by J. L. Wilder
“He’ll be in there for a while,” Dax said, sitting down on his bed and yanking off his boots. “Might as well go now, Vince, if you’re going.”
Tommy shook his head. “Don’t,” he said urgently. “Don’t go, Vince. It’s only going to provoke him if you do.”
“Going to provoke him?” Dax laughed. “He’s already provoked, Tom. You saw how he was. He’s liable to stay in that shower for a week.”
Tommy sighed. “I suppose you’re right. But did you really have to go against him?” he asked Vince. “You know it’s just going to make the rest of this trip hell for all of us.”
“He’ll get over it or he won’t,” Vince said. He had hardly been able to think since they’d left the bar. It felt like a live wire was sparking beneath his skin, and now that he was aware of it, he couldn’t believe he’d ignored it for so long. “I’ll tell you what’s crazy, though. What’s crazy is having four shifters in a shitty motel together and never letting nay of us run off any of our energy. I’m not surprised it came to a fight tonight.”
Tommy looked worried. “This is ranger territory,” he said. “Ace isn’t wrong about that. You could get hurt.”
Vince leveled a gaze at his packmate. “Do you really think I don’t know there are rangers in Wyoming?” he asked quietly.
Tommy had the grace to look ashamed of himself. “No. Of course I don’t.”
“I’ll be careful,” Vince said. “And I’ll be back before you know it.” Probably before our would-be alpha drags his ass out of the shower, he added internally, but he did not dare say those words aloud. Even with Ace out of the room, there were some things Vince just couldn’t say.
“Just hurry back, will you?” Tommy asked him. “I don’t think I’ll rest easy until we’re all back in the same room.”
That made sense to Vince. There was a comfort that came from knowing that your pack was safe and well protected. He had experienced the anxiety and uneasiness that came along with a pack member’s absence too many times, and he felt bad about the fact that he was about to inflict that feeling on Dax and Tommy.
But it was the lesser evil. If he tried to stay in this room right now, he was going to lose it.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” he pledged. “Just a quick run, I promise. Just need to stretch my legs.”
“Okay,” Dax agreed, picking up the remote and flipping on the TV. Vince thought he could probably count on Dax to help keep Tommy calm during the next hour. Dax was good for things like that.
He turned and left the motel room before the conversation could go on any longer. Tucking his room key into his pocket, he set off at a jog towards the woods behind the motel, on the opposite side of the parking lot from the street. That ought to be a good place for a run. It didn’t seem likely that he would come across anybody over there, no matter how hard or how far he ran.
He entered the woods and made his way about thirty yards from the tree line, to the point where he could no longer see the lights of the motel in the distance. Once there, he came to a stop, stepped behind a large oak tree, and began to remove his clothes.
He had lost enough shirts and pants to careless shifting over the years. Now that he was an adult, he was always mindful about it. He was always careful to strip down before assuming his wolf form. Clothes made to fit a human body just couldn’t survive the transition.
When he was naked, he folded his things carefully into a neat and tiny pile. Two branches forked away from the oak tree’s massive trunk, and he carefully tucked his pile of clothes up between them. His things would stay clean and protected there. It was unlikely an animal would find them
And now, at long last, he was ready to run.
He closed his eyes and listened to the wind rustling the leaves. He inhaled and smelled the familiar scent of earth and night and nature.
And he reached.
The wolf lived somewhere deep within him, and the longer he went without shifting, the deeper it seemed to go. It was as if he was out of practice. When he did this regularly, it was easy to access the wild part of himself. But he had been living human for a long time, and even though he had felt close to snapping in the bar, it was hard to make it happen.
The scent of the air, he reminded himself.
The earth under your feet.
The sound of a million little living things that make up this ecosystem.
And then, suddenly and without warning, it was happening.
The ground rushed up to meet him as his legs shortened. He pitched forward as his hips canted and caught himself on hand that were no longer hands, but paws. His ears and his nose felt as if they were straining, growing, to take in the scents and the sounds around him, which had suddenly become bigger and more alive.
And his thoughts diminished. Focused.
This was one of his favorite things about being in animal form. Being human was complicated, emotionally fraught, full of decisions that needed to be made and conflicting ideas that had to be balanced. Being a wolf was simple. When he was hungry, he ate. When he was tired, he slept. And when his muscles itched to be used, as they did now, he ran.
He wanted to let out a satisfied howl, but enough of his human mind remained to understand that this was a bad idea—this was ranger land, after all, and the last thing he wanted was to bring them out with their guns and their shoot first ask questions later attitudes. So, he kept quiet.
And he ran.
God, but it felt amazing to run.
It felt as if he had been sitting still in a cramped seat for days, and now, finally, he was being permitted to get up and walk around. His muscles rejoiced at the opportunity to move. He pushed off the ground with his hind legs and sprang forward, covering huge swaths of land with every bound.
His instincts served him well. The trees seemed to move out of the way to allow him to pass, and he never feared that his speed would cause him to run into one of them. Occasionally he registered the presence of another animal watching him, but he always gave them a wide berth. He wasn’t here to hunt or to fight. This was strictly about the run.
It didn’t even occur to him to wonder how far he had come for a long time. He lost himself completely in the run. He even forgot to keep track of the passage of time. It wasn’t until he saw the lights on the horizon that it occurred to him that he must have come farther than he had intended to.
At the sight of those lights, he hung back, coming to a halt and slinking behind the trees. That was a private home. Somebody lived up there. And nobody would be happy to see a wolf on their property. Vince couldn’t speculate as to what they would do if they did see him, but he knew enough to know that staying away was the right decision. Even a natural wolf would have known that.
The light he had seen was on the porch. Dimly, he could see a figure sitting there. He thought it was a woman by the way the garment she was wearing swirled around her ankles in the light breeze. He sniffed the air, trying to get a sense of the people who lived there, but the wind was blowing in the wrong direction and he couldn’t pick up very much.
Definitely human, though. That much was obvious. He would have known at once if these were shifters, and they weren’t. Which meant that it wasn’t safe for Vince to show himself here.
No problem. He had been away for too long anyway, he now realized. He had been running for almost forty-five minutes at top speed, and that meant he was going to be late getting back to the motel. Which meant that Ace would probably be even angrier than he might otherwise have been, and Dax and Tommy would be worried.
Guilt was too complex an emotion for a wolf. But he did feel the call to return to his pack, the urgency of the need to do so. It was time to go home.
He turned away from the house and made his way slowly through the woods. He would move with care until he had reached a point where they wouldn’t be able to see or hear him anymore. If they suspected a wolf was out here, he knew, they might come running. They’d never be able to catch him, but they might have guns, and bu
llets were faster than he was. That thought wasn’t too complicated for a wolf.
He had just crossed the threshold of where he thought he could still possibly be heard when it happened.
The first thing Vince was aware of was the sound—a snap, louder than any he had ever heard in his life. It sounded as if the jaws of the very Earth had closed. He had a moment to wonder what that sound had been.
Then the pain hit.
It was blinding, unlike anything he had ever felt before. He lost track of where he was, lost track even of who he was. It was as if he had been thrown into a void, and the only thing to orient him was pain. It became his center, the pull that replaced gravity. He couldn’t move. It was drawing him in.
No, that wasn’t right.
He actually couldn’t move.
His forward momentum had been halted as he had started to break into a run. Now he lay sprawled on the ground as if he had tripped, but that wasn’t what had happened. Not exactly.
His brain struggled to catch up.
A part of him yearned for his human self, but he couldn’t shift. Not now. Not when he didn’t even know what was going on. He didn’t even know if it would be possible to shift. The wolf was frantic, clawing. It wasn’t likely to let Vince—human Vince—take over.
He looked back, toward the source of the pain, and immediately wished he hadn’t.
His leg was caught tight in a steel trap, clearly broken, and though he couldn’t see well enough in the gathering dark to be sure, he was fairly certain it was bleeding.
He turned away, unable to face the sight.
The trap must have been laid by the people at the house he had seen. They must be trying to defend their property from wild wolves. Ranchers. He was so stupid. He had insisted on going out running in Wyoming, and now he was going to meet the same fate as his brother. They would certainly find him in the morning, and they would kill him.
There was only one chance.
He would have to hope that his pack could find him first.
And even though he knew it was a risk, even though he knew it might bring the humans, he threw back his head and let out a howl. Calling to them. Hoping to bring them to his side.
Maybe he would get lucky and the humans wouldn’t be willing to come looking until the sun was up.
Maybe.
Chapter Five
AMY
Night was, in Amy’s opinion, the only good time to go out of the house. The darkness that hung like a cloak over the world made things seem a little closer, a little more friendly.
Amy had never been afraid of the dark. Not even as a child. Rather than worry about the things the dark might have been hiding, she felt as if the dark was hiding her. She felt shielded. Tonight, sitting on the porch of her parents’ house and drinking a cold root beer, she felt as if Chris was a million miles away. There was nothing he could do or say to hurt her anymore. Nothing that had happened between them mattered.
She felt free.
Going to the hardware store with her father hadn’t helped matters. She knew her parents had hoped it would be good for her to get out of the house, but a hardware store just wasn’t a natural environment for Amy. Rather than feeling as if she had stepped back into her normal life, she had felt awkward and out of place. It was the same feeling that had plagued her since Chris had started divorce proceedings.
She had been yanked out of the world she had known and thrown back into the one she’d grown up in. Except that this world was no longer her home. She was no longer the girl who had grown up in this house.
But the porch in the evening—that was an exception. She could find comfort here. She wasn’t the little girl who had sat on the porch swing and tried to see how fast she could make it go, but maybe she could be the young woman who relaxed out here with a book and a cold drink after sundown.
Her parents were in bed. It was easy enough to pretend that the house and the property were hers, that this was simply her life. If only I had money, she thought. If only I could buy a little place of my own and start fixing it up, start building something that was just mine. But of course, she had never gotten a job. Chris had seen to that.
Damn him, she thought with sudden vigor, and was surprised at herself. That was unlike her.
Then again, who knew what she was like anymore? She was going to have to come up with new ways to define who she was now that she was no longer Chris’ wife.
She was just about to head back inside for the evening when she heard it—a low, mournful howl coming from the east side of their property.
Wolf.
Wolves weren’t exactly common in this part of Wyoming, but they were far from unheard of, and everyone Amy had known growing up had considered it common practice to set traps around their homes. The last thing anyone wanted was a wolf coming up to the house—even though, in Amy’s opinion and according to everything she had read, it was highly unlikely that any wolf would ever do that. Wolves feared humans just as much as humans feared them, and they were rightfully cautious when they discovered a human residence.
But most humans seemed to think of wolves as more like raccoons—willing to invade anyone’s property if there was a chance of food in it for them. So the traps were set. They ringed Amy’s parents’ house in a wide perimeter, and as a child she had been taught not to go too far from the house, lest she accidentally come across one of them.
The howl came again.
Is a wolf trapped? Amy wondered. The howl was higher pitched than she would have expected, as if the creature making the sound was in pain. If it is trapped, it’s in for a rough night. Dad isn’t going to go out there in the middle of the night and try to save it.
Who was she kidding? She loved her father, but he wouldn’t try to help the wolf at all. When he went out to the trap, it would be with his rifle.
And maybe that would be necessary. It would be cruel to send a wolf back into the wild if it was hurt too badly to fend for itself. But it would be even crueler to leave it to suffer all night.
Suddenly decided, Amy got to her feet. She went to the locker on the side of the porch where her father kept his rifle and took it out carefully, knowing she would need to be ready to put the wolf out of its misery if that was necessary. She also took a big flashlight so she would be able to see where she was going once she got into the woods. The traps were a decent way away from the house, and she would have a bit of a hike ahead of her.
I can’t just leave that wolf, she thought. I can’t leave it there to suffer all night long. It’s too awful.
She knew that going into the dark woods alone and approaching a trapped wolf wasn’t exactly the smartest idea in the world. Her father had done this dozens of times, and he still refused to do it except in the light of day. Amy had never done it before. But she just couldn’t stand the sound of those howls. She couldn’t leave the wolf all alone.
Make a sound, she thought. Let me know where you are. Help me find you.
The wolf complied, letting out another gusty howl, and Amy switched on her flashlight and began to make her way through the undergrowth.
She knew the wolf would probably fall silent once it sensed her approach, and she was right. After that last howl, no more came, she would have to hope she was going in the right direction, and she would rely on her other senses. Like—there. There was a paw print.
This must be the right way.
She broke through the foliage and shone her light down at the ground, lighting up a frightened looking wolf with its hind leg caught in one of her father’s traps.
The wolf looked up at her. Its teeth were bared and its ears were laid back against its head, and she could tell it was frightened and in pain. Would it allow her to get close?
“Okay,” she said aloud, talking more to herself than to the animal. “I want to help you, but I need you to hold still and let me. Okay?” She dropped to her knees.
The wolf snarled.
Amy jerked back. If it turned on her, she knew, i
t could kill her. And there wasn’t much on earth more dangerous than a trapped animal. Sharp teeth, sharp fangs...she gripped the gun a little more tightly.
If only the wolf understood what the gun was. If only she could make it understand that she wouldn’t hurt it, if it wouldn’t hurt her.
But she would hurt it. She had to examine the trapped leg in order to decide what to do next, and that was going to cause the animal pain.
God. She should have waited for her father to do this.
For a moment she considered turning and going back up to the house. But she was here now. Might as well get the job done.
She shone the light down at the wolf’s leg. It was bleeding copiously, and it was clearly broken. She thought the animal would probably die if it was left out here. It wouldn’t be able to hunt or to defend itself from predators. The kind thing was to put a bullet in its head right now.
God, she didn’t want to do it.
But she couldn’t let it suffer.
She reached for the spring that would release the trap. The least she could do was let it out before she killed it. It wasn’t as if it would be able to run. And it was a beautiful animal. It deserved the dignity of dying free of confinement.
She sprung the trap.
As she did, the wolf rounded on her.
Jaws closed around her wrist, sinking deep into her skin, so deep she thought she could feel the wolf’s teeth scrape against bone. She screamed as the pain crashed over her. It’s going to kill me, she realized, and stars danced before her, obscuring her vision. I shouldn’t have freed it. I should have shot it. That’s what Dad would have done. That’s what—
She couldn’t maintain logical thought. The world seemed to be spinning around her. The pain in her wrist was everything. She would bleed out, she thought. She would die here in these woods. How bad would she look when the wolf was finished with her? She reached for her gun, hoping even now to get a shot off, knowing that it wouldn’t matter. It was too late for her to save herself.
