Eyes of the Wolf

37
I woke up after a barrage of depressing dreams. I was still human, I thought dimly, and in a group of people and wolves in the middle of the floor. Perhaps as an echo of the dreams I’d had the night before, a Chris-like voice sounded in my head: “Looks like a friggin-huge bestial after-orgy.” Funny as this was, what with all the naked bodies curled together with all the big wolves, the quip only made me more depressed. I hadn’t even thought of them yesterday, so preoccupied as I was with breakfast and the hunt and Frost and Niko—
I groaned, my throat closing. A couple of packmates around me stirred, and Eagle belly-crawled up to my side and snuggled. Despite our nakedness, this didn’t bother me, and I rubbed her shoulder soothingly until she went back to sleep. When her breathing had deepened and her scent was no longer anxious, I propped my chin up on my hands.
Niko was banished from the pack. Was that better than death? Roger had told me that being a wolf without Pack was the worst sort of torture. But would he have preferred death to that? And for what? Protecting me from the biggest, baddest bitch in the country. Me.
But what about before that? My Alpha had said that Niko had abandoned my father and me the day that I was Changed. Was that true? Was that why Niko had been on house arrest? Because he had disobeyed the Alpha’s orders to protect his girlfriend—ex-girlfriend—from a bunch of killers?
Well, what the hell? I thought, incensed. How hard is it to protect somebody from death, even if you are pissed? Eagle stirred next to me, and I rubbed her arm again. Did he think that getting my dad killed would make me more willing to see his side? Did he think that Roger would’ve been fine protecting me?
And what about Adam? I realized. He was there too. He was guarding my house along with Roger and Niko. Where was he when all this was happening?
I stood and glanced around, but didn’t see Adam anywhere. I started stepping over—and around, in the wolves’ case—the bodies on the ground until I reached the wall, and rummaged through the dresser against the wall for a cami and some boxers.
It’s odd that I haven’t really been upset over my dad’s death since day before yesterday, I mused as I walked out the door, calmer now that I had something to do. Is it because I’m a wolf now? Is death something I’m gonna be okay with? I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. It seemed to me that death should never be something people should just be okay with.
“Dawn?” I spun and looked right into the eyes of the Beta. Out of respect, I ducked my head away from his eyes. This was the first time I’d seen him in his human form. Instead of the deep sable fur of yesterdays hunt, he was a tall man with unkept black hair lying every-which way.
Get used to being called Dawn, Maya, I reminded myself.
“You okay?” he asked. I nodded, then stopped and looked up to him, still not meeting his eyes.
“Can you tell me where I can find Ad—Sparrow?”
“He’s not here. He left this morning.”
“Oh.” Crap. “When will he be back?”
“When he gets back.” He clapped my shoulder twice with his left hand as he left, causing my whole body to give and stagger for a better position to prevent falling. Couldn’t becoming a wolf make me a bit taller? Being a human around these people is gonna get me tossed around all over the place…
I stood on the dirt road for a few moments before coming to a decision. Once reached, I walked behind one of the buildings and Changed before bounding into the trees.
:o3
When I come around by my house, I can still smell traces of blood from across the street. I swallow a whine and then a growl at the smell of unfamiliar people in my territory.
Not my territory. I am Pack now, I remind myself. Still, I allow myself a small growl before going off to see how well I can find back ways around the town.
:o3
I am panting by the time I reach the horse pasture. Luckily, I can tell that the old gelding isn’t here, which means the one I follow is riding him. I know where to find her.
With my eyesight, I cannot tell how well I camouflage in the grass, but surely if I crouch low enough I will still be obscured by the vegetation. Near the gate, I hear a buzzing noise and catch a scent. The familiarity of the chemical strawberry smell—her favorite lotion, I remember—makes my tail wag. She must still be here. There was a niggling feeling in the back of my brain the whole time I traveled here, saying that she would not be here anymore. But she is.
I travel downwind from the arena, emerging from the grasses several yards away from the arena and loping to the shed where she keeps all her horse gear. It smells like sweat in there, but not fear sweat, which is what I am familiar with from my hunts. This is just sweat.
I remind myself to get away from the shed in case she sees me—it would be best if she didn’t have anything with which to compare me, sizewise. I stride away from it, doing my best to act like some sort of stray like she was used to seeing. Since I am downwind of her and her horse, I am able to smell the pair in the arena. No, not pair. There are three.
I curse my poor vision as I squint and try to see who the third is. Without sight to help, I am unable to place the scent. Apparently it’s not familiar enough to recognize. Frustrated, I listen instead. From this distance, as a human I shouldn’t have heard them, but with only slight focus their conversation is easy to pick up.
“—doesn’t know.” Chris’s voice is impatient.
“He shouldn’t. You can’t tell your brother.”
“I wasn’t going to. You told me it was a secret, and those don’t come with fine print unless you’re the one to put it there. And you didn’t.”
“Sorry,” the boy says after only short hesitation. They are quiet long enough for Chris to make another two laps at a walk.
“How are you feeling today, anyway?”
“Shitty.”
The boy shifts his feet. I can hear it. “You wanna talk about it?”
“We already have!” Her tone is strained; she sounds close to tears. I whine and put my head on my paws. The horse stops and her breathing struggles to right itself; I long to get to my feet again and comfort her, but I cannot. The boy climbs through the fence and, after another small, ponderous stop, walks to her and her horse. I hear her body slowly shift in the saddle until both her booted feet hit the deep dirt, and then she comes into contact with the other human. She cries. I whine again, though I try to stop myself this time.
“What is it?” Chris asks softly, still strained-sounding.
He doesn’t answer her verbally, but from here I can see him pull away from her and trot to the fence and look around. At first, this doesn’t register that this is a bad thing, but then his eyes light on me. My head shoots up as he vaults over the pipe fence and runs in my direction. I scramble to my feet and bolt to the pasture, leaping easily over the fence into Roy’s pen where hot wire grazes against my belly and stifle. I yip as I land hard in the grass on the other side. The footsteps reach the fence and scramble through, warned against vaulting again by my mistake. I look up and roll left and to my feet when my pursuer reaches me. Drake—his name is Drake.
He stands a scant two yards away, barely breathing hard. His eyes rove over me, wide and unsteady. His nostrils flare. I can smell his fear for his companion, and a shock that makes his body rigid and hard to keep upright.
“Maya?” he breathes. The word is enough to bring me to my feet and, before he can follow me, I barrel away and under the fence faster than his two legs can carry him.
:o3
Stupid, I growl to myself as I walk through the trees on my way home. The sun is not as hot under the trees, but I am still exhausted from running from Chris’s fields all the way to the forest here. My legs shake, and it takes a lot of focus just to put my feet in front of me. I know I am perilously close to the dirt road, and some dumb human might see me, but that doesn’t seem as bad to me compared to my escapade less than an hour ago.
I hear a car come up the road. My ears move to try and follow it, but the rest of me is unwilling to move any farther. The vehicle slows, and I hear a window roll down, as well as all the electricity buzzing through that makes it do so.
“Maya?” That’s a voice I recognize easily. I lift my eyes and see Adam leaning from the window, concern leaking freely from his body and his hazel eyes. “What’re you doing out here?” The door opens.
He puts his hand on my shoulder, and I feel like falling. I have found Pack; I am okay now. When I start leaning his way, he digs his fingers into my skin just enough to tell me not to lie down. I whine and he takes his hand away, walks to the vehicle and then pats at the bed of the truck. Understanding, I wearily amble over and jump in among a bunch of cardboard boxes, feeling the whole thing sag under my weight.
“If you shift, climb in the back window, ‘kay? I can’t hear anyone behind me, but I don’t wanna be surprised with a naked woman in the back.”
I nod. It isn’t until the truck starts moving again that I realize that the bed is burning my feet, which makes me really want to be human, if only to be in the more bearable back seat. Whining, I struggle to make the Change, and it takes more concentration than usual to force myself into a human again, since every time my feet start shifting the more sensitive pads there hurt more for the contact with the truckbed beneath me.
After several minutes of agony, I was a sweaty human again, and I carefully unlatched the back window and clambered into the truck, trying to avoid contact with all solid things, since they all seemed to be hot. Again, I wished my legs were a bit longer. A lot longer.
“Hello,” Adam greeted. I laughed breathily and sat down on the back seat. It was that really scratchy cloth material, though I doubted I had ever thought of it that way until my bare, sensitive fanny was in contact with it. Remembering that more of me was in the same condition, I scooted to the seat behind the driver’s, so that less of me was visible from the rearview mirror. I was getting pretty comfortable with this nudity thing (made the summer heat a bit more bearable without having to wear any clothes), but somehow being alone in the car with a male I had known before my Change made things awkward again. Especially since I could sense his embarrassment from here as well as my own.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said, when I remembered I could speak.
“No problem.” He watched the road for a minute or so, deliberating whether to confront me about where he’d found me. It was weird to know things like that so easily, now that my senses were more attuned to that kind of thing.
It seemed confrontation won. “What’re you doing out here, anyway?”
“I went for a run.”
“You look exhausted.”
“Yeah.”
“Must’ve been some run.”
“I was waiting for you to get back.”
I heard the gas fueling the car abate a bit as he stopped focusing for a moment on the car. “Why?”
The best defense is a good offense. “You were guarding my house with Niko, weren’t you?”
The steering wheel creaked when his grip tightened. “Yeah.”
“What happened?”
He was stiff against his seat. The car was visibly slowing, and he gently pressed the gas pedal again until we returned to our prior speed.
“The day you were Changed?”
I swallowed. “Yeah.”
Adam took a deep breath. “He said he’d had enough, and ran. I followed him here, and I told him to get back. He wouldn’t listen to me. When I heard Blaze’s howl, I reached the Alpha, Beta, and Moss, and we went in. Blaze was torn up, and you were there shredded to pieces. The only difference between you and the female in the dining room was that you were breathing. Even so, we thought we lost you. Blaze was the only one who figured you would survive, so we got you to the other side of the street before the cops got there. Luckily none of your neighbors were home yet, or the police would have already been there. If it hadn’t been for that, you either would have died, or the police would’ve found a new wolf on their hands in a matter of days. Best case scenario you would have killed them.”
He shook his head. “Anyway, we pulled up the truck and got you home. The Alpha got you settled in while the Beta came in and started asking Niko were he’d been. He wouldn’t let him see you. Niko flipped, but Alpha ordered him to stay in the house until new moon for disobeying him. I’m sure you noticed that there was a moon last night.”
“Yeah,” I whispered, propping my forehead against the back of his seat. So Niko had abandoned us. Had abandoned me.
Adam was quiet again, tension still present in his entire carriage. When I took a deep breath and calmed a bit, he exhaled and looked me in the eye in the rearview. “What the hell were you doing out here by yourself?”
“I went for a run.”
“And what if Frost was still out here?”
“Wouldn’t the pack smell her?”
“Depends. We didn’t last night.”
“I thought that was ‘cause of the hunt.”
“Where’d you run?”
I opened my mouth, deliberated for an instant, and said “Around the forest.”
“You don’t smell like forest. Where’d you run?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
He slammed his foot into the brake and the car stopped abruptly, throwing me into the seat. Why did I always forget my seatbelt? He leaned back in his seat.
“You’re pack now, Maya; it does matter. Where’d you go? Your house? Did you have a run-in with cops?”
“No, I didn’t. It reeked of blood, I only saw it from the trees.”
“Did you run around town?”
“No.”
“You know if you run around town—”
“—Like I would—”
“—As wolf or human, you’re gonna get recognized. The cops think you were kidnapped ‘cause they found no body from you. They’re looking for you—”
“I went to check on Chris, okay?” I snapped at him. He cringed at the tone, but still looked mad. “I took back fields and smelled for humans and stuff, and I took back fields so no one would see me.”
He exhaled sharply. “Where does she live?”
“Away from town. I went to her horse pasture.”
“Did she see you?”
“I don’t know.” For sure, I added mentally. Probably did, though.
I heard his muffled “Shit” as he forced himself to relax into his seat. We sat in silence in the car for awhile, cooling down until we were focusing on the hot temperature seeping into the car and not our own hot tempers.
“Look,” he said, obviously attempting the voice of reason and compromise. “Next time you do that, tell me and I’ll come with you, ‘kay? The Alpha trusts me to keep out of notice, even with a new wolf.”
I bristled, but I could grudgingly see the logic. “Okay.”
“You’ll tell me next time?”
I nodded. Satisfied, he released the brake and we drove the rest of the way home.