced fighting in wolf form. Sure, Liam and I messed around and hunted, but never were there any lessons on how to best take advantage of my opponent or how to best employ my strengths. Human Scout took about half a second to worry about that before Wolf Scout shut her up and let instinct take over. I bit and ducked and lunged and jumped, not because it was the way I was taught, but because it was the way I was going to stay alive. I felt the teeth of others as they grabbed onto me, but the pain didn’t stop me, and I was able to break their hold before too much damage was done. In fact, I thought I was doing a fairly marvelous job of taking on an entire wolf pack.

  It was my overconfidence that kept me from noticing the alpha of the pack had quit paying attention to Liam and decided I needed to be dealt with. He slammed into my side, catching me off-guard. I tried to dig my claws into the ground for traction, but the melting snow left it too soft and muddy. He was on me before I fully hit the ground. The last thing I saw before his mouth clamped over my throat was Liam’s panicked grey eyes.

  Chapter 21

  The temperature at the lake was perfect, as always.

  “What’s up, ketchup?” I linked my arm with Alex’s and pulled him alongside me as I strolled up the beach. “It’s been a while.”

  His answer was a succinct “yes” that sounded as flat as a nine year old girl’s chest.

  That wasn’t right. Alex was always happy to see me. It was the way this whole dream thing worked.

  “So, how is the afterlife been treating you?” I asked, hoping to pull him out of his funk.

  “Fine.”

  No luck there. Maybe we needed a third party to distract us.

  “Where is Nicole?”

  Alex nodded up ahead at the same moment a little girl stepped out from behind a tree. Her hair was more red than brown, but her grey eyes gave her away.

  “Oh wow,” I breathed. “Look at you.”

  She waited with her hand stretched out until we got close enough for me to clasp it.

  “Hey, Scout,” she said, her little hand tucked comfortably into mine.

  “Hey, you. What’s with the girl suit?”

  Her eyes flicked towards Alex’s. “I didn’t want you to go away without ever getting to talk to you.”

  “Sweetie, I’m not going to go away. I’ll always come back here to see you guys. It’s my very favorite place to be.” I thought my words were of the reassuring variety, but they just made Nicole frown harder. I glanced over my shoulder and noticed Alex’s mood wasn’t faring any better. “I’m missing something here, aren’t I?”

  Alex took a deep breath through his nose. “Maybe we should sit down,” he said, gesturing towards a patch of grass.

  A patch of grass I had never seen before.

  Here’s the thing about my little piece of paradise by the lake - the scenery never changed. We stayed on the same stretch of beach. Always. We would walk for hours and hours, and always see the same fifty feet or so. It just kept looping over and over. At this point I knew every square inch of land, and this patch of grass was not part of it.

  “Where are we?” I asked. “How did we get here?”

  And then I remembered how I got there. I remembered the growls and f
ur, the teeth and blood. I remembered my throat being torn out.

  My knees went rubbery, dumping me onto the ground.

  “I’m dead.” Oh God. I thought I was ready for this moment, but I was wrong. “I died.”

  A little hand touched my cheek. When I raised my head, it was to meet Nicole’s calculating gaze. She had her head cocked to one side, her eyes narrowed in concentration.

  “Not yet,” she said. “Close, but not quite there.”

  “I thought it would be the Alphas. I thought I would die for a cause, for something important.” My eyes stung, and I blinked back the tears threatening to fall. “I was going to be a martyr, but ended up being just a random victim.”

  Nicole continued her intense assessment, which was quickly becoming unsettling. Alex, however, didn’t leave me to wallow in my misery alone. His arms wrapped around me in a strong embrace as his warm lips pressed against my temple.

  At least there was one upside to this being dead thing.

  “I get to stay here with you now, right?”

  Alex leaned back so I could see his face. There was no hint of a smile on his lips, the graveness from before still etched in every line of his face. “Maybe. There are rules to the afterlife, but mostly we get to choose for ourselves.”

  Oh good. Cryptic Alex was back. “What kind of choices?”

  “Lots,” he shrugged. “Right now your most pressing one is whether or not to stay.”

  I felt a bit like I was being ripped in two. Here was comfortable. Here was safe and warm. Here was where Alex was. But there was so much I still wanted to do in life. I wanted to travel around, visit foreign lands and all that. I wanted to go to college, learn stuff, and make a few bad decisions, like getting a tattoo.

  I wanted to see the Alphas overthrown.

  And then there were all the people I would leave behind. Angel. Jase. My parents. Talley. Charlie. Liam…

  “Liam!” My shout was so abrupt and loud Nicole jumped back in shock. “Alex, Liam was there. He was fighting, and he was hurt.” I looked around, half expecting to see him walking up the shore to join us. “I don’t know if he’s okay.” I grabbed onto Alex’s arm, my fingernails biting into his skin. “Do you know? Do you know if he’s okay?”

  If it was possible, Alex looked even grimmer.

  “Alex, damn it, is Liam okay?”

  “No.”

  It was a good thing I was sitting. Otherwise, I would have collapsed. It felt as if everything inside of me had vanished, leaving a brittle shell, ready to crumble in upon itself.

  “What’s happened to him?” The image in my head kept flipping from a broken and battered Wolf Liam to a broken and battered Human Liam. It occurred to me he might be more than injured, but I quickly dismissed the idea. If Liam was dead, he would be with us. With me. “Alex, please. Please. You have to tell me.”

  He slid his knuckles along my jaw. “He needs you.”

  “So, that’s my choice? I can die and stay here with you, or live and go back to Liam?”

  A stiff, slow nod.

  “I have to go.” I forced the words out of my mouth, and even though I put all my strength into it, they were little more than a whisper.

  “I know.”

  “I won’t get to come back here again, will I?”

  He replied with a small, heavyhearted shake of his head.

  I had said goodbye to him so many times before, but it never got any easier. This time there was no melding of mouths or wracking sobs. As I clung onto him, my arms latched so tightly he would probably have bruises, I actually felt all the emotions battering through my heart instead of the numb emptiness which had accompanied his death. Maybe it was because this time the leaving was my choice, or maybe it was because I was filled with resolve and purpose. Whatever it was, my heart ached at the knowledge I would never see him again, but I was able to appreciate and be grateful for the time we had been given together.

  “I will miss you every single day for the rest of my life, however long that may be.”

  His arms tightened around me. “You better make sure it’s a long, long time.”

  “I did love you,” I confessed into his chest. “I still do.”

  “And I have always and will always love you.” He finally loosened his grip on me. When he pulled back to meet my eyes I could see a hint of dimples underneath the tears. “But you’re going to keep doing the living thing, and I’m not.” A kiss against my brow. “You’ve got a big heart, Scout. Don’t be stingy with it.”

  Speaking of stingy… I pulled his face to mine and gave him a real kiss. “Goodbye, Alex Cole.”

  “Goodbye, Scout Donovan.”

  “Bye, Scout,” came the small voice from around my hip. I knelt down and gathered her in my arms.

  “I’m going to fight for you, kid,” I said to the girl who should have been given the same choice, the choice to go back and make things right. “I’m going to make sure no more little girls have to come here too soon.”

  “We’ve been waiting a long time for you,” she said.

  “I won’t let you down.” It was a promise; one I had every intention of keeping.

  “Okay,” I said standing up. “Tell me how to go home.”

  Alex’s smile was genuine, and I was glad since it would be the last time I saw him. “All you have to do is Change.”

  At first I was confused, but then I was staring up at him from a completely different angle. The pain came about the same time the smell of blood hit my nose. I reached down deep inside of myself, and began the process of making myself human once more.

  Chapter 22

  The transformation from Wolf Scout to Human Scout was long and arduous. There was no way to mark the time, but I know I laid there for what seemed like an eternity, feeling my body knit itself back together. Bones cracked. Skin ripped. Muscles tore. It was the same song and dance as any other Change, but the intensity had a whole new beat. It was like going from the Foxtrot to the Salsa. When I finally came through it - human, alive, and whole - I sent a silent prayer up to God, thanking him for the miracle. And then, because He was obviously pleased with my consideration, He let me pass out.

  I didn’t fully wake up again until I was in the bed, under a mountain of covers, but there was a hazy recollection of being carried in a pair of strong, familiar arms.

  “Do you ever get tired of that?” I asked, although my mouth felt like it was full of glue.

  Liam’s face slowly came into focus. “Scout? Are you okay?”

  “How many times have you carried my unconscious body now? Three times? Four?” Talk about your Damsel in Distress routine. I had it down pat. “It’s got to get old after a while.”

  He sat down beside me on the bed, his hands sliding along my face and neck. “What I’m tired of is you almost getting dead. I swear, I’m going to lock you in a padded room if you don’t stop all this stupid, life-threatening crap.”

  “Irony, thy name is Liam,” I said, sitting up. As the covers started to slide down I realized I wasn’t wearing clothes. Luckily, Liam was on top the situation, grabbing the sheet so my boobs stayed under wraps, although I suppose it was kind of pointless since he had to have seen them while he was carrying me back. Still, I was grateful for his quick hands. It’s one thing to be exposed when you’re unconscious, and something completely different and more embarrassing to be aware someone can see you naked.

  I took over the burden of holding up the sheet, which allowed Liam to start waving a finger in front of my face in slow motion.

  “Ummm… Whatcha doin’?”

  “Testing for brain damage.” His finger glided to the top of my nose and then pulled back. “Quit looking at me like that and follow my finger with your eyes.”

  To anyone else, including me a few months ago, his voice and abrupt manner would reek of annoyance and anger, but I knew better. Just as I had learned to read the tiny quirks of his face, I was now an expert in the various gruff tones Liam used on a daily basis. This one did
n’t say, “I can’t believe you’re such an idiot and have inconvenienced me so,” as much as, “You scared me to death you stupid, stupid girl.” Maybe a minor difference, but an important one.

  “I’m fine. I know it was touch-and-go there for a while, but…” I took a deep breath. It was supposed to be an attempt to gather my thoughts and decide how to word the whole almost-dying-and-deciding-to-stay episode, but that plan was cut short by the smell of blood. Some of it was mine, but not much. Nowhere close to most. “You’re hurt!” Of course he was. Wasn’t that why I came back to the Land of the Living in the first place?

  “What happened?” I leaned towards him and caught the sheet just in time. “Where are you injured?”

  “It’s nothing--”

  My eyelids snapped together in my own version of a Liam Cole glare. “Don’t mess me right now. I’m having a really bad day.”

  “It’s just some scratches along my side and on my arm.” When I didn’t ease up on the death look, he let out a sigh of defeat. It wasn’t until he started to take if off that I noticed he was only wearing a t-shirt, exposing his arms to the cold. Of course, I couldn’t exactly lecture him on it since I wasn’t wearing anything but a sheet.

  “Holy crap! They attacked you after you Changed?” The markings along his side and up his arm were vicious, and obviously the work of a wolf.

  Liam didn’t look at me as he replaced the shirt. “It was an accident.”

  “A wolf accidentally clawed…” Apparently the trauma of almost dying was making my brain work a little slower than normal. “I did that?” It had to have been me. Anything the other wolves had done would have healed during the Change, and he wouldn’t have been able to Change in the first place if they all hadn’t been killed or ran off. “Oh God, Liam. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

  It looked awful. The cuts weren’t life-threateningly deep, but they weren’t exactly tiny scrapes either. I knew first hand how much being clawed up hurt. And I knew how hard it was to forgive the one who did it.