Running With Wolves

Town hall was alive with low murmurs of disapproval and excited gasps of gossip. A young man of handsome twenty-three with short brown hair and stormy grey eyes pushed open the large double doors and crossed the threshold of the building with pursed lips of annoyance. Nothing caused more aggravation or ruined so many night plans than mandatory meetings by the council. His eyes scanned the room bored,

Figures,. He thought, Old man makes everyone get here fifteen minutes early but he doesn’t have the courtesy to even arrive on time.

The words of the council hummed in his ears as they talked amongst themselves, none of their words even fazing him until someone whispered of war.

“It could mean war,” the masculine voice was low and secretieve, sounding vaguely conspiratorially. He rolled his eyes, George, of course. “I mean, why wouldn’t it?”

He opened his mouth to interjected when a sharp yank knocked him off balance and sent him stumbling into the corner. He turned around with annoyed filled eyes, his mouth open in retort when he froze, his eyes instantly recognizing the 5’1 blonde, her strength as equal to any capable man. His mouth instantly closed and his eyes lightened,

Of course,

“Rune,” He acknowledged passively.

“How can you be so calm?” She hissed, her hand still gripping his bicep.

“Oh come on, don’t tell me you’re buying into the conspiracy theorist in corner B.” He exclaimed exasperated. He rolled his eyes carefree, there was always some potential hazard, some possible threat—if there was a Paranoids Anonymous club every single person in this room should be in it. “Come on, there could be sparklers on the 4th of July and you’d have these guys running through the streets screaming about a wildfire.”

“Luke,” her voice was equal parts shock and disbelief. His demeanor changed instantly, easily picking up the scent of something pressing in the way she said his name. “Don’t you know?”

“Know what?”

Rune blinked, “Christ no one told you?” She shook her head and ran a hand through her hair before her eyes snapped back to him. “Luke, she’s back.”

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When I was a child Seneca, Cheyenne, and I used to say we’d never leave home. We used to tell my father that unless we could find a place that smelled like tangerines and lavender, a 4th creaky step on the stairs, a hideaway place in the wood planks in our bedroom floors, and a fireplace we’d never leave.

When I left I spent longer than I care to admit looking for a home with these attributes to it but I never found it; a part of me was pleased that I didn’t. If I found these things within another house it meant that I could have a home outside of the place I’d spent my entire life—it meant I could be okay somewhere else.

I wrapped myself in the quilt my mother made me as I stared up at the starry sky. The house slept peacefully at two in the morning but I didn’t. My body begged for it, lagging and lulling me trying to convince me to sleep. But my heart and my mind were too awake for such wasteful time consuming things as sleep. I was home. I wanted to be apart of every second of it. I buried my face in the quilt under my noise, breathing in the light sweet lavender scent with just a touch of the old fabric softener my mother used. It was fifty-five degrees out but I didn’t care how suffocating and hot the blanket would make me, it would be the closest thing to my mother’s welcome home hug as I’d ever get.

My mother left, ran, fled, abandoned, whatever word you choose, she had gotten up one day and walked away from the house, like me, and chose never to return. It was shortly after Seneca was killed, the house had been strung tight with tension, laden with sadness, and begging for a reprieve of the bad energy. My mother was a good woman but she was a human woman to the dismay of the majority of my father’s friends and family. But what had set them off far worst was the coming of my mother’s toddler son that brought with him the uneasy sense of an unwelcomed male; My half-brother Conan constantly reminded of this by his inability to fill our father’s shoes as Alpha.

My mother met my father on one of his visits to the east coast, the Maine area from the way I hear it. She’d been badly abused by a pack and was shackled to them due to the Were son she bore whose blood belonged to the pack. My father had freed her but not without a hitch—in his pursuit to free her, my mother had been bitten. Knowing he couldn’t very well leave a bitten woman with a Were child to her own defenses he offered her a safe house, and eventually fell in love with her.

It was a perfect little love story for years until a war broke out and her eldest daughter was killed. My mother blamed my father every day for her death. She cried and yelled constantly, cursing him to hell, telling him it wasn’t her war, it wasn’t her daughters or son’s war—It was my father’s war and his alone. She was furious at him for endangering not only Seneca as the oldest daughter but also Conan the oldest son who biologically wasn’t even his but both, as oldest, forced to war. She couldn’t take it, she snapped, and she left, but not before she begged Chey, Conan, and myself to follow her—none of us did and each of us bore a shame because of it. Our bond to our father, our family, our lives had won out over our bond and love for our mother. We never spoke of our mother again; all of us had been shamed into silence. I missed her but I didn’t blame her, how could I when I’d done the same thing.

I stared up at the stars instantly feeling so much smaller with the sky splattered with millions of stars. It was little things like the stars that I missed most. I loved them, I loved their beauty, their vastness, their constellations, their mythology. It was my grandfather who first pointed out each and every constellation in turn, always telling me their stories, their greatness and their faults. My eyes searched the sky for my favorite, The Pleiades, but failing.

A twig cracked in protest beneath too heavy a weight and my head snapped in the direction so fast it could leave whiplash. My muscles tightened painfully, my body unnaturally still. That was when I caught the scent in the dead air: Pine trees and wet leaves.

Lukas.

I rose to my feet in an instant, my gaze unwavering where I knew he’d be behind the lavender bush. I couldn’t pick through the conflicting instincts rushing through me.

Lukas, ally, threat, safe, danger,

I felt equally the need to run to him and away from him, to go to him and hug him or bite him.

My body was a live wire, sensing everything that moved. A buzzard overhead, a squirrel across the yard, Mia sleeping upstairs, Conan—I heard that fourth step creak and knew Conan was coming, lagged with sleep, he was unaware of my visitor. My head turned toward the house then back to the lavender bush when I heard the brush of leaves against a fur coat and I knew he was gone.

I knew why he was here, not for a reunion or to actually speak with me—he’d heard I was back and he needed proof for himself. He’d crossed territories to do it too.

I didn’t know what was going through his mind or what he wanted but regardless he’d risked his hide and broken borders to do it.

All I knew now was that whatever Lukas thought of me I was still a risk he was willing to take.