he tells me, and I offer him a smile that I know doesn’t quite reach my eyes.
If he’s leaving that soon, it means he already has permission from Burke, confirming my suspicions that his asking me to come is nothing more than a formality. I bet Burke signed that transfer order quicker than he’s ever signed anything. One more wall between us is gone, and he didn’t even have to kill anyone this time to make it happen.
“I gotta go, Hess,” I announce thickly, and before he can object or so much as stand up, I’m out the door.
My world is falling apart, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
Outside, I see pack members heading into the woods, jogging away from their houses, but I don’t follow them. I need to be alone. I need to be safe. The problem is that I’m not safe here. My wellbeing isn’t a factor in anything that’s happening. My mom is barely cold in the ground and already, I’m wading through threats and thieves lying in wait to steal my choices, my freedom.
I have to leave.
The realization sinks into my spirit, dampening me more than the last of the light rain still misting from the sky. But as soon as I face the facts, I know it’s the right thing to do. If I get my wolf, I lose the last barrier I have keeping back Burke.
I need to figure out how the hell I’m going to get out of here. Twin Rivers has been all I’ve known my entire life. I was born here, and I thought I’d die here. But as I start to run in the opposite direction of the pack gathering, the cool air doing nothing to soothe my fevered skin, I realize this place is no longer my home. It’s all just a trap. A trap that Burke is waiting for me to walk into.
My hair flies behind me as I pick up my pace as though I’m running from something that I’m not sure I can escape. Alpha Burke is coming for me, but I’d sooner die than be claimed by him, the male who brought a pack war here to Twin Rivers. The male who let loose his band of rogues, killing our old alpha and countless others.
Murdering my dad.
If I stay here, I have a feeling it’ll be me who’s destroyed next. Maybe not in the dead in a grave kind of way, but certainly my soul will shrivel and shatter, and I’ll be broken beneath the rule of a cruel male.
Somehow, that seems worse.
Chapter Two
My run lasts well into the night.
A Cheshire cat grin of a moon hangs in the sky, ringed with a nighttime rainbow, the air heavy with cloying fog. Even though I don’t have my wolf spirit yet, I’m a natural-born Totemic shifter, which means I was made to share the body and soul of a sacred wolf. My senses are sharper than a human’s, my body quick and limber.
Which is why it doesn’t bother me in the slightest to be barefoot in the wild, my soles soaking up every damp step in the forest. The smells and sensations are a balm to my battered soul, and it all makes me feel less alone. Like I can feel the people I love still watching over me through the canopy of the trees.
My dad and I used to race each other through these woods. We would come home with brambles in our hair and splinters in our feet, and Mom would pluck them out one by one. She would scold us and then we’d all laugh and raid the kitchen to replenish the energy we just burned off. The memory fades, and with it goes all doubt and concern over what I’ve decided. This run was exactly what I needed. There’s a sort of clarity that comes with it, like my expanding lungs expand my thoughts too.
Things are solidified now. I’m not going to go through with the ceremony that I’ve been preparing for my entire life. I’m not going to be able to take in my wolf. And as much as that grieves me, I know it’s my only shot at a life. A real life, minus the subjugation and threats that exist around every corner here, where I can choose for myself and be me without fear of being broken for it.
I’ll have to live like a human. I’ll have to sacrifice my heritage, my ancestors, my second