Running With Wolves

“She must be protected,”

“She shouldn’t stay.”

“Why the hell did you let her instigate Viktor? Like we need more shit from the East.”

I closed my eyes tiredly, trying my damnedest to drown out the overlapping protests of voices, some rallying for me others against me…

You know it wasn’t as though I was sitting right here or anything—or that I had a say for that matter.

“She should never have returned.” Up until this point all the voices were masculine, the men in the pack, most who have known me since I was a child, let their instinct to protect the females—me, overpower them.

But this voice? Cold and uncaring belonged to a woman.

She had hair the color of tree bark, her eyes the same identical brown. She was five-four, a total tomboy, and the one person in this room I wouldn’t trust farther than I could throw her. You know that one person you meet that just flat out hates you for no legitimate reason…or does that only happen to me?

Jasmine, more specifically, She was twenty-eight and my brother’s ex.

Now, I’m not going to say I was the cause of their break up but…

I was the cause of their break up.

“Jasmine,”

“I’m serious,” She seethed. “Every time Sage is around something bad happens. Things have finally started to settled down and we don’t need a reason to go to war.”

And then I was there in the mess of it, no longer keeping to the shadowy corner out of sight but in the middle of the circle in the dull florescent light.

“Was my sister’s death not enough reason?” I snarled furiously my face inches from hers daring her to challenge me. “Was all of our brothers and sisters not enough reason?”

“Sage,” I heard the warning but I didn’t heed it—I didn’t have to, he was their Alpha not mine; no one could tell me what to do.

“What of my father and Seneca?”

“Sage that is enough!” I turned then blinking, I felt the pull of his power tenfold to what I had felt to Viktor; it nearly physically hurt like a slap across the face and it made me flinch. I’d never belonged to Viktor’s pack, but this? This had been home and had I stayed I would have been at Mankato’s mercy.

I swallowed hard wishing Mankato would look at me the way he had at our greeting, like I was his niece, his goddaughter whom he loved—not like I was someone who had the audacity to dare to ignore their Alpha.

Well, I see Mankato has taken to the roll nicely.

“Step outside Sage.” It wasn’t a suggestion and there was zero room to argue; the wolf in me bristled.

In spite of myself I found I’d crossed the room, pushed open the door, and was hit by the cool night air without even a thought to it…fucking Alpha commands.

This is why I hated Blackwood.
I wasn’t the type who took kindly to being bossed around—I wasn’t bred for that. A chill shot down my spine and I tried to push the thought from my mind; of course when you’re told not to think of something obviously you do.

I wasn’t bred to be a follower.

I was bred to be a leader.

An Alpha.

What was I thinking? I ran a hand over my face and drew a shaky breath, what the hell was I doing here?

I thought of Mia, my friend and clarity through all this insanity, who I’d left at the house. It’d been hard enough to explain my brother and I racing for the door, or the ‘german shepherd/husky’ Conan was babysitting for the neighbors. I knew this was only going to get harder to keep from her. I was stupid to think Mia could be my go-to friend here, it wasn’t like she was—

There was a snap of a twig and a muffled curse. The scent of raspberries and pine filled my nose.

“Rune,”

Out of the shadows appeared a small blonde figure with azure eyes. She was pixy like and lithe, twenty with the looks of a fifteen year old. She was as deadly as she was kind. Her unruly blonde hair matched her disposition to not be contained.

Recognition flashed through her eyes when she saw me yet unease and mistrust danced at the edges of those orbs. Her eyes were slightly wide as though she was just taking in the world for the first time.

She’d been Running far too long.

She moved as slow and careful as a doe as she stepped out of the woods, her gaze flickering around for danger before she smiled and launched herself at me. Her small bony figure crashed into me almost painfully as she wrapped her arms around my neck tightly.

“Sage,” She sighed happily as she pulled away, “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

“Seems to be the general consensus around here.”

She tilted her head minimally to the side, toward the building from which I’d just come and I knew she was trying to hear what was being said.

“Rune what are you doing here?” I questioned uneasily. Rune walked a dangerously line between the two territories, belonging to neither, she drifted between both like a ghost she never stayed in one place too long; she was a rogue, a drifter. Suddenly Rune and I had more in common then ever before.

“I had to see you didn’t I?” She responded as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Do you know what kind of paranoia you’re raising in the Eastern pack?”

“I don’t want to talk about them.” I grumbled turning away and gazing up at the stars, Pleiades still out of sight.

“How long are you staying?”

“I dunno,”

“Lukas?”

“Rune.” I snapped cuttingly, my eyes flitting to her.

Rune more often than not spent more time as a wolf then human, it was safer for her in some ways. But the longer you stay a wolf the more animalistic your mind becomes, the harder it is to snap back to reality. For Rune that meant being skittish, her mind switching from one topic to the next rapidly, talking without a filter, defaulting to violence over anything else. Anywhere else and she would have had a mental disorder and been labeled crazy by people her age—here it was just side effects.

“Sorry.” Her eyes darted around us, taking everything in, looking for any potential threats.

It didn’t take very much for me to think of Lukas and unfortunately just being in Rune’s presence made me want to tell her everything that bothered me like old times—including Lukas.

“I saw him today,” I mumbled, my eyes watching the gentle sway of the ferns in the night breeze.

“Did you? That’s good right? Lukas good?”

She wasn’t asking if he was well she was asking if he was friend or foe.

I glanced at Rune out of the corner of my eye, my level of concern for her growing…Exactly how long has she been running around like a wolf for?

“Lukas isn’t the enemy,” I stated flatly, suggesting Lukas was anything other than an ally and Rune might turn on him herself; I didn’t know when she was like this. Yet somehow it went against something within me to say that Lukas wasn’t the enemy, because in some ways, to some parts of me, he was in enemy. Lukas was a Canis, he stood with his pack above all else and fucked up principle or not the wolf in me stirred uneasily around him—not fully trusting him but still fully loving him.

“Good,” She nodded to herself. “I told him you were here. I sensed you first before the others. I saw you coming in the car. I told Lukas. I thought he’d want to hear it from me rather than Viktor.”

She spat the alpha’s name from her lips like something bitter on her tongue and I couldn’t blame her. When the war broke out both of Rune’s parents had been killed, leaving her a teenage orphan. She couldn’t stand allying herself to either packs; one her parents had died for, and she felt had died for nothing, the other had killed them. Both packs had an agreement to let Rune be, flitting between both sides of town. But Viktor had turned a blind eye when the packs split and some of the wolves, knowing Rune wasn’t entirely theirs, harassed her extensively; I’d know, I mended her wounds, cleaned the bloody bites from her torso and shoulder.

I turned to Rune feeling nothing but sadness for my old friend, how could I have left her to fend for herself? Left her to the mercy of both packs?

“Rune,” I touched her cheek softly and she flinched away before she remembered it was me and she relaxed. I brushed dirt off her cheek, pulled mud clumps from her golden locks. “Rune where have you been staying?”

“Everywhere,” She stated matter-of-factly.

“Rune I don’t mean the woods…when was the last time you slept in a bed?”

Rune rubbed her eyes, her large trusting orbs blinking as she gazed up at me.

“I don’t know…a few months after you left?”

“Christ,” I spat looking away.

Why had I fucking left Rune alone?! It was a miracle she wasn’t dead.

“Tell me you’re at least eating…human food.”

“Lukas feeds me sometimes,” She shrugged.

“Sometimes?”

“I don’t like the town. They stare, they watch, they plan…”

“Yeah I know the feeling.” I mumbled.

“He made me promise to come twice a month. He said you’d kill him if something happened to me.”

“Hmph.” I grumbled, well looks like I couldn’t pin this on him then.

She gripped my hand then, bouncing on her toes, “Run with me?”

“No Rune,” I stated sternly, “not tonight.”

“Please Sage?” She begged. “Run with me, run far away—away from Viktor and Mankato.”

“Not. Tonight. Rune.” I snapped, snatching my hand from her grasp. Rejection and hurt flashed across her eyes and she settled fully on her feet, eyeing me curiously with her head cocked to one side in an all too canine gesture.

“Why don’t you run Sage?”

I looked away out into the deep inviting woods, I could feel the seductive pull, the promise to disappear and just simply exist for a while unburdened. I knew those woods like the back of my hand, it was the wood that neither East nor West ventured far into. It was dangerous many said, for Falcon Ridge Forest was a boarder line between the two packs, a grey area. Naturally the danger, the forbiddances of it is was always drew me to it.

“Run Sage?”

“No,” I snapped a harder edge to my voice. “I don’t run, you know I don’t run.”

“But Sa-“

The old squeaky brick red door of the town hall opened and I automatically turned toward the sound. Who wanted to try and push me into submitting now?

I could smell him before I could make out his face amongst the shadows; Tangerines and lavender—Home, Conan.

I heard the rush of air and the soft patter of carefully placed feet and when I turned around Rune had disappeared and instant disappointment of her departure filled me. I could never fully explain my bond with Rune, she was like my best friend, my kid sister, and a Ward in my charge all at the same time. Rune was family and that was that, so my need to protect her was tenfold to my need to protect anyone else that wasn’t.

“Hey you alright?” Conan asked when he approached, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, his head slightly ducked. I knew the gesture, he was sorry for Jasmine’s outburst, sorry for the Welcoming Committees lack of welcoming.

“Yeah I’m fine,” I mumbled distracted, squinting in the night hoping for one last glimpse of my skittish friend.

Conan tilted his nose toward the air. “Rune?” He guessed quietly.

Just as silent I nodded. “Have you seen her around? Have you spoken to her?”

Conan just pursed his lips and shook his head in regret. “Nah, I haven’t spoken to Rune since before you left. I’ve smelt her around these woods a handful of times but I never see her—She doesn’t want to be seen.”

I said nothing as I gazed out at the woods, imagining all of the things that could go wrong for her, all the enemies she could run into; she was so small and vulnerable and alone.

“Rune can take care of herself, Sage.” Conan assured. “There isn’t any other person more capable of surviving on her own than she is.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because you did."