Secret Worlds (133 page)

Okay, maybe not
just
like Wolfie. As ebbing adrenaline let rational thought once again fill my mind, I realized that it was decidedly odd for the alpha in question to be walked around in wolf form on a leash. But for all I knew, the two were tracking something that required the wolf’s superior senses. In human form, we could sometimes use our wolf brain to boost our sniffing power, but the effect was nothing compared to how in tune we were with the world when entirely wolf.

Fur aside, Wolfie had the arrogance of every other alpha I’d ever met. After forcing me to stop running against my will, he was now sitting at Chase’s feet and looking up at me with his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth in a doggie laugh. Once he was sure he had my attention, Wolfie reached up one paw as if to shake … then winked.

“I don’t think she thinks you’re as cute as you think you are,” Chase warned his friend when I looked pointedly away from the raised paw. Despite myself, I smiled at the beta’s words, amused that a lower-ranking wolf could yank the alpha’s chain, even metaphorically. “Like I said, I’m really sorry,” Chase continued his earlier apology to me. “But Wolfie is pig-headed and I’m afraid he’s not going to give either of us any peace unless you agree to talk to us, just for a few minutes. Maybe you’d let me buy you a coffee?”

As I said, I liked Chase, and his words were perfectly polite, but I was 100% sure that spending another minute in the alpha’s presence was the last thing I wanted to do. I closed my eyes in an effort to collect myself, hoping this was just a hallucination brought on by my pack craving. But when I looked back down the street, Chase and Wolfie were still waiting expectantly in front of me … along with a kindergarten-aged kid who was pulling away from his mother’s hand in hopes of petting the huge, terrifying beast sitting beside me.

“Don’t worry, he doesn’t bite,” Chase said to the mother, who had taken in the situation just as the boy’s hand landed squarely in Wolfie’s eye. She had more sense than her son and seemed poised to yank her offspring to safety, but to my surprise, the alpha wolf put up with the mauling good-naturedly before offering the child the same paw trick he’d pulled on me. With the complete lack of self-preservation instinct typical of a human child, the kid took Wolfie’s paw and shook it adamantly, before being pulled away by his mother.

Greetings complete, Wolfie looked back up at me and tilted his head to one side, the meaning clear—he wasn’t a monster who ate small children. But I didn’t allow myself to be impressed. So what if an alpha wolf had let a human child manhandle him? That didn’t counteract the same alpha’s freeze-in-your-tracks command just minutes earlier. On the other hand, I hadn’t come up with any way of wiggling out of a meeting during the unusual interlude, so I shrugged my acceptance and allowed Chase to lead us across the street to a sidewalk cafe.

“Coffee?” the beta asked, handing the wolf’s leash over to me as I stood beside an empty table outside the door. I nearly dropped the tether in surprise, the rough fabric feeling like a poisonous snake in my hands as I considered the repercussions of my situation. No way did I want to be in charge of an alpha’s leash if the wolf suddenly decided that the restraint was beneath his dignity, but I realized we had to keep up appearances for the sake of the humans around us, so I kept my eyes averted from the alpha on the other end of the line and nodded stiffly. In light of the leash issue (and being dragged to the cafe against my will), it seemed like a small matter that I didn’t drink coffee, having found that stimulants were one of the danger points for a female werewolf struggling to control her shifts. But no one said I had to consume the beverage Chase would put in front of me. I probably would have choked on any drink given my current state of mind, so the flavor was irrelevant.

But the wolf disagreed with my unwillingness to state my preferences. Before his beta could leave to collect our drinks, Wolfie nudged Chase’s hand to attract his attention, then firmly shook his head. “You’re hungry?” Chase asked the wolf, surprised, but Wolfie only huffed in disgust. Then, just as I realized what the alpha was communicating, understanding came into Chase’s eyes as well. “You’d prefer hot chocolate?” the man tried again, returning his gaze to me, and I nodded despite myself.

And that’s how I ended up in such a ludicrous situation. After spending half my energy over the last ten years hiding from the merest hint of werewolf presence, I was sitting at a cast-iron table of a sidewalk cafe, clinging to the leash of an alpha werewolf while his beta headed inside to buy me a hot chocolate. I wasn’t even surprised when the wolf rested his chin on my thigh in search of an ear scratch, but I
was
surprised that I allowed my hand to drift over his soft ears. The fur was every bit as silky as it looked.

***

“You know, if you’d just put these on, you could ask her yourself,” Chase told Wolfie, exasperated as he shook a backpack full of men’s clothing under the wolf’s nose. Despite myself, the two were growing on me as I sipped my hot chocolate and watched them carry out a seemingly coherent conversation … despite the fact that one was a wolf. After the bark that froze me on the street, Wolfie hadn’t said another word, but he was quite adept at making his meaning clear, to Chase at least. While taking in the show, I had even started drifting into wolf brain, where Wolfie’s nonverbal language was more understandable, but I had quickly pulled myself back to the safety of the human world. The middle of a city was no place to turn my wolf loose, even if we had been on speaking terms.

“What does he want to know?” I asked, when a stalemate appeared to have been reached by the opposing forces across the table from me. Wolfie, for some unknown reason, preferred to stay wolf, Chase was unwilling to continue being his mouthpiece, and I was starting to get curious about the alpha’s question.

Only when Chase turned to me with a huge smile on his face did I realize that these were the first words I’d spoken in the pair’s presence. So much for the cold shoulder. But I shrugged internally and decided there was no point in freezing out Chase anyway, since he seemed to be a nice guy. I was reserving judgment on the wolf.

“Wolfie just wants to know your name,” Chase answered. “But I can tell you aren’t comfortable sitting here with us, and I didn’t want to pepper you with questions until you had time to see we were harmless.” In contrast to his alpha’s demand for information, Chase’s strategy for putting me at ease seemed to involve talking until the cows came home. So, with an effort, I pretended he wasn’t a male werewolf and interrupted the monologue.

“I’m Terra,” I answered, looking straight into the alpha’s eyes rather than at his beta. It was strange to be chatting with an alpha werewolf as if he were the guy down the street, but the wolf merely nodded his appreciation of the information then peered at Chase as if to say,
I told you she wouldn’t mind
.

I felt okay parting with my given name since I figured neither Chase nor Wolfie would know the first name of the second daughter of an alpha from out of state, but I was careful not to offer a surname, which would have instantly linked me to a pack. Wanting to stay as anonymous as possible, I decided some misdirection was in order to turn the conversation away from a potentially tricky topic, so I shifted my eyes back to Chase. “And
his
name really is Wolfie?” I parried, hoping Chase would be willing to play along with my obvious attempt to talk about something other than myself.

“Well, Wolf actually,” Chase answered. “But I always figured ‘Wolfie’ made him seem a little more human … .” The alpha in question snorted, which sent a tremor of fear running through me until I realized the wolf was laughing, at which point I started breathing again with a jolt.

“That’s very … literal … of his mother,” I said after a minute. Once my heart rate had slowed back down from the effects of Wolfie’s laugh, I could feel my brow wrinkling as I tried to imagine naming a werewolf “Wolf.” We
did
tend to gravitate toward nature-oriented names, but this seemed more like the kind of appellation a two-year-old would give his pet.

“Well, it was
my
mother, actually,” Chase said, turning his attention back to me. “We’re milk brothers.” The old-fashioned term suggested Wolfie had been nursed by Chase’s mother, and probably raised like his brother. It also explained why the less-dominant wolf was able to hold his alpha on a leash, and why the two could communicate without words. Despite myself, I was becoming intrigued by the two werewolves in front of me, but Chase’s next words pushed away my false sense of security.

“So, which pack are you from?” the beta asked, and my jitters returned full force. Without meaning to, I stood, my chair screeching against the pavement as it was abruptly pushed backwards by my motion.

Chase’s words were enough to remind me that I was packless by choice and could easily be drawn back into this or another wolf’s pack, which made my slowed breathing begin to race once again. What would prevent Wolfie from asking around about a twenty-something werewolf named Terra, and what would happen when his words inevitably reached my father’s ears? I would end up right back where I started, and all because I’d been stupid enough to imagine I was simply chatting with two strange werewolves whom I’d met in a bookstore.

All of those thoughts zipped through my mind in the span of time it took to rise from the table, and by then the adrenaline had really kicked in. Fight or flight seemed to be my only options, so I fled.

But I wasn’t far enough away to miss Wolfie admonishing his friend. The wolf’s easy-going demeanor disappeared in an instant as the alpha bared his teeth at Chase, who quickly averted his eyes in submission. If I’d needed any proof that Wolfie was just as overbearing as every other alpha werewolf I’d ever run into, this was it. Not that I’d thought otherwise … well, not for long.

I almost expected there to be other werewolves in the wings, just waiting to rope me back into the pack life from which I’d escaped. Instead, there was just Wolfie’s commanding bark, ordering me to stop. But I wasn’t a member of his pack, and I didn’t have to obey. I ran down the street, and this time I didn’t look back.

That evening, I reached for my wolf for the first time in years. But she was gone, squashed beneath layers of iron control built during a decade of painstaking effort. So it was up to my human eyes and nose to hunt down signs of the lost toddler.

Well, it was up to
my
eyes … and to the eyes of a dozen other park rangers spread out across the rapidly chilling woodland. I’d returned from the city in time to put in a few hours of work at the park, and the monotony of desk-sitting abruptly ended when Mr. Carr barreled in to tell us his daughter had wandered away from the family campsite. I’d yet to meet Melony’s mother—she refused to come out of the woods until the little girl was found, but Mrs. Carr did yell her position through the trees when we arrived. In response, we spread out, each taking a vector that started at the campsite and arrowed out into the unknown. And we started to search.

Since then, it had begun to rain. A gentle autumn shower at first, but now the pounding storm was pulling leaves from the trees and was muffling even the sound of my own footsteps. Water was trickling down my spine despite my hooded slicker, and I could just imagine how a two-year-old would feel, cold and scared, lost in the woods. Her father had told us Melony was wearing shorts and a thin t-shirt—she might already be experiencing symptoms of hypothermia.

The light was beginning to fade, and urgency tempted me to push myself into a trot. Instead, I slowed down, took a deep breath … and sat. I would have received a phone call if Melony had been found, which meant everyone else was probably getting these same jitters of a hunt about to be lost. They would be rushing around like crazy people, and the night would likely end with at least a sprained ankle to remind some careless ranger of the hunt. Worse, my gut said that if Melony didn’t turn up soon, she wouldn’t turn up alive.

But my unconventional childhood left me equipped to handle the tail end of a difficult hunt … if I could just draw upon the memories I’d been hiding from for the last ten years. The problem was that, although I desperately needed to shift forms so I could sniff out Melony’s trail, the last time I’d been hunting through rain-darkened woods with my wolf rampant, the day hadn’t ended well.

I was seventeen then, newly fled from my home pack and trying to eke out a living in a forest much like this one. The woods had always been my safe, secret place as a child, but after I left Haven, reality set in. Without a home to return to, life was a constant battle against the elements … and against my wolf nature.

That year, it seemed that I was always cold and hungry, and the call of my wolf was endlessly enticing. While I was shivering under my lean-to shelter made of branches and a scavenged garbage bag, the wolf begged me to shift forms so her fur could keep us dry. When I was itching for a warm meal, she whispered that we could stalk a rabbit four-footed and slake our thirst with hot blood.
No one will see us here
, she breathed in my ear.
It’s safe to be a wolf.

I knew she was wrong, but I was so miserable that one day I let the wolf have her head. As the days grew shorter, less and less wild food was available for the picking, and it had been over forty-eight hours since I’d found anything other than twigs to gnaw on. In the preceding weeks, I’d caught fish, had set snares, and had even ground acorns between rocks and pinned them in my t-shirt in the running water of a creek to leach out the bitter tannins. And, for a while, there had been enough to carry me through. But this week, no food was to be found.

The hunger gnawed at my belly, but if I was honest, it was the loneliness that really did me in. Werewolves weren’t meant to spend so long away from a pack, and the simplicity of my wolf’s brain made it easier for the canine to handle lack of pack mates—she missed the company but didn’t dwell upon what was absent. So, at last, I gave in to the wolf’s seductive promises. I shed my dripping t-shirt and jeans, then let my arms turn into legs and my wolf take control.