Trial by fire(5)

Our pack was small—twenty-two total, only eighteen there that night—but the air was electric, and as their thoughts swirled with my own, the connection between us became a living, breathing thing. I felt them, all of them: Lake and Maddy, Lily and the twins, Chase. From the youngest to the oldest, from those who thirsted for a hunt to those who wanted nothing more in life than to run …

They were mine.

Devon slid in beside me, and the moment I felt the brush of his arm against mine, I knew.

It was time.

In other packs, this was formal. There were petitions and ceremonies and marks carved into flesh, but here and now, I didn’t have words, and they didn’t need them.

Now. Now. Now.

I couldn’t deny the Change any more than they could. The treetops scattered moonlight across our faces, and I inclined my head. That was all it took.

At any other time of the month, the sound of tearing fabric and crunching bones wasn’t a pleasant one, but under the full moon, the effect was like the beating of a drum.

Run. Run. Run.

All around me, they could taste it. They could feel it. Furred bodies pushed at each other to get closer to me, to touch me, to sniff me, to be with me, and the roar from their minds was overwhelming.

Alpha. Alpha. Alpha.

I forgot about Chase, about Devon, about each and every one of them as anything other than my brothers, my sisters, my people, my pack.

Mine.

This was what I’d been born for. This was all that I wanted and all that I was, and as one overwhelming, unstoppable, incredible force, we ran.





CHAPTER TWO





SATED AND SOOTHED, THE PACK SLEPT. MY ALL-TOO-HUMAN body was worn past all endurance, but for the first time in days, my pack-sense was calm, and the others’ minds were quiet in my own. Their presences ebbed and flowed at the edge of my consciousness, and as I finally collapsed onto my bed, the protests of my aching body dissolved into infinity, into nothing.

I dreamed of wet grass and fallen leaves that crunched under my bare feet as I walked. I couldn’t see my body, couldn’t make out the outline of a single rock or tree, but I shrugged off the blindness as a mild inconvenience. My body knew what it was doing better than I did, and the scents I took in with each step were rich and familiar: damp soil and dew, cedar and cinnamon.

A sound. To my left.

My nose twitched and I whirled, my hair fanning out around me, my knees bent, ready to pounce.

Ready, if necessary, to run.

For a moment, there was silence. A twig snapped. Leaves rustled, and then I made out the faint sound of paws on wet ground.

A wolf.

I knew that much with certainty, but who the wolf was and why it had come here, I had no idea. The list of people who wanted to see me dead wasn’t short enough that I could ignore the possibility of a threat. Still, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t coerce my feet into moving, couldn’t keep my body from crouching down or my arm from moving to hold out a beckoning hand, palm up.

What was I doing?

The wolf moved closer, until I could feel the heat of its body, the warmth of its breath against my palm. I wanted to see, willed myself to see, and then there was light.

The wolf in question was female, larger than some but, based on the size of her paws, not quite full grown. She was thin—and, I knew instinctively, fast—built along lean, muscular lines that were almost masked by thick honey-brown fur that gave way to darker markings around her face and a bit of white near each of her paws.

She brought her eyes to mine, and there was something regal about the motion. I held my breath. I waited. She showed her teeth. She ducked her head. Finally, slowly, she stepped forward, that much closer to my outstretched hand.

And then the world froze and we were caught like that, inches apart, neither one of us able to close the gap. I fought the paralysis, but it didn’t break until the scene around me had shifted and I found myself back in the clearing, the ground covered in snow, my body wrapped up in layers and layers of clothing and the wind whipping my hair at my face. It took me a moment to remember that after our run, I’d gone back to the cabin and fallen asleep in my own bed.

I’m still asleep, I thought. I’m at home in my bed, asleep. This is just a dream.

Despite the realization, I looked for the rest of my pack. I searched for them, with my eyes and with the part of me that knew each and every one of them like they were extensions of my own body.

I looked for the strange wolf who’d almost brought her nose to touch my hand.

But all I saw was a human, a stranger. A man. The part of my brain that thought like a girl recognized the cockiness in his expression and put his age at five or six years older than me.

The part of me that thought like Pack felt his presence like white noise, high-pitched and deafening.