Running With Wolves

The house was eerily quiet for a house filled with wolves. The pack, Conan, Knoll, Jasmine, and Rune,grew quieter, more somber, in the absence of their leaders; Lukas was as much an Alpha as Sage and having them both gone was strange to them all. To the pack it felt like missing a limb that should be there. They rarely ventured out of their corner of wood, and seldom even left Falcon Ridge at all.
All they did was wait.
They waited for their Alpha.
For answers.
For a way out.
For a solution to their growing list of problems.
But for Knoll on this one night, he waited for sleep.
Sleep was not a luxury the youngest Canis had been blessed with lately. Sleep brought on ghosts and demons and things Knoll hid in the shadows of his mind; the pack had enough issues for now. He wondered if Conan noticed the circles under his eyes, the paleness of his skin, and his less than alert demeanor; Jasmine wouldn’t care and Rune was so wrapped up in everything else he doubted she’d notice. But Conan, Conan had stood at his father’s side since he was small, Alpha blood may not run through his veins but no one could play a better actor at it. Like an Alpha, Conan would, and could, recognize the small subtle changes in things.

Whatever, Knoll thought, whether he had noticed or not Conan had never said anything to him and that was all that mattered. Knoll couldn’t very well tell him he was dreaming about Conan’s youngest sister. He couldn’t imagine that being taken well.

Stuck somewhere between sleep and conscious, Knoll recalled his dream where memory and make believe collided and blurred together in a haze of haunting.

’She was beautiful. She was single handedly the most beautiful person he had ever known. All that she was drew him to her like a bee to a hive.
Her laugh.
Her smile.
The light in her eye.
The dimples on her cheeks.
The way her arms snaked around his neck and all he felt was needed.
He couldn’t figure out when it had happened, when he had discovered he was in love with her, that he needed her more than any other person. It wasn’t an obsessive all consuming love sort of thing—not at first. At first it was just that she was who he went to when things went wrong. She was who he went to when he needed to be alone, when he needed advice, when he wanted to spill his guts, when he wanted to talk, or laugh, or tell a funny joke, or go to the store—he just wanted to do those things with her because some how everything was better to him when it included her.

The worst part was that he could scarcely do any of those things with her. The worst part was that he rarely saw the light in her eye, the laugh of her voice, or the warmth of her arms. The town was divided, their families not speaking. Knoll knew what it must have felt like to be Lukas. Maybe he didn’t love her as much as Lukas loved Sage—they were Soulmates, what they had was rare, but still on a small scale Knoll thought he must know.

But here, in the woods, where the light filtered perfectly through the trees and the birds sung their songs, they could be together. Here in the woods it didn’t matter that their families and town was divided, here the only thing that mattered was them. Here was their own little world.

He was sitting on the leafy earth with his back propped up against a tree while she had her head in his lap, his fingers running through her silky soft hair made her eyes closed and she sighed contentedly.

“I could stay here forever.” She murmured.

“So could I.”

they sat in the silence, drinking it in and just enjoying each others company. Some time passed before Knoll realized the birds’ song had stopped and clouds had concealed the sun.

her eyes snapped open suddenly and she sat upright abruptly. She stood stock still and Knoll could tell she was listening to something. She was like a deer, he thought, a deer that senses something it cannot yet see; a predator.

“There’s something out there.” She stated in alarm. She made no move to get to her feet from where she sat beside Knoll. She was perfectly still, unnaturally Were still.

“What is it?”

Her head snapped in his direction, her eyes wide with panic and fear. “There is something in those woods Knoll. There’s something out there!”

Knoll heard the sound. A sound like protesting creaking metal. It made no sense, such a sound, in the middle of the quiet woods. He rose to his feet and walked several feet away from where he left her at the base of the tree, hoping that he could hear better. But the sound was gone and Knoll imagined himself to be crazy.

Suddenly she was screaming a horrible wailing sound that chilled him to the bone. Her eyes turned black, her skin paled and began to crack like peeling paint. She screamed and screamed and Knoll could only watch in wide eyed horror.

The wind picked up, kicking up dead leaves, and then Cheyenne combusted into a flock of crows that took off for the sky leaving him alone with no trace of his secret love.

He was frozen in fear, his fingers shaking, and his mind reeling.

Her voice floated through the air with it, ‘find me Knoll.’

He ran a hand over his face and swallowed hard. Knoll knew sleep would not come to him on this night.; on this night Knoll was haunted.

“Just let me sleep Chey.” He whispered to the night air. He was sitting on the back porch listening to the crickets and other bugs that made up the nighttime noise. It was a settling sort of sound but still Knoll felt restless. He felt like a caged wolf, pacing back and forth and back and forth, anxious to get to the thing he wanted most—Cheyenne.

But sleep did not come to Knoll, instead something else found him that night. He was bloodied and bruised as he stumbled out from where the wood line gave way to a grassy back yard. Knoll stood instantly, sensing that something was wrong, so very, very wrong.

Alarm instantly shocked his system as he got to his feet. “Conan!” He shouted for the stand in alpha before he ran down the steps and crossed the yard. Knoll reached the man just in time before he nearly collapsed.

The man was twenty-three, as tall as Kerrick, and as muscular as Lukas. He had been captain of the football team in high school, charismatic enough to please adults and mischievous enough for all the rebellious youth to find him cool.

His name was Archer, he was Calla-Lilly Jade’s twin brother.

“Knoll,” he wheezed, leaning heavily on the youngest Canis.

“Archie what the hell happened to you?”

Conan burst through the back door suddenly, taking two steps at a time he was down the porch in an instant. Slowly, Rune and Jasmine trickled out behind him. They hesitated momentarily on the porch, their pack was only three now and extremely vulnerable, any sort of incident had the girls on edge.
Jasmine swallowed back her fear and squared her shoulders before she walked down the steps in slow strides behind Conan, leaving Rune on the porch to whine wolfishly at being left behind.

“Archer,” Conan started in surprise. Immediate he put the battered man’s arm around his neck, lessening the weight bared on Knoll. “What the fuck happened to you?”

As soon as they began leading the man toward the house Rune had disappeared back into the sanctuary of her room. Skittish enough already, Rune wouldn’t be seen by people she didn’t know.

“It’s Calla-Lilly.” Archer groaned as the two men lead him up the steps.

“Jesus,” Jasmine whispered when the moonlight hit the man’s skin, displaying every mark across his face. She rushed ahead of them and held the door open for the trio. When the door shut behind them Jasmine made a beeline for the sink where she found a damp rag to clean his wounds.

“What happened to Calla?” Knoll questioned.

Archer coughed violently and blood sprayed across the floor causing him to wince. “They took her.” He groaned. His focus was gone and Knoll wondered how much longer Archer would even stay conscious for.

“Who?” Conan demanded, his voice hard. But a chill had run down Knoll’s spine and he knew Conan felt it too—whoever had taken Cheyenne had taken Calla as well.

“I don’t know.” He snapped, the flash of anger directed at himself. “I don’t fucking know. There were too many of ‘em, too many for me to fight off. They just took her, man, knocked her unconscious and hauled her away like a bag of flower over their shoulder. They threatened to kill me if I followed ‘em. And I wanted to, man, believe me I did but even I’m not that fucking dumb, I wouldn’t have been able to save her.”

Jasmine was pale as a ghost and her hands were shaking as she gently placed the rag to his temple, wiping away the line of blood there. Jasmine felt fear in a way that she had never known before. In her heart Jasmine knew there was a predator out there that even a Were could not dominate and its prey was women.

Archer’s head lolled back slightly as he peered around the room. “Rumor has it this was a pack. Neither Eastern nor Western. Where are Sage and Lukas?”

Jasmine’s eyes flickered to Conan and she swallowed hard. It was bad enough to have half their pack missing, voicing it was worst.

“They aren’t here just now,” Conan stated. “but I’ll tell them about Calla.”

“Why did you come here and not go to Viktor?” Jasmine knew the truth but she needed to hear it.

Archer shook his head bitterly. “You know why. Do you really think telling fucking Viktor or Mankato will do anything? Like they did when poor Chey was taken? I’m telling you because I think we all know it goes without saying that the two are connected. If anyone knows what I’m going through I’d figured it be the people in this house.”

Knoll was quite for a moment. Chey, Calla, who was next? The wolf in him growled protective at the idea of Rune or Jasmine being next. Not his pack, not those he cared about, not again.

“Cone,” Knoll spoke up, his voice cracking. “you have to get a message to Mia, you have to get them home now.”

This had to end, Knoll thought, who would be next, this preator of female Weres.
His Were growled protectively at the thought of Sage, Jasmine, Rune, or Miakoda being next.
No, Knoll thought, he wouldn’t let this happen again. No more people he cared about, no more people he loved. This had to end.

Even Conan had to admit that this, this made everything so much worst.
This made everything more dire and there was no denying it now that there was something out there stalking female Weres. It didn’t matter who their pack allegiance was to.

Few things were going right.
Everything was going wrong.
Something had to give sooner or later.