It was a full moon. The second full moon in the month, which meant it was a blue moon, which… crap. That was the only time you could turn a human into a shifter with an alpha’s bite. An alpha I couldn’t even scent thanks to all the detritus in the area. Dammit to hell!
The motives behind this attack were beyond questionable. Why go to the extent of converting someone, if you didn’t give a damn about them? Why leave them to drain out on their own? The woman had to be terrified, and the fear I saw in her eyes was only a fraction of the outright horror I knew she had to be feeling inside.
Crouching down and trying not to wince as I heard the odd little sounds that came from her throat where air escaped—I wasn’t exactly squeamish, but even that made my stomach churn—I reached over and rubbed my fingers over her bloody forehead.
“All will be well, sweetheart.”
Her eyes fluttered wider, transmitting more of her fear. She rocked her head to the side, barely moving a scant inch before she conceded defeat and stopped moving period, the pain evidently too much.
“You’re not going to die,” I crooned, trying to ease her pain, her discomfort. She didn’t understand, couldn’t and wouldn’t until it happened, and when it did, she needed to be far from here. “We have to move you,” I whispered. “We have to give you some breathing room.” Away from other humans.
I didn’t say that last part, didn’t want her to be even more scared than she’d been before. Because the last thing I needed her to know was that the second she shifted, every single person in the vicinity was under threat.
That first shift was a bastard.
The wolf wanted blood, meat. It was like the human side needed vengeance for what it had been through when its body transformed.
After that initial attack, after the ‘sacrifice’ was found and both wolf and human were at peace, they’d pass out for days. Sometimes even a week.
In both cases, they needed to be watched over.
Needed to be shielded.
When I shuffled the small woman into my arms, Austin was at my side, helping me get her comfortable without causing her more pain than strictly necessary. I winced, hearing more of the faint grunts that were just loaded with her agony.
Guilt filled me, but I shoved it aside. This was for her own benefit.
When she’d bled out fully, that was when she’d transform, and I could tell from her sluggish breaths and the dull throb of her heart that the pivotal moment was upon us.
With her now in my arms, Austin and I took off at a fast pace. Faster than a human would ever be able to compete with, faster even than some might be able to register, but we had no choice. Just running in this manner put us in danger of exposure, but what alternative did we have?
We were in a carnival, for God’s sake.
The last place a rabid, newly transformed wolf needed to be was around so many people. So many scents, so much…
Dear Mother, just thinking about it broke me out in a sweat more than the run itself did.
As we raced away from the commons where the carnival was being held, we veered onto pack territory. The pack actually owned most of Highbanks, everything from Main Street out into the other five major avenues in the shopping district. Only a few acres didn’t belong to us, and they were farms that had been managed by the same human families for centuries.
As for the rest, it was ours, just the pack’s, so running into a forest that belonged to us wasn’t a big ask, but finding something that the wolf wouldn’t consider prey was another matter entirely.
My senses were loaded down with the scent of her blood. My nose was clogged with it, and all I could hear was her dying breaths. I didn’t have it in me to scan for any stags that might be in the vicinity, nor did I have it in me to wonder if there were any other kinds of smaller beasts that might suit the ravenous hunger that was about to overtake the small female.
Wincing at the thought, I rushed through hundreds of trees, ignoring the scraping of branches and the loam underfoot that was crumpled by our weight. We registered the smaller prey—rabbits and the like—who popped out of their burrows to see who and