I went out the door off the kitchen into our backyard. A light blazed in the house next door—the house that Daniel used to live in all those years ago—and I saw the silhouette of Mr. Dutton standing in the window. He looked in the direction of the forest—no doubt wondering about the source of the wolf’s cry that had probably awoken him—but I doubted he could see much with his own light on.
I stood on our back deck until Mr. Dutton moved away from the window. Before he had a chance to turn off the light for a better look outside, I mustered up a few extra ounces of power and took off in a sprint toward the back fence that separated our yard from the encroaching woods. Just before the rosebushes could snag at my pajama pants, I leaped over the fence. I winced at the shock of pain that ricocheted up from my ankle when my feet hit the ground on the opposite side. But other than that, I’d managed a perfect, almost soundless, landing.
For half a second I thought about how proud Nathan Talbot, my former mentor, would be if I told him about my quiet landing—something that we’d worked on in training. “For such a tiny girl, you land like a pile of rocks,” he’d teased me once, his cheeks dimpling with that warm smile of his.
And then, as if he knew I’d allowed myself even to think about him, my phone buzzed with a new text.
Talbot: Do you need any help?
I dropped my phone back in my pocket without responding. If I could manage it, I was never going to talk—or even text—with him again.
Talbot was the last person I’d ask for help now. The last person I’d trust. And all that crap that he’d said about loving me…
I took in a deep breath and told myself not to give Talbot another thought. Daniel needed me, and I had to find him before anyone else in town—like Deputy Marsh with his rifle—decided to go looking for the source of those terrible howls.
A patch of bushes rustled off to my right. I whirled at the sound—realizing I wouldn’t have noticed it without my superhearing—and crouched defensively. Panic pounded in my ears.
A large brown wolf stepped out from between the bushes onto the path in front of me, followed closely by a slightly smaller gray wolf. Their eyes glinted as they looked up at me. I nodded to them, trying to hide my disappointment that neither of them was the wolf I was looking for—but at least they weren’t a couple of local hunters.
The two wolves separated and sat at attention on either side of the rocky path. Like sentinels, awaiting my passage. Only five days ago, these two wolves had been part of the pack that had been intent on killing me at Caleb’s beckoning; now they bowed their furry heads in reverence as I passed between them.
While I questioned my brother’s intentions, these wolves were another quandary altogether. I mean, I still didn’t quite understand why they treated me this way—like I was practically their queen.
I’d asked Gabriel about it a couple of days ago. “As I told you in the warehouse, Daniel is their alpha now,” he’d explained as we stood in Dad’s office together, watching as the white wolf lay next to an untouched bowl of canned stew I’d set out for him by my dad’s desk. “And apparently, Daniel has done something to choose you as his … mate. The wolves recognize this somehow and have accepted you as their alpha female.”
And of course it turned out that my dad, the pastor, was standing behind us, and even though he was usually a pretty even-keeled guy, he went totally nuts over the word mate.
Until that moment, I’d completely pushed aside the worry of explaining to my father what had happened during that dark night Daniel and I had spent together in the dungeon of the warehouse. But the look on his slightly purplish face made it clear that an explanation was needed before his imagination got the better of him. “Daniel … kind of proposed to me,” I’d explained. “Before Caleb threw me in the wolf pit. And I said yes.”
“Ah, that would explain it,” Gabriel had said, as if getting engaged at nearly eighteen was a perfectly normal thing to do.
But Dad’s face went an even darker shade of violet, and he started going on and on about how young we were and how even though he and my mom had gotten married when they were twenty, it was no excuse for such irresponsible behavior on my part. And because I hadn’t been able to get a word in explanation-wise, I’d finally shouted, “I only said yes because I thought we were going to die! I wanted him to be happy.”
My dad had closed his mouth with a snap, and his eyes got all shiny with tears. He reached out and grabbed me in a death-grip hug at the reminder that he’d almost lost me only a few days before. With a pang of guilt, I glanced back at the white wolf that lay next to the desk with his eyes shut, seemingly asleep.
I could only hope now that it had been purely a coincidence that Daniel had started his wanderings into the forest only a few hours later.
I used my guilt, and the adrenaline created by the sudden appearance of the two wolves, to muster up enough power to start running despite the pain in my leg. I’d been able to use my abilities to speed up the healing process of the injuries I’d suffered because of Caleb’s cruelty, but Gabriel had cautioned me to take it easy. I ignored the echo of his warnings and jogged along the rocky path in the direction of the howls. The two wolves loped behind me, so close I could feel their warm breath against my back. I dug down deeper inside of me for more strength and picked up my speed, sprinting faster and faster until the two wolves dropped behind me—but I knew they still followed.
I ignored the ache in my lungs from the crisp, autumn air and the searing sensation in my ankle, and veered off the dirt path into the thick of the forest’s trees, with only Daniel’s mournful howls to guide me. I melted into the run, let it take me over for fear that I’d lose all steam if I slowed even a little. I was nothing but a pounding heart, sharp breaths in and out, and feet that slammed against the forest floor.
I didn’t want to be anything else anymore.
Not without Daniel.
If it hadn’t been for a sharp bark from one of the wolves behind me, I probably wouldn’t have snapped back into reality in time to stop myself from sprinting right over the edge of the ravine. With the warning, I grabbed onto the crooked branch of an old tree just as my boots slipped on the muddy cliff’s ledge. I steadied myself against the trunk and looked out over the twenty-foot drop that lay right in front of me. The ravine was about another twenty feet wide. I realized as I scanned the terrain that this was the same spot where Baby James had taken his near-fatal fall last Thanksgiving.
The warm, tingling memory of Daniel miraculously saving my little brother in this very place filled my mind—only to be tarnished by the sight of the great white wolf standing on a rocky outcropping on the other side of the ravine. His head arched back as he howled up at the three-quarter moon like he was desperate for it to answer his cries. The shrillness of his howling screams pierced my oversensitive eardrums, and I fought the urge to cover my ears.
“Daniel!” I shouted, not sure the sound of my shaky voice could penetrate his cries. I pushed myself up taller against the bowed tree trunk, clinging to it for support. My legs burned with lactic acid, and my ankle kept trying to bend in the wrong direction—threatening to buckle. If I thought it had hurt when it was first broken, that was nothing compared to the extreme stabbing that shot through my ankle, up into my body, now that the adrenaline from my run had washed out of me. “Daniel, stop!”