Running With Wolves

When Lukas was younger he didn’t have any concept of a soulmate, he didn’t know anything about love, and the only interaction he’d ever had with a girl was with Sage (some days he wasn’t sure if that even counted). What he had known back then was that he didn’t think his parents loved each other.

It was a terrible thing for a seven year old to believe but it was the truth. Lukas had heard of love but he didn’t think his parents represented such a thing at all. In fact, they regarded each other and their marriage as more of a business arrangement if anything. They were never cold toward one another but their interactions could hardly be described as warm either.

Lukas recalled the reactions of kids in school to his and Sage’s friendship. His friends teased him most days claiming that he was in love her; ’first comes love then comes marriage than comes baby in the baby carriage!’. The idea seemed odd to him, what was love? Was it the way his parents interacted? Was it the way they portrayed it in movies?
He had never been sure.
And at that age he knew he didn’t regard Sage’s friendship as a business arrangement but that he also didn’t think Sage and himself were apart of some sort of fairytale.

What he had been sure of was that he enjoyed Sage’s company more than anyone else’s. What he knew was that Sage would never tease him, never judge him, and he liked the security of that. If he had been honest he hadn’t even been sure if he ‘like liked’ Sage until she fell out of the tree when they were kids. They’d been challenging each other to see who could climb the highest. With splinters in her palms and dirt beneath her nails, Sage had tried to climb higher than him but she’d fallen. Lukas had remembered it had seemed to happen in slow motion and that in that moment he had never been so scared in his whole life. His breath had stopped, his heart was in his throat and all he could do was watch helplessly. What if she’d broken her neck? What if she had died? The idea of Sage not in his life terrified him and it was then that Lukas began to wonder if the things the boys teased him about were true, maybe he did love her…

She’d fallen thirteen feet and had walked away with a sprained wrist and a badly bruised hip; it amazed him. Any time Sage seemed to get hurt his heart would end up in his throat but she’d always gotten back up and looked at him with a reassuring smile that told him she was fine, that she was still the surest thing in his life.
It had always happened that way, from the time she’d lost her footing while rock climbing and slid halfway down the rock formation to the time she’d street raced in the dark and totaled her car. Miraculously Sage had never gotten seriously hurt—at least not mentally. It was mental pain that Sage could not just brush off her shoulders and walk away from. It was mental pain that could cut her deeper than any knfe.

Lukas had begun worrying about Sage in a way that he had never had to worry before. Lukas couldn’t remember a time Sage had ever in her life just become so completely incapacitated and vulnerable. But when Sage crept quietly into the kitchen sometime later, for one brief moment Lukas believed that she’d be okay like any other time, that she’d gotten out of bed and begun recovering. But something was wrong, her face was as pale as chalk, her hand pressed to her abdomen and a crimson red leaked out from around her palm—Sage was not okay

And Lukas and Sage were definitely not in a fairytale.

Her voice was a hoarse whisper, “I-I think I might—I might need a doctor.”

Lukas stood so quickly his chair tipped back and clattered to the ground loudly. Jasmine was frozen in her spot, her eyes wide.

“Luke-“ She swayed on her feet, her eyes suddenly unseeing and in a blur Lukas lurched forward and grabbed Sage as she collapsed against him.

“Sage,” He brushed her hair away from her face. “Sage look at me,” but her eyes didn’t open and her head just lolled to the side when he shook her gently. “Jazz,” his voice had gone from urgent and pleading to sharp in an instant. He lifted Sage up into his arms and turned to the brunette, panic evident in his eyes. “call the hospital, tell them I’m coming in.”

Anxiety spread through Jasmine. She knew that Sage was in desperate need of a serious doctor but a hospital…a hospital could be bad, oh it could be so bad.

“Fine, but I’m coming with you.”

A growl issued from Lukas. “I don’t have time to argue with you. You’re staying here with the girls, we don’t need more trouble than necessary.” He lifted Sage into his arms and made for the door without looking back at her. “Don’t forget what side of town you’re on!”

The door slammed shut behind him and a whole different sort of anxiety spread through Jasmine as if that door separated her from everything she found safe. Staying put meant feeling vulnerable, it meant not knowing. If she went, at the very least she would have the comfort of knowing things as they happened; going also meant that something inside Jasmine would settle at the idea of being near her Alpha when she was vulnerable.

Confliction wrestled within Jasmine’s gut and she felt helpless. There was only one helpful thing she could do in that moment and so Jasmine picked up the phone and called a Canis.