Eyes of the Wolf

50

It wasn’t until we hit the long stretch of empty road when I finally got into my human form and threw my clothes on. I only buttoned the shirt in two places before clambering through the back window and over the middle seat.

“You smelled another wolf?”

“Yeah,” I panted, tired sweaty from my Change.

“Was it from our Pack?”

“I don’t think so.”

I hated that we weren’t speeding. I knew being pulled over by a cop would only slow us down, but I was willing to take the chance.

“Do you think it’s one of Frost’s pack?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

:o3

When we drove up, there were no wolves in sight. Adam stopped the car before we even got to the garage, jamming it into park and leaping out the door. I followed suit, my hearing picking up more sound outside the truck and picking up wolves breathing, hearts beating quickly. My packmate and I exchanged a nervous look, and I took the lead as we walked to the center of the territory.

A feeling of déjà vu hit me as around sixty pairs of eyes turned to me, all between me and whatever was on the other side. The day I had been sworn to secrecy by my Alpha, to keep the wolves a secret.

Adam brushed against me—accidentally or not, I’m not sure—but it reassured me. He had been with me that first time, too, as a wolf. The ever silent, gold guide that had kept me from stepping into insanity. I turned and smiled weakly to him.

Again, the wolves parted before us, though I recognized several of them now. It made whatever was at the end of the path less frightening—I was more dominant than most of these wolves.

Finally we passed the last layer of fur, and we stopped before my Alpha…and Frost.

I growled. Behind her, about twenty wolves echoed me, and one of the notes in the sound made me want to cower. Why?

“Been telling secrets, Dawn?” The woman grinned wickedly, her teeth almost matching her pale hair.

“What secrets?” I demanded, looking to my Alpha. His gaze hardened, and my wolf wanted to roll on my back and submit. I stayed standing.

“One of my wolves found you in a house with humans. Not just any humans, but the same two humans that he saw you with earlier this year, that you insisted didn’t know anything about wolves. But how much can they have missed with you talking about how that half-breed—” she nodded to Adam “—had his first Change?”

Adam stiffened as the pack went silent.

“Half-breed?” My Beta stepped forward, human, frowning from Frost to Adam and back. “What do you mean, Frost?”

“That wolf is half human,” she said, relishing the words on her tongue. She met the Beta’s eyes and he dropped them almost immediately to a lower point on her face. “He is not a true wolf. He is the product of Fang’s indiscretion with humans.”

Chills went up my spine as growls rippled through the wolves at my back. This wasn’t happening. Frost was looking expectantly to James, who had tensed and glared her in the face. Her malicious smile looked more like bared teeth than a grin.

“And so your son,” she continued, “makes friends with the human that I told you would be trouble. And they go off God-knows-when to go reveal themselves to her best friend. Who recognized Dawn as Maya. Wonder how that happened.”

I snarled. “I told her nothing.”

Frost slapped me. I staggered sideways into Adam, shocked; I had never been hit before. She glared icily down at me, her smile gone.

“Don’t talk back to me, little bitch,” she growled.

James stepped between us before I could launch myself at her. I could feel Adam’s chest thrumming with his own growl. I’d never heard him growl as a human.

“That is my wolf,” my Alpha told her. Frost made a small sound, and one of her wolves walked alongside her, growling low. James grew more tense, but he still paid attention to Frost. “She is outside your power to punish.”

“You disobey me!” she cried. The wolf, a solid rust colored male, leapt and grabbed my Alpha by the throat. I moved to help when another wolf stepped between me and the other; a pale brown wolf with black around its muzzle and feet.

Recognition zapped through me and I dropped to my knees, whimpering, at the wolf that had made me Dawn. His teeth bared and I shuddered. My wolf was gone, leaving nothing but terror at staring into those blue eyes. The blue eyes that had killed me.

A bronze shape landed on the wolf, teeth around the back of its neck. Adam grabbed me by the back of the shirt as a bright, gleaming white-silver wolf collided with the half formed Frost. Silver. My maker pulled back from his fight with Blaze. The bronze wolf took advantage of the relapse to aid James. The air rang with lupine yelps.

Fingers circled around my arms and yanked them back, taking me by surprise. I bucked, seeing Adam out of the corner of my eye get grabbed the same way. They couldn’t hurt him! He was my Pack. My friend. He was mine. Screams tore through my throat, my wolf backing them with the same high pitched cries. My arms were jerked upward, and my exclamations turned to shrieks of pain. Fur sprouted on my skin and my snout lengthened, but I couldn’t get my arms away from my captor, straining my Change due to the position it was not able to take. My howls sounded wrong, discordant, to my ears. Everything did. Fingers closed around my throat as I tried to escape, watching the struggles of my Alpha and Blaze. I bucked against my captor, which only increased the bruising force against my neck. Cries couldn’t come anymore—breath couldn’t come.

Something knocked against the person holding me, and his grip tightened and loosened. I pulled against him, but I was dragged back, away from the violence. The Pack was starting to fight as well. When we were farther away I got slammed into a wall, the hand around my neck again. Sounds echoed distantly as my lungs squeezed, attempting breath in vain. Tears came to eyes that were losing vision.

This was not how a wolf took out an enemy. This was how a human silenced a witness. This was no way for any wolf pack to take care of a traitor. Then when eyesight went and the world was reduced to the fingers obstructing my oxygen, I didn’t care anymore. I fought with limbs losing strength.

Then it stopped.

I fell to the ground, gasping as oxygen rushed like heaven into my lungs. The rest of my Change erupted through my body, shaping me into my wolf at an alarming pace. I turn. Silver wolf impacts human form and shreds him to pieces before my eyes, spattering his bright fur with dark spots and stripes. The wolf-who-was-once-Pack.

He walks to me and licks at my muzzle. His scent returns to me, and my tail wags weakly. My body hurts. I am glad he is okay, though.

I rest my head on my paws for a moment, panting and trying to pull in as much air as I can. Slowly I recover.

Then I am up. Where is Sparrow? I touch noses with the silver wolf to get his attention, and then we are running into the fray. I lift my nose, trying to find the scent through the blood and the other scents writhing around me. My ally stiffens next to me, and I turn to see two humans on the ground, pummeling and being pummeled. We arrive to find Sparrow wiping blood from his mouth, hovering over an unconscious human-wolf. I nose him gently, and he touches my muzzle gently, tickling my whiskers.

The silver wolf growls. I turn and warn him off and he flinches back, stunned. Sparrow runs his hand down my neck, and I lick at his arm. He is okay. I am okay. We need to leave.

I turn and the wolf is no longer there. Bones pop into place audibly at my side, and Sparrow is a wolf, and we run toward the exit.

Where has he gone? I wonder, my body slow still from the attempt to kill me. I can no longer smell him. I do not know why I worry. The wolf was a banished Pack. Nameless wolf.

Sparrow and I run for about a mile or so before I have to stop and breathe. My body is heavy. My companion comes closer and touches my face gently with his nose, query behind the action. I wag my tail a bit, not managing much more, but I start to move forward. Sparrow tenses next to me, and when I look his head is high, ears, up, and nose twitching toward where we came from. A scent tickles my nose, now that I am paying attention to it. Wolves who are not Pack.

Many of them.

I growl, but Sparrow butts me with his head and tugs me with his teeth.

There are too many, he tells me. I groan, but turn and run with him, my lungs burning.

:o3

They are still there.

I turn my head, which is currently level with my knees. The scent of wolves is lingering in the wind, something that should be out of place. Absolutely no room for doubt that the wolves were following us.

What are the odds that Chris and Drake are at the house? I ask. Sparrow looks back toward our pursuers.

What are the odds we can run through some farmer’s field and get them all shot? he replies. Then he stills. They will come after Chris and Drake soon, if they believe they know about the wolves.

I break into a gallop without answering him.

When we reach Chris’s house, Sparrow puts on a burst of speed until he gets to Chris’s window. Then he yips and yelps and hits her window with the pads of his feet. I turn to look back again—something that is developing into a nervous habit. I do not like being prey.

The window opens. Chris leans out, looking from Sparrow to me and back. She beckons to me, sensing urgency, and I canter over and climb carefully through her window and Change.

“What’s going on, Maya?”

“Wolves chasing us, trying to kill us.” I gasped, fighting a bruised throat as Chris pulled her blanket off her bed and draped it over me. I hated how I was being so vague. “They think we told you about the wolves, and they’re coming to kill us. We came to warn you that you’re in danger.”

“Sounds like some smart dogs,” came a sardonic voice. I wheeled to Brad, distantly thankful that Chris had given me some semblance of clothing. Chris’s brother looked suspicious, though there was happiness to see me in there—something in his body language was conveying it. “So how long have you been alive, Maya?”

“It’s a long story,” I said hastily. “But there are a bunch of big wolves out there, and they want to kill me and Chris and my friend and Drake.”

He considered, then turned his back and left the room. I cringed at the deliberate insult.

“Well, Maya, what can we do?” Chris said, fear haunting her face.

I shuddered. “I don’t know. We can fight, but there are a lot of them. Is Drake here?”

“No.” She paced to her window. Adam was leaning his head on the window, having deemed me safe now that I was covered by the blanket.

“So we’re fighting a bunch of wolves with two wolves, but we have the house,” I told her.

“I can call Drake,” she suggested, her voice getting high-pitched. I nodded, then leaned out the window. The wolves following us were ranged around less than a mile away, visible to me, but not coming closer. Did they think we were hiding other wolves in here? Well, if it kept them out, better that they think so for now.

The phone beeped as Chris dialed it, pacing. Her message to Drake was frantic, her voice shivering. She hung up.

Adam was facing the wolves outside, pacing along the porch like a four-legged soldier.

“Is the big wolf on the front steps one of the wolves you’re worried about?” Brad asked wryly. I glanced up at him and flinched when I saw the big semi-automatic shotgun slung over his shoulder.

“If you’re talking about the gold one, he’s a friend,” I squeaked. He peered out the window.

“So all them?” he asked, pointing. I nodded. Brad glanced to Adam.

“Is he a person or one of your pets?”

“A person,” I replied when Adam gave him a dirty look.

Why are we telling him about us?

He’s Chris’s brother, and a hell of a shot with that gun. He can even the odds.

Adam snorted. Since we’re banished anyway, I guess.

I petted his left ear, and he was quiet. The severity of the situation loomed over both of us. Despite the knowledge that the wolves would have come here sooner or later anyway, we felt guilty for bringing the fight here. Thank heavens that Chris’s parents were at work.

“Here they come,” Brad announced grimly. All of us looked out the window and watched the wolves start trotting in our direction. Brad and I both left and went out the door, and I let the Change ripple through me for the umpteenth time that day.

“Cool trick,” the human next to me mutters, loading the gun with loud clicks, and he levels it to point at the advancing enemies. I brusquely wag my tail, shrugging out from under my blanket.

“Just don’t shoot Maya or Adam,” Chris tells her brother, the snap taken from her words to be replaced with worry. I sidled over to her and licked at her cheek. She pulled back, smiling faintly. “That’s gross.”

I wag my tail once, then jump when a loud bang sounds off next to me. My ears feel like they will split in two. Next to me, Brad reloads the gun, his eyes not lingering on the dark wolf that falls to the grass. Its packmates leap away, spreading and then charging. Adam bounds into the middle and engages a dark yellow. BANG. A brindled one staggers and sinks to the ground. Another leaps as Brad reloads, and I meet it in midair to keep it from getting to him. We tear at each other. BANG. I don’t see the wolf that the shot takes down, but I hear it’s dying cry. I rip the throat from my adversary and it, too, falls. BANG. A wolf goes down out of the corner of my eye. BANG.

How many wolves are there?

I smell Drake. He comes out of his car and flinches as some of the flanking wolves turn to him. BANG. One goes down, then BANG, another. His shoulders tense, and he Changes to his dark grey wolf.

That is enough! his voice cries in all our heads. Some of the wolves stop as if listening to an Alpha, but look confused. The grey wolf shivers, but holds his head high when the other wolves give him their attention. He snarls. Do you dare disobey the son of your Alpha?