Running With Wolves

The house was filled to the brim now, Falcon Ridge occupying every inch of the small quaint house. Jasmine and Rune were sleeping in the Safe Room, Mia was curled up on the couch with Conan, while Knoll slept in the recliner. Despite the now cramped space it settled something deep within all of us to have each other so near. In fact, it calmed everyone so much that despite everything it lulled nearly everyone into a sound sleep.

I say nearly everyone because I was out of the realm where sleepers dwelled. I was wide-awake on the back porch, staring out into the dark woods of Falcon Ridge with everyone’s voice but my own running through my head.

Falcon Ridge was dangerous, Jasmine had stated.

Falcon Ridge couldn’t be owned, it had never been own by anyone, Rune had said.

It was not something to be taking for granted, Conan had commented.

Mia had just quietly said that it was not a place she knew well.

Lukas had said nothing.

Yet all I could think was that while Falcon Ridge was dangerous so could w be as a pack. Falcon Ridge might have never been ruled by a pack but we as pack refused to be ruled by anyone. Those woods were not something to be taking for granted but neither was our pack. Mia had been right when she said she didn’t know much about it, but did anyone really know much about any of us really?

To me, Falcon Ridge was perfect.

I could distinctly place each member of my pack within the house and it brought a comfort to me, like a mother always having an eye on her children.

He was as silent as a fox, not making a single sound as he drew near from behind. He wasn’t doing it on purpose, it was just a trait that made him that much more deadly to his enemies. I could sense him behind me and it had nothing at all to do with the fact that he was now Pack...

He had always been my pack.

“You should sleep.” The smell of pine needles and wet leaves filled my nose

“Hmm,” I hummed noncommittally.

He sat quietly beside me on the porch steps but I didn’t turn to him. Pack or not nothing had, or would ever, change between the dynamic that Lukas and I had. Which meant that Lukas and I were exactly where we stood when he’d walked out of my hospital room. He’d stand beside me, protect me from the danger I put myself in, but that didn’t mean he always wanted to be beside me. In fact whenever there wasn’t a group meeting Lukas would be nowhere in sight. It was so blatant that Mia would glance to me, silently asking me things I could never commit to saying.

It was quiet for a while, the two of us listening to the night symphony of crickets, owls, and foxes high pitched yapping.

I gazed up at the sky. The stars were somehow brighter and clearer here then at my father’s house and my eyes instantly connected to a cluster of stars that were not always present in the sky.

“Pleiades.” Lukas stated quietly, his eyes catching the sisters’ constellation easily. He was as familiar with their tragic tale as I was.

Within Greek mythology there are several stories that circulate about the seven sisters.
The Pleiades make up the seven sisters Electra, Maya, Taygete, Alcyone, Celaeno, Sterope, and Merope. They were friends and attendants of the goddess Artemis, the goddess of the Moon.

One story says that Orion, the hunter, fell in love with the sisters and chased them far and wide. Artemis went to Zeus seeking help on behalf of her friends the sisters. In typical Greek god sarcasm he turned them into doves so that they may fly away from Orion. Enraged by the lack of revenge against Orion, Artemis asked her brother, Apollo, to send a giant scorpion after Orion to kill him. So now in the night sky, Orion is placed near the Pleiades forever chasing them but the scorpion is not far behind Orion, forever chasing him.

Another story says that the seven sisters killed themselves out of grief for the loss of their half sisters, the Hyades. While the other story tells that the sisters killed themselves because of the overwhelming burden imposed upon them by their father, the titan Atlas.

It was their friendship to Artemis the Moon goddess, the idea that they may have killed themselves because they couldn’t stand the burdens their father placed upon them, and the tale that they committed suicide in grief of their lost sisters that drew me to them. Lukas knew this and it always made him wary.

“You know what’s most tragic,” I murmured, my eyes mesmerized by the cluster of stars. “The entire family was filled with such loss after the death of one of their family members that they all died in the end. The Hyades died weeping over the loss of their dead brother Hyas and in turn the Pleiades killed themselves out of the unbearable loss of their sisters the Hyades. Not one god, demi god, titan, or any other creature ever stopped to try to comfort the sisters. The sisters felt so alone with their grief that they chose to kill themselves because they could see nothing in their future without their sisters.”

Lukas turned his gaze away from the sky and I could suddenly feel those stormy orbs on my face, his gaze intense with worry and seriousness. “That is only one story.”

“Yes well, the one where they kill themselves because they cannot handle the burdens Atlas placed on them is equally as tragic. How can a father just place so much onto them and not take time to see that it is killing them?”

“Sage,” he started

“What?” I questioned absently, my eyes catching sight of Orion while the scorpion was hidden from view by the tree line.

“Sage look at me.” His voice was low and it was enough to compel my gaze away from the sky. Worry was etched so deeply into his gaze it seemed to consume him then.
“Sage you are not the Hyades who died from the loss of their sibling nor are you the Pleiades who killed themselves from the loss of their sisters…you know that don’t you?”

My back stiffened defensively. Who was he to look at me like I was standing on the edge of a cliff about to jump off its edge?

“Of course I know that.” I grunted, my gaze flickering back up to the stars. “Although,” I mumbled “That does not stop me from wishing someone would send a giant scorpion after the men who attacked Rune, Mia, Jazz, and me...”

Suddenly his large rough hands grabbed either side of my face and forced me to look at him, tearing my eyes away from the stars. His face was suddenly closer than it had been a moment before and his eyes, so wide with worry, I could see myself in them against the reflection of the moon.

“The scorpion never caught Orion. But we’ll get them all alright? Anyone that ever thought about going after you or Cheyenne and the others will pay. We wont chase them across the sky for all eternity; we’ll find them and tear them apart until there is nothing left. Okay?” I nodded dumbly, at a loss of words for the intensity that had suddenly spread through Lukas’s bones. I thought he’d let me go but he didn’t. His hands held me tighter as though I was slipping through his fingers. “You. Are. Not. Them. They didn’t have anyone, you’re right, but you do. You have an entire pack of your own making behind you.” He leaned forward and suddenly his forehead was against mine. “you have me.”

It was then that I pulled away from Lukas’s grasp. His words hurt my heart in a way I hadn’t expected, but I understood instantly why.

“Do I?” he looked puzzled. “Do I really have you Lukas?”

Understanding settled into his eyes and his jaw set as his hands slipped from my face and he looked away.

Irritation poisoned my blood. Would Lukas and I ever just get it right? Just once could we not go from two people who cared for each other to two people who couldn’t even look at one another. Would we ever not be fighting against what we wanted and what our instincts told us we wanted?

“Because I don’t think I do, not really anyway.” My lips pursed then as I reached for him. “I want you,” I whispered forcing him to look at me. My hand moved through his hair down to his jawbone to touch his soft lips, trying to remember him the way I once had. My hand fell away and I swallowed hard. “My heart aches Lukas. It aches because I want you so much and it feels like torture because you’re so close but I don’t have you. It aches because I know you aren’t mine, not really anyway. You’re mine because our Weres say we are, but you and me, what do we say?”

Silence hung between us and I remembered the conversation I’d had with Erik. “We’re trying to make ourselves be for each other what we were before the war but—“

His eyes flashed and like a switch he tuned me out, no longer listening to me but the anger in his head.

“The war. The war! Blame everything on the fucking war!” Lukas burst getting to his feet. “Fuck the war! The war didn’t make us this way Sagemint,” He stated heatedly. “You’re leaving did.”

I flinched feeling as though I’d been slapped. I’d assumed as much but hearing it spoken out loud hurt tenfold. I could feel my Were’s hackles raise. We were both getting tired of being blamed for everything.

“I’m not who I was before that war!” I yelled back, rising to my feet. “I didn’t have a pack before the war! I didn’t have five people looking to me to guide them and keep them alive! I had my entire fucking family before that godforsaken war Lukas and now, out of a family of seven, I have one. I am not the person you want me to be! That girl died when her sister’s body was brought back by neighbors and choir folk who had been made soldiers in only hours. The Sage you knew died when I saw Seneca, bloody, bruised, and covered in teeth marks, chunks of her missing.” I approached him then, the cage that kept my Were in was weakening. If I weren’t careful I’d loose control of her. But my Were…my Were was the farthest thing from my mind. “I hated who I was once I saw her!” I screamed at him, tears streaming down my cheeks. “I hated that what I was, was a being capable of doing that to a person! I hated that it could have been anyone who had done it to her. The local police officer, the Baker down the street, someone we sat next to in church. I hated it! And I hated you for wanting me to embrace my Were! To revel in who I was, a monster who could tear apart a girl.”

Silence fell between us then and the gap that divided us became a continent.

“I didn’t ask you to be a monster,” Lukas snarled. “I asked you to let me stand beside you and never leave.”

“Oh don’t you dare act like it was all me,” I seethed. If I’d been paying attention I would have felt my Were testing my hold over her. I would have felt her knowing how weak that hold was. “Where the fuck were you Luke when the packs divide?! It wasn’t with me where you claimed to want to be so badly!”

“I was trying to figure out what to do!”

“Liar!” I screamed.

And then the bars that caged my Were for years broke and a wild, untamed, free Were was set loose and it was my own consciousness suddenly placed in the cage…