Raised by Wolves(66)

And then the world was being uncrumpled, and the forest unfolded into something new.

Something small.

Something that smelled like wet cardboard and drain cleaner. I would have taken comfort in the fact that I could smell again but for the memories that combination brought with it.

Teeth ripping into flesh. Skin tearing like Velcro. Blood splattering. Again and again, vicious, relentless, thorough. Blood-blood-blood-blood-blood …

Jaws. Daddy. No! I wasn’t back there. This wasn’t real. I was big now. I was strong.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are, little one. No sense hiding from the Big Bad Wolf. I’ll always find you in the end.…”

Even though I was big now, even though I knew that this was impossible and that it wasn’t happening again, I couldn’t stop myself from walking through the old, familiar motions. I peeked out of my hiding space under the sink, saw the man.

I couldn’t smell him.

I saw him Change.

Star on his forehead. Gonna find me. Blood. Blood-blood-blood—

I closed my eyes, the same way I had when I was four. I closed them, but I could hear the monster breathing—right outside.

It was gonna get me. The Big Bad Wolf was gonna get me.

Wood cracked, splintering. It was the front door—the door the wolf had locked behind him, back when he had been a man. And in came others—so many others. A man with exactly three lines on his face: one from smiling, two from frowning.

Callum, the grown-up me realized, even as the four-year-old inside me watched, unable to move.

A woman with a sleek dark ponytail—Sora—dove across the room, tackling the Big Bad Wolf away from me.

“I’ve got you, Little One.” Hands reached in to grab me, but I didn’t resist. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

Blood-blood-blood-blood.

“Shut your eyes.”

I couldn’t follow Callum’s gentle command. Couldn’t then. Couldn’t now. The first time, I’d seen Sora change to wolf form and go for the Rabid’s throat. Then Callum had turned my head away. Only this time, he didn’t. He let me watch, and there was nothing to see.

No Big Bad Wolf.

No house.

Nothing but the forest, outside of Callum’s house. I turned back to face him in his arms, and he dropped me. I hit the ground hard, and Sora, still in human form, lashed out at me. She was too fast. I was too slow.

Bryn.

No. Not again. No-no-no-no—

Bryn. It wasn’t Callum in my head. It wasn’t the pack. It was Chase, and the moment I realized that, the world shifted on its axis, and I was back in the clearing, crouched down, smelling the dirt.

“Chase.” I said his name out loud, and in wolf form, he nuzzled me, pushing his head under my hand.

Chase.

He butted my chest with his nose, and I fell over back onto my butt. “Jerk,” I said.

He laughed, as much as any wolf could. Then, without any warning, he was human, and he was holding me. Rubbing his cheek against mine. Smelling my hair.

This time, I pushed him away, and he fell back. “Jerk,” he said.

I smiled. “It really is you,” I replied. “Isn’t it? It’s not just a dream.”

Chase snorted. “I wasn’t even asleep.” For a moment, he sounded human, but then his eyes began to yellow, and the diameter of his pupil doubled within a single beat of my heart. “You needed me,” he said, a deep vibrating hum in his voice. “I felt you. Protect.”

The last word didn’t sound human. It didn’t sound human at all. Chase had claimed me every bit as much as I’d turned my pack-bond to him, and what was an itch in the back of my mind when I was awake was all-encompassing now.

Chase wanted to protect me.

He had to protect me.

His wolf wanted out, wanted to smell me again. Make me okay.

“It was just a nightmare,” I said, my voice low and calming. “No interference. No Rabid in my brain. No Callum. Just me.”

I didn’t mention that my brain wasn’t the safest place to be these days. Without a word, Chase brought his hands up, ran them lightly over the bruises on my face, one by one.

“Scared,” he said.

It was easier to admit it here. I nodded.

“Angry,” he said, the wolf sneaking into his tone.

I nodded again.

“Sad.”

These were things that the wolf inside Chase understood. Simple things that a human wouldn’t have been able to diagnose with one-word sentences. Emotions were complicated for humans. They were complicated for me. But for Chase, liquid and feral and always a moment away from changing, they were simple.

I was scared and I was angry and I was sad, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about any of it.

Chase cocked his head to the side, and for a moment, I thought he would Change again, but instead, his body went abruptly still in a jerky, violent motion, like someone or something was holding him back. He dropped to his knees, then to his stomach, and as I reached for him, a foreign smell filled the air.