The Last Wolf

Fear rippled through my veins. This guy couldn’t expect me to stay with him? I didn’t even know where ‘this’ place was to decide if I wanted to stay! Raider shifted his stance. The man must’ve moved. I tried to remember anything about the name Hawke. Who was he? What did he want from me?

“She’s not staying here,” Raider growled while circling the cluster of trees closest to us. Maniacal laughter filled the air. I grabbed his hand forcing his attention back to me.

“I can come with you,” I stated, “to the edge of wherever this is, and you can go get help.”

“See,” the voice retorted in a whimsical manner, though the low voice was stained with danger. “She wants to stay with me while you bring my victims.”

“You can’t stay here, Wolf Girl, not with him.” Raider squeezed my fingers before turning to find the face he’d been searching for.

“Hawke, come on!” His body stopped moving as the man appeared again. I realized I’d been wrong before; there was nothing subtle about his muscles. Something about him—his warm chocolate hair and golden brown eyes, the stance he took hiding in the protection of the darkness, cruelty in his eyes—seemed familiar, almost too familiar. “He’s not doing too good, you know,” Raider sighed.

“I know exactly what I did to him,” Hawke snarled. “He should’ve been stronger!”

“How could he be after what you did?” Raider questioned. There was no harshness in his deep voice, only sadness. “How could any of us be strong after what happened?”

“Look at you, Half-Breed,” he stated. His eyes darkening as he approached using another stance that I recognized. “Look at me…” he trailed off grinning. “We are stronger than they let us be. Something must’ve worked for us, why didn’t it work for them?”

“I remember you,” I whispered. Raider shifted so I could see his high cheek bones and the sharp line of his jaw. His face was slimmer than his brother’s, and in this light he could never been mistaken for anyone else.

“What?” they asked in unison.

I pulled my attention back to Hawke. The cold stance of a man with cropped black hair and sharp icy eyes hit me. Two little boys standing in defiance—one with long jet black hair and the same sharp icy eyes and another with short warm chocolate curls and golden hiding in the protection of the first’s shadow—floated through my memories. “I remember you,” I stated louder.

“Wolf,” Raider growled over his shoulder. Not taking his eyes from Hawke’s strong chiseled features. He grew up defined and hollow. Strength meant nothing to him because he never had it.

“You’re his brother,” I cried. “Why would you hurt Colt like that when he protected you?”

Growls filled the silence, not Raider’s. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Hawke hissed.

“I saw it!” I latched onto Raider’s shoulder, trying to force my head over it like it was a high shelf. A need to look into Hawke’s eyes filled me similar to the need my wolf had to change suddenly. “I saw you, him, a man that had his face and a woman that had your hair. I saw them all. You trembled when the man seemed angry; he was so angry, but Colt stood there. He stood there while you hid in his shadow even though you were taller. You were older!”

Raider no longer looked at Hawke. He no longer stood in my way, but I could feel his eyes. They pleaded with me to stop, or to explain. I couldn’t explain. The memory I saw in Colt’s eyes the day after he saved me, the day he took me in, couldn’t be denied. I stared with everything I had into those darkening eyes that seemed almost black with rage now.

“You weren’t there!” Hawke growled. “Don’t pretend to know what happened!”

“How do you know that?” Raider interrupted. His eyes were wide and pale while his hands shook. “Where did you see that, Dahlia?” It was the first time he spoke my name. The word sounded unfamiliar, almost like a prayer, coming from his lips. Shivers crept down my spine as his eyes held mine. “Wolf?” He questioned as my thoughts rushed through my head.

“Colt showed me.” I stated. Comfort evaded me for the duration of his stare. I nearly cringed when his hand grasped my chin between his thumb and forefinger just like Colt. Hawke growled and broke a twig as he stepped forward.

Raider stared into my eyes. His pale yellow eyes looked like light from the setting sun hidden beneath a cloud. The image brushed a chill over my body as I stared back. A blond wolf stood in an overcast field hiding between tuffs of tall grass while a woman with an olive skin tone and chestnut hair begged a man dressed in black to stop. Rags flew out of the sky, from the second story window, while another man held a small boy with bright blond hair tightly by his arm. His eyes were pale, reflecting the green of the grass in the field. I looked closer at the wolf, another set of golden eyes shown from beneath the wolf.

When the clouds parted on the setting sun, the moon looked like it did the night my body forced a change. It was missing just a sliver of a crescent moon. I realized, at once, what I was seeing. Raider struggled against the man’s grasp while his mom begged them to stop looking…for his dad. The wolf in the field was his father, and the unmistakable, wide, golden yellow eyes had to be Macon.

I saw the man dressed in black—even his face was covered—raise the gun to Raider’s mother’s head. She begged for her life, for the life of her child. The man’s hand never faltered as the blast echoed through the field. His father’s growl roared over the shot causing the short man holding Raider to loosen his grip. He raced into the grass to find his family, but his father was racing toward the men while Macon cried. Raider put his hand over his brother’s mouth and watched as animals burst through the front door and ripped his father apart while the men riddled him with bullets. The animals shifted, tensing and arguing about something he couldn’t quite hear. Raider pulled Macon from the ground and ran into the dense thicket of trees, and he didn’t stop running.

He released my face as tears slowly welled in my eyes. I saw him shaking his head through my blurred vision; I wanted to comfort him. “No! How? You can’t remember that,” he growled. Anger ravaged his face. I stepped back, mot expecting that reaction. Remember what? I stood still watching him while he went crazy with whatever he saw in my eyes. “Is that why he wants you so much?” Raider turned on me.

“I don’t know…” I trailed off catching a glimpse of Hawke as he disappeared into the darkness. Taking a shaky breath, I stated more firmly, “I don’t know what you saw!”

“You know who killed your parents.” Raider stated. “They’re faces weren’t covered. Animals, humans, they were all out in the open when your mother died.”

“What are you talking about?” I hissed. He stared wide-eyed at me for a moment before glancing around for Hawke, who hadn’t made a sound for at least ten minutes.

“I saw you, Dahlia,” he said it again. He said my name as if it was the only hope left. “I saw you get cut out of your mother’s stomach. They killed her, so many men and shifters. They watched her die, and when they were all gone someone came back; whoever it was cut you out of her stomach. You’re supposed to be dead!”