Chapter 13:
1158 Words
I woke up in sweat, my heart racing. I sat straight up, my eyes wide open, trying to remember the dream that had caused such a reaction. Beside me, Ella opened her eyes, blinking blearily at me.
"What is it, Grace?" she asked. "Is it time to go?"
I took a gulp of the cold evening air, which had managed to permeate even the shut up shop. "Nearly," I said, clearly my throat. "I just had a bad dream."
Ella crawled up closer to me, her face sympathetic. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"Um, not really, but I think I should."
Ella looked confused, but she prodded Kayden awake, who had apparently only been dozing. "We need to get up," she said. We had all already gotten changed before and had shoved our old shirts into a paper grocery bag we'd found behind the counter, so we only had to check through our bags and make sure the coast was clear.
Of course, we had taken only the bare minimum so as not to get noticed; cans of soup, rice, matches, a few vegetables, and some soap to wash with -- all stuff that could be eaten uncooked, even if it wouldn't taste nice. It was all there, packed into the crevices of our rucksacks, so without any delay I poked my head out of the door and listened for anyone wandering the streets. It was a dark evening outside and it was probably about seven o'clock, but the store was far enough from the main street that there was no one around to notice a bunch of dirty teenagers leaving from the closed shop.
Luckily, there was no trace of the wolf, not even in it's human form. I breathed in deeply to double check -- it seemed like the wolf had missed us. I beckoned to my friends to come outside and we slipped out of the store and down the street in silence.
We only walked a mile before we reached the edge of the town. Past the town there was only the highway, some neatly trimmed bushes and the Eastern mountains beyond it. There would be no forest to hide in for at least another day or two of walking. The thought of traveling so exposed frightened me, but we couldn't stay in the town any longer, especially with at least one wolf so close to finding us. It would track down our scent eventually, and then there would be no where to run.
I wished, pointlessly, that we could have taken a bus or a train, but we would have been too easy to track in such a public place and someone surely would have noticed us -- not to mention we had no way to pay for such a long trip. Our best chance was to risk the open road and hope we made it to the Eastern mountains before anyone -- or anything -- found us.
As we were leaving the town, I took the paper bag with our old shirts in it and I scattered the clothes behind a bush a little way to the side. They were mostly hidden from view, but I hoped the scent would be strong enough to confuse anyone who came looking for us, and possibly send them back into town.
The others watched me silently, as I had already explained to them what I was going to do. Perhaps they wondered how I knew to confuse werewolves or play tricks on their senses. Maybe they were too tired to wonder anything.
Ella eyed me carefully before turning back to Kayden. "I think Grace has something to tell us," she told him.
Kayden turned to me, ready to listen intently.
I paused. I knew, what with the dream I'd had and what I'd said to Ella earlier that it was the time to tell them what had happened.
"Oh, where do I begin?" I said, fidgeting as we walked. "You know that I've been on the run for for more than four months now." I hesitated, feeling unsure of how to go on. "Well, it's because Thomas, the Alpha I went to live with, rejected me. That means he broke the mate bond that binds us. It hurts a lot to do, and although you no longer feel bonded to the person it leaves a sort of scar, both emotionally and physically."
I pulled down my shirt to reveal part of the jagged silver scar snaking its way across the top of my chest. It ended by my stomach, though I didn't reveal the full extent of the scar to my friends. Kayden and Ella both gasped, their faces twin statues of shock.
"When I was rejected, his wolves started chasing me and Jamie. They chased us out into the woods and we ran as fast as we could. Eventually I realised I couldn't hear them anymore, so I tuned around and saw that Jamie was gone. I think... I think they caught him." My voice cracked and I had to hold back the tears.
They were both practically paralyzed by what I said. They couldn't imagine that Jamie, our friend, as vital to our group as any organ, was truly gone. To be fair, neither could I. It was why I had taken so long to finally tell them. I shuddered, feeling the aching inside me start up once more. I had lost so much, more than I ever thought I would. How could you lose so much in such a short amount of time?
I tried to continue my story. "It turns out Jamie and his brother were both werewolves. They were rogues, which means they didn't belong to any proper pack, but there was a makeshift pack of rogues that they lived with. I ran away to that pack a little while before Thomas rejected me, which was why Jamie was there when he attacked."
My two human friends were both still trying to process what I'd told them. We had all thought for years that Jamie was human, it must have been a massive shock to them to find out he wasn't. Eventually, Ella found her voice. Her eyes were full of unshed tears and her words were shaky as she asked her question.
"Why did Thomas reject you?"
I paused. I hated having to say it out loud, to admit what I was. My hands were shaking as I wiped away the tears from my eyes and looked at the ground to avoid their gaze.
"I...I don't know how to tell you. I guess I better just spit it out, right? You know the mutt that caused all these problems with humans and the wolves -- the one that was found four months ago?"
They nodded.
"Yeah, well, it turns out my father was actually a werewolf. My mom was human."
"So that means...?"
"Yeah. I'm the mutt."
- Writer
