Raised by Wolves(24)
I met Callum halfway between Ali’s house and his, in an area of the forest where the trees thinned out and the ground leveled off in a semicircle. Tonight, the Crescent would be filled, our pack’s numbers spilling into the forest proper. Callum’s house was where the pack conducted its human business. Here, they were wolves, and I avoided this patch of land the same way I eschewed dominance scuffles, disapproving lectures, and werewolves like Marcus who would rather see me dead than claimed by their alpha.
“Bryn.” Callum greeted me with a single word and a slight smile. And then, without warning, he attacked. In a blur of motion, he was upon me, his leg snaking out to kick mine out from underneath me. Stunned, I moved entirely on instinct, twisting to angle my shoulder to the ground.
If you’re going to fall, it’s generally a good idea to control the way you do it. Using my own momentum, I rolled out of the fall, and instead of sprawling out on the forest floor, I bounced to my feet, my hands in loose fists, pulled tight to my chest. Automatically, I scanned the surrounding area for weapons. Holes into which I could trick my enemy into falling. Rocks that I might be able to crack a skull with. Sticks wide enough that I could channel Buffy and do the stake-through-the-heart routine, which was guaranteed to irritate a Were, but might also slow them down enough for me to get to higher ground.
Safer ground.
All of this happened in a fraction of a second—a half moment, or not even that. If I’d been thinking rationally, I would have realized that werewolf or not, official business or not, this was Callum, and I might have guessed that he was attacking me for a reason. I might have noticed that though he was going full speed, he’d pulled back to quarter strength, or less.
But I didn’t.
When a human fights a Were, she doesn’t have the luxury of thinking things through. You’re stuck in slow motion against an enemy who moves so quickly that your eyes can barely follow the movement. You don’t have time to think. You don’t even have time to react. You have to anticipate. You have to be ready. You have to react to the things your opponent hasn’t done yet, but will.
And you have to be lucky.
You’ve been very lucky, Bryn. That doesn’t mean you have to press your luck.
Ali might have seen things differently, but at the moment, I would have sworn that I wasn’t pressing anything. It was pressing me.
Callum feinted left, but I was already moving the other direction and backward, and when his hand reached out to knock me to the ground, I’d already jumped. His blow threw me off center, but I managed to catch the limb I’d been aiming for anyway, and swung myself—slightly lopsided—up to stand on the branch.
As fast and strong and darn-near-invincible as they seem, werewolves aren’t much for climbing trees. Their bones are denser than humans, and they don’t have preternatural balance to go along with their stealth. Callum wasn’t quite six feet tall, but he was muscular, male, and much heavier than I was, and there was no way this tree would support his weight.
For that matter, I had no guarantees that it would support mine for much longer, but beggars really couldn’t be choosers. And mid-morning snacks can’t afford to be finicky about the methods with which they attempt to avoid being eaten.
“You’re getting faster,” Callum said, “but you need to be more aware of your surroundings.” And with those words, he shot into another blur of motion, running up onto a nearby stone and catapulting himself off it.
Incoming werewolf, zeroing in on me like a missile. Not a good thing. Not a good thing at—
“Ooomph.” Callum tackled me off my perch. I braced myself for contact with the ground, but at the last second, he twisted, putting his body in between mine and the ground, cushioning my fall.
Thankful for the reprieve, I nonetheless elbowed him in the gut, somersaulted forward and out of his grasp, and threw a rock at his head before I even realized I’d armed myself.
He caught the rock and smiled. “Good girl.”
The tension melted off his body, and his posture changed utterly, a signal meant to tell me that this portion of our little meet and greet was over.
“Forgive me if I’m skeptical,” I said, and like magic, I had more rocks in each of my hands.
“The only way I wouldn’t forgive you is if you weren’t,” he said, and moving with a speed that fell more into the realm of impressively human than typically Were, he managed to disarm me completely, and he chucked me under the chin.
“You’re a strong, smart girl, Bryn, but it’s not enough. You’ve been slacking on your training.”
If by “slacking,” he meant “up at dawn every day for my entire life going through katas and self-defense moves and running like I’m prepping for a triathalon.”