With twenty-twenty hindsight, I now wished I’d put up with the status quo and stayed in Haven. I wished I’d agreed to marry young and turn into a baby machine, to bow my head when my husband entered the room and to forget my big dreams of finding my own way in the world. I hadn’t known then that the outside world was so cold and lonely. I hadn’t known anyone without a wolf clawing at their insides would inevitably stay a stranger.
But my vision at seventeen had been clouded by youth, and I’d chosen to leave the only pack I could ever belong to. As my stepmother would say, I’d made my bed, and now I had to lie in it. With one final sigh, I turned away from the lantern-lit scene to head home to my empty cabin and my cold quilt.
Chapter 4
I dreamed about Wolfie. He was chasing me through the woods, and I should have been terrified of the huge alpha wolf on my trail. Instead, my dream self was playful and laughing as she eluded the canine, pausing once to rub up against his side and lick his face. Perhaps because of the confusing dream, I woke to an even worse ache in my stomach and to one word on my mind. Packless.
I couldn’t miss work since I’d already taken the previous morning off, but a little luck was waiting for me at the nature center. At our morning staff meeting, I learned that one of the back-country cabins an eight hour hike into the wilderness area needed repairs, and I quickly volunteered to do the honors. Carrying fifty pounds of camping gear and tools down the trail wasn’t necessarily my idea of fun, but the task meant I could spend three days away from civilization: three days when I wouldn’t have to look over my shoulder fearing that Wolfie had tracked me down, three days when I wouldn’t have to make inane conversation with my co-workers and pretend to be human, three days to think.
And, at first, the choice seemed to have been a good one. The straps of my pack creaked like the lines on a sailboat as the bulky parcel swayed with my steps, lulling me into a meditative state. Meanwhile, the sun was out and the scent of fallen leaves underfoot reminded me of simpler years. By the time I’d turned twelve, life in our werewolf pack was difficult, but childhood as a wolfling was bliss. I wasn’t able to shift forms at that age, but my mind was more than half wolf as I stalked prey in the woods above our settlement. My sister Brooke and I played for hours, only coming home when our mother yelled up the hillside toward us that dinner was ready.
But then Mom had died giving birth to our little brother, a bloodling who had emerged in wolf form and had torn our mother apart from the inside out. My father drowned the tiny wolf in the duck pond, and before long, I had a stepmother, a little brother, and a father who treated me to birthday-morning orders that sucked every ounce of freedom out of my life.
I shook the unwanted memories away and tried to pay attention to my surroundings. I’d already crested the ridge that marked the halfway point between the nature center and the cabin, and now I was following a boulder-lined stream that filled the air with the sound of running water. As I looked down the trail, appreciating the fall colors, I paused at the sight of a man’s form resting on a log by the side of the path. Although the human seemed to be napping with his broad-brimmed hat pulled down over his face, the unmistakable scent of wolf drifted into my nose from all sides, and I could feel my adrenaline kick back in. I was as distant from my wolf brain as was possible at that moment, so such strong odors meant there were several wolves around and that they were close by. Trouble.
“Don’t you want to say hello to your old man?” the figure called without looking up. I should have been relieved that this was a family reunion, not the ambush by Wolfie’s pack that I’d been expecting ever since my trip to the city the day before. But, if anything, the sight of my father was even less welcome than an invasion by Wolfie’s pack would have been. I unclasped the waist buckle of my backpack and let the mass fall to the trail so I’d be ready to run, but the Chief had anticipated my retreat. A dozen wolves stepped out of the trees behind me and advanced, herding me toward the father I’d escaped ten years before.