I have no choice but to find a way to get this aggression out. I know this rage inside me can be deadly and it needs out and needs out nowhere near her. If she runs, I’ll just have to hunt her down. I let my muscles flex; I allow the beast in me to thrust its way forward. He comes hard. I shift. I shift and then I prowl off the wood porch, across the grass, to the edge where it turns to dirt and rocks, by the willow tree. I begin to mark a perimeter around the house. All the way around, so that no animal, no bird, not even an insect would dare approach.
I snarl while I do it, chest rising and falling fast with the pending haze.
Will it work to keep her safe? I hope so. I glance over my shoulder at the building, knowing that by going for a run there’s a chance she’ll leave. The truck keys are in my jeans on the ground, so if she goes without figuring this out, it’ll have to be on foot, and she’ll be covered in my scent if she does
I have no choice but to go. I need this fury out of me nowhere near her.
***
It’s a thirty-minute drive to the forbidden village, a hamlet nestled in rolling hills and dense forests.
This means it’s a much longer run than that and I don’t know how long it has taken; I only know I’ve run fast, trying to run out my aggression, hunting down and devouring a deer and a rabbit on my way. I’ve run, my feet taking me in this direction, and I don’t know why. I’m just drawn here, much like I was directly after Cornelius died.
It’s not often anyone would happen upon the intersection where the forbidden village begins by chance since there is no common roadway in. It’s accessible through a long country road, longer than the road leading away from my house, outside the Indian reservation property, which is sprawling, beyond private property signs, and detour signage designed to make you believe you should turn around and go back the way you came.
I get the sense that this place is designed with the idea that there’s no reason for outsiders to linger here. A gas station with a small store attached, plus a non-descript large wooden barn-like building are all anyone passing through would see other than a few homes. The chance of someone even coming in this far would be small. I don’t know what else is here, don’t know how many are part of this pack, but before I’ve stopped at the intersection, I’ve been assaulted by many odors. Aromas that are familiar, that tug threads inside me, making the things I thought were real feel as if they unravel, making nothing make sense but yet fusing things together that feel like they could make sense.
I strive to flip through the scents that last time confused me, to untangle and name them. Some of them I feel like I know. Some, I don’t. I know some are young, some are older, some are men and some females. I also know some are more like me than others. Relatives? Alphas in the pack?
A door creaks open at the gas station and a woman near my age stands there, staring. She then drops her chin to her chest and she’s weeping.
She’s weeping while holding the doorknob.
I don’t know her. Why does she weep at the sight of my wolf? Fear? She’s a shifter. I don’t sense fear from her.
Motion catches my attention from the edge of my periphery. Two men are beside the large barn-like building, a door open. They, too, stare at me in my wolf form with something emanating from them that I don’t know how to translate.
They aren’t a threat.
They’re not feeling threatened.
There’s something else coming from them and I don’t understand what it is.
I hear car sounds; a car moves fast toward this intersection from the left and when I see it, I spot two men and a woman inside. They exit. Riley Savage. He gives me a nod and his eyes have a gentleness in them that I haven’t yet seen from a man and I can’t wrap understanding around it.
He holds up a fist and thumps it against his chest before he drops his chin to rest on his chest.
Another man who I know is alpha by his stance, by his scent, he stands there with eyes on me, too. He thumps his chest and drops his head, a similar facial expression.
The woman between them? She smells like… her. The one I smelled before. The one I feel an odd familiarity about. She was at that fence. I also caught her scent last time I was here.