Finding My Breaking Point

by C. C. Masters

  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 fueling 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 en
ough 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.

  I couldn’t believe my luck when I jumped onto the open gate and wiggled under the cover. There was more than enough room back there for me amongst some lumber that was tied down to the left side. I waited anxiously for the man to come back and my heart pounded nervously. There was no reason for him to check in the back, right? Everything looked tied down well, so hopefully he would get back in his truck and be on his way.

  Minutes ticked by until finally, I heard his distinctive footsteps in the parking lot heading towards the truck. The locking mechanism beeped and the truck dipped slightly as he climbed in. I held my breath until I heard the engine start.

  My body was tense while he slowly taxied back towards the highway. We started to pick up speed once he reached the entrance ramp and then we were on our way. The steady sounds of the engine and the wind rushing over the cover soothed me and I gradually relaxed the longer we were on the road. Exhaustion and grief settled into my bones as I laid there. I had no idea where I was going and had no idea what I was going to do when I got there. The only thing that I knew was that I was utterly alone.

  Hollow Crest Wolf Pack Trilogy

  Book 1: New Beginnings

  Book 2: The Struggle

  Book 3: A Place to Call Home (Coming Soon)